Samuel_Tow

Overworld interaction is generally crap, by the by. And the problem is that when most people try to suggest improving it, inevitably it goes into the realm of more experience of more annoying, obtrusive zone events. No, thank you. What we need is more interaction with the world. I keep recycling the old idea of random, one-off contacts, just people in the street or targets of opportunity, that show up in different locations and can offer a one-off mission to anyone who passes by. For instance, a man standing near a manhole could flag you down and ask you to save his wife who was dragged down by zombies, or an armoured truck parked outside a building could suggest there's serious money inside for the stealing. It doesn't have to be grand. In fact, it doesn't have to be bigger than your typical casino map. Just something in the overworld which makes it feel like there is more going on than what your waypoint is pointing to.

Buildings and their insides are another big thing. If I were designing a game, I'd actually try to give each building its own unique inside that depends on the building you're going inside, not on the mission that sends you there. In essence, you could learn what each building's inside looks like, which would make the world feel a lot more... Real, I suppose. At least to me. As it is right now, mission doors are just portals to the netherworld which transport you into what may as well be a dungeon snaking through the bedrock. These instances don't have to fit the outside of the building, but as long as we can associate a certain inside with a certain outside, we can have a sense of "Oh, I'm being sent to THAT building? Yeah, I know that one. Mind that large room on the second floor." As it is right now, we may as well just hit a button and teleport inside our missions, because that's what we do anyway - find a door and teleport to a completely unrelated inside.

In a lesson taken from Oni, having a building with an inside that not just matches the outside, but actually conforms to the building's shape and shell while showing or describing all inside space does a LOT for the feeling of immersion. Knowing that I'm inside that building I saw coming in and looking out of that one window I spotted right over there and WOAH! I really went up high! That's a big plus for me. The less the insides of buildings feel like dungeons and the more they feel like buildings, the better the game feels. For instance, I know where the PTS is, and every time I'm sent there, I know what to expect. It feels like a place as real as Atlas Plaza or the Portal Corp yard. Do you honestly know where the Revenant Hero Project HQ is?

All of our buildings, even the sky scrapers, are too small for real floor space to be put inside them. Floors are too low (like, 7 feet, if that), sides are too narrow and their footprint is TINY. But even if the insides have to be larger than the outsides, having a specific inside to link with a specific outside would make the world feel a lot more believable.

I expect some seriously cool things to come out of this one. I'm typically not an excitable guy, but I'm still excited when I think about how much they can improve tails if they really put their minds to it. I don't even mean anything majorly major, but I fully expect to see at least a few new decent tails with the remake of the old ones.

Sadly, this also means I'd be somewhat disappointed if they don't.

And here I thought it stood for iiO...

"Invention Origin" is a ******* term, since it doesn't make sense. Singe Origin and Dual Origin enhancements are called that by the system, because they affect one or two origins only. There is no such thing as a "Training Origin" enhancement, as the game refers to those as "Training Enhancements" only. TO is a ******* term players invented, I suppose out of a need for conformity in terminology. That carried over to HO, or "Hamidon Origin," which is just as completely meaningless.

Each enhancement is called by what defines it. In the case of Training enhancements, they are defined by concept - they represent your character training his or her skills, and for this reason they affect all origins, as anyone can train up. If anything, they should be called AOs or FOs - All Origin or Five Origin enhancements, since that's what they affect. Single and Dual origin enhancements have a vastly diverse set of concepts, so they are defined by technicalities, instead. They are defined by what they affect, or more practically, how many origins they affect. Since this is what breaks them down into like groups, that's the easiest distinction.

Beyond that, enhancements ought to be defined by the activity that grants them. As such, we ought to have Hydra Enhancements, Titan Enhancements and Hamidon Enhancements. So-called IOs ought to follow the same pattern. As they are granted by the Inventions system, they really ought to be called Inventions Enhancements. They affect all origins equally, rather than just the Inventions origin in particular, which doesn't even exist. Purple Enhancements or "Purples" I can see being called this, because they are inferred to be Inventions Enhancements by means of context, but are defined as Inventions Enhancements that are specifically purple. Because of their rarity and extreme cost, some ambiguity in naming is to be expected.

Really, this bugs me. It's like SG vs. VG. There IS NO SUCH THING as a Villain Group! Both heroes and villains for Super Groups. The game even calls them that, so why people insist on perpetuating this completely fictional term I will never understand.

Personally, I never understood why there has to be a tradeoff at all, or why there has to be rent. I'm not a fan of realism in my games, especially if that realism is "death and taxes."