james_joyce

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Spazz, your guide to pwnz is the best guide to pwnz I have ever read. Perhaps you could write a guide on how to text wall, or maybe just how to [censored] off in general to educate those of us not in the know? That way i could avoid being criticized for [censored] around.

Note: not really interested in being told how to screw around on the internet.

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Awwww, is someone a little grumpy? Yes he is! Yes! C'mere, cutsie wootsie, someone needs a big hug!

Turn that frown upside down, mister!

You fail for not keeping in the header and footer info.

Learn2TextWall

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I've played pet classes in 4 games (AO, SWG, WoW, and CoV) now and my pets have never persisted when I... Oh no it did follow me in AO. Well in SWG and WoW my pets never followed me when I had to go through a load screen to zone, but that was never a problem because I didn't have to buff my pets after summoning for them to be effective. The whole buffing thing seems like an arbitrary time sink for MMs as a counterbalance for the MM himself having less risk. The only problem with that, though, is that it's more of a punishment for the rest of the team than the MM unless we zone into an ambush. People often want the MMs to go in first to set up, but sometimes the MMs want someone else to go in first to distract any potential ambushes.

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Pets persist in LOTRO.

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In WoW, pets not only persist across zone boundaries, but they persist when I log off and back on.

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I was really underwhelmed with the choices. I thought the goal was to port thing from CoV to CoH and CoH to CoV.

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No, the goal is just to port all applicable power sets to all applicable ATs, within reason. Shouldn't matter where they're coming from or who has them now.

This round, they simply ported the sets that needed the least tweaking. We'll see more involved ones later (c'mon /Ninja Scrapper!)

lol @ RPing an explanation for powerset proliferation

but, *highfives* for powerset proliferation.

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Well, there's also the consideration of whether we think attracting more villain players would be good for the game in the first place.

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Not trying to be snarky; I'm seriously curious: do you think the devs should just let CoV wither and die?

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No reward doesn't stop people from griefing,

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Truth.

For griefers, griefing is its own reward.

They have a whole quadrant of the Bartle taxonomy.

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Giving villains more content cheaply isn't going to attract more players villain side.

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I think this is our fundamental disagreement. I absolutely think more content villain-side will attract more villain players.

The difference is, I don't think you can just slap more content into Sharkshead and have it make any difference. There are fundamental things about villain environments that turn a lot of players off.

That's why the idea of opening up Paragon zones is so appealing to me - here you have ready-made player-friendly zones that people actually want to visit (some of the zones, at least). Putting villain content in those zones seems to me to be an easy way to solve almost all the problems with villains.

Of course, the "city of mercenaries" problem (which I'm not sure is a huge deterrent, but it might be) can only be solved by creative content creation (War Witch?), and I guess I12 will be a test to see if they're trying their hands at it.

But none of this matters if you don't think more villain content will attract more villains. That, to me, is the only reason for this entire thread.

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If a villain without a flag on walks into Atlas Park and attacks a PPD officer right in front of you his flag would be turned on.

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But wait, do PPD aggro on villains? Seems like they should. They don't help villains out like they do heroes, do they? In which case, the cohabitation isn't really an effect way to provide villain content, because you open yourself up to PvP through normal play.

See in WoW, Horde may be able to go to Alliance territory, but there's nothing for them to do there. They go for other reasons, mostly disruptive ones. They can go because the world is seamless and no one is stopping them. But they aren't welcome - there's no content for them there.

But here, we're trying to figure out how to get villains more content, cheaply. Having villains in Paragon on this type of "unwelcome" flag system prevents that from happening, at least for people that want to separate their PvE from their PvP.

So if you want villains to have more content, you can't put them in a zone where self defense opens them up to PvP. But then, as I pointed out earlier, even if you're not open to PvP, Heroes can still presumably buff friendly mobs. So you end up PvPing by proxy, which I think people would flip their shaz over.

I've never played EQ2, so I don't know if their content is segregated similarly to WoW's, but that strikes me as the big difference between other games that "let the other side in" and what's being proposed here. In WoW, the other side can come in, but there's no reason for them to be there. So you don't have opposite factions regularly in the same area. If there's a reason for both sides to be there, then that becomes problematic for both sides. You'd see the opposite faction regularly, with all the aforementioned problems.

Giving each side their own instance gives us the benefit of asset reuse and avoids these problems at the same time.

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EvilGeko was kidding.

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james_joyce is sleepy.

(u_u) zzzzZZZZ

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so I don't accept that there would be anything wrong with being able to fight via proxy. Interestingly you can do that in the PvP zones right now.

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The big difference, as I see it, is that people PvEing don't generally want to worry about PvP in any form. All of a sudden I'm up against a buffed, healed mob because of someone from the opposite faction. That's de facto PvP, but I'm powerless to do anything in retaliation. I'm guessing most people don't want to have to deal with it, which is why PvP is relegated to specific zones.
The very separation of the game into two sides will cause people to be competitive with the other side. This type of griefing under your proposal, then, seems inevitable.
When you're in a PvP zone, you a) are expecting competition with other players, and b) can directly do something in retaliation. In fact, I'd be surprised if there's any "proxy fighting" in PvP zones when I could just fight directly instead.
IOW, I think people would bust a nut if the devs allowed this.

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See, this is why I hate "immersion". How stupid is it to have two different versions of Atlas running at the same time. While a group of heroes are shaking their bootys under Atlas, there's this dark villain Atlas that exists at the same time. Somehow this doesn't break immersion, but just having one Atlas does.

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This already happens, most notably in Mayhem and Safeguard missions, and in a bunch of other missions besides.
No one complains now that this "breaks immersion" because their personal experience is completely consistent - I would call it verisimilitude. I walk into Atlas, I see some stuff, I do some stuff, and there's nothing dissonant (you could argue that the blue force field boundaries break "immersion," but I would argue that they're not dissonant). If you're "in character" you have no way to know that there's another Atlas. The only way I'd know that there's another, parallel Atlas Park is via the global chat or tell system, which is an OOC system anyway.

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What the heck does my villain have against heroes generally. My main villain does not know my main hero and vice versa. They don't have any reason to fight. If my hero just happens to see my main villain wandering around Atlas, she would have no reason whatsoever to pull out the sword and start swinging.

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You're right, but if you see that same villain beating on some PPD, I think most Heroes would jump in. Under your proposal, they can't. That seems dissonant to me, in other words, I'd expect to be able to jump in, and I wouldn't expect a hero to be able to "proxy fight" me if they can't fight me directly.

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Can someone stop saying "immersion" and just plainly explain what's problematic about this idea?

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No, because you're exactly right that the argument is about verisimilitude and "immersion". There's a fundamental impasse here that we can't argue our way out of. "Immersion" is more important to some and less important to others. It's obviously less important to you.

Look, I don't even RP and I don't care all that much about immersion. I do care about verisimilitude. Like I said, if they implemented your proposal, it's not like I'm gonna cry about it. I just think that separate instances provide a solution amenable to more people. If they did separate instances, would you be upset? Would you quit? I doubt it. But if they implemented your proposal, every person fundamentally opposed to PvP (which I think is a lot of people) and every hardcore RPer (which, OK, maybe not that many of those, relatively speaking) would at least hover their mouse over that "cancel" button.

If possible, I think they should avoid implementing things that piss off large groups of subscribers. And in this case there's simply no reason to do so. It's a risk not worth taking because there's another solution with the same benefits and (probably) the same cost.

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Take me and my arrogance and the justified scorn you all have for me out of it for a second.

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I don't know if you're including me in this or not, but for the record I think this is a pretty civil discussion and my posts are being written dispassionately. I don't even feel that strongly about this, honestly. I just love to argue about game design.

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Open all the zones... That would immediately more than double villain game space. You pulled out the tired argument that makes no sense and now get annoyed when people point out the legion of holes in that argument.

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I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but you can do the same thing without any complaints of immersion breaking by just giving heroes and villains their own instances of each zone.

I'm not a zealot for immersion, though, and if they did simply let villains and heroes cohabit the same zones w/o PvP, I wouldn't complain.

But there are a few things they'd have to deal with, and a few things that seem counterintuitive.

1) Spawns. Can villains attack PPD and Longbow spawns? And if they can, do hero buffs still affect them? Can a hero walk up to a villain fighting a PPD and heal or bubble the PPD?

2) Police drones. If villains can fight PPD, for example, do PPD now get zapped by police drones? If not, where do villains go to run when they're in over their heads fighting the good guys? Where is their safe area?

3) Do we let villains wander up to BAB or Posi to get trained? What about up to a hero corp store to sell their enhancements?

4) Which TFs in Ouroboros do the players get?

5) Can they walk into the PPD station and pick up a police radio, even though PPD are hostile toward them?

These are all problems that deal with immersion, but they're counterintuitive to the point of being problematic. So unless they do a large amount of work to make this happen, for example by implementing a faction ranking system that sets your standing with various spawns, police drones, trainers, etc, then I don't see them letting this happen.

Giving each side their own instances of the zone, on the other hand, immediately solves a lot of these problems. In the villain version of Atlas, for instance, they can remove Ms. Liberty, hero stores, field analysts, and contacts, make City Hall a red zone swarming with PPD and maybe some NPC heroes, put more PPD on the street and fewer Hellion and Vahz street crimes, give us new contacts in back alleys, access to a pawn shop for the market (which should be merged nonetheless), etc.

In other words, they could tailor each zone to each side without them stumbling over one another. And more importantly, they could do this and still gain the benefit of re-using an existing zone and all its art assets.

So while I agree that immersion shouldn't be a deterrent for implementing fun game systems, I think we should avoid throwing it out the window completely, as it seems allowing cohabitation without additional work might do. And in this case, there's simply no reason to do it: separate instances accomplishes the goal of low-cost new content without sacrificing immersion a bit.

Hero_of_Steel (kindly) linked to my thoughts on the subject, but I want to point out, since it's often overlooked, that making a hero zone available to villains doesn't necessarily mean PvP, co-op, or even competition. Villains could have their own instances of Paragon City where they'll never see a player Hero, and where contacts, zone events, and spawns can be tailored for villains.

Just thought I'd throw that out there since people always seem to get hung up on the, "but I don't want more PvP or co-op" thing when the idea of zone re-use is brought up.

Nice chart.

Assuming we collapse Ninja Blade and Katana, that means there are 15 melee sets, which is the max number of sets of any category. So theoretical equivalency between ATs would mean 15 sets in each category.

A tall order, for Summoning especially. But that makes me want to fill in the other sets up to 15 and see what I can come up with.

Actually, if you consider that melee needs Streetfighting, that makes it 16. (ó.ô)

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If they're not going to fix them, than they're just taking up space, and that's never good. I won't say that Hollows was fine, but in the triage of zones, Boomtown would have been marked "critical need", Hollows would have been "he'll live for now"

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I bet you $5 they'll fix them within the next 3 issues.

I like that they're tweaking the Hollows because the current 1-15 game is dead boring and often really annoying. It was in desperate need of polishing, especially because it's the first thing new players see. And although I might have preferred that they fix up Atlas and Galaxy, it's true that polishing one zone is easier than polishing two.

Honestly, I'd like them to spend another issue polishing the 1-15 content. Atlas, Galaxy, and Kings Row should become extremely streamlined, and The Hollows should become an alternate advancement path. Then I'd be comfortable with them giving yet more content to the mid and late games.

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Yeah, but no trainers allowed in Hazard Zones. They're too smart to stand around, that's why Wincott, dispite his years of diligent service in The Hollows, is still just a Lieutenant.

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Wha Wha Whaaaaaa?

I guess now that you mention it, there aren't any trainers in any of the other hazard zones.

Still, I'd think that in the interest of creating a zone that people enjoy using, they'll add a trainer.

There are lots of fun trainers they haven't used yet. Foreshadow?

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The absence of trainers in The Hollows was, for me, the worst part about it.

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They could easily stick a trainer in there.

Just put Blue Steel in there. He should have no problem running back and forth from Kings Row.

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So Hollows isn't being made more player-friendly to move through?

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I'm guessing they're moving mission doors around to be more level appropriate, so in that sense I'm guessing it will be easier to move through, just not in a geometry changing way.

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I'm with you on the co-op stuff. I'm thinking we're going to see a lot more of that (which BaB pretty much confirmed recently). It's a great way to have Issues that give content to both sides of the game rather than one getting next to nothing. It's not such a great way to make villains feel villainous, however.

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I'm hoping they start introducing parallel villain/hero content rather the co-op. Like Ouroboros, give heroes and villains their own version of each zone with each having their own distinct story arcs (of course with Ouroboros there are only two differences).

For example, it sounds like the villains in this case would be very interested in acquiring whatever it is the heroes are after for their own personal gain. They could even reuse mission art for that.

That would be a little more work, though, because you'd have to write dialog for both tracks, and each would probably have at least some significant mission scripting differences. But it would solve the problem of keeping villains villainous and sharing art assets at the same time.

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Because the subject of anagrams will come up:

Cimerora = Rome Arc I

This suggests to me there's more Roman wackiness to come.

What do I win? More accurately who won the office pool, Posi?

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OMG ANAGRAMS EVREEWARE!

It sounds mostly like they're turning it in to a viable zone for solo players. I don't expect them to change too much else, though I'd be happy to be wrong.

I think it's smart to allow people to solo this zone, as I suspect most players solo most of the time. The low level hero game was in some desperate need of some love, and it looks like this delivers.

I'd still like to see them revisit AP and GC, though.

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furor what poetry

everyone thought that was an anagram for fourth power tray

but they were wrong......

The Furies (their Roman name) or Dirae ("the terrible") typically had the effect of driving their victims insane, hence their Latin name furor.

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It might have a double meaning, then, since we ARE getting additional power trays.

That clever bastiche.

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The large inspirations are cast on your character, not put in the tray.

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Ah, makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

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We also know Psychic Blasters.

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oh, hot damn, how?

Yeah, I'm mixed on this. I was hoping for something new, but the way this is executed DOES sound cool.

So what I'm wondering is, how are these unlocked?