late game content: Suppliers

opprime28 · 08-21-2010 03:29 PM

-Batman had Lucious Fox
-Deadpool had Weasel
-The Punisher had Linus Lieberman
-Blade had Whistler
-James Bond even had Q.

It's a common theme in the hero/villain genre for the character to have his "go to" guy: a supplier, informant, or some combination thereof. They're the guys who are plugged in to the "know" and who can get what the character needs. This is my suggestion for a fun, effective, and easily implemented way to introduce the "supplier" concept to the game as well as add interesting 30+ content. I'll explain the concept in a bullet point explanation below.

The Supplier System:

Upon completion of your first mission at level 30, you recieve a new contact pop up, (though slightly different than most) explaining that one of the villains you'd defeated dropped a slip of paper detailing someone he was going to meet with to get in to the "big leagues". The paper leads you to a man sitting in a booth in pocket D.
The neutral contact in pocket D assumes you're the man whom you'd defeated, and introduces you to an arc that, once completed, gives you a temp power allowing both you (and him) access to "The Network".
The Network is a small zone similar to pocket D or Oro, which houses a hidden underground network of weapons and information smuggling. The arc you completed with the man in pocket D has made him a "supplier" in the network. He is now your contact in there, offering you repeatable missions, more challenging to complete than normal missions, that offer special payouts in the form of temp powers.
The missions are random, and thus so are the payouts linked to them, preventing you from exploiting this too much. The more challenging the mission, the better the temp power payout.
you (and your contact) must build "cred" in the network, meaning that while the missions you're given are random, they come from one of three pools. Access to the 1st pool is granted to all members of the underground, and offers the easiest missions with the weakest temp power payouts. Access to the 2nd pool is granted to "reputable" members of the underground, and offers more challenging missions with better temp power payouts. Access to the final pool (a much smaller pool of special missions) is granted only to "respected" members and offers the most challenging missions. These give the best temp power payouts. You move up in cred by completing x number of missions from your current pool.
Once you have access to a pool you can choose a random mission from that pool or any below it, meaning a "respected" member can choose to run a simpler pool 1 mission or run a more difficult pool 3 mission, though they are still random from the chosen pool.
You will have the option of "claiming" the temp power after completing a mission or selling it on the network's market. This gives players incentive to run missions for the network despite its randomness. Even if you don't need a given temp (you already have a similar power, etc.) someone else likely will.
Any Player with access to the Network can access its market to buy the temp powers other users chose not to claim. The supply of any given temp power is dependent on it being up for sale, however, just like other markets in the game. This would result in both raising the value of the temps as well as help preventing 8 man teams from just popping in to The Network to load up on nukes for TFs, raids, etc. There's no guarentee that there will be even one, let alone enough for a team.
Though the smaller pools' temps may not be worth the time when it comes to selling for inf, the more you run, the higher your cred, unlocking the ability to run the much more challenging missions for the more valuable advanced tech temp powers. This should allow for a constant stream of less powerful temps being for sale at reasonable prices, while the more powerful temps remain rare.
Most, if not all, of the temp powers will based on existing powers/tech in the game. For example, one mission could involve infiltrating a renegade Longbow base (the renegade faction from RWZ?), giving you a Longbow Body Armor temp (+smash/lethal resistance) and another may have you stealing malta tech for the network, rewarding you with a malta sapping gun temp power. Another might involve infiltrating a Fake Nemesis factory and rewards you with a Nemesis personal force field generator temp. Another could have you infiltrating a Rikti ship and rewards you with a rikti drone's optical scanner (the reveal vet reward temp to reveal maps or a +acc boost.)

Examples from each pool might include:

-Pool 1 (primarily minor defensive temps) : Crey Cryo pistol, Knives of Artemis stealth generator, Rikti Drone scanner (reveal temp), Arachnos smoke bomb, Devouring Earth sleeping seeds, Longbow body armor (smashing/lethal resistance) etc.

-Pool 2 (defensive and offensive): Fake Nem Pff, Malta Sapping gun, Advanced Lowbow body armor (smashing/lethal defense and defense debuff resistance), A circle of Thorns crystal shard (placed +regen or recovery), Devouring Earth cairn, etc.

-Pool 3 (advanced tech) warbug nukes, advanced shivan shards, RV Heavies, etc.
Since the network is a smuggling ring that doesn't "take sides" it would be accessible to all four factions (if they've completed the arc to unlock it) and the missions would be coopable, though either only the mission holder would get the temp power or you'd need to restrict team size to smaller teams to prevent exploitation.

In short, you'd have repeatable, challenging end game content that pays out personally with usable, valuable, and unique temp powers you can either keep yourself or sell to others. The challenges would be equal to the rewards, meaning that a user can get the tier three advanced tech for use on TFs etc, but only via a mission roughly equal to hunting them in Bloody Bay or Warbug, etc. The difference is that they can buy or sell these temps to other players, also. I would suggest this NOT being a blind market. Let the players who have earned the temps decide what the temp is worth, and let the market decide if they're right or not. All of this added content would come in a way that fits within the comics universal lore and offers a new, fun challenge to players.

What do you all think? Also, what NPC weopons or "tech" would you like to gain access to?

opprime28 · 08-22-2010 06:27 AM

So no interest in this idea, huh?

I'm surprised. The people who heard about it in game were the ones who suggested I posted it in here because they thought it sounded like a lot of fun, and as far as I can tell, all of the mechanics to make it work already exist in game, except balancing of -some- of the temp powers offered.

And one more thing! Maybe this could get rid of the dang overload of dropping temp power recipes that keep filling up our recipe slots ;-)

BBQ_Pork · 08-22-2010 06:38 AM

Sounds interesting.

Fury Flechette · 08-22-2010 11:29 AM

This is actually a pretty good idea but the rewards have to be worth it. Have it as alternate means to get Shivans and Warburg Nukes and I think you'll find it will attract player interest. Note that the missions to get these should be suitably hard, probably tougher than the PvP equivalent since you're not potentially under fire from other other players.

BBQ_Pork · 08-22-2010 11:33 AM

It could be triple the difficulty of Bloody Bay and there would be a few people that would prefer it to *gasp* a PvP zone. (Even if that zone is completely deserted most of the time, rendering the threat of other players almost nil.)

A little tweaking of Risk:Reward and it'll be feasible.

Wildlight · 08-23-2010 06:23 AM

Nice idea! I'm with Fury and Pork...making the high-end temp rewards available outside a pvp zone might encourage their usage. That could lead to more interesting combat scenarios.

Hmm...when I woke up this morning, I never expected to type "I'm with Fury and Pork..."

opprime28 · 08-23-2010 06:54 AM

Yeah, in my mind the pool 3 missions and temps would be difficult enough that only people who are really dedicated to either a)getting the temps or b) farming them for sale would run the missions on a regular basis. This would (hopefully) keep the supply low enough that it wouldn't be exploitable. I suppose the other option would be to limit the number of temps you could have from each of the pools at any given time, so perhaps 4 tier 1 temps, 2 tier 2 temps, and 1 tier 3 temp.

I also thought you could "tweak" the tier 3 temps a bit so that they aren't the exact equivalents of the nukes, shivan shards, heavies, etc. you can get the old fashioned ways. Make it a "suitcase nuke" which does all of the same things only with smaller percentages, or an "snythetic shivan shard" which summons only 1 shivan, or "portable heavy" etc. I gotta admit I would LOVE to be able to summon a Malta Titan, as opposed to an RWZ heavy, or carry a dark crystal shard that summons a few floating nictus around you.
:-)