konshu

I'm amazed you made it! lol

But yes, that final mission in the arc ... you have to do some searching because the idea is there are foes arriving behind you to close the trap.

As for the master villains running away ... that's something I like to use; not for game purposes, but story purposes. I know it runs counter to convention in CoX, but in the comics I read as a kid the master villains always tried to escape at the end if the fight was going against them. They wanted to live to fight another day.

As for the "lack of narrative" ... there was just a lack of clues. The whole story is there; there's nothing missing. The souvenir doesn't contain a full recount of the situation, but if people really want that, I should be able to include it once i17 hits.

Actually, I think they did talk about it back when Jack was in charge. The Wellman arc on redside that features a rebuilding Boomtown first appeared in 2005. I think the expectation at that time was that a revamp of Boomtown was on its way.

I think that's also when the area at the northeast of Steel Canyon changed to a construction site. That was probably before 8/05, as I believe it preceded the Hellion fires.

It seems that every time the question of revamping comes up, the devs say "We'd rather do new zones!"

Personally, I think all of the zones and all of the content could use a revamp.

Give me a weekend to move all my stuff to San Jose and I'll get right on it!

There's also the tiny veteran fairy pets, which appear to have been modeled at normal size then shrunk down.

Yup, I'm on PinnBadges and it seems to be the most active channel on Pinn right now.

But in general if you like teaming I would suggest spreading yourself across the servers, especially if you like TF/SFs.

I have toons on all servers, and global channels for 10 of them. So if I see a TF or whatever is forming on a server, I can grab a toon on that server and join up.

I agree with this. An idea I've had for the last few years, that reflects how I like to play, is the "Special Operation."

The Spec Op would be a type of unlockable arc you can get that is more intense than the regular arc and kind of like a mini-TF. Several of my AE arcs (e.g. "Dante's Inferno," "Live and Let Die," "Hall of the Dancing Tigers") were written with this concept in mind.

How this would work, ideally, is you get a contact and do a mission from them that unlocks the Spec Op. You do not have to do the Spec Op, or do it at that time, but it is now unlocked. And while a Spec Op can be soloed, since they are more challenging fare, it's the sort of thing where you are encouraged to build a team and run through. At the end, everyone would get a Spec Op reward of some sort, which - depending on the arc - could be a temporary power or some merits. Also, if there is a second arc in the story line, that would be unlocked for everyone.

Adding Spec Ops would also be a way of revamping old content while providing new content.

Of my arcs mentioned above, "Dante's Inferno" is intended to be unlocked by Azuria, "Live and Let Die" would be unlocked by Prince Kiros Nandelu, and "Hall of the Dancing Tigers" by Derek Amberson ... all starting contacts.

Yup, I know about this. I just don't agree that ALL TF/SFs should be shorties.

I prefer the 90-120 minute focus. I don't want the really long ones (Shard, I'm thinking of you!), and the short ones are like an appetizer to me.

As GG pointed out, you can spend about as much time recruiting for a shorty as you do playing it.

One of my suggestions over the years has been to have our TF/SF contacts give multiple choices for their TF/SF. So you could do Posi A, B, or C, for example. Some players would choose the shortest one, some players would choose the one with certain foes, and some players would choose the one with the most merits.

Although, the problem with merits seems to be that you have to get great gobs of players, especially entry level players, going through the TF/SFs in order to get a beefy merit reward. When the TF/SF is short, and those who play it are few and experienced, the merit reward is a bit lean.

Having multiple choices for TF/SFs per contact could easily lead to lean merit rewards on all of them.

I would agree with you, EXCEPT ... wasn't the Boomtown revamp supposed to have happened years ago? Right after Faultline?

I suspect the plan was to revamp Boomtown and use it to bring back the 5th Column. There were probably plans for 5 arcs involving the Council, Arachnos, and the 5th. Then for the anniversary, we were going to get Reichsman back, to cap it off.

However, what happened is that the devs got busy with other things, they dropped plans for the revamp, and merely brought back Reichsman in the TF/SF.

That's my guess as to what happened behind the scenes, and I believe the revamp of Boomtown has been entirely shelved.

Furthermore, my belief is that the devs aren't kidding when they say they have zero plans for revamps at this point.

For whatever reason, the devs seem to be soured on the notion of revamps. Maybe something happened during the Faultline revamp - a lot of bickering or whatever - and now they just don't want to do those any more.

I think the devs believe the original hero content is good enough to get and keep subscribers.

I disagree. I think the rest of the game is good enough to get subscribers, but the majority of the hero content actually puts them off.

That's not just my opinion. I've been hearing players in my teams crab about it since 2005.

Who knows how many players we'd have in the game if the devs paid more attention to the value of the content?

I agree. Cimerora is a textbook example of what NOT to do. It's very pretty, but when you compare the art resources used with the amount of game play for the zone ... yikes! The dev effort was like 10% game play and 90% new art.

Seems to me we could have something closer to the opposite. A refreshed zone with 90% new game play and only 10% new art.

People who are saying we don't need ANY new art are probably fooling themselves. Some new art is always good. But it shouldn't be the sticking point over which old zones fail to get revamped.

I'm all for using the older versions of the zones as time travel.

I think they could possibly look at doing that with Boomtown as well, once they revamp it.

Sad to say, though, judging from War Witch's words at PAX, it sounds like we're not getting any revamps. That old policy seems etched in impervium.

Well ... I guess that brings up several points.

One: The whole "Countess Crey" storyline would have A LOT more impact if we'd been working alongside Crey corp. for several levels before finding out about their evil side.

Two: Some Crey employees are not bad guys. Posi used to work for Crey. So perhaps the company is ... I dunno ... 80% decent people laboring under the impression the company is good, and 20% bad guys.

Three: The idea that villain stories progress as we go up in level never seemed to me to be all that well done. I'd much prefer a system in which one arc unlocks another arc, so as you do content the story unfolds. I think that's more of what they were aiming at.

If you have stories that unlock one another in a progression, then I have no problem with the story of corruption at Crey being something that starts at level 1. I also think there should be more content related to Hero Corps, the various time-honored supergroups (Regulators, Dawn Patrol, etc.), and perhaps the struggles related to the origins of the FBSA.

There is just so much in the lore that you never get a sense of through playing the content.

Agreed, but ... I don't have faith in War Witch just yet. Just a bit of frayed hope.

Yeah, I could see the static items having -Def and possibly +Res.

One of the things I've wanted to see since I started is virtually all contacts moved into instances.

The only contacts that need to be in zone are open contacts, like the Security Chiefs, Wincott, Gordon Bower, Stephanie Peebles, Jim Temblor, etc. And with existing game mechanics, even these could be altered to be instanced.

What are the advantages of going instanced? Here are a few.

One, you can meet your contact in a variety of places, instead of always trudging back to the same spot. I realize we use cellphones for missions a lot, but the way the game is presently arranged when you use the cellphone the other players on the team don't automatically see the contact exposition related to the new mission. If you could visit the contact via instance, everyone could see the new mission info if it was given as dialog.

I'm not saying we should replace cellphones, and I'm not saying we should slow down all gameplay by forcing whole teams to travel to instances, but it might be nice to have another option to work with.

Two, you can put the contact on different maps. For example, you could meet Azuria at a magic shop, you could meet her at a MAGI HQ, you could meet her at the Midnighter's library, and you could meet her at the MAGI vault. This helps tell story visually.

Three, you could show interaction between your contact and other NPCs. Again, this boosts visual storytelling possibilities.

Four, if it fit the scenario, you could exit the instance directly into the mission. In other words, you enter the MAGI HQ, you click to get mission dialog, and then a red arrow points to another door or portal in the HQ which takes you directly to your mission.

Five, it might even be possible to construct a situation where you can exit multiple doors for the option of simultaneous missions (one mission, but occuring on separate maps with multiple objectives).

Six, you don't have that annoying situation where your contact may always be found standing at the same spot, day or night, inactive, with everybody else crowding around. Instead, you get the feeling the contact is always there for you as part of your specific mission.

FWIW, this is more or less how I did it when I made a simulation of CoH using the NWN toolset. I thought it worked very well.