What fundamental structures, assumptions, etc should be reconsidered for CoX?

[DougGraves]

The devs have made a bunch of changes such as unlocking everything at character creation instead of requiring a cape mission, etc.

 

They are redoing movement powers - making people go faster.

 

So what other fundamental things should be reconsidered.  Not "Regen should be better".

 

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?  Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

 

Should the game require you to go to contacts to get missions at all?  Should you just select them from a contact list and use a cellphone from the start?

 

Should you have to go to a trainer to train?

[Coyote]

1: nerf IO set bonuses for Defense only. They're so much more valuable than other set bonuses except +Recharge for specific builds (perma-Dom, perma-PA, etc).

2: re-work mezzing so that it puts out debuffing while it's being stacked, but give PCs higher mag of mez protection as a base so that they actually get mezzed less. Or give them higher base mez Resistance so that they get mezzed for shorter durations.

3: re-consider having offensive toggles drop when mezzed.

[Coyotedancer]

I'd love to see more "cross-over" between the various sides of the City... Heroes getting to go bust goons in missions in the Isles, Villains coming to Paragon to break the heroes' stuff... That kind of thing.

 

I do *not* want open, every-zone PvP, mind, (I got burned out on that idea with the shared zones and rifters in Aion, and wouldn't want to duplicate the experience here-) but having missions or whole arcs set in the "other side" zones? Oh, heck yeah. I feel like that's long over-due.

[MTeague]

I don't want factions / alignments ignored.  But I would like to see more shared space / better use of them.  Shared zones where Bluesiders have contacts in Red Zones (but have to be careful moving around and vice-versa, would be wonderful.

 

I would love the option to start a new character as a Praetorian Exile. ie, you're one of the people who escaped complete destruction in Praetoria and made out alongside Provost Marchand, etc. You would need some Timey-Wimey to able to do anything with the older goldside 1-20 missions, but /eye Ouroborous, there's an app for that.  And then maybe instead of being "undercover" for Loyalist or Resistance, you could be making "slight adjustments" to the time stream, so that certain specific individuals can make it out who might have otherwise died.  (ie, maybe Preatorian Vanessa DeVore leaves the mask behind but doesn't die?).  probably not going to happen? But I'd love it if it did.

 

In terms of mechanics, I have a laundry list of things that I think should not be as strong as they are, and things that I think should be stronger than they are, but I don't have a solution for those that doesn't nerf something that someone holds dear, and we've had too many such threads lately. 

[Majinbewbs]

I don't want factions to be ignored they have a very awesome flavor unless it's like the goldside where if you make certain choices you flip alignment, but if I could pick two things to be reconsidered it would be removing all level limits from contacts and story missions.

 

I love the various little stories some of which can give great opportunity to real feel out the character concept you made, but having to do like 30 missions with exp turned off to not miss anything like badges or unlocking certain contacts would be a great QoL change I would really support. I don't mean for the content itself to change just those little limits that say "oh hey you're too competent for this job" to be turned off, because really who is going to stop while being beaten by some things and demand someone less qualified to save them instead?

 

Using Ouro to go back for certain things doesn't really have a good feel to it and some of the quests that recognize stuff done before don't seem to recognize it unless you've done the quest outside ouro which is an immersion breaker on top of another immersion breaker

 

The other would be doing away with paper missions and making the detective/broker thing for bank heists be unlocked by tips missions which are more fun to do while papers are purely a chore especially when you have to do 10 of them

[Sakura Tenshi]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

1: nerf IO set bonuses for Defense only. They're so much more valuable than other set bonuses except +Recharge for specific builds (perma-Dom, perma-PA, etc).

 

I think +recharge is pretty important to about all characters and should be nerfed a bit. That said though, I'd also like to see Resistances and other such buffs get a bit of a boost (maybe like a 10-20% effectiveness boost) to encourage people to diversify their builds. Also, energy/negative energy resistance is surprisingly a rare bonus that I've noticed when trying to build an invul tank.

[DougGraves]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

1: nerf IO set bonuses for Defense only. They're so much more valuable than other set bonuses

 

It is too late to do defense and resistance properly, but done properly they would be multiplicative instead of additive.

 

Right now 5% resistance is almost useless to a blaster.  They still take 95% of the damage they would normally take.  But to a tanker with 90% resistance already it cuts the amount they take in half.  Which means a power pool ability meant to give blaster some resistance is actually useless for them but great for tankers.

 

Instead, the power should be 50% resistance but multiplicative not stacking.  A blaster with no other resistance gets it and takes half damage.  A tanker with other resistance takes it and takes half the damage they would normally take.  The power is of equal value to a blaster and a tanker.

 

So a tanker would have an inherent power with 50% resistance.  Then a toggle with 50% resistance.  With both on they would take 25% of the damage.  They could add on a pool power with 50% resistance to take only 12.5% of the damage.

[Coyote]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

 

It is too late to do defense and resistance properly, but done properly they would be multiplicative instead of additive.

 

Right now 5% resistance is almost useless to a blaster.  They still take 95% of the damage they would normally take.  But to a tanker with 90% resistance already it cuts the amount they take in half.  Which means a power pool ability meant to give blaster some resistance is actually useless for them but great for tankers.

 

Instead, the power should be 50% resistance but multiplicative not stacking.  A blaster with no other resistance gets it and takes half damage.  A tanker with other resistance takes it and takes half the damage they would normally take.  The power is of equal value to a blaster and a tanker.

 

So a tanker would have an inherent power with 50% resistance.  Then a toggle with 50% resistance.  With both on they would take 25% of the damage.  They could add on a pool power with 50% resistance to take only 12.5% of the damage.

 

That is EXACTLY what I think should be done with Resist and Defense powers, also. Then you know that if you throw a 20% Resist buff on someone, they're taking 20% less damage than before, period, regardless of what their other resists were. And you can balance things a bit more easily... probably need to have a floor and ceiling on chances to hit and damage multipliers, but that doesn't invalidate the concept.

[TemporalVileTerror]

I'd like to see a focus on challenging the fundamental assumption that "Getting to 50" is "The Goal" of the game.  The entire metric for which gameplay progress is measured is borked and runs contrary to both the narrative structure and the core promise of the established power fantasy.  And not the "being a super hero" power fantasy.  No.  I'm talking about the player-agency one.  The "make YOUR OWN super hero" power fantasy.

The Devs and the whole community are in an ideal position to re-examine what the core gameplay loop here is, and divorce it from the previous design decisions which were made with a profit structure in mind.

 

Naturally, I don't advocate completely taking something away that already exists, no matter how problematic it is (although there may be positive and constructive ways to mitigate some of the -most- problematic cases, nudge-nudge, recent example of a topic worth exploring in more depth https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/27596-enemy-groups-and-equality-your-opinions-and-thoughts/ nudge-nudge).  But there is a LOT of wiggle room to explore what even -IS- City of Heroes now.

The people who love what's already here will continue to love it.  The Devs who love what's already here will continue to try and replicate more of it.  But let's ALSO start branching out and exploring the City's POTENTIAL too.  We can do so much more with the liminal spaces that exist in the game design's structure here.  Let's start capitalizing on the existing infrastructure for some NEW things, not -just- more of the same.

 

City of Heroes doesn't need to be just a flashy queue-and-wait combat spreadsheet simulator, after all.  There's much more we can do here ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/30-base-construction/ am I right, @Dacy?   https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/31-mission-architect/ am I right, @Darmian?).

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Majinbewbs said:

.....

 it would be removing all level limits from contacts and story missions.

 

I love the various little stories some of which can give great opportunity to real feel out the character concept you made, but having to do like 30 missions with exp turned off to not miss anything like badges or unlocking certain contacts would be a great QoL change I would really support. I don't mean for the content itself to change just those little limits that say "oh hey you're too competent for this job" to be turned off, because really who is going to stop while being beaten by some things and demand someone less qualified to save them instead?

 

Using Ouro to go back for certain things doesn't really have a good feel to it and some of the quests that recognize stuff done before don't seem to recognize it unless you've done the quest outside ouro which is an immersion breaker on top of another immersion breaker.....

 

My preferred solution is not to let everything scale up to 50, but let you auto-exemp down, even outside of Ouro. 

Your lvl 50 walks up to a contact in Skyway City, accepts a mission. No change yet. You run around beat stuff up, you're still lvl 50, have all your powers.

You change the mission to become the active mission.  Now you auto-exempt down to the cap for that mission / story arc, and you stay exemplared until such time as the mission is no longer active.  (either because you turned in the misson, or, because you chose to activate another mission instead.)

 

Then no headaches to "how do we fairly scale up mobs, and what new powers should skulls have access to at lvl 50", or "what does a lvl 50 Troll do?"

You get the maps as intended. You get the mobs as intented. You can do it without popping into Timey Wimey Wibbly Wobbly. 

Yes, you'd lose access to some powers while exemplared, but I'd find that a more than fair trade for the convience of going anywhere, doing any mission.

I get that some will argue that exemplar itself breaks immersion, but well, can't have everything.

[Majinbewbs]

14 minutes ago, MTeague said:

 

My preferred solution is not to let everything scale up to 50, but let you auto-exemp down, even outside of Ouro. 

Your lvl 50 walks up to a contact in Skyway City, accepts a mission. No change yet. You run around beat stuff up, you're still lvl 50, have all your powers.

You change the mission to become the active mission.  Now you auto-exempt down to the cap for that mission / story arc, and you stay exemplared until such time as the mission is no longer active.  (either because you turned in the misson, or, because you chose to activate another mission instead.)

 

Then no headaches to "how do we fairly scale up mobs, and what new powers should skulls have access to at lvl 50", or "what does a lvl 50 Troll do?"

You get the maps as intended. You get the mobs as intented. You can do it without popping into Timey Wimey Wibbly Wobbly. 

Yes, you'd lose access to some powers while exemplared, but I'd find that a more than fair trade for the convience of going anywhere, doing any mission.

I get that some will argue that exemplar itself breaks immersion, but well, can't have everything.

 

Yeah that would be great. You can still feel like you're progressing and don't have to turn off xp which doesn't even give extra influence anymore so its a win win

[Darmian]

1 hour ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

I'd like to see a focus on challenging the fundamental assumption that "Getting to 50" is "The Goal" of the game.  The entire metric for which gameplay progress is measured is borked and runs contrary to both the narrative structure and the core promise of the established power fantasy.  And not the "being a super hero" power fantasy.  No.  I'm talking about the player-agency one.  The "make YOUR OWN super hero" power fantasy.

The Devs and the whole community are in an ideal position to re-examine what the core gameplay loop here is, and divorce it from the previous design decisions which were made with a profit structure in mind.

 

Naturally, I don't advocate completely taking something away that already exists, no matter how problematic it is (although there may be positive and constructive ways to mitigate some of the -most- problematic cases, nudge-nudge, recent example of a topic worth exploring in more depth https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/27596-enemy-groups-and-equality-your-opinions-and-thoughts/ nudge-nudge).  But there is a LOT of wiggle room to explore what even -IS- City of Heroes now.

The people who love what's already here will continue to love it.  The Devs who love what's already here will continue to try and replicate more of it.  But let's ALSO start branching out and exploring the City's POTENTIAL too.  We can do so much more with the liminal spaces that exist in the game design's structure here.  Let's start capitalizing on the existing infrastructure for some NEW things, not -just- more of the same.

 

City of Heroes doesn't need to be just a flashy queue-and-wait combat spreadsheet simulator, after all.  There's much more we can do here ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/30-base-construction/ am I right, @Dacy?   https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/31-mission-architect/ am I right, @Darmian?).

You are, for my money's worth, absolutely right! 

[Darmian]

On 4/2/2021 at 7:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?  Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

Addressing this as someone who mains Gold, lots of Gold.  No. Keep them separate. What you need is a way for Golds who leave to still be recognized as such by all their old contacts when they revisit outside of ouro.  (That and raising the cap to leave to 25 or having another Gold zone that covers 40 to 50).

 

And for another part of the equation, why do Safeguard missions and Mayhem missions only happen in Paragon?  Surely banks get knocked over in the Rogue Isles?  (Yes, they do in a few isolated arcs but those aren't the same thing.)

 

More Vig/Rogue material that covers the seedier underbelly of  both sides, as opposed to the few, very few, arcs that serve them. Yes, yes, tip missions.  Much as I love tip missions, not the same thing.

 

Fundamental structure?  I keep advocating (you people must be either sick of me doing it now, or haven't noticed it yet) that the AE be mined for content and ported into the game.

There is some great work being written in the AE with fairly limited tools I might add, plenty of writers pushing at the envelope of what can and can't be done. Expanding that toolkit, nevermind implementing my oddball theory crossposted above, would be cool.

 

And I'm a person for whom "making little stories in the AE" is a big part of how I actually PLAY the game 🙂

 

 

Edited January 4 by Darmian

[Zepp]

I think the assumption that pool attacks should be subpar could be reconsidered. I am not saying they should be 100% the level of regular attacks, but they should at least be viable.

 

I would also add the power requirements and differentiation between requirements between travel, origin, and other pool sets should be removed and shifted to a single system.

[dtj714]

8 hours ago, DougGraves said:

The devs have made a bunch of changes such as unlocking everything at character creation instead of requiring a cape mission, etc.

 

They are redoing movement powers - making people go faster.

 

So what other fundamental things should be reconsidered.  Not "Regen should be better".

 

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?  Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

 

Should the game require you to go to contacts to get missions at all?  Should you just select them from a contact list and use a cellphone from the start?

 

Should you have to go to a trainer to train?

You present the “slippery slope” problem well. Start messing with things that aren’t purely cosmetic and/or strictly necessary to change (e.g., the Paragon market), and where does it stop?

 

Inter-zone travel is the perfect example. It wasn’t exactly hard before, but for whatever reasons they decided to make it even easier.  So now the tram, ships, subs, choppers, TUNNEL, and even Ouro (for non-Ouro content) are basically obsolete. Given this, it’s logical to now ask, why not allow open-access to all zones? Why require travel to contacts/trainers/vendors?  What’s a “core component” of the game and what’s just a grindy hassle?  The line becomes more and more arbitrary with each departure. 
 

Personally, I wish the project were just a faithful re-creation of live (and there are other servers out there like that), but this is where the people are, and I don’t play an MMO to solo...

Edited April 3, 2021 by dtj714

[Shred Monkey]

5 minutes ago, dtj714 said:

Personally, I wish the server were just a faithful re-creation of live (and there are other servers out there like that), but this is where the people are, and I don’t play an MMO to solo...

 

I agree with this statement.  However, I do have to admit, that 95% of the changes the homecoming team has done, I've been pretty pleased with.  I think they put a great deal of careful consideration in what they're doing.  I really hope that continues.

[Shred Monkey]

8 hours ago, DougGraves said:

So what other fundamental things should be reconsidered.

 

Go through map objects and remove the physics on things that are just annoying so to they don't block movement.  (CoT torches, etc)

Edited April 3, 2021 by Shred Monkey

[Darmian]

21 minutes ago, dtj714 said:

Personally, I wish the project were just a faithful re-creation of live

Powers-wise or everything?  I could understand to a certain extent powers-wise, but content?  Actual story narrative attempting to move forward rather than a fossilized game? Not for this player I'm afraid.

[Heraclea]

Goldside needs a total rethink to be team friendlier, and it should be possible to invite heroes and villains to run the levelling missions there as well.  You do sometimes see teams running First Ward and Night Ward material.  But I have run one character 1-20 through Praetoria and I am in no hurry to run another.  The factions there make it impossible to form casual teams of people on different paths or stages.  The mobs also do not scale well; while a mission set for a team of 8 full of CoT spooks is bad, a similar mission spawning Seers for a full team of 8 is worse, and actually having the full team of 8 won't make it any more fun.  This doesn't happen, fortunately, because the factions pretty well prevent teaming in Praetoria. 

[dtj714]

12 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Powers-wise or everything?  I could understand to a certain extent powers-wise, but content?  Actual story narrative attempting to move forward rather than a fossilized game? Not for this player I'm afraid.

Other than adding two minor arcs in the mid-game, how have they advanced the narrative/content up to this point?  To the contrary, they’ve been almost exclusively focused on changing game systems/mechanics. Yes, between the two, I would prefer they leave those alone and add more content, at all levels, since new content doesn’t fundamentally impact game play. 

[Darmian]

Just now, dtj714 said:

Other than adding two minor arcs in the mid-game, how have they advanced the narrative/content up to this point?  To the contrary, they’ve been almost exclusively focused on changing game systems/mechanics. Yes, between the two, I would prefer they leave those alone and add more content, at all levels, since new content doesn’t fundamentally impact game play. 

Well, that's a start! And "they" was effectively one person in the end, building all that.  Mechanics, while fiddly, is a different beast.

[golstat2003]

The way mez works, what difficulty means, the way you can outlevel missions.

[Shred Monkey]

Reduce the purple patch effects on, mezz and debuffs... in particular +5s need to be within the range of "I am able to contribute to the fight."  If you sidekick up to a +4 team you'll fight +5s, and that happens too often to make that a "I'm not doing anything" scenario.   I think Tohit and Damage calculations can remain the as is since those are countered by self and team buffs.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2021 by Shred Monkey

[DougGraves]

3 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

If you sidekick up to a +4 team you'll fight +5s, and that happens too often to make that a "I'm not doing anything" scenario. 

 

 

 

I suggest the reverse solution.  When you sidekick make you  equal in level instead of 1 below.  Is making the sidekick 1 level lower making the game better for anyone?

[Darmian]

Well, @DougGraves, one of the issues is the amount of players who think +4/X8 is somehow a "default" and get annoyed if you don't want to do that.