Bruce Harlick, creator of the Reichsman TF/SF speaks...
July 1, 2009 - 8:38pm
I feel a lot better having read his comments.
From HERE
Hi, I’m Bruce Harlick, aka Horatio, the guy who was in charge of the Reichsman Task Force and Strike Force. Thank you for the comments and feedback on the TF & SF. I’d like to take the opportunity to respond to some of them and let you know our some of our intended responses.
To start, there is a difference in the challenge of the final fight in the SF and TF. The TF fight is much trickier and takes longer. We didn’t address that when assigning the initial merit values for the SF. We will be increasing the merit award for the Strike Force to 30 merits later this week. As time goes by and we collect more data on how long it takes groups to complete these arcs, we’ll likely be adjusting the merit rewards further.
There seems to be some confusion as to the use of the dimensional ground ray in the final fight of the Task Force. Before Reichsman’s hit by the ray, he is in a phased state and is running a rather nasty debuffing aura. When he is hit by the ray, it “grounds out” some of his power and he returns to a normal state and his aura is shut down. This will persist for the duration of the fight. The dimensional grounding ray isn’t intended to be used at specific points in the fight; it should be used early on, and one hit will do.
On the villain side of things, our intent was to try to do something a bit different for the end fight. As has been previously stated, we wanted to do a “gadget” fight; something that was more than just hit the bad guy until he fell over. And we wanted to encourage teams to include different ATs, to help shake up some standard team compositions. Certainly, the end fight is more difficult without having each of the appropriate ATs on the team, but it is still doable. Each of the temp powers is intended to make stages of the fight easier. There is no one “golden solution” to solving the fight; by including some or all of the ATs that can take advantage of the various temp powers, you can approach this battle using different tactics.
The Mastermind temp power is not working at this time; Castle has fixed that, but his fix did not go out with the release due to some build issues. This power should be working in a patch this week.
Switching voices, I am aware of the canon issues with the story. The problems are purely my fault; when I came up with the original flow for the story I was under some mistaken impressions on some events in the game’s history. While I did make some adjustments to the story due to the feedback from the training room, I didn’t get all the details nailed down as best I could. Due to a tight translation deadline, I was unable to get final text passes into the build that was going to the Live servers, but rest assured I’ll be doing my best to address them over the next week or so to bring the story of Reichsman’s return in line with the existing history of the 5th Column.
I’ll certainly be reading this (and the other) threads for any other comments you have on the issue. Please feel free to PM me with your comments and concerns if you’d like. I’ll do my best to respond to them in a timely fashion.
To start, there is a difference in the challenge of the final fight in the SF and TF. The TF fight is much trickier and takes longer. We didn’t address that when assigning the initial merit values for the SF. We will be increasing the merit award for the Strike Force to 30 merits later this week. As time goes by and we collect more data on how long it takes groups to complete these arcs, we’ll likely be adjusting the merit rewards further.
There seems to be some confusion as to the use of the dimensional ground ray in the final fight of the Task Force. Before Reichsman’s hit by the ray, he is in a phased state and is running a rather nasty debuffing aura. When he is hit by the ray, it “grounds out” some of his power and he returns to a normal state and his aura is shut down. This will persist for the duration of the fight. The dimensional grounding ray isn’t intended to be used at specific points in the fight; it should be used early on, and one hit will do.
On the villain side of things, our intent was to try to do something a bit different for the end fight. As has been previously stated, we wanted to do a “gadget” fight; something that was more than just hit the bad guy until he fell over. And we wanted to encourage teams to include different ATs, to help shake up some standard team compositions. Certainly, the end fight is more difficult without having each of the appropriate ATs on the team, but it is still doable. Each of the temp powers is intended to make stages of the fight easier. There is no one “golden solution” to solving the fight; by including some or all of the ATs that can take advantage of the various temp powers, you can approach this battle using different tactics.
The Mastermind temp power is not working at this time; Castle has fixed that, but his fix did not go out with the release due to some build issues. This power should be working in a patch this week.
Switching voices, I am aware of the canon issues with the story. The problems are purely my fault; when I came up with the original flow for the story I was under some mistaken impressions on some events in the game’s history. While I did make some adjustments to the story due to the feedback from the training room, I didn’t get all the details nailed down as best I could. Due to a tight translation deadline, I was unable to get final text passes into the build that was going to the Live servers, but rest assured I’ll be doing my best to address them over the next week or so to bring the story of Reichsman’s return in line with the existing history of the 5th Column.
I’ll certainly be reading this (and the other) threads for any other comments you have on the issue. Please feel free to PM me with your comments and concerns if you’d like. I’ll do my best to respond to them in a timely fashion.
From HERE
July 1, 2009 - 8:46pm
#1
Wow, not bad. Nice to hear we're still going to improve it, and get some explanations for some of our woes. Kudos to Horation on owning up to some mistake, and his dedication to fixing them 
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July 2, 2009 - 7:59am
#2
I don't really understand the point of giving everyone on the team a grounding ray with 10 charges if only one person has to use it once. And on top of that, what the heck is the whirlpool thing that flashes above him randomly during the fight and then dissipates after you use the gun on him?
Blah. In any case, it is nice to hear him say that he did mess up. But holy cow, I really don't understand how he could have gotten lore things wrong in the first place. I mean, yeah, the stories and lore can be confusing...but he's a dev - paid to do this stuff, so he has access to guys like Hero-1 (and maybe Manticore) as well as having access to the story bible and even fan maintained sites like paragonwiki. It's really like "what the hell?" Why was nothing picked up on by the other devs or internal testers or to basically not have time to adjust things during the open beta? And the scheduling/lack of time thing baffles me because these errors were pointed out within hours of open beta starting...how could they not have been addressed within the first week of open beta?
Of course I say all this when I was going around thinking that it was Ghost Falcon that was responsible for this mess. >.<
Blah. In any case, it is nice to hear him say that he did mess up. But holy cow, I really don't understand how he could have gotten lore things wrong in the first place. I mean, yeah, the stories and lore can be confusing...but he's a dev - paid to do this stuff, so he has access to guys like Hero-1 (and maybe Manticore) as well as having access to the story bible and even fan maintained sites like paragonwiki. It's really like "what the hell?" Why was nothing picked up on by the other devs or internal testers or to basically not have time to adjust things during the open beta? And the scheduling/lack of time thing baffles me because these errors were pointed out within hours of open beta starting...how could they not have been addressed within the first week of open beta?
Of course I say all this when I was going around thinking that it was Ghost Falcon that was responsible for this mess. >.<
July 2, 2009 - 10:09am
#3
... But holy cow, I really don't understand how he could have gotten lore things wrong in the first place. I mean, yeah, the stories and lore can be confusing...but he's a dev - paid to do this stuff, so he has access to guys like Hero-1 (and maybe Manticore) as well as having access to the story bible and even fan maintained sites like paragonwiki.....
It's possible he thought he knew the lore, so didn't realize he needed to research certain points. Sometimes it's not having the answers, it's knowing what questions to ask.
I still agree with you, though. Doesn't he have an Editor he needs to pass these things through?
Also, these things did come up immediately in Beta. Is this guy a writer or more of a designer/developer? What other things did he need to concentrate on that would keep him from fixing this in the first week? Hopefully not programing and fight mechanics. That'd be a bit too much in the way of double duty, I would think.
July 2, 2009 - 10:22am
#4
Well, according to the 'Ask a Dev' feature with Bruce he says "I'm primarily responsible for making cool stories and missions, and designing systems to help support missions." So the TF/SF stuff is his area of work on the game.
And I understand that he could have thought he was familiar enough with the lore, but that is still not an excuse. I'd say I am pretty familiar with the lore as well, but when I go to work on my various arcs that feature aspects of the actual game lore...I do my research regardless. So when it comes to the flagship feature of the issue, the TF and SF, there really should not be any excuses for why things are wrong because it should have never happened in the first place.
And I understand that he could have thought he was familiar enough with the lore, but that is still not an excuse. I'd say I am pretty familiar with the lore as well, but when I go to work on my various arcs that feature aspects of the actual game lore...I do my research regardless. So when it comes to the flagship feature of the issue, the TF and SF, there really should not be any excuses for why things are wrong because it should have never happened in the first place.
July 2, 2009 - 10:36am
#5
July 2, 2009 - 10:43am
#6
I with Peregrin who with razor
with Peregrin who with razor
July 2, 2009 - 12:10pm
#7
:agreed:
July 2, 2009 - 12:40pm
#8
Flagship of the issue is right, although I might have phrased it as the only feature of this Issue 15 update, if it weren't for my precious costume emotes 
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July 2, 2009 - 12:53pm
#9
:LOL: Flagship of the issue is right, although I might have phrased it as the only feature of this Issue 15 update, if it weren't for my precious costume emotes :P
It is the only feature.
July 2, 2009 - 8:40pm
#10
:LOL: Flagship of the issue is right, although I might have phrased it as the only feature of this Issue 15 update, if it weren't for my precious costume emotes :P
It is the only feature.
July 3, 2009 - 9:24am
#11
There were features in this patch? er... issue?
July 3, 2009 - 9:51am
#12
:LOL: Flagship of the issue is right, although I might have phrased it as the only feature of this Issue 15 update, if it weren't for my precious costume emotes :P
It is the only feature.
:agreed:
I just hope I16 isn't a one trick pony also.
July 3, 2009 - 10:13am
#13
:LOL: Flagship of the issue is right, although I might have phrased it as the only feature of this Issue 15 update, if it weren't for my precious costume emotes :P
It is the only feature.
:agreed:
I just hope I16 isn't a one trick pony also.
Sad to think it, but most likely it will be.
July 3, 2009 - 10:44am
#14
With the exception of I15, they have been 'ponies' the player base has been asking for.
(Created content, customization, proliferation, etc.)
I personally would like to see another Faultline-esque revamp, though I'm sure there will be no real zone additions until GR.
Just give me some reason not to PL the first 25 lvls in AE, please!
(Created content, customization, proliferation, etc.)
I personally would like to see another Faultline-esque revamp, though I'm sure there will be no real zone additions until GR.
Just give me some reason not to PL the first 25 lvls in AE, please!
July 3, 2009 - 7:48pm
#15
I just hope I16 isn't a one trick pony also.
Sad to think it, but most likely it will be.
Sad to think it, but most likely it will be.
I'm inclined to think it won't be. The whole thing seems cyclical to me. In hte past when we've had a light-on-content issue or two they've been followed with something a little more meaty, or at least that's the way I remember it.
Actually the more I think about it the more I'm starting to think that GR will be the meaty interruption in the parade of fluff.
July 5, 2009 - 11:08am
#16
I just hope I16 isn't a one PUMP CHUMP also.
Fix't
July 5, 2009 - 12:26pm
#17
I just hope I16 isn't a one PUMP CHUMP also.
Fix't
Thanks.
July 5, 2009 - 2:11pm
#18
Looking back at some of the recent developments/announcements as well as expansions, I think that the next issues will look much more appealing than the more recent ones. The MA system and power customization are huge resource sinks - the MA required significant work from all the major areas of development (powers, art, animations, ect) and to add power customization, at least as "simple" colorizing, requires a ton of work because the code has to be redone (this was the explanation given as to why it was never done before).
So, while I am not trying to use the above as an excuse for the lightness of I15 or even I14, but rather I think that with these major resource hogs out of the way that we'll see issues return to what we're more accustomed with.
...at least I hope so.
So, while I am not trying to use the above as an excuse for the lightness of I15 or even I14, but rather I think that with these major resource hogs out of the way that we'll see issues return to what we're more accustomed with.
...at least I hope so.