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Chris24601

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Everything posted by Chris24601

  1. I’ve literally not seen the Mage-Killer Tatiana arc just because the contact’s title “Mage-Killer” and the arc title “Last Witch of Striga.” Hearing later that it’s to get her freaking WEDDING RING*, knowing the story from the heroic version just puts that one so far beyond the pale for me. Completing that mission makes your character lower than dog feces in my opinion. That one guy wanted Rogues punished with being mistrusted? Well, I’ll agree to that IF any character that finishes that mission gets switched immediately to villain, locked out of choosing the Rogue option for tip missions and even Null saying “Dude, I can do a lot, but I can’t wash away THAT!” I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate that there’s no “drop story arc” option in this game. It’s not so much an issue Blueside where even an unfun mission is still a story of your character saving someone or stopping a criminal. But on Redside, YOU are the calamity that could befall innocents and needing to essentially find a wiki and read every mission ahead of time to make sure you aren’t exposing innocents to lethal plagues, or collecting victims to be experimented on, or doing anything for Westin Phipps. That level of diligence to avoid all the moral event horizons makes it more like work than something you’re doing for fun. * the ring with the flavor text of “This ring contains the power of Stephanie Peebles’ love for her late husband, Stephen.”
  2. Other than just to give Rogues something unique, there is zero reason for an arc that includes both heroic, rogue and villain options at several points and is REALLY GOOD to be alignment locked to Rogue. Not to mention if you can’t have contacts as a Rogue as the other guy wanted, both that mission and the excellent Bobby Curtin arc wouldn’t be accessible to anyone despite being built FOR the Rogue alignment exclusively (non-Rogue Redsiders can’t even reach Houston to talk to him). Similarly the Rogue arc of Sgt. Schorr shows off the flexibility Red-Side missions could have in terms of approach and goals via in-mission triggers. The rewrite of the ending of the one Crosscut mission to allow you to NOT be a complete monster doesn’t even require any change of mechanics (you don’t turn the Skull over until the very end) and would make that entire arc more playable for a much wider range of players. Another metric I’d be interested in would be what percentage of players voluntarily fail the Marshal Brass mission to take out Amanda Vine’s broadcast despite the fact its not even difficult to complete and requires you to go faff about for an hour and a half waiting for the timer to run down before you can finish the arc (not a huge deal if you catch it in the level band, but kinda annoying if you’re getting it via Oroboros). More ability to choose your path; be it a broader array of Newspaper missions, more Tip missions, and/or more story arcs where you get a choice of approach; is probably the most resource-friendly approach for strengthening Redside.* I also contend that an option to betray the 5th Column and Mage-Killer contacts on Striga would be a good thing. The middle three arcs are sufficiently grey they’re good for either Villains or Rogues; but even big-time villains in comics have drawn the line at working with Neo-Nazis, while beating up an old widow to steal her wedding ring is just so petty that they may as well add a mission about kicking puppies… it’s so far over the moral event horizon you can’t see a character coming back from that to be anything other than pure villain (the most lame and boring kind from my perspective).
  3. The biggest thing holding Indom back is it’s rep as the unofficial PVP server. As has been found with virtually every MMO across genre, PVP is a <10% demographic. The fact that, given it’s reputation, it has roughly 10% of the players on it is about what you’d expect. The best way to improve Indom’s numbers would be to stop pushing it as where to go for PVP. Maybe make it the TF/I-trial server by upping those rewards over there.
  4. XP/inf penalties to teams that include rogues? Give villains a chance to be more evil? You really want Redside to be a deserted wasteland don’t you? All this suggestion would do is encourage most players roll heroes with a “I used to be a villain” and “I’m doing this for the money” in their background info because for most people engaging in pretend evil isn’t all that engaging and exiting Redside numbers already show that. The main reason opening up the ATs happened was because even exclusive access to those ATs wasn’t enough to keep people playing Redside. They merged the markets because there weren’t enough players Redside to sustain it… whole categories of recipes and salvage; much less crafted IOs; were just empty. No amount of influence can buy what’s not there. Redside isn’t popular because being an outright villain isn’t popular. Honestly, I’m curious what the metrics of the new Striga arcs looks like. What percentage are taking the “Work for the 5th Column” and “Beat/Kill an old lady for her magic wedding ring” arcs? How many of those who have are going on to play it more than once (on the same or different PCs)? Particulary in relation to the Rogue-aligned Curtin and Houston arcs (which anacdotally I go out of my way to play with every rogue I roll). I stand by my prior conclusion; you can either make Redside into a more populated Rogue Isles (i.e. focus on more Roguish content… or at least content where Rogue options are possible) or maintain it as a largely empty City of Villains (i.e. focus on content that is exclusively villainous), but a more populated City of Villains just isn’t possible given human nature.
  5. I know that’s what the plan turned into, but the development of lore was ongoing throughout the original run. Ex. Statesman and Recluse weren’t Incarnates until the concept of incarnates was invented. The concept of Incarnates grew out of a need to develop monetizable endgame grinding. One thing I’m admittedly a bit concerned about is taking the LiveDevs post-shutdown statements about future plans as gospel truth for the future. It’s not. It’s a snapshot in time of their future plans that would have to be adjusted due to scheduling, budgets, manpower and programming limitations, demands from above, etc. This bit added in Issue 19 was another snapshot; a foreshadowing of plans at the stage Incarnates were first introduced. Do you think it was an accident the initial adversaries trying to keep you from finding the Well in Ramiels arc are Reflections identical to those you find in the Shadow Shard. Now, plans change. All the time. But that’s actually part of my point. Those LiveDev plans got changed radically. They were made literally impossible by the shutdown. Even if they HAD gone forward, at its prior pace we have no idea how much of those future plans would still apply by the time they actually reached live several YEARS* down the line. People have better ideas and change direction all the time. I would like decisions for the future to be based on what Homecoming’s Devs can reasonably produce and what they think makes sense, not slavish devotion to a roadmap that was largely based on finding ways to monetize the game to keep ahead of the shutdown beast. For example; given the current resources, perhaps scaling back The Battalion and making the Oncoming Storm into a cascade of theats piling up all at once (i.e. Battalion + Praetorian Hamidon + Rularuu + … you know, one threat per power origin would be cool) instead of a singular ever power scale escalating Crisis (followed by an even BIGGER Crisis) would be healthier for City of Heroes now that it is no longer beholden to the abusive demon of monetization. It’s something to think about anyway. * Other than Issue 23, it was roughly 6 months between Issues once Incarnate content came online. With four Incarnate slots left to be released after Issue 24 and added at the typical one per issue… the end of the original Incarnate advancements would have been at least two years out past when it was shutdown.
  6. And this is why, whenever I put something together in Architect, I create a custom group filled with whichever minions are supposed to be able to speak and use that group for any patrols, rescues, etc. Oh, and regarding the military in the Shadow Shard; I forget where I dug it up, but that’s actually Vanguard (who is responsible for all extradimensional threats) before the RWZ update gave them spiffy purple/grey costumes. Another interesting tidbit of Shadow Shard lore is the Stormwatcher badge (added for issue 19: Alpha Strike) that gives a bit of hint of what the LiveDevs future plans were at that time they first introduced Incarnate content… Stormwatcher It was here that Earth's explorers first encountered the mysterious entities of the Shadow Shard. Their threat was implicit and the need to keep them contained became a driving force in the establishment of Tempest Sector. As a representative of Paragon City, you have joined the fight to prevent the denizens of the Shadow Shard from extending their range into your home dimension. Some see their discovery of Primal Earth's dimension as inevitable; a "coming storm" which could rival the Rikti Invasion in destructive potential. Those quotes around “coming storm” weren’t added by me for emphasis. That’s the original text.
  7. I’ll admit, some parts of my recommendations get tailored to “what is within the realms of what the devs could realistically accomplish?” Changing text boxes to get the timeline smoother? Reasonably trivial provided you know what needs to be changed. Making SSA1 Oroboros-only is no more difficult than moving their contacts to Oroboros and maybe reskinning them with Mender costumes. Moving Tina and Maria to the RWZ and pointing their portal missions to the portal there? Similar. Scaling them down to level 35? Depends a lot on whether the various mobs have level 35-39 versions. Belladonna’s arc? Maps already exist for the trial zones. If set to level 40-50 I think all the mobs are available sans maybe some of the Incarnate-tier Devouring Earth (Avatar of Hamidon mainly; the rest I think show up via the issue 24 Red-side equivalent to the New Praetorians as low as level 35). The script has been written. The main work for the Devs would involve making the multiplayer raid mechanics into something a single player wouldn’t be overwhelmed by. The Scirocco heel-face turn? The old devs once described the plan for it in broad strokes, but it would be a brand new mission chain. Still, the Piecemeal personal story with an original map and a whole new mechanic with the gravity springs has shown me that there’s nothing in that broad strokes plan that the HC wouldn’t be able to handle (I don’t know that it would even require custom maps or mobs). The trickiest part might be letting both heroes and rogues run it. Ditto for a Manticore as vigilante arc only less well documented. My idea behind the “Steal a Patron’s powers” arc is basically to have a way for Vigilantes and Villains who don’t want to be an Arachnos toady to unlock the Patron pools. Other than changing the unlock conditions, the two i24 post-Praetorian War arcs are unchanged, as would be Number Sixs. Dark Astoria just needs a small bit of dialogue tweaking around Scirocco and Dominatrix. Anything past that is pure Stretch Goal for me for an issue 28 concept. Realistically, something like an “Age of Apocalypse” EVENT just isn’t going to be practical… first and foremost because a lot of players would resent having their characters disrupted to take place in a forced faction-swap event. I know it happens in comics, but people resent the hell out of it there too. An AoA-like Story arc on the other hand would probably be doable. Fun fact; Age of Apocalypse wasn’t actually a Flashpoint-like alteration of the timeline. Back then Marvel still cared about keeping its time travel rules consistent so one important side plot (the one involving AoA Gambit) was that in that timeline Phoenix had never stablized the M’Kraan Crystal using the Phoenix so it was causing parallel universes/timelines to crystallize (what happened to the 616 universe during AoA). Gambit’s team stabilized their universe’s crystal, which then unfroze the main 616 universe. That’s pretty much a very long way of saying something AoA-like is actually a very solid Portal Corps story arc involving how something different happening in that dimension will end up cascading into THIS dimension unless it’s stopped. Stopping it requires you to deal with all manner of alternate Primal characters in the process (including a doppelgänger of yourself). Make it the focus of an issue and I could see that justifying a new zone and string of contacts for it. Best of all… involvement would be voluntary so it wouldn’t tick off anyone who didn’t want to be involved.
  8. Regarding some of the elements here; Yeah, they were originally setting up Scirroco and Ice Mistrel to defect in a story arc that would unlock the patron power sets for heroes without ever needing to switch sides to get them. Mu’Drakhan was being set up to replace him as the Mu Mystic head and one of the four patrons (basically, they’d reframe Scirocco’s patron arcs as being handed out by Mu’Drakhan… dealing with the Genie (now allied with Scirocco), stopping a plan by Scirocco’s, dealing with the goddess, et al. Meanwhile it sounded like Manticore was going to go full Vigilante (which actually makes his Wyvern organization in the Rogue Isles a bit more lore consistent as they’ve always been referred to as Vigilantes over there. As for Dominatrix, last we’d canonically heard, she and Emperor Cole were awaiting trial for crimes against humanity; but there was talk of putting her into some sort of release program under Ms. Liberty’s oversight. There had also been plans down the line for a desperate gamble to rally everyone against the Battalion was going to involve Emperor Cole dress up and pretend to be Statesman back from the dead and die in a last heroic blaze of glory remembering who he’d been before he’d started making compromises and became Emperor. * * * * Personally though, I think the devs should be really careful about advancing the timeline too much… as the timeline has already become something of a Hawkman-ish continuity snarl compared to the original plan of the timeline roughly corresponding to your level. The biggest culprit was the “Who Will Die?” Signature Story Arc and the decision to reframe the Portal Corps Praetorian arcs (which are still before the Incarnate trials in the timeline) as occurring after Stateman’s death… and then dropping in post-I-trial content starting as low as level 35… … Well, the whole kit and kaboodle of that needs to be sorted out I think before we go pushing out stuff that advances the timeline… particularly when discussing adding it as pre-level 50 material. As an example; the suggestion was to have Scirocco defect and set up in Faultline… the level 15-25 zone… and give out missions or a TF. Then you get to level 50 and there he is, still working for Arachnos. * * * * I think straighten out these issues; many of which can be corrected just by changing some of the dialogue, should be the foundation for issue 28. CoH has a new shot at life and so it’s fitting that it get back into shape so it can go forward stronger. Step one, from my perspective, would be to return to the original model of level = point on the timeline. This works for both the older material and Oroboros in general. The game beginning “Post-Death of Statesman” and in the lead up to the Praetorian War is fine, but that does mean that a few things should be tweaked. 1) Move the “Who Will Die?” arcs to exclusively Oroboros content. It is now something that happened before the heroes got their start. Heck, introduce a new Mender specifically as the contact for them. Related to this, consolidate the second Signature Arc into a single contact on Peregrine Island. The content is good, it’s just rather hard to find or play in order until it drops into Oroboros. 2) Update the Penelope Yin model in Faultline and the Lady Grey TF to make it clearly the modern Penny in civies instead of Penny suddenly 5 years younger than when you run into her in Independence Port in what is essentially the same level range (the easy way would be to just swap the baseball cap and ponytail for the club hair her modern model sports). She’s in Faultline because her father is missing and wants your help finding him. Now all the times you get sent to Penny (that used to be to Sister Psyche) she’ll not be two radically different ages; just in different spots and outfits like Ms. Liberty can be in Atlas, IP, and periodically in Pocket D in civies. 3) Now for something a little more ambitious. Let’s do the Scirocco switching sides arc and set it at the same level range as the existing Patron Arcs (so level 35). Make it a Hero and Rogue accessible arc that concludes with Scirocco unlocking access to the Patron Pools for the PC. At the same time, swap out Scirocco as Patron and Ice Mistral as Strike Force contact Redside with Mu’Drakhan and a new lieutenant. Similarly, add Manticore as a Vigilante contact with a Patron arc involving stealing the power of an Arachnos patron to use it against them (a classic vigilante mission type in CoH). For those keeping score at home that’s two new arcs (Scirocco and Manticore), and some rewriting of Scirocco/Ice Mistral’s arcs on par with how Penny replaced Sister Psyche and Ms. Liberty replaced Stateman. 4) Now for a bigger revamp; let’s fix the Praetorian War. a) Move the two Praetorian Portal Corps mission arcs (Tina and Maria) to the Rikti Warzone now that it has its own portal device (both arcs featured Vanguard soldiers at points and Vanguard is coordinating things regarding Praetoria in general). More importantly, this means those arcs can be lowered to level 35 and made sequential (as the other zone contacts are; completing Tina unlocks Maria). This corresponds to the tail end of Night Ward (for those running pure Praetorian) and to the start of the New Praetorians arc. b) Expand Belladonna’s arc, which will no longer be Incarnate-tier, but unlocked by finishing Maria’s arc. It too will be launched from the Vanguard base (instead of random Night Ward portals). What will be added to it are stripped down single-player/team versions of the I-trial stories (Tinpex, BAF, Lambda, TPN, etc. except Diabolique’s) so they can be played in chronological order and free to take the time to read the flavor text). The map assets already exist; cut scenes already exist; the main factor would be scaling and simplifying mechanics so a single player can complete them; Throwing in members of Vanguard as allied NPCs as needed to make it work (maybe breaking off/tping out for a couple of the “group needs to deal with multiple things at once” elements leaving the player with just the more mechanically interesting/more story driven path). c) The existing Tinpex and I-Trials are retained, but reframed as “Hard Mode” activities. d) Completing Belladonna’s arc unlocks the New Praetorians (and Villain equivalent) arcs. Minor point; expand John Houston’s level range to 50 so it can be completed after the New Praetorians (as it follows up on events where it left off). e) Number Six and Dark Astoria unlock as normal, but with some tweaking to Dark Astoria such that it is occurring AFTER rather than concurrent with the Praetorian War. i.e. the threat of Mot has forced the now heroic Scirocco (who still suffers guilt from his time as a villain) and Ice Mistral into alliance with Mu’Drakhan (and the personal story reframed as Mu’Drakhan remembering when he first began to usurp his former boss). Dominatrix and Diabolique both escaped to Primal Earth rather than fight a losing battle for Cole and its just a personal vendetta that drives their part of the story (and ends with Domi getting devoured then captured and awaiting trial after that and Diabolique doing her iTrial)… the Praetorians with Dominatrix are the last of her loyalists and she whines a bit more about losing them since they’re not so easily replaced. 5) The idea for all of the above is to get the timeline smoothed out so that you don’t have to backtrack through Oroboros to experience it in the order it actually occurred in. It also clears the deck for the Battalion’s arrival via space gate (presumably what is being built in Galaxy City’s ruins) and the new upgraded level 50-54 villain groups as the main “endgame” tier content. 6) I am certain there are bits I’m missing, but that would be my starting point for an Issue 28… fix the foundation so it’s possible for someone new to the lore to follow what’s going on. * * * * Stretch goals: - More rogue content set in Blueside and vigilante content set in Redside. - More high level (35+ when leveling starts to slow, but particularly 40+ where there is a complete dearth of “not working for Arachnos” content Redside) Rogue/Vigilante content in general. - Clear labeling of Rogue (stealing/robbing) vs. Villain (destroying people’s lives, inflicting mutations and diseases) content so those who care about such things can avoid it. - A Shadow Shard revamp that includes Villain access and Rogue/Villan repeatable missions (they can already reach the gate via the RWZ), perhaps even reframing it (or parts of it; i.e. The Storm Palace) like Dark Astoria into an Incarnate zone. Maybe some zone story missions akin to Faultline/Croatoa/RWZ would be in order too (this could also solve the “more high level rogue content” request as well). - For a massively ambitious stretch goal, create level 40-50 versions of the Praetorian zones in the midst of the war (barricades, IDF on the streets, etc.) into which the Belladonna arc could be dropped. Maybe in reverse order with Neutropolis as the 40-45 zone, Imperial as 45-50, and a cratered Nova as 50+ Incarnate zone infested with Hamidon’s forces that is unlocked after defeating Imperious in Belladonna’s arc. - Also ambitious; fill in Kallisti Wharf with hero, villain, rogue and vigilante contacts and villain groups on the streets.
  9. I’ve always just used Street Justice (skipping Initial Blows), sans the T1 all its attacks are beefy feeling. Perhaps an easier to accomplish task would be a “Strength Tricks” ancillary pool. Hurl, Hand Clap and Foot Stomp would fit the general Scrapper Ancillary pattern of ranged, AoE, and minor mezs. Figure out two other powers (a super strong yell, and maybe a cone damaging knockup with the spinning and punching the ground animation) and it’s good. Pair that with Street Justice or maybe Energy Melee and voila… super strong scrapper without the mechanical headaches of porting SS with Rage.
  10. I question whether adding more than the existing six existing slots is even needed. The only reason incarnates and the concept of 10 slots was added in the first place was to create an endgame grind for monetizing. The devs even admitted in one of their AMAs that once we got to Omega, they’d introduce something else to keep the grind going. With that in mind; the spirit of CoH has always been different than other MMOs. “Endgame is rolling new toons” has been a truism for as long as I can remember. I don’t think it’s reasonable to take away what has already been given, but at the same time I don’t think continuing the endless climb based on the old model of monetization makes sense for the nonprofit structure of Homecoming. My proposal is to declare the Incarnate tree complete and focus on ways to provide new options for the existing slots. Perhaps even new ways for the slots to be used… say a version of Judgment that instead of a nuke was a short period in you gained a set of high damage AoE attacks (i.e. instead of one huge nuke chain lightning, you get 30 seconds of being able to launch smaller less damaging chains with a 3s timer… basically akin to the water blast power that can be used twice in a row before going on cooldown). Maybe a Variant Lore could be a single pet that doesn’t despawn after a few minutes (basically akin to a single MM pet of a strength based on the tier) so you could have a “permanent” (well, as permanent as a MM pet can be) sidekick if that’s how you slotted your Lore. I think lateral options like that would be a much better expansion for Incarnate power in the present environment; if you even need to do anything with it at all.
  11. Related: now that the Shadow Shard can be accessed via the RWZ, it probably needs an update with villain access (or at least rogue repeatable missions) and replacing the old generic soldiers with Vanguard (according to the lore the troops in the shard have always been Vanguard, they just hadn’t been given spiffy purple/grey impervium armor because those assets didn’t exist at the time). So my thoughts are; - Replace the generic soldiers with Vanguard troops. - Add villain (or at least Rogue) repeatable contacts in the Shadow Shard. - Create level 40+ versions of the Rulu-Shin who have snuck their way into the Shard. - Create an actual Zone story arc for the Shard that is more than just introducing the repeatable contacts… see Rulu-Shin above for potential enemy group involved in that story arc. - According to the lore the human refugees are shadow copies of people created along with a shadow copy of part of Paragon City created when the Shard was. Consider adding some ruined city buildings and perhaps camps of the himan survivors scattered throughout the zone to display that aspect of the zone (i.e. it’s actually NOT a natural alternate dimension; it’s a finite prison dimension created to contain Rularuu.
  12. Yeah, it'd be nice, but I have a feeling there might have been some under-the-hood hacks with Thunderspy's methods that could get shaky when added to Homecoming's updates (particularly the switch to a 64-bit client). At this point, I'd settle for a few customization options in the form of say; being able to pick say, Praetorian Clockwork or Animated Armor (akin to the Carnival of Light's) for Robotics or Zombie Invasion or Vahzilock cadavers (murk eidolon in place of the Lich) for Necromancy. Maybe Thugs could have a Skulls or Hellions customization option, Ninjas could have Knives of Artemis or Tsoo, and Mercs could have Malta or Council-based options.
  13. A lot of the older female hairstyles are just really really low rez and so look pretty janky with the newer costume pieces and higher-rez faces.
  14. I always figured Athletic Run was the Soldiers of Arachnos’ travel power. That and the availability of the Arachnos Flyer travel lines.
  15. An interesting mechanic for Chaos would be a random roll for damage type/rider. Ex: Bind is an immobilize, but when activated it rolls to see if it’s fire (dot), cold (slow after immob ends), electric (energy/-end), darkness (neg/-tohit), stone (smash/-def), spikes (lethal/-res), psychic (-recharge) or webs (toxic/slow). The immobilize and base damage mean it’s predictable enough in the control effects to do the role of controller, but it will look like you have a whole array of effects it’s generating (sorta like propel, but with a bit of mechanical heft).
  16. Counter-proposal; we need a “Player2 Blast” set; nine identical powers that deal psychic damage, a huge debuff to speed and recharge (representing the complete waste of time involved) and flashes “You’re Wrong!” in big red letters (like Freem!) when they hit.
  17. Apparently, Necromancy for Scrappers is a thing. 😄
  18. Easier would be to jus add SO accs and end reducers of all origins (the only truly essential ones to avoid frustration at 1x/+0) onto each drop table in fairly large numbers so it’s possible to slot just from drops without too much hassle.
  19. It’s also basically what radio/newspaper missions are… just slightly more targeted. You hear on the radio of a crime in progress and respond. You read in the newspaper of the prospect of a rewarding crime and make plans to carry it out. The only thing really needed I think would be an expansion of those systems; - Add more varied one-off missions to the rotations (consider mining some of the more interesting non-arc missions from various contacts… particularly if they use unique maps). - Allow them to work in any zone regardless of level.
  20. Honestly, some days it’d be fun to just snag some grey-conned missions and do a flex, even if there’s no xp/inf involved. Some days you just wanna see your sweeping cross send half-dozen mooks rag-dolling across the room with zero threat. I mean, seriously, who would actually say this? Superman: “I’ll stop that gang attack on a civilian office building!” Police Sergeant: “No, that’s beneath you. Go check in with the Chief in uptown to see if Metallo’s crew is up to something.”
  21. Just add Acc and EndRdx enhancements of all origins to all drop lists and it’d probably be good enough. Extra damage and faster recharge (more damage by different route) is NICE, but in terms of frustration factor nothing is worse than regular whiffing and needing to use Rest after every spawn. Make usable enhancements to alleviate that drop more often and a lot of the store issues handle themselves.
  22. My biggest issue with Graves, and why I feel it needs more than just a power/wealth/status label is the Lackey mission (and anything involving Crosscut really). I just saved this guy, he promised loyalty to you, and the mission makes you turn him over to a serial killer to be tortured and killed and presents it as you betraying someone who was loyal of your own free will. That is SICK and makes you a soulless psychopath. But you’re well locked into a storyarc by then so frack whatever sort of concept you had about your character; you’re the sort of asshole who will turn an ally over to be tortured and killed just for your own gain. In a game where the core experience is teaming up with fellow villains for mutual gain. Frak that! That’s exactly why you need a Rogue/Villain tag in addition to any sort of “what is being gained” tag. That mission alone led to me completely rerolling a character from scratch and never touching that arc again.
  23. Is this a “mapserve” crash where it just locks up and eventually dumps you to the login screen or a hard crash back to windows? The reason I ask is because the former is almost always a network connection issue and not a graphics one. Back when Homecoming first launched I was having that come up consistently. The only thing that fixed it was running a VPN with my location set to somewhere on the East Coast… because apparently some switch somewhere on the default route (either through Chicago or Detroit to Canada… I never figured out which) was causing enough lag to cause a fatal mapserver error… but the alternate routing by forcing my connection to go to NYC or DC first avoided it and made it run flawlessly. Anyway, the better you can describe HOW it is crashing, the more easily the issue can be diagnosed. Don’t presume it’s necessarily a graphical setting issue when there are so many other things that can potentially go wrong.
  24. I think one of the elements muddying the waters a bit as well is that it’s one thing to discuss issues, it’s another entirely to come to a consensus on a direction to take to solve them, and a third thing to account for the resources available to accomplish a significant change in direction. My focus on labels (whether they be Rogue/Villain or Power/Money/Sadism) is largely because it’s low-hanging fruit. It requires no new tech and minimal rewriting of existing content (mostly just adding the correct label). Re-sorting the contacts so competing types aren’t locked behind other types is more effort, but still fairly low-hanging compared to other things; changing which contact they introduce if in conflict (most of them don’t already; this would be more of a fidelity pass). Beyond that though you start getting into actually rewriting mission content, and beyond that into writing new missions. * * * * In terms of the latter I think the best use of time for both the agency and morality concerns would be to expand the number of Rogue/Villain Tip missions. Presently there’s 10 Rogue and 10 Villain tip missions per 10 level band (along with one each alignment confirmation mission for 20-29 and 30-39 and two each for 40-50). They’re also locked by level so once you’re 40+ you’re just seeing the same dozen tips repeatedly. Even just 1-2 new tip missions and one extra confirmation mission per level band would do wonders to freshen up that content. That’s basically 18 missions; about the same as the number added for the new Striga content.* It’s also content where you’re choosing to investigate and whether to go rogue or villain (so choosing how to take advantage of the tip)… which fits the agency concerns and keeps those who just want to be rogues from accidentally choosing a villain option. A related assist in that regard would be to do something similar to the Mayhem Missions at 50… unlock the 20-29 and 30-39 tip missions (to the extent enemy level scaling would allow it) and add them to the rotation of tips you can find. A final tip mission improvement I would suggest is to make a contact (call them Tip Brokers) out of the base item that allows you to grant yourself any tip mission you qualify for at a cost of 1 merit each and place one in every zone. I’m not sure how many people are aware of the base item, but adding the equivalent out in the open world would be a way to provide even more agency to the characters. If you wanted to make Redside appealing you could even limit them to the Redside zones/alignments to distinguish between reactive heroes and proactive villains/rogues. * * * * Unrelated to that, but in the broader wheelhouse of cleaning up content. I feel like the Mayhem Missions should be their own reward separate from contact access. Make all the general contacts into ones you can just use the contact finder for so characters are free to associate with other lowlifes. Then add a merit reward to the Mayhem Missions (you are doing 3-5 missions to unlock it); perhaps instead of one lump sum, you give a modest amount for the robbery (say 5 merits) and then each completion of a side quest on the map grants a few more (such that completing all four side quests and the robbery might net you 10-12 merits). Then put a little more weight on the mini-heists (i.e. the bank missions before there were MMs) so they come up in the rotation more than once in a blue moon and maybe see about adding a few other mission types to the rotation (ex. kill alls, destroy object, and rescue/collect multiple (the kind where you don’t have to escort them out). * * * * The feeling I’ve teased out from this thread is that Redside would be best served by adding to the randomized/semi-randomized content options like Tips and Newspapers more than they would from trying to make dedicated story arcs. The need for story arcs largely hinges on the merit economy, but between alignment confirmation rewards and adding merits to Mayhem Missions you could provide access to the merits needed while allowing Redside characters to largely chart their own course in terms of mission selection; freeing them to only run the specific story arcs that make sense for them instead of needing to run some they’d dislike just to keep up with the Blueside merit rewards. * * * * As a final suggestion for both tips and newspapers; expand their access down to even the starter levels. Put a broker on Mercy Island who unlocks at level 5 to get players used to the system before they even leave the first zone. Just use the same missions from Port Oakes and 5-10 is already the level range for the Atlas Park MM (I can’t tell you how easy that one is to miss if you’re running the current starter missions and contacts in Mercy). Similarly, a set of 5-19 Tips would let Redside characters start to have agency over the type of crimes they’re committing (as fast as you level the usual 10+1 number would be sufficient for the whole band). * * * * That would be my “least amount of work for most value of result” proposal for what to do to improve and draw interest in Redside; expand on the two areas where the players already have the most agency (and with that agency comes the ability to avoid missions you’d find distasteful). One advantage to that approach as well is that, because they’re all individual missions, you don’t need to worry about connective tissue or how the missions connect to a bigger narrative. I have to think that, at least from the storyboard side, designing 18 “random” missions would be less effort than needing to figure out how to tell a story across 18 interconnected missions. * * * * Realistically, this is something I would expect to be added in stages across several pages. But it’s also divided into some bite-sized pieces already (labels, tip revamp A, newspaper revamp, MM revamp, low-level access) instead of demanding an entire elephant be choked down all at once. So that’s my pitch. * * * * * though if it were me; I’d not divide that as evenly as that would suggest. Instead, I would leave the 20-29 tip set alone since you outlevel that so quickly, add one alignment confirmation mission to the 30-39 range (just the one confirmation mission can get very monotonous once you hit the mid-30 slump, but there’s still a lot of content in that level band to occupy you). I’d put all six of the new tips (12 missions) and two new alignment confirmation missions (4 total) into the 40+ range band. It’s still 18 missions worth of design (2 at 30-39, 16 at 40+, but weighted for where you’re hoping to have PCs spend the bulk of their time and increasing the tips by 60% and doubling the alignment confirmation mission options.
  25. The easiest I think would be to just add (Villain) or (Rogue) after each of the contact names; Ex. Peter Themari (Villain) or Hardcase (Rogue); based on the nature of the missions they give. Particularly important is to include it when you’re given a choice of contacts. Something like that would give casuals (those who don’t want to go research missions on the wiki to see what they call for) assurance that their criminal career will be limited to robberies or smacking down those who deserve it (and those who want to kick puppies will know which contacts to take as well). The next step would be to re-shuffle contact access so that rogues aren’t locked behind villains and villains aren’t locked behind rogues. Perhaps for contacts who do a bit of both (Diviner Maros’ stopping the Cult of the Shaper is roguish to even heroic, some of his later missions like breaking Dr. Theron’s spirit in the name of “destiny” is villainous) maybe label the individual missions/arcs.
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