What would you change for CoH2?

If you were in charge of design for CoH2, what fundamental changes would you make to the way the game works?

I don't particularly like the way mezzing works in this game. I believe it should be incredibly rare, but also very scary when it does happen.

In my opinion, minions shouldn't be able to wrest control away from players. It should take a big bad to lock a player down; Ghost Widow, for instance. On the other hand, no one should be immune to mezzes. I would get rid of Break Frees and mez-immunity toggles, while allowing more resilient archetypes to have some mez resistance to shake it off sooner.

I would design certain encounters wherein it is lore appropriate for an enemy to have that kind of power. There would be a unique wind-up animation to give players a few seconds to pop inspirations to try to weather the hold, or for a tank to taunt to make sure the enemy doesn't go after his squishies while he's helpless.

It's not a suggestion, since it's obviously too late to change such a fundamental thing, but it's nice to dream.

Edit: I occurred to me today that the word "mez" could be ambiguous to some. I mean holds, stuns, sleeps, fears, confusion, and to a lesser degree endurance drains and knockback. "Mez" is a term I picked up from my first MMO. It started as a specific class' ability, but was adopted as shorthand for anything that stopped a character from acting.

Our hair would move.

I wouldn't side-lock any non-Epic ATs. Villains and Heroes would be available at launch, and content would be kept within a reasonable amount. After side-switching, there would be some grey content, contacts that would only talk to those in the process of switching.

ATs would remain (freeform building needs to stay where it can be balanced by the GM saying "no"), and probably pretty similar to what we have now.

GDN and ED would be in from day one, and IOs would probably be a bit later (introed after people have racked up some decent cash).

Some of the more absurd badges would be cut (I'm looking at you, Empath).

Zones like Boomtown would be revamped to have something, and there's plenty of lore to do that with. No "zero content zones".

Asymmetric costume parts, all mirrorable.

Ability to set lefty/righty settings, with the attendant changes in powers (shields on non-dominant hand, weapons in dominant, able to set alternating or specific hand for one-hand powers).

Less zoning in hero content, wider variety of tones in both hero and villain content. Ranging from shining, selfless paragon of heroism, to more realistic heroism, to "in it for the money" villainy to very low-down dirty villainy (various of which would have warnings, on both, as they might be integrated into the morality system).

And, like GG said, animated hair.

Random blinking ad facial expressions with mouth movement.

Voice actors for all NPCs.

If I were in charge my goal would be to attempt to provide a more tightly balanced teaming and solo experiences without breaking the "bring what you want teaming" appeal of CoH1.

The general goal would be that every character should act as a force multiplier on teams but also solo well. Not all characters would provide equal levels of force multiplication but all characters would provide at least some.

Now in order to keep the ATs distinctive the general goal would be to change the ways in which they provide this. Melee ATs would have force multiplication in the form of either toggles (such as the VEATs) or added onto their regular attacks. Ranged ATs would be more like the existing Defender or Dominator ATs providing force multiplication through buffs/debuffs/control as separate powers.

The general goal would be to create a situation where the strength of a team is more easily predictable based on size and also quadratic (i.e. 2 players are more than twice as powerful as 1). I'd then change the spawn size scaling for teams, spawns would get larger as team size increased but the individual enemies would also increase in strength (higher to hit, more damage, more hp etc.).

Ideally if done right this would create a situation where, like in current CoH, team composition is very flexible while also allowing content difficulty to be more easily scaled up or down as required and avoiding the situation where some characters can solo content meant for a full team.

I'd go for more freeform character building than what we have now.

1. Make tiers 1-3 of both primary and secondary available at level 1
2. Instead of 4 pools and an epic just make it 5 power pools
2a. Epic power pool available around level 15
3. Loosen up on the requirements in picking powers from the pools maybe dividing into 2 tiers instead of 3 and allow picks from tier 2 after 1 from tier 1
4. More options in both primary and secondary choices.
5. Eliminate tieing inherents to particular powers. This was a rotten idea and is something that really needs to be fixed in the current game. Bruise should not be tied to something that is usually a poor choice, defiance shouldnt have gutted variety from blaster builds.

Change the way mez works from shutting down everything to just shutting down offense. There is no reason that mez should be the equivalent of a oneshot for anyone

facial and body expressions, like a certain mmo long ago in a galaxy far far away.

open powers, yeah i know its tough, work with it till it works, kidnap arcana

lifting, throwing and weaponizing the environment around you, and with distinction for what you are weaponizing, that the less than optimal way the competitors are doing it right now, i telephone pole should be weaponized differently than an suv. and it should be useable in combat, provided you took the correct power. none of this interruptable nonsense. also, limited grappling with most enemies, a stunned enemy can be tossed.

(this idea based more on chase arcanums solution on the subject) either have mezzes be a progressive system of debuffs that eventually lead to a full shut down, but first just weaken the enemies, or make it a game in itsself, where a fully mezzed enemy is defeated.

a metric @&#$ton of costume stuff, and a full commitment to make sure more come EVERY issue. i'm ok with premium costumes for extra, more than ok, but make sure we still see some depth of costumes included with issues...like we aren't seeing now.

dinosaurs.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Physics. Meaningful physics. With powers that interrupt the physical environment and allow for problem solving innovation in meaningful ways beyond a hit points driven paradigm.

That is the future.

Have a major comic book writer create the story.

Give players access only to the game's signature characters.

Zero leveling. Zero customization.

Browser-based and free to play.


Oh wait. That game's already in the works.

More movement in combat. Better (and more complete) job of power customization.

In no particular order:

1) Animated hair
2) Fingers
3) Bare feet that look like feet, not boots with toes painted on
4) Multiple powers to choose from at each tier, so that you can have 2 chars with the same power sets but different individual powers.
5) More customisation for powers, allowing the player to choose how the character uses the power (I.E. Firing blasts from eyes, hands, etc)
6) Character movement based on abilities (I.E. a super-reflexes character twisting and dodging attacks in a manner visibly different from on with invulnerability).
7) The ability to interact with the environment based on powersets (using flight to rescue kittens from trees, using super strength to move obstacles blocking one's path, grabbing a phone pole to swat someone, etc)

I would remove the blue bar.

Oh by the way DYNAMIC CONTENT(tm)! Also destructible environments in instanced missions.

Varied sound effects for powers, particularly melee powers. Slicing a spectral demon with a sword/claws/katana etc. would sound much different than slicing an arachnobot. Even striking the same kind of target would not make the exact same sound every single time.

Better "skins", animations and sound effects for magical powers.

Mmmm... wait !

Real Magical Powers.

So far, only Soul Storm from GW's PPP and maybe Demon summoning looks magical.

I would develop the game in DirectX instead of OpenGL like it is currently. It would make the game perform a lot faster, and make better opportunity for more realistic looking character models. It would also cut down on the ridiculousness for whats needed for ultra mode!

The one thing that sinks City of Heroes more than any other game is the graphics infrastructure and engine. This game looks worse and runs worse than almost any contemporary game that I can think of, and not just Unreal engine and Source engine games. The in-house Crytpic engine was old even back in 2004 when the game launched, some two years after it was originally intended, and it has fallen progressively behind despite all the graphics tweaks.

If we're looking at a City of Heroes 2, this would need to be remade from scratch in something far more solid, possibly the amazingly stable and smooth Unreal 3 engine, while simultaneously carrying over all costume items and at least the majority of locations, if not at Launch, then soon thereafter.

I have a headache, so I'll cut my post short and avoid stepping into controversial territory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.