Win the War on Rikti

[aethereal]

Somewhat inspired by the RL ending of the 20 year war in Afghanistan, this is presumably not a very doable suggestion, since the amount of work seems like it'd be too much for the current size of the HC team.  But I think it's a valid suggestion if the team ever gets bigger.

 

It seems like there's been eternal stalemate in the war against the downed Rikti mothership for long enough.  The Rikti are the earliest and the weakest of the three to four big worldwide threats that CoH presented (the others being Praetoria, Mot, and perhaps Arachnos).  Their mobs are not particularly dangerous.  Their plot has not gone anywhere since I don't know when.  2008 or something?  Earlier?

 

So, I propose:

1.  Banish the current RWZ to Echo status.  People can still do MSRs there.

2.  The event is that the peaceful faction of Rikti take control and negotiate a cease-fire and peace.  The Mothership gets taken away (but there are still some buried surprises in the ground around the RWZ).  There are maybe some quest-lines for people who are now trying to salvage discarded Rikti tech, and finding cells of still-warlike Rikti in hidden underground bunkers.
3.  Vanguard reorients to, I don't know, maybe fight the Battalion if we can ever get that moving, or to contain demonic/multiversal threats out of their current base in the RWZ, with a new quest-line or two.

Edited August 23, 2021 by aethereal

[SuggestorK]

Nice and reasonable Idea.

 

Just i fear there is huge background work necessary to make it happen.

 

Greetings

[Shenanigunner]

We have to address the elephants in the room here: those mysterious Rikti ships hanging out in Pocket D. I fear they may not go quietly.

[aethereal]

They're just there to gas up at the gas station, obviously.

[Ruin Mage]

I think I'm going to disagree with this:
 

• Mothership Raids
• Apex / TinMage TFs
• Number Six (Incarnate Contact)
• Lady Grey TF
• The Vanguard story arcs

That's quite a bit of things that would have to get moved around or otherwise modified to make work with this. Echo zones don't really have content in them besides badges / street sweeping.

[Glacier Peak]

I totally understand the reasoning for this suggestion - the plot end for the Rikti itself concluded over a decade ago... but seeing as how this game is essentially in a state of perpetuity, I am not totally bothered by this fact. I mean, there are still computer screens in-game showing the early 2000's Windows XP running. I don't think it is worth the time to invest in updating all of the graphics for those computer screens to a modern appearance. 

 

So, no for me.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

That's quite a bit of things that would have to get moved around or otherwise modified to make work with this. Echo zones don't really have content in them besides badges / street sweeping.

I was thinking the same thing...  The OP wants a huge chunk of content moved and replaced with [vague handwaving].  So, absent positive proposals of what to replace it with, I'm no-go on the idea.


Also, agreed, I've seen plenty of proposals over the last two years that want to simply "move stuff to Echoes".  That doesn't really work as Echoes are out of the mainstream of the game/storyline...

[Greycat]

19 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

I totally understand the reasoning for this suggestion - the plot end for the Rikti itself concluded over a decade ago...

 

I ... wouldn't go that far. There's nothing (as far as I recall) to say the Rikti that were banished back to their dimension didn't keep control over some significant portion of the population and decide to keep trying. We might have thrown things into chaos, but if you're counting that being a decade, that's a lot of time for "stuff" to happen there.

 

And, if we're using that as a justification, shouldn't we kill off Incarnate trials or banish those to "run them through the crystal?" That war's pretty definitively over, or would have to be massively restructured (Praemidon finds a way to try to invade Primal?) after all...

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

I think I'm going to disagree with this:
 

• Mothership Raids
• Apex / TinMage TFs
• Number Six (Incarnate Contact)
• Lady Grey TF
• The Vanguard story arcs

That's quite a bit of things that would have to get moved around or otherwise modified to make work with this. Echo zones don't really have content in them besides badges / street sweeping.

 

Vanguard's base would still be there.  Tinpex, Number 6, and LGTF would be unchanged.  Mothership raids would be moved to the Echo (or you could do them from the then-current RWZ, but only as the instanced version, I guess).  The Vanguard story arcs would have to be banished to Oro.

[Glacier Peak]

26 minutes ago, Greycat said:

I ... wouldn't go that far. There's nothing (as far as I recall) to say the Rikti that were banished back to their dimension didn't keep control over some significant portion of the population and decide to keep trying. We might have thrown things into chaos, but if you're counting that being a decade, that's a lot of time for "stuff" to happen there.

 

And, if we're using that as a justification, shouldn't we kill off Incarnate trials or banish those to "run them through the crystal?" That war's pretty definitively over, or would have to be massively restructured (Praemidon finds a way to try to invade Primal?) after all...

You may have misunderstood my post, it was about how the content that was written then hasn't progressed any further here on Homecoming. If a player logged on in 2012 then logged on again now, the story is the exact same. So the story was essentially concluded, bookend, closed... until or unless an inspiring volunteer on the Homecoming team has the bandwidth to start writing, visualizing, validating, testing, and adding such content. 

[Darmian]

There's an assumption inherent here that it is 2021 in Paragon. Is it though? Personally I wouldn't advance the in world calendar by that many years at all.  Five at the most perhaps.  I think having it set "in the past" could give the current tiny Dev team a bit of breathing room on "filling in" the best part of a decade.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Darmian said:

There's an assumption inherent here that it is 2021 in Paragon. Is it though? Personally I wouldn't advance the in world calendar by that many years at all.  Five at the most perhaps.  I think having it set "in the past" could give the current tiny Dev team a bit of breathing room on "filling in" the best part of a decade.

Exactly! It's hard to call it the past or future, it's whatever time the story needs it to be (looking at you Ouroboros Menders!)

[jkwak]

first we they have to rebuild Galaxy City and reestablish it as starting zone for new heroes

then we can talk about multiverse aliens and there War

[starro]

No. The war never ends with countless mothership raids that grind new heroes up and turn the survivors into jaded veterans. The Rikti continue building their arsenal for the next raid. And the next.  And the next.
When there is the appearance that maybe peace - sirens blare as raid ships descend onto Paragon City and the Rogue Isles…  

[huang3721]

It's comic-book time. The year is always 20XX. 

[aethereal]

14 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Exactly! It's hard to call it the past or future, it's whatever time the story needs it to be (looking at you Ouroboros Menders!)

That's not how CoH worked when it was live.  The city changed and developed.  Galaxy City was destroyed.  Faultline was partially rebuilt.  Praetoria fell.  Dark Astoria was changed by Mot.  Yes, the old content stayed available, but there was a clear sense of an advancing now.

 

That's what HC should do as well, within the limits of their resources.

[Darmian]

46 minutes ago, aethereal said:

That's what HC should do as well, within the limits of their resources.

That's what they ARE Doing. Like I said above, we don't know how far along they're advancing the timeline from 2012 but it is advancing.

[El D]

Homecoming has done stuff like that - the new Vahzilok arcs definitely takes place post-Faultline/Positron TF revamp - but I think the catch of 'within the limits of their resources' is the key factor here. There's a reason the content updates thus far are just story arcs/a short co-op Trial. The Live devs had much larger, fully funded, team who were doing this for a living and it took them months upon months to bring us stuff like changed zones/enemy group revamps. For a volunteer team like the HC devs, even if they expanded and got more people it'd be more trouble than it's worth. Doing all the work to shift around a huge, fully completed co-op zone with multiple story arcs, several task forces, and numerous links to the endgame content system - not to mention how popular Mothership raids are - into echo content only to have to replace the void it left with something else anyway would be like emptying an Olympic-sized swimming pool and trying to fill it back up via buckets of water.

There's also the fact that if the RWZ gets moved to echo status, there's no in-game progression to lead into the new arcs that'd replace it. Sure, there's a chronological progression from our standpoint as players, but if you aren't introduced to the Vanguard while fighting Rikti in-game why are you going to care about them fighting the Battalion 'later'? The past story arcs and task forces are kept around with the newer ones for a reason, both lore-wise and gameplay-wise. If the HC devs are going to do stuff with the Vanguard fighting the Battalion - which admittedly would be very cool - it'd be easier to leave the RWZ where it is and focus solely on new content.

[Menelruin]

6 hours ago, huang3721 said:

It's comic-book time. The year is always 20XX. 

Time to build Mega Man!

[Piecemeal]

I am deeply offended that you don't count the Primal Devouring Earth as a global threat! In fact, in my interpretation of lore bible readings, the Hydra may have actually sprang out of first-round attempts to make the Devouring Earth, making them likely as old as the Rikti and Freakshow. The Hydra head eerily mirrors the descriptions of early Hamidon in his crucible, discovering the Devouring process for the first time.

[Piecemeal]

On 8/23/2021 at 6:24 PM, Darmian said:

There's an assumption inherent here that it is 2021 in Paragon. Is it though? Personally I wouldn't advance the in world calendar by that many years at all.  Five at the most perhaps.  I think having it set "in the past" could give the current tiny Dev team a bit of breathing room on "filling in" the best part of a decade.

 

Watkins' arc is talking about advanced social media functions and video sharing out in the open world.

 

It's either government wifi or we got 5G, baby!

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

I am deeply offended that you don't count the Primal Devouring Earth as a global threat! In fact, in my interpretation of lore bible readings, the Hydra may have actually sprang out of first-round attempts to make the Devouring Earth, making them likely as old as the Rikti and Freakshow. The Hydra head eerily mirrors the descriptions of early Hamidon in his crucible, discovering the Devouring process for the first time.

I probably should have.

 

I was thinking of, I dunno, enemy groups where some of their global threat come into gameplay in ways other than instanced missions (with the acknowledgement that the Praetorian threat doesn't, really -- but it's SO pervasive that it feels different, to me, than say "that Arc where a Fifth Column person is trying to change history to create a Nazi win in WWII."). But Hamidon raids seem like they count as that.

 

To me, it feels more naturalistic that the Hamidon is an undying threat that can be contained and stalemated but never truly beaten.  The Rikti aren't that.

[Darmian]

2 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

 

Watkins' arc is talking about advanced social media functions and video sharing out in the open world.

 

It's either government wifi or we got 5G, baby!

In a world of super intelligent beings you could have had 5G in 1990.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

To me, it feels more naturalistic that the Hamidon is an undying threat that can be contained and stalemated but never truly beaten.  The Rikti aren't that.

 

To what extent do you want to take that, though? I mean, if  we start that line of thinking for an advanced, high-tech enemy proven to have biotech and portal technology, why are we still seeing Hellions and Skulls 20-plus issues later? They're not even portrayed as a national threat (like you can imply, say, the Family is - clear out one group, others from Miami move in to keep the business going) much less the level of the Rikti. One or two good concentrated sweeps from all the heroes should clear that right out.

[Glacier Peak]

4 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

I am deeply offended that you don't count the Primal Devouring Earth as a global threat! In fact, in my interpretation of lore bible readings, the Hydra may have actually sprang out of first-round attempts to make the Devouring Earth, making them likely as old as the Rikti and Freakshow. The Hydra head eerily mirrors the descriptions of early Hamidon in his crucible, discovering the Devouring process for the first time.

 

This interpretation conflicts with what the in game lore describes for the Hydra's origin. Tina Macintyre's Hydra Multidimensional exploration badge story arc says:

 

"After months of effort, some Portal Corporation techs have managed to isolate the dimension the Hydra comes from."

 

Dr. Steven Sheridan tells us their method of communication in the same arc after completing that mission from Tina:

"Mighty interesting, Character. Mighty interesting indeed. I'll tell you one thing: these Hydra Men aren't the simple blobs of protoplasm we thought they were. In fact, I think this green goop they were covered in is actually their method of communication. Now, mind you, this is only a theory. I think the Hydra communicate through chemical signals. One Hydra Man secretes certain chemicals into that green plasma. Then he touches another, who can instantly 'read' his message. It's quite sophisticated, I assure you. If you'll bear with me for a moment, I believe I can develop a new plasma that will let you understand their chemical signals. Communication will be only one way, but it should give you a better idea of what's going on in that world.

 

The last mission dialog in that arc from Tina tell us that:

 

"the Rikti have been kidnapping Hydra Men from the dimension you visited. Then they bring the creatures back to our world, to help them fight their war against us. I always assumed the Hydra Men were hostile, but maybe they're just confused. Kidnapped, uprooted, stuck on some strange new planet far from their families. No wonder they assume we're all their enemies! It's too bad Dr. Sheridan wasn't able to engineer a way for you to make yourself understood to the Hydra Men; then we could tell them we mean them no harm. But I guess it's best if we just do what they asked of us: leave them alone."

 

This all aligns with my Buckets of Spoilers! Lore Galore! thread:

 

"The Hydra were kidnapped by the Rikti from their home dimension to guard underground bases after the first Rikti Invasion. You can learn more about this in Tina MacIntyre's missions (even through the Ouroboros options, from the mission chain that gives the Multidimensional badge, though you don't actually have to finish the chain to get the badge, so many people don't) (Credit to @Lazarillo)"

 

Per my thread below: