More Villainous Options

Several of my friends have probably gotten tired to death of me making the same complaint over and over--at the end of the day, my villains don't feel very villainous. The vast majority of the villain missions fall into the categories of either doing people's dirty work (apparently for money, though very few really directly mention that) or trying to kiss up to Arachnos. Really, it feels more like City of Ill-Tempered Mercenaries than anything else. Some of the most traditional villain goals, like world domination or just grabbing yourself a big old chunk of power, are almost totally unrepresented in the game.

I've heard people argue a lot that the reason for this is that these can't really be represented in an MMO. In the strictest sense, that's pretty obvious--if a character could actually conquer the world, it would cause some pretty basic problems. On the other hand, heroes get to outright save the world a time or three on the path to fifty. Shouldn't villains be able to at least get a taste of conquering it?

So, that's what this is. Two different ideas I've had to put more of a villainous feel into the game. Before anybody jumps on me for it, I'd like to point out that I am fully aware that these would take huge amounts of effort, and thus don't expect them to ever ever ever happen. Or even be considered. I expect they'd both be comparable to the Mission Architect in terms of effort. Consider it more a thought experiment in how an MMO could do the villain thing better. Not should. It's a proof of concept that I think we could still get more villainous feeling in the game without killing the MMO aspects. That said, I've purposely made sure that both ideas are similar enough to existing systems that I think they could actually be done. I've also tried to make sure that they don't add in much new griefing potential, hence the lack of anything strictly PvP.

Idea 1: Conquest, or your own personal Latveria
The Isles are, presumably, a large place. We have a decent bit of evidence that Arachnos doesn't really rule the entire thing with an iron fist, so why not let the aspiring world dominators take little chunks for themselves?

It'd go like this. At level 5 or so, you'd be able to scout out an area of the city that Arachnos doesn't particularly care about. Ideally, the player would be able to choose: A run-down Mercy Island area, a Nerva jungle one, whatever. This area becomes available to the player as an instance, basically a personal base, except it happens to look like an outdoor area.

It would, of course, be initially infested with Hellions, Snakes, and all those other undesireables that are all over the Isles. Every five levels or so, the player could get missions to drive out their competition, beating up prominent gang leaders in their personal neighborhood and such.

After enough of these, the player would cement their hold over the area, making it their personal turf. This would open up the second stage: Basically, the base editor, except with buildings and such, so the player could personalize their conquest. The options could be fairly basic to begin with: a bunch of run-down buildings, trashcans, dumpsters, whatever they could browbeat the denizens in their new turf into building or stealing. Later missions or badges could open up more--maybe beating up 25 turrets in Grandville lets you build your own, or you can get a mission to beat up Doctor Aeon and learn some architecture from him, thus letting you add Arachnos-style buildings to your territory. Really, the only true limitations here should be what's vaguely within reason and the limits of the engine. If the player wants to build a stone ziggurat surrounded by parking lots on the beach, let them.

At this point, the missions could get more interesting. The player's efforts would start getting a bit more attention, so maybe the missions become 'Stop Arachnos from bombing your territory into a wasteland' or 'Chase Longbow inspectors off of your turf.' Now that they control the area, they'd need some street-level enforcers to keep it safe, so there could be missions to ally with various villain groups, resulting in those groups spawning friendly patrols within the neighborhood. Perhaps they could attack neighboring areas in mayhem-style missions to annex them, essentially giving them a plot size upgrade.

Idea 2: Reigns of Terror
This is sort of designed to be a catch-all for villain goals. Essentially, we know that finishing a task force can spawn a zone event, thanks to the Lady Grey TF and its associated Rikti raids. So, why not let villains purposely trigger such things in Paragon? You could have a series of new contacts, probably at least 40+ or 50+ (see below) who would act as facilitators in helping villains achieve their grand goals. Upon finishing the arc, the villain's work would be unleashed on Paragon in the form of a zone event. There would probably need to be a wide variety of potential end events to encompass as many types of villains as possible, but some examples:

• Giant robot attack - essentially, a beefed up giant monster.
• Zombie curse - Prolonged zombie invasion + Dark Astoria style fog.
• Orbital bombardment - Heavy-duty Rikti bombing without the dropships.
• Zone Invasion - Groups from a villain faction of the player's choice move in on a zone and start fighting the street mobs for supremacy, in the style of the 5th Column vs. Council war. These would probably have to be invasion-coded to con even to everybody.

The villain should probably be able to see their work pay off, which could be done one of two ways:
1. (Realistically) - Let them go into the hero zone as an invisible, invincible spectator, arena-style. They can watch the event unfold, but are unable to participate.
2. (Ideally, but griefable) - For zone events that unleash mobs, let them go into the hero zone in Gladiator fight mode. They're invincible and can't use any powers, but they can control up to eight of the villains they've let loose into the zone. However, this opens up griefing potential, so it's probably not a good idea.

Ideally, the villain would also be able to choose what area of the city their event happens in--not only for those who have a grudge against Talos Island or something, but also because it would be really lame to spent hours trying to get your reign of terror unlocked only to unleash it on an unsuspecting Independence Port. Which has one guy in it. And he's sitting in the tram. AFK. Doing so would however, open up some griefing potential in the form of 'I know guyIHate's Synapse task force is getting ready to fight Babbage... time to drop a zombie invasion on Skyway!' (You already have a pretty good shot of disrupting a Numina with a well-timed LGTF, though.)

You would also need some method to keep people from spamming these. Obviously, there are some problems if every single villain can do one with a few hours of commitment, since every hero zone would be about quadruple-invaded at any given point. Some ideas on gating the content a little:

• For those who want a new money sink in the game: Make your villain need X million infamy to fund their project.
• Alternatively, make there be significant expensive construction involved with it. Perhaps building a giant robot requires 30 Synthetic Intelligence Units, 200 Ceramic Armor Plates... (Probably not a good idea, since salvage prices would go insane.)
• Let characters only do it after level 50.
• Make the arc to unlock them really long and/or hard.
• Make the arc to unlock them a task force that rewards no merits.
• Only let characters do it once. Or once a month. Or whatever.

Mix and match these restrictions until you like them!

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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.

I like both ideas and they are pretty well thought out. Looking at the COH map poster, there are at least two island chains that are listed as "Uncharted" so the concept would be perfectly canon. I might suggest holding off the first idea until the player is level 10 both for travel concerns and to make sure the player is a little more well rounded. At the same time, I'd make the startup/search point in Mercy both to add a little more to Darwin's Landing and to try to tie it into the other islands by proximity. It would be nice to be able to claim these islands either in the player's name or in the name of the player's VG if they are the leader.

For the second idea, I'd suggest it requiring 50 million inf + 25 merits to start the mission. Easily obtainable at higher levels yet if done repeatedly it would slowly cause inf to leave the economy. I'd say that events shouldn't overlap in the same zone, the same attack can't be done within a variable amount of time, and a different event can't be started in the same zone in a variable amount of time. The variable amount of time would be an inverse of the "appropriate" level of the zone. Essentially, the higher level the zone, the shorter the delay is between bombardment. Some hazard zones would technically count as higher than their recommended levels and thus be able to be attacked more often. This would not only help prevent griefing beginners it would also increase the chance of places other than Atlas and Mercy being attacked.

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It could be done with making a fortress type thing which you have to shield from invasions when you are there.

You could use the mission architect style thingy to create your own enemy group specifically for your instance. you could have a point scaling thing, you would get points for defeating invasions, which would have different levels of difficulty each giving more points. The point would allow you to buy more members for your enemy group. So you could start with a minion with standard powers for a small price, that you could upgrade to hard and then extreme (without being able to skip stages) for more points. you could then buy Lt and boss avalability, then a fleet leader EB, a platoon leader AV and a giant monster guardian, so by the end of it with all the points and upgrades after hours and endless hours of batteling you could wage the kind of wars you see in films like LOTR and Star wars with massive Origin specific fleets of enemies.

HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE!!!!!

tho the zone event idea seems a little much, what would happen if loads of people perfected their bases at the same time???? though i do love the idea of having a customisable city. and i think it would be cool if you could invite players to serve you or join forces with you. and heroes could choose to try and defeat your forces, kinda like a hami raid, nice and hard =D

overall I.LOVE.YOUR.IDEA!!!!

/Signed

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While I agree whole heartedly with your basic point, I won't comment on your potential solutions. What I will do is offer a partial solution that would actually be quite simple for the devs to implement and would go a long ways towards making villains feel more villainous.

<rant>
QUIT MAKING THE DAMN CONTACTS ACT LIKE WE'RE FLIES!

I was playing my 50 the other day and got a new contact. Went over to her and talked to her. The first thing she did was act like I was a lackey and passed me a mission she expressly said was beneath her. I'm a level 50 villain who has beaten Lord Recluse himself and I'M BENEATH YOU???

If we who can beat Lord Recluse are such wimps compared to all these damn contacts, why is LR in charge any more???

All the devs would have to do is make the contacts act appropriately timid and obsequious towards us and make the stories into us forcing the contacts to give us information and TADA! We're Villains!!! A simple change of wordage and text. Requires nothing major, except a story teller who doesn't want us all to feel like dirt.

Actually, the same thing goes to a lesser degree blue side. We're Heroes. Stop acting like you're our freakin' bosses.

</rant>

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--If we can have huge sig images, why can we have only five lines of text?
--...faceplanting like a Defender pulling an AV (Nalrok_AthZim)

Kelenar, I would like to congratulate you for being one of the VERY few people who view evil as something more than just killing civilians and killing your contacts and generally being an always stupid evil jerkass for no apparent reason. Seriously, I opened this thread thinking "Not another suggestion to kill and rob bums!" but I was pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly, and I congratulate you on bringing a suggestion that is not only quite good, but in fact very in-keeping with the source material.

Let me just get one negative aspect out of the way before I get to the positive: I really don't like the second idea. Spawning events by player actions SUCKS! I like neither Rikti nor Zombie invasions, so whenever someone happens to trigger one of those, it just ruins my fun for a while, or forces me to switch zones. Inconveniencing other people isn't really something I can get behind, specifically since unlike redeeming Halloween Salvage or completing a high-level TF, these are missions that I can foresee being done a lot, and indeed missions which can allow a villain to grief the hero-side. Not a good idea, in my opinion.

To go to the positive side, however, I LOVE your idea of an Evil Genius inspired turf or island fortress. Especially the island fortress, mind you. If anything, that's what base building should have been like all along, in my opinion. I love the progression aspect of starting with, say, a barren jungle chock-full of ghosts and monsters, clearing it out, building it up and eventually turning it into a base of operations. Personally, I'd stray away from having TOO fine a control over your environment, definitely not going into as heavy a micromanagement as placing individual trash cans. Personally, I like editors that strike a balance between power and simplicity, so I'd actually stick to something more along the lines of Tribes, where you can place entire pre-fab buildings, kind of like in an RTS. If you want, say, a tower of evilnessnessness, you just have to make room for it and stick it on the terrain.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to attach any kind of practical gain from this, like teleporters (helicopters, jets, etc), medical bays, inspiration dispensers and so forth, though if these are unlocked by specific lair-related missions, rather than by plain old grinding prestige, then I would very much get behind this.

It really comes down to the missions, though. If those are made well enough, I think this has a lot of potential, even for relatively little customization, if it comes down to that. Let's look at, say, a jungle island and how that would work in my mind:

1-5: Earn it. You go on a mission where you actually find, buy or take the island, but that's it. You unlock the consistent instance and you can go there and streethunt, but enemies would just keep respawning.

5-10: Claim it. You go on a mission to create your first outpost and take over the bulk of the island. This removes enemies from the beaches and clearing, as well as from the majority of the island, but it still leaves the powerful monsters lurking in the forests. You can't do much there yet.

15-20: Secure it. You go on a mission to set up an actual outpost with supplies and personnel, possibly stealing said supplies and proving yourself to said personnel. Monsters hidden in the woods still exist. You can place small encampments, but no big buildings.

20-25: Conquer it. You go on a mission to assert your dominance over the entire island. You raid the monsters out of the forest, root out a hidden base or two, stock the island with some serious firepower and can now begin to build larger buildings that have an actual benefit.

25-30: Prepare it. This is where focus shifts. You won the island, but now you go on a mission to start building up your grand master plan. This needs... Stuff, let's say. Machines, magical artefacts, experts, more soldiers and so forth. And what better way to get than than to TAKE it? Or, alternatively, make it.

30-35: Keep it. You're finally big enough to warrant attention, and you have to keep what you have by guarding it against rival villains and heroes. You go on a mission (possible more, possible repeatable) where you defend your island from attack while your plan is in motion.

35-40: Use it. Though your plan is still not ready, have a serious staging ground from which you can now begin to launch your own assaults on your enemies. Go on missions where you attack other lairs of other people (NPCs) and take their stuff to get bigger and better buildings to make.

40-45: Finish it. Your grand master plan is almost ready, and your enemies know it. Alternate missions to gather resources to finish it and defend your island while it is happening.

45-50: Success. Your plan is complete, and it is time to unleash it. Protect your fortress while it activates, then go out into the field to put it in motion or mop up what's left. All in instances, obviously.

Something like that

*edit*
I should not that I'm much more interested in the missions themselves and with seeing the lair improve than I am with my ability to customize it, honestly. As a first step, I wouldn't at all mind a selection of lairs that progressed and were built up like the towns in Heroes of Might and Magic. You don't really get to choose what goes where or how it looks, but you still choose to build it when resources permit.

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I absolutely adore this idea. It would certainly make you feel like an evil master villain rather then the lackey of one.

Like Mr. Tow, I am a li'l gripey at the second zone invasion idea. But hell, if it could be balanced well enough or something, I could possibly put two thumbs up to it. I really wish the devs would implement something like this, maybe Issue 23? Or earlier. Here's hopin'

/signed

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Username: @Royal
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I am a huge fan of Idea #1, "Your own personal Latveria".
My own personal "Spider-Skull Island".

A Blue-side equivalent, should there be one, could be "Your own personal Fortess of Alone-itude at the North Pole".

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I like idea 1 tremendously. It would probably be hard(ish?) to implement, but damn if it wouldn't be cool.

Idea 2 is not so great. A GM spawning is kinda nice as you can take it our if you want to or just ignore the bugger and go about on your business. Rikti bombs falling all over the zone? Zombie invasions + fog? Way too disruptive to normal gameplay for my tastes.

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ANYTHING that would make our quest feel epic is welcome. While there are some "chosen one" stylish arcs we do suffer on the red side. Helping to safe the world in co-op sure doesn't make things better. Are we just misunderstood good guys with a bad childhood or something?

Yeah, sure, there's an age rating on the game, it can't be too bad without loosing it, but omg I'd love a real, good mature MMO that don't give a rat's behind about what the "general public" would think!

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Man! I love it. Smacking a few civilians wouldnt be bad either.

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"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."

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I like #1. Not keen on #2.

The problem with world conquering as opposed to world saving is simple.

When you save the world, nothing changes.

When you conquer it, EVERYTHING would change, and that can't be done in an MMO. It would lose it's impact if you conquer the world or take over the Rogue Isles.......and then zone out of the instance and it's business as usual.

The first idea would at least give the feeling that you're in the process of conquering the world.

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I think this is a really excellent idea. I think it could stand to be simplified a great deal, but it's got a lot of potential. Here's what I would do instead.

• No editor. Instead of giving the player the ability to edit the entire zone, make a number of prefabricated island zones available with general themes: high-finance skyscrapers and commercial district; high-tech laboratories; elaborate fortress with caverns; ruined city. Consider making 5 mini-zones compatible with the 5 Origins. The player can get a Mission-Architect-like editor to choose what type of minions he wants hanging around, name his Chief Lackey, and so on, but the terrain is more or less fixed. (It'd be an absolute nightmare coming up with AI pathing and spawn points on a fully customizable island.)
• Base portal. Once the player has conquered his island, a base portal becomes active there.
• Who's the enemy? As with base raids, allow the ruler of the island to launch attacks against other island rulers, rather than "spawn event X on blue-side." Interfering with blueside is just ... I dunno, what's the word? Petty and annoying? When you launch attacks against other islands, trying to take down the competition, it's like Gladiator Mode in the Arena. You watch your minions duke it out with those of your enemy's, while you lead from the rear and go MUHAHAHAHAHA.

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...then again, this is sort of just similar, like, you know, like... Base raids and SG bases!

Oh, go on, slap me! I'm teh ebil Mustard!

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The first idea would be a good system for 'personal bases'. Do pretty much the same thing blue side (only blue side it would be "cleaning up the streets" and making it "Safer for the civilians") Allows for single players to make a base pretty well, without only rewarding those who farm for mass quantities of (*insert resource*).

The second idea...
I love the concept of it.
Certain things could work, but .. a full control of it? Naw, I don't think so.

I'd say special Strike Forces at levels 25, 35 and 45 (perhaps multiple at 45).
Each one would trigger a zone event. Some red side, some blue side. Most would have no minimum number of people. (like AE and Oro)

25 SF would trigger a minor zone event in one of the "less used" zones blue side (Offer the players in the SF the choice of a few zones, whatever zone got the most votes (from SF members) would be used. In case of a tie between multiple it'd be determined by an RNG)
By minor zone event I mean like .. small-time gang riots, arsons, things like that.

The 35 one would be to unleash a giant robot on one of the "big name" zones. Atlas, Steel Canyon, Talos or Founders.
A blue-side alert would pop up saying "Strike Force *name* has unleashed *insert randomly generated death robot name* on *zone*!"

The 45 ones would unleash various things, maybe a few that would trigger invasions, and each one would tirgger in a specific zone.
One might trigger an Arachnos Assault on Atlas.
Another might unleash several giant monsters on Pergerine.
Yet another would unleash a giant robot on Mercy.
etc.

All of these SFs would be failable, including at least certain missions in them would have a timer. For every mission in the SF you suceed before failing, it increases your chance to cause a Longbow invasion in the zone of origin for the SF.
At higher level ones, it might even include some generic, or even signature heroes (like Mayhem Missions.)

Blue side would get a few similar missions (perhaps not as many), that would trigger increased Longbow patrols, outright Longbow invasions, or perhaps experimental protector-bot-thingies. ("Good guy" giant Monsters.)

Each one of these SFs would hold certain limitations.
1: Account-wide rate limitations. No single player could trigger an event more than once a week. No single player could trigger the same event more than once a month. (This would mean if a group of 8 players ran one, and then immediately ran another, it would not trigger a second event. However if a group of 7 ran one, then an entirely new player who had not been involved in an event triggering SF in the last week were to join them, and they ran another, it would trigger a zone event)
2: there would be a rather significant cost assosciated with the SFs. Probably a sum of inf. that wouldn't be bad split between a group, but costly for a single player.

At the start of any of these SFs the leader could choose to run it to not trigger a zone event blueside, and instead earn reward merits for it. This would still invoke the cost (and thus would be worth a bit more reward merits than a standard SF of equal length (like maybe 5 at most)). The gaining of merits from these would not be restricted the same way triggering a zone event is.

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I'd love to resurrect this thread because I've been thinking about personal bases recently too. With the advent of the MA system wouldn't it be fantastic to be able to use its functionality blended with that of the base editor to create a personal base that you could invite people to. You could even stock it with an NPC version of your toon and various minions with scripted dialog and animations. Taking the idea a step further, possibly people could either be "Friend or Foe" when they enter your base. If friendly they could use it's features (Medibots, Teleporters etc) or if foe your base defenses and forces would react to repel the invader.

The benefits of having personal bases available would include:

• Allowing players to dispense with the SG structure, for those who don't wish to participate in it, while still allowing them to access features such as base teleporters etc.
• An addition to the SG structure for those who enjoy it.
• More content. Player bases could be flagged as open to the Public, SG, Team, listed as "raidable" or enterable as a mission or not.

How would you like it implemented?

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K5K - The Killbot 5000
A Spanner In The Works Part One, ArcID: 336662, A Spanner In The Works Part Two, ArcID: 336665, Enter Japes, ArcID: 96001
In The Darkness Creeping, ArcID: 347709, When Dimensions Collide, ArcID: 412416.

#1 rocks but would be hard to do.

#2 however could be done with tweaks of existing invasion code, and should be a priority.

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A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!

Conquest looks interesting, though I'm pretty certain that characters might want to set different goals and ideas for what the "turf" concept does.

The other? No. LGTF and the Zombie Invasion are enough for that style of event, especially one that's tailor made to intentionally disrupt a zone. The costs to Everyone Else being higher than the benefit to That Guy make that a non-starter, in my opinion.

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Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.

Great ideas in there. Especially #1 with some added ideas from Samuel Tow. Would love to develop such an island. Shame that it is unlikely to succeed.

The 2nd idea is also a nice one. Do a mission to develop a masterplan and then unleash it on the poor unsuspecting Heroes while you cackle maniacally. Sounds like fun. Of course, the heroes should be able to do something similar.

Coyoteshaman got it right as well. Just a little editing will make us feel more villainous and be the most like-able way to make us feel less lackeys and more like proper villains.

I fully support any development of any of these ideas.

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First off, I am totally in favor of this idea. I play CoV to be a supervillian. Not someone else's lackey. So any and all opportunities to inflate my villianous ego are welcome. There's just a few bits I'd like to add...

1) The "personal zone" should be linked to VGs. On one hand, it would sort of alienate anyone who isn't head of or high enough rank in a VG, but on the other hand...If you're gonna be under someone else, you're not really the sort of character to have his own hideout anyways. I just think it would make far more sense if it were simple added on to the existing base system.

2) During the triggered raids, rather than being "invisible and invincible", it would be better to be under "Untouchable" and "Only Effecting Self" states. What's the fun of unleashing hell on Paragon if you can't stand in full view mocking the heroes? Obviously there's still no control, but at least you're free to rant to your heart's content ;P

3) Also concerning the raids, there is a simple solution to explaining why nothing changes if the heros fail to save the day. No matter what actions the players take, you still "lose". How? After enough time has passed without a victory, hero NPCs show up to help. A little while after that, you escape from the battle. Whatever rewards would have been given to the heroes are not, because Statesman & Co. did it instead. Should the players succeed, the end is differant in which you are defeated and captured (Really just the same thing with differant text, frankly) and the heroes recieve their rewards. Example:

"Villian" has escaped! But even though his forces were driven out, the damage to the city is vast.
No special rewards given.

"Villian" has been captured! Paragon City thanks all the heroes who helped save the day!
Rewards such as badges are given to those who participated based on their contribution.

4) This would be an opportunity to add a metric butt-load of new badges. Nuff said.

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The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)

Virtue Forever.

Similar to Hertz's idea of pre-made islands that are origin-based, how about the same for the "plot" (Giant Robot, Orbital Strike etc.). One thing I would need is choice; I don't want an evil wizard being stuck in a dark cavern. Even evil wizards want to conquer cities!

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I fully endorse both of these ideas.

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I still like both ideas (though as said, the second on needs tweaking). One suggestion I have for your suggestion is to attempt to do portions of this in the Mission Architect. It'll give you a chance to flesh things out and experiment a bit.

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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.

Personally, I have one GIANT problem with SG bases, and that goes beyond the matters of cost and upkeep. It's the editor. It's just far, FAR too complex, at least for me. I can whip up a cool costume in half an hour to an hour if I don't know what I want, and if I have a good enough idea, I can make one in 5-10 minutes. Creating a large, elaborate, detailed base is the work of days, possibly weeks in our current editor. There's a reason I never got into user-made mods and skins even in games that allowed it - I'm not an artist and I have neither the patience nor the talent to work with tools that are too complex and too difficult.

But base building is what it is, and I wouldn't dream of touching it. I don't fancy a torches and pitchforks mob outside my door, you see. But if we're ever going to be looking at a larger-scale, "own island" base builder, I'd like it to be a LOT simpler and a LOT easier to use. Let me try and explain what I mean.

Does anyone remember the old X-Com: Ufo/Ufo: Enemy Unknown game? Rmember how base building went? You essentially had facilities (it's the game which taught me what the word "facility" even meant in English ) all of about the same size to plop down on a grid map, with only the hangar being larger. You didn't choose what was IN those facilities, you just put down square ala Dune: Battle for Arakis. However, when aliens invaded your base, you had a complete level, detailed, ornate, arranged and practically indistinguishable from your average alien base raid, only it was YOUR design, and the layout was as YOU made it. That's something I liked and something I could work with.

Of course, Ufo designed entirely enclosed bases, whereas if we ever got an "own island" editor, I'd probably make it a cross between that and something like Settlers 2. You'd have some kind of main building that you could build roads out of, and linked to these roads, you could build actual buildings. From the editor's bird's eye view, they'd look like the iconic buildings in your average RTS, but brought down to ground level, they'd actually be whole, enterable buildings like the many bunkers we see around Recluse's Victory and Bloody Bay. Or some might be large underground structures, like the underground Council base in the War Zone (show of hands: how many of you know what I'm talking about?) or something of that nature.

See, I know some people enjoy complex editors with control over minute detail. I just happen to not be one of them. I tried to like Spore, for instance, and despite it giving me so much freedom, I realised that, lacking the guiding hand of a simpler editor's limitations, my imagination failed to produce and my ability failed to deliver. A lot of my greatest costumes are the products of trial and error, just tabbing through pieces until something catches my eye, because the changes I can make are large and significant. If I don't KNOW what I want to change, it doesn't pay for me to have much detail in it. I happen to believe that a custom editor should have a good balance between freedom and simplicity, not just aim for as much complexity as the system will maintain. Trying to make something decent in Champions Online demonstrated that there IS such a thing as too much customization.

In essence, an Ufo-style island editor with progressively more land and progressively larger and more, err... "Powerful" buildings becoming available, and eventually with missions around those buildings and that island, is something I would very much like to see.

And, you know, it doesn't have to be an island. It could be an island, or it could be a piece of land somewhere out in the country, on the side of a mountain, in the desert somewhere, in the middle of a town or city, floating on the ocean, or even underground in a cavernous chamber. Or, hell, even in a Dungeon Keeper style "dig your own hole" environment. As a matter of fact, Dungeon Keeper is how I thought base building would be like, but that's besides the point.

Such a thing would probably be far, far too much work for any Issue, though, and I doubt it'd ever fly as an expansion, but it's an interesting concept, anyway

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