essay EXP gains should be shared to all players in a particular neighborhood

[gabrilend]

6 hours ago, megaericzero said:

Yup. I was speaking vaguely about progress as a whole. Leveling, badging, enhancing, incarnates. Completely severing effort from rewards will do the opposite of incentivizing engagement.

 

The issue with your suggestion as posted is the complete lockout of merit earning outside of a daily handout. The part I quoted was to respond to the assertion that people would be upset largely or solely because of instant gratification.

 

 

Oh, also: HC is free to sign up and play so people are just going to make infinite accounts and reap infinite merits under this proposed system.

 

I don't understand how they could get infinite merits quickly and easily - can you clarify? The archvillains/heroes wouldn't spawn very often, and when they do they're in a random place that wouldn't necessarily be noticed right away. And once it is, they're only one step above bosses, so it's unlikely that people would be able to swarm them before being defeated. It'd be more like, a nice surprise sometimes for people who are dispersed away from everyone else. Or for groups who got lucky, I guess.

 

If you're concerned about the fact that reward merits are being given out in general, do you have another idea? I figured a single merit was a small enough reward that was still valuable that it would work out. Maybe a salvage drop or extra INF? That feels a little too much like "the same things you were getting from street sweeping, just more of it" which kinda defeats the purpose of having a valuable reward given out for hunting down the archvillain/heroes.

[gabrilend]

11 hours ago, megaericzero said:

Having agency over character progression is a sizeable chunk of the drive to play an RPG. Otherwise it's a trophy collection with extra steps.

 

EDIT: or a sandbox.

 

CoH is a sandbox to me : )

[megaericzero]

35 minutes ago, gabrilend said:

I don't understand how they could get infinite merits quickly and easily - can you clarify?

Sorry, Gabrilend. Clave Dark 5 and I are on a tangent unrelated to the thread topic.

[McSpazz]

I haven't been able to keep up with the thread, but I wanted to share something in case it hasn't been mentioned.

When the game was first released, there wasn't an aggro cap. The reason it was added is because tanks were running around entire zones, aggroing as many people as possible, and then using a waiting group to nuke them for a massive return. This obviously won't be possible here, but I think that whenever considering implementing something this massive, player exploitation should be considered completely. Let's not forget what AE did to the game when it first came out.

[gabrilend]

2 minutes ago, McSpazz said:

I haven't been able to keep up with the thread, but I wanted to share something in case it hasn't been mentioned.

When the game was first released, there wasn't an aggro cap. The reason it was added is because tanks were running around entire zones, aggroing as many people as possible, and then using a waiting group to nuke them for a massive return. This obviously won't be possible here, but I think that whenever considering implementing something this massive, player exploitation should be considered completely. Let's not forget what AE did to the game when it first came out.

 

You're right, and there's only so much we can imagine before seeing the design in the hands of the players. I guess... Maybe an extra-long period of time in the testing branch would be necessary? To identify all the various ways it can be abused.

 

I had a thought back on page 2, but I didn't really see a good place to put it. I realized that with the proposed EXP distribution algorithm, there's a potential for abuse.

 

The algorithm was stated as such: when a mob is defeated, 50% of the exp reward goes to any players present, and 50% is distributed to players who aren't present.

 

I realized this is flawed. Imagine if there's a Mastermind soloing in one corner of the neighborhood, and 15 blasters and a tanker running around vaporizing anything that crosses their path. The 16 players would get 50% of the exp reward from any killed monsters, which would be duplicated for each of them since they were all present and accounted for.

 

However, the Mastermind in the corner, being the only other player in the zone that is *not* present, would get 50% of the reward from each kill as well. This wouldn't work. If a Sentinel walked in to some third corner of the neighborhood, the Mastermind would get 25% of each kill the group of 16 made, but that's still far too much. I realized the algorithm needed to be adjusted, and I realized that in doing so it could be made simpler.

 

Instead of segmenting the EXP distributed into 2 portions, 50% for the players present and 50% for the players not present, what if 50% went to players present for the kill and 50% was distributed to each player in the neighborhood? The distinction is subtle, but it negates the potential abuse by giving everyone in the neighborhood the same portion of the distributed EXP. I believe this would be a more fair system.

[iErrie]

I think your Idea has merit but is lost on those who dont want to see the game drowned out by botters. Curious on your thoughts on something Ive been meaning to write up:

What if every zone has Zone Quests that when conditions are met, triggers a Public event. Loved Warhammer for this and think it really does draw people out, especially with the way CoH handles event mobs.

For an example:
Players kill 10,000 Hellions in Atlas park >
Big Bad Bro spawns 10 explosive barrels around the city protected by Event Mobs >
If all barrels are NOT found within time limit (pick one or rando) apply a debuff on zone for 1hr / increase boss spawns / Burning buildings appear / use imagination for some grim Hellion fate
if all barrels ARE found within time limit spawn Big Bad Bro Event boss to defeat

Obvo more thought needs to go into each zone and each mobtype in zone, but would have heavy emphasis on 'kill lots of x' to trigger event which would in turn help re-elevate Street-sweeping! Also think it'd be awesome for those that are present, helped, and are within level range to get a nice exp bonus! Could even add a nice little scoreboard to get your heroes name out there!

Also disclaimer, Im a pretty newish player so Im not sure of all the ins and out, do's and donts so if theres already something like this in the game/already suggest, please ignore me lol

[McSpazz]

36 minutes ago, iErrie said:

I think your Idea has merit but is lost on those who dont want to see the game drowned out by botters. Curious on your thoughts on something Ive been meaning to write up:

What if every zone has Zone Quests that when conditions are met, triggers a Public event. Loved Warhammer for this and think it really does draw people out, especially with the way CoH handles event mobs.

 

If nothing else, I think this is a great alternative to what was being suggested. It requires players actively attempt to start something (discourages inactivity), changes the required activity after the event is activated (makes botting more difficult), and, as an added bonus, makes the zone feel more alive. It could also give more reason to go to zones not frequently traveled (such as hazard zones).

The challenges:
Issue 1: The original poster wanted to avoid making enemies disconnected from level as to stay faithful to a zone's level range. This means that something would need to be done to prevent over-leveled characters from being able to contribute to the event. Likewise, similar safeguards would need to exist to prevent over-leveled characters from triggering the event.
Possible Solution 1: The devs find a means of opting in to a zone and/or district's maximum intended level in its range and make these events fall into that zone/district's maximum level. Some method to forcibly lower your own level to match a zone's could also serve as a means of allowing players to run radio/paper missions in zones they had previously out-leveled. That could bring traffic back to lower level zones not just through zone events but through paper/radio teams.

Issue 2: The return on investment should be comparable to just running a mission team. I don't think trying to bring the exp/influence rewards on par with missions is viable since street sweeping is going to require a massive bonus to match the efficiency of running down a straight path.
Possible Solution 2: Introduce a new type of aether you get from these events that, like monsterous aether, can eventually be converted to prismatic aether. If issue 1 can be solved, this would encourage level 50 characters to willingly lower their level to try out other open world events.

[gabrilend]

4 hours ago, iErrie said:

I think your Idea has merit but is lost on those who dont want to see the game drowned out by botters. Curious on your thoughts on something Ive been meaning to write up:

What if every zone has Zone Quests that when conditions are met, triggers a Public event. Loved Warhammer for this and think it really does draw people out, especially with the way CoH handles event mobs.

For an example:
Players kill 10,000 Hellions in Atlas park >
Big Bad Bro spawns 10 explosive barrels around the city protected by Event Mobs >
If all barrels are NOT found within time limit (pick one or rando) apply a debuff on zone for 1hr / increase boss spawns / Burning buildings appear / use imagination for some grim Hellion fate
if all barrels ARE found within time limit spawn Big Bad Bro Event boss to defeat

Obvo more thought needs to go into each zone and each mobtype in zone, but would have heavy emphasis on 'kill lots of x' to trigger event which would in turn help re-elevate Street-sweeping! Also think it'd be awesome for those that are present, helped, and are within level range to get a nice exp bonus! Could even add a nice little scoreboard to get your heroes name out there!

Also disclaimer, Im a pretty newish player so Im not sure of all the ins and out, do's and donts so if theres already something like this in the game/already suggest, please ignore me lol

 

That idea sounds fun, but it also sounds like a lot of work to implement. Lots of content to create manually. Perhaps if there was a more programmatic way to create these random events? I like the idea of events, and we already have some of them (like oh no a building is on fire go put it out with your ice powers) but each of them had to be manually created. There's a lot of zones in the game.

 

The idea presented in the original post would require significantly less content generation, basically zero in fact, but would require a lot of engine work. Different skillset, I think. So it really depends on what kinds of things the dev team wanted to work on.

 

I'm a programmer so engine work sounds infinitely more fun to me than writing quests and placing invisible barrels in every map : )

[McSpazz]

11 minutes ago, gabrilend said:

That idea sounds fun, but it also sounds like a lot of work to implement. Lots of content to create manually. Perhaps if there was a more programmatic way to create these random events? I like the idea of events, and we already have some of them (like oh no a building is on fire go put it out with your ice powers) but each of them had to be manually created. There's a lot of zones in the game.

 

The idea presented in the original post would require significantly less content generation, basically zero in fact, but would require a lot of engine work. Different skillset, I think. So it really depends on what kinds of things the dev team wanted to work on.

 

I'm a programmer so engine work sounds infinitely more fun to me than writing quests and placing invisible barrels in every map : )

With a team as small as Homecoming's, if you are going to implement new features, it's usually best to do so in such a way that it either enables the creation of further features down the line or makes future development easier. That's why I pointed out that finding a way of imposing SKing down via the zone/area you are in could be beneficial to revisiting enemy groups. It's also why I think that implementing new ways of interacting with zone events as Errie described seems like the most likely as it is expanding on something that already exists, could enable new functionality, and requires fewer new systems than trying to balance outright zone wide exp sharing.

[UltraAlt]

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

I believe that mechanics should be added which encourage players to engage with the overworld as if it was any other piece of content, for the developers certainly intended as such.

 

I don't know if it is still the case, but the amount of xp earned in the open world was - at least at one point - drastically reduced compared to door missions.

This was done due to server strain. I'm not sure that was ever reversed.

 

I did a good bit of street sweeping for a while, but people weren't too motivated to do it once the xp was reduced.

 

Based on the server strain issue, I doubt that more mechanics will be added to encourage open world play.

 

We already have the various events, giant monsters, and fire fighting events. 

Mainly only the events draw a lot of attention.

Even adding the Monstrous Aether Salvage for Monster Hunting hasn't caused a huge increase in Giant Monster hunting teams.

I don't think anyone much cares about the fire fighting events. (I list this by itself as it isn't like the other events. I think there is one like this fighting electrical gremlins on the villain side, but I haven't done that since before the Sunset.) I do it sometimes when I have a water or ice based character as their powers can put out fires.

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

However there is little reason for players to wander around on patrol looking for trouble. Their attention is too often drawn to missions and task forces to bother with such trivialities,

 

If you want more hunts, run the Origin arcs. They have tons of hunts in them.

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

and indeed most players would rather hang out in Atlas Park waiting for something interesting to happen. I believe that this impulse is fundamentally due to their desire to play on a team, and Atlas Park is just the best place to be around a lot of people.

 

Are you playing on Excelsior?

 

I don't see many people hanging around in Atlas, but I don't play on Excelsior that often.
I do play on all of them ... well, not really Indom. I haven't teamed up on there for years.

 

With /lfg, there is no reason to be on the map with the most characters.

 

Myself, I pretty much am hanging out where I'm working on a day job doing character work of one type or another, running missions/taskforce/monster hunts, or recruiting to do something.

 

Hanging out in Atlas after like level 10 looking for teams is kind of an AE baby thing, and there isn't even an AE in Atlas any more - so honestly, I'm pretty confused about this statement.

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

My first suggestion is this: share all exp gained from fighting enemies to all players in the local neighborhood.

 

I'm definitely against this - even for teams.

It encourages leaching.

If you want to doorsit, get on an AE team.

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

placing players who mark themselves as "looking for patrol team" in the team finder into auto-generated groups on a per-neighborhood basis.

 

How about you recruit if you want other players to join you?

I know many have astrophobia, but it isn't that bad to recruit or lead teams.

If more players did it, then people wouldn't have to stand around wherever waiting for teams.

 

If there is content that you have that you would like teammates for just recruit.

As you indicated, characters are just standing around waiting for someone else to do the recruiting.

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

Currently, patrol teams tend to group up and snowball around fighting purple or red enemy groups

 

...errr... where are you see this openworld behavior going on?

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

Important to note is that the lackey/malefactor and sidekick/exemplar system must be disabled for these types of auto-generated teams.

 

yeah, well, that's definitely unlikely to happen ... that is to say ... I seriously doubt it.

 

On 4/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, gabrilend said:

Thank you for reading.

 

I appreciate you taking the time to make your suggestion, but I strongly disagree with you on this one.

[Rudra]

55 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

I don't think anyone much cares about the fire fighting events. (I list this by itself as it isn't like the other events. I think there is one like this fighting electrical gremlins on the villain side, but I haven't done that since before the Sunset.)

The Cap au Diable Gremlins aren't part of an event. If you defeat 100 of them, then Deathsurge spawns. So they are just a means of summoning a giant monster like the protesting Scrapyarders in Sharkhead Isle and the Spectral Demons in Nerva Archipelago.

[UltraAlt]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

The Cap au Diable Gremlins aren't part of an event. If you defeat 100 of them, then Deathsurge spawns. So they are just a means of summoning a giant monster like the protesting Scrapyarders in Sharkhead Isle and the Spectral Demons in Nerva Archipelago.

 

Yeah, like I said, it has been forever. I couldn't remember clearly. 

[Laucianna]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I know many have astrophobia, but it isn't that bad to recruit or lead teams.

 

I will say as someone who often leads teams and leagues especially during zone wide events like Rikti raids, Trick or Treat, Mapserver etc. Leading teams or leagues is probably the hardest thing to do in game 😄 I personally like the OPs suggestion but ONLY if it does not require someone to form a team/league, otherwise I'm out 🙂

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, Laucianna said:

Leading teams or leagues is probably the hardest thing to do in game

 

I don't know about leading leagues, but leading teams is pretty simple because most of the time the other players don't listen to you at all.

It's more of a task to recruit than to have the star when the team is doing whatever it decides on doing.

[McSpazz]

On 4/24/2024 at 1:16 AM, UltraAlt said:

We already have the various events, giant monsters, and fire fighting events. 

Mainly only the events draw a lot of attention.

Even adding the Monstrous Aether Salvage for Monster Hunting hasn't caused a huge increase in Giant Monster hunting teams.

I don't think anyone much cares about the fire fighting events. (I list this by itself as it isn't like the other events. I think there is one like this fighting electrical gremlins on the villain side, but I haven't done that since before the Sunset.) I do it sometimes when I have a water or ice based character as their powers can put out fires.

Even if I'm not in full agreement on the OP's method, I do think that more means of encouraging open world play would be really nice. ESPECIALLY blue side given how many zones it has that just go untouched. 

[UltraAlt]

40 minutes ago, McSpazz said:

Even if I'm not in full agreement on the OP's method, I do think that more means of encouraging open world play would be really nice. ESPECIALLY blue side given how many zones it has that just go untouched. 

 

I go back to ...

 

On 4/24/2024 at 1:16 AM, UltraAlt said:

I don't know if it is still the case, but the amount of xp earned in the open world was - at least at one point - drastically reduced compared to door missions.

This was done due to server strain. I'm not sure that was ever reversed.

 

On 4/24/2024 at 1:16 AM, UltraAlt said:

Based on the server strain issue, I doubt that more mechanics will be added to encourage open world play.

 

My comments were based on the OPs suggested systems.

 

That being said, even I have suggested adding Giant Monsters into zones that don't have them ... even in Altas in the currently little used factory district.

 

The problem with areas on the hero side that ....

 

49 minutes ago, McSpazz said:

that just go untouched

 

... is that back around the time that Galaxy City was removed from the game "funneling" began.

 

The DEVs were actively trying to force the players into smaller game play options to concentrate the player base.

This included diverting away from contacts altogether by using the Police Scanner/Newspaper mission system and not sending heros to their origin contacts to start gameplay.

 

I'm pretty sure that the DFB was added after I stopped subscribing (before the Sunset) because I don't remember ever doing it. Sewer sweeping, sure. DFB, no.

 

Originally, you couldn't just walk up and get a mission from any of the origin contacts; you could only get missions from your origin contact. So if you and a friend made characters with different origins, they would have different contacts. Go to far on friend 1's origin story without at least getting the story arc on friend 2's contact and you outlevel friend 2's contact and can't run any more of their missions; likewise, if friend 2 gets a story arc and their missions are technically outleveled by doing friend 1's missions, then all of the missions for friend 2 have grey enemies in them or outdoors on hunts for that matter.

 

And that leads us back to players simply have shown distaste of contacts sending players on hunts over the years and especially hunts in other parts of the city.

 

Which leads us back to, as a part of the funneling efforts and players' comments about not wanting to get sent to zone all over the place contacts, some areas were either essentially "shutdown" by not directing players to contacts in those zones OR by contacts into those zones OR raising up the level of a zone so that it becomes an end-game zone (Dark Astoria).

 

The reason to go to a zone/part of the City is to run missions and not just generally run around in the streets ... unless, of course, you are hunting for badges ... but it isn't exactly badge hunting if you use a program to put the badges on your map or go to the wiki and get a /loc to thumbtack them on your map.

 

There were plenty of reasons to go to zones, but they were removed.

That being said, I go back to liking the idea of having at least one giant monster per part of the City. The mechanic to have players doing something to cause giant monsters to spawn seems to be a team building mechanizm as well. Several giant monsters do this, some eventually do it without any player evolvement due to infighting of enemy groups eventually fulfilling the same conditions that players would to initiate the spawn.

 

The new "find contact" button still funnels players, but not as much as it used to.

The Origin arcs still can't be followed if the contact chain is broken. You don't get the option in the "find contact" listing to go to your character's origin contact at level 20 if you didn't run the character's origin contact found in City Hall.

 

Of course, the villains didn't even get origin arcs. The DEVs knew that the villain player base was going to be smaller. The "funneling" of the player base started from the get go. I haven't play much villains side since I've been back, but I haven't been over to Fort Cerberus since I've been back. That seemed to be a fun area to battle in for a team of villains.

 

If we throw the need for "funneling" aside, the easiest way to promote teaming in the "forgotten realms"...err maybe I shouldn't use that term ... unused zones is to use the same kind of Police Scanner mechanism ... because they aren't available in these unused zones because those zones are Hazard Zones.

I think all the door missions for the Hazard zones are still in the game. I think there are still ways to unlock the contacts and run those missions, but they can be overlooked and outleveled easily. What if the police scanners in the Hazard zones offered 3 random missions that already exist in that zone? What if completing 3-5 missions in a hazard zone spawned a zone AV boss as an open world mission in the hazard zone instead of a bank mission? The mission puts the marker on the spawned AV on the map. Maybe even have the AV move through the zone on a set route and the players have to chase them down and defeat them before they leave the hazard zone in order to avoid failing the mission? And, of course, some temp power and badges awarded for completion to draw in the badgers.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

On 4/20/2024 at 2:01 PM, Snakebit said:

Facts. There was a time when door missions didn't have a bonus, and the downtime with travelling across multiple zones to get to a door mission made street sweeping the preferred method for xp gain. You could get on a team in minutes, but if you wanted to do missions, you'd wait.  The day they patched in end-of-mission rewards, street sweeping died forever.

That...really doesn't make any sense to me.  The advantage of missions is the higher density of mobs and the control over their level.  Even street-sweeping in a danger zone like the Hollows with larger groups should fall well behind missions *without* end-of-mission rewards, because the mob-density and level can be so much higher.  I mean have you looked at how low it is?  It's like one extra group of mobs.  Maybe street-sweeping was better when you didn't get a real travel power 'til 14, but we get them at level *4* now.  And why not street-sweep on the way to the mission if travel is so slow and cuts into efficiency?

[PhotriusPyrelus]

Stupid double-post...

Edited April 25 by PhotriusPyrelus

[Rudra]

38 minutes ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

On 4/20/2024 at 1:01 PM, Snakebit said:

Facts. There was a time when door missions didn't have a bonus, and the downtime with travelling across multiple zones to get to a door mission made street sweeping the preferred method for xp gain. You could get on a team in minutes, but if you wanted to do missions, you'd wait.  The day they patched in end-of-mission rewards, street sweeping died forever.

That...really doesn't make any sense to me.  The advantage of missions is the higher density of mobs and the control over their level.  Even street-sweeping in a danger zone like the Hollows with larger groups should fall well behind missions *without* end-of-mission rewards, because the mob-density and level can be so much higher.  I mean have you looked at how low it is?  It's like one extra group of mobs.  Maybe street-sweeping was better when you didn't get a real travel power 'til 14, but we get them at level *4* now.  And why not street-sweep on the way to the mission if travel is so slow and cuts into efficiency?

Once upon a time you couldn't set your difficulty. Everyone was locked at +0/x1 and spawn sizes in missions only increased if you had a progressively larger team.