Forgotten functional architecture: Information Terminals

I've been playing well over a year and every once in a while in Paragon City I come across a strange device situated around the city. A big, boxy terminal with spinning signs on the top, you click into it and it supposedly shows you the top healers and so forth in the city, as well as non-existant news updates.

I'm pretty sure it was something to do with PvP, but you'd think that even if it was left all this time it would show something on it. Even if it has characters who have long since left.

I thought maybe these could be repurposed for something, but I remember the distinct lack of terminals in the Rogue Isles. If it were to be changed into something useful, the villains would be out of the loop.

I don't know, does anybody even notice these terminals, and if they do, do they care if it ever has a purpose, if they disappeared, would anybody shed a tear? What on earth could these terminals be repurposed for?

The terminals actually pre-dated PvP, they were added in Issue 2. They used to show who was killing the most of a given enemy group in zone, among other information. They don't show anything anymore because they've been disabled, either because they stopped working right or a dev somewhere along the line decided they were stupid and should be disabled.

I agree that it would be nice to see them repurposed, but I don't see why this should necessarily exclude villains. Just add Arachnos-themed terminals into the RI zones.

I actually was thinking about this the other day. That they should be repurposed somehow for something useful. Wasn't sure what but I do feel that they could be cool.. somehow. :P

I've long been for retooling the Terminals as massive help and tip files of all types (the above is a good idea for inclusion).

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I can think of a few things they could be put to use for:

PvP - as either a place to show pvp stats or somewhere to announce that you are looking for a duel.

Supergroups - another place to show the top SGs or a place to announce recruitment

AE - You could pay with AE tickets to have your Arcs announced on the terminal.

Teaming and TFs - If you have the star, you could post on the terminal that you are looking for more players for a regular team or for a specific TF.

maybe they could just have patch notes on them?

Could use it for a TF/Hamidon/Rikti Raid/Zone Event notifier

For the first 3 just have it so someone can say they are starting or putting together one of them

The last could just be auto posted.

The first would require a new data table which is pretty easy to create and the second would just require zone event messages to be posted to the table. >.>

Quick simple, extremely useful...

weren't they disabled for performance reasons?
or am I thinking of the notorious and shelved City Vault....

In any case, they were fun back when I was farming DA regularly, I could check in and see how many zombies I'd mulched.

Simplest way to re-purpose them would be make them a contact, maybe dispensing missions around the zone (bank robbery in progress here! riot here! stuff like that).

It may be my paranoia, but I think one of the reasons they were disabled was to prevent spammers from getting player information.

As far as repurposing, I'd like to see them turned into open-air versions of the empowerment stations you can build for SG bases. Buffs for sale = INF sink

They're useful for scoping out new enemy groups before they're announced

I just want to be a Nemesis nemesis again.

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I miss the functioning terminals, they made for a great mini-game as I raced the circuit in PI trying to get and maintain top score on the killboard.

I miss the functioning terminals and I know others do to. It's one of those things that come up in conversation almost semi regularly and everyone involved all think that the terminals coming to life would be most excellent.

Mind you, not ala Voltron or some "Attack of the Terminals" coming to life but once again serving a purpose sort of life.Terminals that served a game/server wide purpose would be ever so lovely please and thank you.

Even when the terminals worked, they never worked correctly. Completely useless. Back in the day there numerous suggestions to re-purpose them. Personally, I always thought they should contain game info -- a list of TFs, the level ranges, their location, etc. All things like that. Have a mission to kill 40 Rikti? Look at the terminal which would tell you all the zones Rikti occur in and what their levels are.

That would be a lot of work, but worth it, I think.

What about a way to pay your base rent without having to go to Atlas park all the time? I'd love to see an 'auto' base rent facility that pays the rent automatically and sends an email to a nominted person or persons to let them know it was paid. Or base rent got rid of completely but I doubt that'll happen.

Game info would be good, details of the TF's, groups, a little bit of history, common places they can be found, maybe some history on the surviving eight etc. Would be a good resource to have in game to allow new players to look stuff up themselves without just asking.

I massively approve of these being redesigned to become functional. They have potential to become something neat, such as a help station, or a bulletin board, a contact for certain missions, or even all of the above!

In Talos island there is a newsie who shouts about new additions to the game. Mentioning the train station at Founders', Crotoa, etc.

I think the terminals should be changed into this. With each issue, update the text to give clues and hints about new content and new happenings.

In Asheron's Call, they used to have Town Criers who after each patch would tell you information about new additions. I really think this would be a good purpose for them.

I remember in some early alpha version of the game those terminals would be places to take generic missions from Hero organizations, instead of loading the hero Contacts down with many, many filler missions they're junked up with.

And then they became a slack system to follow zone stats but were either broken or disabled on purpose (i don't really buy in that 'RMT'ers were using them to get names to spam!' or 'newbies would bother people they saw on them for PL!'...that's not giving the dev's ability to break stuff accidentally enough credit; they break stuff accidentally ALL THE TIME)


Since they don't exist in the Rogue Isles except for a few broken ones I dunno what they could really do with them. I'd rather they actually update the stupid useless Newsie NPCs with new information instead of put them on the Terminals...and generic missions come off your police scanner...best I could think of is make them little spots you could access Wentworth's from or something. Instead of having to hop back over to Talos from PI with a full load of salvage junk for market, maybe you could just ditch it all onto the terminal.

Hmmm...

Well...

You could do some interesting things with them. Convert them into teleport beacons, for instance. (That way, you can call a friend from another zone to the terminal.)

Or, perhaps, you could use them as a way to check certain character information. (How much Infamy/Influence and Prestige you have, how close your are to an alignment change, etc.)

I dunno.

It's a small thing, but I think it would be cool if you could use them to do a name check without logging out.