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Exactly my thoughts whenever someone comes up with a new "QOL" suggestion that makes the actual game world a little step more obsolete.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
If you remove the need to actually travel anywhere, what is the point of the city zones even existing? What is the point of travel powers if you can do anything you need to do from right where you're standing? The removal of reasons to actually traverse the game world is one of the things I amleast happy with about the game's evolution.
If you can just make a phone call to do anything you can possibly do in the game, you might as well just take the next step and make the entire game a series of missions, all accessed by a single door in a white room. The need to travel to a trainer is something that will get people exploring the game world. When I first started the game I found all kinds of cool stuff while I was figuring out how to reach the trainer from my randomly located door mission. Removing the need to do that would make the game worse in my opinion. If new players never have to find their way to a trainer from random locations, they will never see even half of the cool out-of-the-way stuff that makes the game feel like it could be a real place. I really don't want to see one more reason to actually interact with eth city zones removed. |
I didn't mind when you actually had to travel somewhere and having contacts all over town was important to get inspirations. When travel powers made a difference and going to a super group base and using a teleporter you worked hard for was actually faster than zooming to any zone from any place with a truckload of day job temp powers and the Orouboros travel cheat as I still like to call it.
This is not bad suggestion but I think we don't need that option. Game is too easy with all missionteleports and other thingys anyway. It's just matter of taste but I think we should travel more, not less 
But suggestion itself was ok.
Remowe all fast easytravels and cellphones. Glory for travelpowers 
Just kidding 
Prunejuice is warriors drink.
At the rate that people want simplicity, somewhere down the line CoX is going to become a single door and a cellphone. In fact, I suspect if there was a "Level 50!" button, most people would hammer that too. It would be NICE of course if things HAPPENED while in transit, it's not like there's roving bands of nogoodnics with their eyes (and rifles) on the skies for traveling supers. Okay, there are some Crey snipers, true, but give them a web gun and a posse and it's a threat. Or a squadron of flying drones to swarm and harass. Travel needs a hook, something interesting. I won't take tip missions in IP, it's too much of a long boring slog.
I don't see a need for this. Mostly, I agree with ClawsandEffect. I don't hold the opinion nearly as strongly, but I agree. Mostly.
But I'm not going to lie -- if this were implemented, I'd use the hell out of it. I'd spend a vet token on it in a second, much more eagerly than I would for remote auction house or vault access. If I were one token away from having it, I might even buy points just to get the token and have remote trainer access right away.
A few thoughts:
To avoid the "calling in the middle of a fight" problem, maybe it could be tied to a power that everyone has, one that requires you to find a safe place to take some downtime instead of using it in the middle of a pitched battle. One that doesn't let you use any other powers while it's active. One that actually reduces your defenses and immobilizes you. So when you've got that little "time to level up" arrow, instead of opening up your Contacts menu and pressing the "call" button, you hit Rest, and after some appropriately-long period (say, a minute), the level-up interface appears. (The Elder Scrolls games have been using the "you level up when you rest" approach for years.)
Or! OR!
Howzabout this:
A brand-new level 1 character arrives in Atlas Park. He beats up some Hellions and accumulates enough XP to reach level 2. Does he have Ms. Liberty's number? Of course not; he's never spoken to her. So he runs back to Atlas Plaza and she levels him up to 2. Now that he's visited her once, he can contact her remotely, but only if (pick one or all of these, they're just ideas):
- He's in the same zone she's in. Not "a mission instance whose door was in the same zone," but actually located within the city. Outside. Where all those other people, even the ones you're not teamed with, are.
- He's of a certain origin or AT. (Okay, maybe not for Ms. Liberty. But at higher levels, trainers could work like origin-specific stores and contacts: "I'd like to help, Doctor Mystic, but I'm more of a technology guy and I don't really know enough about magic to assist you over the phone. Maybe if you come see me I can give you some pointers.")
- He's done a particular mission or arc for her to unlock the ability to call.
- He's within a certain level range. If he's leveled beyond, say, 5, she'll only train him face-to-face. But maybe Blue Steel can train him remotely -- as long as he's visited him in King's Row at least once and done whatever he needs to do to qualify for "remote access" to that trainer.
And every trainer could work like that. Once you've "outgrown" Ms. Liberty, you have to meet Blue Steel at least once (and maybe meet a few qualifications) before he'll level you remotely. Eventually he won't be able to do it anymore and you'll move on to Valkyrie, Mynx, and so on. They'd all, of course, continue to train anyone who actually walked up to them, just like they do now; the restrictions would only affect who could "call" them to train.
On a side note, I always thought it was odd that everyone uses the same trainers. They're not origin-specific or AT-specific or anything. I mean, in practice I guess it's better to just say, "Ms. Liberty is over there, go see her to train," but she's a Martial Arts/Invulnerability scrapper with a few lightning powers... why am I going to her to learn how to more effectively use my fire aura? Or how to pull random objects through a gravitational wormhole and hurl them at my enemies? Or how to summon a more powerful demon than the ones I already command?
FUN FACT: That burst of light when you level up is actually the effectiveness escaping from your enhancements all at once.
Quote:
You made several points that I liked.|
Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell
I don't see a need for this. Mostly, I agree with ClawsandEffect. I don't hold the opinion nearly as strongly, but I agree. Mostly.
But I'm not going to lie -- if this were implemented, I'd use the hell out of it. I'd spend a vet token on it in a second, much more eagerly than I would for remote auction house or vault access. If I were one token away from having it, I might even buy points just to get the token and have remote trainer access right away. A few thoughts: To avoid the "calling in the middle of a fight" problem, maybe it could be tied to a power that everyone has, one that requires you to find a safe place to take some downtime instead of using it in the middle of a pitched battle. One that doesn't let you use any other powers while it's active. One that actually reduces your defenses and immobilizes you. So when you've got that little "time to level up" arrow, instead of opening up your Contacts menu and pressing the "call" button, you hit Rest, and after some appropriately-long period (say, a minute), the level-up interface appears. (The Elder Scrolls games have been using the "you level up when you rest" approach for years.) Or! OR! Howzabout this: A brand-new level 1 character arrives in Atlas Park. He beats up some Hellions and accumulates enough XP to reach level 2. Does he have Ms. Liberty's number? Of course not; he's never spoken to her. So he runs back to Atlas Plaza and she levels him up to 2. Now that he's visited her once, he can contact her remotely, but only if (pick one or all of these, they're just ideas):
And every trainer could work like that. Once you've "outgrown" Ms. Liberty, you have to meet Blue Steel at least once (and maybe meet a few qualifications) before he'll level you remotely. Eventually he won't be able to do it anymore and you'll move on to Valkyrie, Mynx, and so on. They'd all, of course, continue to train anyone who actually walked up to them, just like they do now; the restrictions would only affect who could "call" them to train. On a side note, I always thought it was odd that everyone uses the same trainers. They're not origin-specific or AT-specific or anything. I mean, in practice I guess it's better to just say, "Ms. Liberty is over there, go see her to train," but she's a Martial Arts/Invulnerability scrapper with a few lightning powers... why am I going to her to learn how to more effectively use my fire aura? Or how to pull random objects through a gravitational wormhole and hurl them at my enemies? Or how to summon a more powerful demon than the ones I already command? |
Hypothetically, if you were going to call a trainer, you would have to be in that same zone, and have visited them already. Doing a quick mission to earn their grace might be asking too much, but it's worth a shot to earn that contact number.
I also understand the whole concept that you go to your respectable trainer to learn your respectable build. Not a one-trainer-does-all like it's currently setup. Quite honestly, I'm surprised CoH didn't do this to begin with since they are very story orientated - AT based trainers like the origin based enhancements. On the flip side, we really don't need a whole mess of trainers in every zone.
AKA: Ath BS/SD Brute (Hero)
"The Fall and Rise of Athanatos" Arc ID: 521712
Outcast Cooler - "Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't."
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See, I don't mind traveling between zones. |
Originally Posted by Soul_System
Trainers are not your issue. Your issue is that they need to make running missions worth it and make them keep you in the same zone instead of sending you 3 zones away every other mission.
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To me at least, it stretches credulity quite a bit when an enemy group has plans to dominate the entire world.......yet their whole operation is contained in a 10 block radius.
Setting up shop in zones like Boomtown and Dark Astoria makes perfect sense. They're out of the way, and your plans for death and destruction will stand a better chance of going unnoticed until they're too late to prevent.
"Lets set up everything we plan on doing within a few blocks of where one of the premier heroes of the city tends to hang out, they'll NEVER find us here! It's genius!"
Then: "Hey, why do people in spandex keep busting down our door every few days?"
Traveling between zones just makes perfect sense from a storyline standpoint. How many villains go out of their way to make sure their base of operations is conveniently located for the heroes trying to stop them?
"Oh, we can't use THIS warehouse for our evil cloning project, it's too far from the train! The heroes won't want to bother with us if we're too far from convenient transport! ......Hey, wait a second, I think we're on to something here."
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I see where you're coming from, Claws, I really do, but just to play devil's advocate here... what makes sense from a "realism" standpoint and what actually makes an entertaining story are two entirely different things. There's a reason the Indiana Jones movies use that red line on a map to show that Indy is traveling from Barnett College to the Himalayas instead of actually making us watch him sit and wait and make small talk with strangers for three days on various boats and planes and trains: that part's neither fun nor particularly important to the plot, so they gloss over that part and get straight to the Nazi-punching.
Really, it's no different from the answer to the question of why Jack Bauer from 24 never has to go to the bathroom or wait at a red light in a supposedly "real-time" show: because that would break up story flow and cause viewers to lose interest.
FUN FACT: That burst of light when you level up is actually the effectiveness escaping from your enhancements all at once.
And yet players of other MMOs that have much more open world than instanced content never seem to mind that whatever twisted creatures they need to slay are not all conveniently located inside the quest npc hub.
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Or, in a comedy superhero romance comic, he does have her number, but he doesn't realize it's hers, because he got it off Megan Duncan at a nightclub shortly before he had his Origin. Awkward hijinks ensue! |
Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell
A brand-new level 1 character arrives in Atlas Park. He beats up some Hellions and accumulates enough XP to reach level 2. Does he have Ms. Liberty's number? Of course not; he's never spoken to her.
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Quote:
See, to me that doesn't sound interesting, it sounds annoying. Just like the snipers in Founders' Falls and Peregrine Island aren't interesting, they're annoying. It might be different if there were anything to do inside missions other than fight, but since there basically isn't, aggressive interruptions to travel are just extraneous fights on the way to other fights. Pfui.|
Originally Posted by BRGamer
It would be NICE of course if things HAPPENED while in transit, it's not like there's roving bands of nogoodnics with their eyes (and rifles) on the skies for traveling supers. Okay, there are some Crey snipers, true, but give them a web gun and a posse and it's a threat. Or a squadron of flying drones to swarm and harass. Travel needs a hook, something interesting.
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Who's played Skies of Arcadia? How'd you like those random map encounters? Yeah.
Quote:
Exactly. And to the Indiana Jones reference as well.|
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
See, to me that doesn't sound interesting, it sounds annoying. Just like the snipers in Founders' Falls and Peregrine Island aren't interesting, they're annoying.
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My gameplay isn't in the traveling, but in the goal and the mission. If I was the type who enjoyed finding new things, and I do, I do it when badge hunting.
AKA: Ath BS/SD Brute (Hero)
"The Fall and Rise of Athanatos" Arc ID: 521712
Outcast Cooler - "Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't."
One idea I've been having lately is that a lot of the "conviniences" of the direct interface (such as a "level up" button on the corner of your screen) should come with the advantages of a superbase.
A superbase, in theory, exists to make tasks more accessible and convinient. I think this should carry over to your general interface.
Have a teleporter to Founder's Falls in your base? You should always have the ability to teleport to Founder's Falls directly from wherever you are. Have a field training unit in your base? Yous should be able to train remotely. Etc. Etc. Things like "cooldown timers" could even be installed for things like buying inspirations or getting healed, so that better components could be installed in the base that allow you to access these features more often.
The conviniences of superbases are reduced dramaticlaly by the fact that you have to return to the superbase to use those conviniences, which pretty much amounts to the same thing as travelling around or visiting other zones. It's time intensive, boring, distracting, and sometimes forces teammates to sit around and wait for you.
A superbase should be able to help you circumvent the need to travel around for your regular maintenance -- you've got field support now. This would reduce redundant pointless travel, reduce downtime when teaming, and encourage superbase construction.
All of which are worthwhile goals, in my opinion.
As for travel -- I agree that there should be more reason to travel around the city. I just don't think training is the way it should be. I'd like it more if general city travel worked a lot like the Safeguard Missions, where random bad stuff periodically happens and if you're around to stop it in time then you get some little reward or recognition.
As it is, I lot of people use Ouro portals to get around or to meet up or even to leave an area. In my opinion, a superbase should be much more useful than an Ouro portal and allow you to teleport back and forth at will (but perhaps only if you've made the appropriate construction in the base).
@Altus Vir
Triumph Server
In the pacific time zone? Join us on the "West Coast Heroes" global channel.
/chanjoin West Coast Heroes
Trainers do so much more then level up toons these days, for ex. 2nd builds at Level 10+ or redoing your costume without needing to visit a tailor and as such are still useful. The need to go to a trainer to level up i also always found a bit odd. By the same token if leveling up was automated a lot of current "new" traniers in trials becomes somewhat obsolete.
Speaking of leveling i still dont understand why some Villain Epic Powers like Mu needs to be unlocked, but none of the Hero sides does. But i guess thats another thread alltogether.
//Everybody can have pets and nukes by Dev´s on drugs
@Joshua.