Discussion: Hollows Zone Gameplay Makeover
By
Aidalyn,
Posted on: 2008-03-19 09:38 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Yay more Legacy Chain!!! All around its time to weed out ALL the Longbow and start letting the other lesser known hero groups take over certain areas.
Yay Legacy Chain.
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It's a nice revamp, but I am not sure if I am happy about Coralax and Legacy Chain appearing hero side, when they are still pretty vacant villain side. I will withhold my judgment for now though. I still think these revamps should be for both sides, some how though.
[/ QUOTE ]If anything grandville needs a revamp not the freaking hollows. The zone itself is a deterant of people getting villain toons to lvl 50 due to the lag and enemy placement. I dont see the point of the legacy chain being heroside especially if they are heroes. Just what we need more NPCs to kill steal from me when I street sweep. 
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There is consistently two instances of Grandville at all times on the Virtue server. Next argument.
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I really hope this is not all the info we are getting today. 
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As I stated in an earlier thread, we are still weeks out from closed beta and more weeks out from open beta and then launch. So, expect to get something on a weekly basis from now till then. If we just dumped it all out now, well we'd be sitting around going "that's nice, but when can I play it?" So, thanks for your patience and understanding that it won't all come at once.
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But, but, but.... Well, if you insist.
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Nice revamp, but:
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Its nice and all but please dont tell me we waited a whole week just to hear something we already knew about? Please tell me there is more to come later today?
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More specifically, powerset proliferation, kthxbai.
--
Cyan
I think this revamp sounds very good. I don't think the zone needed a complete new look, as it's quite unique already. Between the water towers, Grendel's Gulch, the Red River, and Eastgate Park and Heights, this zone had a lot of character. Or as War Witch said, a lot of potential.
I'm thinking these reworks will help quite a bit and unlock that potential. I think it'll still be worth picking up a Raptor Pack to cut down on travel time anywhere (let alone The Hollows) still, but this is great. I'd agree with some that I'm a little iffy on Longbow and the Legacy Chain being added to kill steal, but if they're a small presence like in Galaxy and Atlas, it'll be okay. And it'll be fun to see some new mobs (but it sounds like the same should be done villainside)
With remodels like this and Faultline, it sounds like Grandville and Boomtown need War Witch and the added new devs to use their talent and spruce things up for I13! Puhleeeaaze? 
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory
Honestly, I never really had a problem with this zone. Everytime I hit lvl 5 I went there and had a ball and could do that Frostfire mission over and over. The reason I do not go there anymore is simple: I need my temp travel and now I can get it in KR. In addition, its easier to find a team in KR now and do police scan missions since they require less running/jumping/flying. I think the changes are great but I would be surprised its going to bring me back to the Hollows
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might be cool but i dont really play the first 22 lvls
id rather we had the power profilcation list of sets out then this
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I think the horse's teeth are just fine. 
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I really hope this is not all the info we are getting today.
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As I stated in an earlier thread, we are still weeks out from closed beta and more weeks out from open beta and then launch. So, expect to get something on a weekly basis from now till then. If we just dumped it all out now, well we'd be sitting around going "that's nice, but when can I play it?" So, thanks for your patience and understanding that it won't all come at once.
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Hey I think ONE full feature article about one of the new features (Hollows, gamplay improv, midnight squad, VEATS's, Roman stuff, etc.) is enough for one week. But I was hoping that along with that we would get one or two of the 16 missing proliferation sets released each week as well.
You could wait and release all 16 unannouced sets at once as one weeks article, but I thought it would work better, and fit with the slow rollout of info that you talk about, if you gave us just one or two new proliferation sets each week. Surely two a week for 8 weeks would go over well.
<3 War Witch.
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I'd agree with some that I'm a little iffy on Longbow and the Legacy Chain being added to kill steal, but if they're a small presence like in Galaxy and Atlas, it'll be okay. And it'll be fun to see some new mobs (but it sounds like the same should be done villainside).
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This is what we deal with all the time Redside. Welcome to the State of the Game. 
Thankfully, Redside at least, we can kill them after they take our kills.
I love the write up. I'm actually looking forward to being in the Hollows again! I've avoided it since... I7?
My avatar is something I saw over and over in the FF mish teams I was on, and just thought 'srsly?'.
Can WW clarify what the level range will be on the repeatable mishs? 5-15?
I gotta say, I'm not all that happy with some of the changes, but more on that later.
Paths to the contacts, well, that's nice. Them assigning the proper mission doors is fine as well. But the one really annoying thing I didn't see mentioned was missions from outside of the Hollows that end up with a door in that zone. Every once in a while, someone I know ends up with the Jewel of Hera mission, and invariably it's in the north-northeast of a zone, halfway up a mountain, surrounded by purples Trolls. Which is, needless to say, a bloody pain to get to. I hope outside missions with doors in the Hollows got addressed as well, and if not, I'd humbly request that be looked at, especially for the Jewel of Hera mission.
Now, what makes me unhappy is the downsizing of spawns. With a low level AOE build I actually liked going to the Hollows over Perez Park because the big street spawns in the Hollows had no Bosses in them and because Trolls and Outcasts are still easy opponents when compared to the Vaz or CoT from PP. So I'm not super-happy to see intermediate Vaz spawns added and the easy spawns downsized. It's not a huge thing since you outgrow the Hollows relatively quick, but it used to be a nice spot to start levelling an AOE-heavy duo or trio and rack up quick XP until you can move on to Boomtown.
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Jeez, all this whining. Maybe people would prefer no news until release?
I'll have to admit the Coralax are a surprise to me... how did they end up there?
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I love War Witch, but I was willing to accept "the Hollows will be better" as all the info I needed.
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Seriously. This was a bit of a letdown. They know the information we really want.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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I pulled every single mission door from the zone and reassigned it to a specific contact AND that contact's neighborhood. What this means is; no longer will players have to fly across the deadly Grendel's Gulch at Level 5 for their Frostfire mission at the other end of the zone, dodging spawns that can make mincemeat of them in a few short hits.
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Dear War Witch,
You are my hero!
And I love the Legacy Chain addition. Very nice!
Love,
Missy
~Missi
http://tinyurl.com/yhy333s
Miss Informed in 2016! She can't be worse than all those other guys!
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Jeez, all this whining. Maybe people would prefer no news until release?
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No people would prefer information about the features that have people most excited. Which, of course, you knew but threw out this false dilemma anyway.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
Those all sound like really great changes to the Hollows. Now how about setting War Witch loose on the Shadow Shard? The huge villain population in the Shard is entirely too static, too rooted in place. The Shard has such enormous unrealized potential.
How about:
- a few wandering space "dragons"
- a few wandering rikti spacecraft
- a 50-hero Hamidon-raid-level arch-villain
- hollow out some asteroids for us to explore
- more complicated "one-off" missions
- an accolade power earned by completing the four Shard TFs
- access to the Shard for CoV (co-op mode like the RWZ?)
- actually place the Ski Chalet and Pocket D somewhere in the Shard
- black holes, small meteors, vision-obscuring nebulae
- a wisp city
- random rare rularuu raid on FBZ
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What level range will the repeatable mission be for, War Witch? I assume the level range of Hollows, but you never know ...
Hm.
Upon further reflection, I'm not sure I'm that happy about the Coralax and Legacy Chain moving into Paragon City. As cool as they are, they're some of the things that give City of Villains a distinctive sense of purpose. By making them cross-factional, you marginally improve City of Heroes while diminishing part of the cool factor of playing Redside. And honestly, diminishing the cool factor's kind of the last thing City of Villains needs.
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I really hope this is not all the info we are getting today.
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As I stated in an earlier thread, we are still weeks out from closed beta and more weeks out from open beta and then launch. So, expect to get something on a weekly basis from now till then. If we just dumped it all out now, well we'd be sitting around going "that's nice, but when can I play it?" So, thanks for your patience and understanding that it won't all come at once.
[/ QUOTE ]We are going to be like when can we play it anyways so I fail to see your point in this Lighthouse. At least if you did put the sets out there we could at least work on live servers to get the enhancements ready for future alts if we knew what every AT was getting.
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Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
Hmm. My only concern is why are all of these new groups hanging out in the hollows. It sounds to me just like a random assortment of mobs to dazzle the eyes rather than an intentional staging of the zone for some sort of story reason.
Sermon
@sermon
One of Six, Cannibal 6
I'm with Eis for the most part. The Hollows was the place to go unload on a spawn and see how much you could take. That was really the boiler plate for my early characters, to see how much I could handle. Plus I bloody hate the Vahzilok.
But, all in all, I'm happy with the changes. No more interminable running to a mission door, no more having to wait for a teammate that faceplants three times trying to get there, and has to hosp back to AP every time.
The Legacy Chain and Coralax intrigue me. They'll be an interesting change of pace.
All in all, good stuff. And i love the repeatable content from Meg. KR is nice and all, but it's such a... dirty industrial zone. I prefer the wide open spaces and natural disaster feel of the Hollows.
<QR>
The population revamp will definately make the zone a much more friendly small zone experience. Nice changes.
I do wonder where the shoehorned in the mobile hospital they also mentioned they where adding.
(QR)
A repost of mine from an unofficial thread about this announcement:
In all fairness, it's not as if we were promised some earth-shattering, super-awesome-omega-cool secret tidbit of information. From what Lighthouse (or one of the other devs, I can't recall right now) has said, there's still a little time before I12 goes into closed beta, so the information can come in little chunks in order to fill up time.
Besides, after reading WW's diary, I gotta say that there's a distinct possibility that my newbie heroes will actually hang around the Hollows after talking to Wincott instead of making a break for Kings Row. The new spawn design - along with the in-zone hospital - really makes this zone a lot more attractive than it once was.
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