My take on unlockable contacts.
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2006-02-24 19:12 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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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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I would like to let you know of another slightly small problem Statesman. I just found out that one of my Contacts Jaeger is indeed an unlockable contant.
I have no idea how I unlocked him. None. If I want to do his missions in the future I have no clue how to get this contact. I think that indicates that there is a problem with the current implimentation of unlockable contacts. Even after having apparently explored enough to find this contact, I may not be able to do it again in the future, thus I have learned nothing about this unlockable contact.
There is another contact on a Bridge in Nerva that says that I must be trusted by the figure in the shadows before he will give me missions. Well, I am completely trusted (bar all the way to the right and filled in) by the Shadowy figure yet I cannot get this contact. Is the contact bugged? I don't know but I explored that contact till he wouldn't give me any missions just so I could get this contact on the bridge only to find now later that I still can't get him as a contact and I have no new info to go on.
That is just a little annoying.
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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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Don't get me wrong, rewards are good. But, would you consider some type of hints in-game for the non-forum, non-guide reading folks?
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That would reward exploration if we could figure out from exploring how to find unlockable contacts...
James
Maybe it's just me, but all the hidden contacts I ran across were pretty clear about what they wanted me to do - one wanted me to take down the Ghost of Scrapyard to prove myself to him, one wanted me to demonstrate that I really hated longbow (sounds like earn Villain to me), and the Archmage wanted me to go learn about the conflict between Mu and the Circle.
The others look like they're pretty straightforward contact chains, similar to the Origins of CoH - jave to be introduced by one to the next, et cetera.
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
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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?
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The information is available with a five second Google search.
I don't see the problem, myself. For people who like to hunt for things, the kind of people who like to find badges the hard way without looking them up and such, unlockable contacts are a way to expand their fun. For people don't like to hunt for things, the same websites that detail all the badge locations and all the task force missions and all the power stats and the like also list the unlockable contacts.
Hell, Hermod made a guide on this forum.
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Also, some regular contact missions DO make you visit some of these "hidden" contacts.
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Yeah, I had to run to Archmage Tarixus more than once while I was building the Arcano-Bomb.
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Also, some regular contact missions DO make you visit some of these "hidden" contacts.
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Yeah, I had to run to Archmage Tarixus more than once while I was building the Arcano-Bomb.
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Ironically, the contact for the Arcano-Bomb is a "hidden" contact as well, so that doesn't count for much.
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The information is available with a five second Google search.
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And thus useless to the vast majority of players.
defending a broken system because you can find the answer somewhere else is silly.
it's not like the game is swimming in content to the point it can afford to hide big chunks of it from 99% of the playerbase.
The problem with the unlockable contacts it their arbitrary nature. I've done missions for an unlockable not even knowing it was unlockable, let *alone* how I unlocked it.
The idea is fine, provided everyone knows where to find them and the requirements for unlocking them are clearly explained. Then it becomes a challenge, and a fun addition to the game.
Players shouldn't have to buy a guide or access google to access the unlockable contact content.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
actually I dont really mind having to buy a strategy guide to find out about things like hidden contacts. What bugs me is the fact that the OFFICIAL CoV strategy guide I laid down hard cash for doesn't say jack squat about them. Oh well, it mentions them under general contacts for the area, but it sure as hell doesn't tell me how to unlock them.
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
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The information is available with a five second Google search.
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And thus useless to the vast majority of players.
defending a broken system because you can find the answer somewhere else is silly.
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I like a lot about this game but one of the things that I really, really don't like is the amount of information which is not readily available in-game and which must be gleaned from the forums or online guides.
The way I built my 1st hero (pre-forum reading) vs the way I built my second (post-forum reading) was marked. And of course the 2nd was much more effective.
Pre-suppression, for that brief time when having a travel power on would tank your accuracy, people I teamed with would be shocked at their poor accuracy (because they didnt read the forums and didnt know about the change).
The list goes on and on. Yes, Im glad they give me something to read [during breaks] at work, but the information should be readily available to all in game.
I dont want a leg up on someone because I read the web instead of smoking during breaks. My leg up there is that Ill live longer and thats good enough already. 
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The information is available with a five second Google search.
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And thus useless to the vast majority of players.
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Yeah, because the vast majority of players don't have access to Google. I hear you have to have a special pass from the President to use it now. 
Seriously, the information is there for anyone who wants it. Lots of games have hidden stuff, and it's not like Cryptic originated this idea. What in Final Fantasy VII told you that if you breed a golden Chocobo and go to a certain location you can get the Knights of the Round materia? Nothing. It was hidden. You either had to find it the hard way, buy a book or a magazine, or search the Intarweb. Does that mean FF7 was poorly designed? I wouldn't say so. What they did was pretty typical.
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The idea is fine, provided everyone knows where to find them and the requirements for unlocking them are clearly explained. Then it becomes a challenge, and a fun addition to the game. Players shouldn't have to buy a guide or access google to access the unlockable contact content.
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You and I must have completely different gaming backgrounds.
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You and I must have completely different gaming backgrounds.
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Hmm, I'd have to be in the "different" category. You know, back in the dark ages when you bought a game and you got the whole game at once. But somewhere along the line, somebody said, "Yeah, we can sell so many copies of 'Monopoly' but imagine how many more we could make if we sell the Deeds in booster packs and make Boardwalk AND Mediterranean ultra-rare foil cards?!?"
I made a half dozen toons, having read the manual and dilligently reading every part of the tutorial, before learning that lurking inside Outbreak was one of those cool "badges" I had read about but had no clue how to find.
I've cut back on reading these boards because it only causes me to head home, log in my high-level mains and go, "Yep, missed that TOO!"
For the record, there's one in Breakout, too, but it's an exploration badge instead of a hunt badge.
I just think of the unlockable contacts as the kinds of side quests you find in RPGs like Fallout or Suikoden or Baldur's Gate or whatever. A lot of these types of games have "contacts" that won't give you their quests unless you meet some kind of condition. Heck, some of them are only even there to give you their quests in between Event X and Event Y and if you don't go back to Place Z during this time you never see them. It's such a common gimmick it never occurred to me it would be perceived as unusual or, worse, malevolent.
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For the record, there's one in Breakout, too, but it's an exploration badge instead of a hunt badge.
I just think of the unlockable contacts as the kinds of side quests you find in RPGs like Fallout or Suikoden or Baldur's Gate or whatever. A lot of these types of games have "contacts" that won't give you their quests unless you meet some kind of condition. Heck, some of them are only there to even give you their quests in between Event X and Event Y and if you don't go back to Place Z during this time you never see them. It's such a common gimmick it never occurred to me it would be perceived as unusual or, worse, malevolent.
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lol We must just have a different mindset...
While I liked Baulders Gate a lot, one of the things that I did *not* like about it was that after I finished it (without any guides or walkthroughts) and then months later did read a few of those guides, I found out that I had missed a lot of content. I had moved on to other games and had no time or desire to go back and re-play the game in order to see an additional 10% (n.b. made up percentage).
So for me the designers might as well have polished the visible bits more, got the game out earlier, done more QA or even just put less work in and therefore made more profit.
The hidden / unlockable content they put in to BG was completely wasted on me. And no, I didnt rush through the game. After I finished it and found out about stuff I missed, I did feel a bit steamed though.
Guess its just a different POV.
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For the record, there's one in Breakout, too, but it's an exploration badge instead of a hunt badge.
[/ QUOTE ]And I didn't leave Breakout with my first villian toon until I had found it, wandered over every inch of the map, went back to each contact, and killed probably hundreds of fellow Escapees just on the off chance that there was more than one badge lurking beyond my ken.
And then said, "I'm missing out on the rest of this game, let it go." But I was still relieved later to come here and find I missed nothing.
This is my first computer game experience unless you count 7th Guest, which I vicariously played to help my then-girlfriend through some of the puzzles. This concept of special "extra" content for those who rabidly research any game is foreign to me. But, yes, I'm an anachronistic kind of guy who's out of whack with most of the forum posters to begin with anyhow. I think the "easter eggs" on a DVD are cute. I think these "easter eggs" of hidden content (considering I find them long after I apparently am supposed to) stink.
Okay, it doesn't REALLY stink, actually it's only a bit annoying, and I still enjoy the game regardless. I just had to carry the metaphor to its logical conclusion. 
In my mind it increases the replayability of the game. I don't like to plonk down the cash for a game I'd only play once. I feel better if the game is one I'd play through two, three, four times. It's one of the reasons I prefer games with multiple characters or character types or sides or whatever you can play.
For me, the hidden stuff helps with that. I'll go through it once "legit" and have a good time sloggin' through the hard way. If I really liked the game, I'll go online and look to see if there's a bunch of stuff I missed. If there is, then, sweet, I can go through it a second time with a walkthrough and see all the [censored] I missed the first time.
It's like a sequel I don't have to spend more money on.
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This is my first computer game experience unless you count 7th Guest, which I vicariously played to help my then-girlfriend through some of the puzzles.
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Seventh Guest is an interesting example, though, because it was actually very tight-fisted with information. It didn't tell you where the puzzles were. It didn't tell you when new puzzles were unlocked after you solved old puzzles. It usually didn't give you more than an oblique hint at best as to what the goal of any given puzzle was, and it never told you how to go about solving them. Admittedly the game was set up such that you had to do all of the puzzles to win and you couldn't skip any, but it never included any sort of go-here-do-this type information at all!
Yeah, but the new puzzle was still there if you went and looked for it, on a small screen and the icon changed when you passed over the new games. You're not left to your own devices on virtual worldmaps that stretch for miles. (Large portions of which will kill you if you roam aimlessly. )
I can't do newspaper missions in Port Oakes until I hit 5th. No problem, because it tells me that, even if I try to skip out on Mongoose. (However, you can do newspaper missions at 29 in St. Martial, but Ian won't talk to you and it wipes the Broker bar clean, but that's another story.) But when I unlock Henri Dumont as a contact(which I probably did long before I outleveled him), unless I either read outside the game or happen to pass by him and click on him at the right instant, it remains unavailable and unknown.
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I agree wholeheartedly with having some actual 'in-game' content that gives clues and points people toward things like the unlockable contacts. It's one of the main problems (IMO, of course) with MMOs today that there's just not enough game 'in-game.' And usually performing web searches and printing out lists of coordinates and a checklist of required elements . . . well, that's just about as dry as it sounds. It's not putting the 'game' in the game at all.
Such things really do much less than they potentially could for actual enjoyment, due to the process I just described above. It's not playing, it's googling for information and that's just not a good game, IMO. Please put the 'game' back in the game where it belongs with 'in-game' clues and mysteries to unravel instead of web searches.
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Could not have said it better.
Hell let them be any lvl... so when were at 50 and having nothing left to do.. hello end game content...
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