In GW2, every zone map has many different little areas in it with monsters to fight, but also in some places good aligned NPCs that might help you fight them or need your help. Then, there are also a myriad of small events that spawn every so often. So like the vineyard in Queensdale has some activities to do, like kill the grubs that are chewing on the grape roots, etc. Then, every so often, and by that I mean several times per day, it get's attacked by centaurs and if you're there you try to defend it. If you successfully repel the last centaur wave, you get a reward. Then there's a caravan that tries to take a load of beer or whatever to the next town, through the nearby swamp. Once the caravan starts, it moves slowly through the swamp and you have to defend it. When you get to the next town, it's over and you get a reward from the game in the form of some IGC and so forth.
Some of these things have NPC good guys attacking monster areas or being attacked at home by monsters, etc. Some are "defend the base from the Centaurs" and some are "attack the centaur camp and wipe them out" etc, where you might have a lot of NPC fighters on your side, which is nice, if you're a support toon and can use them for DPS output. Sometimes it's just "the really hard elite boss monster has appeared" and you can go to it's area and try to defeat it, but you'll need help, so hopefully other people are on and fighting it too.
These things get people fighting out in the outdoor environment, I feel. You see people outdoors in that game continually fighting these sort of events, even when the people were originally there for some other reason. Like maybe you went to Ascalon to fight the dragon Kralkatorix, because its the daily bonus thing, and then when you got there the Blood-Stone Crazed Devourer appeared, so you did that while you were waiting for the dragon squad to form up and get ready.
I've been trying to think up small, somewhat frequently occurring things that would fit into a modern-day hero game context like this. Obviously the bigger ones could be big Godzilla sized monsters running amok, or whatever, but the smaller scale stuff was a thing I wanted to explore. Especially things that might have NPC good guys fighting the fight too, like for when my Defender needs an army to heal.
So far, I'm coming up with like "help the cops in the powered suits fight the gangs" and "help the NPC supergroup fight the NPC badguy group". I'm trying to come up with things that might have a permanent spawn point in the world map as their "home" and then happen entirely outside so that passers by can see them and go do them or avoid them as such.
What else is there that would fit CoT?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I would like to see more open world events and missions in CoT for the same reason: it gives players something to do outside of the instanced missions. However, I'd prefer they not be nearly as pervasive as such events are in Guild Wars 2. I'd find that distracting and such events are a large part of the advancing/leveling in GW2, which clearly won't be the case in CoT.
I hope and wonder if the kinds of things we saw in CoH, such as muggings and attempts to break into stores, will be a means to earn clues. I'd also like to be see players able to help with such things as broken water mains or downed power lines, which may or may not have been caused by nefarious activity or means. E.g. During a high speed chase the pursued car crashes into a pole/transformer, which could provide PCs with the option of helping catch the perp, fix the power, or prevent a fire from starting and/or spreading.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
With regards to the GW2 approach, I like that the events in that game get marked on the map as such while in progress, including like when the big boss monster moves, you see it moving on the map and you have a sort of radius around it that is considered it's immediate threat area. I could see making that type of map ability being a thing you need an unlock or a personal lair or SG base to be able to access, if they want to do that, but there are also messages that appear on screen or in chat broadcast that tell you an event is nearby, and in some cases what it is (like "A Blood-Stone Crazed Beast has appeared!" etc).
I also like that when such events take place, they don't replace other stuff that much, and the regular indigenous monsters that would normally inhabit the same area are still there. We all remember trying to do "kill quota" missions in outdoor areas in CoX only to have a Rikti Invasion or Zombie Apocalypse start at the same time, thus completely removing the Tsoo or Family or whatever you were trying to get your quota on. THAT doesn't happen in GW2, and that's a god thing.
Edit: changed "Tsai" above to "Tsoo", as my memory slowly erodes away...
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
In GW2 everyone is on the same side, fighting for the same things. Except in the dedicated PvP realm, that is, but let's not talk about that for now. So it would be easy to write content for anyone to just pick up and join.
In CoT, the triple axis alignment system will make it a bit tougher, but I think it can be far more rewarding if done well. According to Kickstarter Update #17 the three alignments are Law Honor and Violence. So even two characters running the same mission, or trying to assist the same NPC in this small-scale open world emergent content could have different experiences depending on whether they do things lawfully, violently or honorably, or any combination thereof.
Add to that, the various reputations with different groups, and you could have even more variation. How to do this with open world content?
Here are some suggestion off the top of my head. Maybe other people will have better suggestions:
- Have some general conduct rules associated with combat anywhere in the world that give alignment scores irregardless of the alignment of the particular mission such as:
- If you interact with an opponent after defeating it, you get scored honorable (basically you subdue the opponent for the authorities)
- If you attack an opponent after defeating it, you get scored dishonorable and violent and unlawful
- If you defeat an NPC without doing any hitpoint damage to it, you are scored as nonviolent. This would be most applicable in teaming arrangements, but could be done solo If you use only mental attacks or stuns to subdue your opponent or if you sway the NPC via dialogue options
- I'm having a hard time coming up with any general combat outcomes that would award a score for lawful.
- When you begin to partake in the open emergent mission, you are given a splash screen or a pop-up window that informs you of the things you can do that would have an affect on your alignment. For instance, there is a bank robbery underway. Thepolice and swat are assembled outside the building and the robbers are inside the building. As soon as you get close enough you get a quick mission briefing from your contact. It tells you that you could bust into the bank guns blazing and that would award your violence score. You could protect the police officers as they go in, increasing your non-violence score. Or you could try to rescue the hostages, increasing your honorable score.
Conversely, you could take out the police officers, thereby increasing your unlawful score, try to kill all the hostages before the place gets stormed, increasing your violence and dishonorable scores, or just make off with all the loot and leave the robbers to fend for themselves, increasing your dishonorable and unlawful scores.
- Flag the open world emergent event with some glowing icons or something similar so that you know that this particular activity boosts non-violence and lawfullness. That activity over there boosts your violence and dishonor. That other one boosts violence and honor, and so forth; allowing you to farm for the alignment you want just by scanning what's happening in the world.
That's just three ideas, that could all be used together or separately. I'm sure there are plenty of other options.[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Frankly, I wish we could just make this game heroes only. In CoX, people didn't play villains nearly as much, and heroes were way more popular. Posi himself said that the thing that sucked about it was that they got the money for selling the red box, then had to support new content and tweaks for essentially TWO games moving forward, which would have been okay if they had two games worth of people playing the content. They didn't, people still played blueside more than redside, overall.
That said, if you are going to have villain PCs in CoT, I have no idea how to wire together a game world that accommodates that. How would outdoor events work? Don't ask me, because I'm pretty well stumped by that problem and I don't even really want to solve it anyway. I'd rather make it a game about heroes where players are expected to be the "good guys" and leave it at that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
"And so it begins ..."
/em looks disappointed
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Well, keep in mind, the deal with City of Villains was that they whipstitched it together and then bolted it onto City of Heroes, which is why it had so many development issues and they eventually moved onto content that could be completed by both sides - evn the option to work on both sides, thanks to Going Rogue.
CoT, meanwhile, has the idea to let villains be created right from the get-go. This is important because it means they don't have to cobble together story pieces out of it, instead actually designing the game mechanics and story in a cohesive way that supports the divide fairly well.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Okay, but that still leaves us with the question of how to manage outdoor events.
If I'm a villain, or even just a rogue, in terms of my alignment, what do I do about the fact that Dr. Roboticus's Robot Factory is spitting out robots that are running amok? Do I fight them? Do I get anything for fighting them? If I do, do I gain Good Guy Points toward eventually changing to Vigilante or Hero later? What if I DON'T want to change alignment, do I have to refrain from doing that event? What if I still want the XP and loot from it anyway? Can I attack heroes that are fighting the robots? If I can, doesn't that just mean that the whole world is a PVP zone?
In COX, we had Blueside areas and Redside areas and the missions, content, etc were designed for the different alignments as such. I think that might be necessary in CoT, just to keep the outdoor events and such "on theme" for the toons inhabiting the areas in question.
Edit: This sectionalization, if it is necessary, divides the player base and probably turns the redside areas into more ghost-town type stuff like in CoX, I think. I'd like to avoid that, but then puts us back at "What am I supposed to do when I participate in the events that spawn?" Each event now has to have activities for both alignments.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Outdoor public events can generally remain "alignment neutral" for the most part, especially if they are city-wide events. For example if Godzilla comes to stomp on the city or there's a zombie apocalypse I'm fairly sure players of any alignment would be motivated to stop it for whatever reasons they want to rationalize.
If you want to worry about isolated, small scale events then the locations they take place in would dictate who would benefit from them. For example let's compare two bank robberies, one set in a hero-leaning zone and the other in a villain-leaning zone. First let's assume you are an extremely goody-good hero (alignment wise). The following list describes what you'd expect from this scenario:[list]
[*] If you fight the NPC robbers in the hero-leaning zone you'll get lots of XP and lots of hero alignment credit because you're doing exactly what everyone expects you to do.
[*] If you fight the NPC robbers in the villain-leaning zone you'll get XP but maybe have EVERYONE attack you in response because you're poking your heroic nose in a place it doesn't belong.
[*] If you fight the NPC guards in the villain-leaning zone you'll get XP but only a slight alignment penalty because those guards were probably corrupt pawns anyway.
[*] If you fight the NPC guards in the hero-leaning zone you'll get minimal XP and suffer a huge alignment penalty because heroes aren't suppose to fight the 'good' guys.[/list]
If you reverse this (by playing a super-evil villain character) you should expect reverse outcomes:[list]
[*] If you fight the NPC robbers in the hero-leaning zone you'll get minimal XP and suffer a huge alignment penalty because villains aren't suppose to be doing the hero's job for them.
[*] If you fight the NPC robbers in the villain-leaning zone you'll get XP and a slight alignment penalty because those robbers were probably just getting in YOUR way of robbing the bank.
[*] If you fight the NPC guards in the villain-leaning zone you'll get XP but not much evil alignment credit because those guards were probably corrupt stooges anyway.
[*] If you fight the NPC guards in the hero-leaning zone you'll get lots of XP and lots of evil alignment credit because you're doing the major crime everyone expects you to do.[/list]
Those lists may seem complicated but the bottomline is simple: If you fight AGAINST the goals/factions of your alignment you'll be penalized but if you work FOR the benefit of that alignment you'll be rewarded.
No one's saying that having a game that allows players to range across a full alignment spectrum is going to be easy. But I think the last thing we need is to repeat the mistake of having absolute "redside" and "blueside" segregation. The way the CoH Devs initially forced heroes and villains to be strictly binary, isolated groups was arguably one of the greatest design mistakes they ever made and they spent the better part of 6 or 7 years trying to unravel it bit by bit.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I agree that alignment segregation has the very undesirable effect of dividing the player base, and I agree that I think it should be avoided if at all possible. That said, you still have to consider what the alternative entails and ask if that's any better, just as bad, or worse.
In the situation Lothic describes, presumably there are multiple player characters, "good" and "bad" aligned, both participating in that event at the same time in the same place. Are we doing this such that the PC toons cannot fight each other? For starters that just sounds weird, but assuming we're not going to just have full-time, forced open world PVP in all zones, you have to first ensure that the players of different alignments can't attack each other in this scenario, for openers. Assuming that "good" and "bad" player characters cannot attack each other, despite how anti-common sense it seems, the question still remains as to whether the event itself "succeeds" or "fails". Do the heroes stop the bank robbers? Or do the bank robbers get away with the loot? If the awarding of event rewards (XP and so forth) is dependent on that outcome, which I assume it would be, then it makes a difference to my personal rewards received whether there are people aligned against me fighting in that fight. I may not be able to attack the "bad" people as a "good" person, and they might not be able to attack me, but we're essentially competing against each other on the "game board" of that event, and the potential rewards are at stake dependent on the outcome.
In theory, the heroes will try to thwart the robbery and the villains will try to ensure that the heist comes off okay and the robbers get away scott free with the loot. Assuming those outcomes are mutually exclusive, one group will get the "good" rewards that should come from "winning" the event, and the opposing group will not. For a non-PVPer like me, this is not something I want to have to deal with. Even if I can't get attacked by other players, I still like PVE primarily because the play is cooperative and not combative between players. And I CERTAINLY don't want to have to live with lesser rewards, or no rewards, for being on the losing side of those events when that inevitably happens, just based on time spent. But if you reward both sides equally despite the outcome, then what reason does anyone have to actually try to accomplish anything? Theoretically, aren't I just going to try to eek out minimum damage needed to get rewards by the time its over and not really care about success or failure? That also seems very odd and counter to common sense to me.
I just think its far far easier to make it a hero game and leave it at that. And the above problem isn't the half of it. The fact is, a lot of criminal "bad" behavior is totally disallowed in a teen rated game in the first place. Things like graphic depictions of drug use, sexual assault, racist hate crimes, neo-nazi symbolism, etc. All of that is pretty much off the table, as it should be, even if you are allowed to be a villain. So you can't even make your villains all that evil, really. I'm not saying I would want that stuff in the game at all, but I was never much of a redsider anyway.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
As a longtime redside player, I think this is an example where the answer is just creating a reason for the xp. Instead of giving the defeated robots to the police, you take them to the local chop shop, or perhaps donate them to the orphan's mad science club? There are lots of ways to recycle defeated robots. Just find a way that works for your alignment axis and get your xp and IGC.
Yes clearly the idea of playing Good (capital 'G') characters in a game is generally more appealing than playing Evil ones and I don't discount your idea that things would be much less problematic (for the Devs and players alike) if CoT was going to be a "players can only be good guys" game.
But I'll point out that the alignment system of CoT technically side-steps the whole concept of "Good vs. Evil" by being based on the relatively "morally neutral" traits of Violence, Lawfulness and Honor. Yes any player can make the simplistic assumption that Good/Heroic characters are typically Peaceful, Lawful and/or Honorable and Evil/Villainous characters are typically Violent, Lawless and/or Dishonorable but in practical terms those traits aren't strictly assigned to one side or the other. I could probably come up with dozens of examples of characters who play "against type" as far as those traits go in relation to Good and Evil.
So in essence CoT is not going to be (and never really was going to be) a strict binary game of Heroes vs. Villains. It's actually going to be a game of Grey vs. Grey. Once you understand how that's going to work it makes the "problems" of pitting traditional Red vs. Blue a lot more manageable both mentally and implementation wise. Goodness and Evilness will be in the eye of the player's character concept, not baked into the fabric of the game itself.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Even in games that have PVP as a heavy component, and even where there are different factions you have to join, isn't it generally true that both sides see themselves as "the good guys" or at the very worst, "our team, not their team" and still basically ethical, if not totally altruistic? And despite that fact, both sides might have a common enemy in the dragon or a common interest in putting out the fire, etc. They can certainly attack each other's bases too, and that becomes the stuff of PVP combat, but you don't usually have "I'm a BADguy because I do BAD stuff" A) because it is so hard to pull it off with any realism in a teen game, and B) because its just easier not to have to write EVERY piece of content with two opposing sets of ethics in mind. You basically end up making two games, or having to write one game worht of stuff that could fit into two different games, and one of them pales in comparison because it isn't allowed to be what it is advertised as being. You can't do a lot of truly villainous stuff, and for good reason, so the act of trying to force that square peg onto the round hole of MMO content writing shows up all over the place, and the need for the content to be able to support both alignments can at times prevents you from making some content at all, because what does the BADguy want to do there, and why is he or she not doing that, according to the game lore?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Again I never said creating a game that's geared towards a "grey vs. grey" mindset would be easy because you have to struggle against people's natural tendencies to see things in strict black and white terms. But I still think a game that makes a good attempt at doing that (like CoH tried in its later years with efforts like Going Rogue) will be a better game than either a segregated "red vs. blue" OR a "hero-only" game could ever be.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Let's stop talking about heroes and villians as if there is only one axis of good to bad. There are three alignment axes and neither good nor bad is in any of them.
I started another thread as an exercise in visualizing the impact of the three alignment axes upon how we see the game. I recommend giving it a try and see how that affects how you visualize alignment mechanics working.
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/alignment-game
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
So can we agree on the following points?
1. The outside world should not be the equivalent of a forced PVP zone all the time. It should be strictly "no player can attack another player", at least on servers and instances that aren't marked for PVP as such.
2. Some parts of the outside world will be "law and order" (e.g. Atlas Park) and some will be "the wild west" (e.g. The Crash Site) and some will be "mean streets controlled by corrupt law enforcement" (e.g. the Mercy Island). Not that there will be red and blue maps, but that the NPCs will be different in different places in terms of missions, events, etc.
3. The small, frequent events that might spawn will be strictly players versus environment, and that all all players would be fighting against the environment, not against other players, in order to achieve the same outcome of the event (definable as "Successful completion"), even if they might have different reasons for wanting to do that.
If those assumptions are in place, we can then design actual events that might take place in different zones, taking into account the zone's overall feel and flavor, and with the expectation that heroes, villains, and everything inbetween would want to do the event to get the rewards, at the very least, and could rationalize it in whatever way they need to.
Example: The event is "Guard Professor Evil's armored car as he is transferred from his temporary holding cell to the Big House." Based on your alignment, the description you'd get of this event, that you'd get from an NPC or the game itself (radio broadcasts, newspapers, or whatever the game does to let you know an event is starting near you) would be different.
So, if you're a lawful character, or closer to it than anything else, the game would give you the "Someone will likely try to make a play for Professor Evil, probably his minions who are at large led by his wife/girlfriend/toady/android assistant. You'd better get over there and make sure he doesn't escape. Bring friends if you have any."
If you're non-lawful, or closer to it than anything else, you'd get "Professor Evil's transfer happens today. If he escapes, he may beat you to your next planned heist. Best to make sure he stays locked up. If you could con some of the lesser well known criminal element into helping you, you could pull it off without getting your hands dirty, or worse."
If you're ultra-violent, you might get "They're moving Professor Evil by armored car today. Get there quick and you might be able to settle an old score. Beat him down so hard he crawls back to jail and goes on a liquid diet for a few weeks. That'll teach him not to mess with you."
Is that the type of thing we're pretty much talking about at this point?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Essentially, yes.
This is the key principle. Public events should be open-ended enough that any given player can effectively "suspend their disbelief" rationalizing why their character (regardless of alignment) would want to be involved. The private, instanced missions can be saved for those situations that are strongly biased towards particular alignment extremes.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'd like to disagree with 3.
The events do not have to be player versus environment. I can definitely see players pitted against each other to accomplish things. You can do this without having players actually fight each other. Imagine it like a carnival watergun race in which you have to shoot your target with a watergun to make your monkey climb higher.
So, in CoT you can either take hostages or free hostages, steal the diamonds or recover the diamonds. Plant the bombs or throw the bombs in the river. You could even have a race to see who will get to the jumper on the bridge first. There are any number of player versus player competitions that don't have to involve fighting. And if there are no opposing players, you could still complete the content because there are NPCs involved who are doing their own thing that you either have to help or hinder.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
To Huck,
Again, that brings into question the idea of what the rewards are for the "winning" versus "losing" sides. I personally would not want to participate in "friendly competition" type stuff if it's an event that might get me loot drops, assuming the loot drops are non-existant for the losing side, or even just significantly worse. That amounts to a waste of my time in the event that my side loses, and then there's a lot of finger pointing etc afterward. Also, in that scenario, there will definitely be a loser when the event finishes, every time, if there's any competition at all. If you solve that by giving both sides equal rewards at the end, then the whole thing is somewhat pointless and silly to begin with I think.
It's ok to have those sort of friendly competition things, and with different rewards for winners and losers, I just would still constrain that type of stuff to PVP instances, servers, etc, or make it content that you can participate in without it being an open world event to do that spawns in the outdoors. Like if it's "go to the NPC and get a some friends and do the non-violent competitive event" like a TF or trial would work, and can be started at any time, by any group, or set of groups, then that's fine. I just don't like it as an outdoor event that spawns on a timer, I think those should be all-cooperative and alignment agnostic.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
At what point did getting a reward become the reason for playing a game? I don't know about you, but I play games because they are an entertaining use of my time. If a player finds that competition is a waste of their time unless they get a reward, that player should seriously consider why they played it in the first place.
But then, I've never really understand why people race to max level, either. Maybe there are just some people out there I will never understand. That's okay. Competitions where the winner gets rewarded just aren't for some people either, I guess.
In our examples, however, I would expect that alignment scores would be adjusted based upon your playstyle and what you tried to accomplish, whether you won or lost the competition.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
It's just that if I have a choice to go to one area and do some bit of game content either by myself or cooperatively with a team, expecting that I will be able to complete it and get rewards without having to deal with other people trying to compete against me for the same rewards, I think I'm going to do a lot more of that than the competitive stuff, which frankly seems less appealing by comparison. But that's just me. People may want to actually do a lot of that type of competitive stuff, actually. This is why I would make it more like a TF or trial or something so you can form a set of people and start it at your own schedule.
The kind of smaller outdoor events I'm referring to, as they exist in GW2 at least, generally allow for people to show up halfway through and still be able to participate and get rewards, like defeating the Bloodstone-Crazed Shark or whatever. If you got there and got some damage in on the shark, you got rewarded for dropping what you were doing and hauling tail to that area to do that, even if you showed up a little later than some people. A lot of competitive stuff we're referring to would make it very difficult to win if you showed up even a little later than someone else, because they effectively have a head start that you probably don't really have any ability to overcome. As such, you would only participate (in any serious, "in it to win it" way) in stuff if you got there right at the start. Thus I would want to be able to start it on my own, by getting it as a mission or something from an NPC. That way you can form a league or several separate teams, and the NPC can start everyone in a fair place at the same time, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Not sure if it has been said straight out but my understanding of the GW2 events is that it measures everyone individually and compares that to fixed "point tiers", not against other participants. That is, if you do X amount of "event stuff" you get the bronze reward, Y amount you get silver and Z amount you get gold regardless of how much everyone else does. Personally I think that is the best way to handle rewards in public events since you aren't really competing with others.
Regardless of how one implements public events the hard part is how to properly weight non-damage related activities (no damage dealing, no healing) in terms of contribution points.
I believe, from playing GW2, that what blacke4dawn seems correct, in the general case of most events that spawn. But something just occurred to me. One such event that I like becuae its cooperative and give a lot of rewards, DOES have a competitive bent to it.
In the Auric Basin, every two hours you can do an event called the Octovine raid. There are smaller pre-events that are part of it's overall life cycle. So like, if you go to the Southwatch Creep section of the Auric Basin map (the part south of Tarir) and hang around here at about 8:45pm, what will spawn, like clockwork, is the "Morderm are attacking the lost city of Tarir" event. As part of that event, the Auric Sages will allow heroes to volunteer to don magical golden armors with which to defeat the Mordrem and liberate the lost city (for the next two hours...). The events whereby you earn the armors, which are a temp-power granting, avatar changing dealy, are all competitive.
In Southwatch Creep, you click "enter" to enter the "get an armor" event. It allows people to enter for a period of time, then it has all the entrants race each other (with travel powers turned off) and the first person to the top of the race course gets the armor. They accept people for another race and rerun this race 5 more times for a total of 6 armors you can get. So if you lose the first one, you might win one of the later ones. If you run uncontested, I think you might still get the armor, and if nobody runs, they dump a lesser version of the armor out in the public area for anyone to don and fight with. It has fewer total hit points, but is otherwise the same as the good kind.
At Northwatch Creep, you participate in a game where you have to kick small moving mushrooms at a large, moving King Mushroom. The first person to hit the King three times wins the armor. At Westwatch Creep, there are skritt traders there asking you to bid on the armors as they try to profiteer by auctioning them away, for Aurillium.
So this could be done as part of a spawning event, you just have to have a way to organize and group contestants such that they all have the same star timer for the competitive part.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
rewinding the the mad robots running amok example the villain could set out to repair the robots that the heroes are defeating or take down NPC police that are trying to collect the robots in a stasis field. these events can be balanced by the quantity of "red" and "blue" characters present. If lots of blue characters are present then the robots are tougher to take down and easier for a red character to repair. Or visa versa the robots are easy to knock down but take longer to repair. So long as everyone is participating at a X level everyone walks away from the event with rewards.
Think about the arsonist events in Steel reds would be starting the fires and blues would be trying to put them out. Reds could be tampering with the extinguisher backpacks and blues could be saving trapped civvies.
I am personally inclined to encourage open world PVP but it's hard in a game like this where each player could be woefully outmatched in any given pairing. Even a master of their chosen powers might find themselves totally outclassed because they played scissors to someones rock, even if the rock isn't too experienced. That sort of conflict doesn't encourage more pvp.
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I just think that, in a non-PVP area, shard, server, instance, zone, etc, the events should be cooperative, like in the Crash Site, where everyone is fighting for a common goal. If there is any friendly competition, it should NOT be to try to make the event a win for one side and a loss for the other, where both sides are populated by actual players. I like my PVE as pure "players, of all kinds, versus environment" in terms of the events that you do. If you want to have friendly races for temp powers or something, fine, but please don't put this "We have to try to put out the fires while the villains start more fires and fan the flames." stuff in non PVP areas. That, to me, is forced PVP, or close enough to it that I don't want it in my PVE home instance. I'm not saying "Don't do this at all" I'm saying "please relegate this to PVP areas only". I don't want to have to do that kind of content for a badge only to have people actively trying to prevent me from getting the badge. I don't want to have a mission from an NPC telling me to go do the event, and watch out for other players that are actively trying to vie against me.
I remember doing Warburg runs in CoX on the Triumph Server in the last year or two of the game. It was usually empty, so you could try to solo those, but you still had to fight the Arachnos forces in the zone, and it could be tricky, depending on your toon's build. If there was even ONE stalker in there looking to troll you for kicks, you had zero chance of soloing any of it. The rescuers needed a numerical advantage over the villains to be able to rescue a scientist and get a code successfully, and the villains could theoretically get more people on their side too and claim it was "fair" if the sides were numerically equal. They weren't because the PVE mobs still tried to stop the heroes, but nobody cared. Even if you took away the ability of the villains to attack the heroes, they could still ruin your chances of getting a scientist rescued just by aggroing nearby Arachnos and kiting them toward you.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
At the risk of repeating myself (since I've been around for a while), there are 3 distinct possibilities.
PvE
PvP
PvEvP
Player vs Environment ... we know what that is. This even includes "capture the flag" type Control Point battles. No more need be said.
Player vs Player ... we also know what that is. It's when Players attack each other [b]directly[/b]. No more need be said.
Player vs Environment vs Player ... is a situation in which the Players "challenge" each other [b]INDIRECTLY[/b] through the medium of the Environment. A game such as "tug of war" played with rope and a line on the ground is an example of PvEvP ... where the Players don't attack each other "directly" but instead pit their strength(s) against each other through the medium of the Environment (in this case, a rope) so as to drag the opposition across a line on the ground and be declared the winner. A game of Soccer using a Big Red Ball and needing to score "goals" would be another example. The point is that the Players interact with an element of the Environment so as to exert INFLUENCE on the outcome of the contest, without attacking their opponents directly.
You can even set up PvEvP situations in which Players guard/assist the NPCs doing what it takes to complete an objective. You can't engage in PC on PC attacks, but PC vs NPC is perfectly fair game, and you just have the PCs "ally" themselves with one (or more) factions of NPCs and then let the NPCs "have at it" with the PCs operating in a Support role so as to aid their "side" in the battle, whether that be as a frontline fighter or a second line buff/debuffer.
The simplest form of PvEvP would actually be a Capture The Flag scenario in which the NPCs(!) rather than the PCs have to do the Flag Capture, with the PCs "along for the ride" to make sure that their allied NPCs actually successfully manage the Flag Capture. The PCs can't Capture The Flag [b]directly[/b] ... but they can influence the outcome of which faction of NPCs DOES manage to accomplish that by participating in the battle. That way, it's less about [b]YOU. THE ONE. The Chosen One.[/b] and instead is more about how well you can cooperate in a team ... even if you're playing solo and are just helping out a pile of NPCs "do their thing" so that you (and they) can win the challenge/contest/battle.
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To Red, In youre version of "PVE Capture the Flag" is that all of the players trying to capture the flag and the NPCs opposing them? I assume so, because you're calling it PVE, and if there were different factions competing against eachother, it would sound more like PVPEP to me.
If there's going to be a lot of GW2-style small outdoor events firing off in the outdoor areas all the time, like "protect the convoy" and "defeat the elite boss that just spawned" etc, would you want that type of content to include any sort of PVP component, if it were a thing that would spawn in PVE zones?
My answer is No, with the caveat that I'm not talking about little mini games to see who get's the temp power from the NPC etc. As long as the event itself (and by that I mean the thing that the large group is doing, and trying to succeed at to get rewards like IGC, item drops, etc) is not player-versus-player oriented, directly or indirectly, I'm happy.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
No. This is one of those things where it helps to work with a Full Context Version in order to grasp it properly. I'm going to use City of Heroes lore as a stand-in point of reference to keep things from getting too vague. Just translate this into City of Titans.
So.
Take [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Independence_Port]Independence Port[/url].
One of the neighborhoods is called [url=https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//4/4f/IndependencePort_LibertyQuay.ogg]Liberty Quay[/url].
So far so good?
Now, let's say that there are three NPC Factions who all want to "take control" of and "rule the roost" at Liberty Quay, and it keeps changing hands between them in a turf war. Let's call these three NPC Factions the Council, the Family and the Tsoo.
With me so far?
So how is this conquest/capture accomplished? By the NPC Factions themselves ... NOT by the Players directly. In other words, a Player can't just waltz in and "cap" the Flag. A Player can walk up to the Flag, but there's no Interact for the Player to do anything with. There's no "glowie" for them to click on.
But an NPC can do it ... IF they can get to this location and not be interrupted while THEY "cap" the Flag ... and change control of the neighborhood over to "their" side.
But there's more than one Faction contesting this place ... there's three.
So ... somewhere in [url=https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//4/4f/IndependencePort_LibertyQuay.ogg]Liberty Quay[/url] there is a feature of some kind ... an office building, a park, a flagpole, something ... that counts as the Flag for the NPCs. This Flag is "defended" by the NPCs of the Faction who last "capped" the Flag here, making it their territory. That means that at different times, this neighborhood is either occupied and run by the Council, the Family or the Tsoo. Which group controls this piece of territory determines which group is walking the streets and "controlling" this specific neighborhood. But the "out" groups are still contesting control of this plot of land, and every so often will launch attacks to "take it" from whichever Faction is currently holding it.
Still with me so far?
So when these street battles of gang warfare erupt for control, represented by either capturing or defending the Flag, the Players can't just swoop in and capture the Flag themselves.
No ... if the Players are going to participate in the Event (or even precipitate it?), they're going to have to help/aid/assist one of the NPC Factions ... attackers and/or defenders ... fight against their rivals. The PCs attack/defend the NPCs [i]as part of the fight[/i] so as to [b]influence the outcome[/b] without directly determining the outcome by grabbing the Flag themselves.
And if we're dealing with a game where your "standing" with different NPC Factions "matters" as to whether they will ally with you, or attack you on sight, suddenly you've got the makings of an opportunity for partisan rivalry.
Note that the PCs fighting in such an Event won't be attacking each other directly. You won't have Player on Player fighting. But if my PC is allied with the Family then I can fight for/with the Family NPCs when they attack/defend this location ... and if someone else's PC is allied with the Tsoo then they can fight for/with the Tsoo NPCs when they attack/defend this location ... and the Family and Tsoo attack each other, since they're rivals.
So the PCs "tug" on the "rope" of the NPC's stretched between them, to try to influence the outcome of the battle by adding the strength of the PCs to the contest between the NPCs ... and suddenly you've got the makings of a "tug of war" for territory that can be something that Players just wandering by can dive right into. All they have to do is Pick A Side and Join The Fight.
Sounds a lot more interesting than simply Street Sweeping all those mobs that are standing around waiting for someone to show up and Arrest Them, doesn't it? It sounds dynamic, and the roster of participants can change even as the battle progresses.
This is what I would consider to be PvEvP ... because in this scenario [i]It's Not JUST About YOU[/i]. Instead, it's a turf battle, and what wins the day isn't the lone "super weapon" (i.e. the PC) but rather the "regular army" (i.e. the NPC Faction) that is trying to take and HOLD GROUND against all comers.
Now in my little example here, I picked three villain groups just for ease of illustration. Now imagine that one of the groups that could have been involved was Longbow ... or the Paragon City Police Department ... or any number of other "good guy" organizations.
Now think about having multiple locations like this spread throughout the city ... and an organized campaign to [b]Take Back Our City[/b] from whoever else is controlling it right now. Because it's not the Lone Hero/Villain who can take and hold ground, it's groups of like minded people who can inhabit a place and "man the battlements" to defend it when the Lone Hero/Villain has left to go do their thing elsewhere.
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Yes ... I'm talking about Control Points again.
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I think I get PvEvP as you've just dfescribed it in your most recent post.
But how does this part of your earlier post work:
Red wrote
"PvE
PvP
PvEvP
Player vs Environment ... we know what that is. This even includes "capture the flag" type Control Point battles. No more need be said."
In one line you type "Player vs environment.... capture the flag..."
What version of pure PvE capture the flag are we talking about there?
Also, in the PvEvP version you discuss above, is that in a zone or instance marked for PvE only, or in one marked for PvP, in your vision of it?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Persistent world events quickly become background noise and add little to a game. World events should be initiated by an effort of players.
Perpetual gang wars, re-occurring monsters, repeated events (like a burning building) and constant faction control changes do not add an element of lasting accomplishment and in fact make players feel as though they do not have an influence on the game world at all. Give the instigation of the events to players and they become a means for the player to pro-actively interact with the games lore instead of simply reacting to it. I also think these events should be scaled to those who want to participate (not just those who initiate the event) so those events also add the aspect of 'coming across something' that persistent events have and don't become an annoyance to avoid. Of course this doesn't include seasonal things like Halloween or anniversary events.
Getting back to the OP's thoughts, small frequent events that seem to work the best are ones that can be handled by a single or small group of players like the many versions of menacing the npc spawns did in CoH. Hellions mugging people, Vahz kidnappings, Goldbrickers second story robberies and so on. Throw in some store robberies, 3 card monte, back alley dealings, car thefts, police standoffs and police chases events all by random citizens with no group affiliation (some more rare than others). Make the rewards fit the event like an increase reputation modifier or special gift. There can also be non-combat events like autograph seekers, kitten up the tree, paparazzi or actual reporters requesting interviews, citizens directing you to a small crime taking place (which you can avoid) and so on. For those who play the less than heroic supers, offer mugging attempts (a guy whistling I'm in the money while standing at a bank machine), stealing other NPC groups ill gotten gains and whatnot.
In the end, I think anything that requires a dedicated team to overcome should be player initiated and small events that can be easily ignored or quickly dealt with should be almost all of the frequent world events (a very small amount of world events would not be detrimental IMO).
I liked the 'stop the sub-plot' events in the old 'Bank Missions', like one spots a clue to what's happening and go in the door to find bad-guys robbing the Pawn Shop staffed by reformed Freakshow.
I kinda like Redlynne's description and the general idea of control-point-like manipulation of faction dominance... except every faction he named is a 'villain' faction and if my hero throws a Fireball into the mess, then they ALL fry. A red-side player would have the same problem, unless there was some way to 'flag' yourself, first and say, "I'm playing for the Green team". My hero would have no troubles, if one of the factions involved was 'heroic', like the Police, or 'Freedom Phalanx'.
Otherwise, this sort of thing would be very difficult to manage, unless it was instanced, with one's faction-choice pre-arranged. If 'all targets are valid', then I probably would not participate, for fear of accidentally nuking some nuns.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Hasn't it already been stated that PvEvP is a no go (in PvE zones)? I recall them saying they didn't intent to implement anything that would put players in competition with other players unless they directly opt into it (via actions like going to a PvP zone).
Thinking about this though, I think I would actually like PvP if it was put out in this type of format. I never liked being dropped in a room with other people, and then just punched each other til someone won. I would rather have a story attached like the missions. If the PvEvP was done in game modes like capture the flag, or King of the Hill, or any of those game types, I could see getting into PvP.
But Oath, they have definitely stated that so we most likely won't see anything like that.
Just a note: Red, you need to be in composition, you are a writing machine!
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I thought Red's idea was pretty good. I could even see something like doing missions for one group in that area would give them some sort of boost. IE A contact at the Tsoo flag would offer a mission to capture a Family leader to be held hostage. Or the Family could offer a mission to capture some assault rifles from the local TCPD cache to use against the Tsoo. These sorts of things could be on a short scale or a very long scale where each accumulates area control points over hours or over days. So the Tsoo would slowly move block by block across common st in downtown pushing the family into the armistice st neighborhood.
In APB player police officers had the ability to "witness" player criminal activity. After witnessing a criminal too many times an APB would be triggered on the criminal player and that officer would then be allowed to pursue and attack that player without consequence. That's not a perfect fit for COT but it could be an aspect of a landscape changing battle between two factions within the game. Where it wouldn't be direct PVP but if you as a blue player witnessed a red player aiding the Tsoo it might cause the TCPD presence in that area to increase. And of course visa versa.
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Competition for faction control doesn't even have to be for the same resources.
For instance, the Scorpions get control points if they have control of the buildings at the various intersecting points of a giant rune shape over the city in which they can conduct their ancient egyptian resurrection rituals.
The elected government gets control points if they can protect citizens and keep crime down, and keep services running.
The crime bosses get control points if they can keep their network of drug supplies and arms shipments running.
None of those three is directly in opposition of the other two, but it can be a race to see who has the most control points.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I can agree to some extent with Brainbot that persistent events get repetitive and feel like a broken record to some extent. That said, everything you can do in a game like this is going to get repeated quite a bit. So it's not like that content is any different than any other kind. One thing I have noticed though is that in GW2 which has alot of this, people are out there doing them, a lot. That at least get's people out in the same areas doing content and running into each other, which creates more ad-hoc pick up groups, etc. The fact that you don't need to be teamed with other people to be able to defeat the Elite Boss spawn together is also nice, People talk to each other on local chat a lot, and on map-wide chat.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Oh, also, I've noticed that many of these Elite Boss spawns are not soloable by anyone. Somehow, nobody seems to complain to the point of rage-quitting about that. So you CAN put content in a game that pretty much requires multiple people to participate in it in order to be able to successfully do it and the game doesn't suffer from losing players over the fact that that content in not soloable and doesn't scale up and down to match the number of players doing it at any given time.
The Octovine raid, which I'm about to log on and do right now, requires 4 teams at 4 different spots to defeat different octovines within 2 min of each other, with other spawns you have to defeat, push around with knockback, crowd-control with stun effects, use special powerups on, etc. IT's fuin, and lucrative in the rewards, so paopl do it a lot. They attempt one every 2 hours, which is the cycle its on. Can't be successfully soloed. Of course it happens in the public outdoor map, not in a mission, so you can go there and look around if you want to. Also, I generally don't join a squad, I just remain on a team of one (me) for my part and get treasure etc that way.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Which is why I maintain that pitting the Players against each other [b][i]directly[/i][/b] in PvP is, overall, something of a mistake ... while doing so [b][i]indirectly[/i][/b] via PvEvP could be a heck of a lot of fun. I mean, seriously ... how many times have people asked for a [b]Big Red Ball[/b] to play "soccer" with, both in City of Heroes and also now in City of Titans? That's a mini-game that at its heart is PvEvP, where the Players "compete" with each other through the medium of the Environment (in this case, a [b]Big Red Ball[/b] object that they can all "attack" to move to try to score goals).
If the team wants me, they just need to contact me.
I was trying to keep the whole notion as bare bones as possible so as to illustrate the basic concept involved. But yes, [i]in theory[/i], the underlying concept could potentially be scaled up to the point of having a whole collection of Control Points and what amounts to a sort of "urban warfare" strategic scenario where Taking Back The City is something that need to be "fought" block by block so as to "clear" an entire neighborhood.
I was also presuming that everyone understood the notion that Players will have a Reputation with different NPC Factions, and that in order to ally yourself with one involved in one of these Control Point Battles you'd need to at least be Neutral with that specific Faction so as to Ally with them for the duration of the battle (i.e. temporarily). If you're on Friendly (or better?) terms with a Faction, then you can just dive right in on that Faction's side, since they're all Friendly/Allied with you to start with in the first place. Point being that there are some underlying assumptions that can either make the "indiscriminate fragging" issue either moot or mitigated, but those are extra layers of consideration involving how to "sign up" to be involved rather than speaking to the point that I was trying to make about How To Achieve Victory inside of a Contested Territory.
And that's even before we get into the idea that if there are ENOUGH of these Control Points scattered around the city (so that there's "always something happening somewhere") that you can then bring a Strategic consideration to what would otherwise be a purely Tactical competitive scenario. The basic idea being that the more Control Points an NPC Faction holds, the fewer resources [i]in total[/i] they have to defend each one ... meaning that "overreach" is certainly possible by capturing "too much" territory. The ultimate condition, of course, would be capturing every Control Point in the entire City of Titans ... and then NEEDING a lot of Player intervention to maintain that state of affairs because the condition isn't inherently stable/sustainable. That would then mean that "taking over the City" would be possible, but it wouldn't last.
The basic idea for the Strategic side of things then would be that as territory held increases, the quantity of NPCs who can be assigned to each territory decreases, resulting a classic "spread thin" condition of weakness if taken too far ... absent Player intervention. NPC Factions that hold 0-1 Control Points, by contrast, are able to focus their comparatively meager resources in more focused attacks, giving them the advantage, since they don't need to defend as much territory.
Net result is a sort of dynamic equilibrium in which "empires" rise and fall, almost continually, as the different NPC Factions fight for control ... and the Players "sign on" for [b]A Piece Of The Action[/b].
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A fantasy setting lends itself to this type of repetitive wilderness events and it does not transfer as well to a modern urban setting.
GW2 has a lot of them because open world events are a focus of the game and much of the game takes place outside of a city setting. This is why those perpetual events work in a game like GW2 and why they fell short and were often ignored in CoH.
Counterpoint, Brainbot.
What a lot of Events do is they have a particular "script" in mind for them, which can become tedious upon repetition. Things like the [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Deadly_Apocalypse]Deadly Apocalypse[/url] or a [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Rikti_invasion]Rikti Invasion[/url], where you have a set script for how things go, and what the Players "do" (or don't do) doesn't really have all that much of an effect on the outcome (other than XP earnings, for all practical purposes). Nothing about the world "shifts" in response to these Events. There's just a big giant Reset when they're done, as if nothing ever happened or went wrong or anything.
Same deal with the burning building in Steel Canyon or the Troll Rave in Skyway City. It ultimately DID NOT MATTER if the content was engaged or not. Why? Because there were no consequences of any kind, other than getting a Badge or getting Debt. No stake, no concern.
That underlying assumption changes when you're talking about Territory Battles ... especially when it becomes a matter of taking and HOLDING territory.
Now Tabula Rasa did something slightly clever with its Control Points (most zones had at least 3, sometimes 4 or 5 of them). Each of the Control Points had its own Currencies (plural) that you got for fighting in and around the Control Points. There was an Assault currency that dropped when trying to break into a Control Point and capture the flag ... and there was a Defense currency that dropped when you were trying to prevent the NPCs from recapturing a Control Point. BOTH kinds of currency could be spent at a vendor who only showed up at that specific Control Point while it was held by the Players, and that could be used to purchase stuff that ordinarily was either not obtainable or you could buy it for a discount with the Control Point currency. Basically, it was a loot reward for fighting in and around Control Points on both sides of the attack and defense aspects, and both sides played quite differently. Things were also set up such that while it was possible to solo a Control Point, it was usually REALLY DIFFICULT to do so on the Assault ... and as far as Defense was concerned, the Bane would just keep ramping up the number of attackers over time until the defenders got overrun, which made for some really enjoyable "last stand" battles.
The one thing that they DIDN'T do, and I'd always wished they had, was make the Control Points ... meaningful ... in terms of how they influenced the territories around them. Instead, they were just "castles" that were cut off from each other and capturing any of them made absolutely no difference whatsoever to the disposition of either Allies or Hostiles elsewhere on the map (meaning they contributed "nothing" to the War Effort). So Tabula Rasa's Control Points were just "shooting galleries" filled with Target Rich Environment that were exciting to play (tactically) while at the same time being effectively pointless (strategically).
There was, however, one exception.
Descent.
Descent was a map which had five incredibly huge Control Points in it. And when I mean huge ... I mean HUGE! Some of them were so big that you could be fighting on one side of them without drawing aggro from the other side of the interior. Anyway, the Descent map had five Control points in a spiral path down into an incredibly massive crater, and if all five were captured by the players simultaneously then that opened up a "door" at the bottom/center of the map/crater that led into another area. So on this one map, you had to capture all of the Control Points on the map in order to trigger access to a special area. Think of it as being sort of a bit like "summoning" the Hamidon, if it helps, except that instead of just fighting enough Giant Monsters to make the Hamidon spawn in at the bottom of the crater, instead you have to seize AND HOLD GROUND in five different areas of the map so as to open up "the pit" to where the Hamidon is.
Anyway, suffice it say that when I talk about setting up a sort of PvEvP with Control Points in City of Titans, I'm not just talking about a onsey-twosey sort of thing here. I'm talking about as being a building block which can be used to spawn other Events and create alternative conditions in which Limited Time Opportunities can be had (such as special vendors or contacts) can be accessed. I'm talking about allowing some of the regions of City of Titans to be more ... dynamic ... than just being the same old spawn groups standing around waiting to get beat up all the time. I'm talking about something that can be used as a stepping stone that can be used to keep the game more interesting past the first play through.
It isn't necessarily "end game content" (per se), but it is something that Players could decide to take part in, simply for the fun of it ... much like rerunning Task Forces that you already had all the Badges for was something that we did because it was fun.
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Territory swapping is not a new concept. It's a PvP concept that has been around for a long time and even CoH had it. A lot of MoBAs, FPS's and PvP MMO's use it. It's fun and engaging, but I don't think it belongs in the open world of a co-operative focused MMO. Even your example of Tabula Rasa had those control points in what amounted to PvP areas.
Without knowing what you mean by meaningful its hard to discuss this. I do know that if any of that meaningful influence imposes a negative on players not invloved then I would hate it.
These are large scale events that require a dedicated team to accomplish and I already said that they should be initiated by players, which you seem to agree with. It looks like the difference in our opinions is the pvp element which I don't think belongs in the open world of a co-operative game. If people want to compete they should do it away from those who want to play co-operative and the effects of their competition should not affect those not involved. To use your Hami example, I have no problem with having to hold capture points to open the door to Hami. I do have a problem if another group can stop me from opening the door unless this was a PvP challenge separated from the open world and once that door is open than both groups get to continue the competition in some fashion.
My point was that perpetual gang wars, re-occurring monsters, repeated events (like a burning building), common invasion events and even constant faction control changes do not provide a sense of achievement. It makes players feel as though they have no or very little influence. No event should have a negative effect on those who are not participating in it. If the instigation of those events are in the players hands they become a way to pro-actively interact with the games world. Re-occurring random spawning events should be easily completed or avoided by a single or small group of players.
In which case you've just locked yourself into a position of Winners Keepers in which there can never be any resets or reversals, because ... "I won it, it's 'mine' in perpetuity" ... since if that condition doesn't hold then it's possible to lose your sense of achievement.
Another counter-example.
Right now, in Star Trek Online, there are multiple Battlegrounds in which Players (all on the same side) fight the Environment in order to win through PvE. All of them are co-op zones. There are ground zones ([url=http://sto.gamepedia.com/Voth_Battlezone]Solanae Dyson Sphere[/url]) and there are space zones (the [url=http://sto.gamepedia.com/Solanae_Dyson_Sphere#Contested_Zone]Solanae Dyson Sphere[/url] has [url=http://sto.gamepedia.com/Solanae_Dyson_Sphere#Undine_Battlezone_.28.22Voth_Zone.22.29]two[/url](!), and there's also the [url=http://sto.gamepedia.com/Badlands#Battlezone]Badlands[/url]). Basic purpose is to "capture all the flags" at each Control Point so as to spawn 3 Bosses to defeat and to successfully defeat all 3 within a time limit of 10 minutes. The space zones added an additional wrinkle of having an extra "bonus round" for the Undine Space Zone and the Badlands, where if you defeat the 3 Bosses you then move to the center of the map and fight against repeated spawns for 5 minutes. When everything is done, there's a 3 minute reset, after which everything reverts to NPC control and you've got (as a Player) the opportunity to do it all over again. That way, you can spend a whole day playing, repeatedly "winning" without changing a damn thing anywhere else.
This dynamic is set up this way because it's all strictly PvE. It's Players versus the spawned NPCs only. The Players "win" by defeating the NPCs and doing the interacts to meet the victory conditions of each Control Point. So all of the Control Points are marked (on the map) as either being Red (NPC controlled) or Blue (PC controlled) and if a Control Point is "left alone" long enough, NPCs will spawn in and try to take control of it, flipping it back from Blue to Red. But the whole thing is set up in an Us versus Them dynamic, which puts Players of all factions on the same side cooperating together ... regardless of whether they're Starfleet or Klingon Defense Forces or Romulan Republic (or Romulan Empire).
And that's FINE for a strictly PvE experience in which everything is Us versus Them ... but is that really ALL that could be done with these things?
The point I'm belaboring to get at here is that City of Titans is premised on the notion that we aren't playing on a SINGLE AXIS. It isn't purely Us versus Them.
We're also assuming that with City of Titans, depending on your PC's Reputation with various NPC Factions, different parts of the city can be Friendly or Hostile to your PC. So places that are "friendly" to a Hero are "hostile" to a Villain (basically) ... and vice versa. That's because, instead of having Atlas Park be Heroes Only and having Mercy Island be Villains Only, we're going to have open world zones where Heroes and Villains can be in the same zone [i]at the same time[/i] and "see" very different reactions from the NPCs who inhabit that location. This means that you can "go to enemy territory" if you like ... but it won't necessarily be (as) safe for you to be there as it would be to stay in "your" part of the city.
Now think about things like the Bank Robbery missions we had in City of Heroes/Villains, and how people kept asking for those to actually play out in the streets of the open world instead of an instance, so that any passing Players could get in on the action.
Well if it's the Villain PCs who are going in and robbing the Bank and then have to get away, if the Hero PCs want to stop the robbery, then the Hero PCs need to stop the Villain PCs by fighting them. That right there means direct PvP, with the NPCs inhabiting the environment cast in a Supporting Role so as to slow down the heist in progress.
Now take that same basic notion of a Bank Robbery and invert the premise.
Instead of it being the PCs who are the direct agents of robbing the Bank ... instead it's the NPCs who are robbing the Bank, and the PCs are cast in the supporting role of trying to aid/thwart the robbery by the NPCs.
That changes the entire premise of how to stop the robbery. You don't need to defeat the PCs who are participating in the event ... you just need to stop the NPCs. That means that the PCs who are aiding the heist need to keep the NPC robbers alive so they can make their getaway, and the PCs wanting to stop the heist need to defeat the NPC robbers so they can't make their getaway. Suddenly, you no longer need to have direct PC on PC combat in a PvP format. Instead, you can set the whole thing up as a PvEvP, with the "supers" acting in a supporting role [i]on either and/or both sides[/i]. What the Players are "doing" is working [b]to influence the outcome[/b] without being put directly in control of events.
If it helps, think of the whole scenario as being something akin to an Escort Mission, in which PCs ally themselves with either the robbers or the police ... to either keep the robbers alive and help them get away, or to take them down and send them to jail. The PCs participating on both sides [b]DO NOT ATTACK EACH OTHER DIRECTLY[/b] without mutual consent (i.e. flagging themselves for PvP). So what you wind up with is an Event where Players can join [i]either side[/i] so as to put their thumb(s) on the scale to help determine the outcome, but the PCs are "participants" in what is happening rather than being the Central Star of what's going on. The PCs are cast in the Supporting Role (either For or Against what's happening) rather than being the direct agents themselves of what's happening.
Simplest way I can think of to set the whole thing up is that the Family wants to rob a bank and a PC signs on as "extra protection" for the mission. But then once the mission is in progress, other PCs can enter the fray ... but the whole thing remains essentially PvEvP at its core.
Now, take that simple contest concept ... and make it so that instead of robbing a bank, you're talking about "controlling" a part of the city by taking it over. How do you take it over? Capture The Flag.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
If you're saying that having a large number of smaller outdoor world events firing off at regular intervals won't be possible or won't have the same results (people actually doing the events, largely as PUG teams that might or might not even be actually teamed together), you're going to have to prove that to me. I don't see any reason why this can't be done or wouldn't translate well into CoT.
A lot of the GW2 stuff follows a pretty formulaic pattern of design, even. You've got the "protect the caravan" one, which could just as easily be a truck driving down the street instead of a dolyak laiden with supplies. You've got the Champion Boss or Elite Boss spawn, which cannot be beaten solo. You've got the "protect the defined area as waves of monsters spawn and attack it" one, etc. I don't see any reason why this sort of stuff can't be designed and executed just as well with modern superhero game assets (aliens instead of monsters, robots instead of zombies, etc), so if you're going to tell me it doesn't work, you're not convincing me without providing me some evidence of your assertion.
While it's true that the big cities are the safe zones in GW2, I don't see where that has any bearing on the issue. You could just as easily have specific buildings in CoT that are safe, like say Divinity's Reach in GW2, where you cannot be attacked, etc, and then have events firing off in other areas, which areas are also urban in their design and look. What's stopping you? How is "big robot runs amok downtown" any less feasible than "defeat the Elite Karka Queen in the nest"?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And Radiac makes the argument for me that basically amounts to ... well ... this ...
[youtube]RbTUTNenvCY[/youtube]
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I specifically said small random world events are the ones that work. Even gave examples.
GW2 has a distinct division between combat areas and non-combat areas. These divisions were based on a wilderness(combat) setting and an urban(non-combat) setting which is common in a fantasy game. Part of the challenge is getting from the safe area to the quest area. Breaking up these journeys with a variety of different events fits that type of game. People participated in these events because it was different than the typical spawns they would encounter along the way. They type of travel players engage in is also more group oriented in this type of wilderness/urban division. Teams travel together and meet others along the way regularly because for the most part getting from one location to another is a path you follow. Littering the path with these events puts them in focus for the player. Also, if I remember right, a player decided to participate in these events or not which is something I have already agreed with.
CoH did not have much real challenge in travel. Because players had a variety of travel methods, all of which made avoiding travel conflict easy, you could bounce from one quest to another with little problem. Breaking up the journey in CoH was not as important as it is in GW2's game dynamic. Also, in CoH, travel powers change the teaming or meeting dynamic of travel that you see in a game like GW2. Its not uncommon for players to not encounter another player, including those they are teamed with, while traveling from one location to another. In CoH, players had control as to how difficult to make their travel. As a result, the large monsters, troll raves, burning buildings and even the majority of street spawns were ignored most of the time. Those are examples of randomly spawning events players don't initiate and do not work well in a game like CoH.
The alternative is events that require a deliberate effort by players to initiate. The Rikti crash site for example had the effect that you desire, people randomly getting together to complete an open world event.
That's why they become less feasible. Players take the path of least resistance unless the challenge is the goal. Just littering the world with self spawning events, large or small, will not engage a large amount of players. Keeping them small and easily completed or avoided (and limited development effort) is the best return on investment for self spawning events. Larger events that require a dedicated team to complete (and a more substantial developer effort) should be player initiated because players seek out those simply for the challenge of them.
I don't have a problem with resets or reversals. I have a problem with constant resets and reversals as a means to influence the world.
As a challenge players can participate in where the battle itself is the achievement it works great. As a way of giving players a sense of influencing the world it does not work.
That is fine but unless the game is PvP focused then no event should let players negatively impact those not participating. It doesn't matter if they do it through intermediaries or directly.
You don't need to keep providing examples because I got it the first time you explained it. In a co-operative game, even one with factions, players do not want other players to negatively impact their game.
People may not have flying and Super Speed in GW2, but they do have Waypoints they can use to teleport around the map with, and nonetheless the events still have people doing them. People would wayping over to level 1-15 zones with their level 80 characters to fight the Bandit bosses that spawn in different places, etc. But that said, I'm not against having player-initiated events, don't get me wrong. GW2 has that too, in the Renown Heart missions (which are outdoor) and the fractals and dungeons (which are private, instanced on a map). And the events in GW2 don't start at random times, they start on precise intervals that are known and can be looked up on the wiki and other sites. That said, many people, including me, don't bother to look those times up, we just go to the zone and check map chat for events and waypoint around to get in on them. There are countdown timers for the bigger ones on different websites though, for those who want to plan their day out.
In fact, I would argue (and I think Brainbot might agree) that it's better to have events like these happen on a known timer than to make them a random unknown. I also like the idea of having a daily reward system that rewards a different event or set of them every day for added bonus rewards for completion. That way, using a GW2 example, if Southsun Cove is a place you usually don't go to, you might go there (I did last night) to get the daily rewards, and you'd go knowing/assuming there would be a big zerg to join and do events with. Plus you get to check out a map you don't frequently spend a lot of time in.
So yeah, I'm ALL about letting people know when the events will be starting. If I ever said "random times" above, I'm sorry for the confusion. They seem random to me because I don't look them up, but they're really not, nor would I try to make them such in CoT. I think it's important to let people join an event that's already in progress, especially if it's just "take down the big boss" because those bosses might be spawns that happen only once every so often and might be a thing people want for rewards and badges.
That brings another idea to mind though. What if we had an event that spawns a big monster every, say, 4 hours, so 6 times per 24 hour day. Then, at random, every so often, it spawns a RARER version of the same big monster, which is tougher and gives a badge and better reward drops? It could be like "Normally, you fight Godzilla, then like 1 out of every 10 Godzilla spawns is Mecha Godzilla instead." I think that might be cool.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Brainbot wrote (forgive me, I'm cutting and pasting instead of using the quote function):
"In a co-operative game, even one with factions, players do not want other players to negatively impact their game."
I have to agree with this. All of the PvEvP etc stuff is fine, don't get me wrong, I'd still want the game to do it, but I don't personally want it happening in the open world of my personal PvE home server or instance. Do that stuff on a PvP server or have a server for PvEvP if you need one for it, but not in the PvE zone/instance/server/maps, that's all I ask.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
What's with all this 2D thinking?
So many people in this forum want to argue instead of find the win-win.
Rather than negatively impact the other players, why can't you make it so that you positively impact the victors. And at the same time make it easier for the other players and factions to build their forces.
Here's an example: Let's say you help the crimelords take over a neighborhood. Reward everyone in that neighborhood reduced costs for stuff in the crimelord faction stores. Make some special crimelord faction missions available for them.
But at the same time, increase the number of crimelord patrols that faction sends out and increase the number of missions opposing factions start against the crimelords as well. In other words, give the rest of the players in the game additional opportunities to build their own reputations against this faction if they choose to do so. That's not a punishment or a negative impact. It's an opportunity.
Win-win.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
What is so hard to understand about someone disagreeing because they genuinely do not like a suggestion? This isn't an argument, at least not on my part. I said my thoughts on the idea without accusation and then expanded upon it when it was questioned.
You still need to compete with other players to succeed. The other players can stop you from changing the faction control. That is others having a negative impact on you. That is PvP and should be separated from PvE in a co-operative focused game. I'm not saying don't have this type of challenge, I am saying put it where it belongs.
I can see where you're coming from. But where you see it as players having a negative impact upon each other, I see it as the players changing the character of the world by their involvement. I don't see it as negative or positive, I see it as changing the nature of the challenge.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I don't think it's so much an issue of if we can "shift" the territory lines between factions (or some such) but rather how far they can be shifted and how much/fast they naturally shift back. If they don't naturally shift back over time and leave it completely in the players hands then I think that over time the territories will be reduced a to few major players, and players will effectively be "forced" to join them to get the most out of the game since the other factions just won't have the territory to "give out" the same amount of content.
Agreed - I don't mind open world missions - even CoH had them after all (from Troll Raves to full on alien invasions) and they can be really fun. But my preference is still for instanced missions.
Yes - this would be awesome.
I understand not wanting to have to avoid or join the giant zerg of people running aroudn the map you're on while you try to do your mission, but at the same time I think the game will benefit from having that. In GW2, there are events that fire off at different times, and then there are events you can initiate on your own. So like, when you're in Auric Basin, you might want to defeat the Champion Arrowhead that spawns when you click on the "Suspicious-Looking Orichalcum Node" so as to get the TEN Hero Points you get from it. People will go there to do that, but then the Octovine raid will fire off every 2 hours on the hour also, and people will be there trying to get Mastery Points etc too. So just having the outside world be busy is a good thing, as you might have more opportunity to get others to help you do stuff, or at least participate in it with you.
Nothing's worse than walking into a PvE co-op zone that's empty. If you can put enough badges, unlocks, and good-rewards-laiden content in an outdoor area, people will go there to get that stuff and for, teams and participate. Then if oyu have Weekly Strike Target type rewards on top of that, the party moves arounf from zone to zone over the course of the month, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
If we're talking about over the life of the game, I can think of a couple of reasons why certain areas and content might stay active.
One reason is because of a continual influx of new characters. As new characters would need to complete level appropriate missions or reputation appropriate completions. This is a given and I think was assumed by all the people in this thread, so lets ignore it for a moment.
Another reason would be to make the content level-independent and include rewards that the entire playerbase would find desirable. But as some of you have alluded, this type of content would become stale if it is repetitive in nature. One way to make it stay fresh longer is to make it different every time and non-repetitive. One of the ways to do this is to harness the ability of the playerbase to inject chaos into it. Anyone who has studied chaos theory will know that all you need are three simple rules and you will have an infinitely unpredictable outcome. Just look up the Three Body Problem for details, or how to predict when the next drop will fall from a faucet. I don't want to get into a discussion of strange attractors, but suffice it to say that you can bound your results into something that is almost repetitive, but not quite. In other words, a scenario with just a few simple rules will become completely unpredictable when the motivations of the playerbase are added to the mix. What Redlynne suggested is almost there, but if you have some sort of self-righting mechanism like what I suggested that makes it easier for the underdogs to reverse the tide, then you will have a continually flowing situation that never repeats itself. I don't like timed resets, and I think they are a lazy out when something far more interesting can be made.
Other games have tried to institute a self-righting mechanism by giving combat bonuses to the underdogs. This never goes over well with the playerbase, especially when actual pvp is involved. (the patest to try this is ESO) But since we are discussing PvEvP, merely providing more opportunities to the underdogs is a far simpler approach. Consider it a form of overextension. If each faction has the same amount of resources, the one with the largest land area is the most dispersed, and thus the most vulnerable. But we have to make sure there are rewards for having the largest land area, so providing non-competitive bonuses like access to higher tier reputation rewards, discounts in the reputations stores, or access to higher tier reputation missions is a good start. And since it appears as if it is impossible for a character to have a high reputation with opposing factions, we won't have to deal with the zerg of people who swap sides to farm faction rewards.
One of the hurdles to doing this, however, would be when new content is added to the game. Let's suppose that five years after opening, a DLC comes out that changes the world, introduces and alien invasion or maybe that just introduces another major faction. I would like to see if the developers can design their simple rules in repeatable content to account for the inclusion of new faction dynamics in the future.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Zone/Area 'Iterations' (instances) might solve this problem... If the Gonzo Drones SG is completely owning the neighborhood on 'Atlas Park 6', then switch over to 'Atlas Park 3', which has a lower population and go to work.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Thinking of the idea that lowbie zones will tend to be busy just with people making new toons, it might be good to AVOID having a CoX-style Sewer TF for people to run ad nauseam just to level fast. Maybe it would be better to just let the outdoor world be the leveling mechanism for levels 1-10 (or 1-20 even) then fold in more indoor missions, TFs, etc at higher levels. Just a thought. It might also be a good idea to have some bonus rewards (nothing major, but something) for doing the outdoor content in the lowbie areas where new toons spawn every so often.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
But I like the Indoor content! I like being the lone hero, or the hero with his hero-partner, delving into the bad-guys' base and rooting out their evil machinations. In a city full of heroes, it can be pleasant to get away from all of the brightly colored distractions and focus on the mission and the opponents before you.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Having had the topic of pvevp brought up multiple times over the years, I will have to remind everyone that the decision was made long ago to not design this type of content. The primary reason is that all forms of pvp (even pvevp) must be optional.
Now, in the future it may be possible to include this type of content. As of now it would also end up as part of our pvp phase maps unless we make a new layer of coding - possible but unknown at this time as to if this would occur.
Having also studied games with similar systems, over time what tends to happen is large grouldmof coordinated players tend to "rule the roost". Which in turn requires nearly equal large groups of coordinated players to affect change. This does tend to lhave negative impact on smaller groups of players who either must assimilate into one of the larger groups or assimilate with the way the larger groups affect the game.
Once there are at least two dominate player forces present, it becomes increasingly difficult for additonal large forces to form and be effective. Of course this depends on the game structure as well. If there are multiple pve factions, then at least there is an in-road of any of the existing larger groups does not maintain control over them. But it is an uphill climb with the out ome of additonal successful player factions becomming large themselves.
This tends to remove or negatively individual / small group identities in favor of larger identities. Having leafue-like structures where there are multiple, smaller guild-like groups recognized by pve factions as part of a larger loose-knit structure alleviates some of the identity issues, but not the macro issues of large player forces maintaining a significant presence.
This results in something that the system originally intended to avoid: a somewhat rigid game environment.
Another issue that these sytems have is they still have a limited scope in order to allow the possibility of smaller pve factions being access by players so they can affect change in that faction's favor. But even that limited scope requires a lot more work to design. Take one "typical zone" and essentially double the amount of content presented with each faction (at least!).
Personally, I'm not in favor of free-for-all pvp and that would include pvevp. Particualry in a level-based progressive power system this game has. As such I would not recommend pvevp mechanics for lower level zones. For one, many players will either out level the content, or higher level groups is end up maintaining control affecting early level play in ways that could be imposing to new players.
If anything, these type of battle-ground-esque pvevp locations would be better served in later levels of the game. Which falls in line with our current scope of design for the game. And I repeat, there are no current plans to do so at this time.
As to the original post - having small, frequent events is something we want to do.
Many of these will be location and faction specific. Some will be small and be "contained" withinnthe event. Some may be small but used to provide the possibility of a clue which results unlocking another mission. This is in fact, planned.
Myself and other devs would like to see small events which can increase in scale to the players involved snd things achieved culminating in something "big" happening.
And of course, those large scale events, with possibly several different coresponding goals allowing for different ways to engage in the content are also planned.
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Thanks for the response.
Even though PvEvP will not be included, will there still be NPC faction vs. NPC faction? Will player involvement affect faction strength?
I love the idea of smaller events building to bigger ones. I hope you get to include that in such a way that depending on how the small events go determines the nature of the larger events that follow.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
So you want to play a Massively Singleplayer Online Game ... kind of like what Star Trek Online has turned into. The only teaming that exists, really, is "forced" upon you by the PvE Queues. Everything else in the game is soloable and you basically never need to team (so most people don't).
Take your "others having a negative impact on you" statement far enough, to its logical extremes, and you create a situation in which other Players can't even be inside the same instance with you, since they might "kill steal" from you, and that would be a "negative impact on you" (as you put it).
My point being that "negative impact on you" can be interpreted overly broadly such that ANY competition of ANY kind for ANY reason by ANY other Player must be disallowed from EVER happening under ANY circumstances ... and that in order to deliver on that promise of maximal border guarding against anything "negative" happening to you, you don't have a multi-player game anymore.
Heck, I could make the ridiculous argument that any Costume Contest you don't WIN will "have a negative impact on you" because you're "competing" with other Players (over Fashion rather than Survival) ... so to prevent that from happening, ever, all Costume Contests must be disallowed or happen in their own instance so it will never affect *ME* in any way. Yes, that's a stupid straw man to set up and knock down ... but that basically is also the direction where a maximal interpretation of what you're saying leads to when taken to the extremes.
A slightly less maximal interpretation is that if *I* want to street sweep an area, then no one else should be allowed to street sweep on MY chosen terrain/turf, because doing so will have a "negative impact on me" because the area will have already been cleared and I can't (efficiently/effectively) go hunting in that area. To which the appropriate response is ... grow up, first of all ... and second, either wait for the respawns or switch to another instance of the same map.
So long as you have more than one Player on a map, particularly if it is shared, there is ALWAYS going to something that can be classified as a "negative impact on me" in some form or fashion. [b]ALWAYS[/b]. Demanding that all such occurrences be "bred out" of the game at this early stage is both disheartening and counterproductive, in the long run. It also certainly doesn't support or breed a behavioral expectation of cooperative+competitive play, let alone very compelling gameplay that can be dynamic enough to want to repeat.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
STO has turned mostly solo because it hasn't learned how to create proper scaling content. STO has a focus on daily and timed rewards which ultimately serves to disincentivize a repeated play. STO does not reward regular team play. STO has a poor excuse for a sidekick system and an annoying teaming mechanic. But STO's worst sin towards teaming is the fact that it has limited variety in playstyles. In the end co-operative play in STO offers little that you cannot get solo. STO is and always was a single player game masquerading as a MMO. Adding some new PVP won't fix any of that.
CoH did not fall into that trap. It rewarded co-op gameplay properly, had a great sidekick system and team mechanics and it accommodated a wide variety of playstyles.
You are not being 'logical' with this argument or the others that follow it. This is pure hyperbolic fallacy.
All of the arguments forget that the difference between them and your already shot down suggestion is the results of them do not impact those not participating.
I am not demanding anything, least of all that anything negative that can happen be bred out. Your idea is fine for PVP but not for co-operative play areas.
I don't want competitive play in my co-operative areas. That is not the expectation that MWM has expressed. I certainly don't want a group of dedicated players dictating the outcome of these territory wars, which is always the end result. But most of all I do not want MWM to create content, and thereby encourage the behavior, in which some players can change others game experience unless they both agree to it before hand.
If you refuse to allow a dynamic world, you will default to a static world where nothing changes and where nothing the Players do will "matter" or influence anything ... out of the fear that someone else might be negatively impacted. Result? Eternal Sameness.
The flip side of that is that in order to win a competition, you have to SHOW UP. Players who refuse to participate don't get a veto over those who do participate. It really is that simple. You have to "vote" with your actions in order to affect the outcome. Those who dare, win ... sometimes ... but it requires that someone Rise To The Challenge in order to accomplish something. You're saying you don't want the challenge to EXIST, because someone else might play on the opposite side from you ... or worse yet, might play it more so as to specialize in winning at it, more often than you do.
You're basically saying that people who don't want to participate should have veto power over whether Open World Events should even happen or EXIST, because they might not like the outcome of those Events if it changes anything in the game world, and you're flying the flag of "negatively impact MY gameplay" as if you were the only Player in the game. This is a fundamentally selfish viewpoint, that holds that the game world exists for ME and no one else should do anything to change anything in it without consulting me first (so that *I* can decide how *I* want things to change). In a Single Player game, that's a perfectly reasonable attitude to have ... but it's not reasonable in a Multiplayer game set in a shared world.
You're basically saying you don't want to have to share the world with other people playing in it.
And when I point this out, you deny the premise of what I'm telling you.
That's TWICE that you bring up the point about cooperative play areas.
You do realize that we're going to have Heroes and Villains [i]all playing together on the same maps and in the same world together[/i] ... right? It's not like the Heroes are going to have their city zones that the Villains can't enter (Paragon City) and the Villains are going to have their zones that the Heroes can't enter (Rogue Isles). It's also not going to be like the Rikti War Zone or Dark Astoria where Heroes and Villains are all "on the same side" which basically amounts to Free For All PvE. There's going to be "sides" in the game.
My preference is that the distinction of Hero vs Villain ought to be something confined to Fluff Text™ rather than game mechanics. That way, we're all "supers" with Powers, and there isn't an artificial game mechanical wall imposed between Players teaming up with each other to do content because of a Black Hat/White Hat divide in the mechanics. HOWEVER ... what I do expect is that the Alignment System will be a controlling factor for how NPC Factions view and react to the PCs ... meaning that a part of town that is perfectly "safe" for one PC to walk through, because the NPCs are all Friendly with the PC, might look completely different to another PC. This second PC could look at all the exact same NPCs and see Enemies everywhere. Why? The two PCs have different Alignments, so the reactions of the NPCs is completely different ... friendly vs hostile.
That way, ALL Districts in the city are technically "co-op zones" since anyone can team up with anyone else ... but the NPC population in a District could be more or less favorably disposed towards PCs of different Alignments. This means that the Friendly Territory versus Enemy Territory isn't controlled by game mechanical lockouts (Heroes don't go to the Rogue Isles, and Villains don't go to Paragon City), but is rather a situation and circumstance of PC Reputation. That means that "my part of town" can be different for different PCs, and what can be a cakewalk to get through for ME might be very difficult for YOU to move through simply because [b]You're Not Welcome Here[/b] (and I am).
Things get more interesting, of course, if the NPC reactions get modified by whoever is the Team Leader, allowing what essentially amounts to "Escort Services" through what would otherwise be hostile territory ("It's okay, they're with me, and you can trust me because you know me" type stuff).
My point being that the scenario I'm constructing for you here is more interesting and dynamic than any sort of Red vs Blue vs Gold "sorting" of who gets what where that forces everyone to "stay in their corner" and never mingle.
Look, if I was talking about changing the entire game world all at once, I'd agree with you. When I'm talking about something that affects a couple of city blocks at a time, I start finding your argument less and less credible.
Here's a map of Independence Port.
[img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//d/d3/Map_IndependencePort.jpg[/img]
Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say there's a Control Point somewhere in Independence Port ... say ... down at the south end of the zone ...here ...
[img]http://i.imgur.com/fgYuOXn.jpg[/img]
If you never go there ... how is that negatively going to impact your gameplay?
My point being that if 96% of the game environment is NOT subject to Control Point "flipping" between NPC Factions, is that going to "ruin the game for you" ...?
In other words, if the game world is "big enough" for you to play without ever going to one of these Control Point Events, because they aren't the dominant feature of the whole game world and they don't determine EVERYTHING you see and do ... do your objections still hold merit?
Or to put it another way, if taking over ONE Control Point determined the pecking order for the entire Independence Port Zone ... I'd be right there with you in objecting that hanging so much world content on so little of a fulcrum point would be unreasonable. But if taking over ONE Control Point merely "flips" who is in charge of a few city blocks out of a zone that is measured in square MILES ... then I'd point out that you're the one being unreasonable by trying to shut off the potential for a world in which dynamic gameplay can have consequences (that last until the next King Of The Hill comes along and changes things again).
In other words, I think we're talking about different scales and orders of magnitude here. I'm talking about pockets of territory, and doing them in bite-sized chunks at at time, rather than flipping entire districts all at once because someone miles away did something that you weren't a part of (and object to, because you didn't participate, nor were you consulted). Keep the Control Point stuff LOCAL in its effects, and you're working on the right scale that I've been talking about all along. That way, people (like you) who don't want to participate DON'T HAVE TO ... and to a large extent, won't be affected. Why? Because the game world is "bigger" than just the local Control Points that are being fought over.
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A way to keep uneven participation, uneven populations from "owning" the area is to have the events of certain zones only active for the faction that DOESNT control the area.
So lets say the heroes flip a major city zone to them. Now the idea is the heroes hand over the control of the zone to the local beat cops because they have bigger fish to fry than petty vandalism etc. A new event opens up for the Villains. They have to take out the local underground drug ring in order to use those funds to bribe the beat cops (or mind control them or whatever). Once a certain % of the wandering NPC's are tagged with bribes/mind control the zone flips to villain control and the gang activity gets way worse since the beat cops despawn.
Now the event is active for the heroes.....
If its based on % or a hard number... then the side with more participation will own the zone for longer durations, but they can't ever totally shut down the zone from flipping. So a lone "street level" hero could clean up a non played district through hard work. Maybe it takes him a week to flip it since no one sees value in that area..... except a supervillian group. They flip it back in 2 days. Inequal yes... but that solo player knows they can take it again and always plague the supervillians.
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A way to keep uneven participation, uneven populations from "owning" the area is to have the events of certain zones only active for the faction that DOESNT control the area.
So lets say the heroes flip a major city zone to them. Now the idea is the heroes hand over the control of the zone to the local beat cops because they have bigger fish to fry than petty vandalism etc. A new event opens up for the Villains. They have to take out the local underground drug ring in order to use those funds to bribe the beat cops (or mind control them or whatever). Once a certain % of the wandering NPC's are tagged with bribes/mind control the zone flips to villain control and the gang activity gets way worse since the beat cops despawn.
Now the event is active for the heroes.....
If its based on % or a hard number... then the side with more participation will own the zone for longer durations, but they can't ever totally shut down the zone from flipping. So a lone "street level" hero could clean up a non played district through hard work. Maybe it takes him a week to flip it since no one sees value in that area..... except a supervillian group. They flip it back in 2 days. Inequal yes... but that solo player knows they can take it again and always plague the supervillians.
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There you go. Something like that is even possible, pretty much as Steamtank describes. It would be yet another example of PvEvP like I've been talking about ... where the Players aren't attacking each other directly (which would be PvP) but rather are trying to "put their thumb(s) on the scales" to tip the balance of the Environment in their favor. It would "gate" the content in a particular area behind competing participation by the Players, and there would be (different) opportunities for each side of the flip. It means that what's going on and what's available in the world is dynamic, rather than static, and it means that if you don't like the way things are right now [b]You Can Do Something[/b] to change that ... all you need is motivation.
Get enough of these things going scattered all throughout the city and it then becomes difficult for any one group to monopolize them all. Furthermore, you can set things up such that the further the scales tip in one direction, the harder it is to keep them tipped in that direction, resulting in a dynamic equilibrium rather than a static one. It's possible to tip the scales "all the way over" ... but that requires a LOT of effort, and once it's done, the result is inherently unstable, meaning it'll only stay that way with continuous Player effort to maintain their collective thumbs on the scales (and they'll need to keep pushing). Without the Players influencing outcomes, the scales will tend towards a more balanced/even distribution of lots of Factions controlling small territories, instead of a single Faction controlling all territories ... thereby achieving a "reset" simply via Player neglect, rather than needing to resort to a server maintenance or a Deus ex Machina of "okay, you won, but in 5 minutes you lose everything by default" kind of thing. In other words, the more you "win" for your side, the more Whack-A-Mole you need to do in order to defend what you've captured.
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Steamtank's suggestion [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/111947#comment-111947]above[/url] might be a bit harder to implement because of CoT's three-axis alignment system, but I don't think it would be unworkable. The devs would just have to identify which groups are in contention for an area, what alignments they'll tolerate in Their Zone and who they'll accept help from in making it Their Zone (might be different, though I can't think of why off hand...)
It might also be possible to have three or more groups looking to take over a zone. The Rocks drive out the Scissors, who will start recovering and building up their power again. Meanwhile the Papers, who were trying to figure out how they can beat the Scissors that drove them out start their plan to take over from those wimpy Rocks... More than three could be a network like [url=http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html]Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard[/url], or simply a larger circle like the [url=http://dragaera.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cycle]17 Great Houses of the Dragaeran Empire[/url].
If there is overlap in who each faction will accept help from, there might be a possibility of the same PCs helping each rival group in turn. If the turnover gets fast enough, the cycle may break down for a while, while all of the groups recover, and the zone is essentially either a zone where anyone can come in safely or a zone where any PC will be attacked... Then once one group has recovered enough, it takes over, and the next in the cycle starts plotting and recruiting.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Guys, we've started talking about heroes side and villains side again. With three alignment axes and dozens of factions, I don't see anything being as clean as heroes and villains. Either we support a faction's agenda, oppose it, or we stay neutral with them.
Now lets say that we have only three factions vying for control of a neighborhood, for simplicity's sake. One of the factions is the local civic government, represented by the police. One of the factions is the local organized crime lord, represented by street enforcers, etc. And the third faction is the Arcane Wives of Death, and they are represented by baby-snatching wraiths and cultist chanters. When players defeat the minions of one of the factions, that faction's local power is diminished. When players accomplish a mission for one of the factions, that faction's power is increased. Some missions can do both by attacking one faction at the behest of another.
I would expect that there are some NPC standing on a random corner style missions with relatively generic content. Defeat a dozen cops to show them who runs things on the street, take out the thugs making collection runs on the local businesses, or stop the wraiths from finding babies. The prevelence of these mission is directly proportionate to the strength of the targeted faction.
Now, what happens when one faction gets more power than the others?
If this happens, the number of patrols by that faction increase. And the mission that was on a certain street corner to support that faction is now a mission to defeat that faction. In other words, it becomes easier for the player characters to level the balance of power again.
What are the rewards for helping a faction? Besides the normal credit for consuming content like loot drops, mission rewards, alignment points and reputation advancement with the faction, there should also be some in-game rewards that exist only when a faction is more powerful than the the others. For instance:
Will this prevent an organized group of players from controlling an area anyway? no. But see, that's the whole point of it. GIVE the players the ability to exert their will and make a difference. My God, if the worst thing you can say about it is that you have a dedicated group of players making a difference in the game world, then we're doing ok. And since the more power the dominant faction has, the harder it becomes for them to keep their power, even an organized group of players will have difficulty keeping hegemony for long. Besides, how cool is it for a player in an underdog faction to feel like they have the power to topple the existing power structure!
The key here is to not take anything away from the players who are in the underdog factions. The only thing missing from an underdog faction are the rewards that the most powerful faction gets. But since the underdog factions get more content to consume, they get to do other things that the dominant faction has trouble doing like farm for reputation so that when their own faction becomes dominant, they will be able to take advantage of the special offers.
EDIT: damn Foradain, you beat me to the 3-axis call out. If only I hadn't written so much :-/
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Yup. What I've been saying all along.
Also my point.
I have the distinct feeling that Huckleberry "gets it" and where I've been coming from this whole time.
Pretty much.
Which "side" are you going ally yourself with? The ones in charge, or the ones challenging the ones in charge?
Who is in charge? Why the NPCs who LIVE HERE, of course. Players (and their PCs) come and go, but the NPCs "live here" through thick and thin. That means that the PCs aren't at the "center of the story" for the neighborhood. They can be the "guest stars" sure, but they aren't the "regulars" who are here all the time. Heck, they can even be recurring "guest stars" in what happens, but they aren't going to put down roots and stay in one place exclusively (or at least, more than 99% of them won't). PCs "circulate" around town, doing their thing all over the place, but the NPCs "stay put" in their neighborhood(s) and "live their lives" right where they are (in other words, where you find them).
By taking the PCs OUT of being the central focus of the Tale Of The City, you make it possible for them to be Bit Players in a crazy quilt of different stories, rather than being [b]THE ONE™[/b] Who Is Foretold To Save/Doom Us All ... and all of the baggage that brings with it.
As far as the "factions" side of things go, I'd start with an assumption of having up to 6 NPC Factions contesting for any given Control Point (1 for each end of the 3 axis Alignment System) with some having fewer than 6 in contention, but usually at least 3. Keeps things more dynamic that way.
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I thank Tannim222 for the recent post, which clarified a lot for me.
I still have a very "CoX/GW2" mentality here so I cannot necessarily understand how the outdoor world map of this game will work without hard walls between the different zones. That said, I can't really imagine how the sort of faction control of different burbs would work. In CoX, you had different areas where you expected specific types of mobs to spawn. Once that map was figured out, it didn't change from hour to hour, it remained static. For example, you always knew you could go to the loading docks on the dege of the map in Talos if you wanted to fight Tsoo, etc.
So, if the factions and where they spawn are subject to change over time, quotas like that will be harder for the player to do, due to just not being reliably able to find a given faction in a given area. Also, since there will be no walls, could one faction overtake like the entire world map? Or half of it? Will there be limits imposed to prevent this? I think I might prefer what CoX had, and what GW2 has, which is a static map of factions in areas and then events popping up here and there at known timed intervals.
I still don't understand how these sort of events would work with heroes and villains in the same maps though. I'm not sure you can come up with a contrived reason for the heroe PCs and villain PCs to want to both play the same event cooperatively. If they can do that, great. Can we make enough events that work that way? I hope so. I don't know.
If they do have the factions in the outdoor areas expanding and contracting territories on the map, I would hope this is done as a clockwork sort of ebb and flow that can be timed and can be planned for in advance. I'd rather have a really repetitive series of events that runs on a continuous loop than have any sort of map territory war that the players can actually have any effect on.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
My point wasn't that it was 2 factions good vs evil. It was that if a faction takes control its quests in the area shut down. Players can no longer push that factions control of that area.
ie:
A) Cops got control, cool thanks heroes we will hold the fort go save the rest of the city.
B) Pigmy Witch cabal has control: Nope we already have all our sacrifices lined up, don't need help getting more, go spread the word of the great banana lord elsewhere!
C) Robototic Space army has control: We don't need to eliminate any more human sheeple in this area, aquire us more territory.
Meanwhile if A has control B and C are competing to take the zone away from A, but A has to wait until they are dethroned to respond. Lets say C won. Now A and B compete to dethrone C.
However B and C during the competition are in direct opposition. So if C has a score of +50 B gets -50 to their score. This theoretically would leave A in control for awhile unless either B or C gets blown out of the water. If B and C have relitively equal help then the in control faction cant be flipped since no one power in the area is acquiring enough resources to challenge the status quo.
If A was a faction that got a lot of player help often in that zone, they will defeat B once C finally rises much faster than C defeated B and regain control relatively quickly... but they can't ever lock the zone for good regardless of effort. Only the lack of effort of B or C over the other can keep the zone for A.
So the NPC's accept help as long as they need help. Once they have what they want... they dismiss additional outside help.
If players are loyal to faction A then any zone A is fighting to control that player gets a boost for rewards from helping in additional zones for the duration A is in control of their first zone... giving the player a reason to LEAVE the zone they already own. Over the course of the week faction A gains control of 5 zones. Well now the players are getting great rewards for going far away from the controlled zone. So suddenly faction B takes a zone in one area, and C takes a zone in another area, and D takes a zone in another.... now A has 2 zones. Their rewards are diminished and the players have a reason to come back and try to recap the zones that dropped. Meanwhile B supporters are attacking the D zone and D is attacking A zone control.
As long as the amount of time it takes to take something vs. how long you can hold it and what your rewards are are worth it.... almost any system can work.
Last note: if faction A supporters helped take the zone from B and C... B and C for several zones nearby should refuse to hire that player. Word on the street is that player is a spy/mole for faction A. That way the factions the player supports has impact on what they can do per zone. But maybe a tiny faction (D) is in the area, they wont ever have control, they arnt trying to, they have a quest that will slowly lower your presitge with faction A and resent you to Neutral so that you can work for A,B, or C.
Something along this lines lets well played factions control for a majority of time, but smaller groups can focus on an area and take it from the big dog. If the big dog has to try and take back 3-4 zones they will have to focus and cant clean house very quickly. So their control length is based on their enemies inability to coordinate, not their ability to zerg the server.
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Dynamic and competitive are not the same thing. You can have dynamic elements without having competitive ones.
You want to have a way to influence my gameplay without consulting me. Which is really the selfish and unreasonable option?
That's a pretty big assumption especially when its been said we are not going to be barred from teaming based on reputation or alignment. Reputation and alignment are not tools, as far as I understand it, to draw lines between players but a way to let players tailor their game experience. A way to have the game world (which is not the same as the open world) react to choices you make as a player. To use your words, things get more interesting when players who have made drastically different choices decide to team up.
That's how the game world is dynamic and its by players choice.
The reason I keep bringing up co-operative play areas is because you don't seem to understand what that means. Regardless of personal motivations, means or goals we all get to make our own choices about how we interact with one another. When one forces non-consensual interaction with another in a co-operative area it is rude at best or at the extreme it is griefing.
I get what you are suggesting. I got it the first time you suggested it. The size of the area is not the issue, it is where you want it to be.
Then what is the damn point to having it in the open world? What purpose does this serve in the open world that it does not in designated PvP areas? If the influence it has on the game world is so small it goes unnoticed then it is not worth being in the open world. It is a PvP contest and should be treated as such.
How about this, instead of drawing lines between players and making them compete to influence an area, make it purely a PvE challenge.
Lets use zombies because they are easy.
Back story is long ago a wicked necromancer cursed a graveyard and now zombies continue to sprout of the ground slowly filling the area until they break out and rampage across the land. Seeing how no one really wants a zombie apocalypse, it has become a common area for people to go and fight back the horde. Hero, villain, civilian and military can go and work towards keeping the mass of undead back. Recently the undead have been appearing faster and the city has not yet responded by improving the defenses in the area.
Mechanics are a small section of the map, about the same size as your example is the graveyard. Zombies spawn in the area at a regular rate and begin moving towards the gates of the graveyard where the military has its camp set up. They spawn and move slow enough that a group or two can keep them in check. Slow enough that a concerted effort with a bunch of groups can drive them back and give the area a reprieve for a period of time and earning those who participated a special reward. If left unchecked the zombies eventually overcome the military camp and break free of the area and slowly begin moving across the entire map requiring the players to not only drive them back by fighting the horde but to complete task that fix the gates and help the military set up the camp again. To keep it from getting out of hand at a certain point named NPC's and additional military show up and eventually drive them back.
This isn't an original or even really interesting idea but it is a dynamic event that allows players to change a factions control in an area without resorting to drawing lines in the sand between players. It allows players to influence the game world and the negative result (the horde breaking free) is due to inaction by all players not because one group of players imposes its will on another.
Just because I don't like your particular suggestion does not mean I don't want a dynamic game world. It just means i don't like your suggestion.
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/71/1f/26/711f26c0212caf177e6e78ef4769cd54.jpg[/img]
Single Player Games where no one will do anything anywhere in the world without your consent are thataway ...
And out comes the personal attack. I believe that means you've conceded the point by failing to refute the argument in a good faith manner.
Thank you for playing.
Edit by Minotaur: This sort of post adds nothing to the debate, and if there are any more I will start wielding the mod stick, keep it civil please.
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Alright Minotaur, riddle me this then.
A shared world in which you don't have to share the world with others. How does that work, exactly?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
/e modhat
I'm not so much objecting to what you said, more the way you said it.
/e modhat off
Now talking in a personal capacity with no particular knowledge
As in most other games, you will have a little competition with people for killing the same mobs, but you will not be able to do something which alters the parameters of how the game works for other people. I think this is more or less what Tammim was intimating although I will happily be corrected on that.
This comes from somebody who plays MMOs solo far more often than in teams.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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This sounds so 20th century. If we have the technology and capacity to enable players to make an impact upon the game world and to see the world react to them, why shouldn't we do it?
Content that only presents itself when certain conditions are met, conditions that the players have to actively work to create, is the state of the art. I see no good reason why we shouldn't include it. The interaction between the city's factions is a fertile field in which to grow this content.
While I don't agree with everything Redlynne said, one thing I must admit is true. An MMO should not aspire to reproducing the feel of a single player experience. An MMO has the potential to be so much more, and any MMO that refuses to reach for this potential will passed by.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Ben Franklin once famously observed that the only difference between a spark and a lightning bolt is the scale on which they operate. I think it's clearly a matter of where and how much you're willing to allow other peoples' game play to affect you own. We can agree that in an MMO, people are going to get in each other's way on in individual basis at times. Kill stealing, people doing big mega events against the Rikti Mothership when I just want to try out my new build on a pylon solo, people not following instructions of the leader on a TF, etc.
If and when I solo my own indoor missions, basically nothing stops me from doing my mission, without me allowing it to. Maybe my friend decides to click a glowwie when I told him not to, etc. It could happen. That said, if I can't even GET to the mission door because the outdoor events have closed it off for the time being, or if the giant zerg of people outside are doing something to prevent me from even accessing that area, that's a problem. You should be able to have events and not cause that problem.
If I'm outside street sweeping as part of a mission to defeat 50 Crey in the Folly, and some other people are there and they maybe steal a kill, I can just go to some other part of the map and look for fresh spawns. In an MMO you kind of understand that can happen. If a large group of jerks is in there helping the Freakshow take over the entire map such that there aren't any Crey anymore, that's a problem I'd rather not have the game create for me. In GW2 when events happen, they don't cause the indigenous monsters to stop spawning altogether, like CoX had with the zombies and the Nemesis invasions, and I think that's key. It's also key to preserve some reliable sense of where to go to get kill quotas and so forth without players permanently or even temporarily altering the landscape of the mob spawns to the point where my kill quota is now impossible for me to do.
Lastly, while it's true that individuals might get in each other's way or operate in such a way as to hinder each other, I think it should generally not done systematically or as the intended result of a larger map-wide event, at least not in a PVE map. In open-world PVP maps, sure, but in PVE areas, this sort of "using the NPC factions as pawns in a PVP game" type stuff is still too close to PVP for me. Even if it DOESN'T have any permanent or temporary effect on the map, I'd still not want it in PVE areas.
Where that leaves us in the "heroes versus villains" part of the game is a tough one for me though. Are we able to create events such that every event that happens has a "this is what heores will do" part and a "this is what villains will do" part, where those parts are not interacting with each other at all? I'm just not sure how that would work. Maybe there need to be outdoor events for the heroes, and villains can participate in them cooperatively or not at all, then there are closed-door villain missions and stuff that are more the stuff of TFs and basic door missions. Maybe any villainy that happens in broad daylight ought to be perpetrated by the NPCs only. I don't know.
Or maybe you'll have villain-controlled instances where the badguys have won and the government is corrupt, etc and also hero-controlled instances where law and order rules and the streets are safe to walk.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The part of the scope of this game is to provide a place where players can interact for both mutual and invidual benefit.
There will be spaces for competitiveness. From the market, mini-events (like races and sports), and pvp.
However, the competitive systems will always remain optional and avoidable.
If there were to be pvevp, it too would be optional. And if it weremto be done right, and truly dynamic to the point it allowed players to have an actual impact within the game world, it must be maintainable for a sufficient degree of time to provide weight to that impact.
Which is why I maintain thatnif such a system were to be implemented, it would be muchnlater after launch, most likely at higher levels of play, and occur in the pvp phase of the city. Perhaps with somemform of character flagging where there is mixed pvp and pvevp going on.
Incentives include by gaining faction occupency, increased faction rating gains for those whom participated and help maintain faction dominence. Access to new and different faction npcs for missions and items. Unique badges based on the achievements.
We have many of the pieces necessary for implementing such a system, but not all. Making this possible, particualy sufficiently game-wide is not within the current scope of design.
Also, a serious point of clarification - locations and factions are not affected by alignment. Alignments are descriptive of player's choices made through play. Alignments themsevles do not drive game play but stem from it.
Indeed this shouldn't happen. What will happen is when events are triggered on a given out door map, another lhase of that map without the event will be created to allow players to acoid the event and not be impacted by it.
Leaving the area shouldn't be necessary. Not when rewards and mission counters can be shared even with partial participation. Sure, you have the option to move on, but not because of "kill stealing" but in the strictist sense, it doesn't exist in the game.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
It's never been a question of having an impact on a reactive game world. It about how they do it and the scope in which the world reacts.
PVP territory wars are done one of two ways.
Either a small amount of the games population is pitted against another small amount of the games population with the winner deciding territory control. The competition has a built in limit as to how many can participate. In which case you have a system in which a small amount of the population have made a decision for the majority. While that territory is controlled by that small amount anyone who interacts with it is being influenced by that small amount of people.
The other way to do territory wars is to have open participation with no limits on who can be involved. This changes the type of game from co-operative to competitive.
The biggest problem is that both ways require players to pick a side and fight in order to have an effect on the game world.
[b]This is PVP directly influencing PVE. [/b]
I'm surprised no one has noticed that it will be possible to have more than one Instance of a Zone map available to Players ... and all the things that that implies.
Heck, you could even do something like having the Control Points be "disabled" in the #1 Instance of a particular zone map (for example), but they're "enabled" in other Instances of the same map. After that, it's just a matter of deciding the ratio which have them on and which have them off. Heck, you could even do the reverse, in which they're "enabled" in the #1 map and "disabled" in the #2 and up maps, and every zone has a minimum of 2 Instances at all times.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Hypothetically, if every instance had to bear a mark or tag or something that labeled is as "PvE" or "PvP", with those being the only two possibilities (that is you can't pick "no tag at all", that option is not allowed), and no others, and with ample explanation (somewhere) of what gets tagged as what and why, do you think we ought to tag the instances that allow control points to be active to be called "PvE"? I personally would want them labeled "PvP" if it had to be one or the other.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Radiac actually spoke about separating PvP from PvE like this way back in post #25 over two weeks ago and repeated it in post #48.
I stated the same preciously as well. We will already have purely pve and pvp versions of maps.
Making het another rule phase is not outmof the question. It is something that would require additional developement time - from the "rule set phase set up" to the more intensive rule set coding itself.
The content designing for determining control points and how players can interact with those map locations (is flight more advantageous over this other travel power, does this location inadvertaintly benefit certain play styles over others, etc...). Not to mention writing up additonal related content such as unlockable missions and associated rewards. Which may require additional art assets and so on.
The concept of these battle ground type pvevp game play isn't a bad one. But if itnwere to be done in a waynthat is truly dynamic and also where players can have some form of tangible impact on the game (even in its own phase), will require a lot of work which doesn't fit the current scope of design.
It is something I had expressed wanting to revisit a long time ago in our early pre-production days when it was decided to not implememt it. And a bit if history for folks, this was one of many possible core design features in the earliest game design documents created during the initial formation of the virtual game studio. After severla splits and reformation and months of analysis the decision had been made to make this game closer to the spirit of coh in how pve played.
One of our core promises is that pvp in all its forms will be optional.
I maintain that if we do revisit possible pvevp that it may end up part of the general pvp phase of the game as to avoid further player base splits. And having this type of play in thst evironement may encourage those not particularly keen on direct pvp to get involved in a form. Either way, it is too early to say definitively exactly how, if ever, it will be implemented. Just know that it is something I do like the idea of, and one day do hope we can revisit.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
You make it sound so binary.
It is obvious to me that every participant in this discussion has a different idea in his or her head about what we are discussing. I'm no exception. I think this disparity of entrance assumptions is the largest obstacle we face towards having a constructive conversation.
You use the words "the biggest problem" when discussing how players contribute towards faction superiority. That belies a certain amount of entrance bias that is probably contributing to your misunderstanding of my term "influence" and interpreting it as "dictate".
You say that players must pick a side like it will be one side against another. I say that with a number of factions, the players will be able to influence the game world to accomplish goals. This is a good thing, not a problem. You say that players will be prevented from accomplishing content based upon the actions of other players. I said nothing of the sort. So whatever mental model you are working from is not mine.
You say that the ability of any player to influence the game experience of another player is undersireable. I say it is the most desireable aspect and MMO could exhibit. The difference is just a shift of paradigms.
I would love to log into the game and see that the Scorpions are showing strong today in the industrial port area. Cool. If I have good reputation with the scorpions, maybe I can head down to the port and take advantage of a storefront they have there. Maybe there's another mission they offer that only exists when Scorpius is ascendant. If I have a bad reputation with Scorpion, maybe I can take advantage of their increased patrols there and head to the port to knock them down and maybe run a special mission to take out one of their lieutenants. If I don't care about Scorpion one way or another, that shouldn't affect my gameplay either. Its just that if I want to open up the insane geneticist's lab in the port area, which is only available when the Mutant Underground is more powerful, maybe I could head down to the port area and see what I can do about promoting the Mutant Underground. Or maybe I want to get together with some teammates and drive another faction into the powerseat. The option is there. Key word being option.
All of that is completely level independent. You could make the contributions of low level characters weigh just as much as the contributions of high level characters, because each would be performing their own level-appropriate tasks in the area.
I view a living world as a means of making the game less rote, less repetitive and more interesting. I want to feel like I'm in a living world.
If my fifth alt has to do the exact same missions with he exact same NPCs in the exact same locations every time, that will get really old. I know you don't want that either.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
This can be avoided without the need of a pvevp system. Which, is in part of why we have a multi-faction system and player choices whichnafddct alignment and how various factikns are affected by your character's story.
Making different choices, choosing to follow different clues previously ignored (or never even earned), may lead to new missions, or even with "mission" but with varying goals or approached from amdifferent point of view if you will.
Then there is the Path system which is a bit more if linear story, but over time there will be different paths available (we are starting with 4) providing yet another unique play through of content.
And this is before we get into player generated content and pvp which will offer yet different play experiences again.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
The biggest obstacle to a constructive conversation is trying to convince the other side you are right and they are wrong. The second biggest is assuming the other side will agree with you if they could just understand you.
I am not trying to convince you I am right. Also, I understand what you are saying. I just don't like it. Why can't that be good enough? Why can't you actually accept any of my issues with this as a valid opinion and address them,all of them, (and not just the ones you have an argument for) instead of continually trying to re-explain your position in the hopes I will finally understand.
If ,despite my assurances, you still do not think I understand what you are suggesting, you can explain it in full again as a fresh starting point which ignores all before it. I will gladly and without contempt treat it as the whole of the suggestion and respond to it and only it as the complete suggestion. Take one step back so we can proceed on equal ground as it were.
What I won't do is sit by and have my position perverted, exaggerated or insulted.
I am going to politely ask that you don't take my words out of context and attempt to use them as a means to argue with me. I said 'the biggest problem' was with PvP territory wars and had nothing to do with how you or I interpret 'influence'.
You're right, I don't. But I see some other options towards this goal as more desirable than the one you have presented thus far. Like I said, it would probably be best to start over before continuing the discussion.
I'd point out that having a dynamic equilibrium of having this kind of PvEvP would certainly make for a rather interesting alternative to the old Newspaper/Police Scanner system for having an alternative to just street sweeping.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Well, I don't know what to say to this. I thought attempting to understand the other persons words and then formulating a response based upon that understanding is what discussion is all about...
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I know, right. This was the kind of procedurally generated content that Evequest Next was working on. It would have been mind-blowing. If you fight the orcs here, they would move over there, looking for other merchant convoys to pillage, but a local warlord would get power hungry in their absence and the players would have a different situation to deal with.
Someday... someday another MMO will have the vision to make this happen.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Eqn was not making procedurally generated content for its world spawn. Many games have been using pgc for years now, from loot tables to varied encounters and even varied encounters in varied locations (sometimes by varied time index at locations).
Eqn was using the storybricks emergent ai system using inputs to simulate emotions, needs, wants, dislikes and so on. Once the spawn was placed and the AI set, the spawn would act in accordance with the inputs without further work by the devs. Indeed, the AI would go about its business changing the world around it without player interaction. In order to manipulate the AI the devs would need to adjust the world around them, like adding more gold to a location if there was a desire for gold.
The problem with emergent AI is that the AI can end up doing things the devs don't intend or understand why. And since the AI emergently decided to do "that action or series of" there is no direct scripting to dig into in order to fix the unwanted behaviors. Learning AI can also end up resulting in frustrating players in general play. There are examples of devs going through the paces with more ascvanced AI and instead of improving the game, players ended up swying things like the devs cheated or set them ip to fail.
The suggestions for these control points in this thread is neither particularly procedurally generated nor using wmergent AI. The control points or battle grounds is still reliant on very specific scripting to provide the controlled methods of specific point aquistion and triggered events (such as special npcs and related missions spawning) and special missions to take back territory and so forth.
Red's use of the term "dynamic equilibrium" is not the same as procedural generation or dynamic scaling (like what coh did to scale spawn size to team size). Only if there were a constant state of change over time in these control points and surrounding affected area would (in a grander view of over time) result in meeting the defijition of the term. Possible, yes. Likely, given simlar game systems then would probably end up as I previously described; more polarized and less continous change. Depending on the result of the number of continously engaged participants, it may seen as good even if polarized.
Though chances are a segment of the popluation which isn't absorbed into collectives may be frustrated by their inability to affect much change. So very much is variable here that a definitive determination is 't quite possible however. This is purely speculative, if not an educated guess based on analysis of similar game systems.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
The original idea of this thread was to have, in CoT, the sort of smaller outdoor events that GW2 has, or something like them. That is, NOT just the full-on invasion events that take over a whole map or section of it, but things contained to one sandlot, back alleyway, or street corner. That then morphed into "let's make a PvEvP thing that can turn the whole map into a giant land-acquisition war among factions" which is A) nothing like the original suggestion (not that that makes it wrong or inappropriate, just that we've gotten pretty far afield here) and B) led us to the PvE versus PvP issues we're still arguing about despite the fact that C) Tannim222 has said they thought of the PvEvP thing already and , after due consideration, decided that it's not a possibility given the resources they have at this time.
Apart from the flame-warring, there's really nothing more to be said about that, if you ask me. Whether or not any one of us would want to put PvEvP events as described above on a PvE instance, I think we all have at least tacitly accepted Tannim222's statement that what is not being designed now will not be there when the game rolls out. So it's a purely academic disagreement now and one that I think the devs, in making that decision, have basically sided with the "leave this type of stuff out of the PvE instance of the game, for the most part, at least for now" side.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
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