Lord Mayhem

In the Rogue Isles the TV watches you!

Congrats, Television, good luck with the new role, and try to stay away from rock stars and hotel windows...

Welcome Doc Delilah, glad to have your sizeable... errr... talents on the team

Speaking of big... here's some big Tom, because it seemed appropriate: linky

Grats War Witch, Ghost Falcon and The Television, and welcome to the party, Doc Delilah. Posi, I hope you enjoy your new role too.

Oh my stars and garters!

I just got a single word text message on my phone from one of my friends (who also plays CoH), saying:

"Congrats!"

I almost didn't dare to think it was this, but I had to come check Dev Digest just in case... oh my!

This arc was pretty much a love-letter to my favourite CoH faction - the Banished Pantheon - and all the wonderful ancient backstory in the game that links them to the Mu, the Oranbegans (Circle of Thorns) and the origin of magic itself.

I've always thought the BP deserved more in-game content than they currently get - and more recognition as the global threat they truly are - so I decided to tackle that head-on myself. If it wasn't for the pesky size limit this arc would have had two more missions featuring the BP and the Death Cultists (even without them it was a tight fit and I had to trim 1 minion and 1 lieut from the custom faction) - I planned to fix that post-GR with the higher size limit, but now I guess I'll just create a sequel, in true Hollywood style - well, except that I'll try to make it better than the original - the Death Cult will return!

Despite getting lots of positive feedback from many of the first 50 or so people that played this arc last year - mostly due to word of mouth on the EU servers - this arc went several months without any further plays. The buzz it generated for my second arc dried up too and my third arc went pretty much ignored by the time I published it (only 4 playthroughs as at yesterday, not including test runs), which broke my little heart, as I spent longer making and testing it than the other two combined. That coincided with the fall in popularity of the AE and I honestly thought I'd missed my chance and wouldn't get enough plays to get noticed for anything like this, especially as all my arcs had dropped down to 4 stars. Then I injured my arm and haven't been able to play CoH much at all since late August

So I just want to say thanks to Dr Aeon and the rest of the Dev Team for restoring my faith in the system - and for freeing up one of my architect slots so that I can create another arc! - and for giving me a burst of confidence in my storytelling ability - I may not be able to get a novel published (yet), but at least some people are enjoying stories I've created, and without your innovative architect system that just wouldn't be possible.

Also thanks to all the players who tested the arc for me in the early stages and gave me such great feedback and such kind comments, even the ones who just wanted to tell me they'd noticed the literary references in it Just to know that people are enjoying something I've created means so much. And thanks to @Soul Storm, who would have made me a poster for this arc, but I asked him to make one for my third arc instead as it needed publicising far more - he did such a great job.

And to all the arc creators out there who are in the position I was in yesterday - all arc slots full, but nobody playing their arcs - keep hoping, because you never know what can happen - next time it might be you. Just remember, even if only one person played and enjoyed your arc then it was worth the time you spent creating it.

I hope everyone who plays this arc as a result of this Dev Choice enjoys it - please leave a comment as I love to read your feedback. If you like this arc, well, give my other arcs a try, especially 220049 - it's better! [/shameless plug] - though I might be a tad biased

Enjoy!

Come on, you weren't expecting a short post from me, were you?

Ttfn.

Yeah I can certainly get behind the suggestions for more realistic building interiors and re-scaling NPC models to be more realistic compared to our heroes/villains. Both of those things do irk me.

Maybe I imagined it, but I seem to recall that around the time of Herocon there was something about instanced maps in Praetoria being linked logically to mission doors in the buildings of each zone, so that the building size/style/layout would match inside and out, and that the enemy groups outside of the building would match those present inside the building - and also that randomised doorways for instance missions would be a thing of the past for new content in CoH/V. I can't find the link now (admittedly I didn't spend long looking for it and my search-fu is weak) so did I dream it?

Just had another thought, but I don't want to keep editing my last post to add it - if the Devs could implement a rumour/clue system like I described, but weren't able to budget for enough developer time to create the missions for it, then they could throw it open as a competition for the playerbase to create missions in the mission architect that could satisfy each of the rumour/clue mission combinations they needed - then Dr Aeon (the redname Dev, not the NPC) could pick which ones get used. This could be an ongoing thing with new missions (and clue/rumour salvage to support the factions/objectives in them) being added each week/month to expand the system.

This game definitely needs more variety in gameplay - more tilesets/maps and mission types/objectives would definitely help, but more non-combat gameplay would be a massive boon. Puzzles might give that, but they'd need to be very cleverly integrated into the game not to feel forced in.

I'd like to see more non-combat objectives added to the game. I didn't enjoy "that other superhero MMO" (TM), but it did have some good ideas in this area, such as freeing civilians from underneath rubble in the tutorial and similarly from a collapsed building on fire in their outdoor city zone - that single task made me feel more like a hero than anything in CoH has (though CoH has far superior gameplay in most other respects, imho). CoH's Steel Canyon fire event doesn't go far enough - it would be much better if players could enter an instance/lobby via the burning building to free civilians trapped by fires and underneath rubble, with the ongoing danger of the building exploding/collapsing. Now make the fires able to happen in any urban zone, let the fire itself be extinguished by many more powers (e.g. Hand Clap, Gale/Hurricane, etc. - maybe allow "Fire" powerset characters to absorb/re-direct fire - maybe let fire attacks have a knockback effect on "fire" objects so with good positioning you can clear the way to trapped civilians) and have a fire station in each zone where extinguishers are freely available for other heroes to get. You could also have crashed cars on fire in outdoor zones (multiple car pile-ups in Skyway?) that could be put out, with civilians trapped underneath/inside that could be rescued.

Also at one point in "that other superhero MMO" I found a crashed truck with ping-pong balls spilling out of the back and I had to find the factory/warehouse they had come from (which was across the street), which led into a single room warehouse instance that was an ambush - not massively challenging/complex, but it did briefly make me feel like I was following up clues in a Batman-style investigation. I can't recall if it was part of the same mission chain, but another mission featuring the same villain in that area led to a confrontation with him inside a small TV studio instance, where he was issuing demands and where the player hero had to rescue TV executives/staff - it was really atmospheric, moreso than many of our dungeon-like instances here, even though it didn't last long.

I'd love to see outdoor zones being used more in quests here (but not for hunt missions ) - try to encourage investigation, exploration and heroes going on patrol. Something else "that other superhero MMO" had was missions/quests that you could find in outdoor zones, as a reward for exploring - you'd get contacted on your personal communicator while moving around the city (basically a heads-up that there was a mission nearby). I'd love to receive missions more dynamically here, whether from Statesman or Lord Recluse phoning my character personally to offer them a task, or missions I need to find in outdoor zones that are triggered by events that can happen at random locations. It would help to break up the routine of traipsing from contact to contact in the same old way that we've always done.

Maybe have bank/shop robberies happening in outdoor zones occasionally, revealed only by a few police cars outside the door and maybe an audible alarm when you're nearby. If no hero enters the bank/shop (into a lobby or instance where they could stop the robbers) then have a getaway car leave and drive recklessly around the zone's roads for a few minutes, which heroes could intercept and stop (and then maybe click on a nearby lamp-post to hang the criminals up for the police to find, Batman/Spiderman-style). By comparison villains could be pro-active and rob banks/shops, maybe discovering an item in the vault that could lead them on to other missions.

And why would players want to do these outdoor events? To unlock new content. My preferred solution would be that completing one of these outdoor dynamic events (stopping a mugging or those gangers that are trying to break into cars/buildings, rescuing civilians from fires/accidents, catching bank/shop robbers, etc. - or for villains: robbing banks/shops, destroying police cars, robbing security trucks, intimidating/kidnapping lawyers/officials, etc.) would reward you with "rumours" - dropped salvage-like items, in one of 3 types - Locations, Events & Perpetrators. Combining 3 "rumours" of the same type (e.g. 3 "Laboratory Location" or 3 "Cave Location" rumours, 3 "Kidnap Event" or 3 "Theft Event" rumours, 3 "Hellion Perpetrator" or 3 "Council Perpetrator" rumours, etc.) might create 1 "clue" of that type, but there would be a chance of failure for this, representing those times when the "rumours" turned out to be false or unconnected, causing your investigation to fail. Player heroes would also be able to trade "rumour" salvage in a trade window (but not on the auction house) to represent heroes pooling their resources to jointly investigate crimes.

Once you had 3 clues of different types (i.e. 1 Location clue, 1 Event clue and 1 Perpetrator clue) you could go to certain city locations (university library, PPD stations for heroes, Arachnos buildings/forts for villains, or inside your SG base for a Batcave-style feel, etc.) to combine them into a successful investigation, which would then give you an instanced mission set in a randomised zone on the same tileset as the Location clue's type, with the same objective to stop as the Event clue, against the same enemy group named on the Perpetrator clue. For villains, instead of investigating crimes to stop like the heroes do, they would be investigating whether certain schemes are viable for them to carry out (e.g. a "Laboratory Location" + "Experiment Event" + "Crey Perpetrator" could indicate your villain had found out where a new experimental weapon had been developed by Crey, which they could steal to sell to Arachnos for profit or to grant a temp power to themselves). Just defeating spawns in outdoor zones could also give a small chance of a "rumour" piece dropping (to simulate you getting information from one of the thugs you arrested, or if you're a villain torturing it out of them or them offering it in exchange for you sparing their life), to make outdoor hunting a bit more viable and atmospheric.

You could even have these clue-unlocked missions counting towards the number of newspaper/radio missions you needed to unlock mayhem/safeguard missions, leading to an NPC contact referral, so players in a rush could just do newsies/radios, and players who wanted a more dynamic/atmospheric experience could use the rumour/clue system. This might not give us any new mission types - indeed I suspect to provide enough content for such a system the Devs would have to clone/copy some existing one-off missions from elsewhere in the game (such as radio/newspaper missions, or one-off missions from story contacts), but the more dynamic yet guided way in which the content was unlocked, making heroes/villains feel more proactive rather than just working for NPCs, would add a lot of variety to the game and help to break up the monotony/repetitiveness that is often this game's worse enemy. It would also make players feel more like the heroes/villains in combat books and give you a reason to participate in zone-based content you have outlevelled (heroes just walking past a mugging because they won't get xp for defeating the muggers just seems wrong - but if they had a chance of getting rumour salvage from that encounter then there would be another reason for intervening beyond RPing a moral/ethical one).

It would just be nice to have a chance to move a bit further away from the "get mission from NPC, complete mission, rinse & repeat" pattern that CoH has inherited from the 1st & 2nd generation fantasy MMORPGs and get a bit closer to a comic book type of atmosphere.

I haven't played properly in a few months, but this has been happening to me on that LGTF map since I13-ish as well - I also noticed the vanishing rocks in Talos on a couple of occasions when moving characters to DA (for the Mortician day job).

I sent bug reports about it, but whenever I was teamed on the LGTF only about half the team ever experienced the same glitches, so I started to write it off as just time for me to upgrade/replace my PC (as I have an old Nvidia 7800 GTX 256Mb card inside it) - which I'll probably do before GR anyway (if my arm injury lets me play again by then).

Brilliant - amusing and very nicely made.

Another great video, very nicely done. Someone needs to hire you asap, even if NCSoft can't/won't.

The Arachnos Flyer - and I want to be able to leave Grandville and drop off my Bane Spiders wherever I choose!

Rularuu might be fun as well, if I can go wherever I wish, seeing as he makes Hamidon, Lusca and the Kronos Titan look small by comparison.

I hate pre-order bonuses because Europe often gets left out as all of the interesting pre-order bonuses are only available in North America. Plus we have no franchise stores where I live, so unless pre-orders are done through Amazon.co.uk or Play.com I cant get them.

I don't mind Collector's Editions having minor in-game items - then I can make a judgement call if it's worth the extra cash and I have a fair chance of getting one - but pre-order bonuses just feel like a tacky con, trying to get you to buy a product that hasn't been reviewed yet (although with MMO releases there's always open beta I guess, considering that it gets used only as a free trial opportunity nowadays).

When I see a company like Cryptic throwing around so many pre-order bonuses and only offering lifetime subs before official release it just smacks of desperation to make a quick profit selling extra copies, and actually turns me away from buying the game. A good MMO will sell itself, it doesn't need tacky gimmicks to trick buyers into getting it. Why can't they have a little faith in the quality of their product? Oh, yeah...