FloatingFatMan

(( Just a brief piece, showing a consequence of Ed's actions. ))

Aftermath.

Cara sat hunched up on her bed in the New Vigilants tower, the light off and curtain closed. She'd finally gotten out of the decontamination unit a couple of hours ago and, at last, had some peace and quiet.

On the bed next to her lay a bible, open to the tale of Judas's betrayal. Cara sat quietly, contemplating the events of the previous day as the comforting sound of an old clock tick tocked quietly to itself on her bedside table.

Abruptly, Cara stood and picked up the bible. Walking slowly towards the door, she unlocked it and pulled it open. A moment later there was a tearing sound, then a metallic clunk, followed by a soft click as Cara closed the door behind her.

In the darkness of the empty room, a trashcan rocked to a standstill, the torn remains of Cara's bible resting inside.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How about.. The Protrastinatortron?

[/ QUOTE ]

You just made that up! That's not a real word!


[/ QUOTE ]

It's on the internet, so it is now!

How about.. The Protrastinatortron?

At the end of the day, the maps themselves won't matter too much. They're merely a canvass upon which art is created.

What WILL matter, is the story lines people give their missions. These, above all else, will be what will make the PCC because I would be much astonished if they gave rewards at the same level as normal missions.

Well... Personally, I draw the line as smacktalk... I just don't like it full stop. It's infantile most of the time, often highly insulting, and about as much fun as shoving my head through a blender.

If there was no smacktalk, I would PvP. As there IS, and as there always will be, I rarely PvP.

You have a very good point there, Birdy; and I agree with you. I think it would be best to either have no ratings system, and all content available for everyone, or a 2 tier system, private and public.

[ QUOTE ]
I hope that most if not all of FFMs list makes it in, I have a story arc I'd like to make and the ability to design the end boss is almost a necessity.

Don't get me wrong, I could do it without creating the unique bosses and renaming another enemy and promoting them to boss level.

I just don't want to.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not MY list. It's NC's own list. From what we can tell, THEY said these are ALL features of the mission creator...

Cara turned to Jennifer and nodded, looking sad. "It was Edward... They used to call him Doctor Mechano, I guess they will again..."

Taking a couple of steps back, Cara let herself slump down against the police cruiser, and slowly sink to the ground. A few seconds later and drew her knees up to herself, bowing her head to her knees. Wrapping her arms around her knees, her shoulders started to shake as she quietly cried.

I doubt cut scene's will make it in. When I was chatting with War Witch at Omega Sektor, she said they were incredibly difficult to set up. It's a lot more than just the dialog; it's the avatar positions and emotes, plus the camera angles as well. The timings are big issue also. I'd be surprised if they let us do them, considering they themselves find them a chore.

Jerkometer!

Being account based for unlocking content makes perfect sense; however. There IS that part about putting your own character in the missions as a contact. That COULD mean it's character based; unless you get to select from a list of your chars for who the contact is.

If so, I'd think the character would need to be at or above, the mission level.

[ QUOTE ]
The rewards system would be inherently abusable; get a couple of mates to rate your missions and you're away. Whether it's stifling creativity to not have all the content available to everyone immediately is tricky to say; It'll encourage more people to try their hand at a quality arc.


[/ QUOTE ]

Which is why, IMO, the creator's name needs to be hidden. OK, that doesn't stop it completely, as people can tell others the name of their mission; but it's probably the best NC can do to limit that sort of thing.

In the past, this has been caused by the water quality settings being set higher than your video drivers are happy with. Have you tried going in to safe mode and adjusting your video options, keeping the water setting low to see if that helps?

Aura's have also caused this issue in the past as well.

Seeing as the other thread is concentrating mostly on the switching sides system it appears we're probably getting, I thought I'd split off a thread to discuss what was shown of the mission creator in this article.

I'm going to look at each part in turn...

[ QUOTE ]

This is a new module for City of Heroes, fictionally presented as a training exercise for Heroes and Villains, that allows players to build their own Missions and Story Arcs and share them with others in the game. Using an intuitive interface similar to the game's detailed Character Creator, players can create missions by selecting options like size and type of map/environment, mission objectives and encounter types, and difficulty level of each encounter. Additionally, players can write all mission story fiction and character dialogue.


[/ QUOTE ]

So the whole thing is being presented as a kind of "danger room"? I actually kind of like that idea. I think it'll fit well with the current mission structure, though it would have been nice to create "real" missions. I can see why they've made this choice though, as it removes any danger of PCC interfering with official canon.

[ QUOTE ]

Players can create their own missions and they can play missions that have been created by other players. Once you have finalized and "published" your missions, they are accessible by all players across all servers. All players can rate player created missions and a Mission Browser lets players find available missions and story arcs through a variety of tabs, sorts and filters in an auction house type environment.


[/ QUOTE ]

I do hope that, once a mission is finalized and published, the creator name is hidden at least until AFTER you've rated it. IMO, they need to do that to prevent mis-rating through personality clashes etc.

[ QUOTE ]

As missions are played and more people positively rate them, the creator gains rewards and access to unlockable content for his/her missions. Rewards will also be given to players of the missions. Players will gain rewards such as badges and even XP for playing user created missions and StoryArcs.


[/ QUOTE ]

So, unlockable content. It gives the mission creator the incentive to make the best missions they can, so as to get more goodies to add to future missions; but it could also have the opposite effect. As for rewards, I think they are essential to get people to play the missions, but they'll need to be careful here or we'll be overloaded with farming missions.

Now for the feature list.

[ QUOTE ]

1. Write your own dialog for all aspects of the mission.
2. Build Missions and Story Arcs using a Character Creator-like interface
3. Players can build powers for some NPCs by selecting from a group of primary and secondary power pools and attaching them to the NPCs
4.Players can build a boss (and other NPCs) to place within their mission by creating its looks in the Character Creator and assigning it the powers of an existing NPC (non playable character)
5. Select a variety of components for the overall mission including Level Range, Map, Length, Villain Group, Pacing, Time to Complete, Goals/type of mission, etc.
6. Customize Encounters to your preference (Place in End Room, Select Villain Group, Name Boss, Select Critter Type, Select Hostage NPC Critter, etc.)
7. Using an in-game auction house type interface, other players can find user created StoryArcs across all shards
8. Creators can include their own character as a contact within the mission(s)
9. Creators don't have access to high level content (environments, NPCs, etc.) until their own characters have encountered/defeated them in the main game.
10. Using an out-of-game web interface, other players can find user created StoryArcs across all shards
11. Rewarding creators of the most popular content with exclusive unlockable content such as signature heroes and villains or unique maps
12. A rating system that allows players to rate missions or flag them for inappropriate content, allowing the developer to remove bad content and potentially ban players
13. Players can enter the mission maps to adjust placement of the NPC spawns from their pre-selected positions


[/ QUOTE ]

Items 3 & 4. I can't begin to say how incredible GREAT this idea is! This should let us make truly unique mob types!

Item 8. TOTALLY awesome!

Item 9. This makes perfect sense, I think. Gives you an incentive to still remember to actually play the game, instead of sitting in the mission creator all the time.

Item 10. Not sure of the usability of this feature really. I guess it's OK that you can browse them, but what I'd REALLY like is to be able to create them offline!

Item 12. As I said before, this MUST be anonymous to prevent mission creators getting griefed. The only people who need to know who made the mission, are NCSoft.

Item 13. Very good, but please put bounding limits so that you can't do thinks like move the entire map's spawns into the same area. Although, if anyone did that, I think they would get pretty bad ratings.

Overall. So far, from what we've seen it's looking pretty damned awesome. This is the one feature, over ALL the others announced in that article, that I'm waiting for the most. GIMME GIMME GIMME!

Cara held her hand up to stop Ryan touching her in her ice form. "Hang on! You'll get frozen!"

Taking a calming breath, she let it out slowly and concentrated. As she did, the flames that covered her ice form, keeping her mobile, flickered out and the ice began to ripple and shift. A few seconds later, all trace of the ice and flame vanished as Cara returned to her normal form and hugged Ryan.

"That... Was NO fun at all... That woman was a lunatic! I... I thought we were going to have to kill her to stop her..."

I suspect the morality will be based on the outcome of missions. Perhaps you have a choice of rescuing or kidnapping, robbing or recovering, saving or killing? Seems the easiest way to do it.. You have an alignment meter which swings based on the outcome of missions.

As Ryan's inferno died down, Cara's own protective wall of fire died out, and she pushed herself up to her feet and walked over to Wild Red.

As she got near, a blessed coolness washed over Red's burned skin. "Please... Stand down, and we can get you to a hospital... There's no point in carrying on any more... It's over."

Hey Kerensky!

You want our thoughts? OK, here's mine.

I want EVERYTHING on that list! As soon as possible! ESPECIALLY all the stuff listed for the mission creator!

Cara glared at Red, tiny points of fire appearing in her eyes.

"No... Are YOU ready to burn?"

A wall of fire erupted around Cara's body; forming a protective barrier of flame as she watched Red fly in to the trap.

OK, I've tried the 177.66 beta drivers, and THESE work perfectly. PhysX is enabled, and CoX is pulling 65fps.

Cara slowly brought her arms back, pushing herself up on to all fours.

"I told you, [censored]." she spoke quietly, "You're never going to feel warm again. I've frozen your foot, it's never going to be warm again. If you don't give up, I'm going to freeze the rest of you, permanently."

She looked up, glaring at Red. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

On the ground, unseen by Red or Cindersnap; Cara's hand twitched slightly. Semi-molted ice began to slowly flow over the crack in her body, sealing and repairing the damage. Abruptly, Cara's hand flashed out; grabbing at Wild Red's ankle.

Cara stared down at Red as the blasts flew at her. Without time to react, each bolt hit her head on. The first few refracted in her transparent ice form, and were reflected off at wild angles, but the final bolt; hitting her dead centre whilst another was still being reflected, exploded on contact with it's mate.

There was a bright flash of light, and a sharp cracking sound, and Cara was flung through the air, spinning wildly. A second later, she slammed into the side of a nearby building and slid to the ground; a large crack visible in the ice that formed her body, running from her shoulder down at an angle through to her hip.

"Ed IS a hero! And you, you're a stinking MURDERER!" Cara almost screamed that last, and with hate filled eyes, wound her arm back and threw a huge ball of white hot fire straight at Red's face.

Cara looked up at Red, her transparent face showing an expression of hatred. "I was in school, studying like Ed said I should!"

She rose higher up in the air, until her eyes were level with Red's. "What happened to Ed in that court was the most unfair thing ever, but Ed was a hero! Sworn to obey the laws, no matter what! You can't just go ignoring that, just because you don't like it!"