TalynDerre

Having a 'nuked' Atlas Park sounds very cool, and not particularly resource-intensive to implement, to boot.

Generally speaking, I don't like my RP characters dying for any reason (unless 'coming back from the dead' is part of their super powers, of course) - even if I want to 'retire' an RP character, you never know when you might want to play them again! And it suspends my disbelief to have to retcon a 'dead' character back to life. Lots of other ways to 'die' narratively without needing to worry about it though - they could fake their own death, be badly wounded and need to go recuperate 'off-screen' for a while, they could disappear and have people assume they were dead, heck, they could just retire!

When fighting the Lost: "Rikti drugs - not even once." When fighting the Prophet during the DFB: "Let's go save the Lost some money on their taxes!" When someone inevitably asks what the hell I'm talking about, I say "we're about to make them a non-Prophet organization." When fighting high-level Council: 'This is what happens when you promote based on ideology instead of competence! All the super-soldier serum in the world couldn't turn this bunch of goose-stepping incels into proper soldiers.' (I play a lot of 'Natural' heroes and villains with chips on their shoulders.)

My Super Strength/Rad Armor Brute Troll pronounces it 'SOO-pra-DYNE.' I'm pretty sure the original manufacturers wanted it pronounced 'soo-PER-ah-dyne.' Pronounced the same way you do 'superlative.'

I will say, I will be disappointed if they bring female mobs into the warriors. The Warriors definitely have an ugly, misogynistic 'macho' ethos - that's why they are VILLAINS. One of my favorite bits of lore about the Warriors was a social worker interviewing people who considered the Warriors to be local heroes (mostly because they fought to keep the Tsoo and the Freakshow out of 'their' neighborhoods) - right up until the point where one of their Elites murdered his girlfriend because she spilled some wine on him when she was serving him. He picked her up and threw her out of a window, if I recall correctly. Another thing to consider is that their chief, 'Odysseus' Hill, is not only a violent, macho jackass, but he's also disrespectful to the Greek culture he supposedly idealizes - one of the two women in his 'harem' who accompany him in his office is named Persephone; that is, the wife of Hades, the only functional marriage in Greek mythology. Implying that you were able to 'win' her from Hades is a SERIOUS mythological no-no. I can't recall the name of the other 'girlfriend,' but it was something equally blasphemous. This guy has got a SERIOUS impious hubris problem.

Please call it 'stealth.' I have lots of Natural and Tech heroes who can't turn invisible, which has a very specific meaning, but sure as heck and be sneaky.

I think adding a single Merit as a reward for doing a Safeguard/Mayhem mission sounds like an excellent idea! And then another merit for each side mission you do!

Thank you @VileTerror for pointing me at this thread! As VileTerror pointed out, there is a lot of overlap with my Ambitions idea from this summer. I would certainly be interested in helping do some outlining and writing! Send me a DM and we'll collaborate!

For what it's worth, 'OK Boomer' for defeating Goldbrickers is hilarious, and I absolutely endorse it. I have no comment on the rest of this thread.

You know, I was thinking about this - what if we put in a system for missions (or, at least, for Task Forces) that is sort of like the Mythic system they use in WoW? We'd call it, I don't know, Crisis Mode. It wouldn't have to be for Incarnate-level stuff, either, any story arc or TF could be done as a Crisis arc. And it would be HARD. My thoughts? Any 'crisis' mob below AV level gets the following buffs: - double hit points - +15% damage across the board - get a +5% to-hit bonus, so capping defense is harder up front - each attack power gives them a stacking +2.5% additional to-hit bonus and stacking +5% damage increase, so long fights will make both Defense and Resistance less and less impenetrable Bosses, Elite Bosses, and AVs would also get 'gimmicks' individual to each boss. Like @Infinitumsuggested, Battle Maiden's nanite swarm is one of the few things that requires fully tricked-out Incarnates to stay on their toes - more stuff like that would make the game much more challenging. Making fights take longer and having enemies get more dangerous as fights go on also will mean that buff-granting Defenders and Corruptors won't feel redundant at max difficulty - that extra 20 points of Ranged Defense from your Bubble Defender will REALLY feel useful as enemies start looking at +30% to-hit bonuses at the end of a fight... And if THAT still becomes too easy, you could put another tier above that: Infinite Crisis! Enhance those enemies' stats even more AND make the boss gimmicks more unforgiving! For the real elite/masochistic among us. I don't know what the extra rewards for doing Crisis content would be, though - maybe special 'crisis' merits that can be exchanged for badges and incarnate stuff? Or just MOAR MERITS?

Frankly, @Naraka, it sounds like you want to play a tabletop game with a human GM - and I don't blame you for it! I love tabletop games, and in fact play and GM them a couple times a month. The kind of flexibility and player control over the game world you get around the table can't be beat. But this suggestion was made with the limitations of the City of Heroes game in mind. That being said, I think that if the Devs took this seriously, crowdsourcing the actual writing would be absolutely necessary. Even if we didn't go with fully branching mission choices like @VileTerrorsuggested, we'd still be looking at approximately 14 story arcs (not missions - arcs) per Ambition. That's a LOT of writing. Hell, prototyping it in AE sounds like a fine idea, though you'd need to do a different AE arc for each choice presented to the play, since AE doesn't allow for multiple contacts per arc. I will say, though, that for me at least, I can't stand the obvious 'fakeness' of doing AE arcs that are supposed to be 'canon.' I can't suspend my disbelief that I'm doing anything other than playing a video game in-universe, while playing a video game.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and have had some discussions with some other players (thanks @VileTerror!) - how can we make people in City of Villains really feel like they are playing SUPERVILLAINS and not just more-competent-than-usual evil lackeys? The most recent weekly discussion thread has shown me that I am not the only person who wants this. AMBITIONS There have been a number of discussions lately about villains feeling like their characters lack agency – that villain progression is just that of low-level lackeys to high-level lackeys, doing other characters' dirty work. So, I have a proposal for a series of missions to give villains a greater feeling of agency: villains (and rogues and possibly even vigilantes) can choose an Ambition, which will lead to a series of missions that span from level 10 through the Incarnate-level endgame. There are two ways of implementing this in-game: a relatively bare-bones approach which will require few new assets and no new coding, and a more robust system that will have more to it but require a more significant investment of time and resources. What is an Ambition? Put simply, your Ambition is whatever your villain is working towards, the end-goal of his or her villainy, whatever that is. Anything that could be a driving motivation for a comic book villain (and that has enough story potential that we could write interesting arcs for it) is on the table. Possible ambitions: to get revenge – on a person, organization, or the world at large to indulge your appetites – for luxury or for something more sinister to rule the world (or at least some significant piece of it) – either openly as emperor or as the hidden power behind the throne to seek out knowledge of that which Man was Not Meant to Know to prove your power and superiority by defeating the strongest possible foes to achieve Ultimate Power and ascend to godhood to simply spread as much chaos and destruction as possible to rise in the hierarchy of Arachnos to become Lord Recluse's right hand man/woman (arguably, this is the only 'ambition' that is already present in the game that has in-game support) The Bare-bones Approach So, at level 10, you will unlock a contact, reachable only via telephone, called 'Your Master Plan' or something like that. In it, you will choose which Ambition to follow. You will perform an introductory mission that will double as a brief tutorial on the Ambition system, which will then unlock a second contact which is dependent on which Ambition you pick. This contact will provide you with two short mission arcs, one at level 15, and one at level 20, similar to the arcs that VEATs have. These first arcs will be laying the groundwork for your master plan – acquiring resources, finding lackeys, possibly establishing a home base. Then, at level 25, you will get to choose the specifics of your ambition – each Ambition will have two (or possibly three) paths you can follow. For example, if you pick the 'Rule the World' ambition, you have to decide whether you want to rule it openly or behind the scenes. If you want to achieve Ultimate Power, you choose whether you want to do so through science and technology or magic. ((Note: the Revenge ambition will probably need to be structured slightly differently because it would be fun to have lots of choices about who your nemesis is.)) Each path you can choose has its own contact, who will provide mission arcs for you at level 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, and a capstone arc that requires you to have unlocked all your Incarnate slots. Each mission arc will be centered around your villain acquiring the 'pieces' necessary for his or her master plan. As an example, let's say you chose 'Rule the World' as your ambition. At level 10, you complete the 'tutorial' mission, pick your ambition, and are introduced to your contact, Ambition: Rule the World. At level 15 and 20, the contact provides you with short arcs that start your path towards fulfilling your ambition – establishing a base of operations, getting access to weapons, persuading some minions to join your cause, etc. At 25, you pick your specific path – in this case, whether to try and rule the world openly, or behind the scenes. Let's say we pick 'Rule openly.' Now your villain gets a series of missions where you actually work to conquer a small country. You get arcs to destabilize their government, plant evidence that they are building WMDs to get the U.N. to declare them a rogue state, knock out their military infrastructure, etc. etc. By the time you get to level 50, you'll have done a half dozen short arcs to leave the country ripe for the taking – and then, once you are an Incarnate-level villain, you'll have a final arc where you order your minions to seize control of the capitol in a coup. There will be a big showdown mission against the remnants of that country's loyalist military, supported by an appropriate AV-level hero (maybe Crimson?), and then you will be finish the Ambition, get awarded an appropriately impressive badge and maybe some Villain Merits. Sure, you haven't conquered the entire world, but you've made a good start... It's not that different from other villain arcs except in the writing – instead of contacts telling you what to do, your 'contact' will be your own master plan, and the writing will make it clear that this is your villain acting on his or her own initiative, laying an appropriate foundation and executing the plan in stages until there is a final victory at the end. The More Robust Approach Your villain will still do the tutorial mission and pick an ambition at level 10. After that, though, things become different. Instead of a series of mission introduced by your 'Master Plan' contact, you will instead establish a 'base of operations' at the end of your tutorial mission – an instanced zone, accessible by a 'travel to my base of operations' power, that will evolve as you progress through the missions. In a perfect world, you could even customize your base of operations like you would a SG base, but that might be asking too much on the coding side. As you play the game, 'Opportunities' would rarely drop from enemies, similar to the way they drop Tips. Each Opportunity would open up a mission where you take an action that furthers your master plan – and successfully completing those missions would affect the look and feel of your base of operations. Some changes would be purely cosmetic, others would add NPCs or terminals you could interact with that would, in turn, unlock further missions. If we wanted to keep the amount of writing required in line with the 'bare-bones approach,' we would say that there were 8 such opportunities that would drop, each of which would send you on that arc's introductory mission. Once you completed the intro mission, an NPC or object in your base of operations would appear that would lead you to the rest of that arc. Once all 8 Opportunity arcs were completed and your villain had unlocked his Incarnate potential, the final Opportunity would be able to drop, and you would complete your final arc. You'd get your badge, your merits, AND your Base of Operations would get some significant cosmetic changes to reflect the fact that you have fulfilled your villainous end-goal! Ideally, each Base of Operations would reflect the Ambition appropriately – 'indulge your appetites' could be a mansion which gets increasingly decadent and luxurious as you complete opportunities, where 'spread as much chaos as possible' might be a wrecked building that gets increasingly covered with graffiti and wreckage, and 'prove your strength' could be compound that gets filled with trophies taken from the opponents you've defeated. They could also double as a sort of 'player housing' outside of SG bases, assuming that is possible from a coding perspective.

Malta Gunslingers. The villain so cool that they got a whole powerset built around imitating them. Ah, someday I will get my Malta-themed villain group off the ground again. Someday...