If City of Heroes were remade entirely today...

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Llewellyn Blackwell said:

That we have not had a KU Dredd flick every year since that first one is a gawd damned crime to all humanity imo. And unlike Stalone, never took OFF THE HELMET!

It's funny; before I saw Stallone as Judge Dredd, I didn't think that I would ever say that he had too much facial animation for a role.

[Herotu]

1. My #1 is voiced characters, even if it has to be Text-to-Speech. I love the missions and the stories but they're quite wall-of-texty - I tend to copy them into ttsreader.com (english uk female voice) and have it read them to me as I travel to the mission.

 

2. Bin levels. No more levels, they're a horrible way to make the game because you end up with this auto-level to match zone-level and sidekick level to match exemplar and all that awful bandaid guff. It's just silly. No levels - done.

Instead of levels you can be trained when you have done enough missions or stories or another "achievement" (number of enemies, if you want to maintain the grindy aspects of the game). 

The game can still have level-style calculations behind the scenes if it's needed for difficulty scaling, but the important part is that players don't see the word "level" on their screen. It makes the game too numerical IMHO - it's more science than art. More mathematics = less fun. Everybody knows that equation.

 

3. More scope for actual puzzles. You know, something a bit cerebral.

 

4. Difficult choices. Letting someone die to save someone else. Going to one place means another place burns, etc. Then your nemesis rises from the place to had to abandon.

 

5. Nemesis. Of course. Did you know that WB copyrighted their Nemesis system now?

 

6. Fewer powers. You heard me - FEWER powers. More items, though. Items that don't have limited charges. Items that can be traded. Items that you can lose or find.

 

7. Dynamic stories. Something I came up with years ago - we know that pretty basic AI can generate believable stories. We know how narrative works, we know 3 act structure, 5 plot-point stories. It's possible to generate stories dynamically!

 

8. A force/damage vs speed trade-off system, so slow clunkers like me can compensate by hitting harder. 

 

9. MANY more destructibles. Let's have the whole place falling apart in big battles. It's FUN! I like to see things flying all over (except when you have lots of players, then it gets ridiculous). 

 

10. No pets. None. At all. I know they're fun but they're also messy and horrible. The effect spam is bad enough with players. Pets only make it worse.

...

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by Herotu

[CursedSorcerer]

1. Having not all havoc in Paragon City being caused by supervillains, but sometimes by natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.

2. Expanding the scope of the environment so that not just Paragon City is the only place that we must protect; but other countries, the planet Earth or even the universe/multiverse.

3. Having the entire environment be interactive like lifting a car or a slab of concrete to rescue a civilian trapped underneath it and/or to throw it at an enemy. And villains could work to attempt to destroy the environment themselves.

 

....Damn! I suddenly want to play this game now!

[GM Kal]

Quote

` The HC admin seem very lenient on people doing very graphic ERP in public chat channels`

Incorrect.
If you see anything remotely approaching this, it should be reported.
The proper method of reporting is to use Menu, Support in game; or https://forums.homecomingservers.com/support/
Not implying things are happening on unrelated forum posts.

We are well staffed as far as GMs, but we rely on players actually using the support system.

Edited July 30, 2021 by GM Kal

[RageusQuitus2]

On 7/28/2021 at 12:43 PM, Luminara said:

 

Nipples.

lol nm im leaving this alone heh.

Edited July 30, 2021 by RageusQuitus2

[merrypessimist]

36 minutes ago, RageusQuitus2 said:

lol nm im leaving this alone heh.

 

So you're saying you're not touching the nipples post?

[krj12]

1.  Better graphics - both character and environmental

2.  Weather

3.  Voice acting for all npcs and cutscenes

4.  Much better base builder.  Personal lairs.

5.  Much better mission creator, more intuitive, and allows me to create missions with all the capabilities of the devs.    Allow me to place said missions out in the world,

not inside an AE building.

6.   More power sets

7.  More character progression after 50  ( continual if possible )

8.  Better music

9.  Destructible environments

10.  Combined world used by both heroes and villains.  Separate zones was a bad decision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by krj12

[Normal Thomas]

I'd rebuild Force Fields and Regen from the ground up with the absorb mechanic in mind. These sets should be way cooler than how they actually play out (as in like, I can skip most of the powers lol)

 

And before anyone says it, yes, I would nerf Regen. Thank you.

 

More dynamic combat. At the very least, less animation rooting. Obviously, keep the game from being twitch based but make it more action-y.

 

A more measured Incarnate system and invention system. Still get cool end game bells and whistles but you gotta make tough choices on how you want to be powerful.

 

Make mezzing more interesting and useful. And on the player end less annoying to deal with.

 

I'd make all the archetypes designed around an inherent power, more like the Villain ones.

 

Make power proliferation less a choice of modifiers and more a choice of powers.

 

[Col. Kernel]

23 hours ago, krj12 said:

1.  Better graphics - both character and environmental - Kind of a given in any modern game.

2.  Weather - Love to see this.  Even more if if were somewhat controllable by Storm, Ice Blast, and maybe some other sets if it makes sense

3.  Voice acting for all npcs and cutscenes - I could take it or leave it.

4.  Much better base builder.  Personal lairs. - Yeah, I'd be all over that

5.  Much better mission creator, more intuitive, and allows me to create missions with all the capabilities of the devs.    Allow me to place said missions out in the world,

not inside an AE building. - I'd rather see the devs move an AE mish into the game proper if they feel it's consistent with the lore and adds to the world.

6.   More power sets - Agreed.  I've seen some player designed powersets (Probability Control for one) that I'd love to see make it into the game.

7.  More character progression after 50  ( continual if possible )

8.  Better music - Can be downloaded by CoH Modder if you want it.  "Better" music is subjective anyway.

9.  Destructible environments - Mixed feelings on this one.  In a mish/TF would be fine, the main game not so much.

10.  Combined world used by both heroes and villains.  Separate zones was a bad decision.  - Yes and no.  Not everyone loves PvP.  In fact, most people hate it, so that is a hard pass.  Now having said that, I'd love to see the Shadow Shard be co-op.

 

Responses in-line.

[krj12]

10.  Combined world used by both heroes and villains.  Separate zones was a bad decision.  - Yes and no.  Not everyone loves PvP.  In fact, most people hate it, so that is a hard pass.  Now having said that, I'd love to see the Shadow Shard be co-op.

 

Well, not really talking about pvp.  Shared zones would still be pve - you'd just have different contacts.   PVP, imo, should be restricted to zones built specifically for it.

 

[A Cat]

On 7/30/2021 at 5:15 PM, krj12 said:

8.  Better music

 

 

I think the music is pretty good. Especially RWZ. The mothership music is totally sikkkk. 

[Lazarillo]

6 minutes ago, A Cat said:

I think the music is pretty good. Especially RWZ. The mothership music is totally sikkkk. 

The music itself in the game is generally pretty good, just really, really poorly implemented.  It's short enough that it really doesn't come up during the vast, vast majority of actual gameplay, and it's long enough that the times when you would hear it a lot of cool, contrasting toons is when you're crossing zones, but due to the speed of travel powers and the fact that one tune won't start while another is playing, you usually don't hear everything you "could".

 

Also, whoever chose the music for the Incarnate Trials clearly thought players were going to take the raid storyline to be wayyyyyyyyy more grim than myself or anyone I seem to play with.

[Pixie_Knight]

On 7/28/2021 at 12:35 PM, Thrythlind said:

... what would you like to see.

 

Character creation updated to modern graphics is naturally one, motion capture is probably not feasible, but certainly some updated graphics quality. More variety of body types... non-binary etc.

 

On to other things:

More investigative / environmental mechanics... a lot of the original game was built from fighting as a base and a lot of other stuff is kind of tacked on... but it would be nice to do a lot of disaster rescues and the like.

 

More modular power selection.

 

For example, have 2-3 options for each tier so that character designs end up feeling a bit less cookie cutter.
Have a separate list of options for powers that are more strictly associated with investigative/exploration mechanics. For example, maybe someone with Time Manipulation would have extra time on timed-missions and such.

 

As a note, any investigative/exploration/rescue/other non-combat mission should be able to be completed without said powers, but said powers would make them easier or present alternate story beats. or just be cool.

 

Some combat powers would have some investigative/environmental missions (melt debris, for instance) and vice-versa, but not so common.

 

Updated base-building (of course)

 

So, basically you want Champions Online? Let's break it down.

• More body type varieties: both Champions and CoH have 3 main body 'types'. A "huge female" body type might not be amiss, but it's not particularly thematic for comics. The typical 'huge' type characters in comics are generally male. Even so, you could customize a lot, including your idle animation, facial expression, and combat stance.
• Better graphics: Champions Online has much better graphics and character customization then CoH, and this was one of it's strengths. Not to mention one of it's selling points. Ironically, CoH's graphics aged better despite having a less robust character creator and more simplistic character models.
• Investigative/environmental mechanics: Champions Online has a plethora of missions where you are suppose to be sneaky, or where you have to investigate and follow environmental clues.
• Modular power selection: Champions Online uses a modified form of the Champions RPG system. As such, you can (if a paid subscriber or if you bought a free form char slot) freely mix and mach powers from any and all frameworks. And then customize those powers with a selection of perks, so no two builds need ever be the same.

 

Except that game didn't do particularly well at launch. While fun, it launched with a lack of content. Especially for end-game. Even worse, it felt so damn grindy and copy/pasted that despite how fun it was, many of those from the closed and open beta were already experiencing burnout by the time it launched. It did well enough that it's still around, but it wasn't the CoH killer that it initially wanted to be. There's a reason that SOE were willing to settle for "played along side of" status with DCUO. CoH was HUGE at the time. Not EQ (or even WoW) big, but still the game to beat in the Superhero MMO market. An already extremely niche subsection of an already  niche market.

 

That said, I do find it amusing that WoW became such a massive juggernaut. I remember a friend talking about the WoW open beta with me while we both happily played CoH. Her view was that WoW was fun, but had a lot of problems.

[Erratic1]

Another thing I would add to a remade CoX....

 

Origin functionally means nothing in CoX. I would shift Origin from being tied to the character and instead tie it to powersets (with pools powers and  epic masteries counting as powersets) giving each powerset different animations to represent the different origins. So a blaster with Ice Blast powerset could choose Mutation and have ice shooting from their finger tips or perhaps choose Technology and have a ice gun from which the powers emerged. Might also take time to clean up the Origin choices--a mutant's abilities are natural to them bu that's a quibble.

[Col. Kernel]

37 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Another thing I would add to a remade CoX....

 

Origin functionally means nothing in CoX. I would shift Origin from being tied to the character and instead tie it to powersets (with pools powers and  epic masteries counting as powersets) giving each powerset different animations to represent the different origins. So a blaster with Ice Blast powerset could choose Mutation and have ice shooting from their finger tips or perhaps choose Technology and have a ice gun from which the powers emerged. Might also take time to clean up the Origin choices--a mutant's abilities are natural to them bu that's a quibble.

 

I would make it so that if you took your Origin power pool it doesn't count against your 4+1 pool limit.

 

But I'd also make it so that you could pick the Origin travel power of your choice and have the graphics be tied to the Origin you picked.  IOW If you wanted to take Mighty Leap with the Sorcery pool you could, but by default you'd get the Mystic Flight swirling runes graphical effect with it.

[Erratic1]

A third thing I would add to a remade CoX

 

Superspeed....going to just come out and say it but they should lift directly from DCUO and have it allow you to run up objects. Biggest problem with superspeed in this game is its utter lack of verticality. Still would suck in various portal zones but would make Superspeed a much more useful travel power in most of the rest of the game.

[Herotu]

Oh, I forgot interactables! More things to click in the world!

 

[Pixie_Knight]

Maybe a VR mode? With or without VR controller support, but VR would be amazing. Not gonna happen, but it would be amazing.

[TombTyrant]

I would stealth nerf accuracy.

[gamingglen]

Some themes can be played throughout the levels.

 

I'll explain further by example: jungle person (or other woodsy type).

I've made the jungle girl finally left the jungle and made it to the big city character as a background, but otherwise she is just another super out on the town.

I wanted to stay in the jungle, at least until some point (level 40?). Have some connecting zones (and since we're doing away with the war walls...), AP has a start area in a jungle, that extends into PP, that extends into ... well, nothing that equivalent in the current game, then Nerva-esque northern island (love that part of that zone, with the ancient ruins), and then Eden-like (edge of civilization with ruined city-like buildings) which then will get the person to the city itself.  

 

Another might be a more post-apocalyptic sequence, perhaps those areas not protected by the city's supers and war walls.  The Eden-like area mentioned above would work as the end part of that, too. 

 

Perhaps those are too narrow a scope and most people wouldn't bother which means a near-waste of development time.  But this about dreaming, right?

 

[A Cat]

16 hours ago, Pixie_Knight said:

Maybe a VR mode? With or without VR controller support, but VR would be amazing. Not gonna happen, but it would be amazing.

I wonder how fast I would puke using travel powers.

[Pixie_Knight]

5 hours ago, A Cat said:

I wonder how fast I would puke using travel powers.

 

The answer is... it depends. Teleport movement is known to help prevent VR sickness for some reason. Other then that, it depends entirely on the person. Some get nausious in Minecraft if using a boat. Others don't. Some can use smooth movement, others can't.

[Herotu]

Climbing, Spider-man webslinging, "surfing"-style flying.

[Player-1]

On 7/30/2021 at 8:29 PM, Normal Thomas said:

And before anyone says it, yes, I would nerf Regen. Thank you.

It would still be in the game?

[Normal Thomas]

17 hours ago, Player-1 said:

It would still be in the game?

That'd be quite a nerf.