Corporate Sponsorship

I'm sure this has come up a dozen times, but here goes.

Corporate Sponsorship could be a set of missions or arcs that allow a hero, team, or supergroup to gain the backing of a Paragon City business or institution. However, the difficulty of a CS trial mission/arc would NOT be adjusted to the level of the hero/group that takes the mission -- the difficulty would be based on the reward to be gained from successful completion of the mission.

Players would have to choose which corporate sponsor to pursue carefully. A solo hero would not be able to defeat the same trial that a team could. To avoid groups bringing in "ringers", teams would be specced down to the lowest level hero on the team.

The penalty for failing a CS trial would be very simple -- the hero can never gain the sponsor's backing. No chance to do the mission again, not even on a team. Perhaps a form of "influence debt" could be incurred, just like experience debt for hospitalization, instead or as well.

The reward for successfully completing a CS trial would be a badge with the sponsoring entity's name, normal experience, and normal influence PLUS a bonus of half the influence awarded over time. A hero might earn X influence per minute or hour while displaying the badge until all of the bonus was awarded, or he might have the sponsor's name on his back for the same number of minutes/hours. (Although capes and wings might be a problem.)

If every member of a team on a CS trial was a member of a supergroup, then every member of the supergroup would get the badge, and the bonus would be awarded as prestige instead of influence.

Although a hero could only have one corporate sponsor at a time, achieving ten sponsors would get the hero a "Corporate Shill" badge, and twenty-five would get him a "Corporate Sell-Out" badge.

For example:

Dober-Man is a Level 10 hero looking for some extra Influence. (Aren't we all?)

He decides to try a Corporate Sponsorship trial for Paragon City University, but is soundly defeated by the Level 25 villains in the trial. He bit off way more than he could chew, and PCU will never sponsor him, even if he joins a supergroup that wins their backing.

He tries again, but picks a trial for Up-and-Away Burger this time. This time he beats the Level 9 villains in the trial so he gets an "Up-and-Away Burger" badge. Since he earned a total of 120 Influence in the trial, he will earn 1 Influence per minute for 120 minutes while displaying the badge.

When that sponsorship runs out, he joins a team and beats a trial for Sheherazade. Every member of the team gets the same badge and influence bonus.


Any merit?

the idea is ok, but i absolutely do not agree with the fact that failure would permanently prevent you from running it again, hence permanently never getting the badge

being locked out of badges is a game mechanic that is considered a sin by most badgers so i doubt it would happen

another reason i doubt it would happen is due to the fact that would take a lot of work to code

Oh I don't think they'll ever do it, I just thought it would be fun to play around with the idea.

On the other hand, during pre-release we discussed burning buildings as a fun idea here in the forums. A couple-few years later, fires broke out in Steel Canyon, just about exactly the way we'd talked about. (Although the rioting Hellions never came up, that was a surprise.)

Anyway...

Yeah, the no-second-chance thing seemed a bit harsh to me as well. How about "influence debt", or the trial is blocked only until the hero succeeds at a different CS trial?

This honestly just sounds like a more cumbersome version of Day Jobs.

Also, some kind of in-game benefit messing with my costume? No thank you.

Someone's been watching Tiger & Bunny?

It's an amusing idea, but probably mechanically wouldn't work too well. Perhaps we could just be given an El Super Mexicano costume set?

Honestly, this sounds like a lot of effort for minimal real benefit.

From an RP point of view it's easy enough to write corporate sponsorship into a character's bio (for example Adeon Hawkwood is sponsored by Portal Corp) so I'm not really seeing how this would really enhance the game play experience.

I think a better option would be to just add logos for various in-game corporations to the costume editor so that people who want to show corporate sponsorship on their costume can.

I dunno, I could see something like this working best in Praetoria's Imperial City. There's a lot of corporations with names and identities in Praetoria, compared to Paragon City's mostly-generic buildings.

Also, Praetorians might be more receptive to the idea of powered people with corporate sponsors than Primal Earth, given that Hero Corps has a shoddy reputation in the backstory; heroism for profit doesn't sit that well among Primals, it seems.

I like the idea behind it and see it's potential and ofc villains have something similar.

- though the idea of being locked out is somewhat abit too much..maybe something like a weeks lock out or a few days.

- Including the SG/VG's was a good touch too, gives a more of a reason to do it as a whole.

- I don't think it would take serious amounts of huge time to code this (but then i'm no coder) as it's like normal badge missions and rewards.

- Think for this to work, some little redesigning might be needed and more opinions from players. the first thing is to first change the lock out effect tho..and have no timed missions.

but i like it.