All I know is that I'll be checking Matt Miller's twitter semi-regularly to see what his plans are.
He, along with some other former Paragon Studio devs AFAIK, don't get officially released from their non-competes until sometime this month. At which point they'll be free to do and say...stuff.
I got a little excited when he tweeted "Start over, use the lessons learned in your defeat" until I saw that this was advice for playing X-Com. 
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Or was it.... |
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I got a little excited when he tweeted "Start over, use the lessons learned in your defeat" until I saw that this was advice for playing X-Com.
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Wont know until they're ready to talk turkey.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
Or was it....
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I can just as easily see the team not ever wanting to touch a super hero MMO again. I just wish they'd say either way, just to clear the air.
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... the forums logged me out while I was typing up my response. Sheesh. I'll try to remember what I said.
I don't mind raids in CoH*, but I'd much prefer it if there didn't have to be raids for endgame shinies. There should be both raids and a solo path, with comparable speed. (Like the DA and other Incarnate solo arcs, only... faster)
*I mind raids in other games, but that's because PUGs in other games tend to scream at me for not knowing the dungeon like the back of my hand already (even when I say it's my first time doing it) and don't have the very gear I'm going into the raid to try to get. CoH's community has spoiled me yet again.
OK, I will try to keep this short so it will be oversimplified (but I predict it still will be overly long)
There are 3 big factors that are very important for a "perfect" super hero MMO.
1) Customization of character AND headquarters
2) Relatively free-form build and fast paced combat system
3) Heavy story driven content and instanced/isolated adventures that make certain YOU feel like the only guy that can save the day.
Customization of character AND headquarters
For customization, I'd say look a Star Trek Online for some tips on how to take things further down the right path. You don't only select facial features there, you can even rotate and position scars. Take their level facial customization to the whole body.Relatively free-form build and fast paced combat system
Headquarters are tricky. This game had a very boring base system. You were restricted to flat walls. It was impossible to have round tunnels or caverns, or an underwater dome. A better base system would offer players the same tools map making devs get to work with. Imagine if you had been able to create your own base out of Oranbega or even blue cavern rooms.
Combat in this game was rather spot on, but the building system could have been better. I wont get into deep details but I would borrow a few ideas from DCUO and mix them up with this game to do the following:Heavy story driven content and instanced/isolated adventures that make certain YOU feel like the only guy that can save the day.
You select a two combat "styles". This means you can select a range of martial arts and fighting styles or weapon arts, including things like dual pistols, archery, or plain hand blasts. Your selection will be of a melee and a ranged style.
You then select an "element". This can be fire, cold, earth, darkness, toxic, psionic, pure willpower, etcetera. Among many things this will determine your damage type, secondary effects and visual fx.
With certain restrictions or penalties you may be able to select multiple elements.
Finally you get to pick from a tree of skills. These skills can fit in the following categories:
Damage boost
Survival boost
Team Support
Crowd Control
Pet summoning
You should be able to dive in multiple trees but never be able to master them all. The list of available powers may variety a bit depending on your selected elements.
The combat system should be much more carefully monitored than it was in CoH. AOE should be much more controlled than it was in this game, but it should also be much more widespread (no one should feel their build is locked out of the AoE game.)
Story writers should have access to better scripting tools. They should be able to completely script any given spawn in a mission. Enemies should never just be standing about in a room looking all threatening. They should be either patrolling, actually doing some animated action or guarding doors.----------------------------------
Speed running should not be encouraged, there should be series of guarded doors/gateways/areas that cant be advanced through without defeating "mini boss" encounters.
This is not all I would do, but it's the core of how I would start. I would also follow a Mine Craft server style instead of a dedicated server, for one. As Arcanaville pointed out on her thread, this would make sure such a game becomes immune to cancelation.
I'd need a game that had no such thing as a "bad build."
Any build, any playstyle, any set, all viable.
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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The question becomes "what's viable?" and "what do you give up to achieve that for everyone?".|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
I'd need a game that had no such thing as a "bad build."
Any build, any playstyle, any set, all viable. |
It was said the low bar for this game was +0X1, and I never saw a build or combo in this game in the past 3 years that couldn't do that for the most part. Yet for some, that was never good enough.
Also, how do you prevent 'bad builds' without also kneecapping 'exceptional builds'? Because that's what I see in newer games like GW2 and DCUO. There's less build flexibility to keep everyone around the same power level, and even with the "best" gear and optimal build (which is not much different than any other builds) I still have about the same limitations as some noob who picked abilities at random.
I for one liked, nay, loved the fact that all the time I invested in tweaking, getting IOs and earning Incarnate powers paid off (for the most part). That I could wade into crowds of dozens of enemies, solo AVs and do team content solo while others couldn't.
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That's extremely difficult to do to an arbitrary standard. In fact I would say its impossible to do without targeting a specific person's definition of "viable."|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
I'd need a game that had no such thing as a "bad build."
Any build, any playstyle, any set, all viable. |
I don't think there is a "perfect" superhero MMO (or any MMO) even in theory, because there are things different people like that are mutually exclusive. By definition, its impossible to include all the features everyone wants, and avoid every feature everyone wants to avoid.
But I think one thing that I've come to believe is very important for every MMO, and perhaps singularly critical for a superhero genre MMO, is you have to decide very early in the design process what will be structured in the game and what will be free and make them as orthogonal as possible. Meaning: if you want your players to have as much freedom as possible in area X, none of the structured elements of the game should have strong dependencies on X.
Very specifically, if you want to make a superhero genre MMO and one of the things you want to encapsulate is the very wide range of powers and abilities that are represented in the superhero genre, the conventional notions of "balance" for MMOs aren't going to work, because they tend to be structured around combat performance. Its impossible on its face to design a game around a wide range of acceptable performance and yet balance the game around that performance.
If a superhero genre MMO has to allow for a wide range of builds and abilities, it cannot critically depend on them for things like leveling. If the strong level proportionately faster than the weak, quantitative combat performance is not something you can allow huge ranges of. The solution is simply to decouple pure combat performance from leveling. Design the game around earning rewards for skill-based accomplishments that are not explicitly tied purely to combat performance. That can be by adding out of combat leveling options that are comparable to combat rewards, or devaluing combat defeats over completing task objectives, or some form of reward scaling by combat performance.
Getting back to what I said above, this isn't a "perfect" design rule. It immediately turns off players who believe that optimizing combat performance is their primary source of enjoyment and that such effort should be primarily rewarded. The players who believe its pointless to do things that don't offer optimal rewards, and can't achieve those rewards through pure min/maxing, will probably not like such a game.
But such people have lots of other games to play.
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The perfect superhero MMO, to me, would have the following:
-Character customization on par (if not surpassing) CoH. That includes both aesthetics and power selection.
-A mission editor, much like mission architect, but with tool to build a level's geometry
-One or more open world cities/places to explore with seamless transition from outdoors to indoors.
-Varied environments, from cities with tall skyscrapers to arctic wastelands and everywhere in between
-Instancing used heavily, even in the outdoors areas, to prevent any one location from becoming too crowded/empty. But it would be best if the instancing were more or less seamless... kind of like WoW's "phasing" technology.
-Fast-paced combat making use of travel powers, dodging, environment objects, ect.
-Destructible environments
-Lots of content at all levels. There should be stuff to do at endgame and there should never be any leveling content gaps. There should also be parity on the amount of content available to both heroes and villains.
-Dynamic missions/objectives, varied objectives, player choices affecting story, emergent gameplay/story
-Open world PvP (on a PvP server, of course) and instanced objective-based PvP scenarios with a plethora of game modes and maps.
-An excellent soundtrack and a visually-pleasing art style.
-A pricing model where the player buys the game upfront with no micro-transactions or subscriptions. Content delivered in sizeable expansion packs would be acceptable.
Developer team that's very RELUCTANT to nerf ANYTHING that isn't absolutely just broken in every regard (Looking at you overwhelming bonfire.)
When you level up, you will still be able to take down hordes of enemies comparably fast compared to other sets OR have nasty debuffs/pets/whatever to make low damage less noticeable, You won't regret your decision and reroll just to not suck.
Melee classes get finishers (Hero) and executions (villain)- Think Age of Conan
You are able to adjust your character's personal difficulty/level much like this game.
Opening doors.
A well played tank won't NEED heals, But hey, They help.
A good RP hub area designed around the idea.
A dev team much like CoX's that cares/communicates with it's fanbase constantly.
NO GEAR. NO. DON'T.- CoX handled gear very well in that, You never really -had- to grind for it, And if they started to seem like they were doing lacklusterish, you could get buy some upgrades without really needing to grind, If you wanted to seriously min/max though, you had the option of grinding for IOs and such.
Certain powers (Elec, Magnets, Super strength, Gravity, Ect) could grab objects in the area and throw them. Damage, damage type and area depending on the object
A community of intelligent, No "Lolnoob" jackoffs.
Knockback recovery, For some reason no game really has this, Champions is the worst offender. If your toon has acrobatic powers or fly, You should be able to recover fairly easy from a knock.
Wall jumping- Because it would be awesome. Shut up.
I'll probably think up more later.
-----EDIT------
Thought up one. Villains players can create a mission, much like AE and assign it to a random door in any map they choose, Heroes can pull up a menu and "Stop" these crimes and are rewarded for the trouble. The villain gets "notoriety" and is able to pump up the difficulty/get better minions/weapons for his missions, for each successful "Failure" or if against a team, Each member of the team defeated by his mission, the villain's minions get a "Morale" boost and do extra damage and such.
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IMO, the goal should not be to make every build viable, but to allow players to backpedal. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That's extremely difficult to do to an arbitrary standard. In fact I would say its impossible to do without targeting a specific person's definition of "viable."
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I have been playing this addictive iPhone game: Devil's Attorney. It's sort of an RPG. Biggest annoyance I found is that you can easily gimp your build and have zero way to fix it without restarting the game.
I think a few things should not be easy to change or able to change at all (AT/power set selection.) Like you say, though, anything that would be fixed should not be integral or able to extremely change the balance of reward acquisition.
In most MMOs I always hated the idea of trash character, the concept that your first ever character should be considered a throw-away character you will mess up because you dont know the game rules yet. It would be great if at least that was impossible, to mess up a character entirely because you did not know the game rules.
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| Design the game around earning rewards for skill-based accomplishments that are not explicitly tied purely to combat performance. That can be by adding out of combat leveling options that are comparable to combat rewards, or devaluing combat defeats over completing task objectives, or some form of reward scaling by combat performance. |
There are other balance things to keep in mind but mission design may be done in a way that things like stealth are viable but not extremely fast either. Speed and stealth exclusivity? Or at least the need of additional skills like time consuming hacking to stealth through missions with minimal combat?
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One thing I've constantly stated is that I think the players in general don't really understand the whole concept of risk/reward, because the "reward" in "risk/reward" is really a reward rate, not a reward, and that's a fundamentally different notion. But I've also stated that I don't think even the devs fully appreciate the notion: Positron has mentioned it and I know some of the devs get it, but the game as a whole is not designed fully cognizant of balancing rates and not rewards. That's why Giant Monsters have huge rewards, but trivial reward rates.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
One idea I always liked (and D&D Online went for, don't think it's "failure" was due to it) is the concept of rewards being attached to the mission as a whole, not to individual kills. This opens up the doors to so many things. You are suddenly able to do things like "if you hold a minion for 30 cumulative seconds he surrenders".
There are other balance things to keep in mind but mission design may be done in a way that things like stealth are viable but not extremely fast either. Speed and stealth exclusivity? Or at least the need of additional skills like time consuming hacking to stealth through missions with minimal combat? |
A mission should be thought of in terms of a timeline, I think. Within that timeline, players can do certain things and earn certain rewards. The way to balance things like tanks herding maps and stalkers stealthing maps is really just a question of looking at the time spent performing both activities and balancing reward rates. Stealthing a map involves performing a lot of motion with no reward, then earning a reward at the end. Plowing involves moving at a much slower pace, but earning rewards along the way. If we scale objective rewards based in part on how long it takes to reach them, we can take a rough cut at making plowing and stealthing have comparable reward earning rates.
This ignores the separate issue of balancing AoEs in combat which can swamp almost all other attempts to balance anything. I've always felt that one way to tame AoEs is with friendly fire. And you don't always have to have absolute failure modes or defeatable civilians with friendly fire. It could be something as simple as adding destructible environment and rewarding players for performing the minimum amount of property damage while defeating all the enemies in a building. Even villains can be given the choice between burning it down or looting it, even if they don't otherwise care about preserving it.
Oh, and since the topic is the perfect superhero game, I'll just say that while I understand the economy of scale, the perfect villain game is not the superhero game reskinned, or even replotted. It ought to fundamentally readdress anew questions like "what do we reward?" and "how are objectives completed?"
Back when CoV was in beta, I mentioned my belief that, however the logistics of the games were going to be managed, I would not have made a Rogue Isles. I would have dropped the villains right into Paragon. It would have allowed for the possibility of indirect faction competition. In other words, CoV players could have been the ones setting fires to buildings in Steel that CoH players could try to extinguish. CoV players could have been the ones setting bombs that CoH players could have tried to prevent. They could have been the ones opening portals to dark dimensions in the middle of Peregrine Island rather than anonymous relative non-entities (at the time) like Antimatter. There were lots of potential opportunities for faction-based mini-games that could have expanded the grey area between PvE and PvP, rather than make direct PvP be an isolated marginalized activity.
I think the idea of having the player community help build the world is a good idea, and pitting players against other players is a good way to reduce the grind. But direct confrontational PvP is not the only way to do that.
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One idea I liked for a long time is a diminishing value per target and also based on range from a "sweet spot". Example: The guy at the center of a fireball will always take more damage than the guy 10ft to the left. In theory, the sweet spot does not have to be the center of the explosion. A dark sphere may induce more damage on its rim than at the center, for instance.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
This ignores the separate issue of balancing AoEs in combat which can swamp almost all other attempts to balance anything.
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In addition, the system maybe should count how many targets will be hit before deciding how much damage will be applied. Then with a formula (non-linear) the more enemies you hit, the less damage you do per enemy.
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| I've always felt that one way to tame AoEs is with friendly fire. And you don't always have to have absolute failure modes or defeatable civilians with friendly fire. It could be something as simple as adding destructible environment and rewarding players for performing the minimum amount of property damage while defeating all the enemies in a building. Even villains can be given the choice between burning it down or looting it, even if they don't otherwise care about preserving it. |
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| Oh, and since the topic is the perfect superhero game, I'll just say that while I understand the economy of scale, the perfect villain game is not the superhero game reskinned, or even replotted. It ought to fundamentally readdress anew questions like "what do we reward?" and "how are objectives completed?" |
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| Back when CoV was in beta, I mentioned my belief that, however the logistics of the games were going to be managed, I would not have made a Rogue Isles. I would have dropped the villains right into Paragon. It would have allowed for the possibility of indirect faction competition. In other words, CoV players could have been the ones setting fires to buildings in Steel that CoH players could try to extinguish. CoV players could have been the ones setting bombs that CoH players could have tried to prevent. They could have been the ones opening portals to dark dimensions in the middle of Peregrine Island rather than anonymous relative non-entities (at the time) like Antimatter. There were lots of potential opportunities for faction-based mini-games that could have expanded the grey area between PvE and PvP, rather than make direct PvP be an isolated marginalized activity. |
I am not sure if it was your post that started the threads I remember on a similar line. I just recall the /jrangers arguing that they didn’t wanted to play villain in a game where they can’t attack every hero they see (something that went down the toilet with coop zones.) I ponder if that was one of the strong reasons for the devs to pursue the separation.
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Going farther, wouldn't it be interesting if there were no declared factions at all? Everyone's just a superpowered someone, and whether they are a "hero" or "villain" is completely irrelevant: they can choose to help or hurt any contact or faction in the game, and the game responds accordingly. You could (or at least attempt to) be an ally to the Hellions, but then crackdown on the Tsoo. You could foil Arachnos, but secretly work for Nemesis. What if every NPC reacted to you based on their own judgment of whether *they* think you are on their side or not?|
Originally Posted by Starsman
A tangent to your tangent: I remember brainstorming an "ideal" super hero mmo before I even read anything about CoH. I always thought you should start your life at your "origin point", where you acquire your power or skill or whatever. From that point forward every action determines if you are a hero or villain based on your actions and a classic EQ/WoW-like faction system. It may also open the doors for things like being a hero that the citizens love but the cops hate (property damage caused by you may be a good fit here; property damage may lower your rep with law enforcement factions.)
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You don't have to worry anymore about players saying "a real villain wouldn't do that." They would be "free" to do whatever they think they would do, but they would also have to live with the consequences of those decisions. Maybe they think a real hero would kill Antimatter given the chance. But maybe the citizens of Praetoria would disagree. Maybe a real villain wouldn't help stop a Rikti invasion. But maybe Arachnos decides to kick them to the curb for appearing to be a coward.
Instead of being about heroes and villains, it would be about lone wolfs and social butterflies, stalwarts and boot-lickers. It would be about how the player decides to deal with all the competing interests in the world, and to what degree they want to build relationships or ignore them, and with who.
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| I am not sure if it was your post that started the threads I remember on a similar line. I just recall the /jrangers arguing that they didnt wanted to play villain in a game where they cant attack every hero they see (something that went down the toilet with coop zones.) I ponder if that was one of the strong reasons for the devs to pursue the separation. |
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Yes, please!|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
*Awesome morality idea*
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What if you were natural origin though? Would you be able to get new weapons/training, Or a psychic character can join Arachnos and "Change" the archetype to widow/fort?
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Here's my take on Origins. They are a mess. They don't map to anything significant in terms of gameplay, they don't map to anything comprehensible in terms of story, and yet they are not 100% free choices. That's about as bad a set of design decisions you can make.|
Originally Posted by DarkBlaster_NA
Yes, please!
What if you were natural origin though? Would you be able to get new weapons/training, Or a psychic character can join Arachnos and "Change" the archetype to widow/fort? |
If I was making a superhero game, I would make "origin" map to something distinct regarding the *powers* the player could have, and that origin would have an actual gameplay impact.
From my point of view, there are three different kinds of "rules" that superabilities seem to follow in most fiction. And those are (super)science including high technology, magic, and whatever you call astral/psionic/mental type powers. Either your power(s) obey the laws of physics - or at least pretend to follow the fictional world's version of physics - or they follow some sort of alternate rules of magic or they seem to follow a completely different set of rules that involve the astral plane, psionic abilities, dream worlds, and other hyper-constructs of the mind and consciousness.
In City of Heroes magical fire and psionic fire and technological fire are all fire. Fire attacks and Fire damage are "elemental" to the game: how you achieve Fire is irrelevant to what Fire does. But I don't think that emulates very well how the rules of comic book fiction work. Some things are highly resistant to magic. You can punch them in the face, but conjuring a fist to punch them in the face is far less effective. Sometimes magical shields can be almost impenetrable to magical bolts of energy and yet bullets pass right through them. And sometimes all the magic and technology in the world doesn't stop something from killing you in your dreams. It would be incredibly difficult to incorporate all the myriad ways in which magic and non-magic interact, but incorporating a bit of the flavor of the fact these two things are reluctant neighbors in the fictional world would add gameplay spice. It adds a way to solve the Superman problem of being completely invulnerable to damage, but still vulnerable - in the comic books, one thing he is vulnerable to is magic.
These properties would be attached to *powers* not *characters* so players could still choose what their "origin" was freely, but they would still have to make choices about what kinds of abilities to pursue within the game.
For me, its about meaningful choices. Meaningful choices have to straddle the line between allowing players the maximum amount of freedom to choose how their characters evolve while still making those choices have unavoidable consequences which the players have to deal with. At some point, some freedom has to be sacrificed to make some decisions lead to very specific results. Players should be able to choose what they can do, but not necessarily how the rest of the world chooses to react to what they do. And how the powers work, the "physics" of the game in a manner of speaking, is something the game developers themselves have to keep strong control of if the gameplay choices are to be meaningful ones within the game itself.
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That goes with the kind of setting I'd like to see explored in a new super hero MMO; that of a 'young universe'. Where superheroes are a relatively new thing instead of a 70 year old tradition. Where the public is still forming opinions about super powered do-gooders as a concept and no Citizen Crime Fighting Act exists yet. Where the infrastructure for meta humans is not yet in place; there's no chain of stores that sell 'beryllium enhancements' for mutants and community colleges don't offer courses in magic. Where there's still room for you to end up being the Big Good(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigGood).|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Going farther, wouldn't it be interesting if there were no declared factions at all? Everyone's just a superpowered someone, and whether they are a "hero" or "villain" is completely irrelevant: they can choose to help or hurt any contact or faction in the game, and the game responds accordingly. You could (or at least attempt to) be an ally to the Hellions, but then crackdown on the Tsoo. You could foil Arachnos, but secretly work for Nemesis. What if every NPC reacted to you based on their own judgment of whether *they* think you are on their side or not?
You don't have to worry anymore about players saying "a real villain wouldn't do that." They would be "free" to do whatever they think they would do, but they would also have to live with the consequences of those decisions. Maybe they think a real hero would kill Antimatter given the chance. But maybe the citizens of Praetoria would disagree. Maybe a real villain wouldn't help stop a Rikti invasion. But maybe Arachnos decides to kick them to the curb for appearing to be a coward. Instead of being about heroes and villains, it would be about lone wolfs and social butterflies, stalwarts and boot-lickers. It would be about how the player decides to deal with all the competing interests in the world, and to what degree they want to build relationships or ignore them, and with who. |
Where, as a hero, you would have to work hard to maintain good standing with the police, the public, the government and with the press (and often they are at odds).
Or as a vigilante, focus on keeping the fear of the various gangs and evil organizations.
Being in with these groups gives you advantages. The Commissioner slipping you cases and information. Government offering you high paying assignments (or hits). The crowd on the street having your back ala the first Spider-Man film. Getting that loud editorializing talk show host off your back.
Of course, having too high standing with groups would have downsides too. If the public loves you, criminals may not take it serious if you try to threaten and intimidate them. Being too good with the press labels you a gloryhound and you actually get reduced accolades for doing good. Or you could be accused of being a puppet for The Man and government stooge and some members of the public refuse to work with you.
This is just the 'hero' side of things. You could easily be Lex Luthor with the press and government eating out of your hands because you buy the right people.
Yeah, such a system would be right up my alley.
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I really like the faction idea.
An add on to that would be having the in game bosses of the factions you most oppose act as your character's nemeses at least as a flavor element in missions that are set ups for an ambush. It doesn't matter if you ticked off the Tsoo or the Family or the CoT, they will be your character's opponent in that mission (or maybe an evil team-up, very comic book like).
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That's basically what I mean with an EQ-like faction system, although not as granular as to go to individual NPCs (simply because that may be a bit too hard to manage.) Although various NPCs may be tied up to various factions.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Going farther, wouldn't it be interesting if there were no declared factions at all? Everyone's just a superpowered someone, and whether they are a "hero" or "villain" is completely irrelevant: they can choose to help or hurt any contact or faction in the game, and the game responds accordingly. You could (or at least attempt to) be an ally to the Hellions, but then crackdown on the Tsoo. You could foil Arachnos, but secretly work for Nemesis. What if every NPC reacted to you based on their own judgment of whether *they* think you are on their side or not?
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Hero or Villan status would mostly be determined in the eyes of certain "lawful" factions like The Police, The Army or Citizens of Atlas. Heck, maybe the citizens of Atlas will see you as a hero while the citizens of Steel Canyon may see you as a villain.
This faction system will not just determine what type of content you can unlock, but also potential perks you may gain access to. (Police may have you to arrest on sight if you approach any public transportation area but you may be a good friend of Crey who may give send a chopper to pick you up.)
But yea, YOU determine who sees you how, and it can be up to a player to act as lawfully good as possible, "grinding" his hero status in the face of all citizens and all law enforcement bodies across the world. It would be a rather epic Super Hero MMO.
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Every MMO has the contact system. This guy hands you errands to perform and then rewards you. As has been pointed out numerous times, you have to almost universally suspend belief in any MMO that its remotely logical these people are asking you to do what they are asking you to do.|
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
I really like the faction idea.
An add on to that would be having the in game bosses of the factions you most oppose act as your character's nemeses at least as a flavor element in missions that are set ups for an ambush. It doesn't matter if you ticked off the Tsoo or the Family or the CoT, they will be your character's opponent in that mission (or maybe an evil team-up, very comic book like). |
It would be interesting if contacts were stood on their head: make an enemy of the Tsoo, and a Tsoo boss starts gunning for you. A simple mission turns into a trap sprung by the Tsoo. They start interfering with your ability to do other things, and you start actively hearing from NPC X that the Tsoo are looking for you in location Y. Instead of contacts giving you things to do, you ask them for information on finding Tsoo Boss Z. They start giving you missions you ask for, which are designed to lead you to the source of your problems.
Contacts would have specific information and missions they were aware of, but instead of always just handing them out in a particular order they would given them to the player upon request instead. This could even be part of a dynamic system of mission generation where a Mad Libs-like generator was capable of generating sort of a "plot state machine" where the character has an enemy X and to defeat him requires a randomly selected set of conditions be met: defeat his Lts, find his lair, foil some of his plots, etc. Doing the required missions to achieve each objective would eventually put the player into the right state to trigger the end of the line mission.
Contacts wouldn't only hand out missions, they could react to the proactive needs of the player. The "reward" for unlocking and staying on reasonable terms with a contact would be that they would be useful to help the player resolve their own driven objectives.
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I would have no "origin" and Magic would simply be another "elemental force" (not in the literal element sense) that determines a damage type and side effects.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Here's my take on Origins. They are a mess. They don't map to anything significant in terms of gameplay, they don't map to anything comprehensible in terms of story, and yet they are not 100% free choices. That's about as bad a set of design decisions you can make.
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The only reason to give an origin like we have in this game should be to determine some kind of atmospheric story branch. Example: pick magic and not only your first contact, but most contacts that get introduced to you will direct you towards magic-themed story-lines.
I think they sort of attempted that in this game but didn't take it past level 5 in the original game and did nothing with it in CoV (and horribly insulted me in The Origin Of Power with it.)
For a while I thought such a thing should be there, but today I'd say: let the player decide what type of content he inclines to via his own actions.
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One area where I believe the original devs were clearly trapped by convention was in setting the story in a universe where superpowered beings were relatively common and generally accepted. In trying to explain why so many super powered people were running around, they almost made superheroes pedestrian. Its almost impossible to do anything impressive in a world that gives actual permits to people to be flying fusion reactors.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
That goes with the kind of setting I'd like to see explored in a new super hero MMO; that of a 'young universe'. Where superheroes are a relatively new thing instead of a 70 year old tradition. Where the public is still forming opinions about super powered do-gooders as a concept and no Citizen Crime Fighting Act exists yet. Where the infrastructure for meta humans is not yet in place; there's no chain of stores that sell 'beryllium enhancements' for mutants and community colleges don't offer courses in magic. Where there's still room for you to end up being the Big Good(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigGood).
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Its ironic that CoH is such a novel MMO experience in many ways, and yet tries to make the notion of a city full of superheroes appear normal. Whatever else I think about that game, DCUO did have a more novel way of explaining the sudden burst of superbeings in a way that didn't trivialize their existence. Stealing a page from that story, it would have been interesting if on Primal Earth the first real burst of superheroes were born just in time to fight in the Rikti War, while on Praetorian Earth the first big burst of superheroes was born in time to fight in WW2, and that was the biggest difference between the two worlds. Praetoria, in other words, would be a cautionary world for Primal Earth where eventually superpowers destroys the planet.
In this completely different alternate multiverse timeline, this gives Prometheus an interesting backstory option. Maybe *he* is the one that brings superpowers to Praetorian Earth, and sees what happens, and now he's trying again on Primal Earth, but wants to control the process more and slow things down.
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I disagree for the reason you mention:|
Originally Posted by Starsman
The only reason to give an origin like we have in this game should be to determine some kind of atmospheric story branch.
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| For a while I thought such a thing should be there, but today I'd say: let the player decide what type of content he inclines to via his own actions. |
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For me, at least, a perfect super hero MMO would include
a pleasing aesthetic. nothing too cartoony, but not realistic enough to dip into the uncanny valley. Probably something like CoH with a slight bump up (but with a better engine running it, so it runs better)
customization. customization. customization. From costumes, to logos, to bases, to powers. Make no two characters alike. Make no two bases alike. Customization was this game's strongsuit, so why not take it up to 11. Your character should feel like your character.
and last but no least, what to do with heroes and villains. Honestly, I feel like making separate zones for each was the most logical choice. Sure it wasn't the best, but it was logical. Heroes get a city to save people in and villains get an area where they can commit crimes without being jumped by 40 hero players.
Trust me, DCUO did the whole "shared zone" thing and it was absolute hell. I was so worried that the guy in blue tights in front of me was a hero, or a colorful villain I didn't interact with ANYONE.
If I had to suggest something different, I would have the two areas still exist, but let both heroes and villains pass freely. Heroes could save people in "Hero City" or whatever, and proactively fight crime in "Villain City", Villains could gain power in "Villain City" and then commit crimes in "Hero City"
it's a thought
Having gone to play a few different MMO's in the last year or so there are a couple of standout things for me that they are missing:
1: Most importantly, Super Sidekicking! This was genius. Being able to play with any character and team with any other regardless and gain XP/Inf etc is the biggest thing I miss in other games. It makes teaming so much easier.
2: The character creator. Oh the humanity. There is just nothing like it out there. Being able to stay the way you look without impacting game play at all, The ability to change it on a whim, awesome.
3: Travel. The ease of travel in CoH was far and away the best of any game. Haven't been to Steel Canyon...? No worries, the train goes there. In another game, you can't take a horse to another location until you've been there the slow way. Surely these horses know their way there already? Or you could show me the map? Added to the travel powers etc.
4: Variety. Having the different ATs with then a dozen different primary and secondary powersets leaves open a huge variety of powers. In other MMO's a hunter is a hunter is a hunter, all with basically the same powers.
5: Breaking the Holy Trinity. I've seen people in other games saying it's not possible, and yet CoH has been doing it for nearly 8 years. The way buffs/debuffs were handled in this game is superior to anything else I've played.