COH2 predicted by Massively
By
Alvan,
Posted on: 2008-12-27 20:23 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I'd want a more open faction system in CoX 2. First you get the choices of villain, mercenary and hero, essentially evil, neutral and good. You pick one from the start but it's changeable on a basis of the kinds of missions you undertake and the target you take it against. Heroes fight crime, villains perpetrate crime, and neutrals don't care, they're just in it for the money. Obviously, being neutral takes some consideration, after all, throw your principles to the wind and you're a villain out for money, but start helping others instead of yourself and you're in hero town.
Then within that, an ethical system. The slider between malevolence and benevolence. You may be taking the heroic mission types to battle criminals, but when you're given the choice at the end, you don't arrest the gang leader. He's scum. You kill him. You're a brutal anti-hero, and you're not going to be picking up missions from Captain America, who himself thinks you're scum. Or you're taking villainous missions, stealing valuables and leaving the heroes who stood against you tied up and gagged while you swoop out the window with a dashing smile! You're a gentleman thief, you're not a killer, you're not some unprincipled thug, why, some more adventurous victims of your charming thievery may even have found it exciting! Fight crime, commit crime, or play both sides against the middle for a big wodge of cash. Whatever it is you're doing, it matters how you do it as well.
Missions and ingame factions would be built around that, Freedom Phalanx aren't going to work with heroes who slaughter their way across town, but Hero Corps will. Longbow aren't psychotic murderers, but they're built like a military and they might be a little more forgiving if now and then a villain dies in the crossfire. Wyvern? They probably have a department dedicated to cleaning up all the blood.
Arachnos? We kill our problems thanks. And if it's not dead, we run experiments on it until it is.
.....ok, they need to work on having some more morally ambiguous villains, but you get the idea.
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
See gentleman thief/lovable rogue would be too much fun to consider anything else
We dont really have any such villains in the game, which is a shame
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
They could add more options to the Villain side by making altenatives to Arachnos - especially if Villains were going to be able to enter Hero zones.
Choosing to join the 5th Column/Council, Circle of Thorns or Nemesis Army could provide a suitable altenrative to having to work for Recluse and Arachnos.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Would you get robes joining the CoT?
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
[ QUOTE ]
Would you get robes joining the CoT?
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Eventually, yes - they'd probably be your cape mission at 20 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Would you get robes joining the CoT?
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Eventually, yes - they'd probably be your cape mission at 20
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In that case I think its a good idea
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
I think there'll be robes in the Fantasy pack that's coming. Necromancers will abound 
Union: @Ban-Sidhe
It will be about time, Jenn Teal has needed a robe for a while, her jeans are starting to wear out now. I think Miss Taik would avoid one though. As much as she'd like one as a flyer a robe would be a bit risky
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
Well think about the new Server gives them the abillity to upgrade the graphics. So all they got to do is update the already built Places like Atlas.. all the hard work is done already all that is needed to be done is simply update the graphics. i would like to see the freedom of powers tht champions offer aswell but keep the classes but offer a wider rage of powers and customisable powers & more cossys like hooded jumpers and the robe thing tht scorpion & sub-zero wear 
or wht ever :P
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Well think about the new Server gives them the abillity to upgrade the graphics. So all they got to do is update the already built Places like Atlas.. all the hard work is done already all that is needed to be done is simply update the graphics.
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Not at all the case; graphics (storage and display) are all handled client side, and any changes they make at the server - whether it's to the software or involves using a whole new farm - won't affect them in any significant way.
Plus, for graphics updates to be more striking than "more detailed bricks on the existing building" there'll be a lot of work involved rewriting bits of client to support a new system, then maps, f/x and animations to make use of that system. If we want the job doing properly, it'll be a big one.
Strewth, 360 replies to this thread and I can't see any flaming. This really struck a chord with the community.
One wish that consistently shines through is that of a unified game world, like that of WoW, WAR, or GTA4. There are an insane number of subtopics and related topics that bear discussing when this is brought up, not the least of which is how difficult it would be to implement. So I'm gonna go out on a limb and rant about it, if only to myself.
The first thing to consider is what exactly you're making this shiny new overworld out of. Some people say they should move the game to a real-world city, but to them I say that would be removing the Gotham from Batman, the Detroit from Robocop. The city is far too entrenched into the lore for anyone to conceivably say "Hey, heroes of Paragon City, you all need to move house!" and suddenly find that all 150,000-odd heroes playing the game (not counting alts) have invaded an unsuspecting US city. No. The action is staying within Paragon.
So, if a unified overworld is to be made, it will be of Paragon. This simplifies matters in some ways. Although such an undertaking would likely warrant the creation of whole new gameworld-creating tools, and the creation of the gameworld using these, the existing districts of Paragon City could theoretically be kept intact. You'd still have your Kings Row, Steel Canyon, and Atlas Park. There would just be a whole lot of new stuff between them. Creating all this new content is both a massive amount of work and difficult to design. What do you put in these areas? Do you chicken out and have the area burnt out and decrepit, without any points of interest? Do you create them as mere copy-and-paste city blocks, more generic than what we already have? Or do you ask the developers to fill in this new void fully? There is no perfect solution.
Assuming the developers think of some innovative way to leapfrog this problem - which they may very well do - you now need to integrate everything. This doesn't sound very easy at all. Each city zone has been designed as separate entities, each one blissfully unaware of any other zones. Putting them in the same map will likely break many of the systems the game uses. I can think of two solutions for this, neither being easy: firstly, you write a tool that ports a zone over to fit perfectly; and secondly, you manually fix whatever bugs come up. And there will be millions of the buggers.
Okay. With the planning, mapping, and unifying done, you now have a solid base to make your game use a single overworld. You also swiftly prevented your graphics engine from ever handling the city in a million years. I made a thread in the Suggestions area ranting about how the engine dealt with distance culling (removing far away objects from the screen) in a very bad way, and reached an agreement with PRAF, the cad, that this wasn't ideal and was the cause for choppy performance in Grandville. A single zone can already bring this graphics engine to its' knees because it simply draws everything in front of you, and now you're asking it to handle all zones? No. You need to do a serious do-over on the graphics. And while you're at that, you may as well update it with some new features to show off your shiny new overworld.
Finally. After all these hurdles, you're there. I have quite possibly missed out other pitfalls, these are only the ones that I can think of with my measly 3rd class computer games design degree. And even I see that the road to this shiny new CoX2 isn't an easy one.
But then. I've been thinking. Issue 13 is largely populated by stuff made by a few of the new NCNC employees. For example, the Cimerora story arcs were made as a way to teach someone the ropes of story arc creation, and they used existing assets. The other features of the issue were mainly issues to be undertaken by "code" people, as they were referred to; people who add in new game systems. Nobody will probably agree with me on this, but I can't really see what the Freem Fifteen (I can't type that without giggling...) have been doing. The mission architect is largely finished as far as I know, the only barrier to release being the customised bosses. And as there are now three times the amount of people employed by NCNC as before the acquisition, I have to ask.
What have they been brewing?
It's something big. Stupendously big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to how big this is. Could it be this mythical singular overworld? Could they be making an upgrade to CoH that satisfies our every expectation? Have they indeed created something so awesome that it will silence all naysayers, beat CO into submission, cure cancer, and end all wars? Who knows. But until they play their hand, all we can do is try to read their poker face.
If you read all this, I will mail you a cookie.
Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.
The reason you don't see any flaming is because Ghostraptor removed about 50 posts from about page 3 to page 5.
Defiant 50's
Many and varied!
@Miss Chief
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What have they been brewing?
It's something big. Stupendously big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to how big this is. Could it be this mythical singular overworld? Could they be making an upgrade to CoH that satisfies our every expectation? Have they indeed created something so awesome that it will silence all naysayers, beat CO into submission, cure cancer, and end all wars? Who knows. But until they play their hand, all we can do is try to read their poker face.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is what I've been trying to tell people since August, the problem is that the naysayers are so wrapped up in their own little world they think that because we're getting no information, they're doing nothing at all.
Well, when something big does turn up you can say "I told you so"
Union: @Ban-Sidhe
Oh, and nice post Necrotron
Union: @Ban-Sidhe
Informative view there Necro, raised some good points that I tend to agree with, last paragraph especially...I have so many thoughts/wishes for whats to happen, but put simply...I know issue14 is coming so will tide by with that content for now and stop melting my brain over what may be coming after...for really we only have speculation at this point;
1.Positron states that there are "big" things coming for post i14.
2.rumblings from a well known MMO site about future possibilities in the game (although admitedly this was guesswork on the writers part)
3. Rockjaws post which, even though he says he is only guessing, surely as FFM noted that he would have been privvy to some info at least before he went.
(silly example but my company has set its plans in meetings for up to 2011...subject to change of course)
He would have been in on the loop for some kind of info, even if just a tidbit, so the "guesswork" is just his way of saying "I know..just cannot say I know"
Again this is all speculation on top of speculation so its all rather moot until we get some kind of official wording.....until then im going to get thimbles for each of my fingertips.
Art of War Co-Leader - Union *Global@Warscythe*
"The box said Windows Vista or better - so I installed Linux"
Does Rockjaw's post still exist?
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Does Rockjaw's post still exist?
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Dagnabbit sorry, I meant blog :P, Master already posted the link before IIRC but here it is again;
http://totheblogmobile.com/2009/01/03/predicting-2009/
Art of War Co-Leader - Union *Global@Warscythe*
"The box said Windows Vista or better - so I installed Linux"
Here:
http://totheblogmobile.com/2009/01/0...2009/#more-587
Steve's predictions for 2009, which also may have had an impact on Massively's predictions.
Union: @Ban-Sidhe
[ QUOTE ]
Here:
http://totheblogmobile.com/2009/01/0...2009/#more-587
Steve's predictions for 2009, which also may have had an impact on Massively's predictions.
[/ QUOTE ]
Doubt it's a sequal not with the Mac version still in Beta.
It'd be pointless to be developing both.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
Even if a sequal is anounced in April 2009, it couldn't actually go live before 2010 at the earliest, so there is plenty of reason to continue to expand CoX for now.
I really should do something about this signature.
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Doubt it's a sequal not with the Mac version still in Beta.
It'd be pointless to be developing both.
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Can't comment on any of the speculation, however you should recall that the Mac project has actually been in partnership with Transgaming and the impact on NCNC's ongoing work, of any sort, is minimal.
You heard it here first, GR confims CoX2!!!
I really should do something about this signature.
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You heard it here first, GR confims CoX2!!!
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Yeah he did not say explicitly that they are NOT working on CoH2. So when you calculate in corporate vagueness PR factor and add likelihood of rumors to be true. You get:
Truth = (PR factor/rumor factor) times wishing come trueness = 100% truth!
I'd still like the war walls to remain in some places, like the Hollows or Perez Park - or at least have some sort of wall between the hazard zones and the normal parts of the city.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork