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At any rate, he went into some stuff about the designers' vision for the game, stuff that was put in that ended up not working (most of which was excised during beta), the state of the game now, and where it's going. Most of it is stuff that any long-time boardwatcher already knows, but among other fun little tidbits was the fact that no one really expected the badge system to be as big a hit as it was, and that he hadn't wanted it in in the first place. However, he was responsible for the accolades, saying that the badges should at least DO something. Then he opened up the floor for questions. Here's what I remember of the stuff that was said:


Tankers are still being worked on. The AoE taunt is pretty much decided on and (I think) largely finished, now they're working on the second system, which he wasn't very specific about.

Something is going to be done about the self-immobilize on Unyielding Stance and Rooted working in conjunction with Teleport Self. It wasn't absolutely clear, but it sounded like they were looking at doing away with the self-immobilize, although they might just be closing the TP loophole. Like I said, it wasn't clear. Roughly, his statement was, "There's these things that look really good when you're designing that just don't hold up. The 'perfect' tanker right now has to take provoke, hasten, teleport, and fitness. That's messed up."

AoE will be addressed. They know it's a problem, and they're looking at solutions.
Mobs will eventually be tuned to the point where three whites (or possibly slightly more) remain a challenge even into the high levels.
Bows and sonics will not be in Issue 3. The Epic ATs chewed up more time than expected.
Bows, sonics, shields, and magnetism were four that he listed as "must go in." When I asked about streetfighting/brawling, he said, "Oh, yeah, that's a given. That's (I believe he said) trivial to do." Someone else brought up pistols, and he added that to the "must-have" list. Pistols are going to be "probably scrapper." Shields are going to be "probably scrapper and tanker." Bows are going to be "probably blaster and defender."
No, pistols are not going to be a power pool. "I don't want it to turn into City of Guns."

Ultimately he wants to get every powerset up to (I think) 10 powers each.

There will be origin-dependent missions, starting with Issue 3. Essentially, if you're a mutant, you'll get some missions that non-mutants can't get. Same with every other origin. The first ones for mutant and science will be in issue 3.

When the power pools are expanded (I believe he meant adding more powers to pools, like a 5th power in the existing pool), teleport will probably get a "teleport to point on map" power.

Semi-regular zone-specific events are coming. The first 3 or so will be in Issue 3. He wouldn't give details on what they entailed, but his example, which he said was NOT one that was currently implemented, would be a gang war that occasionally erupts between the skulls and hellions in Perez Park. He said (I believe) that this was partially in preparation for giant monster attacks.

As mentioned before, web-slinging is very, very hard. Don't hold your breath on it happening anytime soon.

The Statesman epic AT won't be coming until after City of Villains.

As he's already stated on the boards, 2 epic ATs with 16 primary and 16 secondary powersets between them will be implemented in Issue 3.
Epic power pools are also coming in Issue 3. You don't get access to them until level 40. People already past 40 MAY get another respec, but that hasn't been decided yet.

The difficulty slider will only affect mob difficulty in missions, not mob spawn sizes. So you'll still have 3 mobs per spawn when solo, but they'll be higher level.

They will not be adding super strength to scrappers.

Making custom weapons is easier than making custom colors for power, because of how the artwork for powers is done. Those will be further out than custom weapons.

Removing the accuracy penalty for melee attacks only from flight is very difficult to do. Since it's either no accuracy penalty or every attack gets an accuracy penalty, flight will be retaining its penalty on all atacks.


That's all I can remember off the top of my head, and I forgot to bring a note pad, so if anyone else remembers anything, please speak up!

Oh, and thanks again to Statesman! What could have been a dull, relatively uninformative panel was quite lively and useful.

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