EightyGee

If they really want to encourage doing missions, maybe they could reduce the number of mobs that crowd every corner in the "safe" zones?

Assuming PvP really catches on, I can't wait for the championship matches, with several hundred cameras flying around. I assume the geometry will be simple enough (Police drones minus the flashing lights I'm guessing) that lag won't be a real issue, but oh the clutter!

Just think "Paparazzi" and you've got "camera" griefing as clusters of view-blocking camera drones force you to waste your attacks clearing the field of the pesky floating viewfinders when you really need to be focused on your opponent.

Personally I think "spying" will be the least of your troubles and one easily remedied by limiting (or eliminating) communication with people in the Arena from the outside. But cameras that either deliberately (by griefers trying to disrupt) or indeliberately (just dozens of people wanting a closeup view of that big fight) interfere with the event inside the arena is going to be an interesting problem to address.

I'm very curious to see how the Devs deal with this.

If the action inside the arena was taking place in the same instance (server process) as the zone itself, then this would, in fact, be trivial, no more real work then rendering a few more characters on the street in front of you, with an additional transform on the render view to align with the geometry of the billboard.. After all, the view you see when you play is essentially an animated texture running at 20 frames a second splatted on the view frustrum. The real issue is needing to send data not just from the server process your currently in, but from seperate process where the fight is taking place, as well.

Now what they could do is...

...Have the zones where top-ranked players compete be more like a city zone than an instanced zone so that you can have more than just 8 players in them at one time. When you enter the Arena, you see special doors leading to championship matches, which take you to these special zones. To avoid clogging the client-side renderer, each team that enters gets its own "suite" as described above with a wide screen TV watching a camera "view" into the Arena. That would limit the network and render load to the team, and the players or teams competing. The only additional work is, as I mentioned before, one additional renderview and transform, plus the camera logic, which could simply cycle from one competitors over-the-shoulder cam to another, though slightly more sophisticated cameras (weighted average of team position, etc) wouldn't be too tough to implement.

One could argue that a zone set-aside for nothing but championship team-ups might not see a lot of traffic, but I can't imagine it being any worse than the traffic through Faultline or the Rikti crash site.

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There ARE things that can be done -- both to reduce ganking (I'm not promising it will ever completely go away) and allow a broader level range in PvP combat. Lower levels should have a chance to attack and defend themselves, even if it is hard.

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Lower levels should be able to put up a running fight, but not a true fight. They shouldn't be able to "hold their own" against someone +5 levels, in other words.
They should be able to do a bit of damage, nothing major, take 75% of their own HP, and run for their lives to a safe location where they regroup and summon allies.

The one thing I thought of, you could scale up or down END usage on a by-level basis. So, the 15th level hero challenging the 25th level villain could, in fact, shoot the 25th level villain for 150 HP of damage, but it would cost him 3x the normal Endurance.
He just couldn't shoot him a lot.
On the other hand, the 25th level villain could "toy" with the 15th level hero for as long as he felt it was amusing.


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But as no one likes to be toyed with in a situation where they are powerless to defend themselves, no one will participate in this, so the effort to implement it would be wasted.

I mean how many times have you read a post where someone claimed to *like* being chain-mezzed?

A lot of people keep posting that their high-level toon should be able to pwn any toon 10 levels or more below them, but as has been pointed out, no one 10 levels below you is going to go anywhere near you or the PvP Zone you're in, so the point is moot.

As for PvP Free-For-All Zones? I can see it now, a bunch of villians sitting around waiting for the heroes to show up, but none of them ever do... Until they hit lvl 50, of course, at which point, let the villian ganking begin!!! It's not griefing because Hey, they're villians... Since when is it dishonorable for Superman to stop a bank robbery? It's gonna be worse than badge hunters in Perez Park.

And while they could certainly put min/max level caps on the PvP zones, all that does is further segment the population, and given that the players interested in PvP is likely to be some fraction of the overall player base, finding a villian to oppose within a narrow enough range to be worth your while could end up harder than LFG in Faultline at 4 in the morning.

((Formerly posting as KickAsterisk))


It comes down to this: For all the reasons previously stated, if PvP is purely consensual, than players will only accept challenges (or however it works) from players with characters even-con or lower compared to theirs. Likewise players will only challenge other players with characters who are even con to them or lower.

If it's SG consensual (IE my Hero SG versus your Villian SG) then SuperGroups will have no lower-level members, as they will either quit after being ambushed repeatedly by the high level members of their opponent group, won't be accepted if they are lower than the group "level" or will be power-leveled to 50 as a prerequisite for acceptance.

If it's a PvP zone system, where everyone in the zone "consents" to PvP, only Lvl 50's will end up there, as lower levels will just fall prey to higher level characters.

In any one of these scenarios,consensual PvP forces even-con contests between players, as these contests simply won't be fun otherwise. That means that I'm only going to get to challenge those players who happen to have a character at roughly the same level as mine. Those of us looking for some form of built-in even-con system, through either the monster-code or SK, or RSK, or something else, are looking for some way to open up the playing field so that anyone in the game can challenge anyone else, giving us an opportunity to see who the great players really are.

From what I've read, the division in Points of View seems to fall between people who see this as a ROLE-PLAYING Game versus those who see it as a Role-Playing GAME.

For the RPg'ers, the idea is that a Lvl 50 Hero should be able to consistantly beat the crap out of a Lvl 10 hero, because a Lvl 50 Hero is a "seasoned veteran who's earned his advantage through time and hard work" whether or not the player of said character actually has little or no skill in playing the character or the game.

OTOH, The rpG'ers, feel that the player of a lvl 50 Hero should only be able to consistantly beat the crap out of the player of a lvl 10 Hero if they are a "seasoned veteran who's earned his advantage through time and hard work" (or the player or the other char sucks) regardless of whether or not the character of said player has been around for 2 weeks or 2 years.

Now the key difference, as I see it, is whether you view the skill level of the character or the skill level of the player as being the most important factor.

I, for one, am interested in PvP specifically because it's *Player versus Player* and would prefer some system through which my skills as a player are actually being tested by other players of equal (or greater) skill. Having to Power-Level every char to 50 to ensure that unskilled noobs with high-lvl toons aren't trashing me through sheer force of HP and raw DMG capacity is neither challenging nor fun. I'd rather be able to say I won because I was a more formidable player, not because I simply had a more formidable toon.

That puts me in the second camp, though I can appreciate the position of those in the first, so...

Maybe there should be two different types of PvP zones. One for players to match their toons, regardless of skill, and another for players to match their skills, regardless of toon.

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I forgot all about SK'ing!

MentorBots(tm) will be the greatest thing since the TaxiBot and give all those bored 50's something to do.

"Been challenged to a fight? Call MentorBot and we'll send a lvl 50 hero to stand on the sidelines while you fight your nemesis!"

Of course, the villians, once hip to this, will do the same thing. In the end, all PvP battles will be even-con - One artificially upleveled lvl 49 vs another.

Now, how is that better than building an even-con system for PvP in the first place?

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Ha, I love it!

5 stars for you...

I hope MentorBot is not already taken, because I'm starting that tanker tonight.

You have given me my WarCry to "MentorBot here to save the day" HeHeHe

ROFL, I can't stand it...I'd give you tens stars if I could

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Better yet, "MentorBot here to enable YOU to save the day!"

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Kamui, you're comparing apples to oranges here, but even so, in real life the companies I have worked for will gladly pay the 18-year-old high school graduate more money if he has more skills. The fact that Larry has been around longer doesn't entitle him to anything more - he got what he was due for all those years, or should have (a steady paycheck).

This sense of entitlement that people have has got to go. You work hard, play well and whatever rewards you have coming to you for that shouldn't have to wait for PvP; you should already have received them, so the game doesn't owe you any more distinction.

What is the difference if a pair of level 20's beats a level 50 versus a level 10 SK'd to a level 48 beating a level 50?

Before the OP's suggestion is dismissed, it should be given a fair try on the test server.

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As usual, someone has gone and made the point even better than I have, in far far fewer words.

And I forgot all about SK'ing!

MentorBots(tm) will be the greatest thing since the TaxiBot and give all those bored 50's something to do.

"Been challenged to a fight? Call MentorBot and we'll send a lvl 50 hero to stand on the sidelines while you fight your nemesis!"

Of course, the villians, once hip to this, will do the same thing. In the end, all PvP battles will be even-con - One artificially upleveled lvl 49 vs another.

Now, how is that better than building an even-con system for PvP in the first place?

Since people love throwing analogies around on both sides, I'd like to toss in on of my own, though it's a bit radical, because it's actually about *playing a game*

I'm a half-way decent chess player, but if I were to challenge a Chess Grand Master to a match, guess what would happen? He'd wipe the floor with me. Every time. I don't need to test this theory, it's just a fact of life. Is it because he has more pieces than me? No. Can his bishops take out 5 of my pawns at one go? No. In fact, We both have the same exact pieces and they all follow the exact same rules, so what possible advantage could the Grand Master have, that would make me so confident in his victory?

Oh, that's right. He's a better player than I am. That's the reward he gets for his years of playing, combined with his natural ability - he gets to out-play all but a limited and select group of players.

Now, there's already a long-standing tradition of "leveling the playing field" It's called handicapping. If I play Chess against a higher level player, he'll generally spot me a few pieces. In Go, the low level player gets to place a number of pieces on the board before the high-level player places his first. In Golf, the better player will start with a certain number of strokes. In running, the faster runner will give the slower runner, a head start, the list goes on and on.

Only in MMORPGs do you hear players arguing for it to be the other way around, that the low-level players should be handicapped against the high-level players.

I imagine that's because being level 50 isn't a reward for being a skillful player, simply a question of patience, and even that can be circumvented through power-leveling. If skill had anything to do with it, high-lvl players would be screaming for an "exemplar" system for PvP in order to increase the challenge.

Unfortunately, CoH isn't really designed to reward skill, but rather to reward people for continuing to subscribe month to month. To do this they need to preserve the player's feelings of increasing "uber-ness" regardless of whether this is accompanied by any increase in actual ability. We can't have a 3-powered lvl 5 hero wipe the floor with a lvl 50 villian through sheer skill because that would clearly and publicly demonstrate the lvl 50 players lack of skill (at least in comparison to the lvl 5). Being lvl 50 suddenly becomes a hollow accomplishment for the player in question. To paraphrase Recluse, if there's not some distinct advantage to just showing up repeatedly then, "what's the point?"

Frankly, I'm not arguing for an "exemplar" system in which the higher level player is stripped of all powers above the low-level. (though it's interesting to think about) I do think having access to a greater number of powers with more slots, DO or SO enhancements and more inspiration slots, should be more than enough advantage for any high-level player going up against a low-level toon. Combining this with the skill that comes from playing the game at the edge of your abilities should be more than enough to demonstrate you skills as a player, and earn yourself a real reputation in the game. That should be reward enough.

Having the hit-points, accuracy and damage potential to enable a powerleveling noob to one-shot the most skilled player in the game on a low-lvl character isn't rewarding anyone for anything.

Why would an uber-skilled player have a low-lvl toon? One of the hallmarks of skilled players is their willingness to explore different strategies and tactics against their opponents. In CoH, that would include trying a variety of AT/Powerset/Power/Enhancement combinations to test their effectiveness. Another reason would be to fit the tradition of handicapping. Grand Master player spots newbie one or two or ten or thirty) levels to "even the playing field" and make the contest a challenge instead of an opportunity to gloat over having the best FOTM power-build.

But then again, lest we forget...

John Gabriel's Greater Internet F-wad Theory: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F-Wad

So I'm not terribly optimistic we'll see much "true" competition once CoV rolls around, but who knows? I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

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I think it -looks- simpler then it is.

For one thing, if adding missions was so easy that they could afford to code in temporary story arcs for special events that only last for one weekend, then honestly I think we'd be getting floods and floods of new missions, story arcs, and task forces every update. (not that we're not getting plenty, but I mean, hell, have a couple of guys churn stuff out for four months and pow, you've doubled the content of the game, if it were so easy.

Now, while setting up the framework for a mission might not be super hard, You've also got to write the story text, you've got to set the type of mobs, how many there are, set up a mission map...If you really want to please, it's gonna be hard to get away with using a generic cave or warehouse map, so you're probably going to have to have somebody do some modeling work. Then you've got to tie it to the contacts and you've gotta code it so that while the event is active, your contacts offer this special event/story arc instead of your normal missions, or at the very least alongside them. Then you've got to make sure that it'll go away when the event's over. But then, what if somebody takes a mission and doesn't do it until after the event's over? You've gotta account for that. And you've gotta account for people that might be in the middle of story-arcs, so that they can take a third "special" arc, or put the others on hold. (which is going to PO people who are trying to get through their arcs)

THEN you've gotta bugtest the whole thing. Test and test and test again, all on the internal servers. You've gotta try every imaginable thing that players could do to try and trip a bug on something.

After that, you might want to throw it up on the test server. Then you've gotta see how that goes, and see if -that- uncovers any more bugs. Then you put it up on live, when the day finally comes, and what happens? Well, likely some bug slips past, because somebody ALWAYS finds something you missed, so you get people [censored] about how the devs rushed it out. Then you get people who signed on during the weekend to do a TF or finish one of their mission arcs and pow, they find they're forced into doing something completely different that they weren't wanting to do.

Then you'll have the self proclaimed messiahs of the "casual players" who complain that the devs made this cool story arc for the hardcore gamers because a casual player could never play through it all on a weekend.

That's a LOT of effort to piss off as many people as you please.

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As for "derailing normal operations", that would imply that the ability to incorporate limited time-specific content isn't part of the "normal operation" of the game. If you're right about this, that would represents a serious flaw in the design and/or implementation of the system as the devs have chosen to actually include time-specific "events" in the game. It is my hope that these events will become more common, and the developers will refactor the system to incorporate these events into the fabric of the game, rather than simply bolting them on, as the appear to have done with the Ru invasion and the Holloween event.


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The events are designed to be non-intrusive. Nothing in this game is forced on players. They're never required to do anything. One of the major elements of this game is choice. You don't -have- to do TFs, you don't -have- to street sweep, you don't -have- to do missions. You don't -have- to team, you don't -have- to solo.

Given that this is one of the pervading philosophies behind the dev's design schemes, If you -have- to do this time-sensetive story, it's gonna piss off a lot of people for a very small payoff.

And if they DON'T have to do it, well, you went through all that trouble to code in this elaborate thing that a lot of people aren't going to mess with. When they could have been, say, working on getting the skills system to work right on the internal test servers. ;p

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With regard to pissing off people who don't want to deal with the event or who might miss it, while this may be a real concern of the devs, it would be unfortunate, as it reinforces the idea that the game is not the actual vehicle for the story, but simply a game based on the story, as I originally suggested. (Kinda like the game version of "The Incredibles" - it may give you the feeling of being in the world of the Pixar movie, but the story of "The Incredibles" isn't what happens in the game, but what appears on the big screen.) If these "events" are supposed to be part of the story, and the story is supposed to be driven through the game, than dealing with these events, or choosing to ignore them in favor of other priorities, or missing them if you're not around, would be part of the game as well. The option to treat them as if they weren't happening, or never happened at all after they were over, would not.


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Well, ultimately it's partially a hinderance of the game style. In an MMO, not everybody can be "the hero". we're all "a hero". For all we know, there -was- a resolution to the other events', it's just that Statesman is the hero that resolved it, and we were all the supporting cast that was keeping the minions busy. ;p

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Unfortunately, this is not how the devs designed, or, I assume, envisioned, the game. CoH *could* have been implemented as a fictional world, instead it is a game based on that fictional world.

In their defense, CoH is the first MMORPG I've played for more than a month (still going strong after 7 months at this point) which is a testament to everything they've done right so far. My criticism stems from a desire to see the MMORPG mature as a medium to the point where it actually becomes a vehicle through which a long-running "story" can be told, not simply the reflection of the story being told in the Paragon Times. My hope is that as CoH evolves this will become more and more the case for both casual and hardcore players alike.

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Actually, I suspect you and I think a lot alike in terms of ideals. Unfortunately, after watching numerous developers over the years, it's that ideas are a lot easier to come up with then they are to implement. That said, a lot of what you're talking about is the kind of thing that the devs WANTED when they concieved the game. A lot of it had to be dropped or changed because of impracticality, but I suspect they're doing their best to incorperate as much of it as they can to the game. Creating a living, breathing storyline that the players can actually affect is a pretty daunting task, tho.

Personally, I think the events have all been cool so far, and they seem to get a little more impressive and elaborate each time. I still think having a temporary event story-arc is infeasible, tho. But I do think they can do more then they've done so far, AND I think they plan to. Keep in mind every aspect of this game is always being evolved and examined. so with each event, they're going to listen to everybody's comments and take them into consideration.

And wow. I talk to much, and this is pretty far from the original topic. ;p

Um. I did say "casual gamer" in the message!

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Final word on the subject, because I think we do largely agree on this. While I think introducing new story arcs, Task Forces and door missions for weekend events would be GREAT, it's far more ambitious than I would recommend. My only suggestion in these cases is that, since we're expected to fight Ru or Pumpkin Heads, or whatever we encounter next, our contacts include references to these and alternate "defeat x missions" along with their primary story arc missions, much the way they include street sweeping missions of normal mobs as alternates now. You wouldn't HAVE to do them, but at least your contacts wouldn't appear completely clueless to the event at hand. IOW, I'm not arguing for MORE content in these one or two day events, only that the event content (and I enjoyed both the Ru invasion and the Holloween event immensely) is woven into the fabric of the world at a minimal level.

Where I think transient missions, story arcs and TFs do make sense is in longer story transitions that last from one update to the next update (or the update after that) so we're not talking about content good for a couple of days, but for several months. Even if they repurposed all the 5th missions as council missions after the transition, at least there'd be missions in between that would include the players in the transition.

Personally I think this topic merits more discussion, so I will probably move this to its own thread, rather than further compromise this one.

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Two more quick examples: The Rularuu "invasion" and the Holloween Event

Did y'all notice how when the Ru invaded, none of the contacts seemed to notice? Worse still, none of the pedestrians did either. I guess they were too busy worrying about Skulls & Hellions stealing their purses to notice GIANT FLYING EYEBALLS swatting heroes like flies. Near as I can figure, we're the only ones who were scared of them

Same thing with the Holloween event. Giant Pumpkin Heads running around town, and my low level contact wants me to go out and stop the Skulls rampage.

Given that these were limited time events, and seeing how much work went into the models, animations, etc. Would it have been too much to ask that our contacts at least acknowledged these other more immediate concerns? A temporary suspension of "business as usual" to focus on the immediate threat would done wonders for the feeling of immersion.

You don't need to single out any individual players to make the population as whole feel like it is a part of the "story" being played out, but as it is, we are locked into this "eternal now" where each issue the back-story of the game is updated, and the clock moved forward, but where the events within the game have no consequence.
Personally, I think having ephemeral content, that reflects the current state of the "story" and changes (or goes away) as the story evolves and new content was introduced, would keep me interested and excited far more than all the badges, Epic ATs, and Auxilliary Power Pools put together.

I know this was a thread about updates and casual players, but as a casual player (highest char is 36 after 7 months) , what I'd most like to see is the overall story of CoH reflected in the game I'm currently playing, not integrated or retconned into the back-story. If the Devs focused on this, game balance and bug fixes from update to update, I would gladly forgo just about every other new feature.

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This is such a cool idea.

I hope some Dev is reading this and takes a few notes on how to really bring home these invasion type scenarios in this game.

How friggin cool would it have been to be solving the mystery of the Halloween event or the Rularuu event through missions?

Heck, even if you finished it out with a Positron like, 'Thanks for the hard work, the Freedom Phalanx rode in and saved the dam thanks to you!'.

That would just be too cool.

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While I agree with your ideals, I don't think it's realistic to expect something like this. I mean, What you're basically suggesting is that they:

A) Derail the normal operations of the game for the sake of a temporary event, which is inevitably going to piss off anybody who doesn't want to deal with the event itself. Think about all the people that complained about the Rulaaru event simply because their characters couldn't well handle the spawns? Any villian group is going to have it's strengths and weaknesses, meaning that there are going to be heroes who excel against them and heroes that suck against them. My regen scrapper kicked rularru [censored]. my fire blaster (a soloing powerhouse, normally) got his [censored] shot out of the sky in -seconds-.

So who do they try to please with these event-specific missions? Team players? Soloists? Casual players? Hardcore players? And in ANY EVENT, it all basically means that

B) -they'd have to go through all the trouble of writing, coding and creating missions, all for the sake of a relative handful of their userbase, for -one- weekend, after which they'd have to throw them away. (otherwise it wouldn't be an -event-, would it?) That's a LOT of work to please a pretty small portion of the player base for a limited period of time. then when it's over, they'd be constantly hearing the ******* of people who had to work, or who didn't have time to complete all the missions, or the TF, or whatever.

While I agree that a story arc or TF dealing with the changeover would be a cool and very doable idea, no temporary event is going to exist on the scale that you're asking for here. It's just not feasible, in my opinion. I'd love the devs to prove me wrong on this, but I think it's maybe a little unreasonable to expect them to.
Just my 2 inf. ;p

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First, I'm glad that you agree with me regarding the incorporation of story transitions into the game itself. Given the relatively regular period between updates, it should be possible to use this interval as a means to drive the story forward, rather than have the story lurch forward from one update to the next.

As for "events" I don't know specifically how CoH is architected, but...

Adding new "defeat x" missions and appropriate descriptions, into the contact mission database *should* be fairly trivial, and in any event, no more work than building a bunch of new monsters with 3D models, monster descriptions, powersets, badges, etc. as well as rigging all the doors to open once per minute per player. As been on the software development side of the online games industry for the better part of 10 years now, so, while I don't specifically how CoH is designed, I do have a fairly good idea, and, unless they're doing something really strange, this isn't that big a deal.

As for "derailing normal operations", that would imply that the ability to incorporate limited time-specific content isn't part of the "normal operation" of the game. If you're right about this, that would represents a serious flaw in the design and/or implementation of the system as the devs have chosen to actually include time-specific "events" in the game. It is my hope that these events will become more common, and the developers will refactor the system to incorporate these events into the fabric of the game, rather than simply bolting them on, as the appear to have done with the Ru invasion and the Holloween event.

With regard to pissing off people who don't want to deal with the event or who might miss it, while this may be a real concern of the devs, it would be unfortunate, as it reinforces the idea that the game is not the actual vehicle for the story, but simply a game based on the story, as I originally suggested. (Kinda like the game version of "The Incredibles" - it may give you the feeling of being in the world of the Pixar movie, but the story of "The Incredibles" isn't what happens in the game, but what appears on the big screen.) If these "events" are supposed to be part of the story, and the story is supposed to be driven through the game, than dealing with these events, or choosing to ignore them in favor of other priorities, or missing them if you're not around, would be part of the game as well. The option to treat them as if they weren't happening, or never happened at all after they were over, would not.

Unfortunately, this is not how the devs designed, or, I assume, envisioned, the game. CoH *could* have been implemented as a fictional world, instead it is a game based on that fictional world.

In their defense, CoH is the first MMORPG I've played for more than a month (still going strong after 7 months at this point) which is a testament to everything they've done right so far. My criticism stems from a desire to see the MMORPG mature as a medium to the point where it actually becomes a vehicle through which a long-running "story" can be told, not simply the reflection of the story being told in the Paragon Times. My hope is that as CoH evolves this will become more and more the case for both casual and hardcore players alike.

As far as I can tell, the "story" of Paragon is advanced through the Paragon Times. CoH is, at best, a game based on this story, just as the comic is a comic based on this story. Why do I say this?

Case in point: The 5th/Council War

On any given server, you've got thousands of heroes, of whom several hundred are likely to be pounding on 5th soldiers at any given time. Has this had any effect on their presence in Paragon City? No. But a mutiny in the ranks occurs in the Paragon Times, and suddenly the 5th are gone with the exception of a few pockets of combat between 5th and Council members in IP and PI. There are no new story arcs for players to participate in the 5th/Council War, just the old missions renamed. For all intents and purposes the war happened in the Paragon Times, and the game has been changed to reflect this new history of Paragon City. Even contacts refer to the Council as if they'd always existed, and make no mention of the 5th as if they never did.

As it stands the actual player characters have no impact, either individually or collectively, on the story of Paragon City. Now I don't expect the Paragon Times to reflect the day to day activities of the players in the game, nor do I expect unique missions for each and every character. However, consider this alternative to the current handling of the 5th/Council War:

Between Update #3 and Update #4, you introduce 5th/Council missions and storylines that deal with the war. Contacts refer to the Council as a "new and mysterious threat" when they mention them. With update #4 you conclude the war with the 5th vanquished and the Council in place, and report that the collective actions of the heroes of Paragon City, as reflected in the missions we've played, has resulted in the demise of the 5th, but inadvertantly paved the way for the Council to solidify its hold. Over the 3 months between updates, you slowly replace 5th Spawns with "5th vs. Council" spawns and then replace these with Council spawns.

Two more quick examples: The Rularuu "invasion" and the Holloween Event

Did y'all notice how when the Ru invaded, none of the contacts seemed to notice? Worse still, none of the pedestrians did either. I guess they were too busy worrying about Skulls & Hellions stealing their purses to notice GIANT FLYING EYEBALLS swatting heroes like flies. Near as I can figure, we're the only ones who were scared of them

Same thing with the Holloween event. Giant Pumpkin Heads running around town, and my low level contact wants me to go out and stop the Skulls rampage.

Given that these were limited time events, and seeing how much work went into the models, animations, etc. Would it have been too much to ask that our contacts at least acknowledged these other more immediate concerns? A temporary suspension of "business as usual" to focus on the immediate threat would done wonders for the feeling of immersion.

You don't need to single out any individual players to make the population as whole feel like it is a part of the "story" being played out, but as it is, we are locked into this "eternal now" where each issue the back-story of the game is updated, and the clock moved forward, but where the events within the game have no consequence.
Personally, I think having ephemeral content, that reflects the current state of the "story" and changes (or goes away) as the story evolves and new content was introduced, would keep me interested and excited far more than all the badges, Epic ATs, and Auxilliary Power Pools put together.

I know this was a thread about updates and casual players, but as a casual player (highest char is 36 after 7 months) , what I'd most like to see is the overall story of CoH reflected in the game I'm currently playing, not integrated or retconned into the back-story. If the Devs focused on this, game balance and bug fixes from update to update, I would gladly forgo just about every other new feature.

Spent the last hour or so on virtue patrolling bricks for Rikti and Ru. This has been an incredible event! major kudos to the Team at Cryptic! Heros by the dozens banding together - regardless of team or group affiliation - with no cries of kill-stealing just a genuine sense of "we're all in this together"

If you thought you felt like a superhero before... All I can say is WOW!