Hazard Zones: what might revitalize these?

[BurtHutt]

Make them co-op zones which includes Praetorians. And of course adding new content but that's not an easy ask for a small Dev team.

[Take One]

17 hours ago, Techwright said:

What ideas might you have for revitalizing these zones?

Unique rewards, preferably unique for each zone. Temp powers, special enhancements/recipe drops, more influence or xp for sweeping the area, badges.

More challenges and repeatable missions within the zone. Special tip missions. Mini task-forces to unlock. Look at Striga, follow that model.

Repeatable street sweeping missions handed out by the officer by the door who usually tells you about the zone's dangers. The mission caps your level at the zone's max, to let you enjoy the zone the way it's meant to be, without forcing people who don't want the challenge to join in.

 

[Nemeroff]

1 hour ago, The_Warpact said:

... there's something really satisfying about saving the little old lady from getting mugged by Hellions ...

And there's something really satisfying about tripping the little old lady into the Hellions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What?

 

/resume topic

It's minor but in addition to standard rewards, (money, merits, xp) I like Temp Power Rewards. Like in Striga The Warwolf Whistle.

[Rishidian]

I was thinking of Door/Cave missions.  All doors and caves would have a random mission ready - no need to have them assigned to you.  The missions would be scaled to your toon's level when you opened the door (not sure how to scale to a team's level).  Repeat missions would be unavoidable.

[DoctorDitko]

1 hour ago, KC4800 said:

went to Ouro and chose the Freakolympics arc. That automatically reduced my lvl to 29. Then I went into Echo:Dark Astoria

I feel so stupid. I never thought of skiving off on Ouro mishes to adjust level. Great idea!

[Coyotedancer]

7 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Crey's Folly is one of the most interesting zones in terms of its layout - the grimy, industrial feel mixed with the shanty town was quite unique. 

 

Apart from beating up Jurassik, there's just not much reason to go there. 

Pretty much all of the regular missions arc contacts in that level range just LOOOOVE to send you there.... Usually to doors on the far end of the zone from the gate... over and over and over again. Thanks to that, you can end up spending a fair bit of time there if you're running that content. <_<

[The_Warpact]

42 minutes ago, Nemeroff said:

And there's something really satisfying about tripping the little old lady into the Hellions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What?

 

/resume topic

It's minor but in addition to standard rewards, (money, merits, xp) I like Temp Power Rewards. Like in Striga The Warwolf Whistle.

Sssshhh I'm a villain pretending to be a lulz "hero".

Actually, I robbed her, robbed them, and I'm out partying with their Girlfriend from Hell. (she's a freak!)

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

? So they are gone for you, but everyone else sees them?

What happens if you are on a team?

This one doesn't seem really do-able or complicated to program for sure.

Phasing technology already exists in the game.  If you poke around Atlas, there are areas that change depending on what arcs you've played, like whether or not you can see Dana Habashy standing next to her husband.  You can also see the map markers of team members disappear and appear as they go in and out of the phasing areas.  If you're teaming, you see the team leader's world.  I assume that if the game hadn't shut down, more zones would have had the same kind of revamp.

[SwitchFade]

Faultline is a perfect example of how to refresh a hazard zone.

 

Faultline is 15-25.

 

Perez refresh similar, range 1-10

Boomtown refresh similar, range 10-20

Creys refresh, range 30-40

Eden refresh, 40-incarnate.

[catsi563]

A meg mason style contact at the main gate that gives radio style missions to hunt or go here or do that. for the hunts the mission auto exemps you to the top level for the hunt to insure you have a fight on your hands 

[Knock!]

1 hour ago, Take One said:

Unique rewards, preferably unique for each zone. Temp powers, special enhancements/recipe drops, more influence or xp for sweeping the area, badges.

More challenges and repeatable missions within the zone. Special tip missions. Mini task-forces to unlock. Look at Striga, follow that model.

Repeatable street sweeping missions handed out by the officer by the door who usually tells you about the zone's dangers. The mission caps your level at the zone's max, to let you enjoy the zone the way it's meant to be, without forcing people who don't want the challenge to join in.

 

This gives me another idea: new Police Radio missions that are only available in a specific Hazard Zone. Completing 3-5 of those missions could earn you a special mission from the zone's Security Officer, like a new kind of Safeguard/Mayhem mission. To make them interesting, they would need to be distinct from Safeguards/Mayhems in some way. . . .

 

[Marine X]

While the Shadow Shard is definitely not a favorite of many players it has a lot of potential for incarnate level missions:

 

1) the Rularuu Watchers can make you swear you left your Defense at Home ( you might as well have ) but there are some hard hitters in their ranks and would be challenging at 50+++.

2) There is a lot mentioned about the Aspects of Rularuu in the Wiki, but several of them and several locations mentioned never made it into the game including:

 

Aspects          Chularn the Slave Lord

                       Kuularth the Scavenger

                       Aloore the Watcher

                       Uuralur the Mirror

 

Locations        The Repository

                       The Factory Cubes

                       Garden of Mirrors

 

Also, Not to mention it too many times, but it would be nice to have something to do in Kallisti Wharf other than Costume Contests, although those are appreciated.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Marine X

[arcane]

3 hours ago, Heraclea said:

My first suggestion would be to remove the double debt penalty for street sweeping deaths.  

Considering you’re literally the first HC player I’ve ever seen mention debt as if it has any noticeable impact at all, I don’t think that will do it.

[KC4800]

1 hour ago, DoctorDitko said:

I feel so stupid. I never thought of skiving off on Ouro mishes to adjust level. Great idea!

I used to do this on live with my AR/Dev blaster. He loved to go all the way down to lvl 15 and shoot Calibans with his sniper rifle.

[Replacement]

8 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

Phasing technology already exists in the game.  If you poke around Atlas, there are areas that change depending on what arcs you've played, like whether or not you can see Dana Habashy standing next to her husband.  You can also see the map markers of team members disappear and appear as they go in and out of the phasing areas.  If you're teaming, you see the team leader's world.  I assume that if the game hadn't shut down, more zones would have had the same kind of revamp.

I was also thinking about this but considering how long it took Paragon Studios to work out phasing, I don't really have my hopes up that it's straightforward and well-documented for the HC team to dive into.

Pie in the sky, yeah that's my preferred path. But low population caps, forcing multiple instances, and events triggering in only some of them is something they seem pretty comfortably able to pull off.

 

That leaves just the minor detail of... The rest of my unrealistic wish list.

 

But hey! It wouldn't block mission doors!

 

EDIT: I'm really up in the air between if I would prefer Hazard zones cap your level (like ouro), or do like @Techwrightsaid and have the mobs always come up to your level.

 

There's probably room for both.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Replacement

[Techwright]

8 hours ago, Replacement said:

EDIT: I'm really up in the air between if I would prefer Hazard zones cap your level (like ouro), or do like @Techwrightsaid and have the mobs always come up to your level.

 

There's probably room for both.

Personal preference: not capping the level.  Why?  We have a ton of that already, and so few opportunities, as a result, to unleash our hard-won Incarnate-level strength.  I do like going back and doing the old story lines, and I get why they are level capped.  But if I could unleash my full level 50 strength on a street group of 20 Skulls at equal strength to me, with bosses at level 53, then whip out the Incarnate set...that's fun.

 

That said, capping the level is good brainstorming, and I'll not fuss about it if it happens.  It definitely would make a difference in Perez Park, for example.

 

Hmm....maybe raising their range of vision some, too?  That way nearby mobs might run in to assist, adding to the potential to be suddenly overwhelmed.

[Soyuz]

I'd like to see hazard zones given the Zig Jailbreak treatment, where the mobs always con the same way to you regardless of your level. The code to do that already exists, so hopefully the work involved wouldn't be too ridiculous.

 

Stretch goal! Have everything in the zone con according to your difficulty settings. Like missions, it would presumably be set on entry to the zone. You couldn't affect spawn sizes this way, but you could affect the apparent level of the enemies. This unfortunately doesn't happen with the Zig Jailbreak event, so presumably would be new code.

 

In either case, XP should remain scaled to the zone, not to the character. Taking on even-con Hellions is hardly the same thing as tackling even-con Malta, so the XP rewards should reflect this.

 

Ultimately I'd like to see something like this done with all outdoor zones. I've never understood why a Hellion with a gun literally can't touch me if I'm level 40-50, but a Crey agent with a very similar handgun can.

[Hew]

18 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Considering you’re literally the first HC player I’ve ever seen mention debt as if it has any noticeable impact at all, I don’t think that will do it.

I street sweep. Definitely an effect on me!

[Xenosone]

Honestly with the cry of "someone needs to message me so i can get on ae farm" not much can be done to revitalize hazard zones. 

 

I still use them. They have a charm especially perez in the early go. Get to level 6, run perez with whoever decided that begging for a pl for two hours was getting old. Outlevel perez pretty quick and then head to ghostown(boomtown) and out leveling that as well is kinda standard. The contacts and paper missions at that level are old and boring even on redside. 

 

Honestly i kind of wish redside linked to hazard zones. Especially creys folly even if it was just base tp. Then id never switch to worstside. 

[Greycat]

No "max leveling" them. There should be a variety through the level ranges. However, adding content - basically turning them into "story" zones with some extra kick from hazard-size mobs - would be nice. Plenty of potential threat in Crey's, for instance. Certainly in Eden. And who knows what could be found in Boomtown...

 

Some I've had more involved ideas for (the general rebuild of Boomtown, as it gets reclaimed, though it would take 3-4 issues (with 2-3 issues in between those,) the back and side edges would always be hazardous, and in general it would take a good few years, for instance.)

Edited February 19, 2021 by Greycat

[Replacement]

2 hours ago, Techwright said:

Hmm....maybe raising their range of vision some, too?  That way nearby mobs might run in to assist, adding to the potential to be suddenly overwhelmed.

I like this. Iirc, isn't this basically the plot of the old movie The Warriors? One gang stuck deep in enemy territory and their fight to escape keeps catching the attention of more and more who want to see them fall?

 

As for level correcting enemies - one problem is that a level 50 Skull doesn't have any extra attacks or tricks to defend against all the things you would be expected to bring to bear. You would basically require an xp penalty to justify the incredible slaughter (self counterpoint: it still wouldn't be as good of xp/inf as a fire farm).

 

The other thing is the sense that some stuff in zone should be harder than the others.

I'm sure everyone has memories of falling off a broken ledge in The Hollows where everything was fair or even weak...

And landing on purple minions of igneous.

 

Plus, auto-level doesn't encourage you to leave ever.

 

Really though, I think the answer is case-by-case.

Rule of thumb: zones 30 and under have a level cap, 30+ syncs enemy rank. Exceptions flow from there depending on individual zone mechanics.

 

EDIT: Ultimately, whatever would/could happen to these zones would encourage people to actually spend time there. If you sync up enemies, you are strongly advantaging 50(+) characters... And yet the only thing that would really attract those characters is new story content.

 

Just something to keep in mind. if new arcs or other method of delivering story is on the table and you like it as a level 50 activity, using the event/monster system becomes more acceptable.

If you're wanting alternate leveling paths that have some soft story hooks ("here's the premise. Now go. Hunt."), I think zone caps make more sense. They aren't strictly necessary - I don't think it's intrinsically wrong to run an activity with no risk - but it's a soft guarantee you won't "level out" of your ability to enjoy it.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Replacement

[Heraclea]

My other suggestions would be to turn areas of the zones into damage-typer themed areas, with large spawns of fire based enemies here, physical damage there.  Make them farmable without bothering with AE. 

[Ukase]

22 hours ago, Rejolt said:

Create Open  Missions with rewards or mobs that drop salvage you need to create a buff that helps on harder content. Rather than seeing an NPC who gives you flavor text, you go to the Brickstown prison break and get a Tear Gas Grenade Launcher with a Special anti-CoT Tree Vines formula that kills them on contact. You make an open mission with Jurassik in Crey's that gives a buff that makes you mostly immune to toxic damage for 90 minutes of real time that you can do once a day before you do a hamidon raid or a Numina TF.

 

Give players a reason to do open missions in hazard zones. Improve the Seed of Hamidon's rewards and make it so the Buoyancy team flight buff makes you immune to the terrorizes and stuns for hamidon raids.

 

Gives a reason to do things that tie to other content! 

I like the idea of tying things to other content. The buffs, though, I'm on the fence about the strength of them. Candidly, players that use IO sets simply won't need them. I don't know the percentage of players that use IO sets...but I'd guess more than half. Granted, just because folks use sets doesn't mean their characters are slotted well (not necessarily min-max, but with various metrics like recharge and defense in mind). 

Obviously, opinions will vary on this, but that's just mine. 

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Xenosone said:

Honestly with the cry of "someone needs to message me so i can get on ae farm" not much can be done to revitalize hazard zones. 

There's that...  And many of "revitalization" proposals simply amount to requests for open world farming - AKA street sweeping.  (Really, though it's bound to be a controversial position, I can't see that much difference between them.)  However, except for extreme lowbies and the very upper end of the level range (where not-grey areas get pretty small), there's pretty much no level where you can't already street sweep in a hazard, trial, or cooperative zone.  Changing Boomtown (for example) to scale with level doesn't accomplish much beyond giving the player the possibility of a change of scenery.  (Not that a change of scenery isn't potentially valuable.)  Otherwise, you're just doing what you can already do in other zones.

Wandering thought:  Setting aside the lack of a definition of what revitalization really means...  How much is lack of 'vitality' and how much is perception due to the differences between Homecoming and Live?

• The population on Homecoming is much smaller.
• There's a much higher percentage of vets and a social meta that leans towards leveling (reaching 50) as fast and efficiently as possible.
• Even without the above, leveling in normal play is much faster - meaning we spend less time / have less need for not-City zones.

Back on Freedom, even if just 1-2% of the online players were sweeping in not-City zones, that could easily be dozens of characters (if not more).  On Excelsior, that means 10, maybe 15...  spread out across a dozen or so potential zones to sweep in.

 

[Replacement]

2 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

There's that...  And many of "revitalization" proposals simply amount to requests for open world farming - AKA street sweeping.  (Really, though it's bound to be a controversial position, I can't see that much difference between them.)  However, except for extreme lowbies and the very upper end of the level range (where not-grey areas get pretty small), there's pretty much no level where you can't already street sweep in a hazard, trial, or cooperative zone.  Changing Boomtown (for example) to scale with level doesn't accomplish much beyond giving the player the possibility of a change of scenery.  (Not that a change of scenery isn't potentially valuable.)  Otherwise, you're just doing what you can already do in other zones.

Wandering thought:  Setting aside the lack of a definition of what revitalization really means...  How much is lack of 'vitality' and how much is perception due to the differences between Homecoming and Live?

• The population on Homecoming is much smaller.
• There's a much higher percentage of vets and a social meta that leans towards leveling (reaching 50) as fast and efficiently as possible.
• Even without the above, leveling in normal play is much faster - meaning we spend less time / have less need for not-City zones.

Back on Freedom, even if just 1-2% of the online players were sweeping in not-City zones, that could easily be dozens of characters (if not more).  On Excelsior, that means 10, maybe 15...  spread out across a dozen or so potential zones to sweep in.

 

Yeah, some of what you're saying here is why I like the idea of some meta objective or reward.

 

I should note, some sense of achievement is a reward, for the reason many of us save the old lady getting mugged still.

 

Street-sweeping is not, in itself, an incentive. There needs to be more. I suggest regular rewards of single merits and a bit of a story pat on the back, but really anything telling a player "you did a thing!" is a good start.

 

The other thing you reminded me about is something far more near-term: some sort of "hazard zone of the week" type event to accompany our weekly S/TFs.  I don't know what that would entail. Extra spawns and badges?

 

I have no idea, just throwing stuff out.