Ask A Dev Question Thread #1 Featuring Manticore
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2005-08-05 08:35 in Developers' Corner
I am a huge fan of you and your team's writing, the stories in this game have entertained, horrified and touched me more than I thought a simple video game would.
My questions:
Are there plans to eventually have an AV for every villain group IN GAME.
Have you ever used any ideas from outside fans (such as at conventions, or from the suggestions and ideas forum) that you've eventually implemented storywise?
on a related note, might there ever be a contest to write or help write a story arc or taskforce that will actually be put into the game? (I've got ideas I tell you!)
What's your favorite story in the game right now?
Will we be seeing more story driven events like the fifth column takeover anytime soon? Meaning events not directly linked to the release of new content per say.
1. It seems like most of your work involves creative writing. I was wondering what you took in college and how you got into the industry? I have been writing for several years now and have always wanted to work on video games, but have never been sure how to go about it.
2. What ATs and powersets do you personally enjoy playing?
Hey Manticore!
Great work you have going on here and I hope it continues. My Question Will there be a comprehensive list of NPC Heroes made available to the CoH fans? Kind of like a Marvel handbook or Who's who of City of Heroes. I think it would be a great idea. Also, any plans to incoporate Rikti missions for lower levels? Thanks again!
On Various Servers:
Maiden Victory 50 MASD Scrapper
Brazen Prime 41 Fireenergy tank
Lady Stratega 50 FireSS tank
& Tons of other Alts
Dear Manti,
When will Synapse have his revenge against you for sending him, a poor, noble, brave and, of course, wise Blaster, into Lord Recluses' lair to 'scout'?
Scout what, btw? Did you really think none of the Bad Guys were in there, having defeated their guards already?
I'm suspicious of your motives heh heh heh.
Here's a suggestion: Synapse, finally fed up with Manti's obnoxious arrogance, turns bad, joins Lord Recluse and becomes his second in command. At this point, he eagerly awaits the return of the FP to the base. Intentionally, he sets up death-traps in every room and taunts Manti into 'scouting' the base, cleverly tricking him into leaving the rest of the team outside.
Sound good?
Cal2
Hey Manticore,
As in comic books, Heroes as they get older seem to change, abilities become more pronounce and a hidden ability comes forth. Will we ever see something as to our own heros, Hidden Abilities that make us unique to City of Heroes? ie. Signature Hero Powers.
I'm going to pitch in with Windstorm, are there any plans to make, let's say a section of the official site, into a place where we can get the info of individual villians, heroes and groups through out the game.
I love ready the right click-->info stuff, but that's hard to get ahold off when you're looking for information, plus some heroes (like the trainers) don't have anyway to get their info.
Wow, you have a very interesting and challenging job. I love the storylines in CoH; they remind me of my comic-collecting days in high school, with the added bonus of not having to wait a whole month for the next installement, but getting it as my reward for completing the next mission.
I have a few questions:
1) Was it a deliberate design feature, or simply an oversight, that there are virtually no female villians until the last 15 levels or thereabout?
2) I am a diehard soloist, and (while I enjoy teaming well enough) the reason I prefer to solo is I enjoy reading over all the mission text at leisure, otherwise I have little or no idea of the storyline supporting the mish. In my SG, if we are using TeamSpeak, the mission-holder can read the storylines aloud, but this isn't quite the same. Are there any plans to bring storyline more extensively into the teamplay experience?
3)Do you ever feel like you've 'run out of ideas', too creatively exhausted to continue? If so, what do you do to 'recharge your batteries'?
4)Do the powerlevellers, blasting willy-nilly to level 50, using every powergame trick conceivable to avoid the content you work so hard to deliver, bother you?
TigerBaby: 50 MA/regen Scrapper, Pinnacle
Proud member of Twilight, Inc.
1500+ hours and still going!
^___^_______
(>� �<
/<| ->> X </ |>|__/<|
(TT)(TT) ^_V_/
PUT A TIGERBABY
~IN YOUR TANK!~
Is there any plan to put some meaning or organization into the Shard TF's other than empty numerous amounts of caves or click a bunch of stones? I love the zones, especially the Storm Palace, and the AV fights for those TF's are great, but the other over all play of them seems to have no rhyme or reason. I don't feel like I am helping anyone, I might as well deliver newspapers then fight an AV at the last house on my route.
Thanks for all of your work! 
Are you planning to provide more mission content for the upper 30s to the live servers within the next six months?
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Is there any thought being given for ways to make each hero's story a little more unique?
Is there any chance of getting story arcs that diverge significantly due to success or failure?
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"Ideas" has somehow been peeking into my brain, as these were the exact same questions I was going to ask. So I'll ask them in different ways.
Origins: A hero's Origin is the most important story-based element to the character. It determines where the hero came from (hence the word) and to a degree where the hero is going.
Unfortunately, in CoH a character's Origin means nothing more than where they do their shopping and which contacts they'd prefer to try to get missions from. Are there plans to make a hero's Origin mean more (perhaps tied into the pending skill system) or otherwise affect their career significantly?
For instance, I try to have my Tech heroes generally take Tech-based missions (which is difficult due to how the contact tree branches) for sake of theme and enhancement drop probabilities. I'd very much like it if that would somehow immerse my Tech heroes deeper into the "Tech culture" of the game, perhaps opening special access to Tech-related content.
Branching Storylines: While a pain for content developers (given the mission engine as I understand it), this would go a long way towards adding immersion and versimilitude. Have the programmers given the story team the tools they need to allow branching storylines within the mission framework? If not, are there plans for that sort of thing?
As an example, let's say that I fail to disarm all of the bombs in a building before the time runs out. Rather than the story arc coming to a dead stop right there, it would be much more desirable to continue the arc with my character dealing with the consequences of failure. Perhaps I'll chase after the bad guys who planted the bombs to stop them from doing it again and find myself raiding their munitions cache before resuming the normal arc (or continuing down the path of a completely different one).
My questions:
1: I think the Hess TF is fun, but the giant robot surely is a possibility for another epic level 50 mission. How about an alternate council world where you have to fight the thing possibly as an alternative to Hamidon.
2: Why is faultline the trial zone without a trial ? (and without anyone else ever there)
3: Are there any plans to introduce more 'short term' TFs like Calvin Scott that change from issue to issue.
4: Are there any plans to do halloween the same as last year so that those of us whose mains missed the badges can catch up and acquire them, and are there any plans for other short term events of this type. (Also how about a chance for people who did the tutorial pre badges to catch up on isolator)
Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
My question is simple: will heroes eventually be able to take missions and storyarcs against Lord Recluse and his Arachnos minions, or will this group only be explored and combatted in City of Villains?
How do you feel about the removal of Task Force souvenirs?
Would it be possible at some point to see some of the indirect historical references to the 5th Column ("The Vampyri were created after the Council expanded the supersoldier project it inherited from...that other villain group. The one we don't talk about any more.") changed to explicitly mention the 5th?
What is the goal of the Warrior-Outcast-Hellion chain? Are the Warriors bringing artifacts into Paragon City from the rest of the world, as suggested in the lower-level Hellion comments that someone is trying to flood the streets with artifacts? Are they trying to steal artifacts from Paragon City to sell elsewhere? Do they just want artifacts for the sake of artifacts, and they don't really care where they get them?
Hey, Manticore, great game so far through Issue 4...hoping for more to come. I've seen most of my questions asked so far, but...
I heard awhile back that our heroes (and possibly villains) may be getting arch-enemies somewhere down the road. Are there still plans to do this? Would these be NPCs, or might it even be possible to have CoH/CoV rivalries?
Manticore,
I would like you to comment on the upcoming "tabletop" RPG that is scheduled for rollout. Will you have more than the basic choice available, and if so, how does your RPG compare with say the Hero Systems Superhero Game, Champions?
Additionally, will the game be based upon the "popular" D20 system or some other system.. and quite honestly, what is the probability that the game will "keep pace" with the frequent changes to powers and archetypes that each update rolls out!
Thanx for your output!
Why is the Manticore avatar so short?
No, I'm not buying that it is so that people underestimate him, nor will I read about it and more in the upcoming book...
First off let me thanks you for your hard work. The storys are brilliant... I have redone the low lvl content over and over just to play the storys out..
My question is... Is there guna be any missions that SG leaders are going to be able to designe for his/her SG mates?
It would be nice if the leader of A sg were able to do this for events within the a sg.. (Might even get Pop to join one then..)
Man I hope this makes it to you...
Can you tell us anything about zone not released yet south of Faultline? Has it been scrapped? Future issue? PVP zone for COV?
Will any of the existing villain groups be augmented in future releases?
Notably, in the Paragon City timeline on the CoH website, it mentions Nemesis attacking with "flights of jet powered strike bots, the arcs of rocket-rifle fire, and devastating atom ray blasts". Did Nemesis lose this technology sometime between 1946 and present day? I think it'd be great to see some Nemesis troops sporting old fashioned death rays and jet packs instead of some of the incendiary weapons they have now.
Also, later in the timeline, we read about Rikti troops that "wore flight packs and dove down from the skies beside hordes of small, spherical attack drones." Can we look forward to some aerial Rikti combat in the future?
Will Ajax ever be introduced as an NPC? We know he was the only member of Omega Team to survive the attack on the Rikti portal, but then we never see him again. He'd be a perfect addition to the "Protect the Time Capsule" mission you have to do to get a cape.
Are there any plans to allow team members to read the story that goes along with missions and, especially, TF's?
Are there shorter, Hessian-type, TF's in development?
How would someone go about developing a career in your field? What advice can you offer to someone interested in the field?
So, City of Heroes has a comic book...has there ever been any thought of expanding it into an entire line of comics? The CoH universe is almost as big as those in DC or Marvel (even if we haven't seen so much of it), and it seems there's easily enough room for a dozen titles...a few focusing on heroes and groups we already know, and a few to focus on new book-only characters, like Apex and pals. Of course the business headaches would be many (getting artists and writers and all for a dozen books), and there'd be questions of, should a video game company get into doing comics...but I feel there's a lot of potential out there for it.
The reason this question comes to me is because, if I had the artistic talent and the time, I'd love to do a comic based on my characters and my supergroup - and I'm sure a thousand others could say the same. And the CoH universe has room for all those stories. It'd be nice to see a few of those stories cleaned up and brought to life.
Lots of good stuff already out there, some of it already echoing my own, but I'd like to reemphasize and reword a bit for my own priorities.
Are there any plans to update existing and currently underutilized immersize content in the game (Origins, Zones (particularly Hazard Zones), Villain Groups) to offer further immersion? And I'm not thinking Zone Events here. Ideally, I'm talking Zone-specific and Villain-specifc contacts (and maybe badges and plaques an souvenirs) available outside of the normal contacts scheme, much like the high-level Enhancement store NPCs. The Hollows, Striga and now Croatoa have set a standard on the former, and it would be nice to see this retroactively applied to the old Hazard Zones. Likewise, some heroes entertain the idea of having a 'nemesis' such as the Council or even the cute little Clockwork. It would be cool to have mission strings centered on enemies above and beyond current story arcs in game.
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
in Issue 12 ( 1st run ) there is mentioned the possibility of a new War Witch. I know the original War Witch is now a Trainer in Croatoa. Are there any plans for a new War Witch? Along this line; Any plans for more Apex?
Considering you are the one in charge of fiction and storylines, when do you think (if ever) we will get far more in depth origin or AT based story arcs, similar to what we see with the Khelds?
Or at least customized or special missions that require or focus around special powers or needs, have reactive enviornments, etc. Like if I'm playing an Ice blaster and I'm surrounded by fire then I either want that blaster to be doing less damage or feel weakened by the fire until he puts all the fires out using his power. Or if a building is burning, and left to burn it starts to collapse. Random overhanging wires that do electrical damage, or floors collapsing doing smashing/fall damage, boobytrapped rooms where explosions or such will go off without notice, heck even a random map generator so that way doing similar missions will never look or feel the same. Finding out that every door mish from atlas to founders feels and looks the same was rather disapointing as time progressed.
I have a total of five characters, soon to be six. The reason? So I can talk to every contact, see every mission, read every clue. Yes, I am geeky like that. When I5 hits, I'll be making my first Kheldian and starting up their story-arc missions! I can't wait. If the Devs aren't giving us souvenirs anymore, well then, I'll just take all my notes and make my own!
Thanks for the wonderful stories, Manticore. They are the main reason I have alt-i-tis!