Costume Grind Idea?

[Ducie]

Hey guys I was thinking for some new content ideas and this is what I have come up with.

 

A lot of other games there is grinding for different things like mounts in some games to costume items in other. But a lot of people love to grind and do things that they can have to show how hard they worked for something. I know we have badges which are fun to find and grind for, but there is nothing to show for it unless someone searches your character profile.

 

What if we did seasonal grinds where if you competed X amount of tasks your toon receives a new costume piece. If you complete all the challenges you can get a new set. These costume pieces wouldn't be transferable to other toons so you would have to keep them on that specific toon but than people could have something more to show than a badge search.

 

You could even get extremely creative with it and make new NPC's to hunt that have specific salvage drops and than if you turn in a certain amount of salvage to the tailor store they can craft you the new piece of gear, weather it be a helmet, cap, aura or just some new basic shoes to flaunt at the next costume contest to show your dedication! 

 

Let me know what yall think :D

[Coyotedancer]

For every player who jut LOVES an endless grind, there's another who says "Dude. I have a life outside the game." Having to murder ten thousand Flumphs just to unlock the Wowzers Aura costume piece just isn't going to appeal to a lot of us.

 

That's particularly true when half the point of the game is character customization.

[Techwright]

12 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

For every player who jut LOVES an endless grind, there's another who says "Dude. I have a life outside the game." Having to murder ten thousand Flumphs just to unlock the Wowzers Aura costume piece just isn't going to appeal to a lot of us.

 

That's particularly true when half the point of the game is character customization.

Quoted for truth.

 

Grinding is a game killer, and that opinion has been widely documented in gaming forums spanning the globe.

 

Now to be constructive, I personally would be more at ease with a reward for constructive effort, something that advances my character,  rather than just mindless "go there, kill that" or "go there, collect that".   One such example in game (or at least in the original game) was the blue-side awarding of epaulets for completing the 6 Freedom Phalanx task forces.  That takes hours, teaming, and a lot of work, but it advances the character.  Your character gains influence and experience, and storywise, just helped save the city 6 times over.  And he/she/"small furry creature from Alpha Centauri" was not strapped to a corner of the city playing Whack-A-Troll whenever the game finally generated one where you'd already defeated dozens.

 

The cape-issuing missions in the original game could be perceived this way as well, as was the Midnighter's Club access missions.

 

I'd also suggest it should never be a single item, but rather a selection in a "store".  If I'm playing a barbarian character, for example, chances are, I don't need a pair of epaulets.  So why do some crazy grind just to get them?  I won't, you see.   But I would be willing to take on the Twelve Tasks of Hercules to gain access to a selection, where I can pick one item, like say a nice pair of bearskin bracers, while another guy picks high-tech gloves with LED filament lighting, and a third acquires a new alligator skin-type to benefit a reptilian character.   We see something like this in the original game, but using a specifically earned "currency" doing specific missions and events, for Vanguard rewards at the Rikti War Zone.

 

I'm also a fan of the "packet of rewards" idea, if I can coin a phrase.  Going back to the Freedom Phalanx missions to explain.  Completing all these in the original game gave these rewards:  epaulets, a badge, the title of "Task Force Commander", and nicest of all, a permanent 5% increase to your characters maximum hit points.  With this, I may never use the epaulets on my character, but I might be a "badger", happy to show off a new shiny by changing my title, and feel really good about having permanently boosted my hit points.  So I'd feel good about this despite being unable to work with one of the four rewards given.  And I never felt I was grinding (well except in Synapse and Citadel task forces, but poor task force design is a different matter). 

 

48 minutes ago, Ducie said:

I know we have badges which are fun to find and grind for, but there is nothing to show for it unless someone searches your character profile.

Not entirely accurate.  Many of the badges, most notably the day job badges, have additional, useful effects that come in the earning of them, such as temporary boosts to health, power, or resistence, or a temporary power such a teleportation to the auction house (which in the original game was useful as an alternate fast transportation method).  As previously mentioned, the Task Force Commander badge permanently boosts max hit points by 5%.  I believe there are others, though I'm not going to go looking for them all at this moment.  I do think an argument could be made for applying some sort of reward on more badges.

 

 

[Ducie]

Some of the badges do give perm boosts which is awesome.

 

What I'm thinking is something along the lines of POE (Path of Exile) or WoW (World of Warcraft), POE makes you grind out challenges which gives you Micro Transaction Gear, allowing you to change the look of your toon with special effect and even skill effects. Or with WoW most of my friends who play it enjoy grinding for the new mounts and look forward to it, so maybe adding in something that gives your travel powers a new look.

 

Personally I would really enjoy new seasons to CoH where this season quest lines and change things up, the world is now lost to the Rikiti they took over Atlas Park for the season and we need to beat them back, and completing these quest and helping out gets you new looks to show your participation. Or maybe the Lost built a underground city for a season (seasons normally lasting 3 months) and you have to stop them from using a bomb to destroy King's Row. Just something different and optional to participate it. 

 

It doesn't just have to be "Kill 1000 Rikiti Monkey and now you get a Rikiti Monkey face skin" it can be more detailed and elaborate. 

 

It's food for thought, and a new fresh idea to a game that seems to be stagnant. Or hell, make the ultimate season store line reward..... Save Atlas Park and you now unlock a new power set and level option from 50 to 60. Who know, but lets open the idea up for advancement to this game, and honestly the best way to keep fresh content is to break it up in seasons. 

[FoulVileTerror]

You may wish to review https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/12155-going-forward-can-we-have-more-things-that-mean-something/ as it touches on some very similar ideas as this.

[Greycat]

We used to have this.

Get to 20 for a cape, 30 for an aura. And do the mission.

Vanguard pieces? Better grind those merits.

 

Those no longer exist in that form, but are open from level 1. And I *much* prefer it that way. In a game like this that's so *big* on customization, hiding costume pieces behind a GRIND just sucks.

 

Granted, it's not as bad as Aion - wings *sucked* to upgrade, and there was one set of armor that you could only get one piece per character. At level 30, as I recall. So you had to get five different characters on the same side and server up to get one full set of that armor... that was just bs (and yeah. Read that and promptly ignored the set existed.)

 

 

Other challenges? Sure. I like Pither. I'd love to have that "stop fir bolg from escaping" mission have a badge reward showing how many (if any) escaped. But costume type stuff, no. (And thank $deity they don't have powers or boosts tied to them here.)

Edited August 1, 2020 by Greycat

[EmmySky]

I don't think that locking stuff behind a grind wall is going to go over well, especially since the main reason for it seems to be "Look at me look how uber I am".  Aren't we past the need for peer approval?  Also having everything open from the beginning is fantastic for character customization.  And badges can be worn so pick the grindiest one and wear it to prove how uber you are.  

 

I am usually all for more options for more people and this sounds like taking options away.  Do the cape mission before you put a cape on your character, you will have the sense of accomplishment without forcing everyone else to play your way.  Win-win!

Edited August 1, 2020 by EmmySky

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, Ducie said:

What I'm thinking is something along the lines of POE (Path of Exile) or WoW (World of Warcraft), POE makes you grind out challenges which gives you Micro Transaction Gear, allowing you to change the look of your toon with special effect and even skill effects. Or with WoW most of my friends who play it enjoy grinding for the new mounts and look forward to it, so maybe adding in something that gives your travel powers a new look.

One of the biggest differences between CoX and other MMOs is the 'alts are the end game' nature of CoX.  Grinding for particular rewards is one thing when you're using it to add new shinies to players' very limited stables of characters.  It's another thing when people have dozens of characters and have to jump through the same hoops over and over and over again.

[Patti]

I like the idea of mission clues unlocking base decoration trophies that say who earned them by clicking on them.  If you need to show off to people anyway.

But please have costumes always free and available always.  Its THE best part of City of heroes.

[SwitchFade]

12 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

For every player who jut LOVES an endless grind, there's another who says "Dude. I have a life outside the game." Having to murder ten thousand Flumphs just to unlock the Wowzers Aura costume piece just isn't going to appeal to a lot of us.

 

That's particularly true when half the point of the game is character customization.

I would like a wowzers aura. This would make happygoodnesstimes.

[Oginth]

Halloween costume drops are time-limited, I don't mind if we can hunt for salvages to craft time-limited costume pieces.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Oginth

[EmmySky]

2 minutes ago, Oginth said:

Halloween costume drops are time-limited, I don't mind if we can hunt for salvages to craft time-limited costume pieces.

That sounds like a pretty good compromise.

[Coyotedancer]

'Depends on what exactly is meant by "temporary costume parts"...

 

If it's an entire look like the Halloween costumes? Sure. 

 

If you're saying "Oh, look. It's been a month, I better go spend X-number of hours grinding out Thing A or my favorite cape is going to vanish", hell no. 

[Ducie]

I love all the feed back and response here with the community.

 

Just trying to find new and improved ways to bring this game to new heights.

[ZekeStenzland]

Don't really care for the idea. Because costume pieces (in the real world) are trivially transferable. And stealable. And inheritable. And creatable. And counterfeitable. Locked costume pieces make even less sense in the game world than they do in the real world.

 

For all the coolness factor of "the people of Cimerora were so thankful of my efforts to save them that they honored me with this armor",  there are totally legitimate reasons for having level 1 starting characters with that armor ("i inherted it from my dad and want to carry on his legacy").

 

I remember how annoying it was to want to make an angel/demon character who couldn't actually start with wings. Don't care to bring that back.

 

And we already have badge titles, if you absolutely have to brag how much better you are than someone else.

 

[FoulVileTerror]

At -most- I would say only the Signature NPC costume pieces should ever be unlockables, and only as a compromise from the current hardline stance of "no one gets them at all."

And, of course, those unlockables should be accessible from any level, just so that if a concept calls for them, the player doesn't have to wait to some arbitrary level before they can have their friends help them unlock it.

[Xanatos]

Mendor costume pieces at vet level 100 would be cool.

 

The idea being that you got so powerful, your future self came back and took your place.

 

I know it goes against the alt-friendly nature of the game to have character-bound unlockable costume pieces, but as a one-off it could be cool.

[Luminara]

On 8/1/2020 at 11:28 AM, Ducie said:

I know we have badges which are fun to find and grind for, but there is nothing to show for it unless someone searches your character profile.

 

A reward for repetitive clicking, so some people can try to obtain a sense of self-validation by "impressing" others, and other people can flaunt what they have and say, "I have this and you don't, so I'm better than you are."

 

No.