Lock0n
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Quote:I cannot quote this sentiment enough. You've been a highlight of these forums for me for the last 8 years, when I first started stumbling onto your posts. Since that time I've learned about stochastic math, string theory, and wanted to raise the profile of Jurrasik, just to hear him talk more.Originally Posted by Overclock
With the game coming to end on Friday, I'm going to miss all of the Task Forces and Trials, all of the street hunts and mission doors, but I think what I'm going to miss the most is three clicks and a bit of typing each day:
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Arcanaville
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In 8 years, I've never said "thanks" for all of your amazing posts. It never seemed appropriate before, you don't need fanboys, you posts stand on their own. The work you've done for the game and the players speaks for itself.
And yet that doesn't seem enough. So I offer my gratitude and these words to let you know that you've brought a lot enjoyment into my life and that you, as Arcanaville, will be missed.
Thanks a ton. See you around the net, 'Ville. -
Quote:Okay, so to expand further on this idea, I love this notion of indirect pvp. Have players run a series of missions that kick off events in a zone. These events can be things like opening portals for faction groups to attack from (think Anti-Matter or a Nemesis Mole Machine). Fires, or Superadrine riots starting due to careful planting of items by player-run missions. Mass kidnappings/escapes, or just a shortage of authorities due to players taking them out. These can all lead up to a special zone wide event. Call it a zone Lockdown. The idea behind it is the authorities (whoever they are, good or bad) are so freaked out about all the fires, portals, kidnappings, whatever, that they call for a lockdown on the zone and certain specific things change (similar to a Rikti Ship Raid).Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Back when CoV was in beta, I mentioned my belief that, however the logistics of the games were going to be managed, I would not have made a Rogue Isles. I would have dropped the villains right into Paragon. It would have allowed for the possibility of indirect faction competition. In other words, CoV players could have been the ones setting fires to buildings in Steel that CoH players could try to extinguish. CoV players could have been the ones setting bombs that CoH players could have tried to prevent. They could have been the ones opening portals to dark dimensions in the middle of Peregrine Island rather than anonymous relative non-entities (at the time) like Antimatter. There were lots of potential opportunities for faction-based mini-games that could have expanded the grey area between PvE and PvP, rather than make direct PvP be an isolated marginalized activity.
First, enemy spawn points change from being passive spawns to bad guys actively patrolling their areas in sizes comparable to hazard zones. Second, normal contacts and shops go out, as the zone is too messed up to think of normal business right now. Third, emergency contacts open up to provide missions to aid the zone in it's time of need. And forth and most importantly, pvp flags get set for all players who are of differing reputation settings.
So now the zone is a true hotspot of chaos and mayhem. PvP is active, factions are running rampant, zone events are going crazy and the authorities are in a panic. What happens next. If you're on the opposing side of the zone's natural factional state (for example, you're a villain attacking Steel Canyon or a hero assaulting Grandville), then you try to keep the chaos going, by pvp'ing players, stopping zone events from being ended pre-maturely, or otherwise holding a zone that has no members of an opposing PvP faction in it for a set amount of time. Eventually the zone resets itself all on it's own and you're awarded a badge for seriously altering a zone's state for an extended period of time. If you're on the opposite side of that faction, then you can come in and successfully PvP the opposing zone, ending zone events (put out the fires, etc), defeating x number of factional spawns that are running rampant on the streets, or completing missions from emergency contacts (this last one is very important). All these should contribute to a State of the Zone bar that you and the opposing side work on, until the zone is either saved or the chaos ends on it's own and everything resets (with a substantial cooldown as well).
By providing non-pvp'ers several means to engage in the events of the zone without actually pvp'ing, you provide a major reason for them to enter the event and blunt some of the immediate criticism of PvP in general. PvP'ers don't really need much more motivation to play then what they already come with. And you make the accolades and rewards at the end of the event commensurate with the efforts necessary to swing the zone out of chaos or keep it there as long as you can.
Best of all, it really provides for a fun and interesting way to make the game world feel the effects of players playing in it. There are those that won't go near PvP with a 10 foot pole, but by providing a means to engage in the events without PvP'ing, I think a lot of the criticism could be blunted by the fact that you're being given the opportunity to do something truly heroic (factional differences here don't matter, as kicking out someone who's messing up your home generates a universal emotional response, no matter where your home is). And the opportunity to actually completely alter the state of a zone by players themselves is something that I think would be a worthwhile goal to shoot for.
It's a system that probably shouldn't be available at launch but could have great potential down the road as an expansion system that provides players with a way to dynamically affect the game world in ways they never could before. It's not something you'd want to implement in all zones (particularly, low level zones). But it is something that could significantly spice up the normal gameplay of the game in a tangible way that would provide for a challenge that couldn't just be handled by rote, once the details of an event occurred. The PvP element of the event would create challenges in ways that normal players might not expect or be easily prepared for. But it would definitely allow for a means for players to feel more heroic for saving their zone or villains to feel more bad *** by driving off the namby pambies telling them what they can and can't do in their house. And if you make it difficult to set off (especially for solo players) you can avoid having your zones be in complete chaos all the time. Mmmm tasty. -
Okay, so I get your explanations on the positional types down pretty well. But it's the damage types you lay out that confuse me a bit. Isn't it possible for a magic user to weild elemental attacks? Can't a Natural/tech person build a device that attunes itself to human brainwaves and launches psyonic bolts at targets? Or am I mixing your discussions of Origins in with Damage types here and alligning things up too literally?
How do these all relate together? It sounds like the system you're making is one that doesn't make much use of archtypes or powersets in the same way we think of in City of Heroes (not necessarily a bad thing). -
What a fantastic thread.
So you could further turn contacts on their head by changing a contacts' ability to talk to a player based not on levels but by reputation.
Building from other discussions in this thread, instead of being of a faction (hero, rogue, vigilante, or villain) you just have some kind of general reputation level. For example, if you have too much aoe collateral damage from destructable items in missions then your reputation is more villainous versus the number of kittens you pull out of trees or old ladies you help across the street makes you more heroic. Oouuuu, how much fun would it be to be able to go and mug citizens yourself as opposed to watching other factions do it all the time. Heh heh. Oh. Digression over, ahem.
So based on your reputation slider the contact either talks to or ignores you using this instead of determining your level. This allows the player more control over what contacts they choose to associate with and removes much of the train tracks that the initial contact system put players on. It also prevents players from outleveling a contact, though faction level and replayability become an issue. Perhaps a branching system similar to the Going Rogue launch would be helpful here to prevent players from playing through all contacts at once. That is, decisions with one contact either unlock or lock potential contacts and interactions down the road in other ways.
You could take the contact system further by having unlockable faction contacts (Here faction refers to groups like the Circle of Thorns or the Paragon Police Department) that only become available once you've earned up enough credibility with the contact you're working with or perhaps run a special mission of some kind. Faction contacts could provide further missions against or for a particular faction and even provide specific rewards like faction specific costume pieces or special recipes or salvage, or faction based repeatable missions. It also unlocks the potential for having an "arch-nemesis" type adventure that was faction specific.
You could even go one step further and take things back to a direction that I think the original developers of City of Heroes wanted to try but couldn't pull off, and that's make the items that contacts provide (buyable enhancements, inspirations, and even possibly recipes) unlockable based not only on the credibility you've earned with that contact but also whether or not a faction was out to get that hero/villain, thus limiting the player's ability to buy items. So if you want that special recipe that only that contact has, well, you better get the Tsoo off your back first, buddy. Thus providing a motivation to players to seek out those missions and complete them.
So now contacts become a very sophisiticated system where by they have an assortment of missions they'll offer to players based on the player's reputation levels and any flags that represent a faction-based attack on that hero. All tied into a reward system that provides the player with better access to equipment, recipe, and other rewards, based on how well the player works with that contact and how hard they work to maintain their reputation level for that contact. Because we all know that a hero that falls can't go chatting with his old buddies anymore. -
Mostly, I started this thread as a means of trying to push the discussion past, "Why won't NCSoft take our money????"
This was a sentiment I was picking up a lot on and I thought some context of just why money may not matter to them right now would help. It was more on the Titan threads then anywhere else but I figured I'd cross post here too. -
Sigh....
Well, at least the thread on the titan network was a bit more productive. Still, I can now claim Arcanaville had posted in my thread. Too bad it was to wonder how many drugs she was taking, but...
A win is a win. -
Cross-posted to the titan network
So in trying to understand what's been going on with NCSoft and their announcment from yesterday, I've done a bit of digging around with some help. I came across this article from 2009:
http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/...ness/#more-725
It's interesting reading and helps to explain some of the context of why NCSoft is making the decisions that it's making. The basic gist of it is, NCSoft currently has more money then they can spend. Really, literally, they can't spend all the money they have. So from that standpoint we can see that offering to buy the IP won't really phase them much, because they don't need or want (yes, I know that sounds hard to believe) the money. The risk to them is far greater that at some point in the future, someone else will come in and take money away from them with a better game/property. So it makes sense in that context to hang on to the IP and bury it, to prevent the competition from getting a leg up on them, especially with a possible product they used to own.
But that's also why the SaveCOH movement can't let up with the pressure that we've created. As Mercedes Lackey and others have pointed out, the actual acknowledgement of our efforts from NCSoft is shocking and unusual. It means that people there are actually concerned that future earnings (the only thing they really care about) could be impacted at some point by the negative publicity that they are getting from this event. So we have to keep going. We have to keep threatening their future earnings and make them realize that the potential negative aspects of sitting on the IP and squashing our community will come back to bite them in the future. Because I for one, believe that it will.
So stay strong, stay committed, and keep fighting the good fight. This is far from over and we have to keep going. We WILL win. -
Do you use it? Regularly? And if so, how? First strike? Closer? In teams?
I'm using it currently on my fire/dev blaster as a stealthy first strike attack against spawns. Zoom in stealthed, drop it down and follow up with a fireball, most things are no longer standing when done.
Anybody else? -
What you want is a map editor.
It's taken a while for these thoughts to coalesce in my head, but bases are small time, and we're not thinking big enough for this to happen and get everything we want. Think about how many years the base editor has languished. It's done so because none of the devs want to tackle a job as big as fixing the base editor for the small number of players it would affect.
The AE can be our guide for how we can make this happen. The AE was the result of a set of devs that sat down and reevaluated their tools available for crafting missions, intent on making it easier. They rewrote their interface and came up with a much more streamlined and much faster process and at some point, a dev said, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if our players could use these tools too?"
Eventually we got the AE. And it's in these terms that we should be thinking, when we ask for anything else going forward. Bases are in fact, nothing more then small maps, constructed using a crude set of tools the devs made available to us from their own map editing tools, using a small subset of objects in the game. So instead of asking for changes to this small set of inferior tools, for a small subset of the playerbase, we should instead go for something that will exponentially expand our ability to work with bases that will also affect a far wider audience then just base builders.
It took two devs working for a year to recreate Atlas park, using the tools they had available. It was beautiful, brilliant work. But a whole year? For one medium sized zone? Surely there is some overhead in that process that can be improved upon. So why don't we ask the devs to go ahead and rewrite their map editing tools? Give them search features for objects they want to place, give them a go back button, and all the other tools we'd like to see in the base editor. Let them know that doing this would help them crank out missions and maps and game content faster, and then ask for a subset of the tools just like they gave us with the AE. This becomes a win for the devs, a win for Architects who want their own mission maps, and a win for base builders too.
Now instead of a small base editor with limited tiles and items, you have a big, beefy, map editor. And you can build a one story apartment, or a towering mansion on top of a skyscraper. Think about the things we could create if we had access to a tool that would let us recreate the Architect Buildings. You could do anything with that. In fact one thing I'd like to see is a contest to rebuild City Hall that was "anatomically correct," if you get my meaning. How cool would that be?
So we stop asking for a better base editor and we stop asking right now. It's too expensive for something too small. Ask for a map editor instead. Use it for the devs, the AE, and base builders. You get more of everything in one fell swoop and the resource costs for doing such a thing become much more manageable given the audience such changes would affect. -
Quote:Okay, I can't believe no one else has asked yet. Why do you have a two by four in your office?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I have a two by four in my office that is even more.....
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Quote:Uhhhh......wha?Originally Posted by Ascendant
Doctor Crom's UI:
Is that a mock-up or your actual UI? And am I an idiot for not knowing the difference? -
I wouldn't mind getting in on this if there's still any left. I'm on Virtue usually after 10pm EST.
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Quote:Wha?Originally Posted by Fulmens
Point 2: I think the ratio is close to fair.
The devs have to take the most severe cases into account. There are people who make 50 billion inf a year playing this game. There are people who can generate 2 billion a week and have done so, repeatedly. I think I make a couple hundred million a week, and I don't spend that much time on it. There's a lot of people who could buy a base worth of prestige already. PVPers, Marketeers, Farmers, these are some rich people and there's a lot of them. In fact, since most of the inf farmers make is from drops in one form or another, you can run in SG mode and it doesn't hurt your earnings significantly. You might be able to make a case that the inf-prestige ratio is overly generous.
I personally did some experiments by funding "half price Prestige" and I think most of the people who converted at 250-to-1 are also people who would have converted at 500-to-1. I don't see a philosophical problem with 250-to-1; I think it would increase the amount converted and remove inf from the game, which is a goal of mine.
In one paragraph you state that "a lot of people" can buy huge bases with their influence and the ratio could arguably be made even more painful then it is now.
In the next paragrah you turn around and state that you also see nothing wrong with a 250 to 1 ratio and that converting would contribute to a goal of yours of providing an influence sink.
Stop turning so sharply, I don't have my seatbelt on!
Moving along, I'm not asking for a 10:1 or even a 100:1 ratio. Any kind of reduction though would be an improvement to what it is now. 300:1 or even 400:1.
Right now if I convert 100 million inf to prestige I can take that 200k and use it to buy a SINGLE ROOM for my base. two rooms if I choose wisely and leave them both mostly unfurnished. That is a ton of influence to blow on such a small amount of prestige. And I'm not expecting to ever be able to grow a small plot size to a super secure city borough by converting influence to prestige. But I would like to see a better return for my time, such that sinking in that much influence buys me a little more then ONE single room that works.
I wouldn't mind getting a dev comment on this topic, but off hand I can't remember the dev assigned to bases right now. I thought it was Sunstorm but now I'm recalling a PlasmaStream as well. Though I think PlasmaStream is a player??? Oh well. I'll figure it out and try to shoot a PM their way and see if I can get a response. -
Quote:While it is true, that the rate is 500:1, you can't actually buy 1 prestige for 500 influence. You have to spend 1000 prestige for 2 influence right now. And that's why I asked Cat if in looking at it at that context changed his opinion of the subject.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Maybe I misunderstand what you're trying to say, but the current rate IS 500:1.
I personally think a 500:1 ratio is terrible no matter how it's packaged. I think your 3 to 1 ratio discussion is interesting though, Cat. So it's 3 times easier to go out and earn prestige by killing off a minion then it is to buy that same amount of prestige from the SG Register. But how long would it take, killing lvl 50 minions (and others) before you could make, let's say 100,000 prestige. Right now, at 2 hours a night I'm averaging about 8,000 prestige. That would mean in 25 hours I could pull in 100k prestige.
Now how long would it take to earn enough influence to buy the same amount of prestige...
I don't have the numbers for what I'm currently running outside of SG mode. But 50 million influence is no small feat outside of getting good drops and doing some marketeering. I would even argue that outside of using the market, it's not really feasible and certainly not an efficient use of that time. I believe the current conversion rate was set at what it is, to discourage it's use. And I do not believe it's valid or even desirable to continue to do so. -
Quote:Your point taken sir, but still....Originally Posted by Fulmens
The phrase "one hundred million influence" should probably be avoided when claiming people are giving you an extortionate exchange rate.
It took me over a month to earn up that much influence. (Casual gamer, with 14-17 hours of playtime a week). It burned to throw all that down for my base. And while I'd do it again if I had it to give (because I like stuff in my base), that doesn't change the fact that the original justification for such a high exchange rate is no longer a valid concern. -
Quote:Question Cat,Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
The game currently puts roughly 182:1 conversion rate in there for 50s right now.
(yes it varies by mob type somewhat)
500:1 really isn't that bad when considered against that
It currently isn't possible to buy 1 prestige for 500 merits. You have to literally pay 1000 inf for 2 prestige at minimum. That would mean your comparison is actually 364:2 for fighting mobs, vs 1000:2 in buying it at the SG Registrar.
Would you still consider the trade off not so bad in that light?
(This is a genuine question, and not at all an attempt at snark. Please forgive my poor writing if it is read that way.) -
Last night I spent 100,000,000 influence for 200,000 prestige.
That's One hundred million influence for two hundred thousand prestige.
I am not the only one who finds this conversion rate (1000 inf for 2 prestige) draconian.
The original justification for such a high conversion rate was first discussed shortly after I6 and City of Villains were launched. It was stated that, there were concerns that long-time, high-level players would use their accumulated influence to build huge PvP bases and thus dominate the PvP base-fighting sphere. Please note this discussion occurred before the market existed in any form at all.
Given that PvP bases have been taken off the table for the forseeable future, I wish we could get this conversion rate reviewed/lowered. -
Question for you MA artists out there.
I've been pushing the limits lately on the type of story I want to tell with the Mission Architect. I'm wondering what others have done in respect to the big decisions. No, I'm not interested in the how to make your mission file smaller, I have those tricks available. What I'm wondering is from an artistic standpoint, at what point do you say I need to make this a multi file story arc? Versus there are too many custom mobs, change your story and pare it down.
The current arc I'm working on is crazily out of hand. So much so that if I work every story idea I want in, I'll be lucky to get a single mission that fits. My problem is I don't really want to sacrifice story elements for file size limitations. But if I don't, I'm going to have to struggle with using all three of my arc slots for single mission files and that seems counter-productive as well.
How have you other artists out there dealt with this issue in the past? There's obviously no single answer, but any input anyone could provide would be appreciated. -
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Positron through the glass....
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And here you can see the lead developer in it's natural environment. Note the cluttered nest it's built for itself. See the hostility in it's eyes as you approach the glass too closely. Remember kids, never feed the developers. -
Hey Manticore,
Here's my question. Will we ever see some of the lesser used zones, like Faultline and Boomtown revamped and or made into a more integral part of the game in the future? Perhaps through new or revised task forces or missions in the future? It seems that while there are some zones that are heavily used and populated there are also some zones (with tremendous potential) that just kinda get left in the dust.
Okay, one more question kinda related to this. Right now there seems to be a concerted plan with the release of new zones to add content to the game for progressively higher level characters. The Hollows was 5 to 15, Striga was 20 to 30, and now Croatoa is 25 to 35. It's been stated in the past that this is the model that will be used for new content with the next new zone released being for some even higher level after that. Do you see any point in the future where you guys will come back and revisit some of the existing zones to make them more in line of the model you're using with Striga and Croatoa?
Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. You guys all do great work. Keep it up!