Open Shadow Shard to all alignments

As nice as it would be, thats probably too much work to get squeezed into the current development cycle. But changing the contacts to co-op? Hopefully that would be simpler.

With the Rulu-Shin in Who Will Die part 2, maybe there's a small beacon of hope that the zone will be revamped in some manner. Perhaps one of the trials will take place there.

I agree. Making it co-op would be a nice start but unless the TFs and quest givers are changed to make them co-op as well it doesn't really accomplish much. The quest givers shouldn't be a problem, just say that the upswing in the Praetorian War means that the US military doesn't have enough troops to send to help them so they are willing to take whatever help they can get.

The TFs are a little trickier since they all involve missions in Paragon City. The simple solution there would be to change change the "door" for those missions to a portal inside of Firebase Zulu so instead of trekking back to Paragon City you get ported directly where you need to go. That being said, I'd advocate a full re-write of the TFs anyway to make them more enjoyable to run. The actual plots of the TFs are quite good, they just need to cut down on the number of filler missions.

For example, if I were going to re-write the Saga of Lanaru here is how I'd do it (in the style of things like the ITF and Apex TF):


Mission 1: Faathim tells you that you must prove yourself by clearing a cave of Rularuu. The "door' for this mission is a portal inside his death star thingy. This is a pretty standard cave map full of Rularuu. After completing this he gives you a small crystal that will allow him to communicate telepathically with you (i.e. his cell phone).

Mission 2: Ok, this mission is going to be the meat of the TF, it's a huge map with several stages and a bunch of AVs.

Faathim tells you that several forces are fighting to control the master of the Storm Palace and that you must prevent them from doing so and instead use the keys yourself to enter the Storm Palace and confront Lanaru.

The door for this mission is a either the Hortha vine leading from the Chantry to the Storm Palace or a nearby glowie teleport thing if that can't be done. The mission map itself is a reconstruction of the Storm Palace zone complete with gravity geysers (possibly split into multiple sub-maps if necessary due to size, if this is done the gravity geysers could function as "doors" moving you between map sections).

When you zone into the map you're greeted by General Hammond who has established a fire base and field hospital to help you out. He gives you a little pep talk to assure you that his men will help hold the areas you clear (ideally as you clear the monuments his party moves up lagging about one monument behind you, if not maybe put a teleporter at the hospital in the style of the Underground Trial).

The basic goal of the mission is to travel to each of the seven monuments in the Storm Palace, defeat the AV guarding it to get the key and then activate it. The areas in between the monuments will have some additional enemies. In general the areas between two monuments will consist of either forces loyal to the AVs at each monument or alternatively combats between two different forces, i.e. if Nemesis is at the Monument of Torment and Mother Mayhem is at the Monument of Malice then the area in between would have a mixture of IDF and Nemesis Soldiers with some groups fighting each other.

The Monuments and AVs in order would be:

Monument of Anger: Preatorian IDF with Malaise as the AV
Monument of Malice: Preatorian IDF with Mother Mayhem as the AV
Monument of Torment: Nemesis with the "Nemesis?" Archvillain
Monument of Hatred: Nemesis with the "Nemesis?" Archvillain (yes, you'd fight him twice. Why? Because it's funny)
Monument of Fury: Rikti with Hro'Dtohz as the AV
Monument of Destruction: When you arrive here there is no AV but there is a group of Malta fighting the Rikti. Faathim contacts you telepathically and tells you that the Malta have recovered the key and retreated to Paragon City, however he can track them and will open a portal for you. The portal takes you to a small Malta Base style map where you find and defeat a Malta AV (either a new one or possibly a Kronos Titan if a suitable outdoors map style is used) to recover the key and then return to the main map to use it.
Monument of Madness: Once again you are to late finding only a group of Circle of Thorns guarding the Monument. Faathim again opens a portal to a graveyard in Paragon City where you defeat Baphomet to recover the last key.

Activating the final monument completes the mission. Exiting the mission on completion places you in the Storm Palace near the overland Monument of Madness (this was done in the Admiral Sutter TF, so apparently it's possible to have a special "mission complete" exit).


Mission 3: Faathim now tells you that the time has come to confront Lanaru the Mad. This mission is essentially identical to the final mission of the current TF. Go the the big room, fight the giant AV. Have tea and crumpets.


So yeah, that is how I'd do it. The basic story of the TF is actually pretty good, you have to stop a bunch of bad guys who a are trying to steal the keys to control the uber bad guy (who you then beat up). The problem is that this is spread accross 9 different door missions. Combining those 9 missions into one uber mission concentrates the AV fights (which are fun) while cutting out the amount of filler in between. Similarly reducing the number of kill all missions at the start from 3 to 1 reduces the filler there without really impacting the plot.

I know it was brought up at both HeroCon events.

The answer we were given was (paraphrased) we don't have any plans to make that a co-op zone.

I've seldom heard them give a flat NO to anything, it's usually an answer that is worded as a qualified NO. The qualifications they give usually allow them to do something if an idea strikes them later or it becomes something that fits into other plans.

An example of that would be the re-working of the Positron TF. It had been suggested and Posi and Hero 1 were asked about rewriting the Positron TF to shorten it or modify it using things they'd learned over the years and the response I was given was that they didn't have any plans to redo it. Something came up that made splitting it into 2 parts made sense so we got the revamp after all.

I like to think that some of the questions the players asked at HeroCon as well as the M&G's, and how they were worded, resulted in some of the things we've eventually gotten.

That's a change that should be done anyway and "might" make them more popular with Heroes too!


Okay, being realistic, it won't. However it might put off slightly less