Discussion: Hollows Zone Gameplay Makeover
By
Aidalyn,
Posted on: 2008-03-19 09:38 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Actually, the hollows makeover sounds really good. The Hollows currently is more of a mass of chaos, this one seems more refined chaos with taking into consideration the people that solo vs the ones that don't. Which I like. I look foward to testing the Hollows in addition to everything else when ever the changes are brought to test.
And on topic... this is great stuff. Despite my altoholism, I've grown a bit weary of the early level game on both sides, but particularly blue side because having to go through multiple zones to get from contact to mission and vice versa is just tiring. Having a zone with the COV philosophy of keeping missions in the same zone as the contact, and having that zone much more navigable, with a hosptial, makes me happy. Other than venturing out to do enough radio mishes for my jumppack and jetpack, I might never leave the Hollows with my new lowbies once this goes out. So a big Whoot! for War Witch!
(I'll note that I'm on a lower end system, and zoning is always painful for me, so the less I have to do, the better).
On first impressions:
97% awesome.
3% still having to drop that one "defeat all creatures in cave" Igneous mission with minions twice as hard as Vahz who give less xp and have a habit of spawning +1 like crazy even on Heroic.
Still an A+.
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The mission door thing... that's just so awesome, especially for the lower level players without even a safeguard mission travel power.
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Anyone who can get into the Hollows (level 5 required) can get the Safeguard Mission travel power.
Which makes me wonder: why do I see so many characters from level 5-13 hoofing it everywhere? As soon as I hit level 5 I'm in KR on a radio mission.
Is the safeguard Mission too hard? I don't think so -- the hero mission is pretty easy to solo, especially if you take it and then go up a level before doing it.
Do people not know about the travel power reward, and therefore not do the mission?
Or do people just like running all over the place, getting stomped by roving bands of criminals, unable to get over the wall in Perez Park?
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<3 War Witch.
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I'm saddened but not surprised to see the Hollows get further emasculated. The zone was great in its first incarnation, before the Outcasts and Trolls had their superpowers yanked. There should be places people complain are too hard. They separate the players from the poseurs.
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Man, I remember when the Outcasts had their powers at level 5. They need to get them back now that we have solo spawns. I have to admit, I'll miss the old Hollows, but it's still for the good of the game not to have a newbie zone so hard.
[/ QUOTE ]I hated that too. To me those powers were a very important part of the game for newbie players to see. For controllers and storm summoners they get to see what their hard work would pay off in the end with those pets.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
New Factions to City of Heroes (And, a New Gladiator Badge!):
Coralax: Enemy faction to all heroes, cons as a foe. Since Coralax are not found in any other Hero Zone or in any PvP or Co-Op zone, then this provides the opportunity for Heroes to get the Coralax Blue Hybrid gladiator for defeating 100 Coralax Blue Hybrid (assuming that Coralax Blues will be part of the spawns, no reason why they wouldn't be, though). Background info on them says that they have indeed been spotted in Paragon City, however, putting them in the Hollows will be the first time that players will actually see them in Paragon City.
Legacy Chain: Hero faction, thus will con as friendly to all Heroes in the Hollows. Like the PPD and Longbow, they will aggro onto and fight any villain faction that gets near them.
Responsive Hero Factions:
The PPD (Paragon Police Department), Longbow, and the Legacy Chain will con as friendly to all Hero players and will aggro onto and fight all villain factions that come near them (just like the way the PPD and Longbow behave in Kings Row).
I Miss My Hazard Sized Spawns!!
They still exist somewhat in the neighborhoods deep into the Hollows; they exist deep in the Gulch; and they continue to exist in the Tunnels. As War Witch said, "I made no changes to the Caverns."
(Actually, I'm surprised that the Atlas Park sewer teams don't migrate to the Hollows Tunnels when they 'graduate' -- maybe now they will.)
Will Meg be for levels 5-15?
Is Borea not level 35-50? Are radio missions not available for the full range of the zone you find them in? So... why would one think Meg would not be the same? If she isn't, we'll certainly take this up with the Devs during Beta.
Are Igneous Still in the Zone?
Yes. While War Witch didn't mention them by name... they're the only faction that takes "dirt naps" as she referred to them.
No Mobile Hospital?
Just because WW didn't mention it in the reworking of the spawns, doesn't mean it won't be there as previously promised on the I12 Features page. And just to get this out of the way: it's not 'mobile' in the sense that it's moving or spawns in different spots, it's 'mobile' in that a 'mobile unit' has been set up and will always be there in the same spot, like a MASH unit.
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Again I am not trying to take away from what WW did, it is just like everyone else has said we either want to know about the stuff we want or just hold it all to the end because the suspense is going to kill us either way.
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I suppose it's a credit to the game that the suspense over VEATs and powerset proliferation might kill some of you. But seriously... manage it. It's not like you can really do anything with the information when it hits, anyway. I really don't see the point in getting all worked up over something you can't control or change, even when you do get it.
Generally, my belief is that some information, even it's "we don't know yet," is usually better than no information. But they ARE giving us information, so it seems to me that complaining about the order it's being given in is just silly. You will get it sooner or later. Provided you're still alive after that terrible suspense ordeal, of course.
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Actually, the bolded bit isn't necessarily true. We could always make the new sets old news before anyone even tests them.
If the closed beta really is almost a month out, and we had all the power sets now, it's very easy to see people making up their minds as to what the sets can do before they even test. In some cases, even deciding that their conclusions are so certain that it's not even worth testing at all. Obviously a bad thing, so the devs aren't going to give us the sets until they're ready for us to test them, at least in closed.
The Abrams is one of the most effective war machines on the planet. - R. Lee Ermy.
Q: How do you wreck an Abrams?
A: You crash into another one.
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I'll have to admit the Coralax are a surprise to me... how did they end up there?
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Migratory water fowl stopping at the Rogue Islands pick up Coralax Hybrid eggs on their feet and then the eggs fall off when the birds visit Paragon City waterways.
You may have a Coralax Hybrid growing in your Koi Pond right now!
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Hollow revamp sound awesome. It sounds a like a lot of thought was put into this Hollows revamp. Way to go War Witch. I cannot wait to try it out.
Ratman
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Sounds like a lot of good changes. Thanks War Witch.
For those who wished for other information, I give you this plausible explanation:
The Hollows, in its Issue 12 form, is pretty much done. They felt like they could give all the details for it now, because testing won't change a lot of what they've done.
On the other hand, lets look at power proliferation. Would you say that its anywhere near being done, knowing how beta and open testing is going to go? Perhaps Castle, and others, have been reading the latest threads and taking a second and third look at the powers they've ported to new ATs. Maybe they're still working on some last minute details, such as hammering down some animations, or numbers, and are loathe to give up such information in such an unfinished form. Maybe they are working on trailer videos that showcase the new set choices, as well as the VEATS, as they did with vet rewards, the second Rikti invasion, and the Ouro zone, just to name a few things. I'd rather see with my own two eyes what things will look like, rather than just read a list of activation times, etc.
There's no argument that other features are further up the list of most players wish lists, but lets not pretend that no one cares about the Hollows. There's already been plenty of comments in this thread, and its not very old.
Personally, I'd much rather get the info piecemeal than getting everything a month (or more, if you don't get into closed beta) before you can do anything with it.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
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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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Oh come on... even one(1) powerset primary or secondary from any of the other archtypes would give us something to plan on for a week... why hide ALL of them?
Is Issue 12 not going to be released for 15 more weeks and you plan to reveal one at a time each Wednesday now?
That makes me sad.
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Which makes me wonder: why do I see so many characters from level 5-13 hoofing it everywhere? As soon as I hit level 5 I'm in KR on a radio mission.
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Do people not know about the travel power reward, and therefore not do the mission?
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I think there's a "help text" on Safeguards in the leveling-up dialogs ... but honestly, how many new players actually read that?
A new player is more likely to just follow the missions that their contacts give them. In CoV, once you leave Mercy, you're forced to talk to the broker and start working on those temp travel powers. In CoH, your first non-origin contact is usually NOT in King's Row; plus, the first mission your first non-origin contact gives is to go to the Hollows.
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I can see how one might feel that the releasing the set information early would either calm or not affect the level of discord amongst the playerbase, but I certainly can't agree.
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The only known cure to ignorance is knowledge. But in this context, you're right, there's still plenty of DOOOM and speculating whether they give us the info or not.
So, here's an interesting tidbit, I might have given if I were the devs. I would have given out one or two more powerset names today. That would have given us a week of speculating to chew over. It would have created a ton more buzz than this particular announcement.
War Witch did a great job it seems on the Hollows. But, you know, I'm still at this point,
"Cool!"
That's really all I can say about it. Had the devs instead said, "Tankers are getting Electric Melee/Armor" WHOA!! Bombshell. Even without saying anything else, we would have a week full of theories, speculating, and fun.
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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Each of those features has more posts just in the dev corner than the rest of the other features COMBINED. And if we counted all the various threads out in the other forums, it's clear that interest in those two features dwarfs anything else.
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You're absolutely, 100% right, EvilGeko.
So, those will almost certainly be the last topics to get more detail. Because they want us speculating and discussing and frothing about it, building buzz in the process.
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Honestly, I wanted to hear a little more about powerset proliferation if just to quell all of the moaning on the boards lately about psi/ and pvp.
I like the revamped hollows zone (and grats to WW for all of her hard work!) but this isn't going to do much in terms of the arguments currently going on.
Hell, the training room forum has gone off a cliff this past week.
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You...You think unveiling more sets would -lessen- this? Or even giving out relevent info about psi? It seems to me most of the moaning and complaining is coming from people who've already made up their mind that it's going to be broken, and those are not people who change their minds.
Ever.
They could come out, be completely weak, have a hundred ****** in their armor, and come I14 these people will still be complaining about how "broken" they are, because they won't adapt their playstyle to compensate for them.
As has been pointed out, powerset proliferation and VEATs are very likely to be subject to major changes and refinements before going live.
The hollows changes are done. Finished. In the pipe. Worked out. Easy to talk about things like that, because you already know what you're doing.
the VEATs and Proliferation powersets are probably pretty nebulous right now. Some sets may not make it. Some may be pretty different from their current internal builds before they go live. Sure, they could give us info like what sets they're working on porting, but seriously, does that really merit a dev diary? When they can't talk about the specifics of the sets because it's not nailed down yet?
And even if it merited that, and if they said blasters are getting thermal, or corrupters are getting pistols, or scrappers are getting cigar powers, do you really think -any- of that would -lessen- the whining, the flaming, and the rampant speculation? No, we'd just have a big round of "why not this?" "that'll be broken!" "That'll suck!" "Heroes shouldn't get that! Villians shouldn't get that! Positron kicked my puppy! BaB has a funny nose! What about tails with trenchcoats? Where's my pony??"
Best thing the devs can do is give details on the stable features, save the controversial ones until they have an idea of what they're doing. I wasn't expecting a feature article at all just yet, so I'm glad to see any info at all.
Jason Heavensrun
Swift : Freedom Server
http://www.bladeandepsilon.com/CheckmateStudios
Check out my first Architect Arc, "Bring Up the Sun", arc #339507, and let me know what you think!
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Now make Hollows radio missions available so I can get the temp travel powers there instead of having to go to King's Row and I'm sold.
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What he said.
Uber Talgrim - level 50 emp/dark defender
Uber Rod - level 50 dark melee/regen scrapper
Rod Valdr - level 50 invuln/SS tanker
Talgrim - level 50 ninja/dark mastermind
OMG!! Please add these costume designs now!
Everything sounds great, War Witch! 
But, I'm curious. How is it that the Hollows zone never got it's own giant monster, being it's a "hazard" zone and all. Hmmm?
Edit: Maybe Koago should pop up in an GM form every now and again just to thrash those poor souls messin' up his home... 
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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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Oh come on... even one(1) powerset primary or secondary from any of the other archtypes would give us something to plan on for a week... why hide ALL of them?
Is Issue 12 not going to be released for 15 more weeks and you plan to reveal one at a time each Wednesday now?
That makes me sad.
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You realize you just made -yourself- sad, right? Are your legs tired from jumping to conclusions?
Jason Heavensrun
Swift : Freedom Server
http://www.bladeandepsilon.com/CheckmateStudios
Check out my first Architect Arc, "Bring Up the Sun", arc #339507, and let me know what you think!
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Everything sounds great, War Witch!
But, I'm curious. How is it that the Hollows zone never got it's own giant monster, being it's a "hazard" zone and all. Hmmm?
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Giant monsters and hazard zones don't go hand in hand. Hazard Zones are so called because they have large, team-oriented spawns, and are not generally safe to travel for solo players.
Giant monsters go wherever the devs want to put them. Sometimes those are in Hazard zones, sometimes they aren't.
Jason Heavensrun
Swift : Freedom Server
http://www.bladeandepsilon.com/CheckmateStudios
Check out my first Architect Arc, "Bring Up the Sun", arc #339507, and let me know what you think!
This pretty much sounds like what I expected. I don't plan to create any new heroes any time soon, but my existing heroes will now have an incentive to go back and do the Hollows arcs in Flashback mode. I normally skipped those arcs specifically because of the hazard-zone-size spawn groups, which made soloing the hunting missions a major pain. (This is the same reason I avoid most of the Striga arcs.)
So thanks for all the hard work, War Witch!
True enough, it just seemed that more GMs were apparent in Hazard zones than otherwise. Might add another little splash of something interesting, no?
It looks like The Hollows is going to be an interesting place to visit. Will there be "barricade attacks" like in the Rikti War Zone where Rikti make regular attacks on Vanguard barricades? It would give a greater feeling of being under siege if mobs make regular attacks on the barricades at Atlas gate.
As for the Coralax, I always thought they would appear on Striga Isle first because one of the missions had you recovering the body of a Coralax that some researchers found.
I pulled the trigger. That's right, I did it, in Warburg, with the pistol. - Mista Chains
Everyone know the Tank Archetype get the most drops of all the types. This is because of their "Death Dealing" powers. I call it the front line bonus...but you'll never read this in the wiki - "Rx10"
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the VEATs and Proliferation powersets are probably pretty nebulous right now. Some sets may not make it. Some may be pretty different from their current internal builds before they go live. Sure, they could give us info like what sets they're working on porting, but seriously, does that really merit a dev diary? When they can't talk about the specifics of the sets because it's not nailed down yet?
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You just accused another poster of jumping to conclusions. It works both ways. You don't know if any of this is true.
In fact, based on comments made by BaB, it's most certainly not. BaB's said that this round of powerset proliferation are the sets that were pretty easy to port over without a lot of changes for the the most part.
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.
Good grief, people are whiny.
Honestly, reading this info, my heart sank. I liked the hollows as that brutal, hard-edged threat where you learned to use inspirations, or you teamed, or you went to softer zones to do your work. I loved levelling fast off street-sweeping giant mobs. I really enjoyed the Hollows.
Now, it seems I'll be having to move to Perez.
I understand that these changes are for the best - they're for new players to have fun with the zone, new players to learn these things.
I'll just miss it. :\
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How does what you're asking for make any sense at all except that it fulfills our desire for instant gratification?
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What the heck is wrong with wanting instant gratification in this context? I'm not in the devs shoes, I'm in EvilGeko's shoes. I mildly interested in the Hollows, I'm greatly interested in Powerset Proliferation. Why am I unreasonable to ask about the information I'm interested in?
Not demanding, just explaining how incredibly disappointed I am in not getting any information about the features that I and from all evidence, the majority really care about.
I'll defend the devs anytime, but this is marketing BS. It's not selling me on Issue 12, I'm already interested and paying. What's the purpose? Create buzz? For what?
You tell us what sets are being sent over and there will be plenty of buzz.
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You're right EG, there will be plenty of buzz, but it will likely be more of the buzz that the devs don't particularly want to hear. Unless they not only listed the new powersets, but listed the exact specs of each power in the 'trouble' sets (of which Psi blast is the obvious example, but there may be more), there will be ten times the amount of speculation, flaming and dev bashing as there is now. If there was any indication that forum goers as a whole were capable of discussing or speculating about those sorts of changes in a civil way, I'd support release of the powerset lists. Unfortunately we already have, with only the barest of information, hundreds of pages of flames, PvPer v. PvEer battles, redside v. blueside battles, and a level of dev bashing that I haven't seen since the GDN and ED.
I'm also not convinced that the power specs are finalized (we do have "weeks" to go until closed beta), and so it might leave the devs unable to respond to criticisms/suggestions even if they wanted to.
I'm really fine with waiting until Beta, or after, to get this information. Yes, I'm extreeeeeeemely curious and somewhat anticipatory, but I'd rather not have over a month of having to ignore the forums because of the flame level that would result from early posting of the powersets.
I can see how one might feel that the releasing the set information early would either calm or not affect the level of discord amongst the playerbase, but I certainly can't agree.