Something that Final Fantasy 14 does that I don't think is done in basically any other game is the "Trial" structure of group content. What a Trial is is simple; it's a mechanically complex boss fight. That's it, that's all. The reason I like them so much, however, is that they allow developers to rapidly iterate on them as well as have them be impressive spectacles in their own right, as resources aren't going towards designing a lengthy dungeon or raid to get to the fight.
Trials are extended fights in a small environment, generally a flat and circular arena that involves a few terrain features at best. The reason this is important is because of what I call the "Final Destination" trick. Named after the stage from the Super Smash Bros series, Final Destination is one of a few very specific preferred stages for high level gameplay because there's nothing to obstruct your ability to play and strategize. This gives the developers options for making use of interesting mechanics that won't be obstructed by the environment, and won't pull away from the fight itself due to unnecessary visual noise (at least, not without good reason).
Here's an example; the fight with The Goddess of Balance, Sophia, one of the spectacular battles with the Warring Triad. I chose a video without any sound other than the music from the second phase of the fight because you'd otherwise be hearing sword slashes and eight Link's worth of combat grunts the entire way through, which is a bit distracting.
[youtube]knV-5VciTTQ[/youtube]
But the reason I like the Trial structure isn't just because of the spectacle, but because it allows for a variable number of players. They use eight players in the Trial video above, but in some storylines there's even the option for a one-player Trial, such as the level 60 quest for Samurai. It maintains a still excellent level of spectacle, but allows for a personal story and challenge, which would be great for players who prefer solo gaming, such as myself. How many times have you seen a climactic final showdown in the comics? In the movies? This is what I'm talking about.
[youtube]wdk4o1l1q9Q[/youtube]
If the coding structures are in place for this kind of content, it'd allow for the opening up of certain types of story content, which is why I figured I'd toss it in the suggestions forum. Not needing to devote the resources to high end dungeons or raids when you really just want a kickass fight sounds like it'd be a good idea to have as an available option, and it works for particularly high-end fights, such as when battling a god or dragon or some supreme robot.
But, even further than that option, structuring Trials allows for specific tutorial sections running on the Trial coding. An arena in which you learn the basics of combat, for instance, how to be a healer, how to be a tank. There would, of course, need to be incentives to take part in such a tutorial, but at the same time it's important to have such things in a game. Two games that I play with relative frequency - Guild Wars 2 and Warframe - have entirely opaque mechanics because they entirely lack a tutorial system worth a flying damn, and they actively lose players over it.
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".
I made a suggestion along similar lines quite some time ago that was similar to
because I felt it would be easier to code from a development perspective. As I had stated then, and re-stating now, I am not a developer nor a coder and I don't have any experience in that regard. But, logically, that's what made sense to me then and still makes sense to me now. Additionally, from a playerbase perspective, it would allow options. Sometimes I don't feel like herding cats and just care to take on a challenge solo. And then sometimes I prefer to enjoy the social element and additional challenge of raiding. But not everyone enjoys raiding for a variety of reasons, so if CoT were to implement scalable content, to include raiding, I'm down with that.
It occurs to me that such scalable content might even be UGC compatible. Having players make their own "Trial" encounters by giving them access to the boss encounter mechanics could end up being a lot of fun. I know I'd have a lot more fun designing that kind of encounter than a long storyline with a series of buildings and creature encounters.
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".
This sounds like a great 'extra' to have in the game as a way to 'break up' the sometimes mundane nature of doing quest after quest that all have a similar feel; fight through a level to the big bad boss. Not that that ever gets TOO boring for me (there is plenty of variation that can and will be thrown in to make it not feel repetitive), but all the same. It's more.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
I was, am, and will likely continue to remain skeptical of UGC until proven otherwise. That's not to say that they, the user/player, can't do it right but it's that they have a tendency to do it wrong. And by 'wrong', I mean exploitable. I never really had access to UGC before Mission Architect in CoH/V, and I didn't touch it in Neverwinter Online after The Shutdown, but I can't say my experience with AE (and their subsequent BAEbies) did much to convince me otherwise. That being said, I remain hopeful that if UGC does avail itself to the CoT playerbase in some form or fashion and that the collective brainpower at MWM can learn from the MA experience, making it worthwhile and therefore unexploitable (or as minimal as possible).
Admittedly, it's all about Sturgeon's Law. Like any other thing on the internet, 90% of it is bollocks. I keep myself holding out hope for the other 10%; a way of "Featuring" good quests and the like would be good for that in CoT, so that we immediately have a roster of actually good stories to play.
And for the record, UGC is guaranteed, based on what the devs have stated. Maybe not at launch, but it'll be there if plans don't change drastically.
Really though, I fail to see how a UGC Trial would be easily exploitable. Maybe there'd be a mechanic to let you beat the boss faster, but the boss IS the adventure, and if you're cheesing a single encounter, that means either something is broken with your build to allow you to do it (like the infamous Fire Farms from CoH) or the devs have let something slip through what should realistically be a relatively tight net. Both are much easier to fix than an entire building structured to maximize experience returns.
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".
I doubt that UGC trials will be a thing, mainly due to polish and fine-tuning ability. Trials need that fine-tuning to be really notable; lacking story or environment means that they need to be at the top of their game for a big boss fight. That level of fine-tuning isn't really available in any UGC system I've seen, making plots and being a little clever with the architecture (when that's an option) and enemy selection is. I haven't really looked closely at recent UGC systems, but the level of customization it would need just likely won't be seen. The UI would have to be less like a traditional UGC system and more like a game maker.
Under Construction...
Yeah, I was going to edit in a mention from the devs saying UGC would be a thing, but I got distracted by shiny things.
As for how a UGC Trial would be easily exploitable, it would be by design. You know, by the user. Intentionally. It's like in AE when people would make custom baddos with large spawn sizes that didn't do anything. Farmers would just roll through, destroy these huge mobs with max spawn point maps, and rake in the tickets with minimal effort. Vastly skewed risk versus rewards. Thus, my hesitancy for its implementation.
The problem with UGC was those who made crappy ones had lots of friends to up vote it as being great :p
I'm not a coder either but the little knowledge and experience I have in it tells me that it wouldn't be the coders efforts that go into this but rather the "mission creators" since the underlying system should be (from what I have gathered from this forum) flexible enough to be able to create single-room instances as well as multi-room ones. Only bit of "coding" I can see would be fine-tuning the AI and capabilities of the boss.
They have also stated that like CoH they don't have any [i]solo content[/i] from a mechanics PoV, "solo" is just a group consisting of a single person.
Having said all that I have nothing against this type of content and would actually welcome it as one part of all the different types of content we will have on CoT.
I stand corrected. As I said, I don't really know enough to put it into technical terms, so I just stated 'coder' and 'developer' as someone who does stuff with computers to make us content. Contextually, I can determine that there's a difference between someone who's just writing dialogue and someone who's actually designing the calculations and conditions to create various systems, but I wasn't going to presume that the writers ("mission creators") were just people punching out the text bubbles that NPCs say.
Well it mostly depends on exactly how the mission system is written but iirc writing a mission essentially boils to 3 major "areas": lining up a number of conditions (like kill X number of NPC A, get Y number of drop B, etc), the text the player sees, and any extra assets needed (like the "interior" for an instanced mission or a different phase).
Good to know, thanks!
I would like to see something like this as well, and I think it could work well with a superhero MMO. For the sake of accuracy, technically, in FFXIV these Trials are actually locked behind story content in most cases, and then once unlocked can be run at any time, but they needn't be. CoH came close to this idea in a couple of instances, with some of its shorter TFs/Trials, so it wouldn't be much of a leap from a 'successor' point of view. I'm not expecting anything even remotely like this for launch though.
of Phoenix Rising
Am I
We have been already aiming for just this, using FFXIV and Wildstar as our trial models to emulate. (Wildstar may never have gotten the love it needed, but they knew how to make boss mechanics interesting)
Let me discuss for a moment a hypothetical trial I worked up for analyzing the mechanics needed. Set the fight onboard a rigid airship, which takes damage as you go through the trial, eventually losing yaw control. Yes, the end of it is fighting inside of a zeppelin which is corkscrewing through the air slowly, so your floor is continually shifting out from under you. Even if the boss itself is not that challenging, making a challenging environment makes the test fight a lot of fun.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I love you
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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This is the sort of thing that could actually get me into trials.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I know the discussion shifted a bit, but I'm very into the idea of SOLO trial content. WoW's Mage Towers were another example of incredibly difficult solo content (some too difficult IMO).
Lots of us enjoy group content. Some of us also enjoy solo content. There should be challenging and rewarding options for both those players (or that same player at different times).
The Altruist, Invulnerability/Super Strength Stalwart.
Entertaining to say the least. Let's test it, shall we?
Unless MWM puts an explicit minimum group size on this type content then it should be doable since their design philosophy is that "solo" is just a group consisting of one single member.
Tyche, you are a wonderful human being, and I will revel in the fruits of your mad science.
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".
I forgot entirely the other system being studied for trial mechanics.
The Touhou Project.
[youtube]s8JmfCYmtHo[/youtube]
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
You want to introduce bullet hell segments into a tab-target MMO?
That's... ambitious. The only games I know of that have put bullet hell segments into third person action games are GW2, NIER, and NIER: Automata (the latter of which is much, much better on basically every level than the first Nier). They make it work primarily because it's a third person action game in every case, with defined dodge and attack negation mechanics to allow players some breathing room for those people who can't manage pixel perfect dodge strategy. I'm extremely curious how you're planning to bring in elements of bullet hell without making them frustratingly difficult.
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".
I think someone's sarcasm detector is on the fritz this morning.
edit: [url=http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ont4.htm]Interesting factiod[/url]
2nd Edit: From looking at Doctor Tyche's response below, I guess it was my own sarcasm detector providing false positives.
[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.
Not bullet hell itself, but some of the underlying logic patterns used by Touhou in their boss fights. It gives the illusion of thinking through behavior changes during a fight.
The thing is, Touhou has only 2 metrics for pattern generation, while we have four. In addition to HP and time, we also have energy and momentum. My hope is to make it so that a boss battle in a trial is not just tank n spank, or someone calling out "Ok, he's at 10% HP, expect the spawns." I want something more dynamic.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
That video will give me nightmares. Holy crap that’s stressful. :(
There is a reason Touhou games are called Bullet Hell
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I'm 53304% in support of complex boss fights. Tank'n'Spank was almost the worst part of CoH :( Here's a big bad...keep hitting him until he stops moving.
My question would be, how can we turn this power for users in UGC?
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Oh, that reminds me of Furi:
[youtube]Lg-j6kH8pGw[/youtube]
Furi is another Bullet Hell game. Not quite as good in the game logic department but still impressive.
The thing to remember about Touhou is that it is 1 guy making them. All 26 titles were made by Jun'ya Ota, who did the artwork, coding, music, everything for them.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I have some thoughts on that question.
First, some things we know:[list]
[*]there are going to be at least three ranks of combat NPCs: Mooks, Agents and Bosses, and probably one or two more besides, like small beasts below and boss overlords above.
[*]NPC AI behavior will be governed by modules, which use stimuli to direct what they do from among the options presented to them.
[*]NPC modules will/may/can be dependent upon not just the rank of the NPC but also its archetype[/list]
So, knowing this, we can easily extrapolate a potential answer to your question:
[indent]When we place an NPC into User Generated Content (UGC) we should probably expect to classify it with a rank and archetype, and select from among pre-established AI modules appropriate to the rank and archetype of the NPC. I also expect that any NPCs we put into our UGC that already exist in the game world will have their modules hardwired into them.[/indent]
There may even be a way to place traps and interactables in the rooms if we get to classify them, such as:[list]
[*]Bomb - What I'm thinking of when I say that is like if a bomb exists in the room with a boss, then at some point there could be a scripted action already present in the boss's AI module for the boss to take an action and start a timer on it. Then the Bomb script starts running and the boss goes back to its next actions. If the players don't destroy/defuse the bomb before the timer expires, it sets off a large AoE detonation (which could actually hurt the boss too for savvy players to use to their advantage)
[*]Hostage - A person, piece of equipment or other macguffin which is vulnerable to damage and which the players and/or NPC have to interact with to release/retrieve/protect depending on whether the NPCs are heroic or villainous in the UGC.
[*]spawning chamber - like the bomb, this could be something the NPC has to take an action to energize, after which it spits out additional opponents; the number, rank and AI module to be determined by UGC creator.
[/list]and the like, such that the AI module already has built-in scripts to deal with these pre-established categories of interactables.
[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.
Couple of points of clarification:
There are there are 5 main pawn ranks: Critters, Mooks, Agents, Bosses, Elites, Elite Bosses (named).
After that we have Legends and several Monsterr Class pawns (4 to be exact).
The npc modules are a dev-side design system. It is uncertain they would be made available to players. Something to be discussed at a further time perhaps.
The AI isn’t exactly governed by the module. For combat NPCs we will have one basic AI “brain”, it is our Power Designer system which uses a variety of Conditions which can be used to provide stipulations for power behavior.
This way we don’t have to make a bunch of different AI brains for basic combat. We make one and it adheres to how powers are intended to function.
An example of this could be a Melee Module npc that also has a ranged attack in its build with a Conditon that says the power is not to be activated if the target is in Melee range.
The NPC will Alyssa attempt to close range for its Melee Powers, but if the target can’t be reached, it will use the ranged attack when it is available. It will ignore the ranged attack if it is in Melee range of the target.
The modules themselves are meant as a guide for how to build the npc for the developer rather like our Power Set Templates are for PC power sets.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I was unable to view that video earlier, and I just learned what Bullet Hell actually means from another game.
If you are just trying to reproduce interesting boss AI that's cool, but please for the love of all that's sacred to the memory of our old game, don't include anything remotely like Bullet Hell in CoT. Please!
Spurn all ye kindle.
I on the other hand, would love some bullet hell thrown in the game, even if slower paced than a true bullet hell game. FFXiV has done this with at least one boss trial, it was pretty easy but still a nice change of pace.
"Bullet hell" in terms of an mmo is normal for boss fights, it just means avoid bad stuff. Even old CoX had that.
Sure, it usually refers to a high number of smaller things you need to avoid rather than a small number of large things to avoid, but the concept isn't new.
It would honestly be weirder if some kind of "avoid the bad stuff" mechanic was never used in CoX.
One kind of trial that I liked was in WoW. I don't remember the name of the trial but you did it solo and you had to survive multiple rounds. If you were DPS you just attached, if you were a tank you had to outlast the time and if you were a healer you had to keep up some NPC allies that attacked for you. I thought that was a fun way to allow the same trial to everyone. I think that would be pretty fun for people that like playing team support classes, like a healer, to 'solo' some content. I don't think it should be an option for every mission as that might discourage team play, but for some special 'trial' type missions that could be fun.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
Challenge missions like that would definitely be cool!
There was something like that in TSW which unlocked access to the Nightmare dungeon queue. If you were damage, you had to defeat the NPC within the time limit; if you were a tank, you had to keep aggro off the NPC; and if you were a healz0r, you had to keep the NPC alive. It wasn't just a gear check, although gear certainly played a part. You still had to have a decent attack/heal/aggro rotation. It got a lot of negative traction on the forums because, shall we say, less-than-optimal players couldn't get access to content that they felt they were entitled to. Good times, good times.
FFXIV also had that with it's "Hall of Novices" you could use in the opening levels of the game. Get some practice and easy armor that was actually nice looking.
You're thinking of Proving Grounds. If I remember correctly, during the Mists of Pandaria expansion, to be able to enter heroic difficulty dungeons, you either needed to hit a decently strict minimum item level, OR achieve a silver medal in the Proving Grounds to show you could perform without the gear.
It was also used for 2 expansions to get a quick blue quality weapon immediately after hitting max level.
I'll say I prefer FFXIV's Trials of the Novice. Instead of how Proving Grounds were a gate to keep players out of content, Trails of the Novice serve as a tutorial for your roll with incentives to complete.
I'm unsure how well either system could work in City of Titans given that roles are much softer. Both WoW and FFXIV rely on hard roles, X Class/spec is a Healer or not by FACT. In CoT, there is no requirement for a healer, and no archtype that specifically 'heals' given the game has a much wider net of 'support'.
Back on the original topic though of content resembling FFXIV's Trials, I do very much enjoy those. When you don't feel like a big long dungeon you can do one big boss. Part of what makes them fun though, is the tight tuning and level/gear scaling with role requirements. It's a challenge as a healer because it's specifically made with 2 tanks, 2 healers and 4 DPS in mind. The difficulty is consistent across runs. City of Titans can't quite achieve that, again because it won't have set roles. That's not to say it can't be difficult, but difficulty will vary wildly not only with which archetypes were brought, but power selections within. Don't forget City of Heroes had a multitude of difficulty options to tailor content to what your group could actually complete. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it will need to be done differently.
You could make a trial that has npc team members that fulfill all the general roles of a team (control, support, damage) and then throw the player in as a bonus. Have it tuned so that the npc team is just a bit weaker than the content, with the player being the deciding factor. You could have several versions increasing in difficulty that provide more impressive rewards / badges / content unlocking.
Since the npcs make up all the core roles themselves you'd only need to make one trial that would work for any character build. What role the player fills is less important than the degree to which they perform in that role.
Yep. those were Proving Grounds. For a while they were required to complete before you could queue for certain difficulties on dungeons.
There were also Mage Tower challenges that rewarded special costume/appearances in Legion. Some were doable, others required you to do some total BS stuff with your spec and gearing to be able to compete them. If CoT implements "challenges" to that degree I won't be participating.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Byakko Extreme (and byakko normal) already does this in FFXIV in the BEHOLD FURY GIVEN FORM! phase.