Jump to content

Kallisti Wharf Level Range: Everyone


Recommended Posts

5 hours ago, Starhammer said:

for the argument that it preserves the existing narrative, I got bad news for ya, that narrative is broken the first time you "arrest" a street thug by incinerating them, only to see them respawn shortly, stealing the same purse, from the same indestructible NPC.

 

I don't see how this has anything to do with levels or zones, I think you're being a bit facetious here in hopes to undermine the greater argument.

 

Sure there are things that warp the suspension of disbelief, but I'm not talking about CoH's attempt to rationalise game mechanics, I'm talking about how levels and zones were designed in such a way to make you feel rewarded for progressing.

 

1-50 zones ultimately diminish that, theres no sense of progress, it turns CoH into every other MMO; a pointless grind.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/7/2021 at 4:29 AM, RMS33 said:

Cottage rule!  😆

1554921210_MontyPythonrubberchicken.gif.abbbc4882ee0fd39b65e569cd06dd03c.gif

 

Kidding, but Kallisti Wharf was already designated as a co-op 40-50 zone, to accommodate increasing play at those levels. Besides, the programming must be a big job -- with a volunteer dev team, put this in the long term wish list for a new zone.

 

The WoW example sounds about right (thanks for further validating my choice to give my game money to Homecoming instead!)

 

I am very enthused about the good things that @Piecemeal et al are preparing in Kallisti Wharf even now. 

I'd prefer if it was not a co-op zone, but instead a co-habiting zone. Somewhere both heroes and villains can go and be heroes and villains. Maybe with some sort of metric as to who is more in control of the zone, like RV has, but without the PvP element, just whichever side is completing the most missions is on top, as it were.

 

I know that's not likely what is going to happen, as it would double the amount of time it would take to implement missions, but it would be nice for a change not to have keep saving those stupid heroes from whatever mess they have stirred up whenever my villain goes to a co-op zone as there is nothing villainous to be had there.

Bopper: "resistance resists resistible resistance debuffs"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, CaptainLupis said:

I'd prefer if it was not a co-op zone, but instead a co-habiting zone. Somewhere both heroes and villains can go and be heroes and villains. Maybe with some sort of metric as to who is more in control of the zone, like RV has, but without the PvP element, just whichever side is completing the most missions is on top, as it were.

 

I know that's not likely what is going to happen, as it would double the amount of time it would take to implement missions, but it would be nice for a change not to have keep saving those stupid heroes from whatever mess they have stirred up whenever my villain goes to a co-op zone as there is nothing villainous to be had there.

It is an annoying aspect. But there's actually a second layer to why it's so frustrating:

 

Character Flagging.

 

You ever make an AE Arc and you get to choose whether to make a given ambush (for example) an "Enemy" or "Rogue"? That same flagging exists in the open world of CoH. It's why the Council will fight the Fifth Column in Steel Canyon, or why Arachnos units fight against Longbow in Faultline. One of those groups is set to "Rogue" and placed in such a way that it will wind up fighting another specific group.

 

Players have a similar flagging setup behind the scenes. But it only becomes relevant in PvP Zones, because you're flagged as Hero, Enemy, or Rogue (for free for all PvP).

 

Currently, to exist in a zone with the other side, either everyone is flagged "Hero" and can team together in the standard co-op style, or characters are flagged differently and you can't team... but it also institutes open world PvP.

 

To create a cohabitating zone where heroes and villains share the region without teaming up the game needs a "Hero2" flag or "Villain" flag separate from Enemy/Rogue.

 

That said... it's possible that flag has been created and we don't know anything about it, yet. In which case the "Co-Op" zone title might still be applied because no one thought of the "Co-Habitating" term on the Dev team (Stranger things have happened in production companies!). But it is likely that, yes, it will just be a Co-Op zone where everyone, Hero and Villain alike, is trying to stop the Warrior or whomever from achiving big power and bringing down destruction with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Game Master
13 hours ago, Starhammer said:

It's awfully hard not to take it that way. Yeah, not my post, but it's something I believe at least as passionately as the OP would be the best (maybe 2nd best) overall change that could be made to the game. But, until a dev decides they want to do it, it's just a bad idea that nobody wants because it isn't what they've always done.

In every MMO I've played, the switch to level-neutral enemies has been a tremendous improvement to the game experience. Sadly, it's usually a last ditch effort to get the last remaining players not to leave and see the game die... (CoH is a bit more unique in that it has already died). Tatooine isn't a useless venue for a level 50 smuggler who can casually wipe a whole tribe of Tuskens with their Brawl equivalent (even a high level Jedi can't do it in time to save Mom). What it does is open up options. Why shouldn't a new hero be able to Go to Independence Port, and fight organized crime? Why must an ancient Roman Gladiator begin their training outside modern City Hall, fighting through the parks and suburbs (or PLing in virtual reality) before they do anything significant in their "home zone"?

As for the argument that it preserves the existing narrative, I got bad news for ya, that narrative is broken the first time you "arrest" a street thug by incinerating them, only to see them respawn shortly, stealing the same purse, from the same indestructible NPC. We don't make progress cleaning up a zone, be give up on it and move on to someplace more novel, only to do the same there. Any "suspension of disbelief" is already warped by bad decisions made in early game development because nobody thought they could do something better than replicate Gygax's original pattern of "Begin nearly helpless and get better at everything by killing stuff" even though some of the best old school MMOs allowed you do largely ignore that paradigm... even though the game that predominantly inspired City of Heroes worked nothing like that.

Neutral Level enemies don't impair game progression, story progression, or character progression. What they impair is a thoroughly unrealistic and unreasonable game structure that we don't need and are better off without. What they impair is Level 10 heroes getting annihilated by level 50 Nazis that spawn as an ambush next to the level 12 Nazis in Steel Canyon because a level 50 just finished a mission there. What they impair is the "You must play the way we believe you should want to play" mindset.

Kallisti Wharf shouldn't be developed with neutral level enemies, the entire game should be converted to them.

Now, Sorry for wasting everyone's time.

PS: Taking Rikti Invasions out of Atlas and Mercy has doesn't make much difference for what level the most of the characters in the zone are. A level 50 will always be more powerful than a level 1, because the 50 has more powers to choose from, that are modded with superior enhancements... but a bunch of level 1s can still hold up quite well. What the real problem is, is that there may be 20-30 newbies in the zone (because that's where they get shunted after character creation, because there isn't content they can really take part in most other places without a high level benefactor) and they're dealing with the administrative side of getting their characters up and running, but that many of them still draws a huge crowd of spawns... Dog forbid there's a costume contest running when it happens. At least that's why it's actually important for Atlas. Mercy has to follow suit just to be fair, even though there's rarely more than a handful of players there.

There are plenty of mechanical reasons people have mentioned here that make it difficult - narratively it doesn't make sense either, but the problem with converting the entire game to that kind-of rote system is just...

Well, this is a game, and we're trying to make this game appealing and fun - and I think changing everything to neutral-level would make levels feel less...impactful. Suddenly it doesn't matter if you're level 1 or level 50 - you can go anywhere, do anything, and heck the consequences! It comes down to level 1-49 being pointless slog then, where you feel only slightly more powerful - and then suddenly at level 50 you get your proper gear going and incarnate stuff and you just begin melting entire zones. Having progression, zones of operation, means you get to feel your character growing in power as you fight progressively more difficult and thematically distinct enemies - you go from a wet-behind-the-ears rookie to a seasoned champion of good/evil by the end, having gone from stopping petty crime/committing petty crime to world-shaping events.

I can see some of the points you're making, but it ultimately doesn't really work in a game with more than one player.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, GM Tempest said:

There are plenty of mechanical reasons people have mentioned here that make it difficult - narratively it doesn't make sense either, but the problem with converting the entire game to that kind-of rote system is just...

Well, this is a game, and we're trying to make this game appealing and fun - and I think changing everything to neutral-level would make levels feel less...impactful. Suddenly it doesn't matter if you're level 1 or level 50 - you can go anywhere, do anything, and heck the consequences! It comes down to level 1-49 being pointless slog then, where you feel only slightly more powerful - and then suddenly at level 50 you get your proper gear going and incarnate stuff and you just begin melting entire zones. Having progression, zones of operation, means you get to feel your character growing in power as you fight progressively more difficult and thematically distinct enemies - you go from a wet-behind-the-ears rookie to a seasoned champion of good/evil by the end, having gone from stopping petty crime/committing petty crime to world-shaping events.

I can see some of the points you're making, but it ultimately doesn't really work in a game with more than one player.

You'd definitely have to build the game, or sections of the game, around the idea of a game divided not by character level (Or not just by character level) but by narrative level.

 

A long time ago I suggested to some developers I was working with (On a game that never saw the light of day) that we should create different Narrative Levels alongside the core leveling mechanic.

 

I tried to express the idea of characters getting to start the game at level 1 in different "Zones" which each had their own style. Cosmic city zones on Space Stations and alien planets. Street Level city zones in New York. World Level city zones across the globe.

 

That way a player could choose to start on Horizon Station as an alien superhero fighting Cosmic level threats from level 1-50.

 

Or make yourself a street level character who never leaves Hell's Kitchen by fighting street gangs from 1-50.

 

Or a World Level hero who stops a plane from crashing in Tibet and then flies back to New York to write about it for the newspaper.

 

(Or maybe just a Street character who spends all their time fighting crime in France or wherever they choose to play, or a character who starts out in Zimbabwe before moving to New York)

 

And each of these characters at level 1 and level 50 would have the exact same amount of powers, hit points, and whatnot based on their character's core functions like their Archetype.

 

Can a Street Hero help fight Cosmic Threats? Sure, if they're high enough level or have someone to sidekick them. Why not? Daredevil helped the Fantastic Four fight Galactus, after all.

 

But City of Heroes has this gameplay mindset of a level 50 character being Superman and a level 20 character being Daredevil and the only way to keep playing Daredevil is to turn off your XP and stay in Steel Canyon punching the Council for the rest of your career. Meanwhile Superman mostly flies around a different city zone (Peregrine Island) punching Council same as Matt Murdock in Steel Canyon.

 

I largely got the same pushback. But in the end, you can tell both types of stories in the game where there's content from 1-50 in King's Row and the Shadow-Shard. And only tell one story when King's Row stops being relevant at 20 and you can't even go to the Shadow Shard 'til 40.

 

Ultimately, that's a big part of why the Council exists from 1 to 50 in a nebulous "Sometimes we're super powerful and sometimes we're not" fashion. 'Cause Peacebringers are these big Cosmic Hero characters who are stuck leveling from 1-50 like every other hero. At least this way they get to fight a "High End Villaingroup" and do "Worldwide Storyarcs" at level 1.

Edited by Steampunkette
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh... The way I suggested to handle crossing the narrative barrier the other way?

 

The World Hero treated Street Threats as level -10.

 

The Cosmic Hero treated World-Threats as level -10.

 

So if you wanted to play Thor you could head to Kings Row and have absolutely no threat coming at you from the Skulls because you were Cosmic. Similarly Iron Man as a World Hero would've seen them as a nuisance at best.

 

Never did make it +10 for Street or World characters moving up 'cause that's just the story they wanted to tell. I also had ways to flag yourself as one kind of character or another, and change those flags at different times, too.

Edited by Steampunkette
Link to comment
Share on other sites

City of Heroes draws a vast amount of inspiration from super-hero comic books, television shows, and movies.  But, in the end, City of Heroes is a video game.  It has to function like a video game.  In particular, it has to function like a massively multiplayer online video game.  In those games, there has to be a sense of progression, of your character becoming more powerful and taking on bigger and more powerful threats.  Otherwise, there's no real reason to play.  If everything in the game didn't have levels, why even bother leveling to level 50?  Wouldn't a level 50 PC feel like that he or she wasted time grinding all the way to level 50, knowing that someone at level one can do the exact same things?  Game play and game narrative have to come before personal narrative.  That's how you get a game and a game world.

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

But City of Heroes has this gameplay mindset of a level 50 character being Superman and a level 20 character being Daredevil and the only way to keep playing Daredevil is to turn off your XP and stay in Steel Canyon punching the Council for the rest of your career. Meanwhile Superman mostly flies around a different city zone (Peregrine Island) punching Council same as Matt Murdock in Steel Canyon.

You seem to have a strange understanding of the game, as well as wanting it to be something it wasn't designed to be and has no will to be. To that point, there's also the thing of villain groups, even those spanning 1-50, having different enemies for different levels. You won't find certain mobs going past lvl 15, another past lvl 25. In Council, you'll fight mainly regular-sized dudes in combat gear with assault rifles up to around lvl 20. Then afterwards you face more dangerous enemies like the vampyri and werewolves and robots. Suddenly Council get sonic weapons and tougher troops Because you're doing things that are more important to them to protect from you than a tiny base in Atlas staffed by interns. The sense of progression continues on as groups you faced before now have more powerful troops to fight against you.

 

Some enemy groups even have separate enemy composition depending if you're facing the 1-50 version or strictly the lvl 50 ones, as I found with Family goons having a separate 50-only version with tech Resistance weapons.

 

While Daredevil may be focusing on beating up lvl 1-15 street thugs and groups of Council MekMen are a new, challenging end-of-arc fight, Superman will be elsewhere, fighting MekMen, vampires, werewolves, Nictus-empowered troops and preventing building-sized robots from being operational, stuff that's way above Daredevil's pay grade. Nothing's stopping you from doing as you said, turn off XP at like lvl 20 and enjoy doing Daredevil stuff, but you can't expect everything to then come down to lvl 20.

 

 

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  

23 minutes ago, Apparition said:

City of Heroes draws a vast amount of inspiration from super-hero comic books, television shows, and movies.  But, in the end, City of Heroes is a video game.  It has to function like a video game.  In particular, it has to function like a massively multiplayer online video game.  In those games, there has to be a sense of progression, of your character becoming more powerful and taking on bigger and more powerful threats.  Otherwise, there's no real reason to play.  If everything in the game didn't have levels, why even bother leveling to level 50?  Wouldn't a level 50 PC feel like that he or she wasted time grinding all the way to level 50, knowing that someone at level one can do the exact same things?  Game play and game narrative have to come before personal narrative.  That's how you get a game and a game world.

Ehhh... No.

 

The idea of infinite growth of the character and the threats they face is a common direction to go. But it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to tell the Dragon Ball Z story for advancement of narrative and a character to feel more powerful than they did at earlier points in their progression.

 

Having a character go from fighting 2-3 thugs at a time and barely winning to having them fight 8-12 thugs at a time and winning, easily, is progression in itself. Having more powers. Having enemies that you consider "Weaker" than you is similarly, progression. There's no need for those differences to be massive or exaggerated, like Superman fighting a couple of thugs when you could have Wolverine kick their butts with the exact same level of ease.

 

Take Frostfire, for example. Within the CoH Narrative he's "Swapping Sides". But whether he's level 15 or level 40 he still has access to the exact same powers. Why is he narratively more powerful at 40-50? Frostfire goes from barely able to fight Trolls and getting his butt kicked by you in the Hollows to fighting off Malta on behalf of Longbow. At no point does he get a new power, or even a new costume. He just -is- that powerful. Did he "Take it easy" on you in the Hollows..? Why?

 

Is your level 50 character who gets beat up by Malta in a mission where he finishes fighting off the spawn weaker than Frostfire from the Hollows? No. Obviously not.

 

Because the Narrative Level and the Game Level are Separate. Oh, he's a level 50 character, for sure. But he's got the same powers as a level 15 character. While his combat functions have improved with level, his actual power variety hasn't.

 

I also like how you make the example of the character "Wasting their time" by grinding to 50. Isn't that what we're -all- doing? Just spending time gaining levels? Vet levels when we're out of levels that "Really" Matter? Wonder if the people with 1,000+ Vet Levels feel like they've wasted their time...

 

Or if they feel like they've played a game that they enjoy to that ridiculous level.

 

That said. There's other forms of progression. Like the aforementioned narrative progression. You -can- move from Street Hero to World Hero to Cosmic Hero... Or you can create progression within each type. Like Street Heroes that go from fighting drug dealers to Kingpins to Courts of Owls.

 

I get it if you can't imagine that sort of progression lasting from level 1 to level 50. But I know you can experience it from 1-40 in CoH. After all, you can go from Skulls to Family and Freakshow to Crey to work your way up the supply chain. Just stretch those storylines out a little bit more to get it from 1-50 and -whammo-. You've got a Street Level storyarc from 1-50.

 

Just like the Peacekeeper Arc starts out with you saving all the Kheldians in the world from a super-device that chews them up and destroys them before level 30.

 

31 minutes ago, Night said:

You seem to have a strange understanding of the game, as well as wanting it to be something it wasn't designed to be and has no will to be. To that point, there's also the thing of villain groups, even those spanning 1-50, having different enemies for different levels. You won't find certain mobs going past lvl 15, another past lvl 25. In Council, you'll fight mainly regular-sized dudes in combat gear with assault rifles up to around lvl 20. Then afterwards you face more dangerous enemies like the vampyri and werewolves and robots. Suddenly Council get sonic weapons and tougher troops Because you're doing things that are more important to them to protect from you than a tiny base in Atlas staffed by interns. The sense of progression continues on as groups you faced before now have more powerful troops to fight against you.

 

Some enemy groups even have separate enemy composition depending if you're facing the 1-50 version or strictly the lvl 50 ones, as I found with Family goons having a separate 50-only version with tech Resistance weapons.

 

While Daredevil may be focusing on beating up lvl 1-15 street thugs and groups of Council MekMen are a new, challenging end-of-arc fight, Superman will be elsewhere, fighting MekMen, vampires, werewolves, Nictus-empowered troops and preventing building-sized robots from being operational, stuff that's way above Daredevil's pay grade. Nothing's stopping you from doing as you said, turn off XP at like lvl 20 and enjoy doing Daredevil stuff, but you can't expect everything to then come down to lvl 20.

 

 

Yeah, not even gonna bother.

 

Just read what I wrote to the person above you.

  • Confused 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I should note: The Superadine storyarc actually goes from about level 5 to a maximum of 44 (When you arrest Countess Crey in a Janet Kellum storyarc)

 

So that's a Street Level Storyline reaching from 5th level Skulls all the way up to a level 44 Archvillain.

 

It's pretty great, really!

 

But because the focus is on Incarnates and "Post 50" means -just- Incarnates... Yeesh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

Yeah, not even gonna bother.

 

On 5/7/2021 at 4:04 PM, Steampunkette said:

However the decision has been made and the suggestion is thus no longer relevant.

Edited by Night
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...