City of Heroes 2: elctricboogaloo

[Sakura Tenshi]

Bumping this thread a little with more stuff I'd do in a sequel/modern remake of City of Heroes.

 

Completely ripping off My Hero Academia, one of my ideas for Statesman would be that by the start of the hero story he's been slowly weakening from injuries and strain he's built up over his life and a rather nasty one taken in the tutorial's storyline. Statesman would be a recurring contact throughout the levels, not only giving you missions (small arcs usually around 3 missions long, though the missions themselves might be a bit long and be filled with choices) but could also be called for help (similar to how Vincent Ross and Roy Cooling arcs let you call on previous contacts) in some form or another, whether it's calling on his own contacts to help you, some direct intervention (like bonus objectives being automatically handled by him like rescuing rogue police officers trapped in a burning building), or even bribing the player's affection with sweet temp powers. Ultimately it culminates to the secret of Statesman's creeping mortality getting out and the player has to effectively step in, with a little denouement mission sometime later where you rescue/help him with a gang of street thugs who kidnapped someone.

 

You then play a personal storyline as Marcus Cole, walking the streets of Paragon at night seeing all the strong heroes who are more than able to make up the slack for both him and all the Freedom Phalanx. The last objective after getting to his house is 'Sit down and rest for a moment'.

 

And that would basically be what could be called 'The Main Story Questline' for my idea of a revamped Blueside. For players who hate Statesman, he's rewritten as a better person and in a position of humility. Also gets Darth Malgus'd (if you're familiar with SWTOR) so he stops being part of the storyline in post-launch content (along with the content that would not involve him). People who liked him as an idea get a better chance to know him as a person and associate with him more, and he gets a better sendoff than walking into an obvious trap and going "oh, okay, guess I should just give up. *flump!*"

 

A possibility (depending on how I'd end up handling the whole concept, really) would be that your work with Statesman also means he sees you as someone he can entrust the secrets of Incarnate Power to. He can't give the power to you himself, but can give you what he's learned, which, even without Incarnate power being in base game content, would be effective foreshadowing. Unless you've made a bunch of asshole choices and killed innocents over your time working with him or just didn't ignored his storyline, in which case you would get nothing and need to run a separate arc to learn anything. (Because I want to take a bit of the Bioware approach to storytelling in that you can Dun Goof hard and end up missing out on additional content without the use of time travel.)

[Herotu]

• A make-your-own-origin story system. It needs to be flexible enough to incorporate abstract hokum like people popping into existence from another person's dream or being drawn into substance from a pencil sketch or whatnot. I could bang on about this idea, but I think you get it.
• Some way to tie in your choices at character creation to the game you're playing - not just combat-mechanic-wise, but in story terms. Perhaps people you care about are part of the origin, and they are always a great weakness for baddies to exploit! Players need some emotional tie-in, despite always crying that they want to be the avenging angel of death who's family were wiped out in the origin story so now they have no weakness... convenient, that. Also... massive cliché.
• No traditional experience/levels. Progress is great and it's important to learn your way into the powers slowly, but I hate the way modern games are Korean-style grindfests. I think that's the worst thing any game can be - why be human if you're going to act like a machine?
• Minigames. Minigames everywhere. I'm a massive Sid Meyer fan and the key to a great game is to secretly make it a lot of smaller games under one roof!

I will stop with those.

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by Herotu

[Galaxy Brain]

17 hours ago, Herotu said:

• Minigames. Minigames everywhere. I'm a massive Sid Meyer fan and the key to a great game is to secretly make it a lot of smaller games under one roof!

Specifically, fun things to do with Travel Powers. I mean, how iconic is it to have Super-Speed races??? 😄 

[Wild Claw]

4 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Specifically, fun things to do with Travel Powers. I mean, how iconic is it to have Super-Speed races??? 😄 

DCUO did that, having minigames based on flight & superspeed (I don't remember if they had any for acrobatics, their third travel power choice). Of course, the way they implemented it meant you really needed to plug a controller in rather than using a keyboard to get the necessary agility to pull them off.

 

Basically that was the second thing that made DCUO stick out to me as something they did that made it vaguely interesting. The attempt to make consoles & PCs use the same base game mechanics. The first thing was they seemed to base the game on the 80's versions of the  canon characters, which I thought curious but appreciated as the 70's & 80's was my peak DC comic-reading time.

[Techwright]

Base travel power: Adhesion -- able to stick to cave and building walls and surfaces, allowing for fighting in new directions.  Combined with Super Speed, the speedster can now run up/down buildings and tall vertical surfaces without the need to buy a jetpack for those top areas.

 

Second tier travel power: filament swinging.  (concept under development)  You have a tech kit that has two strong-tensile filaments  each with a small anti-grave device at the end.  Firing/throwing these up into the air, the a-g unit will lock onto a position and hold it while you swing beneath it to fire off the second filament, then retract as the second takes control.  One tap deploys the device a second tap stops it at the length you want and starts the swing.  Alternatively, you can fire the a-g device at an opponent to act as a fighting projectile, then reel back in.  In caves and tight spaces, the filament can be fired forward of your position and rapidly reel you in towards the a-g unit for a speed move.  Note this isn't web-slinging (which I'm not sure we can legally do), nor is it technically grappling hook, since both of those require a surface to grip.  The anti-grav "baton", let's call it, allows for mid air swings, no vertical surface necessary.

[Dahkness]

I’d love to see the removal of hasten. 

[Marshal_General]

One of the things I love about DCUO is that you can have your powers come out of your weapons, but I would want that as an option you can set for each power.

[Sakura Tenshi]

On the note of travel powers, one of my own ideas for a City of Heroes 2 travel powers included:

 

• fast travel waypoint system

Not sure if the way points should be physical things in the world (like maybe public transport stops so those without travel powers could use it) or just locales you tag  and interact with through the map.

 

• all travel powers would automatically possess a combat mode and a long ranged mode

So basically one’s travel power is a three for one pick. The long ranged mode would work a bit like long ranged teleport does now with an interruptible wind up animation followed by your character flying, rushing, vanishing, etc. off, becoming invisible and phased out* while a menu offers you a selection of zones to choose from, possibly including the extra options of going right to your base or even the mission door.

 

*this is mostly so you’re not just standing there like an idiot like with the present long ranged teleport while you select your target. This would also have a “spawn-in” animation appropriate to the power like speedsters appear in a flash, skidding to a stop over a short distance, flyers would drop down from above, super leapers would drop down and do the three point super hero landing, and so on.

[Sakura Tenshi]

another thing I'd do for a City of Heroes 2:

 

Hazard Zones would be clearly defined by being levelless zones in which an endless series of large-scale zone events take place, representing the push and pull of the battle between authorities and outlaws in the area. There would be repeatable contacts who would give out a small array of mini-arcs, similarly scaled to be effectively 'infinite' in level that could help push things in favor of one's preferred side of the law, and allow street level heroes and villains to remain street level should they wish.