Wolvorine

I'm just an old pencil jockey from way back. I try to keep the digital work to a bare minimum. Good coloring tool though.

Thank you both, surely.

Well, here's a couple of sketches of two of my characters, Mythus (SS/Invul tank) and Red-Byrd (MA/WP scrapper) that I've been working on for the past week or two during load screens, afk waits, that kind of thing while playing. Figured I'd post them once I decided to call them done.

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But here's my counter-proposal:
Have the favored Permanent Contact in your favorite zone auto-exemplar you (Ouroboros-style) to the top of the level range of the zone, enabling you to get some reward, just not XP. Who is to say that Superman and Batman are still getting XP from the streetsweeping of Metropolis and Gotham? Unless there is a Galactus GM zone event, anyway.
If you choose a permanent contact in a zone that caps at L50 (P.I., RWZ, Grandville or the Shadow Shard (heh) ), they could exemplar you to L45, or not at all.

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Honestly, while I think it’s really cool to see people trying to come at the idea from different angles and see how they bounce… am I the only person who hates the Ouro-style auto-exemplaring so much he hopes whoever suggested that now works at a McDonalds?

So, anyone else have a comment to add? Maybe a Redname even? *hint*hint*

How are you forced to participate in anything? You don't want to get involved, then you get no credit for the success, and no blame for the failure. I suppose you could say you don't want the event to impact your gameplay at all, but things like the weekend rikti invasion are going to do that anyway with zone X or zone Y goin all Rikti-sky on you and semi-random points.

Well, the permement contact is like your Commissioner Gordon. Batman NEVER swings by to see Commissioner Gordon only to have the Commiss say "Sorry Batman, but all the crime in Gotham City is beneath your notice, you've tapped me out". :P

I'm proposing a contact that always has relevant missions for you. Maybe by giving you missions you would have otherwise gotten from other contacts that your existing contacts would have introduced you to.

And yeah, I wasn't suggesting that the street villains get tougher to accommodate you, but maybe that in your Hometown you'd get -- I dunno -- like maybe 1xp for street sweeping goons instad of 0xp. Just because you're protecting your turf.

It's just one of those ideas that occured to me when I was running a character in Steel Canyon, and then I outlevelled the radio/contact missions in Steel Canyon.. but I like Steel Canyon, and wanted to stay there protecting the zone I had come to consider that character's 'turf', but I had to move on to progress the toon and have anything for him to do.

What he's proposing is an answer to one of my biggest complaints in this (otherwise stellar) game. It needs DYNAMIC OCCURRENCES. The way it is.. Raid happens... if heroes fail (falacy, because heroes cannot fail).. then the results are exactly the same. There's no dynamic interaction to the occurrences.

Zombies rise? No heroes bother to put them down? No worries, nothing will happen. Building on fire? No biggie, nothing will happen.

This was one of thoe huge outcries back in the heyday of Ultima Online for chrissakes, that player events didn't have dynamic outcomes.

Despite the fact that I have found this forum to be rather… nasty about suggestions, a couple of (related) thoughts have occurred to me lately, and while I don’t know if the Devs actually bother to read this forum or not, I figure I’ll post it anyway.

First: Home towns. It’d be kind of interesting if you could choose one of the zones at some point to be your chosen stomping ground.
You never outlevel radio missions there, maybe you can always manage to get *some* xp from even street sweeping. Batman spends most of his time in Gotham, Superman spends most of his time in Metropolis, The Flash in Central City… why can’t my hero decide he’s going to be the permanent protector of… say… Steel Canyon (I rather like Steel Canyon) and have that decision be worthwhile in-game? I’d be cool.

Second: Permanent Contact(s). I’m thinking Commissioner Gordon here, Lois Lane, J. Jonah Jameson (sorta). A contact (or limited group of contacts) who you can always count on to have some missions for you.
Not quite like Meg Mason, who just tosses out an unlimited number of similar-but-not-quite-the-same missions, but something like the game goes <alright, had I sent the Hero to the next contact, their arc choices would have been W, X, Y, and Z… so the Perma-Contact will offer a random assortment of those arcs, preferably located in Hometown zone>.

Anyway, just a thought that’s been dancing around in my head.

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Where are the gas stations in Paragon?

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Whoa I can't believe I have never thought about that before...lol

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Then ask yourself this... where are the frigging street lights? Not the traffic lights, mind you, those we've got.

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I strongly suspect that if he had stopped playing it, instead of exploiting the bug, they may have been able to fix it quickly...

And that IS a wolverine in your avatar, is it not?

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Possibly, possibly. But he was in contact with the Devs about it, and they were aware of the entire situation while it occurred and he waited for it to get fixed. He may have taken advantage of it, but at least he wasn't trying to sneak under the radar about it. hehe

And yes, that's a wolverine in my avatar. One of these days I'll resize the image to not look like crap as an avatar on some forums.

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If your name was more intelligent I would believe your story. Sadly I have never heard of any person getting stuck at a level, though I guess it could happen. But, 12 slots in one power? Thats got to be a load of poo.

I say this because, if he wasn't leveling how was he getting more slots?

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Hmm, wow I actually haven't had someone riff on my handle in a while. Short version: it's spelled that way on purpose, not from ignorance. There's a reason for it, I'm not going to get into it.

And no, it's not 'a load of poo', although I suppose I can understand the reaction. It's not my character, so I can't exactly explain it. From what I understand whenever he got enough XP to level, he'd go to a trainer and get more slots, but his actual level wouldn't go up. Took forever for them to fix it, guess they had bigger things to handle.

The thought actually occurred to because of that friend's character. While balance issues may exist to some degree, even that character with his 12-slotted powers gets overpowered and brought down by foes currently in the game. At the same time, he's powerful enough that watching him tank with that character is often "Wow... just wow, that's cool".

High end superheroes are supposed to be awesomely powerful, and I know that while my main character hasn't hit 50 yet he is getting there fast. I'm torn between wanting to see him hit 50 and dreading when he does because that'll be the end of his advancement. I'll still play him, I like the character.

But, it was a thought I hadn't seen suggested before, so I'm interested to see what kind of responses it gets.

Well, I haven’t seen it at least. Granted with the way level cap threads tend to go, who’s going to go looking very far?

Anyway, the arguments against level cap increase are many. Workload time, the PiTA of having to add more powers to all the pools, the ‘and then what?’ issues, all and more are brought up whenever the level cap is mentioned. And I won’t argue against them.

But, it occurred to me the other day when I was really, Really bored… what if they did raise the level cap, but approached what raising the cap would mean? Most just presume that raising the cap would just mean “and you get another 10 levels of the same, and look how much work that’d be”. But it could be interesting if the cap were raised, not giving you more powers, simply giving you more slots for your powers… allowing you to slot past 6. A friend of mine had a character with a nasty glitch; no matter how much XP he earned, he couldn’t level past the mid-40’s. Every time he’s get enough XP to level, the XP counter would just reset.

But it had a strange side-effect. It let him add more than 6 slots to his powers. He had a killer 12-slotted Knockout Blow.

And, being an old ‘comic geek’, the epic superheroes HAVE these incredibly powerful powers. Superman can’t be capped at 6 slots on his Super-Strength, for example.

I know that just the idea of raising the level cap generates ire and all, but I thought this was an interesting take on the idea that doesn’t involve drastic powers additions or new zones or any such thing. It lets High Level characters continue to progress and grow in power with a minimum of Dev work.

Opinions?

Funny, I tend to take Air Superiority because I like like Fly over any of the other travel powers, and for a melee combat character I'd rather have another attack than Hover.

(My god how did this get 33 replies? lol)

Actually I presumed there'd be 3 bike models (at least female, male athletic, and male giant). I had a big hub-bub with a friend of mine yesterday about the amount of work it all is. And yeah, I know pretty much anything is a huge bunch of work. But... that's what the suggestion forum's for, right?

Well, it was my thread, may as well respond to contextual posts.
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Back to topic:
The reasons why Vehicles (that's what you want to search for) are not and probably will never be part of the game are many, but a few stand out.
One is animations. How do you, say, use Golden Dragonfly while riding a vehicle? Either you need some fancy new animation, which can run up to hundreds if we look at how many we have in total, or some kind of limitation and "dismounting." For a bike that could possibly work, but if a system for bikes is implemented, it would have to cover more than just simple bikes.

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Personally, I wouldn’t include attacking while riding. It takes the Super-Bike from “Cool alternate travel animation” (which is how I envisioned the suggestion) into “fully-realized game-mechanics expansion”. At which point you go from “That’s an awful lot of work for a cool visual effect” to “ARE YOU FRELLING HIGH!?!” *chuckles*
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Movement is another. Character can turn in place, run sideways, jump and cling to ledges, all without needing to pitch. Note how even when going up a steep slope, your character remains vertical. That's OK for something with as small a footprint as a humanoid, but for a larger bike, it would need to tilt, which the engine cannot do. And that's before we consider strafing, jumping and riding through water.

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Well… if you expand the idea to Vehicles in general this becomes more of a problem than if you restrict it just to bikes. You can (within certain parameters of acceptability… which are of course somewhat subjective) either make allowances for or entirely ignore the issues of movement dynamics (on-a-dime turns, strafing, jumping). I’d slap that under the label of “It’s just a cool visual effect, don’t demand too much of it”.
The pitch problem is definitely legitimate. Although if the rider was simply in a bike-riding emote position they wouldn’t *necessarily* need to pitch, perhaps just the bike that was node-attached to them. Yes, there’d be clipping issues. My Shoulder Mantle Cape clips like mad with my Wedding Pack Tuxedo, too. We live with clipping to a degree and hope it gets better. But the pitch problem does add a bit (I use bit here to denote ‘an amount I cannot enumerate with any accuracy) more complexity to the bike itself.
As for the size/footprint issue, I’d opt to just enforce the footprint of the bike in regards to where it can and can’t fit, and not allow it in buildings, bases, or missions. Water issues… as far as I know you can’t superspeed run on water, so I can’t imagine why you should be able to take your superbike into the water. Jumping and difficult terrain I’d just give a pass to “You’re Just That Good”.
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There's also mounting and dismounting. While a WoW-borrowed "pops into existence under your butt" mechanic wouldn't be too far-fetched, it would be horribly ugly. The developers have a history of not green-lighting things unless they have at least some level of refinement in them, wings and custom weapons being good examples of that.

It's a cool idea and heavens knows it's been suggested probably over a hundred times, but it's been shot down by the developers themselves in the past.

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I’d think (and keep in mind, I’m not a programmer or a CG artist. I’m a 2D artist primarily, these are just that… “What I would think”) that mounting and dismounting the bike would just be a matter as simple as ‘bike appears, you mount’ animation, and ‘you dismount, bike disappears’ animation. I’d stop to wonder if this was lazy or copping out… but then I remember the beaten bodies of our foes that regularly vanish into thin air.

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weapon customization (wait, we got that one)

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BABs actually said that weapon customization wasn't all that hard. It was just a matter of removing the form of the sword from the power and replacing it with a variable costume slot option. It wasn't something that was made virtually impossible without hefty modification of the game engine.

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But how long did it take to get it? How often was it mentioned before we got it? That was what I was indicating (or trying to).

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wings (wait, got that one too)

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Wings were simply an extension of caps and follow pretty much the same mechanics in game. They have a rest state, a jump state, a flight state, etc, and before you say that we got them in exactly the form people were asking, people were asking for wings to be a variant form of Flight. The devs gave a costume piece where power customization was asked for (which made more sense to me anyways).

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Granted, I didn’t give any suggestions as to How I’d think would be the best way to implement it. I never really though of it as a powerset or anything, more as a different animation visual for a pre-existing travel power. Yes, it’s a lot of work involving new skeletons for the motorcycles and adding a docking point on the [censored] and such… but “A lot of work we can’t prioritize right now over what we’ve got going on” and “No, just.. no” are Hugely different animals.

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That being said, I've never seen it mentioned in the threads I've read, but hey I'll look anyway. 'Course, I'd still like a Super Cycle.

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I'm really curious how long you've been reading the forums then. At least once a month someone comes up with or asks for vehicles to be implemented without looking up any of the existing threads. I've seen 3 different vehicle threads at once on the same page of the Suggestions Forums.

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I’ve been reading for… about 3 months now. But not every forum, and nowhere near every thread. Mostly just scanning idly when the servers are down for maintenance or waiting for a friend to show up online to play.

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Also, something to think about, what does adding vehicles do for the game that isn't already done with the transport powers in game? If they're that distinct, they're either going to be so bad that the only reason to take them is because you insist on having a vehicle (which is a waste of dev time because that's very little player benefit for a lot of work) or they're going to be better (which is a waste of previous dev time because people are only going to use the old trans powers if they refuse to use vehicles).

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I’ll be completely honest; motorcycles as a travel power (slash-travel-power-alternate-animation) as I see it is nothing at all other than a cool alternate visual. Doesn’t add a single thing to the game other than being cool. Yeah, it’s a buttload of work. Hell pretty much anything they add to the game is going to be a buttload of work. I’m guessing butt-capes were a load of work, and don’t add a single thing to the game other than being cool. I like neat cool-looking things. I’m not saying it should be a top-priority for the Dev team or anything mind you.
And one thing you must admit… I Didn’t start the OP by saying “I have a great new idea!” lol

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Honestly, if you'd done the search (and yes, you should have searched for "vehicles" because "Super-Cycle" is a vehicle no matter how you twist it), you would have seen this argument and the many others (most of them concerned with the horrible work:benefit ratio associated with designing them). There's a reason that "Search for similar threads and post there rather than creating a new post" is in the forum rules.

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Possibly, but given that even on an off-the-cuff notion I can see that implementing just motorcycles and implementing cars, jets, tanks, vans, hoverboards, motorcycles, and any other kind of vehicle that could be proposed are vastly different suggestions *in their scope and variation*. When I pipe up with “I was a super-cycle” I don’t mean I want a Super-Mobile or a Super-Jet… just a Super-Cycle. Searching for “vehicle” runs the risk of coming up with a broad spectrum of possibly-related and possibly-unrelated threads all over the place. Did I find 1 thread when I used the Search too? Yes, I found exactly 1 thread hen I used the search tool.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have likely posted in that thread had I seen it before I posted mine. The tearing-down of the person suggesting the idea was far too hostile and gang-gank’ing. TO enter into that thread would be to say “I feel like entering a flame war this morning”, not “I’d like to suggest something I think would be cool”. That thread does Not invite people to start posting around here.

--Note: I've added double-spaces left and right here when typing this response. They don't show up in the preview, so I'll just have to click Submit and see what I get here.

Sure, I could use the Search (ignoring the fact that forum search is often painfully inaccurate). But that brings up the question that anyone who suggests one use the search button before daring to post must have considered... would I then search for motorcycle, cycle, super cycle, hero cycle, bat cycle, vehicle (heaven forbid, THAT opens up a whole new vista to the suggestion), bike... possibly multiple options would bring up some of the relevant threads, but of course if I just happen to Search one that wasn't one of the lucky ones then of course I'd likely still be told to use the Search. Seen it happen more than enough times, I'd rather just make a new thread which adds to the list of threads that people have asked for something in.

And yeah, I'm sure there have been reasons why they won't work. Hasn't stopped people from pie-in-the-sky'ing over power customization, weapon customization (wait, we got that one), wings (wait, got that one too), and.. any number of things.

That being said, I've never seen it mentioned in the threads I've read, but hey I'll look anyway. 'Course, I'd still like a Super Cycle.

Well, I've gotten to my 3 month vet badge, been reading the forums that long, but don't really post generally. But I appreciate your concern.
And, while I'm no programmer, I've worked in the pen & paper RPG circuit for a long time. Lord knows I can handle hearing someone shoot down an idea. Heck, I learned a long time ago not to believe something was unobtainabel just because people (even people 'in charge' said "no".

Aww don't cry Rachel.

I mentioned this in another thread somewhere, but I suppose it's best to put it here in it's own thread so it actually gets seen.

I'd like a travel power that lets me zoom around Paragon City on my own Super-Cycle. At base it'd pretty much the same as Super-Speed really (although probably with the speed cap of Flight). But just for the ability to be able to tool around Paragon on my Super-Cycle (for those non-superhuman heroes and all) would be pretty cool.

Bonus points for being able to customize the cycle to some degree while I'm wishing.

I'd settle for having a version of SuperSpeed with animation of mounting a moderately-customizable Hero-Cycle. Sure it's functionally the same, but it'd be really cool to tool around Paragon City on your Hero Cycle.

It may be 'functional' as opposed to 'decorative', but I'm still WAY behind the 'click to sit' seating suggestion from much earlier in the thread. Ideally click and select from which type of sitting style (they have them broken down by Chair, Executive Chair, Bench, etc already). As it is, you have to spend more time getting your toon in the right position on the seat to make your sit emote look right than you're likely to spend sitting in it.

And the SG members statue/portrait suggestion. I just mentioned this to a SG-mate last night actually, before I read any of these base request threads.

I think the real opportunity here to to advance the canon storyline while AE has everyone's attention. Aside from a little Rikti invasion action, the overarching canon plot of CoH hasn't changed much for a while. Signature NPCs and quest plotlines are fairly static (with some relatively minor exceptions), zones are relatively static. If they took the change to progress the canon plotline, it would give Paragon City (and the Rouge Isles) a stronger feel of a world that still goes on functioning outside of it's immediate interaction with your character. And that tends to be a good thing, usually.
Like Rusted Metal said, I'm not saying the Devs aren't doing things, but I agree that this is a great opportunity for them.