I wish Origins have a bigger purpose, what if...?

[Oginth]

What if contacts only give missions to the right Origin?

 

**But** Ouro allows all missions to be played regardless of Origin.

 

So in the long run, you don't miss out, but in the short run, it makes Origins feel less pointless important.

 

Also you gain exp so fast anyway, you would outlevel some contacts if you have so many people to talk to.

[Lines]

I don't think people will appreciate being shut out of some cool arcs, and some origins would end up being pigeon-holed into fighting a limited range of enemies during some of the level ranges.

 

On a grander scheme, a cool feature might be unique-but-inconsequential story branches or flavour that depends on your origin. But Origin is quite a hard thing to qualify narratively, especially natural.

 

Tyrannical's idea from the other day would be pretty sweet, though!

[Piecemeal]

Origin-specifc things? I am playing with integrating origin specific things into my projects. Currently seeing what can and can't be done. I do want to make more your character choices and details more significant.

 

And before anyone revs up the Speculatron5000, origins will not lock out content or badges. I'm looking to add flavor 🙂

[Alchemystic]

3 minutes ago, Piecemeal said:

Origin-specifc things? I am playing with integrating origin specific things into my projects. Currently seeing what can and can't be done. I do want to make more your character choices and details more significant.

 

And before anyone revs up the Speculatron5000, origins will not lock out content or badges. I'm looking to add flavor 🙂

Interesting stuff!

 

I got another thread going trying to work out a way of giving origins more flavor and the ability to swap what origin content you can do.

 

 

[Oginth]

1 hour ago, Piecemeal said:

projects

Ever so mysterious.

[Replacement]

6 hours ago, Oginth said:

What if contacts only give missions to the right Origin?

 

**But** Ouro allows all missions to be played regardless of Origin.

 

So in the long run, you don't miss out, but in the short run, it makes Origins feel less pointless important.

 

Also you gain exp so fast anyway, you would outlevel some contacts if you have so many people to talk to.

Isn't this returning to what it used to be?

 

The 5 contacts in the basement of city hall. Pretty sure they used to only give you the time of day if you matched their origin. If you wanted the others, pay a visit to your local Mender.

 

I prefer it how it is, with less lock-out. And I'd rather see more done (larger contact level window, a way to use party members to introduce you to their contacts), not more content restrictions.

[Greycat]

What I'd like to see (and have suggested before) are EAT-like arcs based on the origin, following you 1-50. Which sounds somewhat like what you're talking about.

 

Yes, Crey is interested in your tech. I always thought it was a lost opportunity that in the original tutorial you see them "helping" the police with Rikti drones, being good guys, then you hear nothing about them, then *bam* bad guys. That would have been an interesting arc to follow, I'd think.

 

COT or midnighters in your magic, that sort of thing. Have to reveal who's stalking you.

 

And with them available to all in ouro, nobody would necessarily miss out.

[Patti]

Can it be Origin-inspired, but let people choose which one to pursue regardless of actual Origin?   More choices would be better right?  If we can't change our Origin specially so.

[Greycat]

4 minutes ago, Patti said:

Can it be Origin-inspired, but let people choose which one to pursue regardless of actual Origin?   More choices would be better right?  If we can't change our Origin specially so.

 

10 hours ago, Oginth said:

**But** Ouro allows all missions to be played regardless of Origin.

I'd call that a good compromise, personally.

[Patti]

If you can ouro anyway why not just offer the player the choice from the start so they always have the power to decide for themself?

[Greycat]

11 minutes ago, Patti said:

If you can ouro anyway why not just offer the player the choice from the start so they always have the power to decide for themself?

Because it's different when you get to play through a story tied to *you,* versus... let's say "reading through back issues" via Ouro.

 

If, using one of my examples, we create a 1-50 arc where Crey is really helpful to you, oh tech hero, oh, mind if we see tha tthing you're using? No, no, it's to help you really... and they do something "anti-your-technology," it doesn't particularly make sense to level through that as a non-tech hero. "You've done tech sabotage to my tech? But... I don't have any, I'm natural and I kick people, what did you do, tie my shoelaces together?"

 

Fighting the COT or some other group in the magic origin arcs as a tech hero. "You're countering my magic? What magic, gunpowder?"

 

And so on.

[ninja surprise]

After a bank mission is completed the policeman offers contacts with caveats "This contact is tech/science, this one natural" etc. Seems you can technically force yourself to only do contacts matching your origin.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Because it's different when you get to play through a story tied to *you,* versus... let's say "reading through back issues" via Ouro.

My only quibble there is it's not a story tied to YOU. 

 

The Technology Origin arc will never be tied to MY BLASTER, Agent Bluejay. Will never account for anything I add to her backstory.  Will never be tailored in any way to anything reflecting any personal nemesis of hers.   It'll be common to ALL Technology-origin'd characters.

 

So I really don't see it any more "tied to *you*" any more than Looking Through the Glass is tied to "you". 

Or any more than tip mission is.

It's really not. At most it can give an impression of it.

 

I'm in favor of "you can pick any one" similar to Patron arcs.

 

[Greycat]

3 minutes ago, MTeague said:

My only quibble there is it's not a story tied to YOU. 

 

The Technology Origin arc will never be tied to MY BLASTER, Agent Bluejay. Will never account for anything I add to her backstory.  Will never be tailored in any way to anything reflecting any personal nemesis of hers.   It'll be common to ALL Technology-origin'd characters.

 

So I really don't see it any more "tied to *you*" any more than Looking Through the Glass is tied to "you". 

Or any more than tip mission is.

It's really not. At most it can give an impression of it.

 

I'm in favor of "you can pick any one" similar to Patron arcs.

 

In which case, you can ignore it, just like those who (say) play a Peacebringer as an angelic character versus... well, a PB ... ignore those arcs.

 

Honestly, I'd see them as halfway between EAT arcs and normal arcs. They're extra, and focused on something dealing with the origin you chose. A 1-50 set of arcs you can go through, different for each origin. No, they can't be as customized as an EAT because characters have more backstory to them and origins are more generic. But they're more focused than generic arcs.

[FoulVileTerror]

Based on the recent conversation in regard to Origins on the General board here, I happen to think that @Patti and @MTeague are on track with the right idea.

 

If specific gameplay is tied to specific Origins, then I believe there are only two things we can count on:

- Some players will choose Origins specifically for gameplay purposes, paying no heed to thematic consistency of that Origin.  That's not really a problem, but it does illustrate a failure of the designed function of such a change.

or

- Players who have particular concepts for their character, and personal justifications for the Origin they chose, will have content which denies their character concept, or at the very least does a piss-poor job of accounting for it.  And that's the big one.

 

So, if the idea is to provide new content which is catered to an individual player-character, then I think we'll get MUCH better mileage out of an idea like @TalynDerre's:    https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/19762-new-redside-content-ambitions/

Just, instead of focusing on Villain's Ambitions, use the same sort of system and write it in service to a Hero's Origin.

 

Everybody wins!

[srmalloy]

19 hours ago, Patti said:

Can it be Origin-inspired, but let people choose which one to pursue regardless of actual Origin?   More choices would be better right?  If we can't change our Origin specially so.

You can already go to any of the origin contacts downstairs in City Hall when you create a character and do their mission arcs and follow their introduction chain as you fill out their relationship bar.

[ninja surprise]

I always wished origins gave different animations or skins to the powersets.

Magic's animation would be based on a wand, staff, or hand-waving.

Mutation would have all attacks animate from the body.

Tech, Natural, and Science would all animate from some sort of device.

 

Example: Fire blast

 

Mutation uses all the existing animations

Magic would do a quick handwave and fire shoots out of somewhere, or waving wands/staves, etc.

Science, Tech and Natural would get flamethrower, but maybe origin-specific skins are available only to each origin.

 

Example: Asssault Rifle

Science, Tech and Natural again would use the default animation/rifle, but with some unique skins per origin.

Magic could use a techno-mage gun, or hand-waving that summons bullets, grenades, etc.

Mutation could use the existing Fire Blast animations but it's bullets flying out instead of fire.

 

Right now many concept-builders restrict powersets by their origin to avoid obvious concept conflicts. This would facilitate role-playing and make obvious differences between characters having the same powerset but different origin.

[FoulVileTerror]

Or, ideally, add all those animation options without any kind of connection to Origin, so that players can just pick the animations which suit their concept on a personal basis.