So imagine our Devs decided to go for CoH 2...

[tidge]

I'd like to add to the @aethereal points that we used to have a much harder limit on the "awesome sauce" of our builds... the Fitness pool used to be something we actually had to take! Not having the pool inherent was a true PITA, but it was an early throttle on imbalance, even pre-ED.

[Snarky]

58 minutes ago, tidge said:

I'd like to add to the @aethereal points that we used to have a much harder limit on the "awesome sauce" of our builds... the Fitness pool used to be something we actually had to take! Not having the pool inherent was a true PITA, but it was an early throttle on imbalance, even pre-ED.

Yes, having no endurance really slowed the game and gave a stumbling block to the players.

 

Now that I think about it if the Devs had simply removed inherent fitness they would never even have had to make starred ITF and Aeons.  Saves so much work.  

[MoonSheep]

no IOs. support and tank ATs are once again important. strategic team play and “holy trinity” mechanics are important for success

 

CoH and CoV exist in the same realm, you can travel to zones within each without needing to change alignment

[Snarky]

5 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

no IOs. support and tank ATs are once again important. strategic team play and “holy trinity” mechanics are important for success

 

CoH and CoV exist in the same realm, you can travel to zones within each without needing to change alignment

no enhancers at all.  lets just get pure AT and teamwork

[MoonSheep]

7 hours ago, Snarky said:

no enhancers at all.  lets just get pure AT and teamwork

 

ah maybe too hardcore for me, though i am interested

 

i have never run a TF with enhancements disabled, will try it sometime

[Scarlet Shocker]

The problem with Fitness was that it felt like a penalty - rather than something that needed to be managed. It's a great idea in theory that we'd need these high energy characters to manage their endurance to be able to keep up but it seems that it was unequal - often support characters seemed to suffer the lack of it far worse than those who were upfront. I would regularly get left behind in my early days, kneeling on the floor gasping for breath (sometimes even waiting for my Rest to recharge so I could actually bloody rest) while the Tanks and Scrappers dove directly into mobs (but often came a cropper because they didn't have the back up.)

 

To me it felt like it was a deliberate ploy to take your time out of the game as a player, in order to disguise the relative lack of content. It was a device to slam the brakes on, and felt quite frustratingly artificial. If we go back to our original source material, comicbooks, it's fair to say that when our hero is mezzed - ie stunned, exhausted, held etc etc - his antagonist would then make a gloating speech "I have you now, puny hero, watch while I visit my doom on these poor unsuspecting victims below and then you're next" or similar. But of course, in a team game that doesn't work and a cut scene or a repetitive speech would be more bothersome than immersive.

 

What I've experienced in other games is sometimes more interesting to manage - it does slow the game down but if makes you feel involved - is to have three or even four characteristics to manage simultaneously. Perhaps in our game they might be Health, Energy, Resources (ie the stuff you actually need to make your powers work be they bullets for your gun or spell components etc.) In a way we kind of have similar in Inspirations but they don't quite work the same way and tend to be more of a "good to have" than something to be actively managed. But something to add an additional level of management can often be a good thing - but I get that anything that makes players have to think more is rarely popular amongst the masses.

 

One of the very best things about this game is the Enhancement System. To this day I'm still not sure exactly what they are - it doesn't actually matter but I remember Positron offering Apex an Enhancement in one of the comics as though it was a physical tangible thing. But the beauty of them is they are NOT gear in the classic sense - they don't break but some do wear out over time. I think that system could be expanded upon - especially when it comes to supervillains etc who can use their "MegaPulsitron Superweakening Ray"^TM to effectively nullify their arch enemies' (ie you guys) powers by stripping you of the effects of your Enhancements at specific points in the battle leaving you with just your "naked" powers. That would be a powerful and scary mechanic that would require a team to consider and strategise and much more interesting than dropping patches of blue shit on your head that wipes you out if you don't move quick enough

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I remember Positron offering Apex an Enhancement in one of the comics as though it was a physical tangible thing.

"Take an enhancement from the bin", I think the line was

[Trike]

On 3/23/2023 at 12:29 PM, El D said:

That was the biggest writing fumble of the Incarnate system, to me. The Origin stuff always should have been specific for setting canon & lore but open-ended for player inspiration - instead it was specific for setting canon & lore, and directly determinant for players. 'It doesn't matter what backstory you wrote, this is the ultimate source of why your character has their powers and the only way you will become stronger.'

That Origin of Power arc has annoyed me since the day it went in. “Mutants only came about after we split the atom.” That’s fine if you’re writing your own story, but it’s just dumb for an MMORPG to limit players like that. Even the weasel-words they wrote for Sister Psyche don’t help, and they read almost like whoever was writing that stuff was just lightly fictionalizing their real-life behind-the-scenes disagreement with Miller over the definition of the origins.

 

That goes hand-in-hand with the other major beef I had with the writing: they created game lore to account for game mechanics. Why didn’t we have capes at first? Because everyone was honoring Hero 1’s sacrifice. Just ignore it. We can squint and pretend we had capes all along.
 

 

[Trike]

On 3/24/2023 at 6:28 AM, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

That's a valid opinion - but I'd counter it by saying that I feel no negative impact from PVP in the game as it stands. If I want to take part in PVP, I take part. If I don't, then it doesn't bother me. There is no measurably impact on the PVE game I can detect unless I willingly go into a PVP zone (for example to get Shivans) and somebody happens to try and take me on there, which is entirely their right to do so.

 

I'd be interested in understanding how you feel PVP has actually been of detriment to the PVE game and wider community - and I think it's worth pointing out that there are a significant number of players who enjoy casual PVP and wouldn't go for a completely distinct and separate game just to PVP

I think PvP led directly to CoH’s demise. Imagine the things we could’ve had if they hadn’t wasted so much time and effort on the fakakta PvP zones and trying to balance the unbalanceable. The space station! The moon base! A dinosaur island! Removing the warwalls for seamless transitions like goldside!

 

Plus, PvP just brings out the worst in people. There’s a reason why everyone turns off their mics after their first game of Halo/CoD/Fortnite. It’s annoying at the least and vile at the worst. I PvP all the time. I played a couple hours of Halo Infinite tonight, in fact. But PvE and PvP should be kept separate.

[Trike]

One thing I’d like to see is More Than One Solution. Currently the game is 95% “punch things till they fall down”, with a few minor non-combat things sprinkled throughout.

 

Not only can you kick down a door, you should be able to pick the lock. Kick = 10 points; pick = 10 points. Either solution is valid, giving the same rewards. Propagate this through the entire game. Defeat everyone on the map, get 25 points per defeat, with 100 points completion bonus. Stealth past everyone, get 25 points for everyone you sneak past, 100 points for completion.

 

I’d also like to see a combination of bespoke maps and procedurally generated ones. We know every twist and turn of the warehouse and office maps, but it’d be nice to be surprised when we go in. Not just layouts altering, but also color. It’s always a shock to me to see the blue caves rendered in brown. Exact same map, entirely different feel. Imagine that with a full color palette chosen at semi-random (we don’t want lime green walls and chartreuse carpet with yellow furniture), with rooms and hallways likewise randomized.

 

Storywise, I’d want to see things evolve. Positron has gone to Space. Synapse died. Foreshadow retired. Etc. But mostly, moving beyond the city. World of Heroes. Super Planet. Whatever. Just more variety. Deserts, arctic tundra, tropical islands, and so on.

 

CoH came out years before the MCU debuted and long before the live service model of games became a thing, but CoH2 can certainly take advantage of ideas from those things. A story like Thanos’ — Nemesis, perhaps — where it runs for a while and then it’s done. I like that the original intent of CoH seemed to be that levels = time, but that kind of fell by the wayside. It could still be part of it, but the idea that there’s some Big Bad coming in that heroes have to defeat and then the villain is vanquished, never more to return, would kind of scratch the same itch we get from single-player games. As a business model, it keeps people engaged because they want to see how it unfolds.

 

Barring that, it’d be cool if different villain groups behaved really differently. The Council and Malta are soldiers, so they should be more disciplined, moving like trained military units. Street gangs would be more prone to just taking off, and their attacks are uncoordinated. It’s a small thing, but it would really give different mobs a unique feel.

 

Other games use leveling to further specialize characters. By utilizing a branching system, you can really differentiate characters even if they have the same basic powers. I recently played Gears Tactics, the XCOM-like version of Gears of War, so it’s fresh in my mind, but that 4-direction specialization definitely changes how characters play.

 

For instance, this: https://images.app.goo.gl/2EN8AQXkLcXVFPVg8 versus this: https://images.app.goo.gl/7M9QxMcje7SUg2m3A

 

If we wanted to keep IOs because that’s a flavor unique to CoH, have them behave the same way, but you’d have to choose between, say, 10% Damage increase/2% Accuracy increase and 10% Acc/2% Dam. You get a guy who can KO you if he hits you in one scenario versus a guy who can wear you down with multiple hits. Or 10% Stealth Bonus/2% Health Bonus versus 10% Health/2% Stealth. Are you a sneaky thief or a tricky stalker? That sort of thing.

 

All of this done in Unreal 5.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Trike

[Scarlet Shocker]

8 hours ago, srmalloy said:

"Take an enhancement from the bin", I think the line was

 

Sounds about right but I wasn't gonna go back through boxes just to find one Blue King comic and check it. But my point is they can be a physical thing, but they needn't be which is one of their strengths.

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, Trike said:

I think PvP led directly to CoH’s demise. Imagine the things we could’ve had if they hadn’t wasted so much time and effort on the fakakta PvP zones and trying to balance the unbalanceable. The space station! The moon base! A dinosaur island! Removing the warwalls for seamless transitions like goldside!

 

Plus, PvP just brings out the worst in people. There’s a reason why everyone turns off their mics after their first game of Halo/CoD/Fortnite. It’s annoying at the least and vile at the worst. I PvP all the time. I played a couple hours of Halo Infinite tonight, in fact. But PvE and PvP should be kept separate.

 

 

Honestly, this sounds more like sour grapes than anything and there's no evidence to back up your assertion.

 

PVP was (and seems to remain) quite an enjoyable activity for a good chunk of the population. Back on live I ran an event "Friday Night Fight Club" that became very popular and we'd often have a good bunch of folks trashing one another.

 

I think to also reference the behaviour of people in other games doesn't make your point for this game. In my experience most PVP has been conducted in the right spirit here - I don't have too much experience of it in other games such as you've mentioned but I also played it in a couple of other MMOs which were primarily PVE and they were similarly conducted in good spirit.

 

PVE and PVP can happily co-exist provided that people understand they are two parts of a whole and I genuinely believe that to be true in this game. Given that it's entirely optional it allows people to live and let live

[Scarlet Shocker]

1 hour ago, Trike said:

CoH came out years before the MCU debuted and long before the live service model of games became a thing, but CoH2 can certainly take advantage of ideas from those things. A story like Thanos’ — Nemesis, perhaps — where it runs for a while and then it’s done. I like that the original intent of CoH seemed to be that levels = time, but that kind of fell by the wayside. It could still be part of it, but the idea that there’s some Big Bad coming in that heroes have to defeat and then the villain is vanquished, never more to return, would kind of scratch the same itch we get from single-player games. As a business model, it keeps people engaged because they want to see how it unfolds.

 

I broadly agree with most of your points in the above, but I wanted to focus on this: One of the problems we saw in game was a failure by the Devs to properly complete storylines. Matt Miller one said something like "players were bored" (not a verbatim quote)  with Praetoria so they moved on before completion. But one of the biggest issues with that was the story was quite bad in parts and far too long. They could have got the whole thing down in the issues we had and then moved on but there was a move to chase the newer shiny. We see it in Praetoria/Incarnates, we also saw it with RWZ and an incomplete story there. They never properly developed the in-game memes such as the Nemesis plot; the Fans created that and it could have been a perfect story to create, and get a sense of a completely unique villain group and arch-nemesis (small n, pun intended) but instead a casual hand wave and failure to engage with the fan base.)

 

So you kind of make the point they tried to achieve repeatedly but got bored with it time after time and moved on which I found personally to be very disappointing in terms of Lore and game experience

[benchpresser2000]

4 hours ago, Trike said:

I think PvP led directly to CoH’s demise. Imagine the things we could’ve had if they hadn’t wasted so much time and effort on the fakakta PvP zones and trying to balance the unbalanceable. The space station! The moon base! A dinosaur island! Removing the warwalls for seamless transitions like goldside!

 

Plus, PvP just brings out the worst in people. There’s a reason why everyone turns off their mics after their first game of Halo/CoD/Fortnite. It’s annoying at the least and vile at the worst. I PvP all the time. I played a couple hours of Halo Infinite tonight, in fact. But PvE and PvP should be kept separate.

Part of the problem was some of the more casual players didn't have hami-o's when the arena was opened.  There was quite a disparity between those who had them and those who did not.  Then hammi-o's got nerfed.  

[El D]

13 hours ago, Trike said:

That Origin of Power arc has annoyed me since the day it went in. “Mutants only came about after we split the atom.” That’s fine if you’re writing your own story, but it’s just dumb for an MMORPG to limit players like that. Even the weasel-words they wrote for Sister Psyche don’t help, and they read almost like whoever was writing that stuff was just lightly fictionalizing their real-life behind-the-scenes disagreement with Miller over the definition of the origins.

 

That goes hand-in-hand with the other major beef I had with the writing: they created game lore to account for game mechanics. Why didn’t we have capes at first? Because everyone was honoring Hero 1’s sacrifice. Just ignore it. We can squint and pretend we had capes all along.
 

 

 

I'm willing to cut some slack for the capes bit since it was a minor in-universe justification of tech requirements at the time, plus like you said that's easily enough ignored nowadays anyway - but yeah, the choice of 'sudden introduction of hard, backstory-limiting lore where none had existed before' was really off-putting. The concepts themselves weren't even inherently terrible, they were just implemented terribly. Like, tying the splitting of the atom to mutants in a general sense would have been fine if Psyche had said something like 'splitting the atom seems to have sparked new varieties of mutants.' That could have easily jived, especially considering the Nuclear 90 existing in-setting, along with the idea that some mutations are just overall more common than others - like say, psionic manifestations. Also, the world population boom in the modern age would mean many more mutants, too.

 

It definitely would have been an improvement over 'I'm the mutant you meet to learn about mutants, except I'm actually not one despite it having been my Origin since the game launched. Also, here's random new lore to limit your backstory and explain why this sudden new information doesn't actually contract my backstory of having been born before 1939 or the fact that there's an ancient Roman version of me leading a group of similarly psychic oracle ladies.'

Edited March 30, 2023 by El D

[Oubliette_Red]

On 3/28/2023 at 2:00 PM, MoonSheep said:

no IOs. support and tank ATs are once again important. strategic team play and “holy trinity” mechanics are important for success

 

CoH and CoV exist in the same realm, you can travel to zones within each without needing to change alignment

 

The "holy trinity" built into many games, in my opinion, is the worst design in MMO's. It pigeon-holes creativity in that you have to design a character to fit into a specific role rather than being able to play what fit's your character and it still working. The main reason that a dedicated "healer" is unnecessary in CoH, because you can buff/debuff to your heart's content rather than just being a 'heal-bot'.

 

This was one of the many issues I had playing DDO with friends. The veteran player of the game, whom my friends and I met in the game, they had in-depth knowledge of the mechanics of the game and abilities and would help us design an effective character based on what we wanted to play, but that left them with creating a character to 'fill the holy-trinity' hole rather than a character they'd rather be playing. This was only one of the problems I had with the game and it got to the point where instead of me saying "that's so stupid" about something the game did to "that's so DDO".

 

I do not attribute CoH's lack of success or continuing on not having the god-awful "holy-trinity" mechanic, I lay that failure solely at the feet of NCsoft and their lack of marketing support for a game they didn't understand and fans they failed to listen to.

 

Edited March 30, 2023 by Oubliette_Red
reasons

[Zect]

58 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

The "holy trinity" built into many games, in my opinion, is the worst design in MMO's. It pigeon-holes creativity in that you have to design a character to fit into a specific role rather than being able to play what fit's your character and it still working. The main reason that a dedicated "healer" is unnecessary in CoH, because you can buff/debuff to your heart's content rather than just being a 'heal-bot'.

 

This was one of the many issues I had playing DDO with friends. The veteran player of the game, whom my friends and I met in the game, they had in-depth knowledge of the mechanics of the game and abilities and would help us design an effective character based on what we wanted to play, but that left them with creating a character to 'fill the holy-trinity' hole rather than a character they'd rather be playing. This was only one of the problems I had with the game and it got to the point where instead of me saying "that's so stupid" about something the game did to "that's so DDO".

 

Holy trinity is fine, provided that your game is designed around it from the ground up (coh is not, though a coh2 could be) and the concept is well-executed. The problem is that since the majority of games out there are trinity games, and by Sturgeon's Law 90% of them are shit, that results in a lot of shit holy trinity mmo's.

 

Well-made trinity games can provide superior gameplay to what we have on homecoming right now, which is Holy Unitary gameplay - everyone is a tankhealdps.

 

I'm puzzled that you cite DDO as an example as it is not a very strict holy trinity game. You sometimes need specific character types to pass specific challenges in missions, e.g. a certain quest might require a fighter or other high strength toon to push a lever for a bonus chest, but I recall it's typically only the raids that need a tank and a healer to take care of them. You don't need a healbot when you can get healing SLA's or read a scroll, nor do you need a buffbot when you have deathward armor and boots with charges of Freedom of Movement.

 

Quote

I do not attribute CoH's lack of success or continuing on not having the god-awful "holy-trinity" mechanic, I lay that failure solely at the feet of NCsoft and their lack of marketing support for a game they didn't understand and fans they failed to listen to.

 

NCSoft may not have been the best corporate overlords, but Coh's lack of success was fundamentally due to the flaws of the game itself and the mistakes made by its developers.

1. Lack of effective balance testing; any competent testing would identify enhancement diversity as an issue very early on, for example, not allow it to fester for multiple issues.
2. Lack of effective dev tools to quickly produce content; early missions were painstakingly done by hand, and this was not remedied until Paragon developed the internal tools that would later be released as AE.
3. Lack of clear design vision; tacking on incarnates onto a horizontal progression MMO, really?
4. Failure to effectively monetize the game; the F2P trend hit coh in the middle of its lifespan, and it failed spectacularly to adapt. DDO, which did, is still profitable enough to keep going till this day.

I'm also going to be blunt and say that the gameplay in this game, the actual combat and missions and so on, are lackluster. It's a superhero MMO, yet I can't even pick up a car or barrel and hurl it at the villains, nor even move and shoot at the same time. These are the kinds of issues I'd expect a coh2 to fix.

[Communistpenguin]

14 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

I broadly agree with most of your points in the above, but I wanted to focus on this: One of the problems we saw in game was a failure by the Devs to properly complete storylines. Matt Miller one said something like "players were bored" (not a verbatim quote)  with Praetoria so they moved on before completion. But one of the biggest issues with that was the story was quite bad in parts and far too long. They could have got the whole thing down in the issues we had and then moved on but there was a move to chase the newer shiny. We see it in Praetoria/Incarnates, we also saw it with RWZ and an incomplete story there. They never properly developed the in-game memes such as the Nemesis plot; the Fans created that and it could have been a perfect story to create, and get a sense of a completely unique villain group and arch-nemesis (small n, pun intended) but instead a casual hand wave and failure to engage with the fan base.)

 

So you kind of make the point they tried to achieve repeatedly but got bored with it time after time and moved on which I found personally to be very disappointing in terms of Lore and game experience

I always thought MMO's should have a small division that exclusively creates new missions and minor story content. Like, you should design your mmo in such a way that you ahve a basic mission creation tool that you can just plop down an average person in front of, and they can just churn out new storylines for players to go through on a constant basis. It doesnt need to be huge stuff, but maybe one issue you have a gang war, or a smuggling ring, or they hydra are swarming out of the sewers and players have to discover why. Like, I don't know how big most MMO teams are, but I feel like 1-2 writer/mission designers should be staffed at all times for lite content like this to satiate players between big updates.

[Trike]

17 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

 

Honestly, this sounds more like sour grapes than anything and there's no evidence to back up your assertion.

 

PVP was (and seems to remain) quite an enjoyable activity for a good chunk of the population. Back on live I ran an event "Friday Night Fight Club" that became very popular and we'd often have a good bunch of folks trashing one another.

 

I think to also reference the behaviour of people in other games doesn't make your point for this game. In my experience most PVP has been conducted in the right spirit here - I don't have too much experience of it in other games such as you've mentioned but I also played it in a couple of other MMOs which were primarily PVE and they were similarly conducted in good spirit.

 

PVE and PVP can happily co-exist provided that people understand they are two parts of a whole and I genuinely believe that to be true in this game. Given that it's entirely optional it allows people to live and let live

I haven’t seen anyone PvPing on any server. I saw a broadcast once talking about it, but there were no takers. That was the same during Live after the initial newness wore off. We gave it a decent try, but it wasn’t fun. Perma-holds and jousting just made it aggravating. 
 

That was something I mentioned at the time: in order for PvP to be fair and fun, everyone has to have the same basic damage and hitpoints, which is a non-starter in a game like this. Some wag remarked, “The definition of eternity: two tankers PvPing.”

 

As for the inherent nastiness that comes along with PvP, that’s just part of the competitive impetus that is part and parcel of such things. We saw it here, a lot, and it’s carried through to today - look at the reaction I got to this same opinion last year. And there was that guy who went into PvP just being absolutely nasty to other players, then wrote a hit-piece about CoH’s community. Proving it literally only takes one bad apple to ruin the experience for everyone else.

[Trike]

7 hours ago, Zect said:

I'm also going to be blunt and say that the gameplay in this game, the actual combat and missions and so on, are lackluster. It's a superhero MMO, yet I can't even pick up a car or barrel and hurl it at the villains, nor even move and shoot at the same time. These are the kinds of issues I'd expect a coh2 to fix.

Oh yes, that’s definitely something CoH2 should have: the ability to be properly superheroic. Picking up a nearby car would be amazing. Hurl in the Super Strength set does a decent job of emulating this, by tearing up some asphalt and throwing it. I’m sure it was a limitation of the game engine.

 

But rooting… ugh, yeah, that’s the worst. I could understand it for snipes, but games without it just feel more fluid. Similarly, I definitely would *not* like a block mechanic. They always use rooting for that, but latency often gets me and keeps the block from working.

 

On the other hand, the three-dimensional design of the game designed around flight and super jump is pretty unique. I never get tired of flying around, or leaping off a building just to hit fly right before you auger in.

 

I do know a few new players are surprised that when you make a fire-based character, say, you aren’t fire-resistant. That didn’t occur to me, but I’ve seen it enough to think it must be part of other games. Might be something to consider in a new version.

[Scarlet Shocker]

8 hours ago, Communistpenguin said:

I always thought MMO's should have a small division that exclusively creates new missions and minor story content. Like, you should design your mmo in such a way that you ahve a basic mission creation tool that you can just plop down an average person in front of, and they can just churn out new storylines for players to go through on a constant basis. It doesnt need to be huge stuff, but maybe one issue you have a gang war, or a smuggling ring, or they hydra are swarming out of the sewers and players have to discover why. Like, I don't know how big most MMO teams are, but I feel like 1-2 writer/mission designers should be staffed at all times for lite content like this to satiate players between big updates.

 

Agreed.

 

I think one of the most amazing things about this special project is just how much content a team of volunteers, some who've had to learn on the hoof, have given us since game closure.

 

I risk sounding churlish when I wonder what the devs who were actually paid to make the game did a lot of the time. I appreciate it's not that simple - their QC procedures and sign offs probably took much more time and strenuous testing etc but imagine if this game now had some full on devs who could do the stuff the original team did.

[Techwright]

23 hours ago, Zect said:

I'm also going to be blunt and say that the gameplay in this game, the actual combat and missions and so on, are lackluster. It's a superhero MMO, yet I can't even pick up a car or barrel and hurl it at the villains, nor even move and shoot at the same time. These are the kinds of issues I'd expect a coh2 to fix.

 

The day I hung up the spandex to help beta play the late, could-have-been-great Firefall game was an eye-opener for me.  Combat in motion was not overly difficult and it was fun.  I do think CoH handled rooted attacks better than I encountered in most games of its generation, but would love to get back to a more run-and-gun style like Firefall for any CoH-like game.

 

As a side note, Firefall blew away trinity-style gameplay by allowing you a single character (later 2) but that character could don any battleframe he/she had earned up to that point.  So we were not stuck trying to level up a medical frame solo, and even if we were using a medical frame, it had a strong weapon as well.

 

Regarding comments made throughout this thread about the negatives of the Incarnate system, would it be better to scrap the concept of a Well altogether? The presence of it seems to herald some sort of Incarnate path at some point.

[Scarlet Shocker]

19 hours ago, Techwright said:

Regarding comments made throughout this thread about the negatives of the Incarnate system, would it be better to scrap the concept of a Well altogether? The presence of it seems to herald some sort of Incarnate path at some point.

 

I think many people (myself included) would love that but there's a problem: What do you replace it with? Do you scrap the entire system, or just the concept of the Well itself? It's going to require some tricky writing legerdemain, and there's a serious risk of jumping the shark into a Bobby in the Shower moment. I'm not sure scrapping the entire system is viable, many players have worked very hard for the rewards and would be rightly peeved if they went away.

 

It would be good to see something replace it but... how and what with is a real challenge.

[Trike]

As I was soloing redside last night, it occurred to me that, along with selecting mob size/difficulty, it would be nice to select map size. I had to do 3 missions back-to-back on the biggest maps in the game and good lord it was *tedious*. Two of them were the warehouse map, which didn’t help.

 

I’d take lower/fewer rewards for a more reasonably sized map. Just as the current game adjusts mob density automatically for team size, CoH2 should do the same for map size, which you can override if you choose. Because maybe every once in a while you’d like to just park yourself in a section of the city and spend an hour whacking away at baddies.

[Trike]

1 hour ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

I think many people (myself included) would love that but there's a problem: What do you replace it with? Do you scrap the entire system, or just the concept of the Well itself? It's going to require some tricky writing legerdemain, and there's a serious risk of jumping the shark into a Bobby in the Shower moment. I'm not sure scrapping the entire system is viable, many players have worked very hard for the rewards and would be rightly peeved if they went away.

 

It would be good to see something replace it but... how and what with is a real challenge.

But we’re talking about a sequel game, so anything left in/taken out can just be handwaved away as being in a different universe. In CoH2, there is no Well - supers just are.

 

As for endgame content, there’s no reason 50 has to be the max level. Make it 80 or 100, or even open-ended. (Okay, open-ended is a terrible idea. Make it 100.)

 

But once we get to that level, have some incentives, and build in a parallel game to keep folks playing. A version of the flashback system, where you can play missions you missed, and emulate comics and movies by leveling up to epic stuff. Jumping directly into Avengers: Endgame is bad storytelling, a lesson DC didn’t learn - we need to ramp up. I remember the memes after Captain America: Civil War where people compared the airport fight between two groups of 6 heroes with the splash pages of hundreds of heroes fighting, with snarky “movie v. comics” commentary*, but Marvel was patient and knew what they were building to. Once we got the hundreds of heroes versus hundreds of aliens battle in Endgame, it was earned. And every theatre in the world exploded. So after you save the city, you need to save the country, then the world, then the galaxy. Just go bigger and harder (don’t say it) with each iteration.

 

The original design of CoH knew this, which is why we fight street punks at first and face increasingly difficult mobs until we’re fighting gods and demons. It’s gotten kind of muddy over time, but that basic idea is sound - level up everything as the player characters level up. The specific mechanism of Incarnate stuff doesn’t matter as much as just being able to experience things on a more epic scale.

 

* https://images.app.goo.gl/fgcAq8pnZYUKZoF2A

https://images.app.goo.gl/W8J9sF2hkCTcyWhx5