I'm wondering if there will be any sort of 'justification' regarding our arrival in Titan City in our spanking new spandex. I realize that we are not going to have 'origins' like CoH that nominally force us into a beginning path. I'm glad of that BTW.
While I disliked DCUO's "ever'body got nanites" story opening, it did provide a meaningful mini-story as a tutorial. And, I admit that Champions' just dumping you in the world, after your stint in the costume creator, in the middle of a huge crisis got a little old. Yeah, every one of my toons gets to save the world. Again. Hooray for me. If only I could've skipped the terrible voice-acting...
Will there be some contrivance for walking us through the character design steps? Or will we be presented with the raw mechanics of building a character from scratch and you justify it however you want?
How do you think we will be introduced to this brave new world? How will our characters enter the city for the first time? Quietly, during the night, in the seedier part of town? With a sonic boom over downtown in broad daylight?
Personally, I'd like a choice. (of course I'd like a choice, we all like a choice) Give me a handful of locations with different 'moods' to pick from. Different atmospheres in the environment to set the mood for the character, sort of thing.
Of course, I don't know how this might affect tutorials or intro missions, etc. Just wondering what we might like or expect.
For diversity in starting points, it would be nice if we could choose our initial path during CC and that choice would determine which initial mission we start in. The tutorial help could be set up similar to SWTOR with pop up info as it is needed; with the ability to turn off the help pop ups.
As it stands now, we will have two starting locations, one in Alexandria (north side) and one in Clarkstown (southside). Both of these will have content for heroes and for villains. We are not segregating them geographically. Each of these points will have both a hero path and a villain path, as well as a cornucopia of other content.
Tutorial stuff has not been decided yet. We are being smart and doing that last. Doing it this way allows us to write it based on what needs to be included then, and not having to worry about adding or removing stuff later.
I am sure some of the other departments will have something to say on all this, but I will let them say it.
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Conundrum of Furballs
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team, Staff Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Thanks, Furballs. Maybe you can answer this, maybe not...
Are we then expected to pick Hero or Villain during character creation? Or do we design a character and then, when we arrive, choose the path that would generally lead in one of those directions? Can you give us a feel for how this lines up with the tri-axis alignment system?
That, I do not know. I have not been part of the discussions. I have heard many different things at varying different times. I cannot begin to guess how gameplay will link the character generation, tutorial, starting location, and path selection/beginning. I would rather leave that information to be dispensed by someone with an idea of the correct answer.
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Conundrum of Furballs
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team, Staff Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I thought I [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/100991#comment-100991]brought this up before[/url] ...
To continue with what CoF mentioned, they could set the tutorial at "the airport" after which you then get to choose whether to travel to Alexandria or Clarkstown for your first open world zone.
Not trying to steal a march on you or anything WarBird ... but I rather like the idea of being able to define as a part of character creation whether my character is a "native" to Titan City or someone who has come in from Out Of Town. Why is this an important distinction? Because it sets up the fundamental underlying notion that there is a WORLD out there beyond Titan City.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Some of my characters come from out of town. Some of my character came from out of town a Long Time Ago and are currently citizens. And some of my characters are newly arisen from inside the city.
I like the 'Airport/Port Authority as a starting zone' idea, but it only works for Some of my characters. A Hero/Villain Registration facility might work for most, but not all of my characters. "You are in (some zone), when suddenly (tutorial event happens)!" is probably the most broadly applicable.
Hmmm... tutorial... Event... happens?!?
Be Well!
Fireheart
As I wrote up the first time, the Out Of Towners arrive in the airport by plane from Out Of Town and are coming to Titan City. Native characters who are actually from Titan City go out to the airport to meet with someone who is coming into town on a flight.
Point being that the two origins before character creation "merge" at the (tutorial zone) Airport, at which point "something happens" (doesn't have to be anything major or world shattering) that your newbie takes part in, and then after the tutorial you get your choice of starter zone.
Transportation hubs like airports make for a ready set of "meet someone" excuses for your new character to be there, regardless of where you actually happen to be from.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The more they can leave the actually origin story stuff up to the people making the characters, the better, I think. In CoX I read people's info all the time and I 'd definitely include something like that in CoT. PLEASE give us better text editing tools, but give us the "Write your character's origin story here" text space that we had in CoX. That's really all I feel I need for that. How the tutorial works or where I begin in the city is not terribly important to me, as long as it's done well for whatever it is.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
+1
Spurn all ye kindle.
I remember the whole airport discussion, Red. I was really asking more about the process of character introduction as a whole. Will it be integrated somehow with Character Creation? Will the introduction mechanism give us some choices that reflect our story? Will the tutorial be separate from the actual open game world? Questions, not proposals, for a change. :)
I thoroughly agree with you about preferring to define the how's, why's and where's of my character's story. I also want Titan City to exist in a greater, more inclusive world. I was trying to determine if we are going to get it.
Unfortunately, I only got a partial answer. I had assumed most of this has to have been hammered out by now. Else, what kind of development direction would the tech folks have? Or maybe it will be a case of "Here's how we have to do it. What can we say to justify it?"
I'm hoping that we are so close to the nuts and bolts construction of this thing that we are beyond the point of debating large game mechanisms, (like how the CC and tutorials will function) and we can start asking for a few more details from the "what to expect" category. Spoilers not withstanding, of course. :) Hoping, mind. But I have been accused of being optimistic.
To be honest, City of Heroes had a really major legacy limitation in it that City of Titans simply won't have. The Archetypes aren't "bound" to a particular "side" of the game as a fundamental underlying principle.
I'm thinking that it would be ... wise ... to let people choose the Red vs Blue identity for characters during character creation BEFORE entering the game world. That way, you choose to be either a Hero or a Villain before you enter the Tutorial. That then opens up the option of having a branching path within the tutorial of either being a Four Color or a Realistic version of either a Hero or a Villain. If you skip the Tutorial, you have to answer the question of which branch you want to take before you can spawn into the open game world environment.
Doing that, you get to offer a Choice of which Tutorial Story you're going to follow, and the two can be interwoven such that the Four Color and Realistic types can be experienced as the two sides of the same coin of either Hero or Villain. By choosing the Red vs Blue before exiting character creation, you then allow for the writing of each of the Tutorial Stories to be better tailored to the type of character the Player wants to play ... rather than starting from a total grey area mid-point of absolute generic-ness that has to be [i]moved away from[/i] via the choices offered in the Tutorial Stories. This offers a better "grounding" for the writing needed by any Tutorial Stories and lets you write them in "Two-fer" fashion from the beginning such that you don't use one of them as the base with the other one feeling like warmed up leftovers.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Redlynne's suggestion seems like a natural progression from CC to tutorial that is in keeping with the design concepts expressed by the devs. It's my hope that the CC will allow us (as an option) to finely tune our alignment prior to entering the tutorial. Some character concepts are fully developed at creation. I do not want to start as a generic red or blue and then have to fight the system to get them to their target alignment. Other concepts will be perfect for starting as a generic alignment and developing their characters through the story that unfolds.
They have said alignment will be player choice at creation...including a neutral one to allow for natural progression
Thanks islandtrevor72.