My take on unlockable contacts.

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Well since flashback has been put off indefinately we need to come up with a more realistic solution

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Last I heard on the subject was they put it off because they couldn't find a "good" way to implement it.

I would put fixing this "problem" people have with unlockable contacts about the same priority level as flashback IMO, unless a Dev says otherwise.

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Unlockable contacts are an existing system that's not working as intended and in many cases bugged.

Flashback is at best an alpha system.

I think fixing a system and/or bug and/or glitch on live will always take priority over a concept or alpha build of something.

right now 'flashback' is implemented by having a friend make a new character and then exemping down.

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I am putting the requirements for Contacts - and their location - in the Prima Guide...

but here was our intent with these Contacts - reward Exploration. Reward people who poke around to find new things. Now, the down side is that once found, these Contacts don't inform the player about what it takes to unlock them.

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Rewarding exploration is great...if you found a contact and the let you know *how* to unlock them, that would be rewarding exploration, and it would be fun.

Having contacts scattered around with no means to determine what they want isn't rewarding anything....and putting the answers in the Prima guide seems to be rewarding the people who buy the guide at the expense of your other customers.

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I think fixing a system and/or bug and/or glitch on live will always take priority over a concept or alpha build of something.

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You would be wrong.

Bug fixes don't sell new boxes, but new content does. From a beancounter's standpoint, your dev staff should spend 5% (or less) of their time bug fixing/retrofitting old code, and the vast majority of man hours on new development.

Most dev bosses invest more time in bug squishing than that, of course, but there are an awful lot of MMOs out there where you can still find bugs that were in the game at release, or early beta.

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Unlockable contacts are an existing system that's not working as intended and in many cases bugged.


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The real question here is "Is the system working as intended?"

If a Dev answeres No then I would agree with you. I have seen no indication that the system is not working as intended other then user feed back.

MissDemeanor,
I also agree with you. As much as we would prefer for bugs to get fixed before new content is added, that usualy does not happen in the MMO development world.

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I think fixing a system and/or bug and/or glitch on live will always take priority over a concept or alpha build of something.

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You would be wrong.

Bug fixes don't sell new boxes, but new content does. From a beancounter's standpoint, your dev staff should spend 5% (or less) of their time bug fixing/retrofitting old code, and the vast majority of man hours on new development.

Most dev bosses invest more time in bug squishing than that, of course, but there are an awful lot of MMOs out there where you can still find bugs that were in the game at release, or early beta.

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Uh huh... and how does your system hold up against a system they themselves can't figure out how to implement? Keep wasting man-hours hoping to get it to work or fix things that are already there and broken and move on to other things?

Anyway, I PERSONALLY don't care what a bean counter would think. I care what me the player thinks. I know the new content is coming. I7 is around the corner. There's there new content. I'd rather they fix some of the bugs V brought with it than waste time working on a system that can't figure out.

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Unlockable contacts are an existing system that's not working as intended and in many cases bugged.


[/ QUOTE ]

The real question here is "Is the system working as intended?"

If a Dev answeres No then I would agree with you. I have seen no indication that the system is not working as intended other then user feed back.

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It's not. Veluta is in fact broken. She's only offering one arc to many people and forces you through that arc 1.5 times, then awards the souvineer, then refuses to talk to you again.

Confirmed as 'broken' by my email reply from support when I petitioned it.

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It's not. Veluta is in fact broken. She's only offering one arc to many people and forces you through that arc 1.5 times, then awards the souvineer, then refuses to talk to you again.

Confirmed as 'broken' by my email reply from support when I petitioned it.

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Ahhh...I see. Now the problem is going to be sorting out this thread into two categories. 1.) people who don't like the system, and 2.)people who are reporting bugs with the current system.

Good Luck. I see a repeate of what the Defiant bug thread turned into. Eventualy all the actual bugs and people trying to reproduce the bugs or get the bugs fixed get drowned out by people who say the whole system is "bugged" and demand a change to the system, when in reality the system is working as intended (apart from a couple of bugged contacts). These people will refuse to acknowledge the difference between a bugged contact and the non-bugged system.

I have by no means unlocked all the locked contacts, however the ones I have unlocked (I can't remember their names but the Ghost of Scrapyarder contact, and the Scrapyarder badge contact) did not have bugs in them for me.

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I like the hidden contacts as is. It helped add a sense of wonder to the game.

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As in:
I WONDER where the heck I can find this contact
I WONDER what badge I need before he will talk to me
I WONDER if i've outleveled this contact

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I like the hidden contacts as is. It helped add a sense of wonder to the game.

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As in:
I WONDER where the heck I can find this contact
I WONDER what badge I need before he will talk to me
I WONDER if i've outleveled this contact

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lol for real
and QFT

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Anyway, I PERSONALLY don't care what a bean counter would think. I care what me the player thinks. I know the new content is coming. I7 is around the corner. There's there new content. I'd rather they fix some of the bugs V brought with it than waste time working on a system that can't figure out.

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Sure, but as a continuing-account holder, your financial impact is less valuable than selling a new box is. It is an unfortunate truth of the MMO world that rushing out the new expansion (full of bugs and irritating to the current players) covers the cost of the coming year's development through box sales.

Players get ticked off with all the bugs and leave, but they are replaced at an equivalent (or higher) rate from the new box sales in the short term.

Short term--to our detriment, all beancounters think in the short term. Welcome to corporate America, already in progress.

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Ahhh...I see. Now the problem is going to be sorting out this thread into two categories. 1.) people who don't like the system, and 2.)people who are reporting bugs with the current system.

Good Luck. I see a repeate of what the Defiant bug thread turned into. Eventualy all the actual bugs and people trying to reproduce the bugs or get the bugs fixed get drowned out by people who say the whole system is "bugged" and demand a change to the system, when in reality the system is working as intended (apart from a couple of bugged contacts). These people will refuse to acknowledge the difference between a bugged contact and the non-bugged system.

I have by no means unlocked all the locked contacts, however the ones I have unlocked (I can't remember their names but the Ghost of Scrapyarder contact, and the Scrapyarder badge contact) did not have bugs in them for me.

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Problem is, we've had nine unlockable contacts so far (Veluta, Dumont, Buzzsaw, Tarixus, Jaeger, Revenant, Slot Machine, Leery, and Sonata). Of those, four have been or are bugged (Veluta, Tarixus, Jaeger, and Leery), and another's borderline (Buzzsaw requires Bling, which is usually gotten around the same time people outlevel Buzzsaw). We're looking at about half of them being bugged to limited or no usefulness for months on end, on top of finding them and their requirements in the first place.

What's that got to do with the overall system of unlockable contacts? Everything.

For starters, very few people know about these contacts in the first place, so fewer bug reports and petitions get sent in than other bugs. Debuggers have fewer records and less data to work with, meaning it takes much longer than it otherwise would, especially if someone mistakes the notion that they're getting few complaints with the idea that the system's working for most people. The forums are full of complaints about the dreaded barrage of "working as intended" responses from GMs that often preceeds an acknowledgement from a red name that yes, indeed, the bug's real and problematic.

The system, as it stands, leads to limited playtesting available on the test server. Combine this with near-complete the lack of information in-game, and we get the current scenario: a handful of people trying to convince Cryptic and NCSoft that the problems here need their attentions. It's no surprise, then, that it takes months on end before these bugs are acknowledged in the first place, much less patched. By then, most of the players who've worked to get the changes made are out of luck, having outleveled the contact and its content.

If the system were that people in the game knew where to find these contacts and/or how to unlock them, we'd have a faster turnaround on the bugs due to a greater number of people using them.

If the badges that unlocked the contacts were easier to get and/or announced that a contact was unlocked, we'd have a similarly superior system for the players to aid in the debugging.

As it is, however, it took a month for Tarixus to get changed. It took over twice that for Jaeger to change. It's been over three months, and I don't believe that Leery's fix has gone live yet, and to my knowledge no red name's ever commented on the extreme difficulty surrounding getting the badges in time for Buzzsaw, much less Veluta.

Yes, the bugs are a separate problem than the system for unlockable contacts, but the bugs wouldn't be nearly so persistent if the system were designed better.

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... Yes, the bugs are a separate problem than the system for unlockable contacts, but the bugs wouldn't be nearly so persistent if the system were designed better.

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Very well said. I indeed see the problem much clearer now. I hope that your post is read by the Powers That Be, as it explains very clearly the need for the system to change. I personaly would like the In Game mechanics to be more available and more clear.

Let me run something by you, you tell me what you think. What if unlockable contact were left completely unreferred to and completely unmentioned, but once you found them, they gave missions straight away, or told you in plain English exactly what you need.

That way they would still be rewards for the explorrs, as a lot of them are so out of place I've personally never seen them, let alone unlcok them, but it would be simpler once you actually find them.

What do you think about that, just as a concept off the top of my head?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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Let me run something by you, you tell me what you think. What if unlockable contact were left completely unreferred to and completely unmentioned, but once you found them, they gave missions straight away, or told you in plain English exactly what you need.

That way they would still be rewards for the explorrs, as a lot of them are so out of place I've personally never seen them, let alone unlcok them, but it would be simpler once you actually find them.

What do you think about that, just as a concept off the top of my head?

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There is still the problem of outlevelling them unknowlingly or outlevelling them in an efforto meet their requirements.

Until someone TOLD me about them, I just assumed the guy I was walking by was a contact I was either going to get later or one that I wasn't going to get at all (like you don' get EVERY contact in CoH).

May I suggest just removing the level cap? WAY too annoying to find out about them at level 20, 30, 40(+) and realize you've been gypped of content.

...I've just read the OP, none other...

Saying that,

Unlockable contacts need to be AT LEAST more indicated about, hinted about, stronger then they are now indeed...IF they are hinted about as an actual 'puzzle solving before you get contact'.

My 38 corruptor has not specifically set out to 'Unlock any contact', though I know she has, it is of little consequence.

I think maybe that is a problem?

Well, it's not a problem, it's always an option, with the bonuses of these mission, etc.

...Yet...

Let there be a far better indicator that there are Unlockable COntacts....

Let it be better known in SOME way HOW to unlock these contacts....

Let their perhaps be some 'bonus' mission, even just one with nice exp, reward for COMPLETING an unlockable contact ARC, if there is one.

Many are so UNAWARE of even this feature, and when they DO become aware, they are already outleved of that contacts reach....

...it's a waste then. You cannot blame some for being unaware, especially if their is no true 'indicator' of these contacts even being available as some 'extra feature'.

Not even 50% of players read the boards...it should not be a penalty to the many who never do, to never get the full info of what is available to them.

Some people need more 'indicators' then others, so be it, so be it.

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That way they would still be rewards for the explorrs, as a lot of them are so out of place I've personally never seen them, let alone unlcok them, but it would be simpler once you actually find them.

What do you think about that, just as a concept off the top of my head?

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Personally, I like that they reward explorers and badge hunters.

However, if they were going to use your idea, I'd rather see it where the hidden contacts were far greater in number with less missions per. Right now, you'd find the hidden contact and that'd be it for 10 levels. This way, you'd still be encouraged to keep looking if you had, say, 5 hidden contacts per zone, each with about 3-5 missions.

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Until someone TOLD me about them, I just assumed the guy I was walking by was a contact I was either going to get later or one that I wasn't going to get at all (like you don' get EVERY contact in CoH).

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Good point. Right now, a "hidden contact" looks just like any other contact. Since you don't readily know which ones are hidden and which ones you just haven't gotten yet, there's no way to tell them apart. Perhaps they need to give the hidden ones a unique aura.

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That way they would still be rewards for the explorrs, as a lot of them are so out of place I've personally never seen them, let alone unlcok them, but it would be simpler once you actually find them.

What do you think about that, just as a concept off the top of my head?

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Personally, I like that they reward explorers and badge hunters.

However, if they were going to use your idea, I'd rather see it where the hidden contacts were far greater in number with less missions per. Right now, you'd find the hidden contact and that'd be it for 10 levels. This way, you'd still be encouraged to keep looking if you had, say, 5 hidden contacts per zone, each with about 3-5 missions.

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Or a small story arc. Yes, I see what you mean. And I love it Hell, something like that could actually make ME want to start exploring. If I knew I didn't have to kill a gazillion Family bosses or do Lord knows what to who knows how many ghosts somewhere, then I'd be inclined to actually look for those people.

If anything, there's very little exploration in CoH. Beyond graphically exploring the map, I don't do any exploration at all. Because either it doesn't give me anything but badges, or it requires badges. Exploration alone has never been rewarding to me, as it's always complicated by some factor.

But if unlockable contacts acted like "side quests" from your run of the mill Fantasy RPG, then that would be much more rewarding. Say you run around Aeon City, and you meet a bedraggled man behind a dumpset with a contact aura. You talk to him, and he explains how he was Dr. Aeon's personal assistant, until he was fired and Aeon kept all of his possessions. He then sends you on a few missions to retrieve some of them and maybe cause a few headaches. Then you take the ramp off the city and walk around the slums. You meet a woman selling hot dogs. Turns out she was a former girlfriend of the man now known as King Midas, and she wants to get back to him now that he's bigtime. She has a plan, but it ultimately fails. Then you round a corner and find... Who knows what.

I say keep the big stories for the regular contacts with many missions and involving fiction, then sprinkle the zones with less important, but still interesting contacts that can only be found. Looking at the amount of missions Marshal Brass has, instead of an unlockable contact with as many missions, that could probably be 4 hidden contacts with a quarter of his missions and still be plenty.

Just thinking, but I'd be a whole lot happier if it were instituted like that. I might even make a suggestion for it later.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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Samuel_Tow: The auras around the feet of active NPCs have enough colours to put a rainbow to shame, so I can never remember them all.

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Let's not forget there are folks who play these games that have trouble distinguishing color. I've a friend that can't see color at all. They only play Magic-origin characters because they've memorized the names of the enhancements and what they're for.

The very idea those little rings around and NPC's feet provide information about the NPC was completely and totally lost on them until someone mentioned it in casual conversation over lunch one day. Just for fun, try playing City of Heroes in black-and-white once. Or imagine that someone told you could tell the difference between contacts by smell:

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NotJack: You can't find those folks? They're easy! Go to the contacts that smell like roses. They sell enhancements. Unlockable contacts smell like lemons.

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Imagine "glowies" in missions didn't glow, or didn't make noise. (Which, I am given to understand, was added later.) ((Now if we could just get hostages to scream now and then...))

Hidden content is a bad idea when it is actually something you want folks to find. One of the most important ideas about design is that If The User Can't Find It, It Doesn't Exist.

I frequently run into folks in the game that don't know various accolades exist or how you might go about getting them. My first character was 30th level before I discovered certain rewards even existed and the design prohibited me from going back and getting them. I was so unhappy I deleted the character and started over. (I hold the designers personally responsible for wasting my time that way.)

I think accolades are neat and badges are kind of fun--but I didn't learn about them from the game. The documentation is (sorry folks) what I refer to as anti-documentation: It doesn't just not inform, it actually promotes misinformation about the game. I had to go outside the game for basic information about how to achieve success or what success might even be defined as.

If there is going to be "locked" or "triggered" content in a game (badges, accolades, contacts, story arcs, temporary powers, whatever...) it has to be obvious it exists and there needs to be clear, discoverable, redundant paths to unlocking it. Otherwise, It Doesn't Exist.

I don't play City of Villains, but I'd be quite unhappy if I'd paid for the game and discovered that a significant portion of what I paid for was turned off until I guessed the "magic word" to unlock it, once I'd guessed it was there, and that I needed a "magic word," which I have to guess.

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Malohin // Characters

-- !! CAUTION!! --
Jack Emmert != Statesman.
Jack Emmert is the Creative Director at Cryptic Studios.
Statesman is a fictional hero in Paragon City.
If Bill Gates wanted to be called the Micro-lord, we'd just laugh, right? Right?

I don't personally like hidden content.

Especially in an MMO (this is the only one I've heard of that strives to hide content from people) you'd think considering the amount of work they have to put into creating the badges an tracking them and then creating the contact and their missions and linking all this to the badges....you'd think they'd actually WANT alotta people to find them.

I don't think I'd be against hidden content so much if it didn't require so much work to create that is taking away time from the "out in the open" content and delaying said content.

And if it doesn't take much time/effort to make this hidden content then why are we going on 4+ months since CoV without even seeing Issue 7 on test? Why can't we have a CoH update with if nothing else some lvl 50 contacts if just creating contacts and missions is so easy that making hidden stuff doesn't take away from the non-hidden stuff...

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Jack Emmert: I am putting the requirements for Contacts - and their location - in the Prima Guide...

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Since this is basic information about the game and how to play, will a copy of this document be shipped to each account? Will this information be going in an updated version of the City of Heroes documentation? Will it be going on the City of Heroes web site?

I'm guessing... no. If it was on the web site, in an updated version of the documentation, or a free copy was shipped to us, there'd be no reason to pay for the book.

I know you're seeing this as a great boon to the player-base, but I'm sure I'm not the only person seing this as basic documentation being used as an additional profit center, and not a happy turn of events.

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Jack Emmert: but here was our intent with these Contacts - reward Exploration. Reward people who poke around to find new things. Now, the down side is that once found, these Contacts don't inform the player about what it takes to unlock them.

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Perhaps this game element should have received additional review, discussion, and a commitment of resources before it was accepted and implemented. There seem to be quite a number of decisions that suffer from premature implementation.

And just in case you missed it...

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Malohin: I'd be quite unhappy if I'd paid for the game and discovered that a significant portion of (the game) was turned off until I guessed the "magic word" to unlock it, once I'd guessed it was there, and that I needed a "magic word," which I have to guess.

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Malohin // Bob Simpson // Characters

-- !! CAUTION!! --
Jack Emmert != Statesman.
Jack Emmert is the Creative Director at Cryptic Studios.
Statesman is a fictional hero in Paragon City.
If Bill Gates wanted to be called the Micro-lord, we'd just laugh, right? Right?

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I am putting the requirements for Contacts - and their location - in the Prima Guide...

but here was our intent with these Contacts - reward Exploration. Reward people who poke around to find new things. Now, the down side is that once found, these Contacts don't inform the player about what it takes to unlock them.

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Doc Buzsaw- Requires Bling Badge: 1,000,000 Influence.
I got the badge at Level 30... lol, and the contact won't talk to me past level 29...

States... what's up with this?

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Doc Buzsaw- Requires Bling Badge: 1,000,000 Influence.
I got the badge at Level 30... lol, and the contact won't talk to me past level 29...


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Well if you'd just die more, thereby having to play longer to get a max level character, thereby paying for atleast one more month...then you'd get to see it...

Of course then you've gotta pay just to find out about the hidden contacts from Statesman....or just wait til one person buys the guide and types it into a website so we can enjoy it for free...hope states gets paid on a per-copy-sold basis...he won't be getting much then...

funny i got doc buzzsaw at 30. Also, some regular contact missions DO make you visit some of these "hidden" contacts. And earlier someone said they NEEDED to visit them because they ran out of content. I have never run out of contact content on any of my billion characters. Youre either stealthing way too many missions, or are avoiding newspapers as much as you can. I personally like the "hidden" content that you unlock via badges and stuff. It makes it feel like there is a reason to be outside. But as many people have said, yes there needs to be more....obvious ways of getting what is needed. I mean i get some really RANDOM exploration badges that dont even seem to make sense. Because i hit the 8th tree from the left in the forest, i get a badge talking about how positron created his own suit? (not really a badge, but come on, you know some are like that). There needs to be more "out of mission" content, and by that, i DONT just mean random crap thrown all around. Peds need to say things that point you toward things. Like maybe "The other day i went over to (neighborhood name) where that hero blew up all those buildings in a fight blah blah" and when you go there, there is a badge, and maybe some kind of clue somewhere, be it "visual" or "aural (npc speech)" to something else.