Stuff , suggestions, etc.

[GarysBerries]

Some spoilers present within. 

 

1. Still hearing a bunch about the way the mission dialogues are designed. 

Suggestion - Designing them in a way in which it is strictly accept / deny / continue for more info - and scrapping the parts that speak for one's characters. SECOND PART- any place where one's character could speak or has an option to speak / there is "banter" (especially if we / yall are going towards more cutscene-y stuff like the one in IP that has Lusca outside the office window and the character can walk out the dude or whatever) make it like MAD LIBS where we can generate a response that will be added into the cutscene and / or pop as a chat bubble. Give a morality choice / path and fill in the blank to continue within x amount of time or it will be auto filled ( option for no time limit for those who like to take their time and craft with one another / solo. Maybe a vote to continue if it gets stuck with an afk or some weird / dumb thing). Perhaps even a history of chat choices per character. And for those who don't want to make up their own dialogue - have the additional option for a morality type choice / a predesigned dialogue option. Missions will then most likely fractal off into whatever morality choices seem to fit given development and direction. Consensus reasoning being "your pronouns are not my pronouns" and "your dialogue is not my character" and stuff like that. Forcing peoples characters through kind of kills quite a few of them for no good reason it seems and just kinda kills the vibe in general.

Understandable choices, and of course people can abstain from content that is written that way and helping another through content kinda gets around that issue as well. Most of the content I've played that way has been decently designed and pretty fun overall though. I had a bunch of fun helping people through a full clear most Aeon SF. So nice job there. Almost did a 1star on a tank solo but ripplesurge would heal just in time and we were at a stand still - probably could have used a bunch of insps and daggers but I try not to use that stuff too much. Almost got downed by Apex there. I did use a positron to beat Apex though. Bunch of good stuff overall. Some stuff seems rushed and there's better balance to be had imo but I imagine there's quite a bit of pressure to produce so keep making it worth it. thanks.  

 

2.  Hearing worries about streaming.

Suggestion - Make a Streaming / streamer tag akin to the helper / help me / roleplaying. Giving people the option to be accepting or denying of streams. Perhaps even a new streaming forward shard where its known and the norm, leaving those who'd prefer not to be caught on a stream to themselves. 

 

3. It seems there may be a movement towards homogenizing the powersets a little too much per your intents to (paraphrasing) "not have the same powers with just different skins" - Especially with armor sets and blaster secondaries to my knowledge so far. As well as a lot of recoloring of animations for powersets that seem to be better off new (fist based melee stuff comes to mind). I think y'all caught that though, so, nice. I have to check again but I think I caught a time control swirl in pyrotechnic. Unless it has like a time control - esque slow / element it kinda seems out of place - cool design with the colors and firework-y stuff though. Even the math might be going towards too much homogenization from set to set. Time will tell.  

Cool Ideas and I'm sure you all have a ton more. there's already a bunch here - take the time, keep it active, clean it up, do what needs to be done and I'm sure yall will be flying with new ideas and content and loving it if you aren't already. Crashes weren't terrible and still are a decent thing for large buffs after durations expire for oh shit scenarios. Sets that retain crashes if it is deemed too harsh perhaps go towards like a 75% drop like willpower's 50% and removing the inability to regenerate (unless it makes sense) so it can be crash and replenish instead of the 20 seconds of nothing plus the crash. someone's working that, so, nice. The new ideas with the no crash shorter duration buffs are a nice add in the right place though, so, nice again. Invulnerability seems fine as is. If it changes maybe make it some sort of Auto buff thats not too OP. Something that fits "unstoppable" better than it already is.

Once y'all get some good animation people if you haven't already (seems likely there's at least a few) let em go wild adding alternates. The more the better. Just check em and go. Onward to a vast library of customization where people will get lost trying to copy someone's character. 

 

4. Powersets in general

Suggestions / thoughts / catches -Things like laser eye sets that could be beam rifle swaps or whatever I think it better in the long run to take the time and make a laser eye set, or something like a flame sword set, etc. keeping them more precise and unique to themselves rather than, the same sets with different skins and I also think that's the standard here. 

-A bunch of things could have super minor number changes like a BS using the flame sword changing to 90%lethal and 10%fire or something like set specific number "tweaks"; small but enough to satisfy type of thing. Leads to Set specific tree fractals and mission arcs for specific changes / tweaks / visual changes. Seems kinda cool. Tough to add for all but worth it if possible. Like a mission line that ends with incarnate like tweaks to a set. maybe lesser in value but similar in nature. I.E. Energy blast gets like a swirling flame element or adds a few negative energy blasts because they "studied with a rogue void hunter, a warshade, a mage, or something".

-Energy blast specifically is one of my favs but it has this thing where it shoots 3 blasts has 3 sounds and 2 numbers pop up. Other things like katana slashes and dual blades have appropriate number ticks show up. Mild annoyance - still a fun set.

-Mind control. Every enemy-targeted-power I've come across so far auto targets a new enemy when the enemy targeted is dead and I click it / press its button and operates like standard TAB setting. The lift or whatever it's called does not. I'm guessing it has something to do with telekinesis and the lifting / slamming of all enemies affected by telekinesis; otherwise idk rn. medium annoyance when playing a mind control. Of course I can TAB but I tend to position myself to generally target the closest enemy and skipping a TAB hit in those cases. tabbing / clicking or whatever if I'm off. That being said it is out of "custom" with every other power in the game. Suggestion - fix it. 

-Gravity control. When held the lift animation doesn't really lift it like smacks them on the ground first. kind of a bummer. I think it makes sense in some way thinking about the set and gravity and stuff but it just annoys me. suggestion fix it by making it actually lift the enemy held. Flying enemies are tricky with that. Just slam em and place em back in the hold. which gets me onto power specific sound toggles to toggle sound on and off per power and then probably gets to alternate sounds; not through mods but in-game. although good mods are nice for quick fixes and random shit. cool to allow them. thx to the modders - im using a few. upgraded / new office plants - tyvm. spice of life.   

- places that are ripe for further customization like "fire control" or whatever there's no reason there can't be further clarification of T1-T9 and having more "mutually exclusive" fractals / choices if not a whole second set entirely. Literally Fire Control 2 or whatever. Should open up a bunch of ideas even in elements / weapons / armors that already exist. keep it balanced. y'all know.  Hellfire sets? shield melee?

 

5. I still think the math in general or something like a formula or an input is wrong somewhere if not multiple places but I can't place it so if I find it I'll call it. If y'all know please fix it. 

The power info tabs still need an overhaul IMO. making it more specific as to what the numbers there are referring to. Like a hover over tip to explain the base case / giving the formula. Like x DMG vs white minion with no resistances on average or like the wiki has started doing with 1.23 scale dmg or whatever they do. Just to clarify. it will save a bunch of time in the long run for everyone. Most of it's good but enough has me questioning oversight / proofreading. 

Something seemed to be up with staff melee and skyripper? the t9 and its dmg numbers comparatively to others in the set via the info and the displayed in-game numbers but again id have to recheck those. I remember verifying it to myself though. either it was too weak or too strong for what it said it does compared to what it actually was doing when i compared it to the t2 attack with equal dmg enhancement numbers. suggestion - check it out.  

 

6. Suggestion - Adding global events on a running calendar that people can auto que into. 

Like an Itrail type thing that's a pop up event to que into. Invasions, random things, etc. on a rolling schedule month to month. free em up!  

Champions online has something similar. I'd imagine other games do too. 

Again fixing the random / auto que for trials / sf / tf / etc - good thing.  Add a toggle for speed run / no speed run (free style / clear most / RP/ whatever else).

With the auto que / random que - making it cross shard would seem to be nice. probably just load into / shard swap into a server wide area / holding space / shard or something - Specific name colors per shard to help with name duplicates and a letter designation. I.E.  WaterMan(EX) in red WaterMan(EV) in blue WaterMan(I) in green WaterMan(T) in yellow etc. or something like that. The shards are kinda different universes already anyways.   

 

7. Clarify intellectual property for characters specifically - I hear worries here. 

Everything in the game is Homecoming property except the character concepts and Ideas of the creator I.E. the player / Character designer / account owner. Seems to be unclear and If i'm wrong it probably should be clarified. I can see how its probably purposefully ambiguous. But I'd guess you'd lose that legal battle on something like "thats like Gibson saying they own the rights to x, y, z's music because they played on one." Would be a sad day if that were ruled "true".  Depends on the judge and stuff. It's a tricky thing. But I'm sure a lot of people would like to take some of their characters and put them into something of their own without the CoX stuff without having to delete the character in any sort of asset gain scenario. They could just delete the character but as long as they make a fresh costume and rework the powers enough the concept should still hold as their own with no issue. Probably would lead to some cool branches / fractal universes if appropriately good relationships are fostered and upheld. Understandable if CoX doesn't want their stuff used elsewhere, and they'd always have to give permission in any case.   

 

8.  An option to level via the player menu and opting out of having to go to a trainer.

This would lend to a more self taught / self trained type character who then goes out to help or villainize or whatever. 

would also help with congestion issues. yeah bases, but also this.  

 

9.   S.T.A.R.T. vendors and BOTLER available for bases. As well as non-affiliated vendors.

Also, making items in the base editor able to be turned into a portal or like a port-key type thing a-la Harry Potter. I can kinda hide the dimensional shard in some items. If there's a better way I haven't found it. But a coffee mug in some random shelf in a base as the "teleporter" would be cool and stuff like that. and just making the teleporters a rolling list even capable of having all locations available without having to place all the beacons while still having the beacons an available option for those who like the look / feel of them.

Really basic pre-set bases / apartments would probably be a good idea for the less-inclined-to-build-a-base types.  

 

10. Still hearing a bit about Rogue / Vigilante start options in the character creator. Seems worth it to bypass null-the-gull. And for character concepts in general. And maybe drop the change alignment requirement from 11 missions to 6 or something for those who like to switch that way. Building in Morality choices would seem to be a continued part of this game. maybe leading to a specific alignment "running the show" for x amount of time before a reset but that might be too much. 

Further clarifying what a hero / rogue / vigilante / villain "is" seems necessary although super tough to do given the "grey area" vibe.

Rogues should probably get a INF boost (5%?) and are probably the most cut and dry in explanation "if we wanna do it and it pays well we're all for it" - appropriate boosts for other alignments might be a good idea aside from the specific powers per alignment.  

Which gets into hero and vigilante stuff in the rogue isles and rogue / villain stuff in paragon. Probably would have to get into PVP toggles for stuff like that. And the Praetorian free for all and wrapping up all the time travel and getting to "now". Who shot first?! Evil-Positron? Why have I not figured that out yet?! WHO STARTED THE WAAAAAAARRRR?!?!?! not who Maria Jenkins says but who actually - even if its the same. Oh yeah and get these fuckers out of the camera in cutscenes. I get that y'all wanna throw your dicks in Marauders mouth, pelvic jiggle or whatever, and I get the joke. ha. ha.  It ruins it and spoils in 8.75 times out of 10. more so if it's somebodies first run through the content. "by the way he blows up the whole place REMEMBER GUYS."   SPOILERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR    EOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEO ok we get it go shoot your ranged attack at a green mito and tell everyone not to fly when you're flying. side bar done.   BUT I HAVE THE DROP DOWN MENU FOR RAID LEADERS!!!!!!!!! MY MACROOOOS!!!!! ALLLLLL WILLLLL HELLLLP WE KNOW ALLLLLLLL!!!!! BOW TO ME!!!! 

y'all weren't even the ones to take down Hamidon. WERE YOU?!

ok onward. much love.

 

11. Masterminds / sets (in general, again)

-Insect mastery, "lesser" super mastery like a bunch of lower level supers randomly thrown out for x duration, dinosaur mastery, ghost mastery, spirit mastery, Storm mastery, support masteries like not much dmg but all supports or medics or something, and dummy mastery like dummy tanks to throw out and traps and decoys and stuff like rc cars and shit have come to mind so far. so many.  

-Elemental weaponry is always cool- water armor / water melee / water control. 

-Negative energy ranged set (not dark "shadowy" negative energy).

-Archery melee for blasters or hybrid adds for sentinels - like arrow stabs, bow hits / slices and kicks and shit. 

-Trick arrow needs something tweaked; I just haven't quite figured that out yet. All in all a fun set though; I've always liked it and the recent adds are welcome. 

-A teleport customization for fire, minimal fx (nothing just a silent no fx no frills teleport), and tunneling others would be welcome for sure. tunneling superspeed might be cool too. goop can kinda get water and blood and oil and stuff. 

-More close the gap type moves like charges and pulls or repositions. even single target varieties. 

-Allow more power pools so I don't have to "skip" combat teleport or can add a second travel power without skimping on something "worth it". 

-Making KB worth it without KBtoKD even though I think it still has some pretty good value in places other than annoying a really annoying tank. 

-Good luck figuring out and balancing more enhancement sets. they seem very worth it to continue and add for further customization. Cupid's Arrow was a nice add nothing crazy. cool to try something different. There's a shit ton that can be done with that. Perhaps giving every power x number of slots and rebalancing would fix the headache but it doesn't seem terrible. The OPs will stick out like a sore thumb.  

-portal / teleport sets. portal melee or void melee come to mind here. like a ranged set that's melee through portals or shit that comes out of portals to attack like marvel vs capcom? team attacks but through portals one offs or cthulu-y type stuff.

-More natural origin epics and power pools seem to be in line.

-Jetpack / wing options baked into fly. rocket boots are a nice work around but the colors need to be reversed so the color scheme can allow for the jet stream to be the appropriate color. otherwise add a third color option specifically for the jet stream of the jet boots. 

-Don't add a heal to SR on tanks / brutes? or any for that matter but it needs something for the "oh shits" on tanks and brute-tanks and the crash of t9 is too much to be sustainable in this case; I'm just not sure what yet. maybe a like mini-rest where sensing the danger and avoiding it perfectly one is able to take a brief rest, a moment of respit and recover some health or prepare for some perceived danger by bracing for impact allowing for an absorb. Although I am surprised at how well my (not dark or rad) SR tank is doing, gonna see if aid self can have enough -interrupt to work well enough just in case. we used to do it on blasters / scrappers so probably at least ok. The bolas set thing from the wiki? utility belt or whatever with the heal would fit that perfectly but that might be OP. but again more natural origin stuff and a bunch of ninja stuff probably needs to be gotten out soon. Tech and gadget stuff is a little light too. 

-Experimentation probably needs a bit more dmg to the attacks or some minor debuff in line with other toxic stuff in the game. this power pool can have a bunch added to it too, so , cool. The injections need to be applicable to self as well as most buffs in any set at whatever percentage is deemed fair. This might be solved by adding an auto / perma element to something like bubbles or thermal for the user / applicator. like Thermal shield gives the applicator 15% of the buff at all times, Aura optional. 

-Force of mastery or whatever its called with the mental push and the force wall and the mighty leap. those attacks probably need a minor dmg boost or something. 

-Power pools in general seem to be a waste in at least one of them more times than id like. maybe restructure to have the t4 available after 1 selection and reworking them and / or making the t1 and t2 selections better across the board.  

- More Epics and epics need a rework / rebalancing and would probably be better off as new things, not just catchall grabs from other ATs. although some of them are nice a lot of them are MEH for EPICS... definitely some good fits though. equivalents on each "side" so someone doesn't have to make their hero a villain just to get electric mastery through mu on an elec/elec tank. and a bunch of other stuff that just makes sense. perhaps blue side patron equivalents with different powers of course.  expanding the epic power selections set by set and increasing the epic sets available. 

-making a way to have the mandatory t1and t2 selections be viable via some status element or something. maybe making t1-t3 available lvl 1 and 2 so people could grab the cone and skip some shit they really would never use in many cases on certain characters. some are still ok like beam rifles for the -regen but still.  

-Char on fire control getting a -5% acc and a mutually exclusive option for like a fiery vortex cage on the hold (higher dmg shorter hold?). same for cinders. 

-BroadSword but a different style with different origins and animations.

-spear sets might be nice for sentinels even ranged ATs if its like spirit spears or something intelligibly replenish-able as well as melee with tweaks for each. 

-energy / electric / spirit / flame / whatever bow or archery sets

-Titan weapons different options having appropriate dmg to the choice. fire titan weapon =fire dmg / smash or lethal if not just fire dmg and the atomic crusher one does like energy, smashing. and the fire sword being shoved in the ground having flames shoot out the other end. or making those exclusive sets themselves. cuz a big ol hammer thing like Xu Zhu from dynasty warriors would be bad ass and a giant axe is kinda way different than a giant sword, especially a giant flame sword. and electric swords would be cool sets! just stuff that makes sense, again. Probably a time crunch / resource thing, maybe not. 

-Hybrid primaries for sentinels kinda like yall did with the whips on demons. a smattering of close / midrange / longish range stuff.

-A bunch more. If y'all aren't blocked I'm sure you'll come up with a ton. Less broad per set seems to be better in most cases. like no catch all sets but taking the time to make each weapon / ranged / whatever as unique as possible leaving room for an alternate set with the same dmg type / element but different styles. otherwise its going towards a huge group of catchalls with a bunch of mutually exclusive t1-t9s which might not be bad but that doesn't seem to be this game.  

 

12. Don't be afraid of micro tweaks on the numbers to further diversify powersets and fine tune things. like 2.75% here or 7.34% there. It seems y'all might be stuck within certain percent shifts when something roughly in the middle would likely be a better fit. Getting better. Probably understood and noted.  

 

13. Lores / alpha and incarnates

Definitely need balancing and there are a bunch of ways to expand and add here as I'm sure you're aware of.

I'll have to check again but one of the alphas - the one with fire dot proc wasn't proccing correctly in one of the T4s. One of them procced correctly and did a DOT the other one technically procced but would only be the first part of the DOT and not the full DOT. I forgot about that for a while and haven't checked again but I definitely had to go with the lower proc rate to get it to be a full medium DOT not just the first number of a medium DOT. suggestion- check it and fix it if it still exists. add lores and balance them. add more incarnate stuff in the existing categories that seem fair and balanced.  

 

14.  More places in game for people to run their own fresh without the "norms" and "this is the ways" creeping in and taking over. 

just seems this would be nice to have as an accepted "norm" that people without much experience or knowing every nook and cranny or the super duper speed run tactics can run / start things and people would just help and go with the flow. or telling all these people who want to tell you how to play your character / control your character without a good reason to STFU and GTFO. I probably even need to check myself there sometimes. A lot of people seem to think speed runs are "the way" ( they're great when they're great) a lot of people can't seem to play fresh. it has to be how it was "last time" "same place same time same verse blah bleh" which just riddles the whole thing with assumptions, traffic jams, confusion, and a bunch of people being left out and just wasting time / being used for merits or something. although good practice is good practice; there's a fine line that should be found each and every time. mild gripe. better communicate. takes time. blah blah. keep it real y'all. Sorry I don't care that you are making your cat chicken soup no matter how wonderfully bizarrely perfect that may sound and actually be. I hope your cat feels better. Make a chat channel for team / raid random shit / life shit and keep the business clean and clear and just let it go. And quit jumping up on shit that's not yours. side bar 2 done. ah jeesh so much. 

 

15. More color options, and more sliders / new faces, perhaps even body types. 

some of the costume options seem like they might need a 3rd color option and one of the shoulder pads if I remember correctly the barbarian ones? they're like steelish looking or something. They don't seem to accept color changes when it seems it should clearly be the inner part one color and the outer part another. I know the body types are floating around like the Larger / "fat" bodies, bestial bodies and even full on bird bodies / animal bodies might be nice. Especially for some sort of shapeshifter set(s) / designs. more sliders and adding more colors to the creator seem like a plus no brainer.  

 

16.  Adding the ability to hide ones build / bio / player card via the options menu. Perhaps a request system but that might get annoying.  

There's a bunch of creeps yo. 

 

17.  hmmm what was it?

 

18. If I could pay y'all enough for your good work I would. I hope someone can. 

 

19.  Probably some more stuff but I can't remember rn so I'll throw it in if I can. 

 

 

All in all thanks to the OGs for the game and thanks to everyone who has kept it going, alive, and wants to do what's good and right to make it one of the best games out there. Here's to it getting even better for everyone involved. pretty sure some of this is in the works but that's some of what's been floating around in my head.    

 

That's like your opinion (suggestion), man.

Cheers. 

[lemming]

You need someone to edit.   I mean, you put a lot of work into it, but you started losing it yourself. Example: #17

 

There are some ideas in there that aren't bad, just buried in a lot of superfluous words.

[Rudra]

And maybe tone down your suggestion into multiple topic specific threads instead of an everything all at once thread. I stopped reading and caring halfway through.

[Uun]

TLDR 😁

[arcane]

I’ve added this post to my goodreads list for when I have a few hours

[tidge]

I'm forwarding these suggestion to the City of Titans team, I hope implementing them doesn't delay the next patch.

[JasperStone]

[biostem]

Is there a TL:DR version?

[Jacke]

5 hours ago, biostem said:

Is there a TL:DR version?

 

The best example I can think of a TL;DR was from a Traveller adventure put out years ago.  The Player Characters discover this long and rambling journal that bears on the MacGuffin they're wanting to find.  So they feed it into a computer to summarize it.  The first very tight summary was two words:

 

We died.

 

Now there's a story hook if I ever saw one.

 

 

[TheMoneyMaker]

Suggestion: break these ideas down into individual posts. There's too much going on in the first post to have a reasonable discussion about any of it beyond telling you TL;DR.

 

Also, do I give a thumbs up to your post for the suggestion about starting as a rogue/vigilante, a Thank You for the insects MM idea, or a thumbs down for hiding one's "build" (power choices and even set bonuses isn't a build without actual slotting info)? Seriously, why did you feel like slapping all of these very different ideas into one post would gain any kind of traction or attention for anything other than being TL;DR?

[Oklahoman]

16 hours ago, biostem said:

Is there a TL:DR version?

 

Ran it through ChatGPT for you:

 

Quote

Summary:
You're suggesting mission dialogue be streamlined to accept/deny/continue structures, with optional "Mad Libs"-style input for player expression in banter or cutscenes, including moral choices and custom or prewritten lines. This supports roleplay and avoids forcing character voices on players. There’s also feedback on improving powerset diversity (avoiding homogenization), offering more customization (visuals, power effects, builds), and refining game systems like power math, incarnates, and the UI. Additional asks include streaming tags, better alignment/starting options, more global events, QoL fixes (e.g., teleporters, vendors, rogue starts), and a push for creative freedom, character IP clarity, and social features like hiding bios or reducing community gatekeeping.

 

[Ghost]

23 hours ago, arcane said:

I’ve added this post to my goodreads list for when I have a few hours

Good news

Oprah is adding it to her Book Club!