What would you change or add in a City of Heroes sequel?

[Disruptor]

Bored in the early morning and this came across my mind as I was contemplating respecing for the 100th time.

 

Different types of tiers for respecing.

 

NEW: Complete Character Respec. Reselect both primary and secondary powerset choices within your AT along w/ all slots & power pools/epics, ect. Meaning you are AR/Dev Blaster and want to change to Elec/Elec. This respec option would require you to be lvl50 and be very costly, maybe a new type of end game crafting/reward system or Incarnate TF related. A Timeline Change TF that affects you type thing.

 

NEW: Secondary Powerset Respec: Reselect your secondary powerset within your AT along w/ secondary slots. Requirement: lvl50. Very similar to the previous option but less costly (maybe half cost or a third) only for your secondary and the slots used within, epic/power pools not included nor their slots.

 

Traditional Respec: The same as the current form, nothing really changes.

 

NEW: Full Slot Respec: All slot choices are respecable, power choices are not. You like your powers but wanna redo your slots, this is the respec for you. Unsure of the cost I'm leaning more towards recipe.

 

NEW: Respec Five Slots: Perhaps you made a mistake, misplanned or changed your mind on a certain power and/or set bonus, ect. Cheap cost, perhaps 25 merits. This is technically more costly and less efficient than a Trad Respec or even Full Slot Respec but the idea is you making a tradeoff and are paying for convenience.

 

and finally

 

NEW: The One Slot Respec: Do you literally only want to move one slot but are too lazy and tired to redo the whole thing well this is just for you! The cheapest of the cheap, 5 merits. 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyways its 5am, this is kinda for fun post but also slightly serious. I do think alternate respecs would be a nice addition/feature in a CoH2 if the current powerset/slotting system stayed in place.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Disruptor

[TheOtherTed]

1 hour ago, Disruptor said:

Complete Character Respec. Reselect both primary and secondary powerset choices within your AT along w/ all slots & power pools/epics, ect. Meaning you are AR/Dev Blaster and want to change to Elec/Elec. This respec option would require you to be lvl50 and be very costly

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I don't think respecs, of any kind, should either require level 50 or be punishingly costly.  First, by the time someone has hit level 50, the horse has already left the stable.  IME dissatisfaction with powersets usually happens long, long before you get to end-game (if it happens at all).  Thus, by the time the character hits 50, the player has likely already made the decision to stick with those powersets rather than re-roll or make an alt, so what's the point? 

 

Second, while I understand the temptation to link drastic character change with some sort of drastic expense, I'll throw out two counter-points.  1) If you can meet that expense once, you can do so again.  The "expense" is really just time - and maybe one's own patience.  2) I'd personally prefer an in-game mechanic that grants you a respec, sort of like the Terra Volta TF, but maybe a bit more spread out like almost any other TF or a story arc.  IOW, I'd rather feel like I've "earned" the right to respec in-game than, say, throw inf at it and call it done.  Yes, it's still time-linked, but I'd be doing something I probably wouldn't do otherwise.

 

Otherwise, I'm on board with the idea of a complete respec, although I'd go even more complete and allow full-on Archetype respecs.

 

Disclaimer - I am not a min-maxer or an IO optimizer, and I have no interest in end-game activities or any type of farming.

Disclaimer to the disclaimer - not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by TheOtherTed
Words hate me.

[Snarky]

more cowbell

[Shred Monkey]

1 hour ago, Disruptor said:

NEW: The One Slot Respec: Do you literally only want to move one slot but are too lazy and tired to redo the whole thing well this is just for you! The cheapest of the cheap, 5 merits. 

 

I'm not sure the cost is right.  It should probably be higher then 5 merits.  But I'd love this.  And if you have this, you don't really need the 5 slot or all slot options you mentioned because you can do it multiple times.

[Tachstar]

5 hours ago, Snarky said:

more cowbell

 

 

Rawk!

 

 

I kinda like the idea of being able to respec into a different power set. Save a lot of rerolling/replaying.

 

[Zep]

34 minutes ago, Krimson said:

One Big Map with no freaking War Walls that do nothing to stop invasions anyway. I want to be able to fly across the water from Paragon City until I reach the shores of Etoile. 

 

We hates the War Walls - they are fugly.

 

I once was at a Meet and Greet with the original Devs in SF and unloaded about that I thought of the way walls - it was explained the way the system was originally build they couldn't (or perhaps wouldn't) do anything about them. I'd be happy to have one of those blue forcefields at the edge of the zone with some scenery behind it.

 

Computers/GPU's now a days should be able to handle it. 

[Major_Decoy]

All of your suggestions kind of make sense for additions to the game, if they were possible (but as I understand they are not) but none of that is what I'd be looking for in a sequel.

 

A sequel needs to be set in a different enough setting that it doesn't make sense to continue in the existing world. Given that Praetoria, City of Villains, and two Primal Penelope Yins exist in the same game, the only way to really makes sense to approach it as a new setting rather than an expansion of the existing world is to change the game mechanics. Because while multiple universes seem to be able to co-exist in City of Heroes, multiple game mechanics are not quite as friendly to one another.

 

And designing game mechanics is a really big question. Do you get rid of archetypes and powersets and let people kind of build their own characters? Do you keep archetypes?

 

There's no right answer to these questions, and each decision you make will have interesting consequences.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Tachstar said:

 

 

Rawk!

 

 

I kinda like the idea of being able to respec into a different power set. Save a lot of rerolling/replaying.

 

I am very happy with the high end 20 year old Stratocaster Ultra and the $100 (brand new price) black “beater” Gibson I have.   Damn you for making me want another guitar!!!!

[TraumaTrain]

I'd like a setting that truly changes. When an update affects the milieu, some old contacts could be removed and new contacts revealed. (Important story arcs from phased out contacts can appear in Oroborous.)

 

Zones can change too. They did a great job updating Faultline. I would want zones to change as the story changes. Whackadoo meteors wipe out Galaxy City? That's cool, but now give us a devasted zone we can enter and do heroic things.

 

I would want a living setting. Mechanics and QoLs and such are secondary to the world. 

[Akalabeth]

What I would like to see in a sequel is more nice people that played the live game come back. 🙂

[MTeague]

I would make Controls.... not pets.... actual controls.... Holds, Sleeps, Confuses, Stuns.... matter. 
At every stage of the game. Including Endgame. 

 

Otherwise, simply rip out Controllers entirely. 

It sucks to lvl up to 50 and realize no team even notices your primary, and only cares about your secondary, and maybe not even that. 

Oh, and that if you decide to solo, Elite Bosses still get Purple Triangle of Doom that nerf the bejeezus out of your primary skills, even though there's no Orange Triangles of Doom that reduce incoming damage dealt by anyone else.

 

(yea, i'm slightly salty).

[Major_Decoy]

15 minutes ago, MTeague said:

 Orange Triangles of Doom that reduce incoming damage dealt by anyone else.

Oh, I was fighting Ms. Liberty the other day and she had unstoppable and Dull Pain, with surprisingly short recharge times. She was able to pop unstoppable twice while I still had lore pets up.

[biostem]

I would separate the delivery method, range, damage type, and possibly even secondary effects, from all attack sets.  For instance, it'd be awesome if you could choose to use a sword, but have it deal ranged damage, have said damage be energy, and have the secondary effect be a tohit debuff.  Obviously this would require a huge amount of balancing, but I think it could be done.  For instance, perhaps choosing "ranged" would lower the value of any defensive values or status protection powers you could access, or remove some options outright.

[Biff Pow]

Everybody's in the same city. Splitting the player base into three different worlds was a mistake.

[TheZag]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

One Big Map with no freaking War Walls that do nothing to stop invasions anyway. I want to be able to fly across the water from Paragon City until I reach the shores of Etoile. 

 

Praetoria does it but there is still loading transitions and its just a low res view of the rest of the city.  But if that could happen for paragon city,  it would be amazing.  I think the game code still needs zones to break up the population for lag reducing purposes though.  The internet is newer now,  maybe thats not a problem anymore but the popular zones with a population cap of 50 makes me think it still is.

 

[Greycat]

Fingers for my characters.

[Disruptor]

I would attempt to increase the customization for enhancements system by allowing more special enhancements that alter/change powers...

 

For example a set bonus or proc that allows your Emp single target Heal Other to heal self or vice versa. Imagine slotting a proc/set that allows Experimental Injection to be used on yourself OR a proc/set bonus that turns Healing Flames into an AoE Team Heal. Basically give enhancements/set bonus/procs that can give your Tank powers support aspects or your Defender more selfish options.

 

A way for an Illusion controller to give allies Superior Invis, an option for a Stalker to turn his Hide into an AoE Team Stealth, a Tanker can put his own shields on allies, etc. It would blend the lines between AT but allow for more customization within builds and more reason to have multiple builds for a single character your "Supporty Tank Build" vs "Solo Tank Build" there obviously would be tradeoffs numbers wise your Healing Flames doesnt do 1000 self heal anymore instead it would do 500 for up to 8 people or something along those lines.

[Major_Decoy]

2 hours ago, MTeague said:

I would make Controls.... not pets.... actual controls.... Holds, Sleeps, Confuses, Stuns.... matter. 
At every stage of the game. Including Endgame.

 

This might not need a sequel to fix. The purple triangles were a late addition because controllers could entirely lock down a fight and the Archvillains couldn't do anything.

 

So the object is "let controllers control without entirely locking out the archvillains from acting"

 

If you could link certain attacks with certain controls, and if the magnitude of control was high enough, the powers either get locked out or changed to a different set.

 

I don't know if it's possible, but like, if you stack mag 6 confuse on Wretch, he'd use Haymaker instead of Knock-out blow.  Mag 9 confuse get him to punch and 12 to jab.

 

So hold would lock out one power, fear another, stun.. I don't know about immobilize because that one can be pretty handy at times as is.

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

 

This might not need a sequel to fix. The purple triangles were a late addition because controllers could entirely lock down a fight and the Archvillains couldn't do anything.

 

So the object is "let controllers control without entirely locking out the archvillains from acting"

 

If you could link certain attacks with certain controls, and if the magnitude of control was high enough, the powers either get locked out or changed to a different set.

 

I don't know if it's possible, but like, if you stack mag 6 confuse on Wretch, he'd use Haymaker instead of Knock-out blow.  Mag 9 confuse get him to punch and 12 to jab.

 

So hold would lock out one power, fear another, stun.. I don't know about immobilize because that one can be pretty handy at times as is.

 

I have zero hope of purple triangles ever going away or being changed at this point. 

Still, I like where you're going with that.  There has to be some other way to avoid "City of Statues" but still not be "Oh, you wanted to solo the EB/AV? Go get a Shivan, the powers you use to defend yourself in every other content are CRAP against EB/AV's, because reasons."

[WumpusRat]

I've actually got a design document for a superheroic MMO doodled up (it's not finished, but it's full of notes I've made over the years). 

 

Some things I'd love to see for "CoH-2":

 

* An alignment system that isn't 'fixed'. Everyone starts out a vigilante as a new character, and based on what sorts of choices you make for missions (either by just taking the mission in the first place (such as choosing to rob a bank, or to save someone), or what you decide to do at the end, like a morality mission (do you kill the bad guy, betray the hero/villain, turn them in, etc) would determine if your reputation goes up or down. The higher it is, the more heroic the populace sees you. The lower, the more villainous. You wouldn't just do one mission and suddenly flip from hero to vigilante, or villain to vigilante, etc. It would require a lot of work to 'fall', and the same amount of work to 'redeem yourself' in the eyes of the populace.

 

* A tree-like structure for choosing powers. Instead of just "you have Energy Blast as a powerset, which includes these 9 powers", you could choose "Energy Manipulation", which would open up various power choices, and as you branch out it opens up other ones, both offensive and defensive, etc. Including overlap between various powers. If you chose "Earth Manipulation" as well as "Fire Manipulation", by combining the two you could open up magma/lava-based powers, for instance. Would make it super easy for the devs to come up with new powers, as if it's something a tree doesn't already have but is thematic for one of them, they can just slot it into a tree. Or make it a "combine two powersets to make this power" ability.

 

* Choosing the focus for your powers. DCUO does something like this, which I think it's pretty cool. If you choose, say, "Fire Blast" as a power, it doesn't automatically come from your hands. You could choose to have it come from your hands, or a gun you draw to shoot fire, come from some gauntlets, a staff, shoot flaming arrows, or whatever else you wanted to choose. Unlike DCUO, you could either choose a different one for each power (like if you wanted to be a walking arsenal with a ton of different weapons and tools) or have them all come from the same weapon (like someone who has a highly-configurable sci-fi pistol that can shoot a ton of different effects). 

 

* Configurable pets. If you wanted to be a mastermind-type with minions, you could choose how you want to employ them. Do you want to be the sort with just a bunch of faceless goons, who are all roughly equal? Sure, you can do that. Do you want to be the sort who has a bunch of goons and one Big Goon(tm)? You can do that too. Or do you want to just have one Right Hand Man(tm) who assists you in all your heroic/villainous deeds? Sure, you can do that too. Basically you'd have something along the lines of "control points", with the more you invest into any single henchman the more powerful they become. If you had, say, 10 points to spend, something like a tier-1 mastermind pet might cost 1-2, while a tier-3 might cost 5. Or you could make a big powerful minion/sidekick that costs a full 10.

 

* More open world. This one is pretty obvious. Computers these days can handle open worlds without needing to segment everything off into zones. So a huge open city map would be great. And you could zip off to other locations, like the arctic, the moon, the jungles of south america, the african veldt, etc.

[InvaderStych]

Expand on Origins by adding a second attribute alongside them: "Entity" or some synonym.  Right now the game assumes that every PC is a human by default, yet comics are rife with all sorts of beings.  Mostly this affects NPC dialog and such, but its a topic that's come up from time to time, and if we're starting from scratch as a sequel then having these choices impact game-play more directly, if in a quite minor, way could also be interesting.

 

Human: Self explanatory.

Synthetic: Robots, Androids, etc.

Alien: Anyone from space.

Dimensional: Alternate universe types, could also include Demons/etc (I know we've got Asprin fans in the room).

Undead: Also self explanatory.

<Name Needed>: Something that covers toons that were originally some form of animal.

Mythical? - Maybe something like this to cover appropriate backstories?

 

All of this just because I get a twitch when an NPC refers to my non-humans as humans. 😛

[Disruptor]

Quote

Expand on Origins

 

 

Yea I think they could do a lot in regards to Origins. Not only story or mission related and how your character is referred to but I would expand on origin related power and animations. Example if you pick Alien Origin your granted a ray gun w/ special fx. If you are Natural Human you get a improved version of Brawl. If you are Undead maybe a unique revive or even better idea once you HP bar hits 0 you get an extra 5-10 seconds to act even though you've ran out of health before actually dying.

 

Small things like that would be cool to make your Origin feel more important and thematic.

[Greycat]

More serious answer:

- Expand the world. Yes, we started out with City of Heroes. Which itself moved beyond "city" when we started going to Portal Corp. We know there are metahumans and other powered / super beings around the planet (and under it,and over it, and...) - build with the plan to expand the horizons.

 

- We have a great costume creator. While it's probably pretty much assumed "done" with a new engine... expand on it. Modern graphics, let me modify the face, body, etc. Hell, APB let me create custom designs for the clothes, tattoos (as I recall) and car graphics and that was over a decade ago. They even had a music creator/editor. Even more flexibility there ... ok, would probably mean 20 hours in the character creator before getting in the game, but still.

 

- Insert giant base wishlist here, including custom NPCs and such.

 

- I like Epic ATs. Specifically, I like the idea of them being tied to, and drilling down into nitty gritty detail of, a piece of lore. The game in general can grow "out," the EATs can focus "in" on something - say, the game in general can explore the Coralax (using today's mobs,) their environment and such, but the Coralax EAT has to deal with their politics, religion, something specific about them in detail from level 1 to the top level.  Just keep releasing them as the game expands.

 

- Similarly, 1-50 arcs tied somehow to something - say, the origin - of your character. Yeah, a bit dicy, because player-origin and mechanics-origin can be so different. Honestly, I just kind of want the world to react to me. Not as in single-player-RPG-chosen-one, but - well, things like reputation with groups, grudges, etc. (For instance, I *like* that Khelds get void hunters and quantums going after them. I was *really* rather disappointed that VEATs are ... just another player character, not getting focused on - or celebrated by - other Arachnos troops.)

 

- More expansion on IOs with more care given as to just how *far* things can be boosted with set bonuses and the like. As well as "effect IOs" that could go into either a universal slot or a regular power slot (IE, something does a bit of additional fire, or cold, or whatever, maybe drops overall endurance but has some other effect to balance it - it'd require some working up.)

 

- More choices in missions instead of railroading. (For instance, there's that mission redside where you betray Frostfire and eventually basically end up powerful but alone... making choices my character wouldn't have made. Being able to *make* those choices would be appreciated.)

 

A lot of enhancements I can think of to the game would pretty much be covered by "It's a new, more modern game," honestly. UI things, graphical things, gameplay and story writing.

[MrAxe]

The ability to lift and throw physics objects with telekinesis and super strength. TK in DCUO was fantastic as a result.

[Luminara]

Deformable walls/floors/ceilings so we can punch holes in buildings.  Damage from knockback.  Animation system which doesn't root so we could move while attacking.  Less clicky UI.  More granularity in body sliders, so we could make characters with Popeye arms or thunder thighs (examples).  Better hit checking so mixing AoE with single-target attacks couldn't result in miss streaks and long animation times modified the clamp.  Critter AI that doesn't lean heavily on running to Zimbabwe seven seconds after combat begins to "challenge" players.