konshu

Back in 2005, and at many points thereafter, I suggested that Cryptic develop a toolset for mission creation that could be used by both devs and players to create content.

Even back then - if you can believe it - players complained about needing more content and a greater variety of maps.

Like many, I had played NWN before coming to CoH, and I was familiar with the map, NPC, and mission creation toolset we had with NWN, and the resultant huge vault of player created goodness, and I thought it would be a win/win situation to have the dev team make a toolset for mission and map creation. A toolset which would not only enable players to make content, but also greatly ease the burden of the devs who were working on official content.

Joe Morrissey - who was hired to the dev team in 2007 - suggested the same thing, and actually got some traction with the idea. When NCsoft bought out Cryptic and asked the devs for a business proposal, the devs responded that one of the things they wanted was support for building new content creation tools.

The long and the short of it is that the devs are getting money from NCsoft to develop a full suite of content creation tools, some of which will find their way into the Mission Architect. And since it has been a complaint for ages now, one hopes that map creation is HIGH on their list of things to do.

Once the devs have a new map creation tool (like the one we had in NWN), they can greatly increase the number and quality of the available maps. If they hook it up to the Mission Architect, we can make new maps too.

And surely, if we have a tool to make new maps, it will eventually be used to replace the base editor. Or at least one would hope it would be so! lol

Though of course if we can make new maps, we'll need about 10x the file space we presently have.

I'd like to see a map editor that would enable me to make, for instance, a hotel where there are maybe 20 floors and an atrium that allows fliers to travel to any floor off the atrium.

I'd also like to have the ability to create a building map where the interior fighting can spill outside, or onto the roof, as you attempt to capture the fleeing villain.

I'd also like to have instanced exterior/interior maps where the player is outside a building and is faced with multiple doors on the building and must choose an entry point that actually reflects where they will appear on the interior map. For that matter, if there is a team, different team members can pick different doors to enter.

If this is the case, it sounds like server lag in the ITF could be greatly reduced by improving pathfinding algorithms and by causing Shield Defense to run its calculations less frequently.

Y'know, one thing I'd like to see - aside from the "no ears" option, and maybe some fins or other monster ears - would be a second slot under ears that would enable you to add earrings.

I think it would be great if there were maybe 4-6 earring types that were applied to the different ear models and then selectable and colorable.

I think it would also be good to add some bangles for arm and wrist.

I've heard this before, probably as a quote from Matt Miller, but it's hard for me to pick out what would have been the basic Posi TF before the Faultline story got added.

To my eyes, the Posi TF seems like an encapsulation of 3 unpublished Faultline arcs that could have resulted in the trial.

Faultline was populated with Vahz, Circle, and Clocks ... the same mobs that are in Posi.

Each group had its own agenda regarding the dam.

But in the Posi TF I don't think the story works.

If you're in Faultline, and you find there are 3 villain groups in the zone that have designs on the zone and the dam, it seems fairly logical. The villains must be there for a reason, right?

Unfortunately, when you encounter the same stories and foes in the Posi TF, it comes off as an outrageous coincidence. We're supposed to believe that the Circle, Vahz, and Clockwork all plan to destroy the same dam at the same time for their separate reasons? And they're tripping over each other in the attempt? lol

It was a weak story concept to start with. It's good that they changed things up when they revamped the zone and presented us with a more complex story that not only reached into the past of the zone, but also had tentacles extending into RWZ.

That's a good point.

One other aspect of this always comes to mind for me, though it doesn't really have much of a role in this game.

To me the real point of declaring an origin is to determine what type of milieu or what type of foes you see your character existing in / fighting with.

For example, normally a Natural hero like Tarzan, Shang Chi, or possibly Daredevil or Batman would fight against foes who are also of Natural origin.

Science heroes like Superman and the Fantastic Four fight primarily against foes of science origin.

It's a feature I'd like to see explored in game content. It may have even been part of the original plan for CoH, as you can see with the various origin based contacts (MAGI, ELITE, etc.), but a concept that was dropped almost immediately, probably due to a desire to limit content creation.

I haven't gone through the whole thread to see what might have been said about this. But ...

While I don't necessarily agree with the way origins have been laid out in the game (kinda confused about differences between Natural and Tech, Tech and Science, Science and Mutant, Mutant and Natural, Science and Natural, Natural and Magic, Mutant and Magic, ...) I think the basic distinction between Natural and Tech is that Tech items are powered and/or produced as the result of a high-tech process.

Natural items like swords and bows depend upon the user's strength and dexterity to be effective. Guns and flamethrowers and such that are really just modern versions of Middle Ages technology could also be considered as Natural.

A Tech origin would involve a dependence upon things that have computer circuitry, energy effects, and high-tech performance-enhancing drugs that must be taken repeatedly for effect.

But the lines are blurry, especially if you consider Science and Magic as additional explanations for powered items.

I wouldn't combine Atlas and Galaxy. My suggestion (for the past several years) has been to make Galaxy a little more ... "galactic" ... by replacing the dowdy Freedom Corps building with a towering Space Needle type observatory.

Also, when we get new / revamped content (devs, please admit you were wrong, it is the first step toward recovery!) we can continue on the path of having separate stories for each origin, and having one set of origin arcs starting in Atlas and one set starting in Galaxy.

People create so many new toons, I think they would really enjoy a variety of choices for play at the lower levels. (And higher levels too, but start with the lower levels so some stories can continue from lower level to higher level.)

Well, on the positive side, at least he was able to get NCsoft to fund the creation of better content development tools.

I know from my past in the IT field, when I did custom programming for a health care company, it was a pain trying to get approval for anything that was not an immediate bandaid. There was a tendency to want to stay with what was at hand and not invest in sweeping improvements. But eventually I did get approval to create some tools with universal application, and the whole system greatly improved after that. Better things happened faster, with less work, and people were happier.

If the devs haven't given up on the MA and are still working on it and making progress - as the interview suggests - then eventually it should be a great tool for the continuing development of the game.

I'd give it a high priority, but then I'm keenly interested in content whereas others may not.

All I can say is that I don't experience any differences. Well, I do have compatible cursors turned on, but that's about the extent of it.

I'm using an ATI 3300 IGP with WINE 1.01 on Ubuntu 8.10. I've not updated WINE or graphics drivers in about a year, but things are running smoothly so why mess with it?

Uhhh ... doesn't everyone?

I suspect the mothership is around because the Rikti have been busy building a gigantic colony on the moon. The mothership provided a secure, habitable environment during construction.

If you'd been on the moon recently, you'd know that.

With the ITF and LGTF being so popular among players, I think the devs probably figure there aren't any significant bugs to fix.

Ironically, if people weren't playing the ITF and LGTF, I think the response might be that there's no point in fixing a bug for content that nobody plays.

I've played CoH under Windows (for a few years) and under Linux (for the last year), and so far I notice no significant difference between the two.

I agree with you, but I think this is a pretty good illustration of how the devs and players are divided.

I think the devs designed for this purpose and that they believe it is working as intended.

I agree about updating the mission. If I could, I'd put a Coralax body in a glass tube, like the specimen tubes we see all the time on Arachnos maps.

However, I have to say that since the body is never identified by name as a Coralax, and was never shown, I can't say definitively that it was a Coralax. Likewise, I cannot say the strange skull found in The Hollows was definitely Coralax either. These are educated guesses.

Remember, though, when these missions and clues were written, the Coralax did not exist in the game. They were just in the mysterious "game bible."

Here are the in-game references to what I believe are the Coralax.

In Wincott's "2nd Outcast base" mish, there are the following two clues:

(These are found along with a book with Russian text written in blood. I presume this is a diary of Baron Zoria, who entered Oranbega through the gateway in The Hollows back in the 1920s.)

Other clues relate to the Seaview Project. There is a plaque in The Hollows relating to Seaview:

The scientists you save in the Peebles mission are almost certainly Seaview scientists. Stephanie Peebles says,

The clue associated with the crate says:

Comments made by the scientists you rescue include:

The Seaview project, and possibly the Coralax, are also linked to the appearance of Lusca and the Ghost Ship.

Here's a quote from the Paragon Times in relation to Lusca:

The Ghost Ship was the subject of the next issue of the Paragon Times.

(There's more to that article, about how the Ghost Ship first appeared after the Moraine was disturbed by the Seaview vessel, but nothing that really relates to the Coralax.)

So what we appear to have here is a backstory in which a group of scientists in Eastgate are possibly pursuing several different angles of research, one of which was the search for the wreck of the Moraine.

Another angle was probably researching the health of coral beds off the coast of Eastgate.

One of the strange details of Eastgate is the desalinization plant. It is a physical feature of the zone, and it has its own plaque. Because of this, I assume the desalinization plant has a purpose in the backstory.

The plaque's clue reads:

I speculate that the Coralax were disturbed by the Eastgate desalinization plant. It is a fact that desalinization concentrates salts in the refuse water which is returned to the ocean, and a concentration of salts in a bay like Eastgate Bay would tend to kill off coral. So the desalinization plant was probably sickening or killing off the Coralax who lived off the coast of Eastgate, possibly causing them to prepare for battle with the surface world.

Lusca was probably an early conception of the leviathans associated with the Coralax.

The Seaview scientists were probably attacked by Coralax while returning to the wreck of the Moraine.

I felt fairly certain about all this speculation back in 2006, but when War Witch did her mini-revamp of The Hollows and added the Coralax as a zone encounter, it seemed like a confirmation to me.

What do you think?

Death, I'm hardly the first person to complain about being sent to The Hollows. In my experience, it's a very common complaint, and it has been for years.

Also, my complaint is about being sent to The Hollows just to turn down the arc. Can't I just decline it from where I am in Kings Row?

Finally, I just used Eastgate as an example. There's lots of things in the backstory that many players don't know.