Wanted to shoot out an idea to make bases popular
By
Ahkileez,
Posted on: 2006-11-02 15:34 in Base Construction
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The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
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Great minds think alike. Posi and I have been talking about this for awhile.
Here's the not so simple bit: the tech. But it's an interesting idea that we're wrangling at the moment.
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As for tech? You know those "personal items" ...? LEt people put one in, which is an entrance to ... *drum roll* ... their SEPERATELY-acquired, built, and maintained "personal apartment".
But as others have said: that's not going to solve anything. At all.
Access is the first point - cutting some of an SG's membership out of the loop WRT actually using, or even looking at the "group space" is like shooting yourself in the foot ... and then complaining that you have a limp!
Cost is the next point - cut the cost of purely decorative spaces and things. Drastically. If a space is going to be completely and purely SOCIAL in use ... it should have a cost that is, in fact, purely social - "join a group". That includes after-the-fact stuff (RENT), too.
Those are the big two.
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The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
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Great minds think alike. Posi and I have been talking about this for awhile.
Here's the not so simple bit: the tech. But it's an interesting idea that we're wrangling at the moment.
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1. Give a significant prestige boost to an individual for creating a base; and
2. Significantly reduce the price of non-raiding space, equipment, and decorations; then...
Everyone can create their own base-apartment with storage for their stuff with one of their toons. With an alt-toon, they can join a Super/Villain Base and then form an alliance between their base-apartment and their S/V Group. Allowing both their toons to enter either the player apartment or their Group Base.
This can be done right now just by altering database values and not any coding. Tweaking the coding to allow new types of permissions can be done later.
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One thing I think would really help people with the immersion of players into the idea of having a base, is dropping the base portals. It disconnects the base from having any sense of reality. It's 'nowhere'.
My idea would be to give an SG leader or SG creator a special power when they sign up to create their base or something. They use this power to click on a door somewhere that afterwards serves as the doorway to their base.
I'm no game designer, but my layman's understanding is that all doors have a unique identifier. The game already accounts for them and can put up waypoints and so forth based on the door's ID# or address or however it's handled in-game.
So the game is littered with doors that serve instanced missions (and it's possible for two people to have two completely different missions out of the same door anyway) so it shouldn't be a problem for said door to serve as your base entrance.
People with cave bases can use the cave doors, people with sewer bases can use the manholes, and the regular techy and other designs can use whatever door they see fit. Everyone's happy and it uses a facility the game is already equipped with.
And in the one in a million chance the base door also happens to be your mission door, it can use the same selection 'drop down' window the bases and coalition stuff uses, or that which the trams use. So no biggie their either.
Anyone think that can work?
-| Ahkileez |-
Supergroup Leader
The Omni Supergroup / Infinity Server
"With great power, comes great responsibility." - Ben Parker
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The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
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Great minds think alike. Posi and I have been talking about this for awhile.
Here's the not so simple bit: the tech. But it's an interesting idea that we're wrangling at the moment.
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As a thought, perhaps our own "door" within the base that gives us our own space. A wall that displays our badges and trophies from the missions we've completed, A one or two room place that permit buying furnishings and customizations with influence (essentially, personal prestige after all)
A SG base would be required to have your door to your "room" so to speak, and you can "lock" the door if you desire agaist everyone or just visitors to the SG.
If you leave the SG, you would simply make a new door in a new SG base, and all you've spent and made is retained OR a Partial refund is granted if you do leave.
Lots of possibilities with this, IMO
What do you guys think?
Also perhaps adding a "Training Room" to the base as a option, essentially a gateway to a random or selectable mission , or possibly PVP within the SG (Using Arena code. But gaining only prestige rewards) That may also encourage SGs AND Arena usage.
Just a thought...
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The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
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Great minds think alike. Posi and I have been talking about this for awhile.
Here's the not so simple bit: the tech. But it's an interesting idea that we're wrangling at the moment.
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I've posted this idea twice so far. Please don't let "the tech" prevent you from doing this (unless it would be a TON of trouble). I, for one, am tired of hearing "the tech" being blamed for the lack of...well, everything in CoX.
But this does beg the question - what about players who don't belong to an SG? They get to miss out on a nice corner of Paragon City to call their own? What if those players could have, say, an apartment in Steel Canyon?
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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I need a place to store my HO's!
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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Satanic Hamster, not just a cute avatar.
Agreed. I'd really like to make my own apartment, room, etc that I can design, etc. I can understand why there are only a few(or in some cases for the power hungry, one) people who should be able to edit a SG base, but it takes away from everyone having their own little universe and ability to use the base editor. Some SG leaders are like Cartman in the WoW episode of Southpark. They want you to do this and that and are the ones who manage the prestige, enhancements and insps dropped in the bins, etc. Screw that. I don't play the game to fullfill someone else's fantasies, I play for me! I hardly play in SG mode anymore because I have to choose between Infamy and Prestige on higher level toons. Infamy and Influence win these days. I'd much rather have control over where my prestige goes then give it to someone else to use at their leisure with no returns. The way base raids are at the moment they're the same repetive grind of people making pits where people end up spawning after every death after they're locked down in the pit by the defending group the entire raid. That's boring! No challenge and doesn't require much skill if you ask me. Get rid of spawning points where everyone spawns, make people be able to spawn all over the map, and some SGs will have their win rankings drop because all they know how to do is lock em down in the pit, slaughter em, rinse, repeat. BORING! 
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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I need a place to store my HO's!
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and how would storage in a GROUP base help that? What happens if you get kicked from the group?
personal storage would be much better handled by giving us access to the various banks around town. Let us rent a storage locker there.
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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I need a place to store my HO's!
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and how would storage in a GROUP base help that? What happens if you get kicked from the group?
personal storage would be much better handled by giving us access to the various banks around town. Let us rent a storage locker there.
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Yep. Or I mean nope. I mean, I'd prefer individual bases. Batman had a base. Superman had a base. Spider-Man...had a 12 floor walk-up in the Village...but he had a place to hang his mask. Individual bases where we can display our trophies and store our stuff is where it's at, baby!
If the Devs give solo players apartments rather than bases, please give us a small dose of "reality" and make there be entrances at a physical building, perhaps one on the roof and one at ground level. I don't even care if you're able to enter your apartment from any zone...just have the entrance actually be a building and not another glowing column of light.
Attache @ deviantART
Attache's Anti-401k Art Collection
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The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
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Great minds think alike. Posi and I have been talking about this for awhile.
Here's the not so simple bit: the tech. But it's an interesting idea that we're wrangling at the moment.
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This thread struck a cord with me as I perused it because I and a couple of SG mates were talking about this very thing recently, and I even posted some of my thoughts on this on our SG forums which go into more detail so I will just do a quick copy/paste from there and you can read it for yourself.
Relevant snippet of my original post:
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. . . However, I do agree that bases currently are not what people completely like, but not for the reason's he gave.
I also agree that SG members as a whole don't contribute much to the base other than the prestige in which to build it. And it's true that bases are primarily designed by one or two individual members of that SG.
But that's not the entire Super Group's fault, it is the way it is BECAUSE that's how bases were designed !!!
It would be utter chaos if every member had full ability to use the editor as well as what goes along with that is full access to being able to spend every penny of prestige saved on what might be silly whims.
The fact that their base design is limited to few trusted SG members is because of HOW the base design currently works. It is the least of all evils to choose from given the circumstances.
Me personally, I would LOVE if every member contributed equally in how the base evolves throughout the Super Group's life. But the base isnt designed to work that way. Ideally, I would have had bases be ***LESS*** customizable (yes, you read that correctly), but, shifted all that man power used to make it so customizable, instead to have a system that as each member in SG mode completed in game tasks, such as Story Arcs, Task Forces, Trials, etc, the base gained items, equipment, and attributes.
In this way you would build a basic base to start with, and through the course of playing in SG mode, your base would gain in function based on what members ACTUALLY DID in game play, as opposed to mindlessly farming prestige so that the one base designer got to actually dictate how the base looked.
I'd rather see a system where if the SG fights alot of Nemesis, then the base would start to show alot of nemesis functionality slowly creeping in, or CoT, or Malta, etc. Each faction would have their own distinct types of base features that certain SGs might want to get their hands on, thus this gives SGs incentive to fight certain enemies they would normally avoid, such as Malta and Carnies.
So, you want your base to be high tech, well then, that stuff doesn't fall from the sky, your SG needs to go out there and procure all that crap in order to build yourselves a high tech base !!
Fighting CoT isn't going to net you that photonic discombobulator zapotron that you want to build in your laboratory. Your SG needs to fight factions like Crey, Malta, Sky Raiders, etc. Once you've earned enough Tech Points, you can build a tech room. The way I see it, they need to do away with prestige altogether, instead you earn three types of base resources, Tech, Arcane, and generic. Each room you build requires the expenditure of one of said resources for EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING. That goes for the lamp you use, the decor items, even the freakin floor, walls, and ceiling.
As for allowing SG members to participate in SG building, I feel that like any large construction, if everyone was an architect, and no one was a builder, nothing would get done. That's just the simple bottom line to that.
But, having said that, I would like to see something like the following implimented which would give everyone a greater sense of base ownership than currently exists: I would like to see the Devs add a room type to the list of buildable rooms called "Living Quarters". Now, rather than trying to build a base that PHYSICALLY has up to 75 personal rooms (one for each SG member), I propose this room's basic function is simply to provide the base with a "doorway" into an instanced room.
Basically it would function like this: You enter your SG base, and immediately you are in the Portal Room of the main base where you first appear. Then you make your way to the "Living Quarters" room. Once you get there, you see a room decorated in whatever style the base designer came up with, since this room is part of the main base proper. But in this room is a FUNCTIONAL DOOR of some sort. It can be anything from a clickable elevator, to a clickable stairway, to a clickable manhole, or even a clickable hidden bookcase entrance, etc. The types of "clickable doors" are irrelavent and the Devs can create as many as they like for us to use in the base editor. The point is, that there is a clickable door inside this room for each member to use.
Once you click that door, you are then ZONED INTO your own personal quarters. Much how the Xmen mansion is HUGE and the majority of their mansion would be considered the "Main SG Base" but then off to one side you have individual private rooms that are pretty much off limits to everyone except for the person who's room it is.
So, you automatically appear inside your own personal quarters, and now a base editor window pops up just like if you were the base editor of a regular SG base. In essence, it is a mini-base within the main base. Your personal room can only be entered by you, and anyone on your team provided you are the leader of the team (just like how regular base access works).
Now, one last thing needs to be added to the base permissions screen for this to work properly. A new item needs to be created that allows the SG leaders to designate a MAXIMUM PERCENTAGE of resources allocated towards these personal rooms.
What does this mean? Simply put, the SG leaders set a percentage value that the individual SG members can have access to when editing their personal room. For example, say the leaders decide that 10% SG resources are allocated towards personal rooms, then that means that each member can spend up to 10% (divided by the number of members in the roster, so that each has an equal share) of the total value of the SG in designing their room. This means that the more TOTAL resources a Super Group has, the more resources each member has at their disposal for their room. Having the ability to set this cap (in our example it was set to 10%), guarantees the SG as a whole won't suddenly go bankrupt because one member went nuts with the base editor. The worst case scenareo that every single member goes nuts and spends their entire allotment means at most the SG will be down 10% of their total SG resources.
So, seen from this perspective, people will want to have more resources in order to add more stuff to their rooms, and the more resources they earn towards outfitting their rooms, the more they are earning for the SG as a whole. It's more of a win-win situation than we currently have now, it gives members more incentive to band together and help make the Super Group and the SG base better in the long run. Because they are doing it for a self serving need, but the side effects also help the SG as a whole.
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Now to add something more on this, It occured to me that this sort of leaves crafting on the worktables still largely unusable by SG members. So I think folks would LOVE to be able to personalize their rooms with cosmetic objects created relatively cheaply on the various crafting tables, especially since the items won't actually *DO* anything other than look good. Or, you might even squeeze in a couple of actually useful things like a small personal locker, say, instead of holding 100 enhancers like the industrial strength base version, the personal lockers could hold 10, and they are automatically set to only allow that character to use it, no extra fiddling with permissions are needed. Simply put: your room, your locker.
Anyhow, this was just a snippet of a conversation I was having with some SG mates and figured if it sparked some good ideas from the Devs then it would be worth posting.
"All that crap is grey to me, no XP." - Positron 5/15/05 8:36am . . . The world stopped and silence ensued except for the sound of a crying infant off in the distance.
"Everyone needs to chill the hell out." - BackAlleyBrawler 11/13/08 3:26pm . . . Geeks around the world stopped and blinked.
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The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
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Great minds think alike. Posi and I have been talking about this for awhile.
Here's the not so simple bit: the tech. But it's an interesting idea that we're wrangling at the moment.
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now only if my sg was more active so i caoulg get some friggen prestige i mean were so poor a thousand is alot
That would be REALLY cool if they'd make it so you just had to click on the chair, and had it line up automatically...
...but that's probably beyond the game engine.
I'm hoping there is eventually a way to MERGE SGs. I'm a leader in one of those that has multiple SGs because of the 75 person limit. They we went though a contaction stage. Now we've several SGs, some of them with quite a bit of prestige laying around. We've transfered everything else over, but that's why we've got them hanging about.
And whatever happened to the 75 PLAYER limit I heard about?
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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BINGO
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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BINGO
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Sorry, only the first person gets the prize.
The biggest problem you run into with making bases "physical buildings" in the world (even just doors), is that you can eventually run out of doors. How many hundreds (if not thousands) of dinky little SGs are out there, which are basically a handful of people? I think that's exactly the reason we didn't get "realspace" SG bases. Except the Freedom Corps - they have theirs in Galaxy City.
The other downside is that accessing the base would be much more difficult. It wouldn't be going to the Base Teleporter in the zone - it'd be zone-hopping until you got to your base. Personally, I wouldn't mind the change, but others might, as it's a pretty significant loss of mobility.
I agree that non-functional items should be very cheap. I understand (and to an extent agree with) Rent, but I think Rent should only be calculated off your earnings (or maybe earnings + spent), and not include your "stored/unused" Prestige.
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The biggest problem you run into with making bases "physical buildings" in the world (even just doors), is that you can eventually run out of doors. How many hundreds (if not thousands) of dinky little SGs are out there, which are basically a handful of people? I think that's exactly the reason we didn't get "realspace" SG bases. Except the Freedom Corps - they have theirs in Galaxy City.
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In such a system, where real estate for bases would be at a premium...the costs of buying and maintaining a base would have to be much higher...meaning the dinkly little SGs wouldn't have them. I realize this alone would make such a system unpopular...all I'm saying is that the reality of a physical base might make me (and those few players as insane as me) a little more interested in bases and SGs in general.
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The other downside is that accessing the base would be much more difficult. It wouldn't be going to the Base Teleporter in the zone - it'd be zone-hopping until you got to your base. Personally, I wouldn't mind the change, but others might, as it's a pretty significant loss of mobility.
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Again, I would prefer the reality of that situation to the ease of play argument. However as teleporters are such a huge, huge part of the CoH mythos...I would not begrudge something like what we're getting in the Vet rewards - the personal base teleporter. And once at the base, of course, you could then utilize teleporters to get to the zone of your choice...assuming that your SG had the desired hardware.
Attache @ deviantART
Attache's Anti-401k Art Collection
You know what would be great being able to SG invite thru Email.
Unless you have 2 accounts if you want a base for a solo SG you can't invite your other guys.
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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ok, but what would you put in these personal lockers...
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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base
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ok, but what would you put in these personal lockers...
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Enhancements, salvage, and influence.
In regards to the OP, this is a great idea, but Im not so sure this would do the trick.
Whats the difference between this and using an alt to start a new SG and base? Both give the player their own little private apartment. Then just set up coalitions and presto, instant mini-sg apartment, with functioning equipment and storage.
Also, there is another problem that I ran into when I tried a similar thing in game. My SG offers base privileges and a 2x2 room for anyone who provides room cost. Ive even got a max size plot on test currently with 75 rooms including hallways and base equipment.
Ive had no interest though, even with players already in the SG. Problem is, upgrading to a new plot size is about 200,000 prestige per character after rooms and equipment. Its much more economical to just start a new SG and get a whole plot as an apartment.
The real problem with bases isnt making them more fun for everyone. In fact their already pretty awesome in terms of decorating. Problem is: the reward for designing, decorating and maintaining a base. Bases were intended for PVP play, but the costs and difficulty of building a real PVP base are astronomical.
IMO, the only way in the current system to make bases successful is to drastically reduce base costs. Make it so everyone can design a pvp-able base, which would make fighting in bases more common, and thus, bases being used more often.
Also the reward system should be revamped a little, instead of getting a destroyed base for letting pvpers into the base, the defending SG should be rewarded with more prestige to build a better base. The more attackers defeated, the more prestige the SG gets. Same goes for the raiders, give them prestige for destroying base defenses.
Two things have to happen though, defenses need to be strong enough to take out raiders without player backup, and player defenses respawn automatically after the raid is over. That way different raiders can raid a base multiple times, and players dont have to repay to rebuild all the items.
One third thing Id really like to see happen though, is being allowed to pick a specific NPC group to spawn randomly in the base as defenders as well. So, for instance a group could pick Legacy of Chain to defend the base.
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I dig this idea...but I have to admit that I'm barely interested in bases. Once I knew the bases weren't going to be actual locations, I kind of lost interest. When I originally heard they were coming, I thought it was going to be like this:
"The Liberty Patrol, huh? Where's your base?"
"Talos Island. Due west of the Tech Shop. Can't miss it."
Instead, it was:
"The Liberty Patrol, huh? Where's your base?"
"You know that little glowing column of light in every major zone? That's us."
Yes, yes...I know that it fits the whole teleportation grid theme of the city and that to do it any other way would be kind of tough in a city environment without large open areas to "develop"...I just thought bases would be real places, ya know?
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There are huge multi-floor buildings all over the city, they could make one or two of those buildings sg base buildings per zone. Likewise they could also have subterranean bases in basements and the like. Or, they could devote nearly all the buildings in Atlas Park to bases.
I also think bases would be much more interesting if they were in an actual physical location.
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OK, seems that Statesman knows that bases aren't as popular as he wanted. The situation is simple, what you have is maybe 1 or a few people designing the base. It becomes exactly what they'd want for a personal corner of the CoX universe and then everyone else in the SG simply gets to borrow it. So you have a whole SG paying for someone elses dream.
If you wanted a comparason, its like placing a maintainence cost on your costume. However 3 other players on the game cannot choose what they're character looks like as they are only allowed to look like you. On top of that fact you and these other 3 people have to keep playing the game in a state which brings them some personal loss in order to maintain their costume or have it revert to something generic.
Thats the problem. Bases aren't actually for every player, they're for those who start SGs and have admin rights.
The solution is simple. Personal player housing through SG bases.
The concept is that you're allowed to have a personal plot starting with a 4x4 room however in order to own that plot you need to join an SG. Once you join one the SG will have either doors or portals which you can enter to walk into your personal plot or other players personal plots. Inside a plot the owners has almost complete access to what the base designer tool offers but only in that room. They can make it look anyway they want and because its isolated from the main base it doesn't have to clash with the SG base's design. Prestige is generated almost as normal with one exception - all prestige goes right into a personal bank account. You can then choose to donate an amount to the SG or use it on your personal plot.
To keep things interesting though the player cannot add any functional items to their personal plot. No telepads, no medibay, no work stations. These are SG base only items. Additionally if the rent isn't maintained on the SG base as a whole then when the base shuts down the personal plots are shut down as well meaning its in everyones best interests to keep the prestige donations coming.
This idea solves both problems in one go. Everyone gets a 'base' that they can expand and develop for themselves which others can wander into any time you allow them in for a look plus you have the need to join an SG base and need to develop an SG base which provides a unified goal to the members.
Thoughts?
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First thought is that people wanting to make things for their rooms are dependant on 1 or 2 people making work tables. As has been said in another group some SGs don't maintain worktables so that none "admin rights" players can't put personal items in the base.
Maybe a personal space would come with a built-in worktable.... and things made would not be able to be taken out of the room... and nothing functional could be made. Just decorative.
Draugadan
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
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States,
I'm still not seeing how adding a feature for individual housing will do anything to address the current issues with a Group's collective space.
To draw an analogy, it woudl be like adding more PVE content to distract from PVP imbalances.
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Go check out the "Would you play on an all PVP server" thread in the Suggestions and Ideas section.
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To draw an analogy, it woudl be like adding more PVE content to distract from PVP imbalances.
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Now that would be ironically welcome