Twilight Forums

Hey all. Just wanted to say I'm really sorry this is running slow. It was supposed to be finished tonight, but a debilitating headache is sidetracking those plans. It will absolutely be done sometime tomorrow, at which points I'll probably have a couple of other notes to go along with the announcement, all of which will end up here.

No problem at all boss man! I'm getting pretty excited for the realease though:) I mean with all this testing, it has to be something BRAND new. And brand new things lead to expansion and uniqueness of the game. Which is definitely a goood thing!

This month's item is the Plaid couch. It's basically an item that summons items which summon sidekicks.

Sidekicks are a new but swiftly expanding territory, so there may be some quirks, and there may need to be some adjustments before the month is out. I don't think it'll be drastic, but I wanted to warn you that there might be at least some risk of minor changes.

I also wanted to be very clear that there will be many more in-game sidekicks in the course of the next few weeks and months, and those sidekicks will provide many of the same functions as the ones included here. (There are 3 new sidekicks just in the last week available regularly in game which already meet some of the new functions.) The donation ones from the couch are designed to provide easy options in terms of convenience of access, and more flavor, and sometimes greater duration or quality than some of the in-game ones. I say this mostly because I don't want anyone to feel they're required to donate to get useful/different sidekicks--there will be alternatives, though perhaps more difficult to acquire, or of varying quality in different aspects.

Was kinda hoping for a shirt to be honest, fully coloured equipment ftw.

...

A couch you say?

Well that would be awesome if i didn't already summon wolves and buffalo.

Not impressed at all

It's been out for five fucking minutes. You probably haven't even used it. You really don't have any right to be unimpressed.

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Can you make it possible to install and uninstall this in your hideout? Make another room like living room or something?

It's similarities to the pouch already make me want to love it, and I can't even try it out yet. No matter what it actually does, though, I can tell I'm going to wish I had a "return" thing like with the lost items, though, because I'm going to want to pass them around, I'm sure... besides maybe a favorite one or something. But it's not a big deal, the pouch just spoiled me. I'll just have to think of some stock witty phrases to put in messages to send them about, I suppose. Heh.

I agree with Feef. How dare you spend time and effort on creating new kinds of content for the game when you could be churning out lackluster material.

In all seriousness, I am excited to see this long anticipated aspect of the game get off the ground. Thanks as always.

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Psi Man says: "Just say no."

Feef, dont knock it till you try it, if you dont like it, dont buy it, and wait patiently for next month.



Whuknose, out!

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I am Whuknose, all your steak bow before me.

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I'm sooo very curious about the couch. Are the lumps pure evil? Very cool.

I honestly think you should be able to make yourself a "couch castle" (fort?) out of the cushions.

"You sleep in the comfort of your couch fort. I bet Chandler, Ross, & Joey never had this much fun!"

Xentrium breastplate is colored. Every non-colored item is black, white, or gray. Xentrium is silver.

Also, frankly, this really should have been expected, you know. Massive change to how sidekicks work, followed by a 4 day delay because of mechanics testing.

Personally, I'd like to see de-lumped couches providing a boost to your resting. I mean, naps on old couches are awesome.

Finally, I propose that all future IotM that create items that generate effects end in -ouch. Pouch, couch, um... slouch?

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Touch? >.>

Love this. It has mucho potentiale too.

Youch. Vouch!

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Vote for TH on global rankings!

If i am paying for it i'll complain for what ever the hell I feel like, it's my money going into it after all.

It is quite likely that it's simply a class problem of already have sidekicks it's rather unimpressive.

Oh and i'm colour blind you bunch of insensitive jerks so silver = grey here.

Let's keep it friendly.


And Feef, class really isn't that big of a decider. I may not be able to summon my own sidekicks, but I still had 40,000 minutes of buffalo before I shrugged it off for couch items.

Yes, you can summon your own sidekicks, but wolf and buffalo just attack. I wager most people would prefer the effects of the other sidekicks. I know I'd rather have the bonus XP from the old friend, and I wager farmers will much prefer the +chips of the mafia informant.

Yes, you can already summon sidekicks. And my Luxura is a 2 range vehicle with PP regen, so the Hero's Cape and VHF Fighter are useless. The riot shield goes in the off hand slot, so the Aegis is useless. And I can buy Denim Pants in Somerset, so those Dreampants can just screw off. Likewise, the Fighting Club is worthless, because I can equip a baseball bat.

If the only sidekick you could possibly want is one that attacks, then I guess you're right: you can summon sidekicks and thus don't "need" the couch. But to call the massive amount of work that went into the couch, to say nothing of all the writing, "unimpressive" is just insulting.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Then i guess i will have to be insulting i'm sorry, i'd have prefered the work to have gone into a end of game mechanic and i will fully admit I have no idea about the scale of work that went into the couch, as far as I know it could have only been a few hundred lines of code or it could be a million.

What I do know is it's not what I would have asked for as an item of the month and whilst the coding can be used on other sidekicks that will come in over time (I say three weeks before there's a store that let's you hire them for a time period)

So I am sorry but I am unimpressed, the item of the month totally fails to impress me in any way.

As "impressive" and "being impressed" are totally subjective terms, that's fine. Hopefully you'll find next month's more interesting. I do think you'll eventually find the sidekick mechanic more rewarding when you explore the other options, but if you never find the couch handy, that's okay.

It may be a couple of months for a shirt, though, as the full body suit from the VHF-1 at least partially covers that slot.

What I really like about the couch is that it's a manifestation of the sidekicks as a new and unique concept in the mmorpg genre.

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Pupper er poesi!

I haven't logged in to test it yet.. About to do that. But from reading what has ben said here I have a very basic idea. I like how this item will have the potential for "deeper" gameplay. What I mean by that is these sidekicks do not make you stronger in general, but allow for specialization. I think it will stimulate different gameplay and through that all the things I persoally like about mmorpg's; player-econnomy's, Different ways to play, etc...
Just great! Thumb's up Ryme.

And storyline significance? Please? At least minor quests.

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Vote for TH on global rankings!

We go from a great IotM to a crappy one at a drop of a hat.

We go from a great weapon to a tome of familiar....summoning. Yeah that's some swell idea you got there

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I think its ok, it'll will take some time to bed in and see how everything works in context but there's a fair amount of potential there

On the contrary. As someone who actually owns this item (and I'm going to assume you don't, since as far as I know, you don't have any other donation items, and it seems unlikely this would be your first), I must say, I find it, well, useful as fuck. Two of the sidekicks have already increased my farming capabilities, and at least one, probably two, and possibly up to three of them are useful for adventuring in scaling zones.

I find this, to be quite honest, much, much more useful than the Fighting Club, actually - though, again, I'm a farmer, and the Club wasn't geared towards my playstyle.

In addition, sidekicks are pretty different from familiars. Thematically they're the same, sure, but mechanically? Not even a little bit.

I must say, Smoot, you would have some credibility if you actually, like, you know, played around with the items before making assumptions. As it is, it seems to me that you're just trolling.

But please. Prove me wrong. Tell me why this item is bad. What sucks about it? How is it useless? Explain.

Or, you know, fuck off. Either or.

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Read his blog. He never gives good reasons.

I think it's a slightly worse tome of snowcone summoning, in that there are less useful ones (good = item and chip drop, exp bonus, and bad = absorbing hits and potato, which are identical, and hit blocker). Still, no MP cost makes it a great item. I think it's above average.

Well for starters, this nothing more than a tome of familiar summoning, only hey you can't put these critters in a terrarium somewhere, cause y'know that'd be actually useful. Don't get me wrong some of the stuff that the things do looks nifty but wear off in 60 minutes or so.

As opposed to last month's item the fight club club thing, it's a decent item for the future content (whenever the hell that may be) but as of right now seems like a useful tool for leveling. I would've gotten the club but I would have to with the fact of saying "I donated to Twilight Heroes" and that's just something I can't live down.

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Just a random thought, could this item effect resting in some way? (As in, an additional effect for it...)

I just thought I'd give my views of all the different sidekicks this item gives you. Maybe people can form their opinions better on this.

Boxing coach:

Well this first one is a little unclear for me. I have absolutely no idea what is does yet. It is rumoured that it increases the chance to hit but I haven't noticed anything that would support that idea while using it in DDD
force. Could be great but just don't know.. I know very dissapointing first review but thats how it is. On to the next item!

Crow:

this one seems to give a +% items. Handy item for farmers. Don't know eactly how much % But I'm sure it will be figured out someday.

Free dummy:

Now at first I really liked this sidekick, I think I've found something wrong with it though.. This companion can be destroyed, since it takes up all those nasty blows for you that can be expected. What is very annoying though is that it is destroyed no matter how many minutes you have! You can have 60 minutes or 600, doesn't matter if you loose the dummy you loose every last minute of it. I am hoping this is unintentional since it doesn't seem to serve point. I also think you loose it a bit too often but thats just my humble opinion. Other then that great sidekick! No need to sacrifice an equipment slot for damage absorption! (could defenately be my favorite if this gets fixed)

Mafia informer:

+% chips. Very handy for the farmers. I haven't used it myself yet I'm sorry to say, so I have no idea what the percentage on this is.

Old friend:

Nice sidekick. I expect this one to be extra handy for transmoggers and lower lvl heroes. Ofcourse people who just want to lvl faster in general can use it too

Smart-aleck kid:

I like this sidekick alot. Probably my favorite at the moment. It helpd me get quite a bit further in Sector 7 gamma. It doent stop everything but it stops enough.

The dummy has both an HP limit and a time limit. Each use of the dummy adds to both. If it falls apart, it means you've reached the cumulative damage limit. If it didn't have an HP limit, it could be absorbing thousands or millions of HP of damage by the time a high-level player was done with it, and that would clearly be broken.

Heh... heh... heh...

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"