Enviromental Events in the game

[Xiddo]

Sorry to ask this @KingCeddd03... Are you a newer player? Or have you just not explored it so much? I've noticed a few times that some of your suggestions almost go against the stories already written in the game. If so, I'm sure we could point you in the right direction for those really lore-important arcs. Wouldn't want you to keep suggesting things and feeling miffed at the reaction.

[TalynDerre]

Not gonna lie, I really like the 'flooding a zone' ideas, but I am 100% sure that cannot be implemented with the server technology.  Flooding would require massive changes to the zone architecture - essentially, each 'stage' of the flood would have to be an entirely new zone, architecture and pathfinding-wise.

[KingCeddd03]

On 10/26/2022 at 12:40 PM, PoptartsNinja said:

Ok, so on its face, this suggestion "add more zone events" isn't terrible. It's just under-developed, which is why you're getting such a lukewarm response @KingCeddd03. It's great that you want to improve a game you enjoy playing, but they'd like you to spend a little time developing your suggestions and explaining the intentions behind them so that even if something is flawed people can still see your logic and support your idea.

 

So, let's twist this a little. Instead of looking for a general but vague suggestion like "add more zone events," let's try something specific: What could we do to one of the current zone events to make people more likely to engage with it?

 

 

Let's look at the Troll Rave and specific ways we could make it better. Right now, the Troll Rave gets pretty much no action unless someone just happens to be passing by or is hunting for a badge. It's really got 3 major problems:

- 1) It's in the ass-end of Skyway, a big zone that sees little traffic.

- 2) Just knowing its happening doesn't tell you *where* it's happening, so you could spend the entire duration of the troll wave searching for it.

- 3) a level 50 blaster can solo the whole thing in a few minutes so even if you do want to do the Troll Rave when it's level appropriate there's a good chance it'll be cleared before you get to fight anything.

 

Now, we could just make the Troll Rave zone-wide to try to force participation from everyone in the zone, but that would be disruptive. What happens if someone's doing Numinas and needs to hunt 50 Lost in Skyway or whatever? Sorry, all the spawns are Supa Trolls for 10 minutes, no PB on the Numina Speedrun for you today. So we'll throw that idea out.

 

 

Improved Troll Rave

1) Problem #3's the easiest to fix so we'll start there: Make all mobs associated with the Troll Rave level-agnostic like the Clockwork from the Paladin Construction or the other invasion events so they always count as +0 bosses. This alone would help with interest because a Troll Rave would always be a source of XP/Inf (and boss XP/Inf at that!) instead of just a free badge for a passing 50.

 

2) When a Troll Rave begins or when someone zones into Skyway while the Troll Rave is active, they should get a map thumbtack pointing them to the Rave unless they've got a manual thumbtack placed. That way players can head straight to the Troll Rave and don't have to try to figure out which of the (three? four?) places it spawns is actually active.

 

3) Break the Troll Rave into 3 waves. Wave 1 is functionally the same as it is now, with Supa Troll bosses spawning in large groups. If nothing is killing the trolls, the rave despawns on its normal timer. But if something kills enough of the Wave 1 Trolls (and this should be a kill counter rather than a timer) Wave 2 begins.

 

In Wave 2, Elite Supa Troll Elite Bosses should begin to spawn. Maybe 1-2 in a pack of Troll Bosses, with a badge reward for killing say... 15-20 of them. This encourages people to team up to take them down, and when enough Elite Supa Trolls have fallen Wave 3 begins.

 

Wave 3 is functionally identical to Wave 2, except now the Trolls friends/rivals have taken notice. Either the Freakshow, the Outcasts, the Lost, or the Warriors show up in force with a boss rush of their own. So Freak Tanks, Warrior Bosses, Anathema, or Lead Outcasts. This gives players a way to farm some of the less-common midlevel group bosses but there's a twist. Because they can't take on the Supa Trolls directly, in Wave 3 the newly-arrived rivals will bring along a Giant Monster.

- The Lost can bring along the Kraken

- The Warriors could bring a monster-ized version of a Cimeroran Cyclops (name it Polyphemus and up its size by 20%!)

- The Outcasts can bring a hijacked Babbage (with Lead Shockers puppeting it, beat them and it goes rogue and attacks everyone!)

- The Freakshow are the hardest but I'm amused by the idea of them bringing a Clockwork Paladin with a Freakshow Tank poking out where its head would be. Alternatively, we could finally get the Freakshow Tank Centcar the Freaks keep threatening. Alternatively they can just steal the same idea as the Outcast GM and have a bunch of Super-Stunners puppeting the Paladin (with the same results as the Outcasts version for beating all of the controlling Super Stunners) until a better idea comes along.

 

 

Tie a badge to defeating any of the giant monsters (or if you want to get cheeky and frustrate the badge hunters tie a badge to each unique giant monster) and you've got yourself a more entertaining Troll Rave that now:

- Gives experience to everyone

- Has reward merits on completion (tied to the defeat of the giant monster)

- Lets people farm "defeat bosses" badges for a few of the mid-level villain groups

- Gives groups like the Outcasts, Lost, and Warriors a little moment in the spotlight while also letting them show off their rivalry with the Trolls (or just their love for mayhem if the Freakshow show up).

 

4) Give players a way to trigger a Troll Rave. I suggest tying it to Clamor's defeat at the end of Penelope Yin's task force. The Trolls are so happy Clamor's going to prison again they get krunk on Mr. Bocor's Mercy Island Water and party down.

i would like you to try to improve my idea not add your own

[KingCeddd03]

On 10/27/2022 at 12:57 PM, TalynDerre said:

Not gonna lie, I really like the 'flooding a zone' ideas, but I am 100% sure that cannot be implemented with the server technology.  Flooding would require massive changes to the zone architecture - essentially, each 'stage' of the flood would have to be an entirely new zone, architecture and pathfinding-wise.

well all you would have to do is make it easy

[lemming]

6 hours ago, KingCeddd03 said:

well all you would have to do is make it easy

The answer to everything!

 

World Hunger?   Quantum Physics?  Climate Change?  Keeping cats off the counter?

 

This works for all of them!

[Ruin Mage]

Nothing is ever easy.

 

CoH is spahgetti code, its not designed for events like environmental things, and so forth it goes.

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

CoH is spahgetti code, its not designed for events like environmental things, and so forth it goes.

Depends on the environmental effects. Anything that affects the zone is difficult -- the first couple of Winter Events back on Live, the lakes in Steel Canyon were frozen over, too, but that was dropped for later events. However, if you create effects for a zone that are applied to the characters in the zone, that's easier. See how entering Atlas Park during the Winter Event gets you the Snowstorm effect, and the Instant Snowstorm power. You could do the same thing to create a rain effect in the zone as a visual effect, but making the ground look wet would require a reload of the zone geometry, since the game's not set up to allow you to change textures on the fly, and it would be difficult to make that happen as changing weather.. As long as it's something that's applied to the character, it should be able to be done; if you want something that affects the way the zone appears, it's going to take a ton of work, and is better suited for a long-term change, such as replacing Atlas Park with the 'Winter Atlas Park' zone model.

[Rudra]

29 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Depends on the environmental effects. Anything that affects the zone is difficult -- the first couple of Winter Events back on Live, the lakes in Steel Canyon were frozen over, too, but that was dropped for later events. However, if you create effects for a zone that are applied to the characters in the zone, that's easier. See how entering Atlas Park during the Winter Event gets you the Snowstorm effect, and the Instant Snowstorm power. You could do the same thing to create a rain effect in the zone as a visual effect, but making the ground look wet would require a reload of the zone geometry, since the game's not set up to allow you to change textures on the fly, and it would be difficult to make that happen as changing weather.. As long as it's something that's applied to the character, it should be able to be done; if you want something that affects the way the zone appears, it's going to take a ton of work, and is better suited for a long-term change, such as replacing Atlas Park with the 'Winter Atlas Park' zone model.

That would be the consideration. A rain effect that is applied to every character is possible, because the snow effect already exists. It is the flooding part that is the major problem. Aside from the fact that if Talos is flooded, given the way it sits above the water the way it does, then Skyway City would be flooded too. If the water is stopped before it gets high enough to flood the lower levels of Talos (and thus stay out of Skyway), you still have the zone water elevation problem. And with the way water works in this game, you can't just elevate the water tiles or stack another on top of it because players can still get in the water and the different tiles becomes glaringly obvious, as well as their inability to stay at the surface. So the proposal would need multiple versions of the map to work. And how do you cycle different maps for an active zone? Something like this could work for an instanced arc or TF/SF or trial, but not a zone event.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Rudra
Edited to correct capitalization and spelling errors.

[KingCeddd03]

52 minutes ago, Rudra said:

That would be the consideration. A rain effect that is applied to every character is possible, because the snow effect already exists. It is the flooding part that is the major problem. Aside from the fact that if Talos is flooded, given the way it sits above the water the way it does, then Skyway City would be flooded too. If the water is stopped before it gets high enough to flood the lower levels of Talos (and thus stay out of Skyway), you still have the zone water elevation problem. And with the way water works in this game, you can't just elevate the water tiles or stack another on top of it because players can still get in the water and the different tiles becomes glaringly obvious, as well as their inability to stay at the surface. So the proposal would need multiple versions of the map to work. And how do you cycle different maps for an active zone? Something like this could work for an instanced arc or TF/SF or trial, but not a zone event.

i understand now that would not work for the zone but i do like it could be a trail or something 

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

And how do you cycle different maps for an active zone? Something like this could work for an instanced arc or TF/SF or trial, but not a zone event.

Well, a zone event that has a long term, the way the Halloween and Winter versions of AP replace the standard one. But having to install new maps on the server and push them to the clients in an update precludes any sort of dynamic zone change. If the original devs had been able to make the instanced outdoor mission code work better, that might have created a way to do it, but the devs admitted that it didn't work well enough as it was to allow wider use.

[golstat2003]

On 11/10/2022 at 3:37 PM, KingCeddd03 said:

i understand now that would not work for the zone but i do like it could be a trail or something 

 

It could possibly work in a trial, but would take time to code.