All Level Radio Content in All Zones

[Steampunkette]

I mean... the title's it.

 

Let my level 50 character do radio mishies in Cap Au Diable and Brickstown.

 

Add a "Holochannel" for Praetorian Zones to do radio mishies there, too.

 

Still the same old madlibs content generation, just anywhere in the world. Even Hazard and PvP Zones because who the heck cares if someone wants to run around Recluse's Victory fighting pockets of Council or Circle of Thorns bases on instanced maps?

[golstat2003]

Interesting. I actaully thought HC already removed the zone restirction on this, but I've never tried to run radios in a non-50 zone on a 50. 😛 

 

Agreed. This would be a nice change.

[Steampunkette]

I've also been informed that Message Man and Clockwork A87952 are the Praetorian repeatable mission contacts.

 

Which is great! Now just expand their level range from 1-50...

[lemming]

There are repeatable missions in the PvP zones as well.  And iirc, they scale up to your level, but pretty sure it's a limited foe selection.

[tidge]

Morality tip missions can be run in any appropriate zone (for the alignment) that doesn't qualify as a "hazard zone"(*1). Occasionally a morality mission will send a player to another zone.

 

Radio/Newspaper missions are tied to the contact, which will eventually offer a level appropriate safeguard/mayhem mission. <- This is almost certainly the reason for the level limit on Radio/Newspaper missions.

 

(*1) For blueside, IIRC morality tip missions can't be run in the Hollows or Croatoa. They can be run in Faultline.

[Lazarillo]

45 minutes ago, tidge said:

Morality tip missions can be run in any appropriate zone (for the alignment) that doesn't qualify as a "hazard zone"(*1). Occasionally a morality mission will send a player to another zone.

I'm not sure if something changed in the code, but I find more often than not, I get bounced around.  I do feel like it used to be a lot "better" at this.

 

I've definitely been thinking about this a lot lately, and how much it'd be nice to have "hometowns" for my characters by guaranteeing Tip missions give missions in the zone, as well as opening up the paper/scanner.  I'm sure there's some fear that, kinda like the AE buildings, devs would insist on not doing it in Atlas or Mercy, but even expanding it to everything but that, would still be really nice for making each part of the cities feel more lived in.

Edited December 3 by Lazarillo

[lemming]

There are some tip missions tied to certain zones, but most will show in the zone you are in.

[Steampunkette]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

Morality tip missions can be run in any appropriate zone (for the alignment) that doesn't qualify as a "hazard zone"(*1). Occasionally a morality mission will send a player to another zone.

 

Radio/Newspaper missions are tied to the contact, which will eventually offer a level appropriate safeguard/mayhem mission. <- This is almost certainly the reason for the level limit on Radio/Newspaper missions.

 

(*1) For blueside, IIRC morality tip missions can't be run in the Hollows or Croatoa. They can be run in Faultline.

Blueside they let you do stuff in any zone.

 

Redside, every level 41+ tip mish is in Grandeville, sad to say!

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

Redside, every level 41+ tip mish is in Grandeville, sad to say!

No, they aren't. 'Exotic Armor Schematics' and 'Seeds of Destruction' always send me to Port Oakes. (Edit: I always do the Rogue choice, so I don't know about the Villain choice.)

 

Edit again: And the morality 'Easy Job, Easy Money' always sends me to St. Martial.

 

Edited December 3 by Rudra

[biostem]

I wonder if they could simply add a new contact that functions like the classic radio/newspaper, but solely utilizes whatever zone you are currently in.  By doing this, it would also make Kallisti Warf a viable co-op zone for such content...

[Dev Unitas]

So while I understand the desire, this is one of those suggestions that, for me personally (and not the whole team necessarily), I currently think would be a design decision that would come to the detriment of the game. Radio missions being locked to level ranges encourages players to move through the city. If all radio missions were level agnostic, it would lead to players picking the most optimal zone for its doors/enemies/etc and sticking to it. You already see that at 40+ (and even broader when accounting for sidekicking) - players could be in a variety of places, (Grandville, Peregrine, or even the repeatables in Cimerora x2, Dark Astoria, Shadow Shard - understandably) but they almost always prioritize Peregrine.

 

Typically broad-touch level scaling in games does the opposite of what it sets out to achieve, because most players follow the crowd, and the crowd follows the lead, and the lead will usually seek out optimal play. It also robs the implicit sense of progression that comes from moving from one space to the next. If we were to implement this, I would predict 80-90% of radio groups would take place in one zone- whichever they determine is the most optimal for radio missions in that setup. Suddenly, the devs have a motivation to try and bring all radio missions in all zones on par with eachother - a colossal effort that also increases homogeneity as a result.

 

Of course, this is all, itself, a statement painting with very broad strokes. There are always exceptions, and there are always ways to do things better, and perhaps the gains outweigh the losses in the right circumstances. Nevertheless, that's where I personally stand on this sort of change.

And none of what I've said means we'd never do it- it would just come with a lot of debate, conversation and potential problem-solving internally, most likely.

[biostem]

31 minutes ago, Dev Unitas said:

So while I understand the desire, this is one of those suggestions that, for me personally (and not the whole team necessarily), I currently think would be a design decision that would come to the detriment of the game.

Here's the thing, (and you touched on this a bit) - Players already congregate in the Pocket D AE or PI, and there are already some missions/arcs that send high level players back to AP.  Even if starting zones were omitted from this, (a la the removal of AE from those zones), what about giving Kallisti Warf some life via a special co-op radio contact/system?

Edited December 4 by biostem

[Lazarillo]

4 minutes ago, Dev Unitas said:

Radio missions being locked to level ranges encourages players to move through the city [...] You already see that at 40+ (and even broader when accounting for sidekicking) - players could be in a variety of places, (Grandville, Peregrine, or even the repeatables in Cimerora x2, Dark Astoria, Shadow Shard - understandably) but they almost always prioritize Peregrine.

See, that seems backwards, though.  Once you hit level 40, if you're Blueside, Peregrine's pretty much the only place in the city to do anything in the first place.  Want to do something in IP?  Too bad!  How about Steel Canyon?  Nope, nada.  There is no moving through the city because there's no place else to go if you want to do some superheroing/villaining.  And that, I think, has far more to do with the second half of what you said than anything: Cimerora, DA, and the Shadow Shard are all incredibly narrow, in terms of theme.  If you've got a concept to play City of Romans, then Cimerora is no doubt your bag, but if you want to take down stuff that's more traditionally associated with the setting, Peregrine and Grandville are the only choices.

 

"We won't let you play in Port Oakes because maybe people wouldn't play there anyway." does not really make much sense, particularly when even if someone wants to play in Port Oakes, they can't.

[Rudra]

16 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

See, that seems backwards, though.  Once you hit level 40, if you're Blueside, Peregrine's pretty much the only place in the city to do anything in the first place.  Want to do something in IP?  Too bad!  How about Steel Canyon?  Nope, nada.  There is no moving through the city because there's no place else to go if you want to do some superheroing/villaining.  And that, I think, has far more to do with the second half of what you said than anything: Cimerora, DA, and the Shadow Shard are all incredibly narrow, in terms of theme.  If you've got a concept to play City of Romans, then Cimerora is no doubt your bag, but if you want to take down stuff that's more traditionally associated with the setting, Peregrine and Grandville are the only choices.

 

"We won't let you play in Port Oakes because maybe people wouldn't play there anyway." does not really make much sense, particularly when even if someone wants to play in Port Oakes, they can't.

In my experience, that is only with radios. I usually find myself hopping between zones blue side if I'm chasing alignment tips. Not constantly mind you, but I do find myself being sent to different zones depending on the tip. (Edit: Mostly to Steel Canyon or Skyway City with a smattering of Atlas Park.) (Edit again: And there were a few tips that if I checked them while in Talos Island, the mission was in Talos Island.)(Edit yet again: I have a tendency blue side to head to Talos whenever I'm out of tips to smack around Warriors for more tips. So I wind up checking them in Talos, and there have been multiple times where the mission wound up in Talos.)

 

Edited December 4 by Rudra

[Dev Unitas]

11 minutes ago, biostem said:

Here's the thing, (and you touched on this a bit) - Players already congregate in the Pocket D AE or PI, and there are already some missions/arcs that send high level players back to AP.  Even if starting zones were omitted from this, (a la the removal of AE from those zones), what about giving Kallisti Warf some life via a special co-op radio contact/system?

 

7 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

See, that seems backwards, though.  Once you hit level 40, if you're Blueside, Peregrine's pretty much the only place in the city to do anything in the first place.  Want to do something in IP?  Too bad!  How about Steel Canyon?  Nope, nada.  There is no moving through the city because there's no place else to go if you want to do some superheroing/villaining.  And that, I think, has far more to do with the second half of what you said than anything: Cimerora, DA, and the Shadow Shard are all incredibly narrow, in terms of theme.  If you've got a concept to play City of Romans, then Cimerora is no doubt your bag, but if you want to take down stuff that's more traditionally associated with the setting, Peregrine and Grandville are the only choices.

 

"We won't let you play in Port Oakes because maybe people wouldn't play there anyway." does not really make much sense, particularly when even if someone wants to play in Port Oakes, they can't.

 

I think that these issues that are being described are better handled with more content, rather than broadening the ranges of existing (repeatable) content. IMO it's possible to have the zone flow and progression that currently exists as your level progresses, while also expanding the amount of content available to characters within a specific level band into new spaces, with new content. It may be more work for us, but its, frankly, more exciting and enjoyable work for both us and players! At least, compared with rebalancing and adjusting existing paper/radio missions to be equally valued by the playerbase.

[biostem]

What if a contact in each zone could basically exemplar/malefactor you to the max level of that zone, thereby allowing you to run said radio/newspaper missions as normal?  Unless you turn off XP, you are going to outlevel lower level zones before you do all the content, there, forgot the aforementioned radio/newspaper missions...

[Dev Unitas]

1 minute ago, biostem said:

What if a contact in each zone could basically exemplar/malefactor you to the max level of that zone, thereby allowing you to run said radio/newspaper missions as normal?  Unless you turn off XP, you are going to outlevel lower level zones before you do all the content, there, forgot the aforementioned radio/newspaper missions...

That's stepping into a different territory, which is the whole current situation with Story Arc level ranges being incredibly easy to overlevel. That's something I'd definitely like to see us find a remedy for, on my end, and it's certainly not an issue that's gone un-discussed internally.

 

Way I see it, things like this where there seems to be an obvious, clear remedy, there's just a difference between doing something 'simple' and fast, and doing something cohesively and well. But again, very different conversation, though that applies to the main discussion as well.

[Lazarillo]

4 minutes ago, Dev Unitas said:

I think that these issues that are being described are better handled with more content, rather than broadening the ranges of existing (repeatable) content.

I think when you get down to brass tacks, that might sound nice but isn't something that works in execution.  When there's one, maybe two updates per year, each with one arc per side at best that's one and done, after which Ouro becomes the only option, it just won't compare to what we're talking about here, even if it were great and wonderful and perfect content that was universally beloved by all (and don't get me wrong, y'all have come up with some good ones, but also, I'll be frank, some real stinkers).  Doubly so if it just leads to resentment on the part of the content creators who feel existing content needs to be "rebalanced" in the first place to push people away from it and into the new stuff that some players may not jive with for whatever other reason.

[Rudra]

55 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

I think when you get down to brass tacks, that might sound nice but isn't something that works in execution.  When there's one, maybe two updates per year, each with one arc per side at best that's one and done, after which Ouro becomes the only option, it just won't compare to what we're talking about here, even if it were great and wonderful and perfect content that was universally beloved by all (and don't get me wrong, y'all have come up with some good ones, but also, I'll be frank, some real stinkers).  Doubly so if it just leads to resentment on the part of the content creators who feel existing content needs to be "rebalanced" in the first place to push people away from it and into the new stuff that some players may not jive with for whatever other reason.

More content can also include more tips and expanded radio options.

[tidge]

9 hours ago, Dev Unitas said:

Typically broad-touch level scaling in games does the opposite of what it sets out to achieve, because most players follow the crowd, and the crowd follows the lead, and the lead will usually seek out optimal play. It also robs the implicit sense of progression that comes from moving from one space to the next. If we were to implement this, I would predict 80-90% of radio groups would take place in one zone- whichever they determine is the most optimal for radio missions in that setup. Suddenly, the devs have a motivation to try and bring all radio missions in all zones on par with eachother - a colossal effort that also increases homogeneity as a result.

 

The above was part of the response that I found particularly insightful. It echoes the old Matt Miller statement about (some) players always seeking the easiest path to the most rewards for the least effort.

 

Personally: When I am looking for a quick mission to fight a lot of enemies (x8) with a level 50 I almost always choose a morality mission over a radio/newspaper mission. A lot of the reasoning for my choice is that the eventual alignment missions are something I find rewarding (for merits, as well as for the content), but I also like being able to run )most of them) them in zones I choose. There are definitely zones that are smaller/easier to navigate in than others!

 

9 hours ago, biostem said:

What if a contact in each zone could basically exemplar/malefactor you to the max level of that zone, thereby allowing you to run said radio/newspaper missions as normal?  Unless you turn off XP, you are going to outlevel lower level zones before you do all the content, there, forgot the aforementioned radio/newspaper missions...

 

Aside from the Safeguard/Mayhem options, my experience has been that the Newspaper/Radio missions all pretty much the exact same content for all levels but with different enemy groups (and sometimes dialogue strings), one of:

• Defeat Boss and Guards
• Click Glowie (and defeat Boss spawn)
• Escort NPC
• "heist" / "investigate heist"

[srmalloy]

20 hours ago, tidge said:

Morality tip missions can be run in any appropriate zone (for the alignment) that doesn't qualify as a "hazard zone"(*1). Occasionally a morality mission will send a player to another zone.

There are a fair number of alignment tip missions that will send you to other zones; Atlas Park and Independence Port are the two I've gotten repeatedly.

[tidge]

1 minute ago, srmalloy said:

There are a fair number of alignment tip missions that will send you to other zones; Atlas Park and Independence Port are the two I've gotten repeatedly.

 

Blue side also has the level 20-30 mission which is almost always in Talos... but these are the exceptions. See the post by @Rudra mentioning higher-level red-side. I often out-level the red-side 20-30 (there is just too much fun content red-side in this range to do many alignment missions!) but I do recall being sent from Sharkhead to either both Port Oakes and/or Cap Au Diable via a TIP mission (that wasn't the unlock for Mortimer Kal).

[srmalloy]

11 hours ago, Dev Unitas said:

So while I understand the desire, this is one of those suggestions that, for me personally (and not the whole team necessarily), I currently think would be a design decision that would come to the detriment of the game. Radio missions being locked to level ranges encourages players to move through the city. If all radio missions were level agnostic, it would lead to players picking the most optimal zone for its doors/enemies/etc and sticking to it.

This could be addressed by having an option flag that would cause your radio missions to generate for any zone up to your level, so that if you were level 50, you could get a radio mission that might send you to any zone in Paragon City, and if you were level 25, you could be sent to any zone up to Talos Island/Independence Port. "Realistically", police radio requests should be able to be picked up outside the zone where the trouble is occurring, and requesting help of a level appropriate to the threat. If you don't set the option, you get radios as they are now, only in the zone you're in, and only in a level-appropriate zone. Having the radio missions randomize across the city prevents people from cherry-picking the zone for the mobs to fight.

[Lazarillo]

Also, for reference on the whole, "Tips grant missions in the zones you pick them, with specific, rare exceptions, so you can use them to play in the zone you want" thing.  I've been running a fair number lately.  Here are some I picked in St. Martial:

 

Then some more sets in Mercy:

(how's that for irony?)

 

And finally, a couple more sets in Nerva:

 

So, all in all, not a single Tip spawned a mission in the zone I was in.  And there's approximately a 2/3 chance, by this reckoning, that you're gonna get stuck back in boring ol'Grandville.

[Rudra]

11 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Also, for reference on the whole, "Tips grant missions in the zones you pick them, with specific, rare exceptions, so you can use them to play in the zone you want" thing. 

No one said that. What I said was:

 

20 hours ago, Rudra said:

(Edit again: And there were a few tips that if I checked them while in Talos Island, the mission was in Talos Island.)(Edit yet again: I have a tendency blue side to head to Talos whenever I'm out of tips to smack around Warriors for more tips. So I wind up checking them in Talos, and there have been multiple times where the mission wound up in Talos.)

There were times when it happened. Why it happens, I don't know. It isn't consistent, but it did happen. Tips seem to be set to specific zones, but sometimes a tip I check in the zone where I got it even though the zone is too low level for me, specifically Talos Island because that is where I gather them, kept me in Talos Island.

 

(Edit: Unless you are referring to @tidge's post, which I'm not sure about that post's intent.)

 

Edited December 5 by Rudra