After people see The Avengers, fair warning to the Devs...

Ugh... I can never remember what these are called. It's some weird acronym with an X in it despite not having a single word starting with an X. I know it's something about "bombs" but the rest is just a blur.

Also... Is that what I said? For some reason, I keep wanting to say IED - Improvised Explosive Device - but there's a U somewhere in the Rikti bomb acronym and my brain gets cross-wired.

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.

*snorfle* I had to stop and think what ELSE an IUD would be. I finally figured out that Sam meant the bombs, not a contraceptive device.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Not in a zone event. Maybe a league-sized trial where the actions can be staged and/or controlled.

And Sam nailed it on the head; people will want it... for a while till over-repetition sucks the fun out of it and the mechanics interrupt 'normal' gameplay.

I had fun with the Rikti event when it started; then I kept getting interrupted by it. I suddenly pop out of a mission to find the zone empty, the sky greenish and giant ships with MASSIVE UNBLOCKABLE LASERS killing me if I get too close. One time I was trying to get a lowbie to a base portal and the path of the ships was outside the hospital. I died, rezzed and then tried to run past the path, died and ended up back where I started; inside the hospital waiting to get out. So I logged out.

Zombie invasions aren't much better but I do like the Banner event if only for the scenary. The sky darkens cleanly and a fog has rollen in which really brings out the light-sourcing especially redside. But they all suffer from the 'clear map of mobs' problem. With the adundant hunts in legacy content; only those in unaffected zones like Atlas and Mercy (and the Echos, Striga, etc.) can be completed without using the mission-drop function.

So yeah; trial or taskforce would be a better place as it can be kept apart from the real stuff.

Oh and Sam: UXB - Un-eXploded Bomb.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I sure hope there was, cuz that doesn't sound very interesting...

How about a specific female set with tier 1 attack 'Hair flick to the eye'?

Well, Hawkeye's showing quite a bit of skin and some muscles, Captain America's outfit is quite tight across his chest, and Thor fills out his costume pretty well - and if it's your kind of thing, the Hulk is also working it

That would require moving hair for our avatars

Also, in a vaguely realted topic, doesn't the whole team get caputred on the Barracuda SF? And how exactly does it play out?

In a Rikti invasion, everyone huddles together and spams powers for five minutes nonstop and nobody can see what's going on. In the game as a whole, teamwork consists of holy trinity MMO nonsense where characters aren't allowed to be good at more than a few things because if they did, supposedly the forced grouping model of gameplay would fall apart and dooooom.

In the movie, combat is mobile and fluid. Teamwork is executed not by having 7 squishy guys hiding behind one big guy taking potshots at the enemy, but by splitting up and tackling various enemy threats. You can see from the way Cap splits up the team how the roles that characters fill are tactical rather than MMO holy trinity ones. While they vary considerably in the magnitude of power they wield, all of them are competent combatants alone and all the characters with ranged attacks get involved in extended melee combat at least once.

If you wanted to make Rikti invasions more like the movies, here's an idea - have a ground battle and an air battle. Rikti are teleporting in and heroes fight them off on the ground, but they're getting bombed all over the place and taking heavy damage. So a squad of flyers has to get up there and kill some dropships. The more dropships the flyers kill the fewer bombs fall on everyone else.

I want this power.

You punch them and they fly off the screen. A few seconds later their character stumbles back from off-screen looking woozy.

It can be used once a TF.

Well, we can kinda do that now - but it needs a lot of people to help take down the dropships

Currently, the invasions are designed in favor of small teams - there's just one objective that scales to the number of people fighting - adding multiple objectives would require there to be a larger number of players around to complete the event successfully - for example, if the event needed players to take out Rikti bombs at the same time as fighting off the invaders, instead of it being in 2 separate phases like it is now, along with taking own a set number of dropships and going up to a Rikti mothership floating over the zone to knock out its troop teleporters, then the event would be more dynamic, but it'd also need 2 or more teams to complete it successfully.

Here's an example of a multi-objective Battalion invasion event that'd be dynamic, using only tech that already exists in the game, but would still be unfair to small teams - it's split into 4 parts, all of them happening at once, and affecting each other - they scale to the number of players invovled, but still require several players at each objective.

1 - Shivan meteorites land in the zone, spawning Shivans - the meteorites need to be destroyed to keep the Shivan numbers down, or they'll appear during the other 3 objectives to reinforce the Battalion.

2 - Siren's Call style hotspots appear at intervals across the zone, featuring Vanguard troops fighting the Battalion - failing to win enough hotspots give the Battalion a footing in the zone, and they use it to reinforce the Shivan meteroites and the guards on their starships.

3 - A Vanguard NPC appears in the zone who can teleport heroes into a Battalion starship to disrupt their attacks and defeat their commander - clicking the NPC brings up a text window where you can decline to go, or agree to be tp'ed - agreeing to go sends you to an instanced map inside one of the starships, similar to the way the Winter Realm used to work, only with no lock-out timer on entering. Disrupting the Battalion on their ship reduces the amount they can deploy at the hotspots and meteorites.

4 - Several Shivan/Battalion Giant Monsters roaming the zone - not just spawning and waiting, but moving around, similar to the way the Paladin moves through Kings Row. If the GMs aren't defeated, they'll turn up at the other 3 objectives.

The Battalion are an Incarnate race, so the event also gives Incarnate rewards to any Incarnates taking part, and lasts 20-25 minutes - completeing 1 objective in that time gives you common salvage, completing 2 gives you uncommon salvage, completing 3 gives you rare salvage, and completing all 4 gives you very rare salvage.
A Incarnate Trial objective window would be present to let everyone know the situation with the 4 objetives, so that the players could divide their numbers to balance them out.

It's a multi-objective event that's suitable for the scale of the Coming Storm, with falling meteorites, pitched battles, rampaging monsters and swashbuckling attacks on enemy starships - amnd it allows players to choose pobjectves to suit what they prefer doing - they can stand and fight at the meteroites, chase GMs and hotspots across the zone, or hop onto an instanced map if they prefer missions to zone events, or if their computer can't handle the action in the zone - everyone would still be working together - but unlike the current invasion events, the whole thing is totally unfair to smaller teams.

I like this. I would play it. As a trial if not a zone event.

Pretty much. This sounds more like something to do in an organised Trial where you can split people up to handle various logical objectives. Actual zone events just devolve into a mosh pit which is never exciting or interesting.

At one point, there was a drive in this game to get random people just minding their own business engaged and excited in random happenstance. "O noes! A giant octopus is attacking the port! Quick, everybody, we have to stop it!" In a cartoon or a comic book or, hell, even in real life if real life had super powers, that might work, because in real life it's a big deal. In a game where people don't enjoy being compelled and don't want to bother... That doesn't quite work. I get the allure of spontaneous unexpected massive events and the adventure they bring, anything which is "spontaneous" is going to run into the problem of people who can't be arsed to drop what they're doing - people like me, for instance. The problem is you start running into problems of organisation, and the larger the event is, the more the organisation required.

Here's the thing - very, VERY few people actually enjoy having their game interrupted on a regular basis. For the first few times, sure. It's a novelty and there's lots of interest. Thereafter, though, that interest wanes, organisation becomes harder, events become impossible to run and they turn into a nuisance. And ALL of this is because these events start themselves. They show up whenever they feel like and rely on whoever is available and interested at the time, which at the times I play (like right now) isn't many people.

Presenting this as a TF or a Trial is far superior. Hell, presenting it as a Praetorian style event is far superior. The reason it's superior is because people can start it intentionally. What this means is organisation can be done ahead of time and you can be sure you have sufficient participation BEFORE the event starts, and you can be sure the event won't start on you unless you specifically do something to start it. And even then, these are localised and don't bother other people in the zone who don't want to be involved.

MMOs in very recent history have been learning a very crucial lesson: The days of EQ's tough love are over. MMO players are far more diverse these days, and as such their patience for unfriendly game mechanics is at an all-time low. MMOs, therefore, need to be much more careful about maintaining not just their gameplay, but also players' comfort level. The best way to do this is to simply not force uncomfortable situations on people unless they acted to put themselves in that situation.

Right, that. I HATE this acronym, because it's not an actual acronym this it's next to impossible for me to remember it. To me, this would be a UEB.

This is pretty much why I hate Rikti, Zombie and Nemesis invasions - they're a giant mosh pit covered in a soup of effects. I never have any idea what's going on in those. I just target what's nearest and start pressing attack keys until it drops. And this can go on for 15 minutes. It's about as interesting as stirring a bowl alphabet soup.

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.

Well, the silent e at the beginning is a quirk of the language, you wouldn't pronounce the word differently if it was spelled xploded.

It's pretty old, anyway, goes back at least 70 years.

Take the things that we can't do mechanically out of the movie...and what we get with the rikti invasions is basically the same thing.

We can't fly a bomb through a portal...we can't have one person close the portal (ending the invasion for others). We can't jump on "ships" to take them down.

However, if you're on a team...you can tackle various threats. Have some stay and fight the main invasion point...and have others take out the bombs being scattered. You can have members fighting a spawn here on the ground...and you can have members fighting a spawn there on the roof. You can also fly around assisting various members of your group.


That being said...I can deifnitely see how a much better version can be created if it were done as a TF or trial.

Maybe have it so that certain things need to be done within the same time frame...forcing a need to split up the team to accomplish them.

Have the different things structured somewhat like the Hami in a way. Where certain things are more effected by ranged attacks, while others need melee...with things needing to be held. (while still being able to be accomplished without the certain needs). As a way for everyone to have their moment to shine.

It morphs into "Throne Melee" as the chairs you beat people with get ever larger, more ornate and flashy?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

They'll put flashy LEDs on ANYTHING nowadays!

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Rikti spawn based on both the number of heroes in your immediate area and the number of rikti recently killed there, so splitting up like that actually makes things boringer. You kill 3 minions then stand by, tap your foot for 10 seconds, a bomb lands on you, then another 2 minions and a monkey port in, etc. Besides, we all know the Rikti teleport right to our doorsteps. There's no reason to specifically go fight them on a rooftop unless you liked the scenery there.

If a Rikti invasion were more like the movie you would have one squad fighting the dropships while another assists Siren's Call-style hotspots on the ground where the Army is battling Rikti. Then a Rikti commander ports in and you all gather to beat him up.

Speed ITF is the closest to the sort of thing I'm talking about. Mission 2 - everyone split up in 2's and 3's and each squad clears a branch of the map. Mission 4 - two brutes solo a tower each, the remainder kill Rommie.

Actually, yes, we can.

We can?

Actually on top of the ship...while it's flying through the zone?

This has been my complaint since idea one of iTrials being announced on the forums, and the primary reason why I hate Rikti invasions more when I participate in them than when they inconvenience me - like Z from Antz, they make me feel... Insignificant. It's just a basic fact of large unscripted fights that the greater the number of heroes involved becomes, the less individual each of them is. Hell, it's a hallmark of industrial era warfare - there are no warriors, just soldiers for the simple fact that so many are involved and they die so easily. That, really, is just how most MMOs work.

If you look at the Avengers, there aren't that many people in the team. Correct me if I forget someone, but you have Captain America, the Black Widow, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man and, um... Hawkeye? That's six people by my count, which is fewer than even our maximum team size, to say nothing of a 24-man raid or the maximum the League system is able to handle, which is 48. Just imagine a hodgepodge of 48 hero and try to figure out how you design a task that lets them all have their own "moment."

Then you're running into the granddady of all MMO restrictions there are - "class balance." Every class has to be crippled in some way because if you don't twist people's arm into teaming by making them incapable of solo play, they might do the unthinkable and not run raids ad nauseum. It's actually worse in City of Heroes because some characters are solo monsters while others are almost entirely team support, so you can't really give them a moment of their own, or at least I can't think of how one would do this.

In the "bad ideas" thread, someone suggested capping all teams in the game at 4, and I feel this is a good number for a task where everyone can shine. It's enough people to ensure you have a little of every kind of contribution and it's small enough to where everyone's contribution matters. To call up the spectre of the "healer," being the only healer on the team lets you see that you're making a difference. Being one of ten healers makes it feel like you're not doing much of anything at all. The more the people who perform the same function become, the less evident each individual person's contribution becomes.

Simply put, I find smaller teams to be much more rewarding because they have much better feedback, and if you want a team task that treats every player as an individual, you really need to limit the amount of people you engage.

Here's an example: A L4D DLC campaign ends in a mission where one player HAS to die. The survivors are on a bridge which needs to be raised out of reach of the zombies, but the generator for it stalls and three Tanks show up to kill everybody. At least one survivor has to dive back down into the horde, start the generator and ultimately die for the other three to survive (it's always bill because "Kill Bill" is an achievement).

Here's another example: An Alien Swarm campaign has the team of soldiers enter a small building with two doors and three windows, where an engineer has to hack a console while the other three team-mates cover him. You can weld the doors shut, position turrets towards the windows and spread out so you can cover all entrances. And in Alien Swarm, EVERYONE has a gun, be he medic, commander or engineer.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you want mission scripting that requires everyone to do something, you need to do it with fewer people.

I would, actually. I'd pronounce it like Yahtzee pronounce "xbla" when mocking the Xbox Live Arcade. I'd pronounce it "ksploded." Letters in the English language have a n "alphabet" pronunciation and an in-word pronunciation, and X becomes "ks" when used in a world like "paxton." I wouldn't pronounce "xploded" as "eksploded" any more an I would prinounce "park" as "peeark."

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.

Perhaps I misunderstood the actual comment.

I interpreted the comment to be "send people up top to engage the ships", which is doable and the ships explode nicely.

If you mean "stand on top of and ride", then no.

Yep, the entire "you are stronger than you have ever been before and to prove it we will send you off to fight alongside 15-23 other similarly power individuals" thing has sucked since it was first concepted.


But I refuse to believe it has to be how they work.

Seen the movie, but didn't see much that we haven't already got somewhere in the game first.

Alien invasion? Check.
Hot chicks in tight outfits? Check.
Spaceships that blow up if attacked? Check.
Characters that don't get along until the big fight? Check.
Characters that switch sides? Check.
Nukes? Check.
Bombs? Check.
Copyright ripoff characters? Check.
Civilians that run around but never die? Check.
An AV/GM that gets defeated? Check.
Destructible environment? Check.
Base? Check.
Base Raids? Check.

So what exactly do you think we don't have?

Aside from

Bruce Banner showing up on a scooter.
Hulk sucker punching Thor (PvP) during the invasion.
Loki being thrashed like a rag doll
and actual buildings blowing up instead of just cars and stuff.