Nearly 7 Years Later... What Would You Have Done Differently?

Some of the things I would do have been covered, but let's see what else I could dig up:

• Mez effects would be uncommon or rare, and generally limited to lieutenants and bosses among NPCs. No enemy less than an EB or Av would be able to get any kind of chain-hold active. Consequently, status protection would be weakened. (Around mag 4 for Scrapper/Stalker and mag 7 for Tanker)
• More options would be available from IOs and pool powers from Mez protection.
• Stamina would be inherent from the beginning
• IO sets would have more variety of set bonuses, such as increased chance for secondary effects, range increase, status protection, and Inf boost. Some sets bonuses would be made less common, such as defence or recharge, and some would be more common, such as resistance.
• All IO classes would have the same number of sets. They would also all have the same level range.
• The Auction Houses would allow you to search and bid by level range for IOs and Recipes.
• PvP would have been implemented at launch. If this was not possible or too imbalanced to be fun, it would not have been implemented at all.
• PvP IOs would have no effect in PvE. Drop rates would be much higher.
• -Def wouldn't be the "catchall" secondary effect for use if we couldn't think of anything else to add to a power.
• Neither would Knockback/down. Powers (especially NPC powers) who have arbitrarily had these effects added would instead have higher damage or accuracy. I can accept when a hulking behemoth of metal and cybernetics slams a metal hammer into me, that it could knock me down. A crossbow bolt fired by a goon in a green robe? Less so.
• Fire armour and Ice armour would not have a psi hole. Invul would get a little more resist to psi, but still be weak to it.

Not create EU-servers.

War walls would be gone.

Read a comic, not many heroes take the tram when in costume

Left game play mechanics out of the story. Enhancement shops, AH, AT Names, Power Proliferation...all things that could of been put in game without being involved with the story.

AT and Power set design would be altered to actually allow one to make a more comic book inspired character.

If that was truely unable to happen...get rid of weapon redraw, then make it so one could grab a tier 1 between the sets.

No reason a Blaster shouldn't beable to throw both blasts of Fire and Blasts of Ice (or any combination).

Reworked the mez protections. Fire Armor could likely get out of a lot of holds, but why a psi based hold? Laugh at Fire, melt the ice, burn the vines, cry and weep at the telekinetic.

i13 PvP would of never happened.

Cared less about people making the uber combination. It already happens now. You see it on the boards "Oh I have this concept that fits a Brute, but if Kinetic Melee is better for Scrappers, I'll just roll the scrapper."

I would never have implemented ATs in the first place. The whole Tank/Mage/Cleric/Rogue mindset was not genre-appropriate. Superheroes should be tankmages.

In its place, I probably would have had every character select from offensive, defensive, movement and support/buff/debuff pools and differentiate them by designating one pool "Primary" and another "Secondary" for greater effect and perhaps a wider power selection.

And no, I really don't think it's a coincidence that they went with something very like that for CO.

I also would have preferred a point-based build system over level-based advancement.

Game mechanics:
I would've made the whole defense/tohit/accuracy system different. It's needlesly complex.

I would've gone without recharge enhancers and +recharge set bonusses. Every power would have a fixed recharge time, faster than the current unenhanced ones. I'd leave hasten in though, again, with a fixed non-perma recharge time.
This would fix a lot of the balancing problems in the game imo.

Randomly spawning voids and cysts. Gone.

PvP gone. If you're not going handle it properly, you're better of not having it at all. Lots of wasted resources there.

Game lore:
The whole lore behind power customisation and inventions. What where they thinking?

The whole council/5th column mess. I'd have just left the 5th alone and never bothered with the council.
And why is the Reichsman involved with the column? It would've made a lot more sense if he had brought his own troops.

Cimerora and Croatoa. I love the ITF and the Croatoan arcs, but it all feels so hamfisted and barely connected to the rest of the content that I think those resources could've been better spent on other content.
Or at the least I would've made proper Cimerorian leaders, instead of confusing and inspirationless incarnations of signature characters.

I'd have given the Praetorian Praetors an actual grey morality instead of turning them all into cold hearted megalomaniacs and sociopaths.

A lot more mission/map tilesets/areas.....A LOT more...


And I'll agree with what someone said at first, don't put PvP in until it was 'ready' and/or there was something other than deathmatch to do with it (RV doesn't really count since that's just deathmatch).

Storylines would be completed not kicked to the curb

Popular characters would come back again for new storylines, they would not disappear

Every NPC would have a personality. We would not have Bank Villain 1, Bank Villain 2 , Bank Villain 3. We would have Bossy Bank Villain, Psychotic Bank Villain, Lying Bank Villains etc etc

Tilesets would be imaginative and be like comics. Instead of Caves Caves Caves Caves Caves Cave-ety Caves there would be tilesets that reflect the main groups. A giant flying plane for the Sky Raiders, an underground abandoned hazardous waste dump for the Lost and so on

AE would have ghost writer and collaboration features to help improve adventures people wrote and liked turning them into things everyone would enjoy

Besides the "you" focused arcs there would be several long ongoing arcs featuring the major characters so you could battle Nemesis or help Manitcore from 1-50 or battle Manticor and help Nemesis from 1-50

Player lore would get added to the game. NPCs would talk about costume contests or meowing. This would be the players way of impacting the world

From Day 1.....

Implement dynamically generated maps rather than recycling the same few;
Launch CoV at the same time;
Encourage base raids around the clock using copies of offline PC characters as NPC base sentries.

Hmm since this is what I would have done with the ability of hindsight.

1) Power customisation from the start, programmed it in from the ground up. Apparently dear old Jack was genuinely surprised that people wanted to customise their powers...

2) PvP...erm...no...wouldn't have done it, the game chugged along fine without it and would have kept it that way, though I probably would have fallen into the pit-trap of 'well we've made city of villains...there has to be PvP in there somewhere!' idea when CoV came around. I probably wouldn't have done Base raids (made Bases a purely social function), perhaps the PvP zones would have been in there but without the ridiculous 'lets try to draw in PvErs into the zone' mechanics like the badges for the RV GM heroes/Villains etc.

1) More comic book like mission maps. Caves, warehouse, office - some of this is ok but 6+ years worth?! One of my main complaints with this game. Not only are the mission maps repetitive but they are very dull.

2) More time and attention on original TFs (Freedom Phalanx especially). Many of these are absolutely no fun and the story is not very epic. Actually, on some of these, the stories really lack cohesion. Also repetitive in nature which also kills us. The Shard TFs are also quite....meh.

3) More superhero factions. I don't mind most of the groups in game but add to them. Add superhero types that look really cool. Not a lot of wow factor with many of the factions and groups.

First, I agree on the ED (more on this below) / GDN from the get go. Although I sure did love my regen scrapper back then

I would change base cost prestige to depending upon the location, size, so on and so forth, the cost would change.

This would also require character housing to be tied into the sg base system. It goes much further than that, as different buildings in different zones could be chosen for a base.

So a small apartment in Kings Row would cost very little prestige. A three level base in a building around Atlas Plaza would cost a lot of prestige.

On the other side of things, a player made version of the bat cave could cost a lot of prestige due to his large size, and amount of equipment located therein that would require power upkeep.

I would do away with in game references to game mechanics. So nothing in the game would reference your AT for example.

Also, get rid of enhancements and thus, enhancement stores altogether. Instead I would award some type of improvement point system, where as a character gains levels, they take the awarded points and allocate them into their various powers. Attack powers can be improved upon for more damage, secondary effect (like dark melee's to-hit debuff), recharge, etc...

I would have built pvp into the game from the ground up. Powers would behave the same as possible between pve and pvp. PvP zones would be contested areas between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Once a contested zone is controlled by one side, they can use it to access the opposing side's "pve" zones. PvP would be an opt in / out system that can be flagged by either entering a contested zone or by interaction with a npc.

Contested zones would require one or more objectives to be completed in order to gain control of the zone. These objectives would tie into pve type play which would tie into the "story" of that zone. An example would be if Dark Astoria were a contested zone, villains could help arachnos take control of the zone where the Mu have an agenda with the BP. The more control gained by the red side, the worse the zone becomes. When heroes move in and complete their objectives, the zone would change to become brighter and less haunted.

hmm... What comes to mind first...

-I would have tried making a model that works directly on the character.. Instead of our current cilinder.
-Fingers in the model
-Start with one game... the splitting of the community is just plain stupid!
-I would have splitted the text from the code. Meaning the server gives codes only and the client translates the codes to readable text. This way the client can pick the language you want to read it in. And EU would have had two more server playable.

Steal the "trophies" concept form certain other games, so that when certain mission arcs, TFs, SFs, Trials and events are completed successfully a SG gets some trophy to add to their base.

Make the player's relationship with game factions/groups dynamic. Instead of paper/scanner missions, different faction contacts offer repeatable missions with nice rewards, but working for one faction against another gradually increases your notoriety with the latter. So each player is hated and loved by different groups, affecting how those groups react to them and what missions are offered.

Oh boy, how'd I miss this thread? Since I came after the addition of ED , inventions, and the market, I can't speak to how the game worked then. But here's what I would do...

1. One City, part one -- open world PvP (with restrictions). From the start, there would be one city for both heroes and villains. This would mean we designed for open-world PVP from the start, but I'd have two serious restrictions: characters would have an "on/off" flag for PVP, and there would be "zones" around the regular gathering places which temporarily sets all PVP flags to "off" to prevent annoyances while at auction or training or whatnot. With heroes and villains in the same city from the start, I'd allow side-switching from the start as well.

2. One City, part two -- "City," not "Cities." I'd not have spent development time on 3 different cities (Paragon City/Rogue Isles/Praetoria). Instead of "old, blocky graphics city," "dirty-yet-better-graphics villain city" and "bright-and-shiny great graphics city," we'd have one city that continually gets updated graphically to represent changes in city structures/infrastructure. When new zones are added, they would be either new development/subdivisions to the city, or else things that exist outside the city (mountains, deserts, moon base, Atlantis, etc).

3. One City, part three -- No war walls. The seemless look of GR makes me hate the war walls even more now then when I first saw them. As the city stands now, it doesn't feel like one city so much as a dozen or so small cities broken up into little boxes.

4. More stores and contacts inside buildings. I'd have vendors and contacts not stand out on the streets so often (as they do especially in both CoV and GR). Instead, most would have their own store or building you enter and exit. The CoV magic trainer in an airport warehouse really annoys me given there's a perfectly good magic shop going unused not far away. And the vendor robots on the street in Praetoria are tantamount to getting my enhancement from a vending machine, and that's beyond cheezy. Superheroes wouldn't enhance their powers from vending machines, would they?

5. More dynamic contacts and better AI on citizens. Contacts should be more exciting than statues, and do more than adjust themselves and cough. And citizens should act somewhat aware of their surroundings. When a battle starts, citizens should flee the area. Or at least step away from the mugger and ensuing battle.

6. Greater player customization. I'd have planned in advance for greater character customization, including more sliders & nodes for our character models, and power customization from the get-go. Customizable minions for Masterminds and Illusion controllers. Powers emissions from various parts of the body, as well as guns, wands, or staffs. That kind of stuff.

7. A custom arch-villain system. I want to create my own nemesis and have him/her show up throughout my career. Radio/paper missions would be much more interesting if there was a chance my rival was in the mix, and it would become my story instead of someone else's story I was taking part in.

8. AE in fewer zones, also with non-techy options. When I added AE, I would add buildings to only a few zones instead of most everywhere. I'd include a feature in mission creation (next to the select contact section) that allows you to set a holographic skin for the AE lobby/computer station/mission loading room, for when you're talking to the contact and/or in-between missions (i.e. a mystic workshop, or Atlas City Hall, or abandoned warehouse -- nothing breaks immersion in a magic-based AE mission than returning to the contact between missions). Otherwise, I'd have more than one AE building model; I'd at least have one in an older Croatoa-style building, less techy-looking and more mystic-looking.

9. Better base editor, also allowing for player-created maps/zones. A better base editor is needed, so I'd like to see one that not only improved bases, but also allowed players to create their own building maps/outdoor maps for use in the AE. I'd kill to have a zone-editor that works like the map editor in Roller Coaster Tycoon.

10. Three Origins. Finally, I'd reduce the number of origins to three -- sci-tech, natural, and magic. The overlap between some of what we have now is needlessly confusing.

I could go on, but that's ten, so I think I'll cut it off here.

d

Lots of good ideas so far, some that come to mind for me:

No PvP. PvP has given us nothing but headaches and wasted resources. The thing I hate the most about gameplay is Suppression and while the Devs will deny it all day long, Suppression exists *only* because of PvP. The only way I'd even think about PvP is if everyone were equal within the PvP arena. Bullets, fire blasts and ice blasts would all do the exact same damage with slight secondary effects, for instance. The way it stands now, it's way too random and certain builds rule over all others. Rock-paper-scissors is a ridiculous way to try and balance PvP.

More variation in mission maps. If dynamically-created content wasn't doable back then, I would've poured more resources into the variety of instanced maps.

No rooting. CO removed rooting from most powers and thus increased the fun factor a hundredfold. Being able to "run and gun" is terrifically fun and I can't even think of a good reason why every power needs to root our character in place. Certain special abilities such as sniping or an uber power should be rooted -- that's a trade-off for their uberness -- but to just hit someone? No.

Get the lore straight. You need someone on staff whose job is to police the story bible and vet everything so that it makes sense within continuity.

Power customization from the get-go. Not just coloring powers, but also their emanation point. Choose hand blasts, eye blasts, forehead blasts, etc.

Travel powers at level one.

Capes at costume creator. Even if they had to be added later, I never would've written game lore around the fact they were added later. Just add them and be done with it. We don't need game lore to explain why we suddenly got the Stealth pieces, so why capes?

I would separate the travel powers and the pool powers. Then deregulate the pool powers so that you don't need prerequisites to use them. I don't understand why I need to take a taunt from the Presence Pool to get to the stuff I really want in it, the Fear. I don't see the need to have to "relearn" how to punch or kick before being Tough, or to learn two of those abilities before learning how to dodge effectively.

Plus, the values all need to be fixed up. Blasters need higher numbers in a lot of those items than the tankers do, like Maneuvers or Tough and Weave... That, or the Pool Powers should have the same values across the board, regardless of archetype.

I would probably also make Tough have resistance to all except Psionic as opposed to just Smash/Lethal. Perhaps not as much resistance to All/-Psi as for Smash/Lethal, but there are a lot of sets that don't resist elements all that well (SR, Ice, Energy Aura), and they could really use some decent shoring up.

Finally, Regeneration would have a real Moment of Glory again. This fifteen second "Oh Crap!" button is just... It doesn't do it for me. I was killed so many times using it, I finally stopped. It didn't serve its purpose, and now I've moved on to other tactics.

Oh, one big thing I forgot to add that's mentioned by every single person I've introduced to the game:

Your abilities should make you resistant to similar attacks. A girl who joined asked me if her fire Blaster was immune to fire attacks. My cousin wondered if his ice Controller was immune to Frostfire's snowman. Sadly, the answer is "No," but it would be pretty cool if it were "Yes."

I wouldn't go with total immunity, of course, but rather "greater resistance." Some sort of bonus your Ice Blaster has against cold powers that a different powerset wouldn't have.

so this thread is turning into "What do you want to see in CoH2?"

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

A lot of the stuff that people would have liked 7 years ago probably would not have been feasible given the time, financial, and technical resources they had available to them. That being said, here's what I would have striven to do:

1. Power customization at the start.

2. 1 free inherent travel power with the option to pick others using a power pick. (One of the best selling points this game has is travel powers.)

3. There should be nothing inherently villainous about a Dominator or heroic about a Controller, so I think all ATs should have had access to both Redside/Blueside at creation.

4. PVP. Either design the game with PVP at the start or leave it out entirely. To be honest, a lack of PVP was what drew me to the game in the first place, but I did have some friends who really loved to PVP. Trying to put it in later resulted in no end of trouble.

5. I would have put differing storylines on each server so a player would have an incentive to play on more than one. Fight to overthrow the Rikti yoke on Freedom! Be a villain working in the shadows in a world where the heroes have known Triumph and Arachnos is but a memory.... Maybe on Champion Statesman has been dead for decades and his daughter Miss Liberty stands as our shining inspiration ...

Oh, and I would have built in cross server teaming akin to the crossovers the Justice League/Justice Society used to have.

With the benefit of perfect hindsight:

* Not bothered with hazard zones.

* Done a better sell-in of ED.

* Not spent time and effort on zonal PvP

* Not spent time and effort on base PvP

* Taken the time to created a decent developers' tool for making map layouts

* Not launched AE with it giving full XP rewards (what were they thinking?)

* Not launched AE without a commenting system in place

* Spent more time on improving the chat interface sooner

* Put more effort into following up the Hall of Fame / Developer's picks in the months after the launch

* Allowed bases to have a location and presence in the city

* Not implemented base rent at all (again, what were they thinking?)

Wow... I know this is a monster thread, but I have to add my .02

(1) Never have blasters, period. Defenders should have been more like corrupter from the start with blaster level damage.

(2) Everyone should have some kind of defense.

(3) Everyone should have reasonable offense. (CoV got their characters far closer to right)

(4) Personal housing using the base system.

(5) Additional zone events. Like the fire fighting in Steel. Non combat things would be great too. I wouldn't mind rescuing a kid from a river, or a cat from a tree. Simple but amusing and adds flavor.

(6) Ability to get more than 5 costume slots.