From what I've read about the way the game is being designed, I feel this game has so much incredible potential. I was thinking last night, aftering finishing up the Netflix defenders series, about what this game could be eventually. I'm just going to put some thoughts and ramblings out there, about what I would envision in a fully completed game, not just at launch, but years down the road with multiple expansions and add ons. I realize nothing I'm about to say is in the works, as far as I know, but I'm just throwing it out there to get the creative juices flowing and to see what people think about it.
I'm going to assume that all the features that have been outlined by MWM will be implemented already, namely, a radically customizable character creator, an alignment system, character power customization and augmentation, and major and minor storylines that you can follow to your own choosing. Once this framework has been implemented, here are the bonus features I would like to see:
The first thing I am picturing is the ability to choose your starting location, as well as customize your lore. This would include places outside of titan city, including multiple ficticious cities in multiple countries around the world. This could also even include other planets, space stations, and dimensions. It could be based on the class and species that you choose, and there could be a multitude of different starter "lores" that you could take part in. Essentially, I'm envisioning your powerset to determine how the game starts and progresses, rather than having a generic universal start. So just using some examples, if you wanted to make a batman like character, you could start in a major US city, and choose a tech class. This would start you out in your lab, where you have a training room you can use to get accustomed to using your devices, as well as a computer interface that gives you mission updates, such as when the commissioner needs you to help with a particular problem. If you wanted a character more along the lines of Iron Fist, you could pick a martial arts powerset, and start in an Asian countryside on a matrial arts compound, where you would have a tutorial from a sensei who teaches you how to harness your chi. Once you complete the training, the sensei tells you to go the nearby city to break up a street gang they've been tracking, and the storyline would go from there. For either of these cases, you could easily have your storyline intersect, finding a lead that takes you from the major US city to the Asian country, and vice versa. This is simply how the story would start, but it would progress and expand from there. Take note, I'm also suggesting a sort of small starter base, where you get your bearings for how the game works, and get some starter missions. These could also have the ability to be expanded in the future, as your primary home base. If you want other bases in other cities, this would be possible too, with a certain amount of in game currency. Also take note that I think it could be very possible to have each of these different starts taking place in any city in the world. So you could be a tech character and start in an Asian country, which would have its own different storyline, compared to someone who starts in a European country as a tech character. I realize this is a lot of unique stories that would need to build, and it adds up fast, but I think this level of customization of the storyline of your character would really make the game incredibly immersive and interesting, especially when it comes to replay value.
Another I'm picturing is the ability to make your character an alien species, perhaps with several different "designated" species that exist in the CoT universe, either from another planet within our galaxy, or even possibly from another dimension. Picture the warshades and peacebringers of CoH, except rather than just an aura, or floating mist, it would be specific alien body features, like the different alien species in any scifi universe. Further, certain alien species could be no different than humans in their abilities, whereas other species could have some special abilities that are only available to them.
Finally, I am picturing the ability for villains and heros to set up traps for each other, luring each other to a site that appears to them as just an ordinary mission, such as for villains, "raid this weapons warehouse" or for heroes "stop these petty criminals from manufacturing weapons", when in reality, it will be a set up with real players waiting for you to take you down. It's a bit hard to explain how this would work, and I'm honestly not even totally sure myself, perhaps some kind of queuing system, but I think having some way for heroes and villains to interact with each other, in more than just a typical pvp arena type fashion, would be pretty interesting and cool. It could even be possible to develop arch-enemies, who go back and forth with each other in a mission storyline, and can keep fighting each other in different settings and scenarios over a long period of time.
I feel that these ideas, in addition to all the wonderful foundational stuff that is in the works, could make the game perhaps one of the most immersive hero games to ever exist.
What do you think, could any of these ideas work for future updates? Any suggestions or ideas on how you could picture them working?
This idea could be interesting for the PvP community.
Agreed.
It seems too rife for griefing to set loose on the open community.
Hmmm. Multiple starting cities and worlds? Methinks that is a bit too ambitious. It has taken years to set up just one city for launch. if they open new areas they will be smaller areas devoted to story telling, like a colonial area for time travel stories, or maybe a necromantic netherworld for undead adventures n'stuff.
While the basic premise of multiple starting location that actually tie into ones lore/background rather than just having a free text filed on the character-details page would be a nice thing to have I feel and fear it could devolve into the same problem that CoH's origins had in that they were too generic, by that I mean that instead of being able to choose one that "perfectly" fits your character you have to adjust your character to one origin that is good enough. This is also compounded by those who make a character that doesn't have single origin for all of their powers.
Martial Arts certainly is a more specific "origin" than Natural I fear that if MWM brings this in players wouldn't be satisfied until they bring out at least one for both "hero" and "villain" (and probably more "sides") sides for each style of martial arts that they have aesthetics for. Then even if they managed to get one origin for each style people would start asking for variations, primarily about why you "left" like if you were sent out, kicked out, lone survivor, and so on.
Then you would probably have a to "duplicate" a lot of that (not talking just martial arts) for any off-world species. More starting locations (and major cities) would certainly be welcomed and I feel somewhat necessary for the long term viability of the game since alting is a major part of end-game I just don't feel that tying the majority of them to specific paths/origins would be such a good idea, especially when considering ROI.
Also would this just be the starting location (a single story arc) or an actual Path (character defining red-thread kinda multi story-arcs)?
Im going to speak out AGAINST multiple starting cities.
A HUGE draw from the original CoH, was this giant community beacon in Paragon Park, where every server seemed to automatically rally around, creating this huge teeming community, with player run events and tons of new faces going in and out all the time. While there were MANY reasons why Champions didnt do so well, I feel having an easily accessible starting area that encourage group activies was a huge loss in binding agent.
I for one hope to see this type of community drawn gathering area again.
Except the CoH game began with two starting areas. I personally just happened to pick Atlas Park instead of Galaxy City because CoH was my first MMO and I did zero research about it before starting. But, as you mentioned, it did seem like more people tended to gravitate towards AP overall, which was very likely why the devs "decommissioned" GC in the very later issues.
That being said, I'm not against the idea of a singular starting area as it could impress upon new people the health of the game if they see the number of players there, which could be good or bad (server balancing notwithstanding).
Holy Textwall, Batman! =P
I'm not sure you thought this through enough.
As a reminder, these are our available power sets. And they only describe the technical side of our powers.
If I wanted to make a Martial Arts char I could use any of the Melee sets(and possibly Ranged, if I want to go the Dragon Ball route), simply by choosing the MA aesthetic.
Saying that all Super Strength Titans were aliens, Vampiric Blast users are all actual Vampires, etc. Well, I'd say that would take away possibilities for the players to play THEIR hero/villain/whatever.
The same goes for Props and Animations of course.
I mean, what if I want to play a combination MWM couldn't possibly imagine anyone would want as a backstory?
Sounds rather easy to implement, just publish a list of alien species, a little back story and how to make 'em in the CharGen.
To make such a system worthwile, we'd probably need a War Mode like in WoW... where players can opt in or out of those extra surprises. And get something out of accepting the risk.
Just imagine you're playing a few missions with you kids. Do you have kids? Are you even old enough to have kids? Don't know, don't care. This is hypothetical. =P
Your little group enters the abandoned ware house, looks around a bit... maybe takes out a few mops. And then gets jumped and eventually ROFLSTOMP'd by a bunch of bored PvPers.
How would it make you feel to watch your kids (technically kid's chars) get called 'noob', 'fag' or whatever's en vogue these days... while getting tea bagged.
Yes, my straw man PvPers are jerks. But this is a worst case scenario... so, eh.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea. But in general, people aren't too appreciative of bad surprises.
The whine threads would pretty much write themselves.
So, either make it a clear PvP scenario where both sides know what they are getting into or...
I'm envisioning a system where we could send each other invitations for semi-PvP encounters. It would essentially be a toned down mission editor:
Map size small, thematic is up to you, any texts would have to be written and the enemy is a computer controlled version of you.
To prevent spamming, maybe players could get three or so invitations to send each day.
This version would also have the advantage of not locking players into the hero/villain role.
Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
I DO like the idea of character gen walk throughs or templates for known aliens/mutants/groups etc to help give you a start for world flavor.
The first two things seem like they should be handled in the Bio section, however that's handled. Just say you're from another planet, or say what type of alien you are. No need for the developers to try to support this stuff, since they will always be more limited than what we can imagine.
The Altruist, Invulnerability/Super Strength Stalwart.