Official Going Rogue Discussion

Also, of the small amount of info we've gotten from the devs, they've mentioned repeatedly that they are including a new starting area, and hinted that it'll be a mixed/co-op zone, where Hero and Villain ATs can work together. I think it was also mentioned somewhere that this would likely be a "neutral" zone, in that anyone who starts here would probably be in the grey zone morally. (So if you wanted to run a Mastermind to Atlas as soon as possible, you might need to start here.)

Also, as a full expansion, they'd want all the new features to be available to anyone who buys the box. Especially new players. Adding all this new stuff, then telling all the brand new players who just picked it up that they have to slog clear to 50 and then start over before they can do all the expansion content would trigger a massive ragequit.

You're probably thinking in terms of other MMOs, where expansions typically involve raising the level cap, and therefore the new content is targeted at people who are already at that previous level cap who can move right on into the new content meant the new span. It's extremely unlikely at this point that the City of Heroes/Villains Level Cap will ever be raised again, and we've seen no indication at all that such a raise will be part of Going Rogue. We have seen indications that it may contain alternative advancement possibilities for high level characters, such as gaining new enhancement slots while retaining an effective combat level of 50, for example. We've also seen indications that it will contain new content across the whole span of levels, so your brand new starting characters will have something to do in this new expansion.

Source(s)? I haven't been able to find even that much information.

Normally I would come up with some cutting remark to that sort of drivel.
But I think trying to read that just blew a few cerebral coils, and fritz a couple of diodes to boot.

In related news: \o/purples

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

What would they call the tutorial? We already have Breakout and Outbreak. Outout? Breakbreak? Boutoreak?

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Posi confirmed in one of the interviews a few weeks back that there are going to be level 1 Praetorian zones along with a new tutorial.

I'm guessing that if you start in Praetoria, you'll start as a neutral rather than as a hero or a villain.

The starting off neutral, and then chosing a side by moral chocie missions bit is correct, but I don't remember anything about it being confirmed as a Praetorian zone?

EDIT: Also, for in-game reasons, it might be a bit strange that the only people who started off neutral were from another dimension

Ooh, I must have missed that - maybe it was that picture of Foxbat ont he top right that made me skip through the article

A third tutorial sounds interesting - I wonder what storyline it will have?

Maybe superpowered people in Praetoria are only allowed to serve Tyrant, and if they refuse, they're locked up, and you start off as an escaped superpowered person? Then the tutorial could take place around the area where you were locked up, and then you exit into the new starting zone, and because you'll be hunted, you have to try and find a way out of the dimension, and the moral choice missions you play there will lead you either to a portal to Paragon City, or to the Rogue Isles.

Yeah, Positron has mentioned that those who stay loyal to their side will get some special stuff, but he didn't mention badges.
Why I was wondering was that if there was a loyalty bagde or badges, then that might cause a bit of rage, because the only way to get them would be to pass up the chance to change sides and get Villain or Hero badges

This game is not WoW. WoW may have been build to have its level-cap raised all the time, but CoH is balanced around the magic number 50, not to mention that level-cap raising doesn't just magically fix something or add something new, all it automatically does is make you grind more to reach maximum.

If you can add more level 50 content, why not do that? In fact, isn't that preferable to make something you can access right away than to make something you first have to grind for?

'Fraid there can't be done much here. You already get HO enhancements that are better than the SO stuff, even though the HO you get is random, and you get quite a good amount of merits with which you can just buy your invention recipes of choice. Hell, merits are already half-way there on trivialising random drops.

And, at least here on Virtue, we have weekly Hami Raids on both sides, and I am fairly sure most even do them just for fun, not any tangible reward. I mean, yes, rewards are nice and the best incentive an MMO could probably have, but if you don't have fun doing a Hami Raid now, will you have fun doing a Hami Raid when it gives you a Plus One Gold Armor?

Here's the thing: If the players get twice as many slots, they'll be roughly twice as powerful as well. To counterbalance that, enemies will also need to become twice as powerful. Best case, nothing actually changes and we're back at square one. Worst case, the game becomes so difficult that the leasurely teams are not possible anymore. No more throwing teams together just for the sake of it, only TANKER SCRAPPER HEALER from now. I don't wanna see that myself.

It's a question of game balance. If you want to be so powerful that nothing can faze you, or the majority of the player-base, the two obvious solutions are nerfing players or making enemies more powerful. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

See 1.

You want more end-game content, but you also want to push the level-cap up every year? That's not how it works.

Right now, the level 45-50 end-game consists of two raids, four task forces and the several end-game story arcs that nobody ever cares to mention. Too much? Just right? Not enough? I leave that up to you to decide.

But now push the game to 60. The current end-game content had YEARS to build up. If we now have a new leve level 55-60 end-game, it'd either take extremely long to make and be a drain on Paragon Studio's resources just to get something equal in quantity to the level 45-50 range, or you'll get one raid and one TF and a couple of story-arcs. And what then? Will you then again remark about the lacking end-game content?

Long story short: More end-game content IS always welcome, it's even one of Going Rogue's intended purposes. You just can't have both more end-game content than before and a new level-cap.

SO LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY CASUALLY PURPED-OUT WARSHADE.

Let me break this myth for you: Purple sets don't make your toon into an unstoppable juggernaut. True, they do make you more powerful, perhaps significantly though, but the real reason to have purples is just to show them off, like bragging rights, so to say.

In fact, purples ARE supposed to take forever to get. Aside from the raids and TFs, they're the big end-game scavanger-hunt of the game. You can't both demand more end-game and demand it's done in a month. Again, you can't both have your cake and eat it, too.

And on that one, I actually do agree with you. Generic missions, like Radio/Paper missions, might suffice with generic maps, but the thing is, you see the same warehouse, office building and laboratory map all the bloody time. In a game that is all about instances, actually unique environments are more than just nice to have. While MMOs, by their very nature, are a lot more about repitition than other video games, it's about how you hide the grind.

Quite honestly, it's hard to tell what the difference between farming and doing a Citadel Task Force is. Actually, there's a key difference: At least farms stick to the same place.

I'm not a PVPer at heart, so I can't say too much on it. It's true, PvP is more or less just tagged onto the main-game. CoH was simply designed as a PvE game. I really can't say more about it because I just don't PvP much. I dabble occasionally in some of the PvP zones, but that's it.

Now, mind, the game isn't flawless, far from it. As far as I'm concerned, the early content is showing it's age, coming from the EQ design school of 'let's make the game as tedious, slow and repititive as possible AND THE PLAYERS WILL LOVE IT'. There's nothing wrong with adding new stuff, either. I like new stuff, I think everyone likes new stuff. You just need to take a minute to think what kind of new stuff we need. Your shotgun approach of THIS AND THIS AND THIS hardly adds anything valuable.

Oh, and please, use some bloody line-breaks. Do you know how painful it is to read a list when you can't visually tell where the first point ends and the second starts? Show some bloody courtesy when you post on a forum and use the enter key.

As an extremely casual player of that other MMO, I can tell you that raising the level cap doesn't help. You know what the first thing is that happens when they raise the level cap? The same players that sat around at the old max level raiding and whining about having nothing to do race straight for the new cap. Go on a few raids, work out the new strategies. And then sit around raiding and whining about having nothing to do.

For everyone *else,* you've just gone from being ten levels away, to being twenty levels away. And given how the experience tables usually work, if you *aren't* in a big guild with people willing to power level you, those shiny new levels can take almost as long as you've *already* spent playing the character.

Not to mention the "value" of an expansion full of new high level content, most of which you (the casual player) are weeks or months from ever being able to see. Heck, the expansion for that game has been out for a year, and the *only* new content from it I've experienced myself are Death Knights.

Right now in that other MMO, there's *massive* sections of the original game that people avoid like the plague. Why? Pretty much for the same reason people avoid the Positron TF. Those areas are *old* and were made with a whole different design philosophy. Which can pretty much be described as "EQ Delerium," or the delusion that pointless, time wasting grinds are good for keeping players subscribed to the game. Actually, it turns out that what keeps players subscribed is gameplay that is interesting, challenging-without-being-insanely-hard, and actually fun.

For example, in the "old world" areas, it's pretty common to get a quest that amounts to "get me ten pieces of zebra steak." Under the old design model, the developers dumped a hundred zebras in a nearby area, and set each one to have a 20% chance of dropping "A Zebra Steak." At level X, a zebra should take about a minute to kill, and you'll need to kill an average of 50 to get your steak. There, aren't you satisfied? The developers just "entertained" you for an hour.

In the new areas, there's apparently a goblin that gives you such a quest. "Get me some mammoth steaks." Except then he hands you a bomb, and the following instructions:

Step 1. Find a Mammoth
Step 2. Feed Bomb to Mammoth
Step 3. Wait 30 seconds
Step 4. Collect Steak

The part that makes it fun and challenging (or so I'm told) is Step 2, convincing a mammoth to eat a bomb. It might require additional steps, and might still be set up to take an hour. But you're actually *doing* something. You have a goal. You're not just sitting there playing "Whack-a-Mole" with some random critter.

Agreed. As I said, in that other game, there's places no one ever goes, at least not for XP. Almost all the original "end game" dungeons fall into this. Most of them are long, tedious, and very difficult at any level where you can still get XP for them. After all, they were originally intended to occupy time for the max-level players. Unfortunately, now there are newer, better areas where the content covers the same range, but is actually fun. So, good luck getting a group for that quest there. Mostly what happens now, is that people come back to solo with their new Max Level characters, who are 20 levels higher than the old endgame boss, and curbstomp him. Or as often, still get stomped, because some of those dungeons are so insanely difficult that even being twenty levels higher than everything isn't enough to beat it.


One thing that helps is good variety for critters and areas. One thing that does annoy me about CoH is the fairly limited selection of enemies. Yes, there's a large number of enemy groups, but almost all of them boil down to "crazy guys with weird clothes." Where are the dinosaurs? The giant mutant insects? The nightmarish alien monsters from another dimension? Heck, nevermind lions and tigers and bears, I'd be impressed with robot guard dogs at this point. One of my favorite areas so far is the Shadow Shard. I liked the first "holy torpedoes, what the snarf is THAT?" moment when I first encountered an Overseer. After so long fighting Mafia guys, and Circle guys, and Malta guys, seeing a flat-out fantasy critter was totally unexpected. They're still one of my favorite enemies.

Personally, I strongly dislike PvP, in any game. I think I've gotten Shivan Shards exactly *once* in the year since I started playing, and I doubt I'll try again. I have zero interest in being anywhere near the type of player you're most likely to notice in PvP. (Not necessarily the most common type of PvP player, but the ones that you *will* remember afterwords.) I'm sure that polite, mature, intelligent people engage in PvP. But the immature, rude and moronic dingbats are the only ones I ever seem to see.

Interesting question about losing badges not meant for the other side. There is good reason for losing them after all. Whether they outweigh the reasons for keeping them is the question.

Advantages of Keeping them:

1) Makes badgers happy and adds some additional content for them (assuming that is a good thing)
2) Everyone hates to lose some thing they worked for
3) Badge counts would get screwed up if you lose some badges and don't get replacements which would really upset some people
4) If Overall Heros, Villains or Neutrals could get more badges, all seriously insane badgers would feel obligated to play that line lol

Disadvantages Of Keeping Badges:

1) Badge counts would get really high for those who get all 3 sets and again serious badgers would feel forced to play all 3 lines. (not sure if this is a real problem or not but some will definitely complain long and loud)
2) Simpler coding/recoding for devs, no worries about stacking Accolades and such.
3) Preserves game imbalances. Much easier to get many Accolades as a Hero than as a Villain. This is a problem because again people would complain about having to become a hero to get Accolades easier (Atlas and Crey Accolades are especially easy for heros plus no 5 hour badges).

What it really comes down to are perceptions and what the majority of players would prefer. I know Disadvantage 3 annoys me red side (the 5 hour badges in Accolades stink and annoy PvPers and non-PvPers alike as far as I can tell). So I probably would switch to Blue to get Accolades then switch back because playing mostly solo farming Paragon Protector Bosses red side isn't fun, much easier fighting minions Blue side for example.

It will be interesting to see how this one shakes out plus the Influence/Infamy/Combined Markets issue. I don't see how they can do this without Combining markets which doesn't make much sense thematically, but the game comes before the story.

I'm not sure switching will be quite that easy

They might even make some sort of penalty, to make a second switch harder, as your former friends might not be that willing to welcome you back