A plea in the name of in-game events and Giant Monsters everywhere!

I just want to say, this is the first.. "forum worthy" complaint I guess? - I've ever bothered to write out. That's how adamant I am about the following ideas/suggestions. It's a pretty good suggestion.. you should read it.

While reading this topic over how the Supernatural Banners Event was something that was rarely succeeded due to lack of participation pretty much every single time they happen, I started to think. Lack of participation was a problem, but what I thought was a bigger problem, and even the reason for that lack of participation, was the lack of enough incentive to do the event at all. This made me consider pretty much all other events in the game - be it Monster spawns like Lusca, Jurrasik, or Kraken or zone events like Hellion Arson, Supernatural Banners, or Supa-Trolls Street Rave.

One of my fondest memories of this game has always been the grouping of many heroes (or Villains . . . Or both?) to take down one massive threat.
Unfortunately such a small percentage of events in this game get that kind of attention. The RWZ Mothership Raid, the Zombie Outbreak and what could potentially be the absolute best: Rikti Zone Invasions, just to name a few.

I have two main suggestions for events, none of which I believe are out of the question by any means.

One suggestion is the increasing of incentive to do these events. The main solution for this and probably the easiest would be the changing the rewards somehow. More dynamic rewards, or even higher payout of rewards. This of course would also have to take into consideration the difficulty of each individual event, and the rate at which they occur in-game.

For example: Maybe, as it stands, Giant Monsters should yield a more rewarding amount of Merits - end of story, decent incentive right there. Or maybe Giant Monsters should yield a much more rewarding amount of Merits while simultaneously spawning less often and being more challenging to compensate. Preferably the second idea, as this would serve to give Giant Monsters spawns - and events all together - an even more epic feel when they occur and are participated in. There are really dozens of solutions too.
And not to mention badges, there are damn near 750 (I think.) badges in this game, there just has to be room for multiple monster-kill badges, right?

Sushi Lover: Defeat Lusca 10 times.
You have defended dock workers of independence port vigorously from the sea creature known as Lusca, they have deemed you "Sushi Lover" if only because they love you so much.
Sea Sick: Defeat Lusca 25 times
You have slain the persistent beast Lusca time and time again, maybe that last bite wasn't such a good idea.

I'm not saying or suggesting all of these things (including my suggestions below) be implemented. But as far as increasing incentive to partake in these events goes, reward changes/additions like these would - I believe - do the trick. (They are what would make me want to do them.)

My second suggestion points the finger more toward the cosmetic issues with many (not all) of the events. My main problem: why should our Heroes and Villains ... Or PRAETORIANS?! feel like this is a threat that should be dealt with?

Let's look at a current successful event - The Mothership Raid. On top of yielding the best amount of Vanguard Merits possible (incentive through reward), the whole thing just feels urgent and epic. The pylons are powering this *massive* ship which is also the stronghold of the invading Rikti here on earth. Take them out and then what do you do? Jump, fly, and teleport on TOP of the damn thing, and start slaying thousands of aliens right where they sleep. It's seriously awesome. Same thing for the Zombie Outbreak, the zombies come to *you*, they are everywhere and it is total chaos when teams group together.

But the Hellions... Eh, these guys aren't as pissed off at the world as they should be. They are the gutter of Villain-dome. Street rats that any hero past security level 15 can disregard entirely and leave up to the newbies. When these guys go insane and start setting buildings on fire in an attempt to ultimately explode them; why in the hell would they stick to 1 random, what appears to be, ..apartment complex? They need to wreak some variety of actual chaos. Burn more buildings, hurt wandering citizens, make us want to stop you more.
Or the Trolls... First off these guys are just blasted out of their heads on Superadine, and they just want to wreck havoc and party to the end of time. Have you seen what Superadine does to these guys? Something tells me they should have a much harder time controlling themselves and all of their actions, they should be so unbelievably irresponsible and chaotic that the police can't handle them alone. Yet what happens? They run through a designated path and end up standing around doing ... nothing. At the very least, keep them in a certain radius of their spawn points, and make them actually cause harm to people and things around them. Make them do what they are supposed to be doing. Dancing or smashing.

Also perhaps these event-enemies can get the Zombie/Rikti treatment and have no level, so that you can't simply out level them in two days and only go back if you're a badge hunter.

This same idea applies to Giant Monsters just as easily.
I love taking a look down the docks of IP to see if Lusca is around - and of course, there he is - all alone, reigning (what should be) ungodly hell down upon those poor poor Dock workers. But unfortunately those Dock Workers are completely safe all grouped up tight, and Lusca is doing absolutely, you guess it, nothing.

This same scenario happens with almost all the sadly forgotten events that we've (I've?) enjoyed in the past and should still want to partake in today.
Kraken! There's thugs and mystics and even photographers - A hapless citizen for goodness sake! - all around you just waiting for you to crush and wreck havoc upon! (I'd say there are also buildings for you to destroy, but collateral damage is nonexistant, so it'd look rather silly if he did that).
But Kraken would prefer to do nothing. He's only interested in fighting Super Heroes. Kraken shouldn't be that smart, he should want to HULK SMASH more than Hulk himself, so should Jurrasik, so should Adamastor, Pallidin, Babbage, Deathsurge, you name it - they are Monsters!

The very least I want is for them to just not stand around (actually wander/rampage about) and to just attack things, citizens, NPC's, (if it's possible, dumpsters, cars, fire hydrants, just like in Mayhem missions). Be a threat.

Now my dream solution would be that the monsters eventually wander outside of their zone (starting from their normal spawn points after staying there for some time), so that eventually it would run across more densely populated areas and hopefully face enough heroes willing to band together and destroy it. (Just like in the zombie raids - bring the threat to us)

For example lets say Adamastor spawns. He waits around his graveyard for awhile smashing stuff and NPCs (this waiting period can serve those who would prefer to go and actually hunt down the monsters), and eventually make his way to the big hill at Talos Island train and do his havoc there; an area teaming with NPCs and citizens and a spot enough players pass through to garner attention, certainly more than the depths of Dark-F-ing-Astoria.

Personally I just think that Giant Monsters and chaotic events like these are such iconic threats of the Super Hero/Villain world that it's a shame they are completed (if that) and never considered again by many players. I don't even think Event Alerts should be a removable chat, I think it should important enough to Paragon City to alert it's Heroes of monsters in a way that they have no choice but to read that small line of text. Or for villains, maybe the local Mayhem Mission contact can call *you* and tell you about a monster appearance. A pop-up diologue would do this perfectly. Basically I just want giant monsters and events to have a much higher presence in the city and isles. I want to want to partake in these events!

Anyways I realize that right now we're amidst all this Going Rogue business and there are countless things on the table right now and as usual, and with that in mind I might just end up bringing this back up in the future. But I would love some input on this, because all I have right now is my own perspective on it and that's as biased as bias can be.

I think a lot of the giant monsters suffer not just from low rewards but from a "been there, done that" mentality. It's very cool and a lot of fun the first time you do it, but by the third or forth time it's lost it's luster.

Lusca in particular has extremely low rewards for the amount of time it takes to defeat all the tentacles and the head. I would award at least 1 merit per part.

Another reward that would spur interest in giant monsters would be to have a guaranteed set recipe drop for your level from all pools. So you might win the lottery and get a Luck of The Gambler +recharge or you might get a Lethargic Repose. But I think just having the chance at getting a good recipe would encourage participation from players at all levels.

I don't know how recipes didn't even cross my mind, that seems like an extremely enticing and viable solution. Recipes, salavage, you name it, if people want it and it's granted in a reasonable and and balanced way through GM's then ... why not I guess?

It's hard to say. I was hoping for more GM interest when they simply added merits, but it is pretty small. I love 'em and will jump at the chance to fight them, but then I'm on record as being a little weird.

Just a couple of weeks ago I held an SG event GM hunt running through all of them that was pretty fun. We had one team of 8 and a few of them were not from the SG and we had members switch in and out depending on which monster was next. We ran through all of the zone GMs (including Paladin) in a couple of hours, ending with Lusca. We all had a great time, but then we were all interested in the first place so that doesn't really much address the "problem".

It's hard to say if anything at all would help. It seems to be a thing one is interested in or not. Wouldn't object to them trying to get some interest going, but I'm not sure at all what kind of results would occur.

I think the only problem with increasing the rewards is that if you get a good debuffer, they fall over like they're made of toothpicks. I almost missed Babbage entirely because I stopped to pick up some insp.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

If there was a reward increase, I think a spawning and difficulty change (less spawning, more difficult) could be implemented to compensate. Particularly the 'More Difficult' portion, because you're right, get one well slotted Rad in there and it's over.

That's why the all pool guaranteed recipe drop is appealing: There are so many junky recipes that the odds of getting a good one are against you. But the more GMs you kill, the better your odds of getting something really good.

It's a strong incentive without being overpowered or farmable.

There is a fine line between just enough and creating spawn camping.

They could probably push it to 3 or 4 merits but much higher would create spawn camping.

Also server population certianly makes special events hard for lower population servers. Also, the longer the event goes, the less people care. So yeah, there is some of that "been there done that".

I certianly would like a little more but with how busy the devs are with GR and dealing with AE farms I doubt they have much time to address this.

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Originally Posted by TwigDeath I just want to say, this is the first.. "forum worthy" complaint I guess? - I've ever bothered to write out. That's how adamant I am about the following ideas/suggestions. It's a pretty good suggestion.. you should read it. <read>

I'm all for anything that puts some life back into the streets of this game. I used to love when street sweeping was a rewarding activity and you'd actually see people in this game. Now there could be a million people on at the same time and they are all hidden in instanced missions and plugged into VR machines at AE whilst tumble weed patrolling the streets is the main thing you see between missions.

I don't think they have the ability to make GM's more interesting. Even if they could I doubt they'd go back and rework existing ones/events as they'd rather just pile on another event. Which means it has to pretty much come down to reward rate. Which quite frankly would need to be very high to draw people out of existing paradigms.

If the game made some attempt to encourage people to play in the world instead of on office map 03 it would be a much simplier step to then get them to engage in events and GM's. Big, beautiful, empty world. Unfortunately the team decided to abandon the world in this game in favor of all-instanced-all-the-time. I'd love for it to change back, but 'how' is the question that needs to be addressed before they can even begin tackling event/GM participation.

Honestly, even Praetoria which looks very attractive, will likely be reduced to spending 80% of your time on Praetorian Office map 01 and then you wizz by the beautiful world to get to Praetorian Warehouse map 04. Unless of course the dev team has done a complete reversal on how they view this game, but I sort of doubt it.

But ya, /signed for anything that gives life back to the world in this game.

I would like to see more also , tired of the Banners but then again I don't have to do them either , unless I want all my toons to have the badge

I guess Giant Monsters and events like Hellion Arson are just some of those golden opportunities that got shoved behind the other golden opportunities littered throughout this game and it's great world. I say opportunities because there are so many awesome things that exist within the CoH world that I'd imagine newer players never even eventually experience. It's a shame many of the trials don't get any love, from Sewer to Eden. An even bigger shame are entire zones that don't get any love and have concepts behind them that should make them atleast as enticing and epic-feeling as Sirens Call or The Hollows. Creys Folley, Eden, Firebase Zulu, Cascade Archipelago, The Storm Palace


.... But that's a different rant for a different time.


Praetoria is beautiful and terrifying, Paragon city is, well, a huge awesome city, the Rogue Isles are gritty and mean but still full of life, it's a shame we spend so much time in instances and in-doors. All I know is that a reworking of many of these events might just get people interested in something that's always been what I consider wasted opportunities. Because it would personally get me interested. A recipe drop still sounds ideal if not coupled with increase in Merits (It just isn't worth it for the amount of Merits you get currently. Especially when you consider the fact that 1 high-end Uncommon Recipe is 50-bloody-merits.)

Frosticus put it right, basically "/signed for anything that gives life back to the world in this game."

The biggest problem with GMs it that they're just a big sack of HP. Ideally, each GM encounter should be different. Lusca is close, because you have to be careful of all the tentacles as you go through defeating them and then the head itself.

With regard to the Deadly Apocalypse, I don't think they should have tied it to costume salvage outside of Halloween. I don't think it should be available outside of Halloween at all. In a Zombie Apocalypse, you can hang out in one spot and kill a bunch of zombies, or hang out with your team killing tons of zombies and getting some badges if you don't already have them, or ignore it and there's no harm to anyone else.

With the Deadly Apocalypse, you need either one full, capable, and coordinated team, two full coordinated teams, or 3+ teams participating. If there's not enough interest in the Deadly Apocalypse, nobody can finish it. If there's not enough interest in the Zombie Apocalypse (or, for that matter, Rikti Invasion), it doesn't matter. Deadly Apocalypse should be restricted to the Halloween Event.

I think the Zombie Apocalypse should be year-round. I think the Supernatural Banners should be Halloween exclusive.. Zombies are always a threat, and an awesome one at that :P

Somewhere in there I managed to mix up Deadly and Zombie apocalypses, I'm with you now hehe.


Honestly I think it would actually be worth it to - at some point - rather than push new things, go back and rework the old. Nothing like Faultline revamp, that's asking for quite a bit (except when it comes to Boomtown, that place needs life so bad), but old things like those mentioned, from events to trials to giant monsters. Things that are currently there already, they just need.. I don't know, a revival for the modern day City of X player.


A lot of these events just seem plain ... outdated. It's like old costume pieces. Why would I ever choose the old plain "wings" headpiece when I have this new awesome very detailed elegant Valkyrie wings head piece?

Not much to say but great stuff..

It would be great if the devs could just hit a post with a wink or even PM you a wink.. Even if it's just to say " Hey we seen this and we are listening.. "

A redname recognition in anyway would be more than awesome. But they're busy people so there's only hope.

As I stated though, I may just end up bringing this idea back up in the future, maybe on a different forum, after this one dies. I'm really adamant about giving these events some eventual love/attention, though. As it stands, it feels like some of them are just plain broken - because they're so lifeless lol.
Also more perspectives on this would really clear some of the fog on the situation (at least in my head).

This is a good idea, it is sad the Monsters just stand around all alone, they should be having fun breaking/killing stuff! I miss the old days where you could take out them solo heheh.... ok I had 1 person with me but still.

Maybe he meant "I miss the old days where anyone who could afford SO's could take out them solo heheh...."

I just might do that then, thanks.