JonScott

Never mind. Fiddled around a bit and found it. (Just a matter of turning Particle Physics Quality to None.)

Thank you very much, Cat. That was becoming a real frustration.

This one was inspired by what the ArenaNet devs are doing with dungeons in Guild Wars 2 (you can read about it at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeons if you're interested).

When you accept a TF/SF, you’re given the option of doing it in “Story Mode” or “Reward Mode.”

Reward Mode is exactly what we have now--minimum team requirement, challenge scaled for the minimum team size, big reward at the end.

Story Mode is for all the folks who want to enjoy the story content of TFs/SFs but don’t really care about the rewards and hate the hassle of padding a team. The minimum team requirement is removed, and the content difficulty and rewards are scaled down to the level of a standard story arc.

A couple notes:

Unlike with GW2 dungeons, Story Mode does not unlock Reward Mode (or vice versa). You get the choice of doing one or the other right from the start.

Not sure about repeatability. Reward Mode should definitely be repeatable, just like it is now. I don't think it would really matter one way or another for Story Mode.

Long story short: I used to love the object summoning thing with Propel. It was fun and quirky. But over time, I have grown to loathe it--objects cluttering the battlfield, large objects blocking hallways and doorways, objects blocking my field of view during combat, objects getting tangled in the geometry and trapping me so that I get body blocked and ganked ...

I suggest getting rid of the summoned objects completely and reconceptualizing Propel. Instead of, "You can open a gravitational rift and retrieve a heavy object, then Propel it at your foes for Smashing Damage" it would be something like, "You generate a focused gravity pulse that sends a single foe flying, propelling them into walls or other objects and inflicting Smashing Damage."

Along with cleaning up our battlefields, this would allow Propel’s cast time to be reduced. The long cast time seems to be the main mechanical issue with the power, and the reason for the long cast time seems to be the summoning animation. So reduce the cast time, probably to somewhere between Lift and Gravity Distortion, and increase the recharge accordingly. You wouldn’t have to change any of the other numbers, and Propel could maintain some of its current character (high, single target burst damage with powerful KB).

If this is too much, if people are simply too enamoured of the object summoning (which I can understand; like I said, I used to love it), then how about this: at least provide an alternate animation that doesn’t summon random objects. This wouldn’t allow for reduced cast time (and it wouldn’t fit the description, but meh) but it would give those of us who don’t like the object summoning an alternative.

I think this would be really fun:

Add a bunch of new Boss Kill missions to the radio/newspaper and tips, where the boss is a copy of a player character randomly selected from the opposing faction database on the same server (Rogues and Vigilantes could find themselves facing either Heroes or Villains). The boss would be generated using the same technology that’s used to create the Dopplegangers, and of course the copied character would be leveled up or down appropriately.

This would create some greater variety for Boss Kills, as well as making them more interesting and challenging, since you’d never know just what to expect.

Of course you’d occasionally end up fighting the nefarious XXPWNSYOUXX, NoobKillR17, or Generic Pinkman 1056, but I think that would be a small price to pay for the added fun.

Had another thought on this topic today, really more of a summation of what's been talked about so far, but it still put an interesting spin on things for me, so I thought I'd share.

Maybe it would behoove the developers, as they move ahead and try to keep City of Heroes running for another five years, to make infinite replayability part of their development strategy. Essentially, just what we've been talking about, going back through the game and revitalizing old content to make it fresh again.

In most MMOs, play leads up to some sort of ad infinitum (or ad nauseum) endgame, such as raiding. And for most MMOs, this fits their inherent playstyle: players create one or at most a handful of characters and then play them to max level, then want more to do with those characters.

Players play that way in City of Heroes too (at least as much as possible without a real endgame), but they also seem much more inclined to go back, roll up new level 1's, and play through the game a second, third, fourth, or thirtieth time.

Basically, City of Heroes inspires rampant altaholism, and I wonder if it would help the game to fully embrace and exploit this bit of its underlying psyhcology. It might also help CoH stand out from the pack. "In other games, you get to the end and all there is to do is raid. In our game, there is no end. Every time you create a new character, you have a whole new game to play through, because we strive to make City of Heroes Infinitely Replayable."

And I'll go first.

Personally, yes, despite the down side, I do think the devs should dedicate some resources to revamping old content. I think it would make the game more fun for a large portion of the existing playerbase--a majority of whom seem to be altaholics who unavoidably end up going back through and playing the same content over and over--and I think it would help attract and retain new players.

Of course that is just speculation on my part. Reasonable speculation, I think, but still, just speculation. (Which is actually why I'm making this thread: to see what everyone else's reasonable speculations are.)

I don't think I'd like to see one big overhaul, ala Cataclysm in WoW. That would basically mean we'd get little to no new extensions or expansions for a long period of time, and I like getting that new content too. It would also be only a stop-gap: eventually that new, exciting overhaul would get old and feeble too.

I think what might work is if the devs made revamping old content a permanent part of their process: basically create a small "legacy team" or "damage control" team whose job is to go through old content, start with the greatest egregiousness, and rewrite and rebuild. This would be an ad infinitum proccess. Let's face it, everything gets old; as the game keeps improving in new areas, the legacy team would keep going back and updating the weakest existing content to keep pace with the new stuff.

This would slow down the pace of new development, but it would mean a slow-but-steady--and continual--improvement in the existing game. And, yeah, I think that trade-off would be worth it.

So I've talked enough. What do you guys think?

I just want to get an overview of the community's sentiments on this issue.

Should the dev team devote resources to revamping old content?

Some things to keep in mind as you answer the question:

First: what do we mean by revamping?

When I say revamp, I don't mean an all-new, all-revolutionary transformation. We'd still have the same villain groups (though we might see some new members), the same repetitive maps (though, again, we might see some new ones), and the usual array of mission objectives (FedEx, Kill Boss, Escort, Click the Glowies).

What we would get would be missions, story arcs, and Task Forces rewritten and redesigned to be tighter, more engaging, and (hopefully) more fun; branching dialogues and choices that affect the outcome of missions (ala Going Rogue); and zones redesigned to be more fun and, where needed, more accessible (i.e. vault and auction access, stores and trainers in better locations, and so on).

Basically, what we would get would be similar to the Hollows makeover in iss 12, the redesigned Positron's Task Force, and content generally updated to the current standard of Going Rogue.

(For those of you who were unimpressed with the Hollow's makeover or who've been disappointed with the new Positron TF or Going Rogue, hold on to that feeling. It's probably a good indicator of the experience you'd get from this sort of revamping.)

Second: revamping old content means less new content

Keep in mind that dedicating resources to revamping old content means shifting them away from creating brand new content. So every redesigned mission we get means there's a new mission we didn't get, and every redesigned zone we get means there's a new zone we didn't get.

Of course, redesigned content does kinda sorta count as new content (you're getting new text, new objectives, new branching dialogues, etc.), but ... well, take that as you will.

This was actually inspired by something Bill Z Bubba said in another thread, so he deserves the credit (or the condemnation :-).

When a character reaches 50, she unlocks access to TFs/SFs and other team-exclusive missions through the Flashback system. However, the Flashback versions have no minimum team size requirements and the difficulty and reward levels are reduced to the level of story arcs.

The purpose of this is to allow players who simply prefer to solo or who for some reason can't schedule the time for the regular TFs and SFs to still play through the content and enjoy the storylines.

This seems like it would have little to no negative impact on the current TF/SF system. The actual TFs and SFs would remain exclusive, special content, with high-level rewards, both in loot and prestige, for those willing to dedicate the time and effort to them. The Flashback versions only provide easier access to the story content.

An added benefit is that this would also significantly expand end game content, at least for those players who didn't do the regular TFs (which I'm thinking is at least a large chunk of the player base, if not a majority). And best of all, it does so by using the wonderful powers of the Flashback system to recycle existing content :-)

The original reasoning behind required team size.

This is according to Jack Emmert, from a developer's blog post he made early in the development of that other superhero MMO. While my feelings toward the man's work and leadership are ... ambivalent at best, I see no reason to think this is inaccurate.

Did a quick run through the Hollows just a little while ago, and so far I really like what I see.

Particular thumbs-up on putting "live" police in. Much, much cooler seeing the cops actually fighting the bad guys instead of just being typical NPC furniture.

I generally like the wider variety of villain types now, but I also find the ubiquity of Lost, Hellions, and Skulls kind of detracts from the personality of the Hollows. They add variety, but the variety is so evenly spread out, it's actually just created a new homogenity. I'd like to see a predominance of Trolls and Outcasts with the other villain groups a noticeable minority. Say make it twice as likely a specific spawn point will produce a group of Trolls or Outcasts as opposed to a group of Hellions, Skulls, or Lost? (So if you were generating a random number like rolling a die, 1=Hellions, 2=Skulls, 3=Lost, 4-5=Trolls, 6-7=Outcasts.)

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I like the branching dialogue news however I think that a lot of posters are getting more worked up about it than it warrants. I expect the uses are going to be minor at first and, based on past examples, I really doubt they are going to go back and re-work old storylines (at least not soon and not many if any).

They haven't retrofitted old stories with the "Story/Chapter" formatting and that seems like a much easier "fix" than re-writing stories to include branched paths.

I think this new feature is good but I don't think it is going to transform CoX into Fallout (which had great branching stories and dialogue).

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Hey! Quit harshing my buzz, [censored].

Nah, kidding.

I hate to admit it, but you're probably right. Even if they do go back and start changing the existing content, we're probably not going to notice anything major for quite a while.

Still, a couple very significant things have changed recently: they now have sole control of the property, and they actually have a full-blown dev team to work with.

So past examples might not apply anymore.

On the other hand, there's always going to be more to do with the game then there are people available to do it, so some things will just not get done.

So best course right now is probably wait and see, cautious optimism, fingers crossed, here's hoping, but don't get those hopes up too high mister, cause you're just setting yourself up for a disappointment.

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Keep in mind that this is a difficult format to work in. For one, you can't have interpersonal consequences except in extremely rare occasions, because between a few hundred thousand players each individual player will have their own consequences so completely subsumed by those of others as to render their individual changes completely and utterly trivial.

This destroys the notion of being a significant force in a fictional world, and as such takes out much of the enjoyment of playing a superhero game because you just aren't 'super' anymore.

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Yeah, you just can't have one player or team making choices that change the game world for everyone. Barring special circumstances, this is probably always going to be a minor disappointment in the game.

On the other hand, this opens up all sorts of possibilities for each character's personal storyline.

I just finished running a couple new villains through the beginning of CoV, and I was thinking how cool it would be if you had a choice of, say, turning the Mu Codex over to Burke or telling him it was destroyed in the battle and keeping it for yourself. Your decision has no immediate effect (other than a significant infamy boost, or maybe a nifty new piece of rare salvage or something), but when you hit level 8 or so, if you turned it over to him, he gives you a special mission or two; if you didn't, he starts sending goons after you, and you have to either go make up with him or beat the tar out of him to get him to back off.

Or what if operative Burch, from Kalinda's first mission, offered you the choice to either kill him or let him go? Kill him, and Kalinda is pleased and you continue with her missions. Let him go, and you lose Kalinda as a contact but Burch becomes your new contact and offers you a different series of missions. Of course Kalinda won't let that slide, so either Burch's missions or later missions allow you the chance to square accounts one way or another with her and Arachnos.

This also raises the possibility of some genuine mystery-solving. Clues might actually get to be clues instead of just sign-posts pointing to the next mission. Like at the end of Positron's TF, instead of him figuring out the whole scheme and sending the characters on the final mission, he could say, "Okay, I see two possibilities here. Either they're doing A or they might also be doing B. You're the ones who've been in the field on this one. What do you think?" And then you get to use all the clues you have to figure out which mission to take.

So, yeah, I'm veritably gushing with the possibilities.

I just hope--really, really, really hope--they do start going back and reworking the early content. All the neat stuff they're throwing in will just make that early, legacy stuff look even weaker by comparison.