Official Thread: Response to Positron's Letter
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2006-09-27 11:34 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Issue 10 is a ways out, but it will bring us an update to an old familiar villain group. This group will have their power center altered
[/ QUOTE ]
Right, let's list all the villains that have a power centre.
1) The Council
2) ...
3) Er
4) That's it.
[/ QUOTE ]
The 5th Column. An old villain group, from before Issue 3. Super-nazis, to put it bluntly. The Council organized a hostile takeover and pretty much forced the 5th Column members to join them or die fighting.
There have been hints during the last year or so that the 5th Column would return. I assume the above is another allusion to that.
[ QUOTE ]
There have been hints during the last year or so that the 5th Column would return. I assume the above is another allusion to that.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not hints, outright statements.
And that was what I was driving at. The Council are the only villain group that actually have any kind of a power centre (in the sense of 'base'). So, when the Fifth came back, they could boot the Council out of Striga and take over.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Are you taking resources away from CoH/CoV?
Cryptic has a team of programmers, artists, designers, and producers dedicated solely to creating and maintaining both products. The studio will continue to update both titles with new content, including a multi-year storyline, a new gameplay system that allows characters to craft Enhancements and Costume pieces, brand new missions, and much, much more.
[/ QUOTE ]
"...dedicated solely to creating and maintaining both products"
In other words, "Yes, we are".
[/ QUOTE ]
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Nope, they're not hiring any new people. Nothing to see here.
I literally L'MAO. Thanks for the humor 
[/ QUOTE ]
did anyone else notice the MUO trailer in the lower right hand corner of the screen from Obsidious' link? No gameplay involved, but the trailer is already done, so the project must be moving along fairly well.
I have to agree with Lady Sadako that there will be 2 seperate teams working on CoX and MUO. Tabula Rasa hasn't brought CoX to a screaching halt development wise, neither has Guildwars or Auto Assault. Just because CoX and MUO are the same genre does not mean that they are going to be sharing development teams or stealing from one another. I am sure that some folks may get shuffled, but they are not going to downsize the CoX dev team to bolster the MUO one.
"Me, I assume 99% of the world's population are full-blown *******. Humanity seldomly lets me down."--Eisregen
�Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.�
― George Carlin
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Are you taking resources away from CoH/CoV?
Cryptic has a team of programmers, artists, designers, and producers dedicated solely to creating and maintaining both products. The studio will continue to update both titles with new content, including a multi-year storyline, a new gameplay system that allows characters to craft Enhancements and Costume pieces, brand new missions, and much, much more.
[/ QUOTE ]
"...dedicated solely to creating and maintaining both products"
In other words, "Yes, we are".
[/ QUOTE ]
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Nope, they're not hiring any new people. Nothing to see here.
I literally L'MAO. Thanks for the humor
[/ QUOTE ]
did anyone else notice the MUO trailer in the lower right hand corner of the screen from Obsidious' link? No gameplay involved, but the trailer is already done, so the project must be moving along fairly well.
I have to agree with Lady Sadako that there will be 2 seperate teams working on CoX and MUO. Tabula Rasa hasn't brought CoX to a screaching halt development wise, neither has Guildwars or Auto Assault. Just because CoX and MUO are the same genre does not mean that they are going to be sharing development teams or stealing from one another. I am sure that some folks may get shuffled, but they are not going to downsize the CoX dev team to bolster the MUO one.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think you are suffering from a common misconception here.
NCSoft does not develop CoH or any of those other games. Cryptic Studios does. Other companies make those games. Auto Assault is made by Net Devil, for example. Those games are published and supported by NCSoft, but thats a far different thing than developing them.
Cryptic's only games to date are CoH and CoV. Now they are making another game. The concern over resources is valid. We were told there would be seperate dev teams for CoH and CoV, and that CoH and CoV would both develop at the same time. That has been demonstrated to not have happened.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
People keep saying we were promised two development teams, one for CoH and one for CoV but keep overlooking a major point -- this only applied while CoV was in development. Cryptic apparently had no plan to maintain separate teams after CoV had launched. While they may have not made this particular policy clear from the outset to the playerbase, Statesman did admit this was the way they had operated in a post to this forum sometime within the last few months or so.
So, really, the "we were promised two dev teams forever and ever" argument ought to be quietly buried.
[ QUOTE ]
People keep saying we were promised two development teams, one for CoH and one for CoV but keep overlooking a major point -- this only applied while CoV was in development. Cryptic apparently had no plan to maintain separate teams after CoV had launched. While they may have not made this particular policy clear from the outset to the playerbase, Statesman did admit this was the way they had operated in a post to this forum sometime within the last few months or so.
So, really, the "we were promised two dev teams forever and ever" argument ought to be quietly buried.
[/ QUOTE ]
True, I should point out that I didn't expect two seperate dev teams to exist forever. I will contend however, that there really never was two seperate dev teams. Or if there were, there is nothing in the game to prove it. CoH development stopped with Issue Five, before CoV launched.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
[ QUOTE ]
People keep saying we were promised two development teams, one for CoH and one for CoV but keep overlooking a major point -- this only applied while CoV was in development. Cryptic apparently had no plan to maintain separate teams after CoV had launched. While they may have not made this particular policy clear from the outset to the playerbase, Statesman did admit this was the way they had operated in a post to this forum sometime within the last few months or so.
So, really, the "we were promised two dev teams forever and ever" argument ought to be quietly buried.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's not the argument. The argument is that there was never ever a separate development team. Geko and Statesman were all over the place in the CoV development and what little bulk up in staffing that occurred, after the financial stuffing that NCSoft took when City of Villains didn't sell enough, a number of developers were quietly let go.
It happens, it's unfortunate and I had wished that CoV had sold better. It's just that we heard this line before. That's all, I'm not cancelling my subscription. I've got too many friends in the community. That doesn't mean I don't see the writing on the wall.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Issue 10 is a ways out, but it will bring us an update to an old familiar villain group. This group will have their power center altered
[/ QUOTE ]
Right, let's list all the villains that have a power centre.
1) The Council
2) ...
3) Er
4) That's it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Banished Pantheon...Vahzilok...(shudders)...Rikti...5th Column
[/ QUOTE ]
I think most of you are missing Sadako's point: The leader (or is it former leader?) of the Council is The Center. Posi is making a clever little play on words and dropping us a hint. It's definitely the 5th Column coming back to deliver a little old school revenge....
Maybe.
Something I noticed in Positron's letter was that, in Issue 9, heroes will be getting Statesman's Strike Force, described as the hero equivalent of the Lord Recluse Strike Force. Unless something is being done with the Hamidon, that will be giving heroes two ways of earning combination enhancements, one of which is straightforward and formulaic, while villains will have one that still requires a carefully-tailored team to have a decent success rate (and I've seen the postings about 'non-optimal' teams completing the LRSF; doing it once, or even twice, is not statistically significant). Throwing the balance the other way, or will there be additional options for villains not covered in his letter? I'd like to believe the latter, but experience with prior announcements has taught me to view then with a jaundiced eye...
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I see one major problem with a Marvel Super Heroes MMO. I don't see how they could ever balance it. If a game like this one has balance problems imagine a game like that. And how on earth do you account for multiple versions of the same marvel character? A team of four Wolverines? There is only one Wolverine? More than one would just feel lame.
[/ QUOTE ]
I would be shocked if they let you play as signature characters, really.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed, I'm pretty much assuming all the major marvel characters will either be contacts or "Pets" that come along on missions.
[/ QUOTE ]
Matrix Online used to delete people who made copycat Morpheus and Neo characters. Starwars galaxies didn't like you making copies of their famous characters either. The fact is that if you can't control how your trademarks and copyrighted characters are used and percieved by others then you are infact in violation of the copyright and/or trademark laws since you're not working to protect the IP.
By allowing some 8yr old to make a character who is exactly like Spiderman and then go jumping around and cursing on broadcast while griefing people then it portrays a bad image of the person they look like. Thus you'll NEVER be allowed to make a character who is a copy or too similar to copyrighted/trademarked figures.
If the devs want some advice is this. People WANT to be Spiderman, Hulk or whatever. If they don't allow folks to do that then people will be disapointed. So here's a suggestion. Let people take control of these characters inside of instanced missions, let the AI take control of their character OR have them trying to save/rescue their character.
Imagine this. Your character is sent on a mission by Thor to stop a plot of Doctor Doom's to take over the world. You fight through the mission all fine and then in the final room you're face to face with Doc Doom while solo. He totally kicks you're characters butt. The scene switches and now you (the player) is taking control of Thor who is aware of your character being captured and is now going to have to save them from Doc Doom. This means you're not only inside an instanced mission so you're not going to grief someone else, you're in a contained environment and its very very cool because for a brief time you ARE Thor.
If this was a team mission something similar would happen except that you'd have a set of signiture heroes assigned to help Thor. So lets say the mission (when done by a team) allows all of the team to get captured and each member is taken to a selection screen showing what signiture heroes they can control for the 'rescue' part. They each select one person each and off they go with each player controlling a different signiture hero.
Sounds like it would work huh?
[/ QUOTE ]
That's actually a clever, workable idea, Tal. Kudos!
- Green Lantern
"Say, Jim...woo! That's a bad out-FIT!" - Superman: The Movie
Me 'n my posse: http://www.citygametracker.com/site/....php?user=5608
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
People keep saying we were promised two development teams, one for CoH and one for CoV but keep overlooking a major point -- this only applied while CoV was in development. Cryptic apparently had no plan to maintain separate teams after CoV had launched. While they may have not made this particular policy clear from the outset to the playerbase, Statesman did admit this was the way they had operated in a post to this forum sometime within the last few months or so.
So, really, the "we were promised two dev teams forever and ever" argument ought to be quietly buried.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's not the argument. The argument is that there was never ever a separate development team. Geko and Statesman were all over the place in the CoV development and what little bulk up in staffing that occurred, after the financial stuffing that NCSoft took when City of Villains didn't sell enough, a number of developers were quietly let go.
It happens, it's unfortunate and I had wished that CoV had sold better. It's just that we heard this line before. That's all, I'm not cancelling my subscription. I've got too many friends in the community. That doesn't mean I don't see the writing on the wall.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was just stating what the devs have said regarding two dev teams. What people believe is up to them.
[ QUOTE ]
That, or the 5th Column are outright taking the Council back over. That would be a heck of a turnaround, albeit not an unwelcome one. The Council is painfully lame.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, no more COBRA wannabes.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not terribly worried about the Marvel deal. The fact that it's going to be made for a gaming console suggests it'll be a faster, shallower game than COH, optimized for a gamepad with what? Eight buttons? I'm pretty sure it'll cater to a different audience than COH either way.
Meanwhile, Cryptic has a big project to work on and train new people on and learn new stuff on etc. One that'll bring in a lump sum of money. One that associates it with 'big names' in the entertainment sector (though I'm not sure being associated with MS is a good thing). These are things that can be used as bargaining chips and credentials in future deals. Once that is done they'll likely go into a follow-up to COH and bring all that experience from the Marvel MMO into the field with them, but this time they have their own properties they can work with.
For Cryptic, I only see good news in this. For the hardcore COH fans, it won't be an issue. The only people who might mind are NCSoft.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry to say i look at this quite from the opposite. COH is on the way out at cryptic i can say for sure. Though the Devs might say its not, its only probably to prevent a mass exodus from COX before the marvel game is released.
Think of all the growing pains COX went through that the marvel game due to Cryptics experience now will not. Sorry to say that COX just became the guinea pig for MUO. Notice the "Giving players what they want" attitude which is a convient excuse for giving us things that for years we have asked for AKA trench coats, new flight animations etc, that can all be then put into the marvel game once the bugs are worked out here. After all if you cant make a gambit look alike with a trench coat on who will play a marvel game.
Finance wise a small development company like Cryptic that has 1 franchise that keeps it going, and they go into a partnership to make a new game for a new console/MMO company like Microsoft and there 360. And this partnership will be in DIRECT compitition with its previous game releases? To me it is a enormous conflict of intrest. Essentially the same customer base is being draw upon. With COX pretty much past its pinnicle of subscription dont think for a moment that any industry breaking improvments will be seen in COH. Infact im willing to bet that even if the dev team came up with some great new idea for COX that it would be questioned to impliment it in COX or save it for MUO.
Sorry i know its a DOOOOM post but frankly this symbols to me the real begining of the end in a way ED or any other game adjustment of the past, couldnt even have touched.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Issue 10 is a ways out, but it will bring us an update to an old familiar villain group. This group will have their power center altered
[/ QUOTE ]
Right, let's list all the villains that have a power centre.
1) The Council
2) ...
3) Er
4) That's it.
[/ QUOTE ]
*Cough*Fifth Column*Cough*
[/ QUOTE ]
Circle of Thorns
and if you go on to those dominated by single individuals:
The Family, The Warriors, The Tsoo, etc
Thrythlind's Deviant Art Page
"Notice at the end, there: Arcanaville did the math and KICKED IT INTO EXISTENCE." - Ironik on the power of Arcanaville's math
[ QUOTE ]
So what is I8 about? Getting heros equal to villains. Heros have tons of missions and zones to explore compared to villains. So lets take the only thing villains had that heros didn't away from them, newpaper missions and mayhem missions.
[/ QUOTE ]
Most of us 'old-timers' assume that certain CoH zones over time will be turned over or opened up to CoV. Almost half the zone count that you're a little jealous over consists of zones rarely ever used - especially the Hazard zones which is a vestigial concept that the game grew out of during CoV development. CoH is chuck full of vestigial concepts and artifacts that were interesting at first, but are outdated and less than interesting now. CoV is chock full of features and QoL that CoH players have been asking for since CoV was just a glimmer in someone's eye. I agree that CoV could use some more elbow room, but I'm not sure waiting 18 months to port gameplay options over to CoH so that CoV can get another zone or two is an un-awkward solution. Though truthfully, I don't know that there's anythng but awkward solutions at this point as far as content additions. The long gap between Issue 6 and 7 strained most everyone's patience going forward.
[ QUOTE ]
That wouldn't bother me as much if they at least threw the villains a bone. But it doesn't sound like they really plan on balancing villains much, instead all they talk about is adding more to heros or to both. i.e. the Stateman taskforce and inventions.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, CoH isn't getting any new zones. They're getting tweaked ports of CoV gameplay modules and some small amount of tweaked zone assets, with some vague refurbishment of the Boomtown and Faultline zones (one of which may be becoming a PvP zone, but maybe not). Both games share the new costumes, new Veteran Awards, increased base functionality, and QoL stuff. I8's less CoH-centric in my eyes than I7 was CoV-centric, and there's been assurances that there won't be another 8-month gap between Issues. You're looking at February-ish (give or take a few weeks) for the next major installment of content that'll likely be more CoV-centric, with a Halloween and possible Winter Holiday event in the meantime.
I mean really, folks, this split-focus for content was a concern before CoV came out. It wasn't CoH players just worrying about whether CoH would get its due. It was about the dev team being a servant to two needy masters. I shake my head when I read vague assurances that work on the Marvel MMOG won't drain resources away from CoX. That tune has been sung before. Gird yourself for the inevitable. 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Are you taking resources away from CoH/CoV?
Cryptic has a team of programmers, artists, designers, and producers dedicated solely to creating and maintaining both products. The studio will continue to update both titles with new content, including a multi-year storyline, a new gameplay system that allows characters to craft Enhancements and Costume pieces, brand new missions, and much, much more.
[/ QUOTE ]
"...dedicated solely to creating and maintaining both products"
In other words, "Yes, we are".
[/ QUOTE ]
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Nope, they're not hiring any new people. Nothing to see here.
I literally L'MAO. Thanks for the humor
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, to be fair, Cryptic talked about how they doubled their staff when CoV's developement started in earnest back in Fall 2004. It didn't seem to allow Cryptic to avoid a content pipeline slowdown that lingers to today. Any isolated plot point can tell "A" story. Connnecting the plot points tells something closer to "THE" story.
I'm not going to tell you not to be optimistic, Obsidius. There's a track record that exists in reality, though, that undermines the zazz of your sarcasm.
[ QUOTE ]
I have to agree with Lady Sadako that there will be 2 seperate teams working on CoX and MUO. Tabula Rasa hasn't brought CoX to a screaching halt development wise, neither has Guildwars or Auto Assault. Just because CoX and MUO are the same genre does not mean that they are going to be sharing development teams or stealing from one another. I am sure that some folks may get shuffled, but they are not going to downsize the CoX dev team to bolster the MUO one.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, if you educated yourself with 5 minutes of Search-Fu, you'd know that Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, and Auto Assault were all done by different development studios, while MUO and CoX are being done by the same development studio.
Please don't compare apples to eggplants.
On another note, my money's on the 5th Column, given the amount of teasing we've been given for the past few months. Although I would be pleasantly suprised if I am wrong
hahaha...
Half an hour later, and *snip*! 
[ QUOTE ]
"I9 brings with it a huge new gameplay system: Inventions. Players will be able to craft Enhancements and Costume pieces for their characters using recipes, and salvage that they find while adventuring."
He mentioned Enhancements and Costume pieces, which is all great. But I was kind of hoping to also craft my own temp powers. Like a pack of 6 Web Grenades, similar to the ones you could buy from Siren's Call. I dream of being able to consturct my own gadgets and equipment and have a utility belt of temp powers. 
[/ QUOTE ]
YES! Making a supply of temp powers for personal usage would be great. Requiring certain recipies for mission completions would be cool as well. There are endless applications for this type of invention.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Be nice if the Praetorians were reworked for villains as well as heroes.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have to say that I shudder thinking about a hero version of Lord recluse
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmmm....Lord Daddy Long Legs...? This does leave an unnerving feeling. 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not terribly worried about the Marvel deal. The fact that it's going to be made for a gaming console suggests it'll be a faster, shallower game than COH, optimized for a gamepad with what? Eight buttons? I'm pretty sure it'll cater to a different audience than COH either way.
Meanwhile, Cryptic has a big project to work on and train new people on and learn new stuff on etc. One that'll bring in a lump sum of money. One that associates it with 'big names' in the entertainment sector (though I'm not sure being associated with MS is a good thing). These are things that can be used as bargaining chips and credentials in future deals. Once that is done they'll likely go into a follow-up to COH and bring all that experience from the Marvel MMO into the field with them, but this time they have their own properties they can work with.
For Cryptic, I only see good news in this. For the hardcore COH fans, it won't be an issue. The only people who might mind are NCSoft.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry to say i look at this quite from the opposite. COH is on the way out at cryptic i can say for sure. Though the Devs might say its not, its only probably to prevent a mass exodus from COX before the marvel game is released.
Think of all the growing pains COX went through that the marvel game due to Cryptics experience now will not. Sorry to say that COX just became the guinea pig for MUO. Notice the "Giving players what they want" attitude which is a convient excuse for giving us things that for years we have asked for AKA trench coats, new flight animations etc, that can all be then put into the marvel game once the bugs are worked out here. After all if you cant make a gambit look alike with a trench coat on who will play a marvel game.
Finance wise a small development company like Cryptic that has 1 franchise that keeps it going, and they go into a partnership to make a new game for a new console/MMO company like Microsoft and there 360. And this partnership will be in DIRECT compitition with its previous game releases? To me it is a enormous conflict of intrest. Essentially the same customer base is being draw upon. With COX pretty much past its pinnicle of subscription dont think for a moment that any industry breaking improvments will be seen in COH. Infact im willing to bet that even if the dev team came up with some great new idea for COX that it would be questioned to impliment it in COX or save it for MUO.
Sorry i know its a DOOOOM post but frankly this symbols to me the real begining of the end in a way ED or any other game adjustment of the past, couldnt even have touched.
[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe a DOOM post, but is a very likely scenario. Let's hope the two games can coexist, or better still...MUO might be a console only development.
I wish it would turn out differently but in all honesty, and I absolutely love CoX, I think this spells the beginning of the end. As a previous poster noted, the focus of the devs now is just on making the current base happy (had read a dev interview maybe last week before I knew about MUO and was surprised they didnt focus on increasing subscribers). The sad thing is that we invested so much time into our chars and yes, even though the game may still run, if we see this mass defection to a new, more managed game, for those of us loyalists that remain, it would be no fun if there are so few playing.
So not really sure what to do at this point, I guess play until the proverbial plug is pulled but I won't be putting in the time as much anymore on making new chars, etc, not with the death penalty so close behind me.
Arc: 378122 "Tales of the Terran Space Marines -The Apocalypse Initiative" 5stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rgl4...687B0FC89F142C
Arc: 481545 "Twilight of the Gods - The Praetorian conflict"8000+ hits!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxJ6S...848B21E2350DCC
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That, or the 5th Column are outright taking the Council back over. That would be a heck of a turnaround, albeit not an unwelcome one. The Council is painfully lame.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, no more COBRA wannabes.
[/ QUOTE ]
The whole '5th Column Subversion' understory was, I thought, underimplemented. The period when we saw the 5th Column and Council fighting it out in the streets was way too short; I can't see how the people behing the takeover could have swung enough of the rank and file to roll over the rest that quickly; I would have enjoyed it more if it had gone in a progression -- first you see some of the Council as street spawns and in a few of the 5th Column bases you get sent to in missions, then the firefight between the Council and the 5th Column holdouts starts and spreads across zones, trickling off over several weeks, ending with occasional street spawns of Council chasing 5th Column, or sniping them from rooftops. Meanwhile, the 5th Column bases become filled with Council, first with the old 5th Column 'branding', then with the Council logo oversprayed (i.e., swap the 5th Column banners for Council ones, spray the Council logo over the 5th Column logo on crates and doors, etc.), then the takeover completes and the Council signage is everywhere.
The rationale behind this is that, while the Council may have been ready to instigate the coup, changing all the signage would be too much of a complication to happen as soon as the coup starts -- you have to figure that someone is going to get suspicious when the barricade doors in all the bases get repainted a different color with a new logo, or that all their supply crates are being painted with a different logo before being shipped out. It's not reasonable for there to be a flag day where everything in the 5th Column bases suddenly transforms into Council gear.
Having Reichsman escape, gather the remnants of the 5th Column, and take it back from the Council provides an opportunity to do it better -- heroes and villains start seeing missions from contacts and the newspaper/police band that send the player into a Council base, but it's 5th Column in the base (still with all the Council logos, possibly with the exception of the banners yanked down. Running firefights as occasional 5th Column groups attack spawns of Council on the streets (probably abortively in the Rogue Isles as Arachnos steps up its presence to shoot them both down to keep order, spreading into open firefights between the two groups, ending with the Council bases back under 5th Column control, changing symbology back over time to the 5th Column logos. Entirely new missions where the heroes and villains get sent into Council and 5th Column bases to do various things, some of them ending with the post-mission dialog with the contact saying that they discovered that the information leading to the mission was planted by the other group, in order that the hero/villain attack the base to inconvenience the other side. Large battles between the 5th Column and Council on Striga, possibly making it a joint hero/villain cooperative zone against both the Council and the 5th Column...
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am kind of disappointed that there isn't more emphasis on getting villain areas up to Heros levels. I mean there must be twice as many zones and areas for heros as there are for villains. Villains have fewer contact missions, no Shards, no Hollows, no Stringa and no Hazard zones at all.
So what is I8 about? Getting heros equal to villains. Heros have tons of missions and zones to explore compared to villains. So lets take the only thing villains had that heros didn't away from them, newpaper missions and mayhem missions.
That wouldn't bother me as much if they at least threw the villains a bone. But it doesn't sound like they really plan on balancing villains much, instead all they talk about is adding more to heros or to both. i.e. the Stateman taskforce and inventions.
[/ QUOTE ]
Many (if not most) of the CoH Hazard zones are continually empty and unwanted. They were a very bad idea about forced teaming, except that even teams don't want to do street hunting in the middle of the Abandoned Sewer Network.
I'm really hoping most hazard zones just go away.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hazard zones are a relic from adressing the desires of multiplayer games of eons past. When Heroes launched the number one thing people wanted in this genre was enormous vacuos zones filled to the brim with groups of enemies that they could "hunt" with friends. When my small circle of friends started we were damn near the only people running missions.
You have to remember that when Heroes launched, instanced content was virtually unheard of in the genre (Realm had it! Hahaha!) and was a hotly debated feature. Many people argued that any instanced content at all eroded the very framework on which these games were founded.
Obviously Cryptic was a little ahead of the curve here and instanced content, if not the norm, is now a staple in the industry.
So that's the peculiar situation we are now left with regarding Hazard zones. When I started you couldn't walk 50 yards in one without seeing a roving group of eight mega heroes herding 3 dozen enemies to their mass murder, and now you'd be lucky to find one other character grumbling about some god forsaken quest they need to finish 2.5 miles north of the Boomtown gate.
I don't want them to go away, I want them to change dramatically. I want them to become kind of PvPless PvP areas. What? Well, I want you to NEVER have to go there unless you go to a specific contact for a Hazard mission. I want them to be HAZARDOUS hell zones, with hordes of dynamic enemies groups patrolling the area. I want you to be finishing up a hard fight, spy another group baring down on yuou over a hill and have to hero-up or die fighting. Make them change ala Victory but have the engine to do so be PvE. I think it would be a blast, hard as hell and not for the faint of heart, but 100% voluntary.
That would kick [censored].