Dev Diary - A to Zoe Task Force: Digging Deep Into Mission Design

[Cobalt Arachne]

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Howdy folks, it's that villainous spider person again, Cobalt Arachne!
Unassuming local dev from the Homecoming Team!

 

Hope everyone's enjoying Issue 28, Page 3! I'm quite pleased we were able to get a second Page release out this year, especially one that adds task force content to the Kallisti Wharf zone, really rounding it out as it's own content piece.

 

Speaking of... That's what today's Dev Diary is going to be focused on, the Marigold 'Zoe' Langston Task Force! Or ZTF for short!

 

This goes without saying, but if you haven't played the Marigold 'Zoe' Langston Task Force yet, and want to remain unspoiled, turn back now!

The remainder of this Dev Diary will be discussing elements of that content in-depth, so if you want to experience the content fresh, please do so before reading further!

 

With that wrapped up! Let's dig into things!

 

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Where Did It Start?

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Game design starts with brainstorming and prototyping!

 

I'd recently been retracing my childhood gaming catalogue as an adult, now with developer eyes keen to deconstruct examples of design toward seeing what might be useful lessons about the games I loved most and how I might apply what I enjoyed about them to towards my future work.

 

While spending some time with Unreal Tournament, I came across an example where they achieved an early 3D 'moving' map by way of making the ground textures scroll to create the illusion of relative movement.

This was something I knew could be done in City of Heroes, so my experimentation for this content started with 'What would a mission map in motion look like?'

 

My first experiments with this was actually to use a boat on a flat plane of scrolling water, to create the illusion of the boat traveling at high speed. This worked out well enough, but I was trying to consider how it might translate into a playable City of Heroes mission, and felt like the concept might work better if the map was on top of cars or a train instead of a boat. Players could travel from car to car and move forward to complete the mission, which I felt would be a satisfying way to set things up.

 

Once I had decided a land-based vehicle and the train idea came into my vision, the thought that hit me right away was 'Use the Nemesis Mole Machine to create an underground train drilling through a tunnel!', and with that I was off.

 

It started as a platform in a long tunnel, then it evolved into a multiple platforms. I was simply having so much fun building the map (which at this point had not been committed to any content plans yet, I was still just in prototyping) and before I knew it there was a train with over 12 cars, a massive drill at the front, and the decision had been made:

My next piece of content was going to feature Nemesis and use this train map.

 

I've wanted to do a piece of Nemesis content for quite some time, even sneaking little Nemesis things into other works...

Such as the hidden Flat Nemesis in the Rikti War Zone revamp, or the dangerous Chaos Spiel during the Valentine's Wedding flashback mission.

 

Having always loved Nemesis, I was ready to give him a feature content that would make him shine!

 

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Content From Concepts

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So now I had the finale map built, but content needs to be more than that, so I started thinking about what kind of content I wanted to deliver. This was going to be the first follow-up to the ASF chronologically, so it was going to involve the remaining Gold Brickers.

For the Dr. Aeon Strike Force (ASF), I sort of used that content as my 'City of Heroes Development 101' to familiarize myself with as many internal elements of the game as possible.

The ASF as a result was a very long content piece that satisfied my desire at the time to create a deeply-engaging, longer focused content offering, but for the new Nemesis task force I wanted to deliver something a little more lean, a little more focused.

 

The ZTF then became the foil to the ASF, A->Z.

Aeon threw everything at the wall to learn how it worked and to see what stuck, but Zoe would deliver exactly the components it needed to in-order to deliver a shorter but engrossing experience. Towards that, I decided early on the content would be shorter... Limiting myself to only feature three or four missions, rather than the seven the ASF had.

 

The train mission was already locked-in for the finale, so that left me with two or three other missions with which to craft a compelling narrative, and deliver an experience that capitalized on what made people love Nemesis.

 

For the first mission, I decided to borrow from the Imperious Task Force, and the first mission for the Zoe Task Force is very similar in structure, rescue ten hostages, and fight a harder target at the end of the map.

Since this is Kallisti Wharf content, I felt it was warranted that both the new office map tileset be featured somewhere, and also the Blackwing Industries be featured in the content, as they were Kallisti Wharf's signature villain group.

The first mission really stands to serve as a postcard to its home zone, showcasing their new maps and enemy group.

 

This lead to the idea that Nemesis would fool Blackwing's P.E.A.C.E. operatives into thinking the player group were actually Nemesis automatons. Nemesis routinely gets the upper hand at the most unexpected moments, so it felt appropriate that players would start the TF behind Nemesis, who had already made the first move.

 

For the second mission, I had been waiting for an opportunity to use the Central Hold Block (CHB) prison I added to Grandville back in Issue 27, and this felt like a good opportunity.

This was to be a Hero content offering first (but allowed to be cooperative), meaning if I decided to feature a bunch of City of Villains exclusive elements, it would more likely be new/fresh to many who don't play on redside that much.
An automated boss gauntlet would work well for diversity, a bit of an evolution of the Cauldron second mission of the ASF, where players don't have to move and the bosses come to them.

This would also be the location of the secret encounter (I usually add a special max-difficulty boss to most my Advanced Modes).

 

For the third mission I decided to go with a max-variety setup where players would go down three branching paths and each would feature a different main enemy group and map type.

This mission serves as the bridge that moves players from the middle of the task force towards the finale, and thus is more transitory.

Since the goal of the content was to bring players to the train map, this mission explains how players find Nemesis' base.

For Advanced Mode we hid three extra bosses in the optional areas of each branch, to make it more interesting. Credits go to @ViridianDev for working on the three bonus bosses found in this mission!

 

Then of course there's the Nemesis finale train map, which needed the main question figured out: "What happens when you or an enemy fall off the moving train?"

This question dictated the creation of the crunching mechanic, and informed the design of the final Nemesis encounter, where you have to send his duplicates off the train in order to progress.
This mechanic became the focus of the map, as it also gave advantages to Repel and Knockback effects, which are often controversial to players, so the idea felt like it would set the content apart from its peers.

 

This is accomplished via an invisible critter who sits on the front train hitting the entire map with a power. The power only knows to 'crunch' something when it's alive and in the volume found on the floor off the train. Additionally, using beacon-blocking tech that Number Six added, we were able to ensure the mobs would try their best not to run off the train and die in immersion-breaking ways (Still possible with some creativity, but mobs should have a basic level of 'do not just run off the train and die' intelligence).

 

Lastly, during preliminary testing, it was decided it felt 'off' to start the finale mission already on the moving train, so the introduction section of the finale map where players fight red herring Nemesis before boarding the train was added.

 

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Need New Nemesis

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Alongside the new content, I decided I would take a look at the Nemesis enemy group, which for many players was an unpopular group due to the way Vengeance functions on the group. Often leading to scenarios where players had to sit and do nothing while waiting for Vengeance to wear off before they can finish the mobs in Nemesis packs.

To achieve this, I partnered with @ViridianDev to give some refreshments to the Nemesis group that would help them stand a little stronger in this new piece of content. After all, if players actively avoid Nemesis content, then they're going to want to avoid the Zoe Task Force, and that would be a problem for me.

 

So the first issue was we needed a counter-play option to Nemesis Vengeance, and this is where Generals first came in. They were designed as 'anti-vengeance' enemies who, when defeated, would cleanse Vengeance off affected mobs and ensure other mobs on defeat would not drop Vengeance.

Additionally, to lean into the Silver Age vibes, we gave Nemesis Generals a Weather Control Machine that summons tornadoes and storm clouds and an Atomic Rifle.

 

I think this has worked out nicely to ensure the group still maintains Vengeance (I did not want to remove what was a classic and identifiable characteristic of this enemy group). So instead of nerfing Vengeance down to be a non-issue, we added a way players can deal with it while fighting the group.

Next came Tacticians who served to be emergency Vengeance solutions, inflicting a strong Confuse on anybody affected by Vengeance when the Tactician is defeated.

 

Recently due to positive feedback we decided that we would proliferate the Generals and Tacticians to older Nemesis content.

Be on the look out for them soon, ready to make your Vengeance-filled Nemesis legacy missions more tolerable!

Then I added the Gasmeister debuffer boss, as this is a good way to ensure that if a Tanker or Brute maintains too much aggro for too long, the debuffs will eventually catch up with them, this ensures the team has pressure to not only tank groups, but also move through them before debuffs begin to pile on.

 

Next, I added the War Chassis elite boss. I always add a 'disruption' style Elite Boss to my content for Advanced Mode, with a fancy scripted mechanic that forces players to pay attention/react in order to properly navigate the mechanic. They were originally called Advanced Warhulks, but was changed to War Chassis to better match existing Nemesis lore bible contents.

 

In Advanced Mode, War Chassis charge up a Siphon Shrink Ray beam cone that debuff shrinks the target and steals a power from them.

Resulting in situations where significantly weakened players are suddenly fighting a target who can use their strongest power against them. This creates tension, but the outcome of failure is interesting/fun to experience (It is crazy to see a War Chassis animate Eagle's Claw!).

 

Lastly, I felt the Fake Nemesis duplicates needed something to make them more interesting, so I designed the Mini Nemesis Bombs which double both as reinforcements and as bonus badge credit for Unveiler badge!

 

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Weaving Together A Challenging Fight

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Like my previous content, I added an Advanced Mode to the Zoe Task Force, and like previous content, I added a special challenge boss to the content for those who are looking for a challenge with a team.

 

For the ZTF, I approached the challenge using the CHB location in the second mission as the location for the fight.

Originally, I concepted a fight where each of the five CHB Arch-villains had their own mechanics, and then at the end you'd fight all of them + their mechanics simultaneously.

But when I sat down to script it, I just wasn't feeling the inspiration, so decided instead to think about who could show up that would be unexpected that would make for a more fun fight.

After some pondering, landed on bringing Weaver-1 into the game. He never was added to the game properly as a character, previously existing as a single piece of concept art in pre-release City of Villains material:

 Not sure how they would fight like that... 

Obviously they were going to need some major development to actually appear as a boss for this content.

Keeping his original appearance wasn't going to be possible with the limitations on 3D we currently have, so I decided to start with an Arachnobot tank body, and then turn him into a giant spider with a swarm of little spiders on his back. Several hours of tinkering later and we got this for our Weaver-1:

 Mhmm, little bugs... Scurrying about... 

 

Now that he's been added to the game, he can make appearances in other content and we can develop them as a character in the lore.

Though he was added for this content's special boss encounter, he won't remain exclusive to it, and players can look forward to running into Weaver-1 in future content.

To make his encounter more fun/interesting, I gave the Weaver-1 versions of the CHB mechanics an Arachnos flair, resulting in the Spidernado attack.

Weaver-1's voice lines were recorded by myself, then run through audio editing to make me sound more villainous.

While some players abhor voice acting (Easily muted on it's own volume bar!) , I find that it can be quite useful when used with purpose for audio cues and other flavor uses to bring a character to life, without committing to full voice overs.

 

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That's all for today's Dev Diary!

I'm very happy to hear so many people are enjoying the Zoe Task Force, and I hope for those of you who were curious enough to read this but haven't checked it out yet, that you'll give it a shot!

 

If there's any aspect of the content you're deeply interested in learning more about, but I didn't cover, feel free to ping me in a reply on this thread and I'd be happy to expound more on the various details that made this content happen.

As always, it's an honor and privilege to be able to continue contributing to the game we all cherish so much! I hope you'll continue to look forward to more good things as we continue to work on bringing the game new content. 🙂

 

A super big thanks to everybody who got involved in testing, feedback, and helping to make this content the best it could be!

 

As always, a huge thank you to all the support of our player community, the people are what make City of Heroes!

💞

[Arbegla]

Well now I want to solo the ZTF in hard mode just for the extra boss fights!

[Lockely]

Bravo and well done on one of the best TFs available in the game! The CRUNCH mechanic alone is brilliant, and the design of that train map and how you've staged all the enmies makes it very fun to play on and fight against. Never before have I enjoyed using Fold Space so much.

[Glacier Peak]

6 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

 

Weaver-1:

Are we to consider the 4-star mode of ZTF (specifically Weaver-1) as canonically part of the game's lore? I know that for the 4-star ITF, 4-star LGTF, and 4-star Dr. Aeon, those were more for fun. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Glacier Peak

[Vanden]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Are we to consider the 4-star mode of ZTF (specifically Weaver-1) as canonically part of the game's lore? I know that for the 4-star ITF, 4-star LGTF, and 4-star Dr. Aeon, those were more for fun. 

 

Not just the 4-star modes, hard mode in its entirety is essentially non-canon for all those TFs.