Official: Feedback and Suggestions for Bases!
By
2Negative,
Posted on: 2007-08-27 15:31 in Base Construction
Here's a few things I can think of to add to this lovely wish list...
- X-ray charts that can be placed over a neon light board...such as in RWZ hospital. As they are now, they're very dark and can't see much on them.
- Real looking medical beds + equipment, as seen in the RWZ hospital. The interrogation steel tables with restraints just don't seem very inviting.
- Wall mounted lamps that actually emit light. The base editor claims that they are turned on, but if you dim all the lights in the base and rely on them to highlight a poster or any type of decoration, it's doesn't really do anything. The editor clearly shows where the light will be focused on though.
- Animated Tech wall-mounted rotary vents. The ceiling fans work, but the wall mounted ones don't move. That should be addressed.
- Different variants of wall mounted torches. Not everyone cares to have two big hands holding a flame. What about a simple lit up stick, like most torches are usually built? Give us more choices please. I believe the CoT maps have angled wall-mounted "normal" looking torches...that'd be a start.
- Better doorways. This has been brought up before, but I'd like to see something like sliding doors seen in Council cave maps, or the large tech/science arches in the lab maps. These would make for much more appealing doorways compared to what's currently offered. Animated doors could also contain security settings to lock a room from sg members and coalition members that don't have proper security clearance to enter.
It's probably at worst impossible, at best impractical (extra strain on the servers for no real reason), but I'd like to have NPC armed henchmen in bright orange jumpsuits and hardhats randomly wandering around my base. Without them I just don't feel like a megalomaniac in charge of a sinister organisation attempting to take over the world. 
I'm serious about NPC's btw, but not necessarily in that configuration. It feels empty in the base when no-one else is around.
Or even better: An AI construct. Maybe even just as a hologram generated by a device (doesn't have to wander - just animate in the projection unit).
Being able to turn wall trim off so you don't end up with odd mismatched sections when you have items too close to the wall.
Matthew 5:14-16
Earl: Running ain't a plan; running's what you do when the plan fails.
QR
*waves tiny flag reading Raise Storage Items per Base Limit*
My SG was formed for one main purpose - to create a closet for all our alts. We only have three active members and have hit the limit for storage bins.
"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in."
I would like to be able to set permissions for coalition members to take items from storage.
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I would like to be able to set permissions for coalition members to take items from storage.
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I'm going to have to veto this one.
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
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I would like to be able to set permissions for coalition members to take items from storage.
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I'm going to have to veto this one.
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You don't have veto power here.
Would you like to explain why you don't like this idea?
I would think some additional level of coalition interoperability would be good - an "advanced permissions" mode that gives us the ability to make fine-tuned adjustments would not be a bad thing, in my opinion.
The one downside is that it would further encourage players to create multiple solo bases and coalition with themselves, lessening the interaction with other players. Not the intention in an MMO environment.
It would be relatively simple to rob an sg blind (even easier than now) by allowing another sg access to your bins. It's bad enough as it is now that people get into an sg, take from the bins, and then quit.
If this suggestion gets approved, SGs will get emptied out completely. It will happen. Will it happen to anything but a minority? No. But it will still be an issue.
I had a separate base for storage for over a year and it worked fine. Is it a pain in the butt? Sure, but the security was absolute.
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
*shrug* it would be an option. If you are worried about losing items, don't allow access
I'm not worried. I have taken measures to prevent such a thing. It would be a problem for others, however.
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
Doesn't this mean you have to either have assistance from another player or 2 accounts (Running on 1 or 2 PC's) to access that coalition storage?
For example I have a coalition "Storage Base". But The problem is I only have one real Toon/Alt in that SG.
So atm, He is the only character I have that can retrieve things from that base's storage.
Oh wait... I suppose I could log out of my current Toon, Log that Coalition Toon/Alt in, have him go get the items from the Coalition Storage & then he could port to then drop it in my "Main" SG's storage...
But there are issues with this:
1. There has to be room for the item(s) not such a big deal if it were just ONE thing, but still.
2. You'd need pretty much need to know exactly what you wanted to get before you logged to the Coalition Toon/Alt.
3. This is a major PITA!
The Better Solution might be to allow access to coalition(s) storage, AND add in the multiple levels of permission in any one of the various methods suggested around here previously.
Like say, having Permissions for each container. This could be setup on a per room basis - so you could say "all the bins in the common room (or workshop 1, etc.) are open access", or something along those lines.
Or they could let us put in small 1x1 personal rooms for specific characters (or maybe all characters from 1 Account?)
I'm sure there are lots of ways they can, or could - address the storage/permissions/theft issues.
I have no clue which would be the most feasible to implement though?
EDIT: To address OneKnight's comment quoted below
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The one downside is that it would further encourage players to create multiple solo bases and coalition with themselves, lessening the interaction with other players. Not the intention in an MMO environment.
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I think it's pretty fair to say that Bases & Coalitions have NEVER been used by players "as intended".
The countless Solo SG's, and all the Base Padding Hoopla prior to the Prestige Grant - is a testament to this, granted there were many "holier than thou" people complaining about Groups/Players "padding their Bases" as being any or all of the following:
Just Plain/Flat out "Wrong", "Not As Intended", Unfair, Immoral, Unethical, and a number of other less polite things.
Like I said the fact that so many people did that, and the Devs KNEW we we're doing it, and still gave out the bonus based on = "the current number of Members in the SG/VG as of Maintenance on the morning of the Grant".
And they HAD to foresee players doing this even before they decided to do the Prestige Grant, and their "oh well, happy holidays 
" reaction to the Accidental Double Grant, pretty much leads me to believe they're no worried about this sort of thing as much as before.
I think they're ditching the "Anti-MontyHaul-ism GM", "No reward without equivalent or greater risk" View/Attitude.
For a more liberal/lenient "Lets give the players what they want within (some) reason" Approach/View. (IMO of course)
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.
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*shrug* it would be an option.
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the devs don't spend a lot of time coding for bases at all. do you want that limited time to be spent on an option the vast majority of groups would either not use, or be hurt by?
I would like to see:
Greco-Roman pillars, with the various classical orders (Doric, Ionian, Corinthian). My current design uses a LOT of pillars, but I've had to make do with the Japanese named ones; the Arcane ones look like they belong in underground crypts, and that's what I am trying to avoid. But the Japanese ones look wooden.
Marble walls, floors, and ceilings.
Statues - smaller versions of the Arena statues, or the Founders Falls lions and angels, that sort of thing.
Fountains, too.
The ability to put lighting in hallways.
Also agree that we need windows - again, helps to avoid that subterranean feeling.
Domed ceilings (not coming in, going out)
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
When hovering over enhancements stored in the enhancement table, I would like to see stats on that enhancement (% increases, other enhancements in the set, set bonuses, etc), just as you would if it were in your tray or on the market.
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
Search didn't help and I don't have the time to sit and read all that I missed so if this is a repeat I appologize.
How about making an item or a wall mounted item (maybe even use the dry erase boards already in our inventory) and make it a calander for the SG.
So if you can schedual events you can click on the item and a calander will open up where you can place events and a description of the events.
Everyone could click on the item but those without the permission of schedualing events could only read what is on the calander. That way, there is a place in game where you can see upcomming events.
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*shrug* it would be an option.
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the devs don't spend a lot of time coding for bases at all. do you want that limited time to be spent on an option the vast majority of groups would either not use...
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I think a vast majority /would/ make use of it. Or I could be wrong. Its kind of subjective, as are about 99% of the base feature requests. I /think/ It would be of more use to smaller SGs using a second SG coalition for extra storage. It could be also be of great use for quite large SGs that (even with the 150 character limit) use coalitions for alts, or for SGs that break up members by themes but unify the SG as a whole with coalitions.
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...or be hurt by?
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I don't think the risk of this is significantly greater than opening permissions to all sg members, the same risk we take with all permissions, building and storage wise. If you're in a coalition with a group, odds are you trust them and help one another quite a bit. If you don't know them well enough yet, disable the permissions until you are comfortable.
Admittedly, this feature would be significantly more useful if you could set permissions by room or by container, but the same could be said for current permission as well.
Direct Coalition access to base storage is a significantly greater risk than a single group member. With group members you can kick them, with coalition members you can't.
Secondly, there would likely be no "fine control" over this function. In other words, you would likely not be able to set permissions for different groups. Given the developers previous actions: it would be "allow coalitions storage access yes/no", not by group (individual coalition group), but by category (all coalitions or none).
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
Want more styles of decor available. For instance,
Bio (magic base items, but artistically like bioengineered trees and hamidonesque things),
Ramshackle (Gritty, steampunk-ish Tech base items that look scorched and damaged and throw sparks and leak steam and stuff),
Infernal (Magic base equipment, but made to look evil and black magicky, with bones and lovecraftian stuff in it),
Contemporary (Tech items... look, just have the devs walk into the server room and start snapping pictures. Racks of HD's, diesel generators, and suchlike
Also need a bit more furniture. Maybe a bunk bed, each one just big enough for one person. And blank doors so we can at least point at a blank wall and say "private rooms are over there."
A no attack "Group-Friendly" Defender is like a "Team Friendly" basketball player who won't dribble, run, or shoot, under any circumstances. "I'm a PASSER."
No Doubt you hear this all the time, but this is a serious suggestion. You know I appreciate that the SG system in game and Base system is designed to encourage SG's to be both active and actively recruiting in order to gain Prestige.
However the system is painfully crippling for small SG's. Perhaps designers want to ensure small SGs work very hard to grow larger, but the simple fact is there may be a limited number of new members on any given server and a great deal of competition to acquire them.
Smaller SGs have their work cut out for them, if you happen to be a non US based SG starting out the task is even harder as you have a smaller pool of potential recruits to work with. Specially if you only want players in your time zone. After all you want players who are on roughly in the same time period.
So if you happen to be a new small non US/UK SG earning Prestige sufficient to your needs is quite difficult. Thankfully there is coalitions, but even then, it is going to take a small SG with half a dozen members or less ages to build a base that lets them enjoy the full depth of the game.
And lets face it, the whole base building side of the game is something you really want to do cause its great fun and rewarding, but it seems scaled to favour large groups who can earn Prestige at a good rate. Now dont get me wrong this isnt a whine, I am not saying it shouldnt be hard work, but if you have a small SG with a couple of members the system really seems stacked against you.
Could not the price of items be tiered to coincide with the size of the SG member base. So that X number of Account holders in a given SG places the SG within a scaled price tier. Done in such a way as to ensure that small SGs dont miss out on some of the wonderful aspects of the game.
Just a thought.
Cheers
Yes, this topic has been discussed to death.
Get 2 friends to commit 5 alts to the SG. You do the same. That's a 300k prestige bonus. You can build a functional base for that.
After that, here is an excellent guide.
Also, scaling does not work because an SG can get a bunch of members, save a lot of prestige, kick everyone out, build a huge base for cheap, and then reinvite everyone.
Costs will always be the same for everyone.
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
I have read the aforementioned guide already thankyou. We've done the Alt's thing and respectfully 300k does not get you much of a base. Minimally functional yes, in a very limited fashion.
Not to devaluate the massive cost in time and resources that must go into the creation of some of the impressive bases I have seen, I still feel that the game favours large SG's. I guess I will simply have to come to terms with that like all other small groups who no doubt either deal with it or dissolve in the face of such a massive challenge.
I hadn't considered the problem of people abusing a scaled system, but i am quite sure what you say is correct, it would happen. So thankyou for making that point which more than anything explains why no scaled system.
Thankyou for taking the time to respond, I still feel that the current price-range of items is prohibitive to many and clearly favours large SG's but then perhaps thats deliberate for reasons which I might not fully appreciate but which ensure subscribers continue to play.
I'd like to have an opportunity to Rename a SG/VG, even if it's just once like they once did with our global handles.
I've "inherited" a SG and a VG - I joined them with my main Hero and main Villain shortly after CoV came out, and due to attrition & other various reasons, they're "mine" now.
Some folks left with a farewell = "I'm moving to more Active Group", some left in search of a PvP base Raid-capable Group - back when people thought the CoP was going to be fixed "soon" and some seemed to be from the generic player turn-over rate.
After the Prestige Grant went through, (Well, both of them actually - being a procrastinator paid off for once - who'da thunk it?) - I finally went ahead and kicked the handful of characters that were still hanging around with 600-700 "days since last played" & collecting dust.
I also kicked 1 in the VG and maybe 2(?) in the SG that were last logged in 6+ months ago.
Given that some groups kick people after a week or a month, I think 180-200 days AWOL was reasonable.
I probably wouldn't have even done this if I knew whose Toons they were or had globals handles for them, but I didn't know/remember whose characters they were anymore - Heck, I don't know if I ever did?
It was also part of the "protected storage" issue, those groups are now my own "solo-groups" for now.
And will most likely stay that way unless I have RL friends that decide to return to the game.
(There were about 8-10 of them at one point before the Arena/PvP balance-nerfs & ED, and several of them came back for awhile during I7 and not long before I8 iirc?, it was definitely before I9 though.
Anywho, I'm hoping I can convince them to pickup the Good vs. Evil Edition at Walmart if they haven't already and start playing again.
I might even buy each of them the GvE pack if they'll agree to play again, and not bail after the 1st month or so.
But I KNOW they aren't going to like the names of the SG - idk for certain about the VG.
But being able to change it to something everyone would be ok with would be nice.
And this may seem silly, but I've really gotten into base-building , even before the Prestige grant I had enough for functional "Solo" Bases. I can Live with the silly name SG.
(I got blind invited and joined on a whim mostly so I could go into SG mode and get Base Salvage - helping earn Prestige was just a bonus, although now over 2 years later, I'm very glad I joined the group.)
My other Request is a way to Invite my alts to Groups without having to make a trial account, or rely on someone else to help me add New Alts when I think of a new concept for Character.
And right now I'd have to "dual box" to do this - running both my main account & a trial account on my PC is PITA.
Being able to promote &/or demote members not online would also be very nice - in relation to the base storage security issue & so I could give more of my alts Base Editing permission, storage access, etc.
Having one or more Unknown Toons in the group with storage access & other Permissions - was very worrisome.
Until I made a trial account to help with the "pre-prestige grant padding, I only had a couple villains in the villain group, and my main Hero in the SG.
Its amazing what I can do now (with the characters that I added to the groups before the Trial Account ran out).
I don't have the luxury of multiple accounts, I recent got a year subscription for CoX in September & for Tabula Rasa not long after release - so I feel like I'm paying NC Soft a fair amount of money right now, along with my subs over the last 3 years...
And Chris Chung's recent answer in an MMORPG.com interview Will there be an NC Pass? question was "[We] should have something to announce this year, said Chung. There isnt anything really holding it back, but timing, making sure our infostructure supports it, and we want to make sure its the right thing for our customers.
Ok this is way too long for some folks to read, & I could go on but I'll stop for now! 
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.
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Wishlist:
Windows -- Doom had them 14 years ago, why can't we? Tired of bases that look like basements.
<ul type="square">[*]Not real windows, just simulated ones. [*]Different sizes, from portholes to enormous wall-sized picture windows. [*]Take a screenie overlooking a zone and use that. [*]Better yet, allow us to take a screenshot from wherever we want the base to be, then use that shot. Clever people will take shots looking in all four directions from a building and put windows overlooking those areas on the appropriate walls.[*]Also include screens of places not available in-game: Earth orbit, undersea, the moon, inside a live volcano, etc.[/list]
Multi-level bases -- just for more flavor.
Personal apartments
<ul type="square">[*]1-3 small rooms each player can add for their character, decorated at little cost. [*]Give personal decorations its own sub-menu and make that stuff super-cheap. [*]Also, the rooms should not count towards base size, rent, control, whatever. Completely off the books. This will get people more involved with SGs, make the bases seem larger, etc.[/list]
NPCs and "player ghosts" in bases
<ul type="square">[*]Veteran pets[*]Technicians[*]Robot butlers/maids[*]The "player ghosts" thing: use the information about your own alts and put them in the base, walking around, working, relaxing, doing whatever. Especially for smaller and one-person SGs, this would give the base a feeling of being used, rather than just a decorated version of your parents' basement.[*]The more actual players are in the base, the fewer NPCs are there. If it's just 1-3 players, then 5 NPCs; 4-5 players, 3 NPCs; 6-8 players, 2 NPCS; 9 and up, 0 NPCs.[/list]
I'd love to stand on the balcony of my base, looking out the enormous picture window at the Earth spinning below. Glancing down and to the right, I see my Arrow Blaster stringing his bow, and over there I see my robot Tank deactivated and plugged into the recharge cradle, while a hired technician goes over his readouts on the laptop beside him. Across the base I can see my Defender relaxing in front of the TV, while my Controller putters in the kitchen and then wanders back to his room, closing the door.
Tell me that wouldn't be ten shades of cool. 
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Tell me that wouldn't be ten shades of cool.
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I can't do it because you are 100% correct and all of the above would be awesome. The windows I want especially so I dont have to tell people to imagine they are on a space station 150,000 miles from the earth.
@PlasmaStream
"Big Bada Boom(tm)!"
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http://GuardianForce.Guildportal.com - Virtue
Niska: Are you Familiar with the works of Shan Yu?
[q]Promoting up to the same level as you should have a confirmation prompt since you can't undo that action (and since it can happen due to lag or an accidental keypress on the right-click menu)[/q]
[q]The auto-promotion system is seen as a bit to arbitrary. A lowest rank can too easily gain sole control of a whole group. Can the system prioritize higher ranks?[q]
No kidding. I just lost an SG of 1 1/2 years in the building and nearly 4 mil in prestige to a 3rd rank. Somehow ended up with the SG, the base editor decided to skip over four 2nd rank officers to give it to her. And it's hidey-ho, off we go into the sunset because support says it's our fault for recruiting her.
Yes, we deserved to have our stuff stolen... but not our base.
Ugly bugs. There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread. Please fix the ugly bugs.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
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Add another vote for base NPCs.
Customizable would be nice but would settle for citizen NPCs that walk around, wave at you and spout random text.
Also be able to specify which citizen NPC. You know, those npc with certain first letter in their name that when clicked, tells you the game time, server time, logged time etc.
EDIT: In the same vein, i think the street vehicles in-game are also considered NPCs so maybe have those available as well. If only just non-moving decorative vehicles would still be good.