Adding content?

[aeb]

Two ideas for adding content came up with some friends last night. 🙂 

 

First, I was thinking about Architect Entertainment. Folks are sure adding content there. Some of those missions are pretty good, too, and even cannon-compliant. I wonder if there's a way to turn some of them into regular story arcs; it seems to me that some of the ground work has already been done for, which ought to help, though more would need to be done. 🙂 

 

When I mentioned this to a couple of friends last night, they had another idea: somehow open up our lower level content to being done at higher levels as well. I play another game that did this, and it seemed to work for them. Again, some of the work on them has already been done, though more work would be needed. 🙂

[GraspingVileTerror]

These are popular suggestions, and come up from time to time.

The former idea has been toyed with on and off in the form of showcasing player-made AE content with a Featured tag, but as for making it official, there seem to be some barriers in place there.  It's generally not spoken about, but ownership and licensing issues do present themselves.  Essentially, any player-made content would need to be released (likely through something like Creative Commons Zero), and the original author would lose their authority over that content.

Likely, anyway.  I can't speak with absolute certainty on that.

 

Making low level content accessible by high level players has some other concerns which limit the interest of some Devs from allowing it.  Notably, low level content is populated by enemies which pose less of a threat than high level entities, and very few factions in the game have units which exist through all levels of play.

One solution would be to add new enemies to those factions to increase their difficulty at higher levels.  That would take some considerable effort, as it would necessitate entirely new creations which would need to be balanced.  Of course, that would also mean entirely new content!  So, it's worthwhile in its own right.  It just takes time.  We've seen Piecemeal do this with the Freaklok, and Piecemeal also expressed plans publicly to tackle the Warriors (no word on when that's coming down the pipeline, though.  Could be next year.  Could be later.)

The other solution is to just simply allow players to complete low level content at higher levels with the reduced challenge, and tone down the rewards to match.  Again, it's not a non-zero amount of work, and I don't know of any existing Dev who is interested in that idea.  No Dev volunteering to do it means it's not going to happen.

 

There's also the narrative conceit argument against allowing high level players to do low level content.  I strongly disagree with it, but will include it for completeness' sake:

Some believe that the game "tells a story" with the way the content is laid out per level.  I think that particular ludonarrative is WAY too dissonant to ascribe such a high value to it, but we're each entitled to enjoying different aspects of the game.  So, I won't tell any of those players that they're wrong to like what they like, but I will say that adherence to that narrative does create a barrier for other players to more meaningful engage with the game content on their own terms.

 

In any event, I think your ideas hold a lot of merit, @aeb.  Thank you for sharing your feedback and ideas!  Please continue to do so.  Hopefully we'll see some progress in those fronts.  Maybe a Dev could comment on them and we can get a less speculative answer.

[aeb]

I see your points, @GraspingVileTerror though one in particular suggests some low-hanging fruit. You say:

 

"Making low level content accessible by high level players has some other concerns which limit the interest of some Devs from allowing it.  Notably, low level content is populated by enemies which pose less of a threat than high level entities, and very few factions in the game have units which exist through all levels of play."

 

This is true, but many missions and story arcs are more limited in level than their factions. The four Atlas Park story arcs are levels 1-7, but the Hellions and Skulls two of them feature are listed as levels 1-14 in Architect Entertainment, and are featured in other story arcs (the last Shining Stars arc for the Hellions, and the two Kings Row arcs for the Skulls) which go are 15-19. Now I like low-level content, but even I find doing missions through Ouroboros at level 19 less painful than doing them at level 7. Since Vahzilok are listed in Architect Entertainment as 1-20, and Arachnos as 1-54, I should think that adapting these story arcs to top out at 19 instead of 7 should be doable with the villain groups as they stand now, and would make them somewhat more attractive. This wouldn't always work. The Hollows arcs couldn't be redone like this without expanding the Igneous, and the Faultline arcs would require expanding the Vahzilok, but Graham Easton tops out at 24 when the Tsoo are continuous from 15 to 40 in Architect Entertainment. So it would would work on a case by case basis. Still, I see some benefit with less work involved in expanding access this way. 🙂

[aeb]

I just thought of one more thing... what if the old-style contacts that are around in most zones were more accessible, like through Ouro? I think the only missions available now through Ouro of the older contacts are ones that cough up a badge. I rarely remember to do them at level, while I can, because I'm after the stories, but if I could go back, I'd get them more often. 🙂

 

P.S. I've played a game that's one long story. CoH isn't; it's a collection of shorter stories, or a long-running series with multiple episodes, some more related than others, not one big interconnected plot. It doesn't hurt or confuse to start with story three or episode 5, unless Episode 5 is the second half of  a two-parter that started with episode 4, and the game is pretty good at telling us when that's the case, with numbering the arcs in Ouroborous, and not letting you play out of order if you do it at-level. 🙂 

Edited July 25, 2021 by aeb
thought of more

[Grouchybeast]

14 hours ago, aeb said:

I just thought of one more thing... what if the old-style contacts that are around in most zones were more accessible, like through Ouro? I think the only missions available now through Ouro of the older contacts are ones that cough up a badge. I rarely remember to do them at level, while I can, because I'm after the stories, but if I could go back, I'd get them more often. 

 

Pretty much all the old content is available through Ouro.  The only missions that aren't in there are the single missions that are basically radio-style content filler.

[Darmian]

Were all the lowbie Galaxy City missions repurposed for Atlas?  I know the contacts themselves were moved to Atlas but they don't all have missions anymore.  I did know this but it escapes me presently.

[aeb]

20 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

Pretty much all the old content is available through Ouro.  The only missions that aren't in there are the single missions that are basically radio-style content filler.

I know there are contacts in Atlas Park, King's Row, Steel Canyon, and Skyway City who give several missions each, but who only are seen in Ouroborous for badge missions if they have one of those. Maybe. They don't count as proper story arcs, though. Somehow similar people in Brickstown and Founders' Falls are included,  and have story arcs. It's confusing.

[Grouchybeast]

On 7/26/2021 at 8:44 PM, aeb said:

I know there are contacts in Atlas Park, King's Row, Steel Canyon, and Skyway City who give several missions each, but who only are seen in Ouroborous for badge missions if they have one of those. Maybe. They don't count as proper story arcs, though. Somehow similar people in Brickstown and Founders' Falls are included,  and have story arcs. It's confusing.

There are some mutually exclusive lower level contacts who share identical missions, and only one from each set of those contacts is in Ouro, I assume so that there aren't loads of duplicate missions in there.  So while there quite a few missing low-level contacts, there are a lot fewer missing missions that it looks.

[aeb]

14 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

There are some mutually exclusive lower level contacts who share identical missions, and only one from each set of those contacts is in Ouro, I assume so that there aren't loads of duplicate missions in there.  So while there quite a few missing low-level contacts, there are a lot fewer missing missions that it looks.

Show me them. I don't find them in Ouro... only one badge mission, Matthew Habashy, Officer Fields, Sondra Costel, Allan Thiery, the first Shining Stars arc, and a bunch of Praetorian stuff show for levels 1-9... I don't see any of the other contacts in Atlas Park and King's Row... I understand not having everyone if they overlap, but where are any of them? Levels 10-14 and 15-19 seem similarly bare of the other contacts, except for some badge missions. If they're hiding, I'd like to find them. 🙂