Hellion Arson event in Steel Canyon

Every time I pay attention to this event, I'm disappointed all over again. I have a few suggestions to improve it.

1: Beginning

Kick the event off with a bang. Whenever the event launches, have a few fire engines with their sirens wailing come screaming into the zone from the Atlas Park tunnel and race to the fire. Yes, this would require new artwork and that always seems to be a bottleneck, but it's the only piece of artwork I would request for the event, and really what kind of a city has a fire chief but no fire trucks? Bonus points if heroes can sit on the truck and ride to the fire.

Once the trucks get to the location, firefighters would spawn beside them. It looks like the classic firefighter hat is already in game, on Fire Chief Williams' head. The rest of the costume can be done with existing costume options, I think.

There should also be police cars and trucks racing in along with the fire trucks, and the police would set up a defensive perimeter, like they do in places like The Hollows.

During the event, it would be nice if pedestrians all over Steel Canyon would randomly say things about the fire. Civilians near the event could clump up into crowds and stare. That's what people do at fires. It would be nice if the smoke and light from the fire were visible from a greater distance, but that might be asking for too much.

2. Middle

Once heroes are there, drawn in by the sirens and the crowds of civilians, what do they do? It would be great if the Fire Chief could say useful things, guiding the heroes to take the extinguishers and fight fires. Bonus points if he could read the data on character's badge progress screen and make custom comments: "HeroName, if you put out another 37 fires I'll make you an honorary Fire Chief!"

There could also be a police chief making similar comments and directing heroes to fight the Hellions.

A natural instinct for heroes is to run into the burning buildings, but currently you can't. I think the front door of the building should open into that one Hellion burned out building map that already exists. Heroes could run around fighting Hellions and putting out fires on that map if they wanted to, and rescue hostages.

3. Ending

The ending of the event now is anticlimactic. Everyone just falls down dead with very little warning or drama, and that's the end. It's hard to make a huge explosion feel like a let down, but this event does it. Or, even worse, there is no explosion and the event just sort of peters out.

I think there should be two specific endings: either you put out the fire and save the building, or you don't and it explodes. I suggest that the fire chief and police chief give updates about the progress heroes are making during the event. "If we can't get these fires under control in the next fifteen minutes, this building is going to collapse!"

I'm not sure exactly how the event is coded now, but I imagine something like this: after a certain amount of time has passed, if the Hellions are largely beaten and the fires are under control, then the police sweep in, the Hellions are routed and no more spawn, the firefighters move in to clean up the last of the fires, and the fire chief and police chief declare victory, loudly. Even better if the crowd cheers.

If time has passed and the number of Hellions and fires is over a certain threshold, then the fire chief starts shouting dire warnings, the crowd panics and flees, we get the noises and small explosions like now, more and more fires start sprouting like crazy all over the building until it's engulfed in flames, then a huge noise, a giant flash of light and fire, all the nearby heroes drop dead, and presto changeo the building is replaced by one of the ruins like you see in Boomtown. It stays in that sorry shape as a testament to the failure of the local heroes until the next server maintenance.

Honestly, I really like this idea, but it might be a little much in terms of coding. And the idea of a building being down until server maintenance seems a bit harsh.

There's only about five buildings that can catch fire (I wouldn't mind if more were made flammable) and the event occurs more than five times a day, and this would end up locking out less populated servers or even fairly populated ones where everyone's just busy elsewhere for a sufficient period of time.

My own far fetched suggestion would be to have a second zone event (possibly even share it with boom town) where you can help construction crews rebuild buildings. like by gathering supplies (which could be temp powers you can get from a glowie and then apply to a targettable but 'empty' spot), or fend off enemies who might come to try to sabotage construction. (maybe instead of hellions for such a thing it would be Arachnos, culminating up to the appearance of a safeguard villain using invasion coding. It all ultimately works in Preatoria.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

I approve of this idea except for the "building stays dead until maintenance" part.

/Signed, except for what Xzero said. Theres little point making an event more appealing and upgraded and then kicking them in the nads if they happen to have bad luck/not enough people and fail it once. Nothing else in the game has that, so theres no precedence either.

Still, love the suggestions made.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

As I was reading the OP, I was mentally tweaking it, coming up with something like the Praetorian zone events - Do something to trigger it (instead of hoping to catch it at the right time), clear out the arosnists and enough fires to make it safe to enter the building, go into a sub-zone to rescue trapped civilians (with bonus fires and hellions to fight), then come back out and beat down a boss. Make all the Hellions scale, like the foes in the Praetorian events do, and add an all-new Elite Boss at the end.

And then do something similar with Troll Raves.

A long time ago I wrote up a pretty similar zone event, before the steel fires were implemented. Mine was more based on a high rise tower, with entries to quick rescue and fire surpression missions located via broken smoking windows. But it had an introduction similar to yours. More noise more sound more drama. I like these sort of missions. They aren't the standard anti-criminal heroics like we normally get.

Overall I like the direction the idea's lead I'm not sold on the specific implementation. I'd much rather see an event coded to be the best it can be rather than budgetting it so it is merely better than it is now.

I'd also like to see some soft grouping enabled for these types of events.