One Ouroboros too many?

A friend had a bug crop up yesterday, and it got me thinking about the overall design of Ouroboros. I'll start with the bug for some background.

My friend had started out a hero (mind/kin controller) but wanted access to patron epic powers. So he used tips to cycle thru vigilante to villain to rogue. A "funny" thing happened on the way back to hero though. He reached level 50 while doing the Lady Gray TF with our SG Saturday night. After we completed it, he asked me if he should focus first on finishing his hero tips or do the incarnate arc. I told him I'd go with incarnate arc first, to more quickly begin receiving shards. I had to log, and could not help him with either.

Well, the next day we teamed again. He had started the incarnate arc and had the Trapdoor mission ready to go. He had also already converted back to hero. So he, another SG mate, and I all met in Ouroboros, teamed, and were going to do Trapdoor. The crystal wouldn't let us in, telling us that we had to complete the selected mission first. We had no idea what the problem was so we tried different things to get in -- pass the star, select a different mission then Trapdoor again, etc. Nothing worked; we got the same message every time. He eventually realized he had started the incarnate arc in the "villain" Ouroboros, and we were in the "hero" Ouroboros now. Mender Ramiel wouldn't even let him drop the mission.

Wrong Ramiel. Wrong Ouroboros. Phooey! He petitioned for a GM and we went off to do some missions in FBZ. A GM showed up during our second mission there, and spoke with my friend for a couple minutes. The GM was unable to fix the problem. (I have no idea why he couldn't even just drop the mission/arc from my friend's task list, but he apparently could not.) My friend was told there were two ways to proceed. He could run another set of vig-->villain-->rogue->hero tips, and complete the incarnate arc while he had access to the "villain" Ouroboros. Or he could run incarnate trials, and gain the alpha slot that way.

It occurred to me after the GM left was, hey, now there are alignment-change tokens available! Since this issue is a design bug, they should just grant my friend a couple of the tokens so he could quickly become villain, complete his incarnate arc, and quickly become a hero again. I suggested my friend email support and request this, and I hope he does.

Perhaps you can see (or already knew) that the existence of two separate Ouroborosses, with the same contacts, etc, is a confusing design with unanticipated bugs just waiting to happen. It doesn't even make sense in internal logic. I suppose one could throw up smoke and mirrors and claim <cough> time paradox <cough>, but that's pretty hollow reasoning.

As the title to this thread suggests, there is one Ouroboros too many. I suppose they created two because it was the easiest way at the time to allow the same contacts to offer different missions. It also made it easy to insure that players only had access to the right set of flashback missions. CoH game technology has advanced since then, and context-sensitive interaction with contacts is already happening. So here is an overview of how a better Ouroboros could work:

1) One "neutral" Ouroboros. Heroes, vigilantes, villains, and rogues, could all co-exist there. I say neutral (like Midnight Club) instead of co-ed (like Cimerora) because no co-ed missions would be available. Players could remain on co-ed teams, but co-ed teams could not do Ouroboros contact missions, flashbacks, or TFs. (Heroes and vigilantes would be treated as one alignment though, as would villains and rogues.)

2) Contacts would have their logic enhanced to recognize the alignment of the person speaking to them. What they offer would vary accordingly, and no missions would be offered to co-ed teams. If Ouroboros content has already been selected, players of the opposite alignment could not join the team.

3) The main exit portal would have its logic enhanced as well. Heroes could only access Paragon City destinations. Villains could only access the Rogue Isles. However, both rogues and vigilantes would be allowed to travel to all zones. (If you've ever played a Rogue and gone to the "wrong" Ouroboros, you know how much a boon this item would be.)

4) The echo portal would ensure only those eligible could travel to its destinations (which is currently only Echo Galaxy City).

5) This one is probably not necessary, but it might reduce confusion. The large room with flashback crystals would gain doors. A player entering would essentially go to one of two places, where the "hero" crystals are, or where the "villain" crystals are. Entering the room would not split a pre-existing co-ed team. Flashbacks would only be offered to the team leader of a team with just heroes and/or vigilantes, or villains and/or rogues.

The Dev's have said before that Ouroboros is a dirty hack and that at present it's not possible to combine them.

Fixing Oro would also make cross-faction teaming easier in the revised Dark Astoria.

Currently, after your initial run-through, the DA arcs (Which are clearly intended to be repeated regularly as the solo/small team Incarnate path) are only available via Oro. That makes it absolutely impossible to run them with a "mixed" group more than once... Not good when DA is supposed to be both a cross-faction co-op zone *and* one with content that's intended to be run many times over on the same characters.

I don't think a co-op Ouroborus is worth it if allocating those resources means cutting other new content or revamped older content. Their resources and time are finite, and the QoL benefit of a new Ouro isn't worth, say, throwing away new content.

My question would be, when I switch from villain to hero, all of my other unfinished missions disappear, unless they are co-op missions. Why should the Mender Ramiel arc be any different?

It doesn't seem so much an Ouro problem as a side-switching problem. You shouldn't have any outstanding villain missions after you switch to hero. The Mender Ramiel arc should reset, since it treats the v-side as v-side only and h-side as h-side only.

Well, that is why I don't even bother to /petition and I just fix issues that crop up myself (restart arcs, drop the mission, or move on and do sometime else). Unfortunetly, support's hands are usually so tied they can't do anything.

Last time this happened to me, I just spent some astrals from an alt and mailed myself an incarnate unlock token.

I had the same thing happen to me. I just left the arc there and did iTrials. It would be nice if side switching would give a warning and an opportunaty to abandon it.

So long as there are two Ouroboroses anyway, it seems a shame not to play the divide up for all it's worth, with the villainous version having dark storm clouds instead of a tranquil sky, and an openly evil group of Menders from a different future recruiting villains to change the past and thwart time-traveling heroes enlisted by their hero-side counterparts.

I asked a few Ustreams ago about Vig/Rogue at least being given a way to visit the other side's Ouro, and they seemed to partially dodge the issue, again stating that basically "Ouroboros is an awful hack.", so that's still their official position as of earlier this month.

I agree that it needs to be fixed.

It'll take a lot of work but Ouroboros is a huge deal and it keeps getting bigger with every patch that adds missions.

Leaving it as-is is like fixing something in your car with duct tape. It may work, and nobody might notice it now, but when they do notice it, it really breaks immersion.

The worst is when you try to get into a cross-alignment group through Ouroboros not realizing that it's a faction-specific zone. There's NOTHING IN GAME TO SUGGEST THAT! Not even a loading screen tip! The zone appears the same across factions (which is a huge mistake btw, it doesn't matter if it's supposed to be super-neutral ground, there should be something to show you that it's different, even if all it does is enhance the "heroic" nature of the ui when you're blue). Even if all you do is have random heroic or villainous dudes and chicks standing around drinking tea, it'd go a long way to illustrating that the zones are different (which you need to do).

I'm curious if this:


Alignment Change

• Fixed an issue where Villains and Rogues could retain active status on some Broker contacts when changing alignment.