Shadestorm

"getting aggro" Is the least of our problems castle.

Having a niche role with not much content that allows us to leverage that niche, and performing worse at that niche than other ATs is the problem.

<Insert obligatory cheese with whine comment>

You should make more friends if you have problems getting a TF together. I've never had issues...

Proper pvp etiquette, as far as I am aware, involves creating a specific macro for /em teabag, and executing it on top of the defeated body of anyone who whines about being attacked for any reason within the borders of a PvP zone. Bonus points if it also CCs you in to a costume with a monocle and tophat.

Next time someone complains about badges, remember to inform them they chose to get badges and temp powers that were intended as a PvP-Risk reward, and you are simply providing the risk.

For me, PvP died when set bonuses became mandatory to compete. It basically flew if the face of the entire design of auto-exemp PvP zones, and drove away so many people that the zones become a ghost town.

Arenas were never (repeat never) popular, but zone PvP used to be pretty healthy due to the freeform nature, rewards, and general parity. Altering the design to encourage buying or farming your way to victory turned off so much of the PvP crowd that those that were left ended up with nobody to lord their new gazillion inf builds over, and no functional difference in AT or powerset stengths or weaknesses to encourage teaming or vary the fights.

PvP these days is basically hit/hold/run repeatedly. In short, it's not only expensive, but its boring.

As for the OP. Dude, lemme tell you a story.

I recently returned from a year of not playing, and I decided I'd start slotting these IO sets to replace the vanilla IOs that I had slotted. I fired up mids, I did a bunch of math, and I respecced in to my slots.

From there, I set out on a grand journey. Not a journey of farming, but a journey of playing the game. I decided I'd take my Nin/Nin Stalker (who is my only 50, and the character I usually play) And begin tackling any content I'd missed on his way to 50.

I used the ouroboros crystal, and my badge history to mentally keep track, and started to solo everything on +1/0. I WASTED time reading mission text, even doing SFs.

Whenever I got tips, I stopped my mission arc and did tips. I bought a few of my 1-merit pieces this way. Once I got up to the 2 merit peices, I started using my merits every other day to just roll for recipes.

I am not a marketeer. Whenever I fill up on non-white recipes (usually every other day, or every three days.) I visit the market, check the listings, and if its worth over a million to someone I toss it on the market. I use the money, combined with what I make playing the game to buy the salvage and recipes I don't have.

Did I mention that this character has been in SG mode since level 25 and never turns it off? Technically I'm making less money than I *could* be making, doing nothing but playing the game WITH ONE CHARACTER.

Exactly one month later, my Nin/Nin stalker is capable of soloing most of the AVs in the game, as well as rikti pylons. The only thing stopping him from taking on the things he can't is a hard limit of the Stalker AT, the low max hitpoint cap. There is no enhancing around that unfortunately.

I have zero purple IOs. I did all this visiting the market two or three times a week for ten minutes. I did all of this with the squishiest melee AT in the game, using the most resisted damage type in the game.

I play 2-4 hours a day, 4-5 days a week.

Purple IOs are nice, but I think you're seriously overestimating how much anyone at all NEEDS them for a build.

If you have the kind of build that NEEDS them, then you have the kind of build that is so ungodly uber, or severely poorly planned that it SHOULD be an "only in your wildest dreams" goal reserved for EXTREMELY long term play. It's not like you can't already get an absolutely obscene amount of power with very little effort. Most games would have taken a look at builds like MOST set-driven players have and nerfed everything back to the stone age.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

What more do you need?

Fun times. Here, have a go if you feel like boning up on your cloth. I know cloth was probably my least favorite part of drawing classes.

On the left is Literati, Archer and researcher of the occult. Learned everything he knows by pouring through the M.A.G.I. Archives when he was a clerk there.

On the right, Literati's nemesis, Shadestorm. Shadestorm was created to kill on command, and obeys whoever holds his crystal. It is capable of doing other tasks, but any task asked of it requires a debt to be paid. Precisely, that debt is one death.

Literati was responsible for discovering Shadestorm, and has since left M.A.G.I. to find the crystal and take it back for safe keeping. He feels responsible for the people Shadestorm has been used to kill.



And here are some non-action shots in case you decide to use them and need reference.



Finally, here's some quick backstory (for fun)

Initial M.A.G.I. Findings on the Shade crystal

Archived emails regarding the Shadestorm entity.

That's the idea. Having some experience with game design myself (Mods, Contract 3d work, University) I'm a firm believer in the idea of designing smarter systems that encourage emergent game play. I love a good strict narrative, which is one of the reasons I like City. More often than not the writing and narrative is quite good. However the problem with "on rails" content is that the more you stick to the rails, the more replay value it loses. Not only that, but often an emergent system ends up being cheaper and faster to develop while giving the players a greater sense of ownership over the experience.

Your suggestion about randomization just got me thinking about the way SGs already work in the game. They're an optional layer that meshes well with content you might already be doing. Prestige sits on TOP of things, just like all of the other core systems that were added later (inventions, morality, architect) Its optional, and in most cases its designed to interoperate with existing systems and content.

The discussion and posts of everybody here have been a great way to not only figure out what City's players want in a new system, but also a great way to refine those systems and put together something that doesn't "feel" to horrible to implement.

As the whole SG tip/Arc system has been the favorite of almost everyone with the exception of Coyote_Seven (And I do love you Coyote for speaking so highly of the hireling idea!) I think moving the discussion as a whole in to further refining of the pieces of that system is the way to go.

SO!

Base Items: What sort of functional items beyond analysis machines could serve the SG arc system? Should SG arcs reward purely functional items? What sort of arc would reward your item idea at the end?

Rewards: The badge/table setup seems like a fair start, but what else could be to to vary the reward scheme?

Event schemes: How much is too much? Assuming you have multiple SGs tackling these in various stages of completion, what would be the maximum level of random stuff you could see being reasonable sticking in replacement lists? Bosses at most? Elite Bosses? AVs? Giant Monsters? How to we prevent SGs running arcs becoming a hindrance on normal play for other people?

Other stuff: If the system is set up to use basically what exists for most of the arc, with a mission as the finale, how can we make greater use of the entirety of the game? Would having event points in the Rogue Isles for Heroic SGs be out of line as it would require the group to have a vigilante? How about using other places? What about "addons" to unique maps that show up in several places rather than replacements?

Go. Hunt. Kill Luddites.

They've obviously sabotaged the invention system because they couldn't crack the evil orange pipes.

Did you at least get inf refunds for the lost IOs like you normally would if you left them in respec limbo?

What people said before me, just confirming from the perspective of a def-based stalker.

Rularuu Eyeballs, any version - Not only can they see through stealth, but that have ridiculous tohit. Even the minions can be a serious threat to a pure softcapped build.

Rikti drones - Not exactly dangerous as much as they are annoying. They'll pop your hide, and have really annoying defense numbers. Put them in a group with guardians, and you're basically relying on buildup or yellows to keep from whiffing on them.

Longbow Nullifiers - Alone these guys are a joke. However if you put five or six of them in a group all firing debuff grenades, they can bring you low pretty fast.

(Boss) Malta Gunslingers - Luckily, they're easy to deal with if you spot them. Almost any hard or soft mez will really put a damper on these guys. Even mag 1 knockdowns will do the trick. However if you happen to miss them in a group, they're pretty damn accurate with their hardest hitting attacks, and they're ranged attackers. I like to call these guys "eyeball junior" They don't seem to near-auto-hit like the eyeballs, but they're accurate enough that defense base toons can't reliably mitigate them.

I'd create a series of 1-10 MA arcs, advertise them, and tell people there's an alternate levelling path.

If I was going to fix it, that's what I'd do.

Maybe I should.

Thanks Fred! Out of curiosity, what AT/powerset did you play it with?

I had a thought, perhaps put the knives back in, but have the hostage group consist of a few customs to solve the sticky caltrops problem. That way people don't end up sitting around waiting for the caltrops to clear before they can start moving back to the door.

So, cleaning up my one and only Arc that's been mulling around in various stages of completion for a while, I've run in to some specific quandries.

This was submitted for the third challenge, however it was a bit rushed to meet the deadline, and there are still things I'm not happy with. Currently, I'm looking for feedback on some very specific points. I welcome any and ALL feedback, but I'd appreciate any insight in to the points I've listed here.

***SPOILERS FOLLOW. Please play the arc before reading these.***

Overall Design/Mission intros: The goal was to take an arc and involve the (Heroic) player in a moral dilemma. I play a lot of arcs, but often I find that the sense of the player's actions are less important than the wants or needs of the contact. The overall goal for the arc was to place the heroic player in a position where each accepted mission felt like a choice, and that stopping the chain of events may feel like a better idea than mindlessly hitting the accept mission button. As silly as it might sound, I wanted to involve the player with a character as emotionally as possible, and then ask the player to betray that character. I wanted every mission to feel like a difficult choice. I wanted to communicate to the player that sometimes the cost of doing the right thing means doing things you're not proud of. Did you, as a hero, feel ashamed of your actions through the arc? Did you feel connected to the Jane Character? Did you feel like your actions and decisions mattered? If not, what may have made this arc more personal?

Mission 1: Originally, this mission was populated by Knives of Artemis. A lot of the people who took it through in test simply hated the stacking caltrops from the final ambush event. In addition, the way trops like to stick around made picking up Jane a bit of a chore, as the player would end up wasting the knives and standing around waiting for the trops to die before they could move on. To compromise, I replaced them with a custom faction that serves the same thematic purpose. The problem is that they show up, and are never explored or explained. This I hate. I'd like any opinions on returning the Knives to the map, or other solutions that would make this first bit a little smoother.

Mission 2: This one is usually a love it or hate it for people. Some people really hate babysitting combat NPCs. The design goal here was balancing Jane so that she could take care of herself, but that she'd be weak enough that the player would have to take care of her. This is an expression in game terms of trying to elicit a sense of camraderie between the player and Jane. I felt that this was important to the arc as a whole, as I needed the player to take responsibility for Jane in an emotional sense before the following two missions. In gameplay terms, this meant asking the player to do so literally. The first few variations people tested had a much weaker Jane, but I got a lot of complaints that she died too easy, failing the mission. I beefed her up, but she wasn't extensively tested. Do you feel she was too hard or too easy to take care of?

Mission 3: Like mission 2, I'm relying on gameplay mechanics to move the story forward. When the player is asked to betray Jane by longbow, and accepts, I want the player to own that betrayal. Thus, I've designed Jane in this mission in an obvious state of unreadiness, and I'm asking the player to beat hear while she attempts to run rather than have a challenging fight. Was she easy enough to catch and finish off? Was the dialogue effective while you did so? Did you feel sorry for her? Were you suprised at the mission exit text?

Finale: Unfortunately, Mission 4 got the least amount of work. I spent most of the testing time on this one tweaking Jane, but the map is admittedly too big, and hunting for her is a chore. Simple question here. For the setting, what would you say is a more idea map for what is supposed to be a short trip through a wrecked section of city culminating in the final fight. Additionally, how did you feel upon completing it? Did you feel like you'd done something wrong, done something right, or was it a moral grey area?

Thanks in advance for any feedback

Like to thank all of the villains, rogues, and vigilantes I had the pleasure of leading in today's Rogue Isles war effort on Infinity. All in all we managed to get between ten to fifteen people their accolades, and several of those people even ran Borea missions in breaks between waves.

Even the mass of back to back Full on heavy spawns in Grandville within shooting distance of passing dropships didn't manage to stop us, and it was amusing to see heavies running AWAY from the group on a few occasions.

Solid fighting, Solid healing, solid buffing, and really solid rally times all around.

It was a blast Infinity, and I wanted to personally thank everyone who landed in my group today, or that other group that we hooked up with in St. Martial that one raid.

Thanks for the fun and the badges!

I think all of this bears futher scrutiny/refining.

Initially, the whole SG tip system sort of assumed a mix of contained missions by collecting tips through normal gameplay like an average tip.

Refining that system with what we've dicussed with the kheld tech... What if the SG had the ability to sort of guide the flow of events from an initial "seed" tip that sparks a line of research. From there you're using the kheld/replacement ruleset, zowies, etc. to supply the entirety of the chain of SG tips the group needs to fill that bar. After that bar is full, you get the actual SG mission, which is executed from the raid teleporter to complete the arc.

For the replacement spawns, rather than using level dependant mobs, have them use the world event/GM maths to be level-less auto-adjusting mobs like zombies and invasion event Rikti. In this manner you could run the same events for any SG member regardless of level.

The end mission would be the one with the badge, schematics, big reward, but the whole process would be apperant to every member of the SG through the replacement tech, even if they're not the type to normally read or decipher clues. Additionally, every member of the SG gets a personal badge for participating in the arc whether they were at the final mission or not. This is a gimme reward for dealing with the replacement mobs, and an incentive to be in the SG doing the arc. This means that soloists that help with the end mission get a good reward, but to get the full spectrum you would ideally be a member of the SG for the whole thing. The personal badge would fill up its completion bar every time part of the arc was solved.

Quick example of refined SG tip system entry level arc. (This arc requires no custom facilities, just the SG computer and raid teleporter) -

1. Someone gets an initial tip:

*Hit list. This list contains the names of each member of <SG name> accompanied by a monetary value. You're not sure where it came from, but perhaps an analysis by the computers in your base could provide you with more information.

2. Member takes the tip to the mission computer for analysis:

*The computer is analyzing the materials, handwriting, and other properties of the list. It requires a passcode to complete the analysis. (At this point, the tip is on a list of available SG arcs. Members with a permission rank high enough to accept the arc can choose from this list of initial tips, and begin an SG arc. Once begun, the SG is locked in to the arc until completion or failure.)

3. Officer selects the Analyzed hit list as the SG arc.

*The materials and composition of this document don't shed any light on who wrote it, but one thing is certain. Someone has it out for <SG name> and is willing to pay top dollar to see you brought down. Until you get to the bottom of this, you might want to watch your back. (For this step, SG members are flagged for mob replacement. Every so often an adjusted Knives of Artemis LT will show up with an aggro shout of "Command, we've got one of <SG Name> here. Engaging.")

4. After a while, someone in the SG gets any of the following tips from one of the spawned LTs. These are a drop rate equivalent to uncommon salvage, made a bit more uncommon by the necessity of getting the drops from the Knives bounty hunters. Ideally, the drop chance of getting one (solo) from one of the spawned LTs would be about as good as getting a standard orange recipe drop. Once one of these is turned in to the SG computer it stops dropping.

*SG tip drop: Working transmitter - The Knives operative dropped her radio. Despite being a bit scratched, it looks like it still works. You should take this to your base computer to see if you can isolate the frequency it was operating on.

*SG tip drop: Confession - The Knives operative confessed that she'd been working for an anonymous source who called himself "Portent". You should cross check the database at your base computer to see if there are any records of this alias.

* SG zowie tip(Trash can model): Discarded flash drive - You found a flash drive bearing the insignia of the Knives of Artemis. The data is encrypted. Perhaps the computer in your base can decipher it.

5. Once all three tips are recovered, the Knives LTs stop their replacement spawning. In zones, a random conversation boss (GR style blue NPC that turns red after conversation) called "Suspicious Individual" will be placed on the replacement list for wandering civilians. Once an SG member has noticed the Suspicious Individual and engaged in conversation, they get the following:

*SG Boss Dialogue: Suspicious Individual -
"You're very perceptive <Character name>. I can see it is not simply blind luck that the women I hired could not finish the job. Despite my better judgement, it looks like I'll have to stop <SG name> from fulfilling their destiny myself! *Accept dialogue flips boss aggro, Shapeshifts in to ridiculous villain costume, and you fight.*

6. An SG member successfully takes out "Suspicious Individual."

*SG boss defeat tip: Suspicious Individual's Phone -
The wannabe Villain told you an interesting story: "I'll tell you what you want to know, just stop hitting me! There's this voice, see? It calls me up, it tells me things. Things that are going to happen. At first it was just lotto numbers, tomorrow's news, things like that. So I cashed in, get it? It told me that <SG Name> was going to find out, so I put out the list like it told me to. Take my phone. Maybe you can trace it or something, just take it easy on me alright?" Perhaps you can use this phone somehow. You should take it to the computer in your base.

7. SG member turns in the phone, which completes the tip bar for the arc. The Knives resume their previous spawning, but no longer drop anything. They will continue to do so until the SG completes or fails the SG mission which finishes off the arc.

*SG Mission: Stop Portent -
It seems this Portent has been rather busy, hiring not only the Knives of Artemis but random civilians to make sure <SG name> never again walks the streets. Tracing the phone calls gave you his location, and the transmission frequencies and cypher keys from the Knives radio and flash drive should get you access to the facility. Its time to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

From here, you need at least 4 SG members to initiate the SG mission through the raid teleporter. You get there, figure out Portent is a potent supervillain who has recently completed a machine that lets him see the future, and has used it to determine that your SG will eventually stop him. Ironically, if he hadn't put out the list, you never would have known a thing. Your enemy group is Knives of Artemis, your objectives are to take out Portent (AV level enemy) while fighting off timed knives ambushes from two spaces on the map.

*Rewards! -
SG badge: Temporal Analyzer plans - Looking over Portent's device has provided you with knowledge you can use to build a Temporal Analyzer for your base. This device can be used to determine the origin time of temporally displaced objects. This should allow your group to investigate objects which have travelled beyond their normal time stream! (This device unlocks SG arc seed tips for arcs that require a temporal analyzer to complete.)

Personal Badge (Everyone who was in the SG from the beginning to the end of the arc): Inevitable - You helped prove to Portent that messing with the time line can be more trouble than it's worth.

Reward table: Bonus prestige, Bonus INF/Prestige split, or Bonus rare tech salvage of your choice.

*Failure! -
Total group wipe of the mission gets you the following clue, and the arc is cleared:

Despite everything you learned, Portent and his hired goons proved too much for <SG name> Luckily, he no longer views you as a threat, and has decided the hit list isn't worth the money. He's still out there somewhere though.

From here, the seed tip for this arc won't drop again until every other potential arc has been dropped and completed or failed.

From PMs with Golden _Ace, who suggested I post this:

As much as I LOVE PvP zones, and wish there were more, PvP is in a really messed up state at the moment. I'd be happy with a new style competitive PvE zone. No direct PvP, but zone based buff/debuff mechanics, and perhaps temp powers to spawn ambushes at the opposing faction if you see them.

Just say that while there's a formal treaty, Arachnos has an alternate agenda, and the Heroes are simply fighting in self defense. Thus, due to the FORMAL treaty, no heroes and villains attack each other directly. There are UN satellites itching to take a bite out of Arachnos, and Heroes are... well its the law.

Think of it as players getting the rules, but the zone mechanics favoring bending the rules as would logically happen in a temporary cease fire. Actually, that's a good name for this style of zone. Not a coop zone, but a cease fire zone.

Whole setup could even make for some interesting arcs.

Personal Moon zone soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNRcH...eature=related

The team leader's alignment would be reflected as the alignment for the entire team, thus teams with a Hero or Vigilante lead would be considered "Heroic" and teams with a Villain or rogue lead would be considered "Villainous"

The zone mechanics place the players in a position to just be mean to the opposing faction, creating an effectively more hazardous hazard zone on a "pvp light" mechanic that gives players the ability to indirectly interfere with players of the opposing faction.

Its an uneasy truce, and thus completing door missions in the zone can grant your side some buffs, the opposing side debuffs, and some zone specific "Distraction" temp powers. These temps are not pets, can not be commanded, and have no ties to the person or persons that spawned them once activated:

Heavy Defensive Turret (Hero): This turret is a stationary 'defensive' emplacement that will attack not only hostile NPCs, but members of the opposing faction. While the the most virtuous of Heroes ave been seen to use it in self defense, certain Vigilantes have been observed using it in more... creative ways. This distraction is roughly equivalent to an RV pillbox.

Payoff (Vigilante/Rogue): You remembered to carry a little extra pocket money, and can use it to convince a group of (Think of a good NPC group) NPCs to attack players of the opposing faction. Technically, you're not violating the cease fire. Technically. This distraction is a difficult ambush.

'Malfunctioning' Heavy (Villain): Gee, it sure is unfortunate that these giant death robots foul up every now and again. Who could have guessed that it would decide to start firing at anything without an Arachnos tracer signal? *wink wink* This Distraction is roughly equivalent to a vanguard heavy.

The moon zone is now, and always has been a great idea. However, I'm a bit tired of every new bit of content being cooperative. I realize its faster to make one zone than two, but who says that every cohabitable zone has to be cooperative?

Lets not forget that at one point Heroes and Villains actually didn't get along so well. The whole schtick of "well its so dangerous that everyone should cooperate to stave off global crisis" is getting old.

Why can't we have a PvE zone that is cohabitable, but not cooperative, with differing door missions and perhaps even competitive zone objectives (think like the buffs in PvP zones) for both sides?

I'm tired of working with heroes for the millionth time. Maybe I want the moon laser for myself, or maybe Arachnos wants to take it over for leverage?

Welcome to the discussion Coyote! Don't be so hard on Kat. Everyone's got a right to their opinion, and I'm glad you like the hireling idea. I'll admit that I like it, but it hasn't been very popular with a lot of people so it hasn't sparked much discussion.

Just don't start a flamewar over it, and I'm sure you can agree to disagree.

Any thoughts on anything else you've read in the thread, or problems with that system?

I've got a portfolio prep class to run to so I'll have to make this one brief.

SG merits:
This doesn't really functionally differentiate itself from prestige outside of the conversion rate. Sure, you've got an anemic rate of gain due to the drop chance, but it doesn't necessarily solve the question of the prestige economy being a currency with no sinks. Now I like the idea of an alternate currency with alternate means. Perhaps a better parallel to take a nod from would be the A-Merit system, or even the standard reward merit system. Here you're awarded merits for difficult or time consuming tasks rather than any task at all. Similarly, you could look as prestige as the inf of SGs and SG Merits as the reward merits of SGs.

SG computer Safeguard/Mayhem:
I sort of went here in the original SG tip system, but I think the trick here would be taking those mission types and upping the challenge level. Short of redesigning the whole mission, there are multiple ways you could scale the content. Allow scaling of lower level maps to higher level mobs for instance, or adjust the timer and ambush functions to present a greater challenge in these missions. The point here would be creating SG missions that are quite a bit tougher than your standard safeguard/mayhem.

More later! GTG!

Great job sir!