It's been a while since something like this was discussed, and I'm just posing this out of curiosity...

I often feel that, while CoH is a fine game, it sometimes falls short of what I would expect from the comic book genre.  So - with all that you've seen implemented in CoH, how would you structure an all-new comic book MMORPG?  What aspects from CoH do you think work well, and are worth keeping?  What different mechanics would be implemented?

I would probably take a few cues from  :ff: and  :ffvstr: 
While CoH and CoV are great, they do lack a bit of the comic book atmosphere,
be it campy silver age stuff or a dark and sinister feel from the modern era. 
I think the music in FF helped that tone a lot.  It would be cool to see "time travel"
or "other-verse" missions that isolated players and teams from the main set of maps
and immersed them in the old standby stories of comics:  missions based on parallel universes
or time travel.

On a strictly selfish note, I wish both CoH and CoV had single player capabilities.  As awesome as those games are, there's just something killer about running around as your favorite copyrighted comic book heroes.  The character creation tools in these games are so good, it's a slap in the face to fanboys everywhere to not get to play your fave characters in tights.  A single player, non-server based version of the games (played in the dead of night with the blinds closed, of course) would be a great remedy.

That's a hard one.  MMO's are their own animal with their own requirements.  A lot of the game focuses on social aspects because they have to.  And, with the exception of the auction house, the social part works pretty well overall.

They have to skimp on some amount of realism.  Aside from the end-user technical hurdles, they can't really operate a destructible environment to any degree... that would be extra objects that the servers would have to keep track of.  Realistically, a level 50 scuffle should be bringing down walls and chewing up the scenery.

The same problem exists for the NPC population.  Paragon City is pretty darned empty for as big as it is.  A real city would be much busier.  But again, that's more objects for the system to have to keep track of.  We see enough jarring anomalies as it is, like business people walking in midair in certain locations, or the longbow rocketpack guy continually stuck in a wall.  Adding objects wouldn't be helpful.

One big change they could make that would very helpful would be integrated voice communication as an option.  That has it's own problems, of course, but it would beat trying to type dialogue in the middle of a firefight.  Keybinds can only take you so far for communication purposes.  Yeah, I know there are third-party voice servers for this, but everyone needs to be on the same system.  The main hurdle would be accomodating users that didn't have the required broadband, sound card, microphone needed to participate in voicecomm.  And there would be the social problem of female toons with very male voices...

The absolute biggest problem I have with the game is the inability to do some mixing and matching of powers to really customize my character's abilities.  The pool powers provided just don't cut it and aside from the extra abilities tagged on by IO sets enhancements don't add anything new to powers... they just enhance the properties that are already there.  I'd like just a bit more freedom to go outside the box.

Player-customization of powers would probably be a pretty big hurdle, but one that I'd hope to have addressed in the next iteration of a comic-book MMORPG.

As I recall from secondhand stories of the development of CoH, the original design intent was to allow a broad selection of powers to custom your character to your preference.  The problem they soon faced was that testers would either make poorly-designed characters that were ill-equipped to handle the standard enemies, or they started gravitating to identical builds involving ranged attacks, and defense against enemy damage.

I don't find the concept of Archetypes an inherently bad idea, as it does cut down on what might otherwise require a bunch of number crunching and tweaking.  Still, I'd want to be able to more accurately depict basic elements that I see in comic book characters.  For example...

1) Comic Book Bricks.  The fundamental concept is someone that is strong and tough.  They hit hard, can take a beating, and can lift and throw heavy objects if something isn't nearby to pound.

2) Skillfully Trained Crimefighters.  They've made up for brute force through skill, training, and intelligence.  They also tend to have short-distance ranged attacks, in addition to melee skill and defense.  Whether it's webbing, boomerangs, shuriken, smoke grenades, bolas, or whatever - comic book characters are rarely in the situation of saying, "I can't do anything because he's far away from me and I can only hit things in melee."

3) Blasters With Defenses.  They've got great attacks at range, but they're not exactly glass cannons, either.  Iron Man and Dr. Doom have their armored suits.  The Human Torch pretty much ignores heat, and seems to dodge plenty of attacks while flying.

Holy crap, a suggestion post by BlueBard that I don't feel the need to attack!  :blink:

I recently wrote a design doc for Game Design class for a superhero game. It was single-player, and most of it wouldn't work well online, but one idea I thought might translate well online was a way to get rid of archetypes without screwing up the balance.

The system was inspired by Final Fantasy 7-- if you equip magic materia, your magic stats go up, while your physical stats go down. Same thing for physical attack materia, but in reverse. Any character can fill any function, but if you try to mix magic spells with physical stuff, your character's stats end up being pathetically average, and they can't really do anything particularly well.

A system like this could work well in CoH. Take, let's say, Temp Invuln, and your health and attack go up, while your ranged multiplier sinks. Take Fire Blast, and your ranged stuff goes up, while your health hits the floor. Taking all physical powers would make you like a Tank or Scrapper is now, while all ranged stuff would put you in Def/Troller/Blaster range. A mix of them would put you around non-tricky Kheldian range-- average blasts, average shields, with no real area in which you excel.

There would still be some balance issues with this system, but I think it would be quite workable if they spent enough time working out the kinks.

Quote from: captainspud on May 24, 2007, 10:38:43 AM
Holy crap, a suggestion post by BlueBard that I don't feel the need to attack!  :blink:

It was bound to happen sooner or later.   And look... Hell didn't even freeze over!  ;)

Dinosaurs...

And um... more dinosaurs...

Interactivity... click spoiler for more...
[spoiler]The big thing COX lacks really is interactivity/immersion on anything other than a basic, basic level. They upped the ante with some of the newer zones and areas, like pretty much all of the Rogue Isles with NPC groups really & truly fighting or doing things. Another good step forward was in Mayhem missions.

Now I agree you can't have a fully destructible city for people to romp through but... in missions and such that is another matter entirely. How do you explain away the clearing of rubble after a battle, some time has passed and it got cleaned up... whatever... or just let it detract from the immersion and don't worry about it. Still though in all honesty having players able to rip up some pavement, a lightpost or the occasional car *if someone in it have the hero politely dump them out before throwing it, heh* being tossed around wouldn't be that bad. The environment could temporarily display the damage and in a few minutes or so it would simply repair itself, for lower end systems just have it able to be turned off displaying the damage. We have to load all these objects in the environment anyways. Balance wise, just don't let the damage get out of control from tossing something, put in measure to counter it. If a hero lifts something allow the object to be able to be targetted and destroyed even while its on its' way towards you. Let melee attacks versus incoming objects able to deflect or destroy them.[/spoiler]

Mission Variety... more in the spoiler below...
[spoiler]Another option possible would be to allow for variety in mission set ups instead of here is a level, here are the mooks, hooray boss battle erhm... arch villain/elite boss! Have heroes here about bank robberies or kidnappings something that let them run into a villain a little quicker for variety. Not everyone has henchman after all. To extend villain fights or make them more epic or such add some scripting, give bosses or arch villains a power that lets them get away or just script an encounter to end before they run out of hp and get arrested. Make it where you see a villain more than once during an arc, not every missions but another appearance or two before finally getting ahold of one would be great.

Oh and did I mention dinosaurs?[/spoiler]

Of hazards and giant lizards... click to see...
[spoiler]Also back in with the instanced destruction, give me a mission to stop a giant monster destroying the city. Have it be defeated or for a more powerful one simply have enough damage done turn it away back where it came. Add in some interactive temp powers in a mission to help deal with or capture it. There is a good chance I might just watch the monster lay waste to the city for a while. Let there be a bonus badge for having it destroy as small a part of the city as possible.

Having the game spawn the occasional hazard or person in distress (other than oh no he took my purse!) would also be cool. Or just have random stuff like that pop up in outdoor missions, they can't fail but just have them give big bonuses to xp, influence (whatever currency you use), etc.
[/spoiler]

Mission difficulty and improved inventions, temp powers, gadgets... click for more information below...
[spoiler]I think you basically end up forced to at least with MMOs often use a class formula and not let people run totally wild. However power pools though a handy add on, are kind of a dropped ball in my opinion. Yes there are the Epic Power Pools but you don't get those till near the end of the game and a lot of them are rather awful. Extending power pools to really make a real difference in a character earlier, and removing the near universal necessity of one particular pool (*cough* stamina *cough*) would be a good idea.

I also don't think every mission should be doable or as easily doable for every class or character set up. If a mission is too tough because it really needed stealth or something else to help out too bad. Just make it actually possible to abandon missions not force us to do them and be stuck with them (except once every 7 days). It would encourage grouping to an extent and for the total soloer who must do it alone... why add in a new sort of shop that sells temporary powers/gadgets. Have a contact introduce you to them early in the game for when you might need a little extra help. Perhaps even an arc or mission they can give you later on might give you access to more advanced gadgets/temp powers from them or even a permanent one. You could even use them to tie into the invention system, they could also sell recipes or you could earn recipes & such through missions from them. Take courses in hero vehical repair/maintenance, weaponry/gadgets, etc. A supergroup could even have their own weapon/gadget room in their base where you can make things, and have a constant supply of them. Say your base (depending on size and type of room) holds so many of these temp powers at a time, you use them all up they slowly come back in stock or you can just make some more if you want.[/spoiler]

Improvements I'd like to see in the game, or at least applied elsewhere.

- Power customization.

- Vehicles.

I really don't need to explain those I hope.

- Zones/Levels/Etc.  A better system needs to be worked out.  While Zones with Level restrictions do serve certain purposes... (Level 1 heroes not stumbling into level 50 zones) its also very limiting.  The emphasis is for the new player to gain levels to explore, but the whole idea of pushing a player from one zone, to another zone, to another is very limiting.  Players get backed into a corner in the game and get bored stuck in that corner.  The rest of the world needs to be opened back up to them.  Let them be able to enjoy the rest of the world again.  Villians should never be completely outleveled.  Special mobs should be anabled of each villian group to be able to challenge a player at every level.  Heroes get better... why can't the villians?  The idea of having certain villians in an enemy group con white/yellow/red/purple to all players... just like a monster would be great. 

- End Content/Alts/Etc.  Alts are not the only answer as to what to do when you hit level 50.  Alts can be one of the choices, but you need to offer the other choice as well.  Who cares how someone is playing the game... as long as they are playing the game?  Give the other players a reason to keep playing their 50's.  Its not that hard.  Part of the solution is above.  Expanding Portal Corp missions into something like radio missions would help.  Imagine being able to go back to an alternate timeline of Paragon City in the 50's, the 70's? Or to have the choice to keep going to these other Dimensions?  Radio missions should also be expanded to be allowed to be played in every zone.  Sometimes new content of just new zones, isn't the answer.  Adding depth and the ability for all players to enjoy an old zone just may be.

- PVP.  Arenas was a start and had so much promise, but really needs better execution.  Nuetral zones with missions and objectives is ok... but I'm itching for something that offers that what I do makes a difference, like Recluses Victory.  Great idea that needs to really be expanded to every zone in different ways.  In fact.... this is what needs to be done...  Arenas need to be downgraded and demolished.  What they really should be are those "Training Rooms" we can't get to in the Freedom Corps stores.  We go there, go down the elevator to the training center, on the lower floor is the training center with all the usual arena stuff.    Each zone gets a "Recluse Victory" type PVP area.  You go to a building, enter and you go into the PVP for that zone.  Take Steel Canyon as an example.  You go there, enter the PVP marked building and enter a smaller area duplicate of Steel Canyon for PVP.  New PVP zones are nice... but defending/attacking established zones is even better. 

- Inventions/Powers.  As always, more powers would be nice.  I like for the most part the set up of the primarys and secondaries and understand the process --- I'm all for it.  I just want to see more sets like everyone else.  So how do we do all these niche powers though?  Like ray guns, gas guns?  Ninja stars and nunchucks?  INVENTIONS!  No reason to go off and make whole power sets now... we really need to make things like that temporary powers.  They also need to expand inventions, or at least... theme it better.  Weapons shouldn't be made at Universities.  Now, crafting weapons at the Police Headquarters makes sense.  Crating new costume peices at the Paragon Times.  A little bit of a hassle, perhaps... but it starts to give the illusion of specialized skills and gives a little roleplay.  Which reminds me...

- Add depth.  We need more buildings we can go into for no reason other than, well... to go into.  Not every building, but a few buildings we can go into just for kicks would be nice.  Having one or two of those warehouse in Kings Row be open to go inside anytime would be nice.  More variety in maps too and special maps like the Garage / Tattoo parlours.

Whew, getting hungry.  I'm gonna' end my ideas here and grab myself a sandwich.

RTT

Quote from: captainspud on May 24, 2007, 10:38:43 AM
Holy crap, a suggestion post by BlueBard that I don't feel the need to attack!  :blink:

I recently wrote a design doc for Game Design class for a superhero game. It was single-player, and most of it wouldn't work well online, but one idea I thought might translate well online was a way to get rid of archetypes without screwing up the balance.

The system was inspired by Final Fantasy 7-- if you equip magic materia, your magic stats go up, while your physical stats go down. Same thing for physical attack materia, but in reverse. Any character can fill any function, but if you try to mix magic spells with physical stuff, your character's stats end up being pathetically average, and they can't really do anything particularly well.

A system like this could work well in CoH. Take, let's say, Temp Invuln, and your health and attack go up, while your ranged multiplier sinks. Take Fire Blast, and your ranged stuff goes up, while your health hits the floor. Taking all physical powers would make you like a Tank or Scrapper is now, while all ranged stuff would put you in Def/Troller/Blaster range. A mix of them would put you around non-tricky Kheldian range-- average blasts, average shields, with no real area in which you excel.

There would still be some balance issues with this system, but I think it would be quite workable if they spent enough time working out the kinks.

Well when they tried something similar to this before, as I'm sure you know, it supposedly suffered from people making either ultra uber toons or complete gimps. The fact I see people in the 20's and higher with power selections in the current archetype system that make their character completely useless nullifies that reasoning as far as I'm concerned. If an idiot can level a toon with all 4 travel powers and nothing from their primaries worth a damn up to the 20's and beyond, it's obvious gimping can be worked around.

I'd need to think on it for a long time, but essentially I'd try to combine the FF point and power system with the COH costume and combat system. The big problem with MMO's that don't fall into the Fantasy genre is the fact you have nothing to work with. You're basically working from scratch. COH added a few things of it's own, but when you get down the bare bones it's still just EQ in Tights. COV moved away from that a bit more with their archetype system, but they fell into the trap of relying too much on their AT specific stuff like Domination and Fury.

I guess one of my main complaints that I'd work on is perfecting the archvillain system. The current system makes the player feel like he's barely a hero. I mean sure, Recluse and States are supposed to literally be gods, but should it take a team of 8 to take down the Vindicators?

Destructable environments!  Grab that flagpole and knock that gunamn right off the roof!

And there's two parts to this game that have always bugged me:

1)Being hit by powers that target at the start of the animation, even if the power would logically be interrupted by the time it fires.  If a sniper is drawing a bead on me and I walk around the corner it should interrupt the power!!

2)AOE's that *somehow* miss your allies and only affect your enemies.  C'mon - if a grenade goes off in the middle of a crowd of people, they ALL get blowed up!

Quote from: Uncle Yuan on May 24, 2007, 07:34:31 PM
2)AOE's that *somehow* miss your allies and only affect your enemies.  C'mon - if a grenade goes off in the middle of a crowd of people, they ALL get blowed up!

Big problem with that idea, Unc... If AOE's can damage everybody, then you just introduced PvP into every single zone and every single mission area.  You'd have blasters PK'ing left and right in the public areas just because they could, and idiots turning missions into their own mini Arenas when disagreements pop up.

Some people might get their jollies from that, but I wouldn't.

Quote from: Uncle Yuan on May 24, 2007, 07:34:31 PM
Destructable environments!  Grab that flagpole and knock that gunamn right off the roof!

And there's two parts to this game that have always bugged me:

1)Being hit by powers that target at the start of the animation, even if the power would logically be interrupted by the time it fires.  If a sniper is drawing a bead on me and I walk around the corner it should interrupt the power!!

2)AOE's that *somehow* miss your allies and only affect your enemies.  C'mon - if a grenade goes off in the middle of a crowd of people, they ALL get blowed up!

*EDIT* Curse you ninjabard of blue! :gbtclaw *note I am not flipping you off, I just like tossing up these little smilies of myself in random posts of mine*

There is one reason for number 2... griefing... GRIEFING... if you allowed AOEs to actually work in a more realistic manner, then you would have people taunting villains near other players just to hurt them. Not to mention a level 50 blaster popping some inspirations, aim + buildup causing havoc in lower level zones to other heroes.

implement a built in voice system. would make some groups so much easier, and makes >bleep< way easier to figure out sooner.

let people further customize their powers by picking colors for energy attacks, style of weapons, etc. It would be great if we could customize our powers to 'coordinate' with our theme by way of color, I think. I also think it should be a fairly high level quest chain.. an earned privilege.

for the people who prefer to solo, maybe offer a system where you can buy a temporary power to summon an NPC of any AT/Power combo to be your sidekick.the power is good for so many hours of game play, or for so many summons. this is also good for those who may play odd hours and have trouble finding good groups. The power is not usable if you are in a group, or if you have the pet out and join a group, it unsummons the pet.

I'd also suggest implementing individual player hideouts. Many heroes had their private place to rest up, separate from any group they belonged to.

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 13, 2007, 10:18:36 AM
implement a built in voice system. would make some groups so much easier, and makes assholes way easier to figure out sooner.

I already suggested this one (see above).

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 13, 2007, 10:18:36 AM
let people further customize their powers by picking colors for energy attacks, style of weapons, etc. It would be great if we could customize our powers to 'coordinate' with our theme by way of color, I think. I also think it should be a fairly high level quest chain.. an earned privilege.

The devs have already said it isn't going to happen, but I agree it would be nice to have.

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 13, 2007, 10:18:36 AM
for the people who prefer to solo, maybe offer a system where you can buy a temporary power to summon an NPC of any AT/Power combo to be your sidekick.the power is good for so many hours of game play, or for so many summons. this is also good for those who may play odd hours and have trouble finding good groups. The power is not usable if you are in a group, or if you have the pet out and join a group, it unsummons the pet.

I like this idea!  A lot!  It should be doable, at least to some extent.  I think it should be limited to mission maps though, so you don't have bozos using them to farm the streets.

The way they could probably implement it is something along the lines of 'Summon Tanker', 'Summon Blaster', etc.  It would be difficult to implement a way to customize the power combos, but even a generic build would be useful.  Say that 'Summon Tanker' brings forth an Inv/SS pet with level-appropriate powers.  They could even break it down like, 'Summon Tanker (10)' that summons a 10th level tank, 'Summon Tanker (20)' etc.  Then the pet could autoexemp or sidekick to the appropriate level.

Let's see... If I were building generic pets along the AT lines...

Summon Tanker - Inv/SS
Summon Scrapper - Claws/SR
Summon Blaster - AR/Devices
Summon Defender - Rad/Rad
Summon Controller - Grav/FF

One question in my mind would be the AI.  For example, how do you tell a pet Defender or Controller to buff you?

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 13, 2007, 10:18:36 AM
I'd also suggest implementing individual player hideouts. Many heroes had their private place to rest up, separate from any group they belonged to.

I like this idea too, but that's a lot more stuff for the servers to keep track of even if you keep them fairly small and generic.

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 13, 2007, 10:18:36 AM
for the people who prefer to solo, maybe offer a system where you can buy a temporary power to summon an NPC of any AT/Power combo to be your sidekick.the power is good for so many hours of game play, or for so many summons. this is also good for those who may play odd hours and have trouble finding good groups. The power is not usable if you are in a group, or if you have the pet out and join a group, it unsummons the pet.

You know, giving this a bit of thought I think it would be more useful if you could summon a Sidekick pet even if you're in a group.  It would help people fill out groups when players aren't available.

Say that each person can summon one pet.  The pet does not appear until you enter the mission map and disappears when you complete the mission.  You can't summon more pets into a mission than you have free team slots, and each pet 'joins' the team as soon as they are summoned.

maybe the pet idea is worth posting on the CoX boards?

I think another thing that could be interesting..

Using the invention system, create recipes and salvage that are used to create items that unlock unique quest lines, NPC Quest Givers, etc.

Maybe you invent a Trans-Time device and you get quests from an NPC in another time (to blatantly steal someones idea for missions in other times), or you create a decoder ring that lets you communicate with NPC X.

Let them build on existing possibilities.

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 13, 2007, 02:26:18 PM
maybe the pet idea is worth posting on the CoX boards?

I'd say so.  Being able to fill out mission teams when you can't get a lot of players would be incredibly worthwhile.  How many times have we all sat around looking for a Tank, or some other AT to fill a missing role?

It would have to be really balanced and limited to prevent abuse, but I believe the technical hurdles are low.  The biggest problem I see is if someone isn't managing their pet right and they draw down too much aggro.  But that happens in normal teams and with normal pets anyway.  People who aren't used to managing a pet would have a learning curve, but they'd learn.

I think the potential advantage outweighs the disadvantages and could be an easy win-win.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8501967&page=0&vc=#Post8501967



so I posted the idea

Quote from: ThePrelate on June 17, 2007, 07:03:31 AM
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8501967&page=0&vc=#Post8501967

so I posted the idea

Oh well, I can see most of the posters hate the idea.  They have a few valid arguments and a few poor arguments, but bottom line if the vocal majority of players don't want it the devs aren't gonna go out of their way on it either. 

I don't get how it somehow devalues AT's.  We already know that an AI is not going to do as good a job as a good player, that's given... but unlike a poor player an AI will often do what it's told which might be a plus in some circumstances.

I only know that when I play, which is usually late at night and often in the wee hours, it can be hard to pull a team together.  The longer you stand around trying to get players to agree to join, the more likely that the players already in the team will lose patience and drop out.  A lot of people ignore blind invites, which means that it takes that much longer to get an invite turned around.  It's not impossible, of course.  And you can do all-Controller missions if everyone's on the same page.  But sometimes it would be nice to have a tank around to draw aggro and that kind of thing.

I do like the suggestion that such a thing could be mission-based... available for some missions and not for others and add some variety.  That's probably the best suggestion.

'Hiring' a sidekick is another idea that might work.  Say you go to a certain contact in PocketD who can point you to someone you can hire, then you have to travel to where that NPC is, then pay the inf and you only get them for as long as it takes to complete one mission.  They still wouldn't show up except inside a mission.  But if you're going to make it that difficult, why bother?

Let it die.  Maybe the idea can be resurrected down the line if it seems like there's a need.

    I think they fear while the idea is cool, it is somewhat overpowered.  Sure lots of us like to solo... and they feel if you're going to solo, solo.  If you're going to do a mission with someone else, best do it with another player, unless of course you're a mastermind.

    I can see where they are coming from.  After all, temp. pets are available as rewards for doing certain missions, etc.

    Me, I'd love to see something like Masterminds heroside but I know it won't happen.  Shame.

    The best chance of seeing anything close to this would be like a vet reward or accolade.  You can summon either a Longbow agent... or Arachnos agent for a minute or so once every hour.

RTT

I dunno. I can see where people think it is overpowered but at the same time..


maybe if more people could effectively play, or play without an arse persoanlity overriding any usefulness they have in a PUG, I wouldn't have found the time to come up with the idea  ni the first place.

After all, who wouldn't rather play with the 'real deal' that has more options and doesn't require you controlling it like a pet while doign your own thing?

oh well.

Look at it this way.

COH is a Massive Multiplayer Online Game. Throw in RPG into that if you want. Consider ourselves lucky that this development team actually takes soloing into account, and gives the average player the ability to solo over 90% of the content. Any other online game usually tries to hinder, if not utterly kill off soloing.

Farming alone would benefit too much from the ability to summon a useful pet on anything better than the timers current summonable temps have. Look at Shivans for instance.

Personally, I'd rather see the current idea of random heroes showing up in missions to help becoming much more common. Off the top of my head, hero-side, I can only think of 3 instances worth mentioning. The archer in Outbreak and the two times Fusionette shows up. Villains get a few more, Wretch and Barracuda, and various Arachnos.

Something along the lines of a 1 in 10 chance of paper/scanner missions spawning a random hero/villain to help would be a good start. I hope that eventually hero storyarcs start to get redone to include more active content like Faultline.

someone mentioned in the response post that having an NPC pet, or hireling, along should impact exp and inf.. I would totally be ok with that.

too bad I can't remember my forum password. I'm at work. maybe I'll remember to post it otnight :)