Old Complaints ~or~ 'A More Perfect Superhero Simulator'
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-01-08 17:49 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Blasphemy!! |
Originally Posted by Zamuel
Invoking the cottage rule here since I actually like blue caves.
 Plus, it's one of the few sensical places for mazelike areas to explore. |
You're right though. Eliminating them would be extreme. Perhaps I'd like to see them used less frequently, however. And particularly not for rescue missions where the guy you have to rescue has the chance to fall through the holes in that dreaded room with five "floors" full of holes in the ground.
Blue caves are just exceptionally cramped, and navigating them is treacherous when speed boost is involved. When fighting COT in them, the Behemoths can easily completely block your view so that you can't really see anything but them. And bottlenecks are far too frequent, so that meleers and defenders can't get to where they need or want to be.
I'd love to see a new cave type like the blue caves (twisty corridors, puddles, stalagmites, stalactites, vaulted ceilings, etc.) that allows for wider corridors and greater freedom of movement. And in the name of all that is (un-)holy, please use a different color. Something more realistic would be outstanding.
But, again, that's just my opinion.
Rescale the CoH population. I'm tired of making a character who is 5'5" and being dwarfed by civilians. I'm tired of making a character who is 8' tall and looking like a midget next to a group of Council. I made a guy yesterday, huge body type and about seven foot and change and he was barely even to the Hellions he was fighting.
Either cut all the NPCs down by a foot (and Council down by two feet) or rescale the PC height grid so a fully maxed height character is 6'5" or something. 'Cause what it says is eight feet ain't no eight feet in any sane world.
I shouldn't have to take my 8' character and stand next to Penelope Yin to feel 8' tall. 
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Originally Posted by Jophiel
Rescale the CoH population. I'm tired of making a character who is 5'5" and being dwarfed by civilians. I'm tired of making a character who is 8' tall and looking like a midget next to a group of Council. I made a guy yesterday, huge body type and about seven foot and change and he was barely even to the Hellions he was fighting.
Either cut all the NPCs down by a foot (and Council down by two feet) or rescale the PC height grid so a fully maxed height character is 6'5" or something. 'Cause what it says is eight feet ain't no eight feet in any sane world. I shouldn't have to take my 8' character and stand next to Penelope Yin to feel 8' tall. |
Really, I would like to see our height slider go to 10' AND the population of Paragon and the isles be shrunk by about 1 or 2'
Types of Swords
My Portfolio
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Fair enough. Limiting their usage would give them a bit more impact and it might be better if it had strategic bottlenecks for ambushes though the claustrophobic feel is something unique to it. That said, what is your opinion of the Shaper/Leviathan cave in Sharkhead? It seems closer to being a Blue Cave 2.0 though it could stand to be slightly twistier.
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Originally Posted by TyrantMikey
Blasphemy!!
You're right though. Eliminating them would be extreme. Perhaps I'd like to see them used less frequently, however. And particularly not for rescue missions where the guy you have to rescue has the chance to fall through the holes in that dreaded room with five "floors" full of holes in the ground. Blue caves are just exceptionally cramped, and navigating them is treacherous when speed boost is involved. When fighting COT in them, the Behemoths can easily completely block your view so that you can't really see anything but them. And bottlenecks are far too frequent, so that meleers and defenders can't get to where they need or want to be. I'd love to see a new cave type like the blue caves (twisty corridors, puddles, stalagmites, stalactites, vaulted ceilings, etc.) that allows for wider corridors and greater freedom of movement. And in the name of all that is (un-)holy, please use a different color. Something more realistic would be outstanding. |
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I recently made an Arch-Villain for a story arc I have involving Council. I made him max slider on everything. Body size, height... huge body scale.|
Originally Posted by Zyphoid
QFT
Really, I would like to see our height slider go to 10' AND the population of Paragon and the isles be shrunk by about 1+2' |
I couldn't find him amongst the regular enemies. He was only 8 feet tall. Regular Council minions are like 9, with lieutenants being 12 and bosses being 15. My max size Arch-Villain was the smallest character there.
At least in AE, we should be able to make larger units. But you're still right about regular NPCs being too big. My main character is 6 feet tall, which is tall for a girl, but she's still dwarfed by basically everything.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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It's not even Hellions and Council and Outcasts.
The chain smoking, strung-out looking civilian chicks shoving you aside as you try to train at Ms. Liberty are still a foot taller than your 6' hero. What's up with that?
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You're right, we totally need a package slider for male toons.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
we should be able to make larger units
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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I was going to go there, but it's nice to see that someone else took care of it for me.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
You're right, we totally need a package slider for male toons.
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Thanks!
It's not a question of our sizes, it's a question of a lot of things not being to scale. Civilians are, if the height ruler is to be believed, around 6'6'' the lot of them, and a lot of Hellions and Skulls and enemies modelled on them are huge, as well. By contrast, newer enemies and those based on player models are not as gigantic. Crey agents, for instance, are tall, but not absurdly so, and Malta aren't really all that big. And outside of the Praefectus, the Cimeroran Traitors are human-sized, as well.
Of course, the University tutors are TITANIC! They started out tall as a mountain, and apparently someone finally caught enough flak over the "Mister 'I can't make an NPC less than 8 feet tall'" joke and lowered their height... A little. They're still around 7 feet tall, the lot of 'em, and they have no reason to be that big. Steel Canyon University is depressing. I have to stand on the back rests of chairs just for an average-height character to look them in the eye.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I definitely /sign fixing the NPC heights, across the board. It's just daft.
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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.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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I'm like 5 foot 6 in RL, but I had to make my avatar an extra foot taller just to look normal beside the NPCs
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Y'know, one thing I'd like to see - aside from the "no ears" option, and maybe some fins or other monster ears - would be a second slot under ears that would enable you to add earrings.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
Speaking of ears, why on earth isn't there a "no ears" option for the full tights on the head? I was making a character and realized that if I wanted tights over his head, I'd still have his ears poking through them in all their glory. I could make them elf ears or vampire ears or goofy long imp ears but they had to be ears
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I think it would be great if there were maybe 4-6 earring types that were applied to the different ear models and then selectable and colorable.
I think it would also be good to add some bangles for arm and wrist.
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If this is the case, it sounds like server lag in the ITF could be greatly reduced by improving pathfinding algorithms and by causing Shield Defense to run its calculations less frequently.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
At one point someone told us that there were two performance issues on that map. One was the number of patrols and ambushes and another was the Shield Defense powerset of the Cimeroran mobs. Consider what that powerset does. Several times a second, for every Cimeroran mob (well, the ones with Shields) the server has to figure which other mobs are within a certain radius around it and use that to control the defense and mez protection of each mob.
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I'd like to see a map editor that would enable me to make, for instance, a hotel where there are maybe 20 floors and an atrium that allows fliers to travel to any floor off the atrium.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I would occasionally like to enter an office building that doesn't look like a scene from Being John Malkovich. And to be honest, when the building layouts are actually logical, it actually makes players *think* more: if this is the lobby, does that mean the elevators are that way; if I want to get to the storage rooms, would they be in the back of the building? Random layouts just make me think "run real fast and kill everything." I rarely even have the sense of being in a building so much as a concrete hedge maze with elevators.
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I'd also like to have the ability to create a building map where the interior fighting can spill outside, or onto the roof, as you attempt to capture the fleeing villain.
I'd also like to have instanced exterior/interior maps where the player is outside a building and is faced with multiple doors on the building and must choose an entry point that actually reflects where they will appear on the interior map. For that matter, if there is a team, different team members can pick different doors to enter.
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Accessories? Yes please. I would love to be able to add jewelry to my toon's civillian clothes. Or hell even some of their hero outfits.|
Originally Posted by konshu
Y'know, one thing I'd like to see - aside from the "no ears" option, and maybe some fins or other monster ears - would be a second slot under ears that would enable you to add earrings.
I think it would be great if there were maybe 4-6 earring types that were applied to the different ear models and then selectable and colorable. I think it would also be good to add some bangles for arm and wrist. |
Another thing I would like to see is weaponry for blasters and other ranged toons (outside of assault rifles and bows). A lot of the arcane-themed characters out there would really benefit from say, staffs, wands, or even orb type weapons. Of course, that would probably require new animations.
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Because this was quoted. I have an excuse to dredge it up. I have two things to say about this.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I would occasionally like to enter an office building that doesn't look like a scene from Being John Malkovich. And to be honest, when the building layouts are actually logical, it actually makes players *think* more: if this is the lobby, does that mean the elevators are that way; if I want to get to the storage rooms, would they be in the back of the building? Random layouts just make me think "run real fast and kill everything." I rarely even have the sense of being in a building so much as a concrete hedge maze with elevators.
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First and most important, those closed doors we see in office buildings are there to imply that there is more to the area, we just don't go there. For instance, where we find a corridor circling a large area of "blackness, there are doors to that to suggest this isn't a void, but rather it has rooms in it that we just don't go into. I don't really have a problem with that... Where it makes sense. Offices are a good example of it making sense. Warehouses... Not so much. They don't have any doors to suggest there may be other sections closed off. At most, they have cargo load doors to suggest there's a lorry parking spot OUTSIDE the building, which a review of the outside of any warehouse-holding building, there isn't.
And then there are Arachnos bases. Who the HELL thought any of that made sense? Why are their bases essentially see-through mesh corridors hanging on the inside of a black hole. Does it strike no-one as absurd that the apparent intended look was that Arachnos bases were built inside some kind of titanic, pitch-black chasm just... Floating in mid air? That kind of thing wouldn't make sense even as an alien construct, and it just serves to make Arachnos all the more goofy. They're SO adamant about being bad that they excavated the inside of the planet just so their bases could float in darkness. Ugh...
Secondly, I completely agree on the notion of logical design over "dungeon offices." With or without the out of doors, locations simply look better when they make sense. I refer to Oni when I talk about these things, because the game has buildings that ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE BUILDINGS, both on the inside and on the outside. That TCTF HQ you get to see from the outside? All of its internal space makes sense and actually fits snugly on the inside of what you see from down on the street. All, like, 10 floors of it, which is an amazing design. Even when you can't see the outside, even when you're underground, Oni's maps still manage to feel like real structures, rather than chaos architecture. And it's not even that hard to do. The University instance is a pretty good example. Instead of making odd-shaped rooms floating in blackness, just make rooms that fit together snug a are subdivided into smaller rooms within them. In fact, I wouldn't be terribly upset if each large office map were broken down to a grid of large squares, each as a predefined set of smaller rooms inside it.
Or, heck, take a cue from UFO: Enemy Unknown, AKA X-Com: UFO Defence. That gave you outside locations complete with buildings with realistic insides, and it gave you inside locations (like attacks on your base) that had what I described above - large sections or "facilities" as the game called them, formed into large square blocks, each subdivided into basically a corridor and a few rooms. It made the bases feel a lot more realistic, even though the process of making them was so simplistic. Simplistic enough, in fact, that they were made by the PLAYER in a Dune: Battle for Arakis sort of style.
I've heard tell that the buildings and instances in Going Rogue will "make sense," so I have my fingers crossed to see that.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I definitely /sign fixing the NPC heights, across the board. It's just daft.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I'm like 5 foot 6 in RL, but I had to make my avatar an extra foot taller just to look normal beside the NPCs
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It's also disconcerting for Mercenary Masterminds; I had to make my own as tall as Michael Jordan just so he could look his own men in the eye.
If NPCs use the same character building system that we as players do, it should be really easy to fix this.
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Originally Posted by Alanari
Another thing I would like to see is weaponry for blasters and other ranged toons (outside of assault rifles and bows). A lot of the arcane-themed characters out there would really benefit from say, staffs, wands, or even orb type weapons. Of course, that would probably require new animations.
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I concur
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Because this was quoted. I have an excuse to dredge it up. I have two things to say about this.
First and most important, those closed doors we see in office buildings are there to imply that there is more to the area, we just don't go there. For instance, where we find a corridor circling a large area of "blackness, there are doors to that to suggest this isn't a void, but rather it has rooms in it that we just don't go into. I don't really have a problem with that... Where it makes sense. Offices are a good example of it making sense. Warehouses... Not so much. They don't have any doors to suggest there may be other sections closed off. At most, they have cargo load doors to suggest there's a lorry parking spot OUTSIDE the building, which a review of the outside of any warehouse-holding building, there isn't. And then there are Arachnos bases. Who the HELL thought any of that made sense? Why are their bases essentially see-through mesh corridors hanging on the inside of a black hole. Does it strike no-one as absurd that the apparent intended look was that Arachnos bases were built inside some kind of titanic, pitch-black chasm just... Floating in mid air? That kind of thing wouldn't make sense even as an alien construct, and it just serves to make Arachnos all the more goofy. They're SO adamant about being bad that they excavated the inside of the planet just so their bases could float in darkness. Ugh... Secondly, I completely agree on the notion of logical design over "dungeon offices." With or without the out of doors, locations simply look better when they make sense. I refer to Oni when I talk about these things, because the game has buildings that ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE BUILDINGS, both on the inside and on the outside. That TCTF HQ you get to see from the outside? All of its internal space makes sense and actually fits snugly on the inside of what you see from down on the street. All, like, 10 floors of it, which is an amazing design. Even when you can't see the outside, even when you're underground, Oni's maps still manage to feel like real structures, rather than chaos architecture. And it's not even that hard to do. The University instance is a pretty good example. Instead of making odd-shaped rooms floating in blackness, just make rooms that fit together snug a are subdivided into smaller rooms within them. In fact, I wouldn't be terribly upset if each large office map were broken down to a grid of large squares, each as a predefined set of smaller rooms inside it. Or, heck, take a cue from UFO: Enemy Unknown, AKA X-Com: UFO Defence. That gave you outside locations complete with buildings with realistic insides, and it gave you inside locations (like attacks on your base) that had what I described above - large sections or "facilities" as the game called them, formed into large square blocks, each subdivided into basically a corridor and a few rooms. It made the bases feel a lot more realistic, even though the process of making them was so simplistic. Simplistic enough, in fact, that they were made by the PLAYER in a Dune: Battle for Arakis sort of style. I've heard tell that the buildings and instances in Going Rogue will "make sense," so I have my fingers crossed to see that. |
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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.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Yeah I can certainly get behind the suggestions for more realistic building interiors and re-scaling NPC models to be more realistic compared to our heroes/villains. Both of those things do irk me.
Maybe I imagined it, but I seem to recall that around the time of Herocon there was something about instanced maps in Praetoria being linked logically to mission doors in the buildings of each zone, so that the building size/style/layout would match inside and out, and that the enemy groups outside of the building would match those present inside the building - and also that randomised doorways for instance missions would be a thing of the past for new content in CoH/V. I can't find the link now (admittedly I didn't spend long looking for it and my search-fu is weak) so did I dream it?
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You are correct.|
Originally Posted by Lord Mayhem
Yeah I can certainly get behind the suggestions for more realistic building interiors and re-scaling NPC models to be more realistic compared to our heroes/villains. Both of those things do irk me.
Maybe I imagined it, but I seem to recall that around the time of Herocon there was something about instanced maps in Praetoria being linked logically to mission doors in the buildings of each zone, so that the building size/style/layout would match inside and out, and that the enemy groups outside of the building would match those present inside the building - and also that randomised doorways for instance missions would be a thing of the past for new content in CoH/V. I can't find the link now (admittedly I didn't spend long looking for it and my search-fu is weak) so did I dream it? |
What concerns me, however, is how the Devs dont seem to ever go back to old content. Or if so (Hollows, Faultline, Cape mish) it's very, very rarely. This whole emphasis on 'New shinies!' often leaves a lot of the older content, literally, in the dust.
Hell, even the New Cape mission has a HUGE error in it. The mission is meant to be in the same building "Just down the hall" (quote from the actual contact)...instead you get send across the park to some random, non-descript building. The door in the City Hall is THERE, its gets used in the Villain 5thSF, so....WHY in the name of common sense did they chose not to use it?! Oo
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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.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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If it was already covered, I missed it. I'd like an option to NOT go talk to [whoever] -- the ones that introduce you to other areas, like the Hollows, Bloody Bay, etc.
When a contact says "Go talk to [whoever]", give us both an accept and a decline option. If we choose decline, then flag it as already done, same as if we'd actually gone and done it, and let us move on. Hanging that on the existing "talk about what else is going on" would be VERY logical.
Yes, I know all the workarounds. Yes, I know it doesn't take very long. Yes, I know it's valuable info for new players (which is why I don't advocate eliminating them completely).
But none of that makes it any less annoying the 20th, 30th, 40th time I have to go do it. I can't even imagine how annoying it must be the 100th, 200th, 300th time.
Please, just give us the option, okay?
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Yes, yes, for the love of God, yes. If I have to do the Architect tutorial one more time for that putz who simply WILL. NOT. GO. AWAY... I may go more mad than I already am.
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Originally Posted by Tripp Hazzard
If it was already covered, I missed it. I'd like an option to NOT go talk to [whoever] -- the ones that introduce you to other areas, like the Hollows, Bloody Bay, etc.
When a contact says "Go talk to [whoever]", give us both an accept and a decline option. If we choose decline, then flag it as already done, same as if we'd actually gone and done it, and let us move on. Hanging that on the existing "talk about what else is going on" would be VERY logical. Yes, I know all the workarounds. Yes, I know it doesn't take very long. Yes, I know it's valuable info for new players (which is why I don't advocate eliminating them completely). But none of that makes it any less annoying the 20th, 30th, 40th time I have to go do it. I can't even imagine how annoying it must be the 100th, 200th, 300th time. Please, just give us the option, okay? |
Here's another one that would be nice (though it's likely already been mentioned and, if so, I apologize).
Someone mentioned that the tailor screen shouldn't be modal (that is, take up the whole screen so that you can't do anything else) but modeless (a widow, so that you can access menus and the chat window).
The same should be true for the enhancement management screen. It really blows when I can't see my chat window for tells or that someone's attacking me because I'm managing enhancements in Brickstown and an ambush has shown up or someone's trained a group of baddies nearby who thought I looked like a fun/interesting target.
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Yeah, either get rid of those or let us opt OUT of them. Once a contact wants me to talk to Jim Temblor, ALL my contacts will insist I go visit him, even if I don't want to. This is, plain and simple, bad game design, because he isn't necessary. David Wincott is even LESS necessary. Kill those missions, or at least let those of us who've done them at least once to just skip them. They don't give rewards, anyway.
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Originally Posted by Tripp Hazzard
If it was already covered, I missed it. I'd like an option to NOT go talk to [whoever] -- the ones that introduce you to other areas, like the Hollows, Bloody Bay, etc.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Mission Architect Handyman