Better Open World Content
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2009-05-12 08:44 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I would be interested in the OP to giving some details about how precisely "that other game" is doing better real world content than CoX and what would be his wishes.
-Is that more unique or varied landscape, for example, adding a 'Chinatown' or 'Little Italy' district (or replacing a few blander districts?). Being able to visit the Freedom Phalanx headquarters or the 'Paragon museum of heroic history' would rock.
-Is that more immersive in game events? Some points on the map have a chance of spawning an event that the player can participate in (for example, passing by a bank, you notice a robbery in progress, defeating the thugs outside and clicking in the door port you to an instance mission spawned for the occasion)?
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I'll give you examples.
In RWZ there are forts (little round top) that get attacked. In other games there would be a quest giver who would ask you to help defend. You would have to defeat X number of enemies nearby to complete the quest.
There would be missions to go to the Sky Raiders base in Striga. There would be a whole story arc of fighting sky raiders and having to get something from the base. You wouldn't just fly by and avoid it.
Note that there is a tiny bit of that in Striga - you are sent to take out the turrets and invade Wolf's Throat of the council base.
CoX has a lot of cool stuff lying around. In other games someone tells you a story and details about them and you interact with them.
Faultline now has a story, and part of it actually has you running around in the tunnels in the far side. But for the most party you ignore actual Faultline and just do instances.
So it would be improved if we had some extra, more directed defeat X missions?
That's fine with me, I doubt that would take much development time. Personally, I'd just skip them like I do any other defeat X missions that are skippable.
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I would prefer if they had improved giant monsters that cause true environmental damage and would go on rampages.
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I would be interested in the OP to giving some details about how precisely "that other game" is doing better real world content than CoX and what would be his wishes.
-Is that more unique or varied landscape, for example, adding a 'Chinatown' or 'Little Italy' district (or replacing a few blander districts?). Being able to visit the Freedom Phalanx headquarters or the 'Paragon museum of heroic history' would rock.
-Is that more immersive in game events? Some points on the map have a chance of spawning an event that the player can participate in (for example, passing by a bank, you notice a robbery in progress, defeating the thugs outside and clicking in the door port you to an instance mission spawned for the occasion)?
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I'll give you examples.
In RWZ there are forts (little round top) that get attacked. In other games there would be a quest giver who would ask you to help defend. You would have to defeat X number of enemies nearby to complete the quest.
There would be missions to go to the Sky Raiders base in Striga. There would be a whole story arc of fighting sky raiders and having to get something from the base. You wouldn't just fly by and avoid it.
Note that there is a tiny bit of that in Striga - you are sent to take out the turrets and invade Wolf's Throat of the council base.
CoX has a lot of cool stuff lying around. In other games someone tells you a story and details about them and you interact with them.
Faultline now has a story, and part of it actually has you running around in the tunnels in the far side. But for the most party you ignore actual Faultline and just do instances.
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Sounds interesting; and not much extra work for the devs.
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I would prefer if they had improved giant monsters that cause true environmental damage and would go on rampages.
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You mean that there would be consequential outcomes from what you had done: a reason to do it to begin with beyond "because it's there".
I have to say that the original SWG was an amazing game fore exploration, I mean, I had up to that point always been competitive in a game, I mean, unlocking everything and going everywhere so I could be the best, but suddenly it was like: I'm just going to go off into the middle of nowhere and wander around because I can, because it would be fun. I have to say a game that has done a good job of balancing the Instances/Open world problem is WAR with the Public Quests (like open world instances....sort of) and then the usual option of open world or at least a few instances, but by giving you something in between you could wander and find something interesting, and even do a quest/instance when you got there. I dont' know though, I've always been of the opinion that more games should use CoX's ideas for 3-d battles, even if it was more like having access to cj, hover, hurdles, etc. isntead of actual SS or SJ or Fly it just adds something to the game, PvP especially, I mean a lot of the things in CoX would be awesome in a post-apocalyptic shooter style MMO.....*drool*
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Actually the Open World content system sucks.
I'm sorry but I'd rather now have to have spawn camping/stealing and waiting for spawns in this game. So [censored] no, to more open world content in this game.
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Let's have cell shading instead >.>
No Thanks!
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I would just like a nice balance of mission variety, someone times I want to do an instance, sometimes I am itching to stay in the Zone. I almost wish open world combat was like in Ultimate Spiderman, random events happening, harder to camp and kill steal.
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QFT... Instanced content is great, but I feel that CoX overuses instances. On the other hand, open world content is great, but most other MMOs overuse it as well. We could stand to have more open world content for sure - they just have to be careful not to make the same mistakes that other games make. So you should never have to wait in line to rescue/kill/click on a thing - either don't put those types of quests into the open world, or use phasing so that each person sees his own copy of the thing.
One of the things I think WoW does nicely is have unique and interesting landmarks in the open world that quests require you to interact with:
- check out the beached sea monster
- steal some stuff from that weird village down there
- explore that pirate ship down there
and so on.
We could do similar things here - create unique landmarks in the world that missions send you to interact with or investigate. And instanced missions could follow from a lot of those missions. For example, investigate Frostfire's lair - a static building with ice patches around it with some specific guards out front. In fact, a lot of things would be made possible just by putting mission entrances at static doors instead of random. Maybe the Freak HQ has some funky machinery out front, or some specific guards posted. Maybe that CoT boss is at the instanced end of a non-instanced cave system with a unique look and feel.
So I think the idea of open world content is great, but it has a few basic flaws in most MMOs that the devs can avoid easily.
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I like these ideas quite alot.
BTW, I am a huge fan of the cell shading and black lines in super hero games, I know some people hate it and so having the ability to turn it off is great, but I would love some shader that let me turn on.
Someone also asked about the "other game" I mentioned, I like it a lot though it needs loads of work. I haven't decided to move there or stay here as I am just coming back here, but there are lots of things in CoX that can easily be added to give this game added life without breaking the content or balance.
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I would prefer if they had improved giant monsters that cause true environmental damage and would go on rampages.
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And NPCs that do more than stand on a pedestal and watch you die.
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I would prefer if they had improved giant monsters that cause true environmental damage and would go on rampages.
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And NPCs that do more than stand on a pedestal and watch you die.
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I would love to see Cops help.
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The one thing I kind of miss about true Open World Environments.....
I can point myself in a random direction and explore. In other games I could spend s couple of hours just walking in one direction and seeing the different landscape. The scale of such an environment is a fun distraction, at least to me.
That being said on Open World would just not work with Travel powers. We move way too fast to really enjoy the details that would be found in such an environment.
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Years ago, Mark Miller talked about connecting the city and dropping the war walls, I am guess they dropped that or was impossible. I will see if I can find that article.
Downed War Walls would be nice, but there are some sections of the city that look like they should retain containment. I'm thinking of places like Dark Astoria and the RWZ.
In addition, if you look at the city map, there are a few locations between functioning zones that look like spaces to drop a new zone. They just connect the dots for zone-to-zone connections. Supposedly, we'd just travel through the unnamed zone. But if it is their intention to expand at any point in these spots, they can't drop the War Walls there.
Any War Walls that they decide to finally drop, it would be fun to remove them with some animation of implosions, like dropping a stadium or old Vegas casino IRL.
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From the obvious Council base in the RWZ - which goes on to quite a depth actually, to the Crey caged 'zoo' in Nerva, there is a lot to explore.
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Then there's the little area in the Longbow base in Nerva, where they have DE in cages...I found that one completely by accident while on a "defeat x" mission. And after all this time, I still love the Council base on Striga. And the Sky Raider base in Sharkhead (although it needs more turrets, like the instanced version). The Storm Palace is still the most visually stunning zone in the game, too bad there's so much empty space between the islands. I thought Carnival Town was awesome, before redside started overusing Freak Chic. And I loved the old Faultline. I have a whole folder of screenshots I took just before they got rid of it.
What do all of those places have in common? Oh yeah, they're all places you spend very little time in, if any. Most of your time is spent going through the same city-scape over and over.
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Open World is a game killer for me. I think it sucks. I hate people that KS. And that is what happeneds in an open world environment.
CoX has an open world. No one uses it, obviously. You are not forced to go into the instanced missions. There is an ENTIRE ZONE (S) you could go explore.
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This has been one of my biggest gripes since Everquest. I'm so grateful for the format that games like Mythos (RIP) and now COH have. I think more mmos should have a similar setup as COH. I much prefer finding salvage and recipes off of loot that only I see rather than a random roll on something, or some high lvl on a mount gathering up all the resources in a noob zone....
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Open World is a game killer for me. I think it sucks. I hate people that KS. And that is what happeneds in an open world environment.
CoX has an open world. No one uses it, obviously. You are not forced to go into the instanced missions. There is an ENTIRE ZONE (S) you could go explore.
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This has been one of my biggest gripes since Everquest. I'm so grateful for the format that games like Mythos (RIP) and now COH have. I think more mmos should have a similar setup as COH. I much prefer finding salvage and recipes off of loot that only I see rather than a random roll on something, or some high lvl on a mount gathering up all the resources in a noob zone....
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KSing has been a thing of the past in newer MMOs for a long time now.
Honestly griefing isn't that big a deal anymore.
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Open World is a game killer for me. I think it sucks. I hate people that KS. And that is what happeneds in an open world environment.
CoX has an open world. No one uses it, obviously. You are not forced to go into the instanced missions. There is an ENTIRE ZONE (S) you could go explore.
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This has been one of my biggest gripes since Everquest. I'm so grateful for the format that games like Mythos (RIP) and now COH have. I think more mmos should have a similar setup as COH. I much prefer finding salvage and recipes off of loot that only I see rather than a random roll on something, or some high lvl on a mount gathering up all the resources in a noob zone....
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KSing has been a thing of the past in newer MMOs for a long time now.
Honestly griefing isn't that big a deal anymore.
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You must be playing in a different game world than I am, because most current mmos use the same open world content, free for all mob killing, loot rolling, resource gathering formula from one to the next. I was a long time player of Everquest and WoW, I just quit LOTRO cuz of the same bs.
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Open World is a game killer for me. I think it sucks. I hate people that KS. And that is what happeneds in an open world environment.
CoX has an open world. No one uses it, obviously. You are not forced to go into the instanced missions. There is an ENTIRE ZONE (S) you could go explore.
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This has been one of my biggest gripes since Everquest. I'm so grateful for the format that games like Mythos (RIP) and now COH have. I think more mmos should have a similar setup as COH. I much prefer finding salvage and recipes off of loot that only I see rather than a random roll on something, or some high lvl on a mount gathering up all the resources in a noob zone....
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KSing has been a thing of the past in newer MMOs for a long time now.
Honestly griefing isn't that big a deal anymore.
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You must be playing in a different game world than I am, because most current mmos use the same open world content, free for all mob killing, loot rolling, resource gathering formula from one to the next. I was a long time player of Everquest and WoW, I just quit LOTRO cuz of the same bs.
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Aside from EQ every game you listed has "tagging" for the first hit which eliminates KSing. You hit the mob first and it's yours.
What's wrong with loot rolling?
Resource gathering is first come first serve. What's the problem?
I don't see how you think CoH eliminated things no other game didn't. WoW has instances too, so does LotRO.
Personally I think instancing is the worst thing to happen to MMOs. Where there used to be interactive community and in game politics there's now just silence because people are teaming in their own private instance.
Instances promote selective interaction which defeats the purpose of being in a MMO to begin with. Being thrust into an online world with tons of other players is the whole point.
I wouldn't trade my EQ days for anything. Teleporting people around and buffing lowbies. Running into people from all over the world just by assisting a player who needed help or happened to run by my team while we were camping.
Camping was so very social and sorely missed by me in online gaming. Being able to zone chat while leveling was also great.
I really don't agree with instancing. If it's your cup of tea that's great, I just don't personally like it. It's almost like playing an offline game.
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Open World is a game killer for me. I think it sucks. I hate people that KS. And that is what happeneds in an open world environment.
CoX has an open world. No one uses it, obviously. You are not forced to go into the instanced missions. There is an ENTIRE ZONE (S) you could go explore.
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This has been one of my biggest gripes since Everquest. I'm so grateful for the format that games like Mythos (RIP) and now COH have. I think more mmos should have a similar setup as COH. I much prefer finding salvage and recipes off of loot that only I see rather than a random roll on something, or some high lvl on a mount gathering up all the resources in a noob zone....
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KSing has been a thing of the past in newer MMOs for a long time now.
Honestly griefing isn't that big a deal anymore.
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You must be playing in a different game world than I am, because most current mmos use the same open world content, free for all mob killing, loot rolling, resource gathering formula from one to the next. I was a long time player of Everquest and WoW, I just quit LOTRO cuz of the same bs.
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Aside from EQ every game you listed has "tagging" for the first hit which eliminates KSing. You hit the mob first and it's yours.
What's wrong with loot rolling?
Resource gathering is first come first serve. What's the problem?
I don't see how you think CoH eliminated things no other game didn't. WoW has instances too, so does LotRO.
Personally I think instancing is the worst thing to happen to MMOs. Where there used to be interactive community and in game politics there's now just silence because people are teaming in their own private instance.
Instances promote selective interaction which defeats the purpose of being in a MMO to begin with. Being thrust into an online world with tons of other players is the whole point.
I wouldn't trade my EQ days for anything. Teleporting people around and buffing lowbies. Running into people from all over the world just by assisting a player who needed help or happened to run by my team while we were camping.
Camping was so very social and sorely missed by me in online gaming. Being able to zone chat while leveling was also great.
I really don't agree with instancing. If it's your cup of tea that's great, I just don't personally like it. It's almost like playing an offline game.
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PPL will wait for your first hit to miss and then tag the mob. The downside is that if they do attack your mob you don't get any experience for whatever damage they do... so yes greifing is still extremely prevalent and ppl use it to their advantage. There are only a couple of games that fully thwart ksing. EQ2 with encounter locking and FFXI which also locks the encounter.
Everyone seems to think that just cuz you tap a mob that someone else can't interfere and that simply isn't the case unless encounters are locked or instanced. People are disrespectful and do not have any boundaries in games. Just making mobs a tap encounter doesn't solve the underlying issues of griefing. Especially using the tap aggro tactic. Tapping a mob just as someone grabs its aggro and you let them have all the aggro... Its just rude, idiotic, pointless behavior.
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I just move on to the next mob when someone does that. It's never been a big deal for me.
If anything it makes me laugh that someone would go through such lengths to get a rise out of me in a game.
I like CoXs open world stuff, I like it mainly (I think) because its rare and entirely optional. I much prefer instanced missions thankyoueverymuch 
I have experienced other games *cough* that use 99% open world stuff. I have suffered from the lack of specific spawns. While I didn't have to endure KSing I did experience the unusal situation of having missions like "Escort x number of y" practically completed for my just by standing in the vacinity of where the mission takes place.
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The question I have for those who do not want any open world content is why have such big zones then? If everything is instanced (which it almost is), then make one zone a line up of contacts, a line up of doors, one WW/black market, one trainer, one base portal, one arena, one of each kind of store.....now that I think about it, just make IP the only zone in the game and put each monster in each corner of the map. Just seems like a huge waste to me to have a huge zone when no one does anything in it besides travel through it.
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Barely read the thread, but this is actually one of my biggest issues with CoH. We have this giant world, INTRICATELY crafted... and running around in it is cool... but it's static. It's just there. I think we need weather, but that's another thread..
The problem with doing Open World stuff in CoH is really how to make it heroic (or villainous), and to minimize griefing... and also to have a good reason to actually repeat it.
Take stuff like the Troll Rave and the Steel Canyon Fires for instance.. something bad is happening, a bunch of heroes go "oh crap!" and then run in to stop the trolls or put out the blaze. It's a lot of fun, actually!
(Especially the fires on my Ice/Ice Blaster 
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Take those and in addition to the badges, add some kind of reward.. PPD Merits or something, I don't really care what. you get these from doing ANY Zone Event (barring GMs).
Now, take the idea that something is actually happening.. and proliferate it. I'm sure a bunch of our favorite nerds sitting around a table (the devs) can quickly spin out a whole bunch of ideas that would work for these zone events.
I'm gonna sound a bit extreme here, but this is exactly what I wish would happen.
Make at least 3 for every hero side city zone, and at least 5 for every villain zone. At least one should be active during each "game day".
I have some ideas, but I'm not gonna really go into 'em. This is what I think should happen though.
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The question I have for those who do not want any open world content is why have such big zones then? If everything is instanced (which it almost is), then make one zone a line up of contacts, a line up of doors, one WW/black market, one trainer, one base portal, one arena, one of each kind of store.....now that I think about it, just make IP the only zone in the game and put each monster in each corner of the map. Just seems like a huge waste to me to have a huge zone when no one does anything in it besides travel through it.
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Zone events are fun. I don't think open content is pointless. I think having mission arcs in open zones is fine and dandy. I think COH has a good balance of open content and instanced content. If they want to make entire areas of open content to satisfy some players then I'm all for it. The more players that are happy then the more people they can keep subscribing to keep the game going. So long as the existing instanced content isn't compromised.
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Grandville has some great places to discover. I spent a couple of hours mapping out the tunnles under the city. A great time waster.
I think another person hit it on the head, we need contacts that give zone type missions. Something simple like "I lost my watch in the caves, can you go get them?" Just to add flavor to the different areas and promote exploration.
More open world caves and buildings would be fun too
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I think another person hit it on the head, we need contacts that give zone type missions. Something simple like "I lost my watch in the caves, can you go get them?" Just to add flavor to the different areas and promote exploration.
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Quoted for Truth. Too much of that sort of thing can get old in a hurry (harkens back to the good old Ultima Online days of endless insigificant fetch quests), but a couple of such things would be nice.
To an extent there is content that does that already - specifically the Kill X of Y type of missions, but most of them are very static.
All in all, I agree, Paragon city could use a bit more action in it.
I really think there's only so much you can do with a static world, though.
Most succesful open world type MMOs have had a more dynamic world, where player actions can alter the common landscape. Not incidently, most such succesful games have been more PvP oriented. The grandaddy of all MMOs, Ultima Online, was a good example of this - it had open PvP, player housing, and even player-run cities, and as a result there were sweeping player-driven plotlines, and massive, in-character, conflicts that altered the shape of the world (and yes, there was griefing too - and how - but we dealt with it). To this day, there are player-characters who are as well known on their home servers as major NPCs despite having given up the game half a decade ago because of their role in such player-driven, open-world activities.
Even games with more restricted, less sandboxy feals to them generally succeed at open world content with some level of dynamism in the environment. Warhammer Online would be a good example of this. The basic paramters of the world are very much set in stone, but nonetheless player actions (notably, success in inter-factional conflict) can have a real, meaningful effect on game-play and even on the physical environment for everyone. The entire game is set up to ensure that out-doors, in the same common area as everyone else, is where the action is.
Personally I would KILL for someone to make Ultima Online: the Superhero Edition, now with updated graphics. But that game is not City of Heroes. City of Heroes is a different kind of game; one designed to appeal to a differnt kind of mind-set, and one with its own particular advantages and limitations.
If Champions is shaping up to be that game, then thats magnificant, though from what Ive seen so far Im skeptical.
I would be interested in the OP to giving some details about how precisely "that other game" is doing better real world content than CoX and what would be his wishes.
-Is that more unique or varied landscape, for example, adding a 'Chinatown' or 'Little Italy' district (or replacing a few blander districts?). Being able to visit the Freedom Phalanx headquarters or the 'Paragon museum of heroic history' would rock.
-Is that more immersive in game events? Some points on the map have a chance of spawning an event that the player can participate in (for example, passing by a bank, you notice a robbery in progress, defeating the thugs outside and clicking in the door port you to an instance mission spawned for the occasion)?