city of villains New Redside Content: AMBITIONS

[TalynDerre]

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.

Edited June 5, 2020 by TalynDerre
I forgot to put the @ in there...

[ImpousVileTerror]

Thanks for sharing!

As we discussed beforehand, I really like your idea, and I'm glad you posted this.

 

Some critique, though, in the spirit of refining and enhancing what you've got here.

 

I don't think we need to wait for Level 10.   Level 5 is fine.  Hell, even Level 1, after perhaps finishing an introductory story arc of some sort?

 

I don't like to invoke "comic book" for anything related to this game.  I feel it's more of a barrier than something aspirational.  I think we shouldn't limit ourselves to thinking in terms of "what's appropriate in a comic."  We can aim so much higher and so much wider.

 

I like the idea of these Ambitions branching out.  While that does add to the workload in implementing them, it gives replayability and depth that the system (and the whole game) can use to really catapult players on their characters' unique journeys!

 

Revenge is a tricky one, and might be better served as its own new gameplay system:  Archrivals!  (link pending a write-up on THAT proposal)

 

I am 100% against -requiring- Incarnate as a capstone!  150%, even!

Incarnate can be its own thing, but I really do not think we should mix and match these.  Honestly, I'd also want to enable accessibility to the entire Ambition system from Level 1, but I know that from a technical standpoint, it's easier to codify a progression system that piggy-backs off of the Security/Threat Level system in the game.

I had posted in another thread a while back about the benefits of developing Outward Progression, as opposed to Upward Progression.  I think your Ambition System offers a potential opportunity for exactly that.

 

I like the example you give for the destabilization of the small nation!

 

I also like the idea of "Opportunities" working like the Tip System; as you complete them, they fill a bar.   This could be done in combination with the Bare-bones Approach.  Fill the Opportunities Bar to unlock the Story Arc which takes the next step in The Master Plan.

 

Additionally, once this system gets established for Villains, similar systems could be made for Rogues, Vigilantes, and maybe even Heroes; with suitable writing to give a narrative thrust which makes the most sense for those alignments.

And, dare I dream! . . . maybe all of these could be alignment NON-specific, so you could tell your Heroic character's personal story of rising up against a tyrannical despot leader of a small nation, and liberating the people, only to accidentally become their new de facto governing body.  

 

While I don't think you expressly stated it, I wonder if you intended these Ambitions to be mutually exclusive?

I think it would be GREAT to be able to have -multiple- ambitions on a single character, BUT the cost to achieve more than one ambition would multiply the Opportunity Cost by some factor.  ie:  8 Opportunity Points to get to one Step Of The Master Plan, but if you have Two Ambitions, it's sudden 12 Opportunity Points for -each- Ambition's next Step.  

If you wait to complete a whole Ambition tree before starting a new one, then the cost might only be half as much.  So, in the above example, having completed Ambition Alpha all the way through to the end, and then starting Ambition Beta, the Opportunity Cost is 10 for each Step.

Things to consider!

 

Your Ambitions System offers a LOT of opportunities!  I fully support developmental investment!

Thanks again for sharing it with the community!

 

 

[Naraka]

And how is this suggestion more simpler than making your own AE missions?

[Zeraphia]

3 hours ago, Naraka said:

And how is this suggestion more simpler than making your own AE missions?

Simpler? Obviously not. But making your own AE missions isn't the same thing as he suggested. In the entirety of 99% of the contacts you do in the Rogue Isles as a villain, you are a lackey. Adding in this option to non-AE content allows you to actually view your character as the OP expressed as a *real* villain. Creating your own virtual arcs versus actually gaining this missions is a big difference in terms of the plot of that character and the story the character will have which I would think is an important story element to a super-hero/villain-based MMO. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Zeraphia

[Naraka]

2 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

Simpler? Obviously not. 

It obviously is because you can do it now.

 

2 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

But making your own AE missions isn't the same thing as he suggested. In the entirety of 99% of the contacts you do in the Rogue Isles as a villain, you are a lackey. 

Exaggerations aside, you're basically saying give character agency without player agency.

 

To differentiate those terms, "character agency" is the buzzword thrown around mostly with regards to story threads created by writers not lining up with motivations created by players.  In reality, it's moreso suppose to outline the illusion of the character participant affecting the story.

 

"Player agency" in this context is the player sitting at the keyboard and their participation in fulfilling their character's motivations and decisions.  This can be as simple as creating "headcanon" of what your character would actually do or say in the context of different situations, or as complex as creating outside and/or inside content to facilitate these decisions.

 

At the end of the day, I'm not stating something is a bad idea or shouldn't be implemented, I'm more or less trying to be frank and the frank truth is, you basically want someone else to provide your character agency.  You don't want to put forth the effort beyond creating a character, costume and bio, to facilitate that agency.

 

Yes? No?  Or fuck you, Naraka?  Probably the 3rd response sense that tends to be the vibe I get every time I put forth this type of rational.

[Chuckers]

After you choose your ambition, I think your contact could be your personal "white board" where you have listed the tasks you need to accomplish your goals. If there is a specific lair created, the white board would actually be in that lair and clickable, like the radio or television.  

[Greycat]

The OP never stated this would be "simpler" in any way, shape or form. Offering that up as a rebuttal is kind of a strawman. Yes, this looks like it'd be hugely complex.

 

The main differences I can see are (1) someone who doesn't know, like, etc. AE will have access to them and get to experience them without foreknowledge (some people do like just "seeing where a story goes,) and (2) they can affect the world, in every way from the small (I have badges!) to larger (dialog, possible other missions, reactions of NPCs.)

 

The second, by the way, is part of why I love Khelds - you're spawning specific enemies just to fight ME? Thank you!

 

Now the downside is, of course, that even with all these paths and branches, assumptions *have* to be made about the player's character. (Which appears to be Naraka's point.)  For instance, let's just take the "general chaos" path. If I have a villain who's (say) an arsonist, but tries to avoid killing people (burning down warehouses at night, old buildings, buildings that shouldn't have anyone in them) - well, it's unlikely there's a path specifically for that, but if there's a mission to "Cull the weak," I'm immediately hitting a hard stop there. There's a difference between an accidental Civilian casualty in a Mayhem mission and going out and targeting people.  (The flipside being if that's not allowed but it's *totally* what your character would do. "Humanity is a disease, you're the cure... but you can't shoot anyone? Lame!")

 

In short, it sounds like it could be an interesting, fun system, but at the same time would hit some of the same complaints we currently have. Which is not a bad thing - writing for villains is *hard.*

[Chuckers]

7 hours ago, Naraka said:

And how is this suggestion more simpler than making your own AE missions?

Because a) some of us don't want to create AE missions and b) some of us just aren't any good at it. There are people out there who are 1000x better than myself at creating dialog, story, and mission design. I don't want to play a crappy AE arc that I designed. Also, AE takes me out of the Isles/Paragon City. It makes me feel like my character is in a choose your own adventure book as opposed to working through the ranks in the Isles/City.

 

[ImpousVileTerror]

It's my understanding, @Greycat, that the intent here is to work on this gameplay feature with direct supervision and input from the community.   For your example, yes; we would ensure there are different paths between "burn the warehouse while no one's in it" and "burn the warehouse with people inside."

 

Does that sound, from a developmental investment . . . Ambitious?

 

Yup.  Frankly, it is.  

Kiiiiiiinda part of the point, though.

 

An important thing to note, and this applies for MANY of the suggestions in the weekly discussion thread about Redside:  When implementing these kinds of new gameplay features, careful planning ahead of time can mitigate the impact to dev resources by implementing them in phases.  Establish a bare-bones frst, with the specific pre-designed expectation for future elements to be introduced.   Kind of like where the Legacy Devs were going with the Incarnate system.   It doesn't need to be an "all or nothing" endeavour with creative deployment.

[Naraka]

9 minutes ago, Greycat said:

The OP never stated this would be "simpler" in any way, shape or form. Offering that up as a rebuttal is kind of a strawman. Yes, this looks like it'd be hugely complex.

The underlying argument, if engaged, would have been that given how hugely complex it is, it likely couldn't achieve everything desired either by the individual's speculated suggestion or by the community who would eventually express changes and additions to it.  It wasn't a rebuttal, it was a demonstration.  A demonstration of how it is hugely complex and the shortcomings it will undoubtedly have.

 

12 minutes ago, Greycat said:

The main differences I can see are (1) someone who doesn't know, like, etc. AE will have access to them and get to experience them without foreknowledge (some people do like just "seeing where a story goes,) and (2) they can affect the world, in every way from the small (I have badges!) to larger (dialog, possible other missions, reactions of NPCs.)

1. Good news!  Someone else can make arcs for you!

 

2. That is the overarching problem I'm pointing out.  Affecting the world is what many people are pushing for villains but it's unobtainable.

 

15 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Now the downside is, of course, that even with all these paths and branches, assumptions *have* to be made about the player's character. (Which appears to be Naraka's point.) 

My main point was, you're not going to please everyone.  There's going to be something that isn't covered.  I'm not chasing perfection, but moreso emphasizing the complexity involved and simplifying it would really just put you closer and closer to making AE missions...but even at its most complex incarnation, it wouldn't have the complexities of AE missions.  I'm still surprised at some of the usages I've read with regards to how AE is used to facilitate roleplaying and it's really downplayed because many view it as just for farming.

 

 

 

 

[Grouchybeast]

AE missions are fine, they can be fun, but they're playing pretend inside a world that's already playing pretend.  I, and I'm going to guess quite a few other players, are never going to find them as satisfying as content integrated with the rest of the game world.

[Blackfeather]

It's a cool idea for sure, and honestly, I don't think it's really fair to needle suggestions for their potential complexity of implementation. This is, after all, the suggestions forums...we don't have some civic duty to make them easy to implement: all we can do as players of the game is suggest what we think is cool in some shape or form, and flesh those ideas out into fully fledged concepts. And then if the dev team ends up using some of those suggestions? All the better.

[Naraka]

33 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

AE missions are fine, they can be fun, but they're playing pretend inside a world that's already playing pretend.  I, and I'm going to guess quite a few other players, are never going to find them as satisfying as content integrated with the rest of the game world.

To put this in an analogy with regards to my perspective:

 

To you, AE missions are playing pretend as this suggestion is to me being a make-believe solution.

 

While I can certainly see the prospect of AE missions being unintegrated into the world/game, why not look into making AE *more* integrated?  Why not create systems where you can "attach" mission arcs to existing contacts or new contacts?  Why not allow players to pick buildings and places for the mission entrances?  You can then just put labels in the mission text that describes what motivations are in the arc.

 

I think the only argument might be they aren't "canon" or dev sanctioned or something...but a lot of the suggestions are pushing the effort of these kind of projects onto the community anyway so where do you stand there?

[BZRKR]

1 hour ago, Naraka said:

While I can certainly see the prospect of AE missions being unintegrated into the world/game, why not look into making AE *more* integrated?  Why not create systems where you can "attach" mission arcs to existing contacts or new contacts?  Why not allow players to pick buildings and places for the mission entrances?  You can then just put labels in the mission text that describes what motivations are in the arc.

@Naraka,  should make a suggestion thread for this!

If "Increasing the Villainside Population" is a goal, then merely adding AE content won't do it. Having new characters go into the AE building in Mercy and only coming out to level up won't help the "empty" feel of the Rogue Isles. However, if there was a "Candidate for Villain Content" flag that folks could put on their AE missions, then the devs could select from the best rated ones to put into the game world outside of AE. The player made arcs would just be the first step.

 

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

AE missions are fine, they can be fun, but they're playing pretend inside a world that's already playing pretend.  I, and I'm going to guess quite a few other players, are never going to find them as satisfying as content integrated with the rest of the game world.

I have no problem mentally treating an AE mission as "Canon" if I think it's a particularly well done story in AE.

But also, there's some very strict limits on how many AE missions you can post per account.

I don't plan to make a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th account to post even more AE missions.

[Greycat]

14 minutes ago, MTeague said:

I have no problem mentally treating an AE mission as "Canon" if I think it's a particularly well done story in AE.

But also, there's some very strict limits on how many AE missions you can post per account.

 

You *can* keep asking for more slots, but... yeah.

 

It'd be nice to just be able to get more AE slots. They don't take that much room.

[Naraka]

2 hours ago, BZRKR said:

@Naraka,  should make a suggestion thread for this!

If "Increasing the Villainside Population" is a goal, then merely adding AE content won't do it. Having new characters go into the AE building in Mercy and only coming out to level up won't help the "empty" feel of the Rogue Isles. However, if there was a "Candidate for Villain Content" flag that folks could put on their AE missions, then the devs could select from the best rated ones to put into the game world outside of AE. The player made arcs would just be the first step.

 

I probably will eventually.  I rarely see suggestions for AE.

 

But it a structure could be created to facilitate sliding such arcs onto contacts, perhaps even setting up a rotation with some merit rewards, you could probably manage to make something similar to what the OP is aimed for but using community resources...that and maybe expand some options in mission creation.

[tidge]

19 hours ago, TalynDerre said:

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.

As opposed to Blue side, where the character 'agency' is constantly tracking down items stolen from M.A.G.I., if you aren't trouncing characters in DfB just to get early XP and boosts because you can't be bothered by Twinshot.

[Six-Six]

are we, then, talking about implementing a sort of skill tree to the game?

[Grouchybeast]

6 hours ago, Naraka said:

While I can certainly see the prospect of AE missions being unintegrated into the world/game, why not look into making AE *more* integrated?  Why not create systems where you can "attach" mission arcs to existing contacts or new contacts?  Why not allow players to pick buildings and places for the mission entrances?  You can then just put labels in the mission text that describes what motivations are in the arc.

It would still always feel like a second-best let's pretend to me.  The fact that my character was LARPing around Paragon rather than standing in the AE building wouldn't really change that.

 

On the other hand, I'm all for the devs taking suitable AE arcs and properly integrating them into the game.  I think that would be an excellent option for a volunteer-run game.

[TalynDerre]

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.

[Naraka]

9 hours ago, TalynDerre said:

Frankly, @Naraka, it sounds like you want to play a tabletop game with a human GM

No sir.

 

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.  The reason I suggested aiming the suggestion toward AE is because it already exists and there is already a consensus for more content and using the community to get it.

 

10 hours ago, TalynDerre said:

But this suggestion was made with the limitations of the City of Heroes game in mind.

How do you come to that conclusion?  From rereading your OP, you're requesting to add a lot of systems, contacts, tutorials, stories/arcs/paths, incarnate integration, unique item drops, etc.  While some of these things can technically be considered as already available systems, you're still requesting all new stuff.  So who writes the arcs?  Who codes the contacts and tutorials?  Who lines up all this work?

 

10 hours ago, TalynDerre said:

That being said, I think that if the Devs took this seriously, crowdsourcing the actual writing would be absolutely necessary. 

*throws arms up in the air*

 

Lol that's AE.  You just added a bunch of extra work into the suggestion.  But like I said before, you can probably make the suggestion a lot more simpler if you actually try to use AE and cut out the majority of the unneeded complexities.  The barebones already exists.

 

 

[ImpousVileTerror]

@Blackfeather, I appreciate the sentiment and agree with the application of it in the context of most commercial games.

 

However, here?  At Homecoming?  It's not -ALL- we can do.  So long as the code is out in the wild, we can band together and work as teams by our own rights, and develop the ideas we propose.

It's been a lot harder than I would have hoped, since it seems that in many cases the people who do such work end up taking their balls home and starting their own servers (if you can excuse the mish-mash of a metaphor there).  But that also just kind of proves the point:  Other servers exist, with all kinds of wild experimental development being performed!

I really think that the Homecoming community would benefit immensely from community teams forming up and working on projects together here.  Documenting their projects.  Integrating broader community feedback in to the side projects, or at least amending notes which address and acknowledge said feedback.  Sharing their efforts publicly, for the added benefit of failure protection should the project members need to bow out.

No, not everything is going to get used by the Devs here, and it can be absolutely heartbreaking to feel that kind of rejection.  And yes, the Homecoming Team could be WAY MORE encouraging for the players who want to do this (although, there is a potential litigious spectre looming over them, so I shall continue to give some benefit of doubt there).  And yes, you're absolutely right that these Suggestions and Feedback boards are expressly -for- spitballing ideas, and other members of the community would do well to be reminded that creative criticism would be much more productive than whinging about how all they can do is focus on the negative.

 

But, after saying all that . . . I maintain that "just giving the ideas and polishing them" isn't the end of our potential journeys here.  We can do more!  We have that power now.

 

Of course, if that was the intent of what you said . . . well, then I'm just happy to signal-boost you!

[Blackfeather]

7 hours ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

@Blackfeather, I appreciate the sentiment and agree with the application of it in the context of most commercial games.

 

However, here?  At Homecoming?  It's not -ALL- we can do.  So long as the code is out in the wild, we can band together and work as teams by our own rights, and develop the ideas we propose.

It's been a lot harder than I would have hoped, since it seems that in many cases the people who do such work end up taking their balls home and starting their own servers (if you can excuse the mish-mash of a metaphor there).  But that also just kind of proves the point:  Other servers exist, with all kinds of wild experimental development being performed!

I really think that the Homecoming community would benefit immensely from community teams forming up and working on projects together here.  Documenting their projects.  Integrating broader community feedback in to the side projects, or at least amending notes which address and acknowledge said feedback.  Sharing their efforts publicly, for the added benefit of failure protection should the project members need to bow out.

No, not everything is going to get used by the Devs here, and it can be absolutely heartbreaking to feel that kind of rejection.  And yes, the Homecoming Team could be WAY MORE encouraging for the players who want to do this (although, there is a potential litigious spectre looming over them, so I shall continue to give some benefit of doubt there).  And yes, you're absolutely right that these Suggestions and Feedback boards are expressly -for- spitballing ideas, and other members of the community would do well to be reminded that creative criticism would be much more productive than whinging about how all they can do is focus on the negative.

 

But, after saying all that . . . I maintain that "just giving the ideas and polishing them" isn't the end of our potential journeys here.  We can do more!  We have that power now.

 

Of course, if that was the intent of what you said . . . well, then I'm just happy to signal-boost you!

Of course! Fleshing those ideas out into fully fledged concepts can potentially entail actually working on the game, especially with the code out there. And even without touching code, there's a lot that people can do to better realise some ideas, for example attaching tentative numbers to powerset suggestions, along with flavor text to go with them, etc.

[tidge]

On 6/3/2020 at 10:55 PM, TalynDerre said:

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.

I keep coming back to this complaint...

 

If you take your villain 'all the way through' Red side (lvl 1 - 50), you will get a significant amount of NPC dialogue that is *very* respectful/fearful of your accomplishments. For example, finish the Lord Recluse SF and there are several Red side NPCs which congratulate you. I don't recall any dialogue kudos for having done the Statesmen/Ms. Liberty TF.