gabrilend

Hi, I have a mechanical idea that I think might address the concerns presented in the first 5 pages of this thread. I don't play Brutes often, so take this with a grain of salt. However it has been expressed that their desired role is that of a middle ground between Tankers and Scrappers. This is reflected in their class's distinguishing feature, their Fury mechanic, however it is primarily a damaged focused power, meaning their flavor leans toward favoring the Scrapper side of the AT spectrum. One could argue that their bonuses to threat brings them closer to Tankers, and while true I believe that there should be some alteration to the Fury mechanic to do that, rather than threat. Here's my proposal. Leave everything about the Brute the same, threat, damage cap, fury granting damage, everything. Next, reduce their health by 25%. Then, alter the Fury mechanic such that when a Brute reaches 0 hp, they do not die, but instead damage taken is taken from their fury bar. If the brute reaches 0 fury, they've lost the will to fight, and as such fall unconscious / die (depending on your perception of the fantasy of the game). In addition, while in a 0hp state they cannot generate new fury, as their body is too weak to build up more rage. If they manage to defeat their foes, their fury will continue ticking down and if their natural regeneration is enough to bring them up above, say, 5 or 10% hp before they run out of fury, then they'll live to fight another day. However if they cannot regenerate enough hp (or be healed by a teammate) then they will fall unconscious/die from their wounds, having slain countless foes that litter the ground around them, evoking Boromir or Broxigar. I believe this will grant a new flavor to the Fury mechanic which will set aside Brutes as straddling the middleground between Scrappers and Tankers, allowing them to fight back beyond the brink of death fueled by pure rage, while also dealing more damage the madder they get.

lol thanks I guess? xD Yes I don't think that this would work very well. I think that disconnecting mobs from their level is against the ethos of an MMO with a living breathing world. It makes the world feel less alive, if there's no difference where you are. The level scaling in modern versions of WoW do something similar to this, and I don't really like it. Really kills the sense of progression as you level. Just to clarify, I don't think that EXP should be shared with the entire zone, just the entire neighborhood. When you're looking at a map, there are a few pale blue dots that correspond to the green/yellow/orange/red areas on the map. Each of those would count as a "neighborhood" for the purposes of this idea. I agree, but unfortunately people don't often join teams for it. And when they do, it's localized to a particular area, and they feel frustrated when they run out of enemies to fight. So they seek tougher challenges with their larger teams, rather than dispersing and fighting similarly leveled foes, as the game is balanced around as far as hard character stats like health and accuracy and such go. Increasing the AoE of EXP dispersal would help and could be a decent alternative to my idea, but I think my idea is better both thematically and mechanically. The primary downside is the development cost and potential for lack of player interest.

What a lovely challenge! I'd love to hear more about that. I usually play that way, but when I get lonely I sometimes do newspaper missions or team up with other party members. It fills me with a sense of longing for a more populated city/island. I think this is absolutely a wonderful idea. Having an increased threat monster arise due to the presence of heroes, or maybe an archvillain shows up to stomp on all the lesser villains, something to that effect. Perhaps there's a hidden counter or meter that fills up as players fight monsters in the zone, and when a certain amount have been defeated a hero/archvillain is spawned that is thematically appropriate for that level range. That's a decent reward, but I believe it's a little similar to the Giant Monster mechanic. Perhaps an additional twist is necessary...! What if this archvillain/hero that spawns is of the opposite alignment to the zone. So, for example, if you're in Paragon City, an archvillain would spawn who was hostile to the players *and* the normal enemies present. So a neighborhood in Atlas Park for example which is mostly populated by Hellions would have an archvillain spawn who was drawn to the fighting for some reason and wanders around much like a player does fighting both heroes and Hellions. I believe that would encourage players to fight them, because not only would they be worth a lot of exp and infamy/influence, they also would be reducing the potential targets for their street sweeping patrol. There's currently already a large group of NPC costumes created for the bank heist missions. Perhaps after (100 * number of players in zone) enemy units are slain / arrested / beaten down, it spawns a hero/archvillain in a random neighborhood? Ideally, without any proclamation or explanation of their presence. That way players would have to hunt them down. Basically mirroring the players and using the same behavior they're using, but for the opposite side. It seems to me that the kind of mechanic you're suggesting is already in the game. We have Rikti invasions and Nemesis plots and various other events that occur at randomized intervals which draw players to certain zones. I believe those mechanics are useful and interesting, but they do not accomplish the same goals I have when presenting this idea. Namely, they work to *concentrate* players in particular zones, while my idea is intended to *disperse* players throughout whichever zone they're most suitable for level-wise. The idea is that you'll be playing as you normally do, sweeping the streets, and you'll occasionally be grouped up with a fellow player or three who are also doing the same thing. You'll share EXP, and be able to see their location / health bars which should allow you to coordinate easier. And if you want to move on or do something else, all you have to do is walk away and you'll be put into a different group or given space to yourself again.

While we're at it, can we decrease the minimum size of the chat box? I like having a large UI scale, but I tend to like my chat-box to be tall and skinny. However with a large UI scale the chatbox takes up 1/3rd of the screen... I usually end up disabling it entirely while playing, except for brief moments when my character checks their phone or whatever.

I do believe this is already possible. Is the capability you seek covered by the /petsay command? reference: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Petsay_(Slash_Command)

That makes sense from a thematic point of view (how could you learn anything from a fight you didn't engage in?) but it severely hampers the implementation of the proposed idea, as players are intended to be encouraged to spread out in the neighborhood rather than clump up within eye-sight range, as they do currently in most missions. They'd still be encouraged to fight alongside one another, because it's always easier and more fun to do so, however they would not be punished for going their own way or by being abandoned by their teammates. I believe that the benefits offered are greater than the negatives caused by this issue. Perhaps the EXP gain could be explained in canon as heroes discussing their engagements with friends after the fact, while the player is logged off? Or possibly since the area is being cleared, the new enemies that wander in to replace them are less experienced, and thus slightly easier for your character to fight (purely thematic, no mechanical buffs or debuffs applied) Benefits: increased presence in the open world, giving new environments for players to explore alternative playstyle involving protecting/hunting in a neighborhood increased teamplay due to the dynamic companionship from wandering players Negatives: potential for AFK abuse thematic issues with earning exp out of earshot reduces capability to accomplish open-world missions (of which there are but a few) Correct me if I'm wrong but one of those lists appears more valuable to me than the other. So I guess I'm saying "a little evil for a greater good" which is quite a vigilante thing to say, now that I think of it.

I had an idea, and I moved it to this thread EDIT: I'm going to post this in it's own thread, so it can get more focused discussion. Sorry for distracting from the discussion of the changes proposed by OP, carry on...

Ah yes I was concerned about that as well. Which is why I said: "I believe this will encourage players to fight in the overworld, and if AFKers are a concern then perhaps make it so that after 2 minutes of inactivity you stop gaining this type of EXP until you engage with an opponent again." Do you think that solution wouldn't adequately address the "world-sitters"? I'm open to hearing suggestions, of course. I don't think there's enough players to support that kind of issue. Over time players would spread out to whichever zone they were leveled to (as encouraged by the proposed auto-party mechanics) and I believe that would ensure enough dispersal that it wouldn't be an issue. Perhaps disable this behavior at level 50, or re-enable the malefactor/exemplar system for level 50s and bring them to the average level of each neighborhood? Also, the current open-world missions aren't too difficult to complete. If there are enemy types in a particular area, there's typically enough around for you to be able to find the kind that you'd need. Are there specific missions you had in mind that target rare mobs? I was only aware of the kind that are like "defeat 8 hellions" or "defeat 8 Crey units". But if they were more specific, like "defeat 8 embalmed Vahzilok corpses" or "defeat 8 Clockwork Tesla Knights" then perhaps that would be a bigger concern than I'm expecting. I see what you mean. Perhaps this would be an "opt-in" system, like the auto-generated groups I suggested which (as proposed) are only applied when the player marks themselves as "looking for patrol team" in the team finder interface.

City of Heroes is known for it's vibrant, beautiful, and diverse overworld. One if it's finest qualities is the verisimilitude of the city - it feels alive, like a real living breathing place. A major part of this is due to the civilians who wander around and greet you if you say hi. The mobs that your character can fight will often terrorize one of these lovely people, and that tugs at the heartstrings of any righteous hero. Of course, a villain might see the same situation and decide that these pre-occupied goons are a perfect target for assassination. Perhaps the civilian will cower in terror before them and offer up their meagre life's possessions, or perhaps whatever information they know will be a valuable tip for them in their exploits to come. In either case, there is an inherent incentive for players to contest these wandering enemies and their acts of terror. I believe that mechanics should be added which encourage players to engage with the overworld as if it was any other piece of content, for the developers certainly intended as such. Consider the amount of effort and variety given to the design of each and every environment, and if you share my perspective then you will see a labor of love. However there is little reason for players to wander around on patrol looking for trouble. Their attention is too often drawn to missions and task forces to bother with such trivialities, and indeed most players would rather hang out in Atlas Park waiting for something interesting to happen. I believe that this impulse is fundamentally due to their desire to play on a team, and Atlas Park is just the best place to be around a lot of people. Therefore, I suggest adding mechanics that both encourage engagement with the overworld but also connect players and bring them into natural, organic teams. My first suggestion is this: share all exp gained from fighting enemies to all players in the local neighborhood. I believe this will encourage players to fight in the overworld, and if AFKers are a concern then perhaps make it so that after 2 minutes of inactivity you stop gaining this type of EXP until you engage with an opponent again. This encourages overworld play, however it does not necessarily bring players together. To that end I suggest placing players who mark themselves as "looking for patrol team" in the team finder into auto-generated groups on a per-neighborhood basis. I believe this is a more difficult solution, however I think that being on a team gives players a sense of companionship, and the auto-generated nature of it allows for them to enter / leave teams easily simply by moving neighborhoods. Not only will this connect players who are at similar levels, it will also give them a way to grant each other buffs and support one another if they're in peril. Currently, patrol teams tend to group up and snowball around fighting purple or red enemy groups. This I believe is an anti-pattern because it's too closely aligned to the style of gameplay performed in mission teams, where fighting high level enemies is expected and encouraged through the increased EXP gains and our ability to customize the difficulty of missions. In the proposed system where players are placed into teams based on geographic location, it will be natural for players to spread out and explore because of the larger spaces they inhabit. In addition they will be encouraged to fight similarly leveled opponents, because if their team disbands (due to outleveling the area or perhaps from going to sleep or switching characters) then they will be left in an area that is out of sync with their player's level, and so will have to spend time walking to a train station or a boat or whatever when they're left all alone. Important to note is that the lackey/malefactor and sidekick/exemplar system must be disabled for these types of auto-generated teams. Not only would this open up new styles of gameplay for players to engage with, it will do so without necessitating the development of new art assets. All that would be needed would be programmatic alterations, and while my understanding is that CoX has a legacy codebase full of spaghetti, code is often much easier to develop than art for this kind of team. To summarize: 1. sharing exp (but not infamy/influence) to all players in a particular neighborhood will encourage players to engage with the overworld content 2. placing players onto auto-generated teams based on geographic proximity and limited to their current neighborhood will help bring players together 3. engaging with content in new ways (by encouraging fighting similarly leveled opponents and spreading out to find more foes) gives players more options for how to play and increases their engagement with the game we all know and love. Thank you for reading.

See attached picture for details.

I do believe such functionality could be accomplished using the in-game macro system, assuming a "slow move" action was implemented. You could bind it to whatever chord you'd like, or heck even just replace WASD with it if you'd like and have the chord be for moving quickly. Like how sprinting works in many other games!

This idea adds more flexibility to my original idea, as it allows the cancellation effect to apply to *any* power, which is certainly nice! Thanks for the idea! EDIT: Although, now that I think of it, this solution would not resolve @Saiyajinzoningen's issue. For that problem there'd need to be a "negative speed" enhancement, as nulling out / cancelling a travel power would defeat the purpose of picking that power in the first place. However, a negative speed enhancement would allow for slowing it down, which addresses both my concerns and theirs. Are there any other powers that might be suitable or typical targets for the Null Origin enhancement?

Like, a "negative" sprint? Which makes you ~35% slower, to compensate for the bonus given by the Swift inherent power? That could work. Of course there could be 4 total powers, one for each inherent power.

This discussion is a little absurd, but all in good fun. But I do believe there's a kernel of a good idea here. Once completing all the exploration badges in a zone, you can't get any more tips that point you toward new ones. Obviously, because there aren't any more. However, the mechanic of "exploring for patrol EXP" is a good mechanic because it provides value for people who like to wander the city. I propose adding a new mechanic after the final badge has been completed where a new "badge" spawns randomly somewhere on the map, and the player is given a task to go find it. Upon reaching it's location, they are rewarded with some patrol exp, and automatically given the task of finding the next one. Essentially the same functionality as the tip system, but genericized. I believe this would encourage players to spend more time in the world where they are visible to other players, rather than hiding behind closed mission doors. At least, it'll make it a little less painful for the players who do. The current system works great for this, but it's limitation is that the supply of exploration badges in each zone is finite - adding a randomized exploration task would allow for the benefits of the current system to continue applying even after the zone has been explored by the player.

Having Swift and Hurdle by default are excellent QoL features for characters who'd like to run 35% faster and jump 166% higher (!!!). Which I do believe is most of them. However, for some characters (especially of the Natural origin) it might be seen as an unrealistic portrayal of their character. Without even turning on the sprint power, characters with the Swift power will jog as fast as a sprinting olympian, and be able to jump over traffic lights! Jogging that fast might make sense because it is technically possible for a human to do (albeit exhausting), however jumping that high is simply impossible. Unfortunately, it's currently impossible to move slower than a jog except by using the [Walk] power. Which is quite slow and relaxed, and not intended for navigating the world. Also, the player cannot attack using this (very slow) power, which means it is unusable in combat. In addition, the game world wasn't originally designed with those speeds and heights in mind. This is not an appeal to purity - rather, the worlds themselves will feel smaller due to the increased movement speed, which isn't always desirable for characters who seek immersion in expansive environments. I propose adding a new option to Null the Gull that would allow players to remove the inherent fitness powers. Ideally one at a time, so they could keep (for example) Health and Recovery while removing Swift and Hurdle. I believe this would allow some characters to fit their design a bit better, especially in terms of movement, which is often the most personal method of interaction a player has with any game. City of X is no different, and while the movement mechanics in this game are excellent they can often be a little unrealistic if a player is attempting to portray a semi-realistic human character.

I think this is the reason here. It's a good thing that players are encouraged to group up. This is a team-based game, at it's heart, and the mechanics favor playing on a team for a reason. I think it's a good thing that the archetypes are so specialized.

Yes I 100% agree! More UI customization options would always be nice, but when going for a cinematic experience the names can really distract from the storytelling.

Maybe within a certain radius your MM pets kneel down and start recovering? or whatever the "kneel" equivalent is for robots and demons and whatnot. could give them a regeneration/recovery buff combined with an attack and accuracy debuff, that way they sorta recover but also are "weakened" by the Mastermind's lack of attention. Though TBH with the buffs to recharge time on their summon powers and the ability to train / enhance every one of them within range with a single power, it's not that big of a deal to just dismiss the hurt/tired ones and summon new ones. I do that quite often throughout a fight because my ninjas run out of energy soooooo quickly...

Here's a keybind that would work for such behavior. Assuming the new functions are called "move_normalized" and the alternating keybinds are stored in "normalized-movement-1.txt" and "normalized-movement-2.txt" normalized-movement-1.txt: w "forward" a "left" s "back" d "right" space "up" x "down" CTRL+SPACE "bindloadfile_silent normalized-movement-2.txt" normalized-movement-2.txt: w "forward_normalized" a "left_normalized" s "back_normalized" d "right_normalized" space "up_normalized" x "down_normalized" CTRL+SPACE "bindloadfile_silent normalized-movement-1.txt" shouldn't be too difficult to adapt that to your specific situation. I'm on Linux so whatever I say for the file-path and such will probably not apply to you, so I just put the filename - you can figure the rest out teehee check out this page for more details: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Bind_load_file_(Slash_Command)

In City of Heroes/Villains, the camera is locked directly behind the player character. Meaning if the player would like to look at something, they need to place the camera such that their character model does not obscure the thing they're looking at. This introduces difficulties for flying players because if you're looking directly at your target, you cannot see them, meaning if you'd like to get closer to them you need to use at least two different keys ("up" and "forward") to do so without losing elevation. See attached picture for details. I believe this functionality could be implemented by creating a new keybind which moves the character according to the world-space orientation rather than the player's camera orientation. To be clear, no current functionality should be affected - a new option should be made available for people who would like to build the keybinds for it or otherwise customize their experience with the game.

Thank you for the conversation everyone! I'm honestly happy and amazed that so many people thought to comment. It warms my heart to hear people interacting with something I made, even if the general tone drifted more negative than positive. I have a pretty thick skin, so don't worry - I'm going to keep making videos (among all the other art I make) and I'm definitely going to try and incorporate some of the suggestions and ideas you all brought to the table. I view all this criticism as constructive, so thank you again! If I make another CoX video that I'm proud of (I'm not proud of all of them teehee) and that addresses some of the concerns raised, then I'll be sure to post it here. However, I noticed there's a more specific board for this kind of thing (Art and Multimedia) so I'll post it there next time. So be sure to keep an eye on that board, both for my sake and for the sake of everyone else who posts there. : ) Just to reiterate and to confirm that I was listening to you, the primary concerns appear to be: 1. focus on the story 2. remove extraneous details 3. use a different shell, like FISH or ZSH instead of BASH - apparently powershell-for-linux doesn't go well with this crowd 😉😉 4. actually turn on my speakers and attempt to align the tone of the video with the music - for this one, I muted my speakers and let fate guide my actions. 5. develop better methods of conveying information to the audience, through subtitles or dialogue or some other method 6. highlight the environments that are unique to Redside, like Grandville or St. Martial 7. remove details that aren't necessarily extraneous but still add to the length 8. provide a better description (some people said they were more interested once they read about Seleo) 9. this one I added, but perhaps find someone else to perform with who "gets it"? 10. a list looks better with 10 elements. I hope I covered everything. Feel free to update me if I didn't, I'll add to this list here. Again, keep an eye on the Art and Multimedia board if you'd like to see more, or perhaps if you want to see something better by people far more talented than I 🥰

It's a music video for the whole album, and I think it plays twice. Or maybe 1.5 times, because I cut it short partway through once I was running out of steam. You don't have to watch it if you don't want =P

It's just my style : ) I try to go as quickly as I can, sometimes I take a second to think about what to do next, but for the most part it's all important. Maybe the next video I make will be shorter, but tbh I can't see it getting down to 3-5 minutes. There's a few earlier ones I made and when I rewatch them I can definitely tell that they're improving! If I keep making videos about CoX then perhaps I'll post again here, if it's around 30 minutes or so =P

Makes sense to me. I edited the link to skip to the music / CoX content

teehee it's more in line with my other works, which tend to have an intro like this. Not sure why, I think it makes it feel more real or visceral because you can see exactly what I'm doing to set up the performance. I consider it sorta like, the credits that play at the start of old-timey movies - the ones that keep you from the action and usually showcase the musical score. Though in this one it's perfect silence, which is unusual - I usually have a microphone recording my keystrokes, but I left it at my boyfriends house for a month or two RIP >.> So far I have 4 City of Villains videos, and 2 of them are... flawed, so I consider them dress rehearsals. The other two (including this one) are totally improvised.