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

First, kudos to both SuperOz and Forbin agreeing to disagree. I honestly think that's the first time I have seen two individual forum members anywhere actually do that, without getting a last word in or anything of the sort. Then again, you both have been reasonable everywhere else here, so I am not surprised.

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Originally Posted by SuperOz Me, I just want some feeling of that cinematic experience. I'll freely admit I want game balance to be put aside in favor of story, but for no other reason that I feel doing that not only breaks from the notions that all tasks are able to be done by all characters equally (and I'm not arguing this be universally true; just for these particular circumstances) but allows individuals to shine in an otherwise collective 'lump' of experience. It's selfish but also human to want to be recognised individually for your efforts. I don't think it'd be wrong at all to have moments for Scrappers/Tanks/Brutes/Controllers/Blasters et al to show off. After all, a lot of the story of this game is about you being the hero, not 'you all'. But in a 'you all' gathering, I think it'd be great to highlight just what makes your AT and powerset special, and let other people see it too.

I completely agree. It has been my main beef with the Incarnate System's AT homogenization since day 1 of its existence. I know that a mentality like that is reminiscent of the "holy trinity" days of MMORPGs, and that many now find that to be archaic. But that sort of thing is intrinsic to most superhero universes.

To relate to the topic: it would only be awesome for a brief time if The Avengers team consisted of six Hulks, then we would get over the uber-smashing that was going on, and want to see something else. As written, watching the Hulk do his smashing thing and then seeing the deadly precision and finesse utilized by Hawkeye provides us with a dynamic switch that keeps our interest far longer. The game could use more situations that called for that (and do more to make individual ATs shine at what they are meant to do, and not step on the toes of others).

New Emote..Team mate "Sucker punch".
.."Smash"
NCSoft an Marvel joint venture for Avengers MMO 8)- Hint hint 8)-

The zone events themselves are usually uninteresting and the rewards are miniscule at best. I have had a couple of ideas on how to improve zone events to make them... you know... events instead of some of the random stuff we get now.

1st: All giant monsters need to actually be giant. Honestly, you could hardly call most of them "giant monsters" as much as you would call them slightly larger enemies. The Kraken is an example of this: Half of the fun of fighting the Kraken is just finding where the darn thing. An example of a truly giant monster is the Seed of Hamidon: You can see that thing floating ominously from miles away, making that soul-shaking rumbling sound. I myself grew up on old Godzilla movies, so when I heard about giant monsters I expected something a little more... giant. For a reference image:

http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//f/f...Size_Chart.jpg

I would suggest making everything to the left of the Kronos Titan 5 times their current size, minimum, with everything to the right of and equal to Kronos titan twice as large. Hamidon, Crystal Titan, DE giant monsters, aspects of Rularuu, and the ghost ship would remain the same size. Seriously, the giant monsters need to look like they'll trip on a building before they become interesting. It plays in with that whole "objects we see as so big are so small" thing that monster movies have going for them.


2nd, increase the rewards for zone events by a lot. Zone events have the unique capability of being dictated in how often they are present by the devs, and because of this it is impossible to "farm" zone events if they are adequately controlled in frequency. There is, therefore, very little reason to have such minor rewards as they do now. Currently most zone events give a badge, and maybe 2 merits. This isn't even enough to sneeze at. An exact number for the awards I have not set (I believe 10 merits was suggested for GMs in a suggestion thread), but there's no reason not to give 10 or 20 or even 30 reward merits (depending on frequency) for these zone events. For events that are essentially defense events, greater experience and INF rewards are a nice way to get more people active. A little more on that...


3rd, events where enemies spawn at your feet are not that interesting. You just huddle together and fight the enemies off for what seems like forever. Zone events, with their rarer frequency and higher rewards, should encourage an active part on the player. The ways in which you can do that are plentiful, but my idea is as follows: Make it so the enemies that appear in the zone actually appear throughout the zone and also have some march through the zone on preset paths. Rikti heavy assault mechs and elite zombies will spawn natively during the event without requiring dozens of players to gather in one spot. Then, the entire zone event becomes about street sweeping, finding enemies you want to kill and fighting off enemies that wander in and attack you instead of a stationary tank and spank. This allows you to create goals that can be accomplished that give further rewards, such as cleaning out certain neighborhoods or defeating all of the elites or something along those lines. This also allows smaller groups to fully enjoy these events, and on smaller population servers this is a must. And finally a little more on that...

4th and finally, certain events have aspects that are too hard. The Rikti Invasion has the Drop Ship: flying and nearly indestructible enemies with an unavoidable high-damage laser. This is a pain in the rear to everyone in the zone, and there isn't anything a player can do about it. This needs to be toned down; make the lasers much less damaging and maybe make the drop ships less durable (along with rewarding players that destroy them). Probably the hardest event is, without a doubt, the Deadly Apocalypse. To be frank, I don't think I've ever seen this event completed with less than a team of 24 people, and as fun as this event is it is all but impossible to do on the fly successfully. Completely deadly apocalypse redside is even more unheard of (and this is on the super-populated virtue, mind you). The coordination needed is astounding, the enemies spawn en masse and are strong, the banners are ridiculously difficult to kill with twice the HP of an AV, and it is really hard to fight enough of the enemy spawns to even make the banners vulnerable. The event simply needs to be much easier.



... that's about it from my end.


EDIT: Can't believe I forgot this. It would also be nice for there to be a few non-PVP zone events where an AV will spawn on the map.

Thankfully I have suggested having AV spawns on maps for players to fight... There is no exclusion between a small guy having powers and a big guy having powers.

I also do not find it impractical to fight giant monsters. The only people who have to resort to the ankle-fighting are players who can't fly or jump (a rarity with the prominence of raptor packs) and also have melee powers. Even then, I don't have an issue with attacking the ankles of a monster, since in all practicality that is what you would do to take down a giant monster: hit him low and cause him to fall over. If only we can somehow make it so giant monsters go from up phases to down phases during combat. That, or get it so you can actually stand on the giant monster. But alas these are small limitations.

BTW, the whole "I'm not saying I have a problem with your idea BUT... (then list a bunch of issues you have)" doesn't mean a damn thing. It is patronizing.