Are bases content? A theoretical excercise.

Since you brought this up, I figured I'd respond to this post directly!

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Originally Posted by Impish Kat I think this is the kernel of why this isn't my most favorite idea ever. It feels too much like... City of Sims, or Super Civilization, or WarStaff II, or... you get the idea.

And what's wrong with those games? Next to City of Heroes, the game I play the most is Sim City 4; and I belong to both the SimTropolis and SC4Devotion communities. We already have a building mini-game with the base editor (and we've seen that there are people who love playing with it; why else are there people clamoring for more decorative base items?) So what's wrong with having a little MMORTS in your MMORPG? Personally, I think making such arbitrary lines in the sand is a bad thing. As long as it's optional then it shouldn't in any way detract from the main game.

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CoH is about teaming.

Maybe for you. I tend to solo most of the time.

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It's about missions.

I've been street sweeping more often lately. Quite often, I'll log in just to play the market. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one doing those things, and having fun doing them!

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I would rather see Supergroup/Base content be focused around the Group and teaming.

What about those players who have solo-SGs who only have their alts in it? What about SGs filled with mostly idle characters because most of your friends have stopped playing, but you still enjoy playing with and tweaking the base and using it yourself?

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I think the re-vamped CoP was a step in the right direction. It requires a small group from an SG to host the event, but it is also open enough to allow our solo coalies or friends from other (smaller) SG's to join and earn badgies.

The CoP needs a lot of work. The reward not worth the risk involved. They should either scale down the risk or scale up the reward. It's pretty clear to me that the risk the CoP presents to the player is still engineered toward the original reward (an Item of Power).

I think all of this bears futher scrutiny/refining.

Initially, the whole SG tip system sort of assumed a mix of contained missions by collecting tips through normal gameplay like an average tip.

Refining that system with what we've dicussed with the kheld tech... What if the SG had the ability to sort of guide the flow of events from an initial "seed" tip that sparks a line of research. From there you're using the kheld/replacement ruleset, zowies, etc. to supply the entirety of the chain of SG tips the group needs to fill that bar. After that bar is full, you get the actual SG mission, which is executed from the raid teleporter to complete the arc.

For the replacement spawns, rather than using level dependant mobs, have them use the world event/GM maths to be level-less auto-adjusting mobs like zombies and invasion event Rikti. In this manner you could run the same events for any SG member regardless of level.

The end mission would be the one with the badge, schematics, big reward, but the whole process would be apperant to every member of the SG through the replacement tech, even if they're not the type to normally read or decipher clues. Additionally, every member of the SG gets a personal badge for participating in the arc whether they were at the final mission or not. This is a gimme reward for dealing with the replacement mobs, and an incentive to be in the SG doing the arc. This means that soloists that help with the end mission get a good reward, but to get the full spectrum you would ideally be a member of the SG for the whole thing. The personal badge would fill up its completion bar every time part of the arc was solved.

Quick example of refined SG tip system entry level arc. (This arc requires no custom facilities, just the SG computer and raid teleporter) -

1. Someone gets an initial tip:

*Hit list. This list contains the names of each member of <SG name> accompanied by a monetary value. You're not sure where it came from, but perhaps an analysis by the computers in your base could provide you with more information.

2. Member takes the tip to the mission computer for analysis:

*The computer is analyzing the materials, handwriting, and other properties of the list. It requires a passcode to complete the analysis. (At this point, the tip is on a list of available SG arcs. Members with a permission rank high enough to accept the arc can choose from this list of initial tips, and begin an SG arc. Once begun, the SG is locked in to the arc until completion or failure.)

3. Officer selects the Analyzed hit list as the SG arc.

*The materials and composition of this document don't shed any light on who wrote it, but one thing is certain. Someone has it out for <SG name> and is willing to pay top dollar to see you brought down. Until you get to the bottom of this, you might want to watch your back. (For this step, SG members are flagged for mob replacement. Every so often an adjusted Knives of Artemis LT will show up with an aggro shout of "Command, we've got one of <SG Name> here. Engaging.")

4. After a while, someone in the SG gets any of the following tips from one of the spawned LTs. These are a drop rate equivalent to uncommon salvage, made a bit more uncommon by the necessity of getting the drops from the Knives bounty hunters. Ideally, the drop chance of getting one (solo) from one of the spawned LTs would be about as good as getting a standard orange recipe drop. Once one of these is turned in to the SG computer it stops dropping.

*SG tip drop: Working transmitter - The Knives operative dropped her radio. Despite being a bit scratched, it looks like it still works. You should take this to your base computer to see if you can isolate the frequency it was operating on.

*SG tip drop: Confession - The Knives operative confessed that she'd been working for an anonymous source who called himself "Portent". You should cross check the database at your base computer to see if there are any records of this alias.

* SG zowie tip(Trash can model): Discarded flash drive - You found a flash drive bearing the insignia of the Knives of Artemis. The data is encrypted. Perhaps the computer in your base can decipher it.

5. Once all three tips are recovered, the Knives LTs stop their replacement spawning. In zones, a random conversation boss (GR style blue NPC that turns red after conversation) called "Suspicious Individual" will be placed on the replacement list for wandering civilians. Once an SG member has noticed the Suspicious Individual and engaged in conversation, they get the following:

*SG Boss Dialogue: Suspicious Individual -
"You're very perceptive <Character name>. I can see it is not simply blind luck that the women I hired could not finish the job. Despite my better judgement, it looks like I'll have to stop <SG name> from fulfilling their destiny myself! *Accept dialogue flips boss aggro, Shapeshifts in to ridiculous villain costume, and you fight.*

6. An SG member successfully takes out "Suspicious Individual."

*SG boss defeat tip: Suspicious Individual's Phone -
The wannabe Villain told you an interesting story: "I'll tell you what you want to know, just stop hitting me! There's this voice, see? It calls me up, it tells me things. Things that are going to happen. At first it was just lotto numbers, tomorrow's news, things like that. So I cashed in, get it? It told me that <SG Name> was going to find out, so I put out the list like it told me to. Take my phone. Maybe you can trace it or something, just take it easy on me alright?" Perhaps you can use this phone somehow. You should take it to the computer in your base.

7. SG member turns in the phone, which completes the tip bar for the arc. The Knives resume their previous spawning, but no longer drop anything. They will continue to do so until the SG completes or fails the SG mission which finishes off the arc.

*SG Mission: Stop Portent -
It seems this Portent has been rather busy, hiring not only the Knives of Artemis but random civilians to make sure <SG name> never again walks the streets. Tracing the phone calls gave you his location, and the transmission frequencies and cypher keys from the Knives radio and flash drive should get you access to the facility. Its time to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

From here, you need at least 4 SG members to initiate the SG mission through the raid teleporter. You get there, figure out Portent is a potent supervillain who has recently completed a machine that lets him see the future, and has used it to determine that your SG will eventually stop him. Ironically, if he hadn't put out the list, you never would have known a thing. Your enemy group is Knives of Artemis, your objectives are to take out Portent (AV level enemy) while fighting off timed knives ambushes from two spaces on the map.

*Rewards! -
SG badge: Temporal Analyzer plans - Looking over Portent's device has provided you with knowledge you can use to build a Temporal Analyzer for your base. This device can be used to determine the origin time of temporally displaced objects. This should allow your group to investigate objects which have travelled beyond their normal time stream! (This device unlocks SG arc seed tips for arcs that require a temporal analyzer to complete.)

Personal Badge (Everyone who was in the SG from the beginning to the end of the arc): Inevitable - You helped prove to Portent that messing with the time line can be more trouble than it's worth.

Reward table: Bonus prestige, Bonus INF/Prestige split, or Bonus rare tech salvage of your choice.

*Failure! -
Total group wipe of the mission gets you the following clue, and the arc is cleared:

Despite everything you learned, Portent and his hired goons proved too much for <SG name> Luckily, he no longer views you as a threat, and has decided the hit list isn't worth the money. He's still out there somewhere though.

From here, the seed tip for this arc won't drop again until every other potential arc has been dropped and completed or failed.

Great stuff, I'd like to play that arc, lol. I particularly love the idea that there could be non-sg members on your team. What they would see is a sg doing a sg arc together. And if it's fun, reward-able, you have someone that sees first hand some of the benefits of being in a larger sg.

I think there are a lot of potential on this thread. Many great ideas and it doesn't seem that they are overly difficult to implement. Let's hope that this gets noticed and mulled over by those who make the decisions.

That's the idea. Having some experience with game design myself (Mods, Contract 3d work, University) I'm a firm believer in the idea of designing smarter systems that encourage emergent game play. I love a good strict narrative, which is one of the reasons I like City. More often than not the writing and narrative is quite good. However the problem with "on rails" content is that the more you stick to the rails, the more replay value it loses. Not only that, but often an emergent system ends up being cheaper and faster to develop while giving the players a greater sense of ownership over the experience.

Your suggestion about randomization just got me thinking about the way SGs already work in the game. They're an optional layer that meshes well with content you might already be doing. Prestige sits on TOP of things, just like all of the other core systems that were added later (inventions, morality, architect) Its optional, and in most cases its designed to interoperate with existing systems and content.

The discussion and posts of everybody here have been a great way to not only figure out what City's players want in a new system, but also a great way to refine those systems and put together something that doesn't "feel" to horrible to implement.

As the whole SG tip/Arc system has been the favorite of almost everyone with the exception of Coyote_Seven (And I do love you Coyote for speaking so highly of the hireling idea!) I think moving the discussion as a whole in to further refining of the pieces of that system is the way to go.

SO!

Base Items: What sort of functional items beyond analysis machines could serve the SG arc system? Should SG arcs reward purely functional items? What sort of arc would reward your item idea at the end?

Rewards: The badge/table setup seems like a fair start, but what else could be to to vary the reward scheme?

Event schemes: How much is too much? Assuming you have multiple SGs tackling these in various stages of completion, what would be the maximum level of random stuff you could see being reasonable sticking in replacement lists? Bosses at most? Elite Bosses? AVs? Giant Monsters? How to we prevent SGs running arcs becoming a hindrance on normal play for other people?

Other stuff: If the system is set up to use basically what exists for most of the arc, with a mission as the finale, how can we make greater use of the entirety of the game? Would having event points in the Rogue Isles for Heroic SGs be out of line as it would require the group to have a vigilante? How about using other places? What about "addons" to unique maps that show up in several places rather than replacements?

Some thoughts:

Make large SG's 'good'. A simple way: After the first ten unique accounts, every member of a SG gains a permanent buff as long as the SG maintains population:

11-20 members, +1 percent to one of Resists, Damage, Heals, End Mod. You choose the buff when you join the SG or set it once per day under options.

21-40 members: +2 percent.

41-60 members: +3 percent.

61-100 members: +4 percent.

101 members+: +5 percent.


Give Large SG's goodies:

CoP raid allowed to SG's with any number of members.

"better" raid allowed to SG's with 30+

"Even better" raid allowed to SG's with 70+

"Uber" raid allowed to SG's with 100+

Better versions could be as simple as the CoP with better temps to as elaborate as you want to go. Private versions of Cavern, Hami, and Eden Trial would be my personal recommendations, with mobs toughened as appropriate for 3 groups of OMG toons.

Even better would be new raids entirely, but we should gun for easy stuff at first.

I would like more content to bases but I'm against too big favours to large SG's. Most of SG's are small and so is mine. There is already too many things that practically needs big SG's.