Samuel_Tow

I'm going to bed. It's 5 AM.

It's not a question of it being a problem or a challenge. It's a question of principle. I am level 50. They are level 1. I LIKE the fact that they have a 5% chance to hit me and their powers are 1% as effective and I have 95% chance to hit them and my powers are eleventy billion times more powerful against them. I like nuking grey cons into nothingness. I can't nuke white con minions with nearly as little effort.

To you. I enjoy travelling around the zones. There are, as well, ENEMIES in these zones to fight. Just because you don't fight them doesn't mean there aren't those of us who do. One of the most fun things I've done in this game has been taking my level 30-something Mastermind, teaming up with a friends' Mastermind and walking all the way from the city islands in Nerva Archepelago to Primeva without touching water, which meant crossing two Longbow Bases on foot, fighting everything along the way. We gained much experience and had a lot of fun. No PvP involved.

The zones are full of content. Use it. I like to use it, and I don't appreciate other people yanking it from under me.

Then come up with something better than "Let there be PvP." Preferably something that starts with "No PvP, but..." There are plenty of ways to make the world feel more "alive" that don't involved the whole can of worms of potential problems that come with even semi-open, non-consensual PvP.

The zones have enemies in them. Fight them. The zones have badges in them. Find them. The zones have plaques in them. Read them. The zones have a lot of pretty locations in them. Go to them. The zones are interesting to travel through. Travel through them. Your view of "purpose" seems restricted to "things to do with other people." There are PLENTY of things to do in world zones than interact with other people. Hell, there are plenty of hunt, delivery and patrol missions - ACTUAL MISSIONS - that need to be done in the world zones.

You're exaggerating on the lack of purpose.

My response in that other thread was the same one I have here - I don't need to SEE my actions mattering. I don't want to change the world for other people, because I wouldn't want other people changing my world. Our actions matter in the very own, personal universe each character exists in. Each of us has defeated Dr. Vahzilok, stopped Romulus Augustulus and saved a thousand worlds, yet for each new character these things are happening for the first time. That's enough of my actions mattering for me. I'm not interested in game mechanics that alter zones.

My actions matter if I care about doing them. I care.

People don't dislike the Rikti invasions because of the lag... Well, people who actually take part in them might, but those of us who AVOID Rikti invasions do so because they are BORING. I, for one, am never happy when I get saddled with a hunt in a zone taken over by an invasion and cannot accomplish it until the invasion is done.

I don't care how small the affected zone is. It's still part of the zone I am in and intrudes on my gameplay if I'm unlucky enough to have something to do there. I don't care about the zones feeling more "alive." I wouldn't care if they were dead. I'm certainly not interested in yielding a SINGLE INCH of my convenience to forward a notion I care nothing for.

If you want the zones more alive, look to designing non-obtrusive events in them, like the Steel Canyon fires or the Skyway City Troll raves. Don't presume to make people's experience more "alive" against their will just because you feel that's what they're supposed to want. Design events that make the zone alive without killing players in the process.


Well be surprised, then. Not all of us farm and grind to the "end game" so we can exemplar down to redo the content we skipped. I'd rather have my fun on the way up, and I'd rather not have meddling fools mess it up for me. I don't enjoy strangers not on my team "helping" me. I can tolerate it if they're considerate enough to help with buffs and debuffs only, but even then I'd rather they didn't. The fun of the game is the fight. If I wanted to have other people fight my fights for me, I'd go join a team. When I didn't join a team, it's because I didn't WANT to be on a team. If I didn't want to be on a team, I'm not going to appreciate people butting in on my fights and ruining my fun.

I like my instances for the same reason I like my home - it's the place where random strangers can't bother me when I don't feel like being bothered by random strangers. If you want to take this away from me, then you're going to have an uphill struggle.

How "alive" they felt is subject to interpretation. I would call those more "obnoxious" than alive. The very reason I play City of Heroes over all the other MMOs is because it's NOT like all the other MMOs. That's what I enjoy about it, so don't be surprised if I'm unresponsive to your approaches in making it more like the other MMOs. Other MMOs can go to hell. Tried 'em, they were all more or less clones of each other, all boring, all tedious and all too big on the enforcing social interaction. Screw that. City of Heroes is a game before it's an MMO, and I'm damn glad it is, or I'd have dropped it like all the other MMOs back in 2004.

It's also bad form to claim "most others." Unless you have some objective way to prove that, you're just making things up to make your point seem bigger than it is. Maybe you and most others you knew, but I rather doubt you know even the 100-150 thousand players City of Heros has, let alone the millions of billions that something like WoW has. Unless you have some objective way to prove what "most" people like, then do the smart thing and don't bring it up, because me and most other people REALLY hate that.

If I'm doing my mission and another player finds himself determined to stop me, how am I not forced into PvP? Or do you view this as "You have a choice of either engaging in PvP or not doing any missions?" If my mission includes not just the possibility, but in fact the high likelyhood of PvP, then I AM forced into PvP. It's like being given a mission with an elite boss and trying to spin an explanation about how I'm not actually, really, technically, being forced to fight an elite boss when it actually, really, technically, says "Defeat Elite Boss and minions" in my objectives. What, do I HOPE no-one wants to stop me, thereby defying the very point of your suggestion? Or do I hope it flops as badly as PvP zones did and that I'll be able to hit a dead spot and do my mission unopposed?

Any time PvP is placed in my path, I am forced to deal with it, either by engaging in it, by working to avoid it or by devising ways to mitigate its impact. Either way, it's a huge step down the rabbit hole from where I stand right now, where if I close my eyes and wish really hard, I can pretend PvP never existed. If I had my way, I'd yank PvP out of the whole damn game, but I'm more than happy to concede its presence and never complain about it as long as it stays out of my side of the game. Don't try to bring it over to my side of the game, please. I don't want it.

Is there 20 of what? Instanced missions? There are hundreds of them. Maybe not all in Steel Canyon or Skyway City, granted, but the game is full of them. And no, I do NOT want any of them to be "in the open." I like my instances. Not just because I like the privacy of an instance, but because I actually like the maps, themselves. I cannot and will not concede to the notion of moving ANY indoor missions outdoors. Not unless you move them to an outdoor instance, and even then I'm not too keen on that idea.

And I'm not mad about hunt and patrol missions. In fact, I love the occasional reason to hunt outside. I'd do more of them, were it not for the PITA of finding the appropriate enemies of the appropriate level in the appropriate zone, an indignity that isn't present in hard-coded instances. Yes, sometimes people interfere, but luckily, the outdoor zones are so "dead" that there aren't many people to bug me even outside. Frankly, I prefer that over the old days when everyone was outside and you were tripping over each other and competing for spawns. Forget that! I'm happy with my outdoor hunts, even though people still drop by and nuke my spawns for no reason.

And even if, per chance, I happen to find myself dissatisfied with an outdoor hunt, be it due to other players or because some yahoo at Cryptic decided it was a swell idea to have single players playing squishies go hunt 50 Stuff in Trial Zones with 8-man hardcoded spawns or whatever other indignity, I can just drop the mission and go grab an instance. That doesn't quite work if all missions are "in the open," does it?

"As for PvP," if you want it to be only for those interested in it, why not make it ONLY for those interested in it? Have it be instanced with people who want to take part after the announcement signing in and spawning in-mission Battlefield-style? That way it's easier to form consistent teams AND it doesn't get in MY way. Everybody wins! About the only thing you lose are spectators (which you ought to be able to have like in an arena match anyway), but if people are spectating and not taking part, chances are they're not INTERESTED in taking part.

I mean, if it's going to be only for those who are interested, why does it have to be hold around those who AREN'T interested? People have been suggesting instanced PvP missions where heroes and villains have opposing goals for years. Simply taking the Mayhem/Safeguard zones and turning them into a version of UT's Assault game mode sounds like a suggestion that should not just be superior to the current pointless incarnation of PvP, but even something I might want to look into. But it doesn't have to happen out in the open where it can involve the unwilling.

I feel nothing of the sort. I've been here for five years (got my 60 month badge a couple of weeks ago) and I'm nowhere near bored. There are so many characters to play that I fear I will NEVER be done even if I had 20 years. It's taken me 5 years to get 6 level 50 characters, and I have about 20 others still waiting to get there, and every new Issue gives birth to at least one more new character. With Issue 16's new Rad/Rad Blaster, I'm going to remake the Meat Machine I made and deleted five years ago. With Going Rogue... Who knows?

I stay with this game because I like this game. Exactly as it is. I'll never turn my back on something new, but I will NEVER stand for the abolishment of something old. I loved this game unconditionally back five years ago when it really WAS all about fighting stuff and nothing more. This, to me, is both the core mechanic of the game and the one thing that always keeps bringing me back. Well, the second thing. The character creator is and always has been the first and most important. I've made friends. Then they left. Then I made new friends and then they left. Some came back, some left again, and some are still here. And while I like my friends, I don't play this game for them. I will certainly never refuse hanging out with them in-game, but I pay $15 a month for myself and myself only.

I like this game as is. Build on it if you want, but DO NOT take away from what it already has.

Not every player in the game has been playing it for several years. Redesigning the game so it fits those who have been playing it for several years over those who are just starting out is bad practice.

[/quote]Sidekicks to mentors already pose as high levels. Removing the need for mentors allows for more verstility and dynamics when creating a team that auto SK's.[/QUOTE]

Sidekicks in contemporary teams can pose as high-levels, yes, but they need a LEGITIMATE high-level to serve as the anchor and engage on missions his level. I have nothing against that. In fact, I have nothing against allowing a single player to have multiple sidekicks. I would like to see at least 3-4 sidekicks per mentor, and I wouldn't be terribly upset at 7 sidekicks per mentor. What matters is that there IS a mentor.

I do NOT want to open the entire game to anyone of any level engaging in any level content of his own initiative. In fact, I believe allowing this in the Architect was a mistake driven by good intentions - to give authors some more exposure. I will always demand that there be at least one player that is of the level the mission is and who serves as a mentor. One person is enough for me, but I will not and cannot agree with allowing people without a mentor to take on higher-level content.

Besides, this goes against your own argument, as well - finding teams more easily and having an easier time getting along. You don't need complete and total freedom to do this, you just need more sidekicks per mentor. Even in the very extreme case of one mentor to seven sidekicks, that's still something I can get behind - let the mentor herd cats and patch up the works if he's committed to it. But I cannot agree with the notion of eight mentor-less sidekicks. I simply cannot.

The same argument was made about Fly back when it cost hideous amounts of endurance to run, and yet that was rectified at some point. It still costs a lot, but not nearly as much as it used to. I wonder if I can't find Big Pippy's planner to see how much it used to cost...

Only three people incurred permanent bans, but a bunch of people got temporary bans. Memphis Bill got a 3-day-ban over something silly, like posting "no" in more than one word, as was the time.

I'm aware of what the forum drama was about. I and a number of other people asked for more forum moderation. Instead, we got a poster purge and the forum being moved to For Fun so they WOULDN'T HAVE TO PROVIDE MORE MODERATION. The idea, at least my idea, was to have moderators pay the forum more frequent visits and give more attention to reports originating there, potentially handling problematic posters. What they did was handle a few problematic posters THEN and effectively shunting the forum off to where they didn't have to listen to us bicker.

That was not a solution. That was avoiding to find a solution and just writing the problem in as working as intended. Bah humbug!

That depends on your point of view. I find stupid to be irritating, rather than entertaining.

Technically, yes, but if I'm responding to a post that's anything older than the latest, it's buried WAY down in there, and switching to it and back to typing is a hugely lengthy and cumbersome process. I don't suppose there's any way to retain the old usability of seeing exactly the post you're responding to conveniently? I suppose quoting it could work, but still...

I tried that, but it gave me a search field. I don't know what to search for. It's like trying to find somebody in a crowd if you don't even know what he looks like. An index or table of context would be nice, but I wasn't able to find such.

They can and do affect each other. I just don't see why the hero and villain PLAYERS have to affect each other. Villains can fight heroes and other villains, heroes can fight villains and other heroes. There is no restriction as to which side these heroes and villains come from. The two sides of the game already affect each other. The hero and villain PLAYERS just don't affect each other, and I'd rather keep it that way.

Really? Says who?

Suppose I do NOT want Hellions conning white to me? And I don't. I didn't gain 50 levels so deadbeat level 1 enemies could pose a credible threat. On the flip side, certain enemies are intended to be incredibly dangerous. It doesn't make sense that a level 1 hero would be able to so much as look at them funny. That's the point, not the problem.

Instances were introduced in this game as part of a policy for reducing griefing. The less you depend on the actions of other people, the less opportunity they have to grief you. Plenty of players have advised others that, if someone is bothering you, just go into an instance where he can't follow. And now you want to open all instances to every damn yahoo that thinks a level 50 coming in to attack everything I'm fighting is helping me? No, thank you.

Go to hell. Does that communicate my feelings on allowing public-zone PvP accurately, or should I infringe on the language filter to elaborate?

The zones are just fine. I meet heroes and villains in them, and that's more than enough. I'm not interested in seeing SG events and the other garbage that used to pollute Atlas Park Broadcast until the Architect cleaned up the plaza. I ESPECIALLY don't want to see the zones come to life if that meant yanking ME out of MY missions and out where everybody can interfere.

By... Introducing PvP? So the only way that actions could matter is if you fight other PLAYERS and interrupt and possibly fail ther mission? "Hero vs. villain" does not translate into "player vs. player" in any way, shape or form that doesn't translate into "player vs. NPC" in exactly the same way.

No, it is not. You can refuse the Mayhem mission and still get a contact. This was done specifically for the people who DIDN'T want to do Mayhem missions. And even if it weren't, the "5*paper + mayhem" model is an abominable waste of time and effort if all you want is a contact. Mayhem missions when I feel like it is one thing. Mayhem missions because YOU feel like I should be doing it is quite another.

Essentially, mess with player's gameplay for the sake of feeling like you're messing with their gameplay. Rikti Invasions are already enough of a pain by making me switch zones when they occur, and they only occur once in a blue moon. It's also a pretty big illusion to think that "the Atlas posse" will rush to save the bank. At best they'll stay right where they are. At worst, the'll move away for a while.

There ARE no benefits for doing a Safeguard mission outside of experience that can be gotten everywhere else and a handful of barely-useful temporary powers that don't always even spawn in a Safeguard. Besides, heroes weren't "designed" so they don't need to do Safeguards. They were designed before Safeguards existed, and the developers chose not to repeat the mistake of hamstringing heroes to Safeguards as they did with villains. Yanking existing utility wouldn't have gone over well, anyway.

Yeah, that's some vivid imagination. Because I imagine when the message comes up, people already in Atlas would either keep hanging out in the Architect or move on to another zone. As well, I've been to events where it takes multiple people to accomplish something and been the only one there. Being killed because no-one else showed up was not fun, and I don't fancy giving stray villains PvP meat via my own body just because they came in a full team. Never design an even that depends on people showing up. People will NOT show up all the time, and for the people who do at these times it will suck enough to not want to repeat it.

I don't WANT other people "helping" me out by stealing my experience and throwing off my groove. That's why I do instanced missions instead of hunting the significantly larget Hazard Zone spawns. That's the POINT of instances, not the problem with them.

"It's done in other games" is the world's worst argument for adding something into this one, especially when it comes about alone. Especially since I've played some of those "other" games and never liked the idea that the things I was sent to hunt were being camped by the other 15 people who had to hunt the same things in the same area. That never made me any friends, but it may have made me an enemy or two. On the flip side, I've made a lot of friends by teaming in instances and for TFs.

Far as I'm concerned, PvP can go to hell. I'm certainly not interested in giving up MY game to help save a part of the game I have exactly zero interest in. I certainly don't want it shoved in my face so that other PvPers can have pot-shots at my unwilling self. Dropkicking people into PvP encounters is not a good way to improve PvP. Getting people to actually WANT to PvP is. If I don't WANT to PvP now when I CAN go and find it, why do you think I'd want to PvP MORE if I'm FORCED into it?

Why would I want to be inconvenicend to facilitate another player, when the game already provides plenty of opportunity for both of us to have our cake and eat it too? I don't want to PvP or even be exposed to it because there are PLENTY of non-player villains for my hero to fight and plenty of non-player heroes for my villain to fight. Why would I fight other players? I don't want to, and rather than trying to step on my toes ever so slightly (or more than just slightly) by trying to intrude PvP in my PvE zones, either try to convince me to go to a PvP zone or accept the fact that I'm happy it's hidden away in its own separate zones.

What if you're on the other side? Yeah, that's a bit tougher. These missions would have to be clearly marked as pvp content just like everything else (if they're on "the other side", most outdoor missions could be within friendly zones). I guess there might have to be a slight revamp of villain side so you don't have to do mayhems... ...or not. Personally I'm no fan of the pvp in this game, but going on these mayhems would be fun imho. I still get a new contact if I fail, and there's no debt, so...

I'm sorry if posting this makes me a jerk or if you feel I misunderstood you somewhere. The fact of the matter is that I LIKE the game's level structure, I LIKE the game's instance structure and I HATE PvP as a general concept. If you are interested in forwarding any of these ideas, do so without yanking my game from under me. I'm perfectly happy with how things are. Don't "fix" them for me. If we can both be happy, then fine. I don't have a complaint. That's why PvP zones are separate from PvE zones - everybody has his place. So unless you have a way to do this that DOESN'T ruin my game in new and creative ways, then I am VERY, VERY much against this.

I was going to ask - what the HELL point is there to this idea other than griefing? Seriously. I cannot and will not stand for game-sanctioned griefing of other players. If there's someone you don't like or can't get along with, do what all grown-ups do and get over it. Schoolyard bully tactics have no place in a game we play for fun.

I also want to add that I didn't mean for this to be a put-down, as I really do see a lot of interesting points in the general idea. However, I do happen to disagree with several of the basic premises quite strongly, and I wanted to voice that. I'm glad it came over as benign as I hoped it would

Yeah, the damn thing has been completely useless for a couple of months now. Before the turnover to the new forums, at least if you left it alone long enough it would self-update to the right time and you could see it if you were quick enough, but now it's perpetually wrong.

Knowing when you can log on has become a crapshot, and it's kind of awkward for me, since it's 5PM right now.

It's supposed to be a joke, like "Hey, here's some I16 info!" when there never was any I16 info to begin with. It's pretty much the equivalent of a RickRoll.

That's the reason we were given officially. Argue with the developers if you're not happy with it.

Firstly, how I read the suggestion wasn't just giving players an option to self-exemplar down (that's been much-requested over the years) but outright REMOVING levels. I like my levels, and I'm not going to sit idly by and not my head while people suggest they be taken away from me after five years. No, thank you!

As well, while sidekicks and exemplars are a good system and I'd like to see it extended a little bit more, I am NOT a fan of self-sidekicking. Self-exemplar I suppose I can see - you can always hold back and not hit as hard. But self-sidekicking is absolutely out of the question as far as I'm concerned. I have to agree with other people - self-sidekicking up 50 levels IS a mistake. It allows people to take on "end game" enemies from level one and do nothing but that for 50 levels. And then they come here to complain it's a boring grind. Ya think?

Sidekicking up should always, ALWAYS require a mentor and only ever allow this mentor to take missions from this level. Sure, allow low-level players to play with their high-level friends. Do NOT allow them to pose as high-levels, themselves. It's an exception to forward playability, not a feature to bypass the levelling structure. I'd like to see that status quo remain unchanged.

No. A big part of this game is the same reason I like Dragonball Z - taking a character who starts out strong but not very, and watching that character mature and get stronger. Facing an enemy who can wipe the floor with you and represents a hard boss fight, only to come back ten levels later and instead face 10 of that enemy and wipe the floor with them is COOL. Starting at level 50 is just ego stroking without the substance. Starting at level one and THEN getting to level 50 is ego stroking, but with the substance of having SEEN what these enemies can do.

Flashback in this game sucks. I can play a low-level hero just fine when I'm still progressing to the levels, but going BACK in the levels and LOSING powers I'm used to is the single-most annoying thing in the entire game. If I start at the end of the game, what point is there to go back and relive it? Roleplaying? Weak. Sense of progress? Not really, not when I can hit the "I win!" button and shoot all the way back to 50. Limitations are part of what makes the game fun. Removing the limitations and claiming "Well, you can just limit yourself anyway!" doesn't work. It's fake. More fake than a game actually is.

This is already true in this game. Not all sets are equally strong while levelling up, but most sets are balanced between each other in the end. And the reason Psychic Shockwave is an outlier is, in fact, in regard to final end-game performance. It's also a case of one power overshadowing an entire set, which is IN-SET balance which doesn't need to take other sets into account. Starting in the end game wouldn't change this.

You can't describe missions as randomly appearing and then claim people can choose what they want to do. That's not how random works. You can just as much hope a contact randomly offers you the mission you want as you can hope that the game randomly spawns the mission you want. Personally, I prefer contacts to a very large extent. I don't see why heroes HAVE to be reactive and only ever respond to emergencies, when they can instead work with contacts and get to the root of what's causing these emergencies. If I had a choice, I'd rather the more involved investigations were the primary goal of heroes. While I wouldn't be opposed to random emergencies popping up, I like to think that my hero has bigger goals than spending his life putting out the fires that Dr. Makes Fires keeps starting and never anything more. Being a super hero shouldn't be a beat job, it should be... Well, about adventure and mystery.

Besides, I'm sick and tired of everyone depicting heroes as these layabouts who sit on their hands all the time except when disaster strikes. The heroes I design are constantly working to take the fight to the villains.

As long as you're not advocating fighting other PLAYERS, then I don't have a problem with that. However, I just don't agree that, on the flip side, villains HAVE to be proactive. Sure, for some villains that's key - big plans, lots of schemes, destroy all humans, etc. That's definitely an integral part of any game that has you playing the villain. But just as much, responding to events as they occur, seizing opportunities, taking advantage of unexpected situations or just selling your services are just as integral to the broader spectrum of being a villain. Some villains are born leaders, some villains are born followers, and some villains are born apathetic and looking for something to do.

A lot of CoV is built with mercenaries and followers in mind, that has to be said. There isn't much room for leaders, which is sad. But just by the same token, a few characters I made just fit the "follower" role PERFECTLY. Either they are followers of their masters (my other villains) and working for their true masters by proxy of Arachnos, or they're just biding their time and looking for venues to use their powers. A system that only catered to scheming, cackling villains would remove this vital part of the game.

"Big" baddies are overrated. My most favourite baddies are the small, lone, human-sized enemies who don't look like BASEMENT CAT DESTROYER OF WORLDS. An actual thinking, playful personality is a plus. For me, one of by far the visually coolest bad guys in the game is Requiem, because he's not huge, he's not a horrible monster, he's not feral... He's just a smart guy who happens to hold enormous power in his hands. And after you've wiped the floor with his enormous army, here is this one not-very-tall skinny guy who poses ten times the danger.

Giant armies are cool, I will admit that, but not as the "big bad," but rather as the armies of mooks who guard the big bad, who's actually many times stronger than his entire army just by himself, only he didn't want to or couldn't get his hands dirty.

Personally, I like my baddies small.

If your question is whether I would play such a game, then the answer is "no." I'm not interested in raids, I'm not interested in chaos, I'm not interested in teamwork, I'm not interested in sharing my imaginary glory. I don't need big cosmic threats that take 20 other people to defeat, because such a dogpile isn't fulfilling. It's dull and unrewarding. And I DEFINITELY don't want the game's biggest rewards to hide behind forced teaming content. EVER! Why do you have to go and undermine your own point, anyway? You start out by trying to make the player feel like a super-super hero from the start of the game, then you throw in an enemy that makes the player feel like the chewing gum stuck to a fat man's shoe. No, thanks. I like my baddies in smaller packages that can be defeated by myself if I try hard enough or think quickly enough. I was never a fan of stories that featured loads and loads of character.

That's an interesting prospect, because I've always dreamt of a game where everyone was some brand of tank-mage and didn't have anything positively crippled to make it mandatory to team. And I certainly wouldn't refuse some more attention played to knockback. I've always wished that knockback mitigation didn't mean not being budged at all, but rather meant that you would, say, flip in the air and quickly land back on your feet, as opposed to cartwheeling through the air.

I'm not sure that knocking someone half a mile back is productive, though, as you then have to chase after him and find him, which IS a problem for melee.

You can't really ignore game design. I've nothing against giving melee fighters some ranged attacks, ranged fighters some personal protection and so on, and it can be designed such that going for melee and range costs you defence and suchforth, but the truth remains that completely random building hasn't worked yet. The original City of Heroes system allowed something like that, and the result was that some people made incredibly overpowered characters, some made incredibly underpowered ones and there were very few in-between. You start out with the idea that everyone will be super, but propose a system that will allow only some to be super and most to be rather sub. The point of game balance isn't to make everybody WEAK, it's to make everybody EQUAL. You can draw the balance point higher up the power curve, but you can't discard balance out of hand and expect people won't get hurt when they realise they're not quite super.

Ironically, that's one of the sections I like in principle. The only way to make an MMO truly interesting in terms of combat is to shift the importance from build, numbers and RNG calculations and into... Well, player skill in real time. The only way to do that is to have positioning and aim matter. Tying powers to button combinations like, say, Street Fighter or MegaMan, is another good way, but that's hard to do in third-person 3D.

This comes with problems, though, and they are the most boring problems of them all - network speed capacity. A good action game really isn't playable with more than 60-70ms of ping. I play City of Heroes with 250-300ms of ping on a GOOD day. Such an action game is cool for offline play, or play over either LAN or at least through local Internet servers. But I live in Eastern Europe and connect to servers in the US. There's no way I won't have a lot of ping.

That's a pipe dream, I'll tell you right now. Even ignoring issues of geometry load and server capacity, you CANNOT travel at 200 mph and expect to have any sort of control over where you're going. Ever driven a car at 200 mph? Your reaction time simply isn't good enough to do much more than drive in a straight line and try to keep on the road. And while it's true that heroes might have better reaction times than us mere mortals, you have to remember that YOU are in control, and it's YOUR reaction time that matters. IP is around 2 miles long. At 200 mph, that's 36 seconds end-to-end. That means building and intersections are going to be shooting past you in milliseconds. Let's be generous and call an average street 50 feet wide. At that speed, an intersection will pass by you in 0.16875. That's ~169 milliseconds. Not only is that half as long as my ping time, but you are NEVER going to have the reaction time needed to actually make that turn, and make it precisely.

Heck, Super Speed right now is around 80 mph, and even that's too fast for most people to be able to manoeuvre over anything but straight open roads. I've seen people try to use Super Speed indoors, and the people who don't constantly run into walls move in fits and starts as they stop to face the right direction. Exaggerated speed is cool, but because we, the players, are all human, we can't go TOO fast.

That's an interesting concept. I've never been very good at twitch reflex games, but once upon a time I was very good at UT2004 because I learned all the tricks and kinks of all the weapons and vehicles and was able to consistently beat players who were otherwise much superior to me, but using poor tactics. However, I have serious doubts that this can be possible in a game that still depends on builds and to-hit checks. About the only way to make that happen is to introduce these "complex play mechanics," and I'm not convinced this is a good thing. Why? Because "complex" very often turns into "boring" and then into "annoying" when you have to do it more than a few times.

Example: Playing a Mastermind can be a very complex experience with the right binds. You can control each henchman individually, control placement, behaviour and so on. It can be very productive, but it's SO DAMN FIDDLY! The result? Even the most active Masterminds eventually fall into a simpler, easier approach that, while it isn't QUITE as productive, is at least sustainable. The ideal game of skill shouldn't be built on complex game mechanics. Quite on the contrary, it should be built on SIMPLE game mechanics that simply require knowledge and situational awareness. "Easy to play, difficult to master," as it were.

That's as much as I'm going to quote from this paragraph. No, thank you. I am not interested in sandbox games. At all. I like making my own fun in controlled games from time to time, but I DESPISE a game that essentially hands you the keys to the world and tells you "Go make your own fun. I'm going out to have a drink." I like a discrete, finite world with pre-determined things to do, with storylines to follow and missions to take part in. And on the flip side, I don't like a world where most of the activities don't actually have a point.

Some of the ideas are interesting, but you're ignoring some very basic game design principles which I suspect may cause more problems than the novelty of ignoring them will bring. This is also a general design which I am not a fan of just because I was never a fan of the direct source material that it's trying to simulate. I've always said that a "comic book simulator" would not be a fun game to play, and I maintain that. Any game has to be a game first and only at best emulate the important details of the source material it is inspired by. You don't start with a comic book and think "How can I turn this into a game?" You start with a game and think "OK, how can I make this more like a comic book?"