Adaptive Content

[Leogunner]

I've read plenty of suggestions for extra notoriety settings and what not.  All well and good.  But that's not what I do (keep making/posting the same ideas).

 

My personal view of "challenge" is adaptation.  You can't always be in control of everything because it won't ever force you out of your comfort zone.  Sometimes things change and you just have to deal with it by changing your tactics or difficulty levels.  An idea I had been knocking around occasionally is a more thematic event-oriented change called "Zone Pressures".  Overall, it just means actions that have occurred (or haven't occurred) has an effect that is zone-wide that can affect the enemies you face or even your team's abilities.

 

Some basic ideas-

 

High Crime: Occurs in a zone where villain activity has not been suppressed (no one doing stuff in that zone).  Enemies in an area (or the instances in that zone) of High Crime gain AoE defense and gain +ToHit for every villain ally that is within 15ft.  High Crime suppresses if 5 or more missions are completed within 5min in that zone (or a certain number of enemies are defeated outside of missions) for 1 hour.

 

Police Presence: Occurs in a zone where villain activity is mostly suppressed (high traffic zones, lots of street sweeping/TF/missions completed).  Enemies that flee will seek the nearest escape and exit the scene permanently.  All enemies gain a 5% chance to do a massive critical hit ONLY on their first attack in combat.  

 

There could also be zone/faction specific zone pressures-

 

(Skyway) Troll Supremacy: Only occurs during the Supa Troll raves, all trolls in the area have a 50% chance to transform into a Boss Supa Troll at low health, healing themselves to full in the process.

 

(IP Port) Sky Skiff Retaliation: While engaging Sky Raiders in IP Port (instances too), Sky Skiffs will do a fly-by and shoot missiles at any heroes in the immediate area.  Occurs for 5min after a successful Sutter TF.

 

[Ghost]

I like where you're going with this

[Outrider_01]

More powers for the enemy.  Widow smoke grenades, Malta sappers, Nemesis vengeance, and Paragon Protectors hitting MoG.  Like, why can't Skulls be making life difficult, nothing like them going invisible then popping MoG and every other gang banger suddenly getting Neo from the Matrix like reflexes from Vengeance.

[Leogunner]

2 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

More powers for the enemy.  Widow smoke grenades, Malta sappers, Nemesis vengeance, and Paragon Protectors hitting MoG.  Like, why can't Skulls be making life difficult, nothing like them going invisible then popping MoG and every other gang banger suddenly getting Neo from the Matrix like reflexes from Vengeance.

I could see a zone pressure effect that randomly swaps in a Nemesis automaton into a faction dressed like one of them that has a special version of Vengeance that it casts upon entering combat and again upon defeat.  Would be a sting to an early 20-30something team to mix things up.  How that zone pressure could come into effect...well, it could always be in effect because everything is a Nemesis plot.

 

 

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

More powers for the enemy.  Widow smoke grenades, Malta sappers, Nemesis vengeance, and Paragon Protectors hitting MoG.  Like, why can't Skulls be making life difficult, nothing like them going invisible then popping MoG and every other gang banger suddenly getting Neo from the Matrix like reflexes from Vengeance.

 

Tar Patch for Skulls bosses, Tactics for Lts.   

[Night]

Making zones fill with tougher enemies won't make people wanna run missions in them, especially when you've done everything you can in that zone or outleveled them. It's only gonna make people avoid them altogether. Also, low level gangs are meant to be easier, they're for starting out characters. Try going solo into a +2 Vahzilok, Outcast or Skulls mission at lvl 8, with lvl 8 powers and you'll find more than enough of a challenge.

[Leogunner]

1 hour ago, Night said:

Making zones fill with tougher enemies won't make people wanna run missions in them, especially when you've done everything you can in that zone or outleveled them. It's only gonna make people avoid them altogether. Also, low level gangs are meant to be easier, they're for starting out characters. Try going solo into a +2 Vahzilok, Outcast or Skulls mission at lvl 8, with lvl 8 powers and you'll find more than enough of a challenge.

Lower your difficulty.  Set yourself to +0 or -1 and x1.  You got SO enhancements at lvl 1, I don't wanna hear "Oh, but it's suppose to be easy in the low levels".  Psssh...

Edited May 1, 2021 by Leogunner

[Haijinx]

3 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

Lower your difficulty.  Set yourself to +0 or -1 and x1.  You got SO enhancements at lvl 1, I don't wanna hear "Oh, but it's suppose to be easy in the low levels".  Psssh...

 

People not only want to be able to solo easily, they want to be able to run Max Difficulty easily. 

[KelvinKole]

I like the premise here. The world feels most alive when some zone level events are happening, not inside mission instances. I'd like to see some dynamic zone characteristics that pull people into low traffic areas. What if you couldn't initiate task forces inside zones that have been "overrun?". Not much traffic in Croatoa, need to clear out some fir blog or no access to Katie Hannon.

[Night]

12 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

Lower your difficulty.  Set yourself to +0 or -1 and x1.  You got SO enhancements at lvl 1, I don't wanna hear "Oh, but it's suppose to be easy in the low levels".  Psssh...

Points were being made about making low level enemy groups more difficult, I'm saying it's not needed, they're a challenge at their intended level as is. Your original suggestions sound more like zone events, like the prison break in Brickstown or Longbow raid in St. Martial, which, sure, more zone events is cool. But you're not gonna force people into running missions in zones so they don't get attacked by  tougher mobs or can fight easier mobs in their missions, or into streetsweeping grey mobs 30 levels below them. People are just gonna avoid those zones.

[Leogunner]

3 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

I like the premise here. The world feels most alive when some zone level events are happening, not inside mission instances. I'd like to see some dynamic zone characteristics that pull people into low traffic areas. What if you couldn't initiate task forces inside zones that have been "overrun?". Not much traffic in Croatoa, need to clear out some fir blog or no access to Katie Hannon.

 

My initial idea wasn't to push people into low population zones but I could see that being something to do when you're not busy just to help others.  My initial purpose was to add in some variety to engagements but also to toss around an idea to give you some kind of tangible effect on the environment like in some of the PvP zones.  Making more zone events gives the zones a bit of variety but they are merely things that happen to you.  This would be something that you have an affect on the zone.

 

As for limiting TFs inside the zone if it's overrun, I think is a neat idea but probably would be unpopular.  It happens in other games but people aren't expectant of the game to cater to them in those cases.  Having the TF initiator tell you to defeat a few groups of enemies to be able to start isn't that inconvenient but I'm sure someone will see it as supremely inconvenient. 

[Leogunner]

7 minutes ago, Night said:

Points were being made about making low level enemy groups more difficult, I'm saying it's not needed, they're a challenge at their intended level as is. Your original suggestions sound more like zone events, like the prison break in Brickstown or Longbow raid in St. Martial, which, sure, more zone events is cool. But you're not gonna force people into running missions in zones so they don't get attacked by  tougher mobs or can fight easier mobs in their missions, or into streetsweeping grey mobs 30 levels below them. People are just gonna avoid those zones.

 

It's not zone events, it's more like "zone effects".

 

Like I said before, low level enemies were intended to be faced with TOs, DOs or no enhancements at all.  That has changed so you already aren't facing these groups at their "intended level".  That and very few ideas are being prompted or discussed about varying difficulty outside of stuff like notoriety setting that are in complete control by the player while simultaneously ignoring the fact the player has settings to make the game *easier*.

 

The game is in dire need of a challenge boost injection.  If you have to ask "but what about the noobs and 1st-timers", the obvious answer is to change your settings!  I'd bet you money a noob with no enhancements can solo that mission at -1x2 with no enhancements at all in a hypothetically High Crime area.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Leogunner said:

 

My initial idea wasn't to push people into low population zones but I could see that being something to do when you're not busy just to help others.  My initial purpose was to add in some variety to engagements but also to toss around an idea to give you some kind of tangible effect on the environment like in some of the PvP zones.  Making more zone events gives the zones a bit of variety but they are merely things that happen to you.  This would be something that you have an affect on the zone.

 

As for limiting TFs inside the zone if it's overrun, I think is a neat idea but probably would be unpopular.  It happens in other games but people aren't expectant of the game to cater to them in those cases.  Having the TF initiator tell you to defeat a few groups of enemies to be able to start isn't that inconvenient but I'm sure someone will see it as supremely inconvenient. 

 

I would see that as supremely inconvenient. But I hardly ever run lower level tfs anymore so as long as it doesn't affect higher level tfs, then no issue.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Leogunner said:

 

 

The game is in dire need of a challenge boost injection.  If you have to ask "but what about the noobs and 1st-timers", the obvious answer is to change your settings!  I'd bet you money a noob with no enhancements can solo that mission at -1x2 with no enhancements at all in a hypothetically High Crime area.

 

Sure, as long as it's OPTIONAL and not forced on everyone. 

[Clave Dark 5]

11 hours ago, Leogunner said:

High Crime: Occurs in a zone where villain activity has not been suppressed (no one doing stuff in that zone).

So like every zone after midnight or so?

 

Not my idea of a good time as I'm a shift worker and spend over half my CoH hours in the middle of the night.

[Night]

Changes like this should be entirely opt-in if they're gonna affect everything in the zone. Perhaps you can talk to a Longbow liason near the zone's level-up person and accept the challenge for increased rewards or tokens to be exchanged at a merit vendor. Best way would be to just make it zone-events like currently existing ones, with icons on the minimap to let everyone know what's going on, even have several spawn points, not something that forces itself on players.

 

Also, limiting access to zone TFs is a terribly harmful idea. I'll paint a word picture:

MrGenericPlayer comes home after a long day, he's busy but manages to make an hour a day to play with a group of his friends, slowly going through the game content. Everyone is roughly the same level. Last night they finally finished going through Croatoa arcs and unlocked Katie Hannon as a contact. The group is excited to play through her TF, but they get to her and see a big popup reading "133/500 Red Caps Defeated". They're all around lvl 31, and don't have the time or will to kill hundreds of enemies and still fit in the TF within the hour, so they go check out Brickstown for another TF in their level range. They get to Manticore and see "0/500 Crey defeated". Defeated, they choose to turn to AE or run paper missions instead of what they wanted to.

 

An equivalent thing was done in some of the zones in Guild Wars 2, where the dungeons would not be open unless a lengthy quest chain was completed, and that was always a pain. It resulted in a buncha people standing afk around the dungeon entrance, waiting for a few people to complete the event chain so they could do what they wanted to. It's a system that doesn't work without a really huge population that does the zone content daily.

[Haijinx]

29 minutes ago, Night said:

Changes like this should be entirely opt-in if they're gonna affect everything in the zone.

 

And this is why we can't have nice things.

[Night]

11 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

 

And this is why we can't have nice things.

There are so many suggestions which come down to "this is how I want to play and nobody can play in any other way! Everyone has to play how I want to!" instead of putting in any effort to forming dedicated teams or groups themselves so they and the few likeminded people can play how this one person wants.

 

How this putting-in-effort thing works with revitalizing lower level zones? Well, a group of likeminded people with this goal in mind could make a number of characters, level them to the max level of each zone, turn off XP and then make it a thing of advertising daily for zone content. Like, "Skyway city needs your help! Come join in lowbie streetsweeping, paper missions and story arcs!". You could even make it a habit of picking one day per zone, monday being Kings Row, tuesday for Steel Canyon, etc. Don't need sweeping changes that affect everyone, especially when it would just make people avoid those zones. I still like the idea of more zone-events and even multiple events per zone to add to the liveliness, not that those aren't avoided anyway after you've done them a dozen times.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Night

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Night said:

There are so many suggestions which come down to "this is how I want to play and nobody can play in any other way! Everyone has to play how I want to!" instead of putting in any effort to forming dedicated teams or groups themselves so they and the few likeminded people can play how this one person wants.

 

Rampant Unaddressed Power Creep is Unaddressed.  

[Night]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

 

Rampant Unaddressed Power Creep is Unaddressed.  

I like feeling powerful, this is a power fantasy game

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Night said:

I like feeling powerful, this is a power fantasy game

 

And this is why we can't have nice things.

[Night]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

 

And this is why we can't have nice things.

So we can't have nice things because people wanna feel like powerful superheroes in this superhero game.

[Troo]

15 hours ago, Leogunner said:

The game is in dire need of a challenge boost injection.

I get it, basically the invasion proliferated to other enemy groups.. yeah not a terrible use of existing functions but kinda meh after aliens, robots and zombies..

 

1 hour ago, Night said:

I like feeling powerful, this is a power fantasy game

We can fly and jump over buildings. Check.

Some of your suggestions also have merit. You and Leo should get together and come up with something epic.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Troo

[KelvinKole]

Maybe a merit bonus, like the WST, but for zone missions? This week it's Skyway City, and you can get 1 merit per mission completed in Skyway, up to 10. It's not adaptive, but it's an incentive for higher level players to revisit low level zones and help some lowbies along. 

[Leogunner]

9 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

So like every zone after midnight or so?

 

Not my idea of a good time as I'm a shift worker and spend over half my CoH hours in the middle of the night.

 

You can still stealth a few missions to suppress those high crime areas solo.

 

That one is the least offensive example considering it's counterable by just decreasing the team multiplier to have fewer enemies to fight.

 

1 hour ago, Night said:

Also, limiting access to zone TFs is a terribly harmful idea. I'll paint a word picture:

MrGenericPlayer comes home after a long day, he's busy but manages to make an hour a day to play with a group of his friends, slowly going through the game content. Everyone is roughly the same level. Last night they finally finished going through Croatoa arcs and unlocked Katie Hannon as a contact. The group is excited to play through her TF, but they get to her and see a big popup reading "133/500 Red Caps Defeated". They're all around lvl 31, and don't have the time or will to kill hundreds of enemies and still fit in the TF within the hour, so they go check out Brickstown for another TF in their level range. They get to Manticore and see "0/500 Crey defeated". Defeated, they choose to turn to AE or run paper missions instead of what they wanted to.

 

So you view an issue that could hamper an idea.  Is your first response to hyperbolize the issue so you can complain more about it?  Or would it be a suggestion to make it more accessible?

 

Suggesting the inoffensive "let me model the game to be exactly the challenge I'm comfortable with" is just a cop-out because we're talking about a PvE game (player vs ENVIRONMENT).  You shouldn't really be dictating the stakes of the environment.  Next you're going to tell us we should get to decide how many merits we get as a reward or choose which enemy factions show up in a TF.  The point is to make the environment dynamic rather than static.  You can already change notoriety from anywhere, tune the levels and remove bosses/EBs/AVs.

 

As for your hyperbolized example, the easiest solution would just be the TF giver giving you a pre-mission to activate the TF or spawn a zone event related to the zone whose completion activates the TF.   Something completable solo in maybe 10-15min or a team in 3min.

 

1 hour ago, Night said:

There are so many suggestions which come down to "this is how I want to play and nobody can play in any other way! Everyone has to play how I want to!" instead of putting in any effort to forming dedicated teams or groups themselves so they and the few likeminded people can play how this one person wants.

 

How this putting-in-effort thing works with revitalizing lower level zones? Well, a group of likeminded people with this goal in mind could make a number of characters, level them to the max level of each zone, turn off XP and then make it a thing of advertising daily for zone content. Like, "Skyway city needs your help! Come join in lowbie streetsweeping, paper missions and story arcs!". You could even make it a habit of picking one day per zone, monday being Kings Row, tuesday for Steel Canyon, etc. Don't need sweeping changes that affect everyone, especially when it would just make people avoid those zones. I still like the idea of more zone-events and even multiple events per zone to add to the liveliness, not that those aren't avoided anyway after you've done them a dozen times.

 

Like I said, I don't care about shifting traffic (revitalizing lower level zones, as you say).  I mostly care about making missions change over time.  Like the example above of a shift worker playing at late hours working high crime zones isn't barred from completing the same missions as before, they just have to change their tactics (or their difficulty setting).  I could be encountering a mission solo in a High Crime area which might force me to change tactics in a few fights or have some other mission where now Trolls are turning into Supa Trolls in a mission that didn't have them before.

 

But the suggestion overall is mostly pie-in-the-sky as I'm certain it would be more difficult to code than any kind of notoriety options added.  It's mostly a kind of forum springboard to see what ideas bounce a bit more and identify the people that would rather clutch their pearls about how Jimmy can't play because he's blind, in a wheelchair and only awake 2 hours of the day.  Nothing against those people and their situations but it's not fun for everyone to have to compromise for the least common multiple while they do nothing to compromise their play....or rather, I'm tired of people using other peoples' situation as an argument.

 

11 minutes ago, Troo said:

I get it, basically the invasion proliferated to other enemy groups.. yeah not a terrible use of existing functions but kinda meh after aliens, robots and zombies..

 

 

Not exactly.  More like Temp powers granted to mobs in a zone and its instances.