Missing step in the Origin of Power arc

[Night]

The Origin of Power arc from Percy Winkley is missing the Talk to Positron step that should take place once you speak with Penelope Yin. Because of this, you don't learn about the Technology origin and Positron's theories anymore. The arc goes as follows: War Witch->Penelope Yin->Manticore->Synapse->door mission. While Penelope Yin even tells you that 'Positron has some theories about that' at the end of her dialogue, implying he's the next to talk to, and he should be but his step is missing. That's what the arc list looks like on the wiki, with Positron's step in there, and even the HC wiki isn't updated to include Penny Yin.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Percy_Winkley#The_Origin_of_Power

[srmalloy]

Back on Live, the arc got changed so that you only got sent to four of the five iconic origin characters. You always got sent to War Witch to start, and you always got sent to the character representing your origin, but the other two (or three for Magic-origin characters) were chosen randomly. I think this occurred somewhere around when Penny Yin replaced Sister Psyche. Some time after that, the arc was streamlined further and dropped Positron as one of the possible destinations, so you always got the other three after seeing War Witch.

 

I don't know if there was a problem with the random selection of destinations (I remember how you could get the three in different orders for different characters after it was charged to not send you to all four), but it always felt as if you were missing something by not talking to Positron in the arc. It's not as if what amounted to five FedExes and one real mission took up much time.

Edited December 16, 2022 by srmalloy

[Wavicle]

It should be changed back. It should absolutely introduce you to all five.

[Rudra]

On 12/16/2022 at 2:10 PM, srmalloy said:

Back on Live, the arc got changed so that you only got sent to four of the five iconic origin characters. You always got sent to War Witch to start, and you always got sent to the character representing your origin, but the other two (or three for Magic-origin characters) were chosen randomly. I think this occurred somewhere around when Penny Yin replaced Sister Psyche. Some time after that, the arc was streamlined further and dropped Positron as one of the possible destinations, so you always got the other three after seeing War Witch.

 

I don't know if there was a problem with the random selection of destinations (I remember how you could get the three in different orders for different characters after it was charged to not send you to all four), but it always felt as if you were missing something by not talking to Positron in the arc. It's not as if what amounted to five FedExes and one real mission took up much time.

I just did the Percy Winkley Origin of Power arc. I am playing a Technology hero and he skipped Positron. It needs to be restored or fixed, whichever the case may be for if it s bugged or intentional. Skipping the technology origin when talking about the origins of power is just plain wrong. Especially if you are playing a tech origin character. They aren't of equal importance? Red side with Ashley McKnight you talk to all 5 origin representatives. It is only right for you to get to do so blue side as well.

[UltraAlt]

On 12/16/2022 at 12:35 PM, Night said:

The Origin of Power arc from Percy Winkley is missing the Talk to Positron step

 

Troubling.

 

 

On 12/16/2022 at 4:10 PM, srmalloy said:

it always felt as if you were missing something by not talking to Positron in the arc.

 

Yes, because obvious we will be missing Positron's side of things.

 

5 hours ago, Rudra said:

I just did the Percy Winkley Origin of Power arc. I am playing a Technology hero and he skipped Positron. It needs to be restored or fixed

 

There are many weird changes to the Origin arcs.

They were pretty much caste aside completely by the time Going Rogue was release. I guess considered to be too outdated because they were from the Golden Age of the City of Heroes ... well, that's actually a joke.

It was all due to funneling and fixing things in older content. 

 

The game is built upon that when you run one of your missions, you are playing in the world created/changed by that characters interaction with the world. But then some content was added to shift aspects of the game across the board regardless of your character performing any action that would lead to that change.

 

The way people are playing the game at this point, the funneling really isn't necessary outside of WST, LFG content, Event content, and Zone content .. and Giant Monsters!

Half of the player base or so is only running as level 50's. The remainder is leveling quickly with x2 XP and/or exploring the game content as they level. Correct contact pathing to all the available contacts (especially for your origin)  as you level will not impede the game at this point.

We don't need to be funneled into only First Ward and Night Ward at a certain point ... there at least were ... not sure if still are ... non co-op/Praetorian (yeah, I consider First Ward and Night Ward to be Praetorian content) in that level range. Co-op areas are simply not as useful to game play as they were before Vigilante and Rogue were introduced and Null the Gull made it easy to shift into those modes without running tips.

[Rudra]

Except it was the Croatoa arcs that funneled me to Percy Winkley who only has the Origins of Power arc. So you still get funneled to it blue side. Should it be updated, at least for Positron's part since power proliferation is no longer pending or new? Sure. And the Golden Roller's statements for the tech origin can be a good reference point for it. Positron should still be a contact in the arc you are sent to though.

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

And the Golden Roller's statements for the tech origin can be a good reference point for it.

I'd be willing to bet that Positron's dialog is still buried in the game code/piggs; all that was done to the arc was change it so that you never got sent to Positron. There would have been no need to cut the conversation out of the piggs and force a big re-download for everyone's client, since the mission arcs are kept on the server.

[TheZag]

Put positron back in but also add a skip to the end option like the contact in DA.  Most of us are well aware of the origins at this point.  I can only run around the city reading text boxes so many times without a combat mission.  Does the chat-a-thon even give rewards?

 

[UltraAlt]

14 hours ago, Rudra said:

Except it was the Croatoa arcs that funneled me to Percy Winkley who only has the Origins of Power arc. So you still get funneled to it blue side. Should it be updated, at least for Positron's part since power proliferation is no longer pending or new? Sure. And the Golden Roller's statements for the tech origin can be a good reference point for it. Positron should still be a contact in the arc you are sent to though.

 

I'm not that far along in tracking the Origin Arcs, but the Origin Arc should end up sending you to Percy as well.

 

The Funneling action is different from one contact passing you off to another one.

The "find contact" is the main funneling mechanic.

 

It gives you the first contact to go to the hollows, but it doesn't give you the other contacts in the Hollows (or other zones) as you level up ... except for The First Ward, Night Ward, and Midnighter contacts. All of these are dumped on you as a group. The Midnighter ones are to redirect/funnel you into Cimeroria. I don't even know were First Ward and Night Ward route you as I usually end-up bypassing them or out-leveling them.

 

I don't run a bunch of Radio missions. I'll run tip missions.

I generally level in 2 ways (not including my Origin Quest Characters);

1) Running with a friend of mine which generally is a level pact type situation where we use x2 XP and run various stuff as we keep outleveling stuff because of the x2 XP.

2) Leading teams. Mostly trails, task forces, and events but sometimes mission teams. When I run mission teams, they tend to be zone or tip mission teams. I don't run a lo of scanner missions. I try to only use x2 XP for the first 8 hours.

.... I'm of point here. But I already typed it....

 

I guess I'm going to have to level lock below the cut-off for the first Croatoa contact (Gordon Bower 25-29) until I can find out if the level 20-? origin contact will give me the arc or not.

 

8 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I'd be willing to bet that Positron's dialog is still buried in the game code/piggs; all that was done to the arc was change it so that you never got sent to Positron. There would have been no need to cut the conversation out of the piggs and force a big re-download for everyone's client, since the mission arcs are kept on the server.

 

Unless it was removed to reduce the game's size, and it would have been done as part of the normal updating process.

 

I can't remember. Was there a time that they were talking about trying to port City of Heroes over to game consoles? 

 

5 hours ago, TheZag said:

Most of us are well aware of the origins at this point.

 

Did you enjoy finding out about them the first time?

There are still new players joining.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

Unless it was removed to reduce the game's size, and it would have been done as part of the normal updating process.

I can't see how removing 1k-2k of text would make enough difference in the game's size on disk to be worth removing.

 

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I can't remember. Was there a time that they were talking about trying to port City of Heroes over to game consoles? 

It may have been discussed, but I don't see how you could make CoH work within the limits of a console game controller; it would require a keyboard. For example, it's clear that ESO was designed around consoles, with its limit of six abilities plus an ultimate, with two sets (front bar/back bar) of abilities swappable (and any toggle not in both bars turns off when you swap) -- while in CoH I normally have three bars of ten powers, plus two overflow bars for less commonly used powers (three for my MMs), all immediately available. There's no way you could cram all that into the button limits of a game controller.

[TheZag]

4 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Did you enjoy finding out about them the first time?

There are still new players joining.

 

If im being honest,  not really.  Even the first time through just felt tedious.  A personal story style mission to convey the information would have been better in my opinion.  As it is now,  ol' boy could have just given us a stack of papers and told us to read over it and talk to him again when you are ready to move on.  The origin names themselves are very self explanatory and the origin of the origin as a read it quest is very redundant.  A mission showing the contact getting their power or showing the origin of the origin would be more enjoyable (for me.)

 

[srmalloy]

7 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Unless it was removed to reduce the game's size, and it would have been done as part of the normal updating process.

Even if it was removed, the full text of Positron's dialog for technology and non-technology characters is on the old Paragonwiki page for Percy Winkler -- Talk to Positron. So it could be recovered and reinstated.

 

[Wavicle]

6 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I can't see how removing 1k-2k of text would make enough difference in the game's size on disk to be worth removing.

 

It may have been discussed, but I don't see how you could make CoH work within the limits of a console game controller; it would require a keyboard. For example, it's clear that ESO was designed around consoles, with its limit of six abilities plus an ultimate, with two sets (front bar/back bar) of abilities swappable (and any toggle not in both bars turns off when you swap) -- while in CoH I normally have three bars of ten powers, plus two overflow bars for less commonly used powers (three for my MMs), all immediately available. There's no way you could cram all that into the button limits of a game controller.

FFXIV characters typically have about 30 buttons and the game is explicitly designed for console. The cross hotbar system they use works very well.

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I can't see how removing 1k-2k of text would make enough difference in the game's size on disk to be worth removing.

 

I'm saying that I don't think that was the only thing removed.

 

8 hours ago, srmalloy said:

It may have been discussed, but I don't see how you could make CoH work within the limits of a console game controller; it would require a keyboard.

 

I play CoH with a Logitech F310 Controller. Mostly I use the mouse to place location-click powers and to move the pointer around. Most of my keyboard use is for chatting only.

 

8 hours ago, srmalloy said:

There's no way you could cram all that into the button limits of a game controller.

 

 

.... and most gaming consoles since the PlayStation 1 (I'm pretty sure, but definitely with PS2) allow you to connect keyboards. I used an USB keyboard on the Playstation 2 while entering text for RPG-making games. (NOTE: on the back of the box art for the RPG Maker 2 - "Compatible with Logitech USB keyboard")

Most will allow a mouse as well, but I never used one on a gaming console.

The ability to use other hardware to play a game is game dependant rather than console dependant.

 

 

 

If they were looking at porting to consoles, they would need to make the game a size that would fit on game discs and/or storage.

 

Also, compared to today, there were greater storage constraints on PCs when City of Heroes was released as well.

Later in the 1st life of CoH, the game was downloaded from the internet and internet speeds were much slower for most gamers back then.

 

But back to the controller,  the basic setups that I have in the post mainly for toggling between tray 1 and 2 and accessing all 9 other power slot in the active tray.

I have another setup for toggling 3 trays for Kheldians.

And have been working with an Innocent Bystander tray with non-superhero powers that can toggle the active tray to tray 1 (which has a toggle to tray 2, which has a toggle back to tray 1) as well as activate a costume change.

 

5 hours ago, TheZag said:

A personal story style mission to convey the information would have been better in my opinion.

 

I can agree with this, but I still found it a look into how the DEVs thought the world was constructed.

 

5 hours ago, TheZag said:

The origin names themselves are very self explanatory and the origin of the origin as a read it quest is very redundant.  A mission showing the contact getting their power or showing the origin of the origin would be more enjoyable (for me.)

 

Spoiler

The combining of the origins into a single origin was of interest to me. And the inner relations of one origin to another in the combination process back to the Origin of all powers.

 

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Even if it was removed, the full text of Positron's dialog for technology and non-technology characters is on the old Paragonwiki page for Percy Winkler -- Talk to Positron. So it could be recovered and reinstated.

 

Good to point that out.

If it is all written there, it could be more-or-less copy-and-paste for at least some of the work to put it back into the game.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by UltraAlt
more info on gaming console keyboard use