Probably way too late to do anything like this, but I had a thought. The oldschool MMO thing doesn't fit the genre so much, wall-to-wall criminals in city zones stretches the suspension of disbelief a little--*but* I had a thought. There has been a recent game that has a system that *would* fit the genre. Warframe.
It's much more like the Super Hero genre to stick around in your hideout, or super group base, or possibly even a city zone for RP and markets and such, until you 'hear about a crime,' read: select a mission that it'll automatically load you into, you can go save the day from--much like how warframe has its mission and lobby system.
What do y'all think?
hmmm, kinda like Watch Dogs where the baddies are somewhat instanced in map?
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Avatar by MikeNovember
Eh, I mean mostly have the city maps as basically just markets and RP areas--and perhaps a few high crime city zones with actual enemies for people that like that, and mostly just load into missions, possibly finding groups automatically--without having to run to doors and whatnot, with the bulk of the out of mission game taking place in the personal hideout or super group base.
Something inspired by warframe, pretty much.
Eh, I get that it's a tad immersion breaking having dozens of Rooks on every street corner, but if you wanna smack a silly face around, it's nice to have one nearby.
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Avatar by MikeNovember
Please no, no, no. I would hate to destroy the sight of other supers running, flying, jumping, teleporting to and fro. Even when I'm soloing, it's one of my favourite things about an MMO.
Spurn all ye kindle.
That seems like it'd be perfect for a loading screen, honestly--seeing your char and your team heading to the mission, flying, parkouring and teleporting.
Eh, like I said, high crime zones for something a little more like that--if you wanna be more pro-active.
The problem I have with the idea is that it cuts down on the opportunities to see other players/characters at random, to witness cool fights, maybe heal or buff a lowbie who's on the ropes, to stumble upon a GM fight and join in, etc. The last thing I want is for the city to look more empty than it is.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Mmorpg are born to be "persistent" and "massive", the more instanced the game the less persistent and massive it becomes. And by the way, loading screens shouldn't exist in a perfect world, so the less the better as well.
You must increase the open world activities from City of Heroes, is one of the few things you can and should improve, not diminish those. City of Heroes was too instanced and fortunately it was built in an era where that was well known (instance is bad), they were forced to close the game in mini-areas because that was the tech-limit, you can recognize the effort to make the instances feel like those are "connected in a unique open world" from a few details: like enemies that don't heal up even if you leave the instance and come back 10 minutes later (contrary to most instances of new games, where devs just take the "feature" for granted not understanding its purpose and bad side and now technology evolved and we don't need so many/heavy instances anymore or can hide those better but unfortunately there is less effort in doing so).
The feeling you desire, staying in the base waiting for the danger to call and fast travel into missions, with no need to farm around, can be improved without destroying what a mmorpg should be (persistent and massive, or it's not a mmorpg anymore).
Travel powers already are one of the solutions, compared to other mmorpgs CoH already permits you to fast-travel with no consequences and no pauses around, plus if the minions are doing realistic things and not just standing around waiting for a beating it becomes realistic and fun to see them (one stealing an handbag, another opening a garage, another 3 chatting to each other, that was already amazing in CoH Atlas Park for example, but left behind in some zones/instances... just make sure to improve this and put effort in enemies "activities" in open world).
Another solution would be for example to get random waves of enemies appearing and attacking the city in openworld, here you get the "alert" and go into openworld to save the city instead of actually closing your self in a "loading screen showing you being a hero + 8 players instance afterwards" (bye massivity and players control). Instead of having 100 enemies lurking around, you may put 30 (doing realistic activities and being persistently there) + Big Waves (as farming objective for who loves to farm in open world). So you would see the city less overcrowded by criminals in an unrealistic quantity, but still have massive quantities of enemies to beat around pretty often thanks to the waves.
And last point, the role play and immersion: Isn't a common comics-hero activity to stop flying because a random old woman is in danger?
Spiderman's bad luck gives him old women to save during travel all the time, same as Superman (which can just do that faster) or even Batman keeps saving civils while doing other activities... and they can't ignore it even if Lois or MJ or Aunt May or Alfred are in immediate danger. I'm sure all of you can remember the moral issues with Superman following Doomsday, he had to slow down the hunt due to peoples in danger here and there on the path and he even had to go back because an house was exploding and a boy was asking for help, leaving Doomsday to kill more peoples because he couldn't ignore one.
When I feel immersed I still do that in CoH, even at high level when I fast-eyebeam a lvl1 thug to save the civil and back to flying again. You would delete this (open world activity and immersion) to get a loading screen showing you and your friends doing things you're not actually doing ^^".
I agree with some of the others that you want to see other people when you're out.
MMO's tend to feel dead when you don't see other players, but in an MMO like this, I'd personally enjoy seeing all the costume and character designs that people can come up with, as they make their way to various missions and locations.
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No
To expound upon that, absolutely, positively no.
You want super powered people to just sit around and wait for someone else to recognize that there is a problem/opportunity?
If what you want is a queueing system or some sort of grand 'Looking for Group' / 'Looking for Raid' mechanism to automatically create groups for you, teleport you to the content then hand all of the hit point bags to you to beat up, no thank you. I do not want to play that game. And by the sounds of it, I probably would not want to play Warframe either.
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I definitely don't want to play a lobby game like that. I stopped playing Warframe specifically because of how limited the ability to go out and randomly do stuff with other people is. Stomping around the overworld, running into people, seeing others flying along? Those are a lot of fun for me.
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".
... There's a lobby system in Warframe?
Warframe is a sort of half-lobby game. Your orbiter is the lobby you sit in as you search for matchmaking into your mission of choice. It's expanded somewhat recently - the various "towns" you can enter, such as the relays, Cetus, and that one place on Venus I can't remember the name of. But even the "open" world elements of The Plains of Eidolon and the place on Venus have to be filtered through the lobbies you have to spend time in as you collect missions and do matchmaking. It's definitely not a true MMO.
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".
Fortuna on Venus. Yeah, I play Warframe. I just never considering listening to Ordis listen to riotous background radiation as a lobby, but I can see the implications.
I actually loved how instanced CoX was and wish more MMOs were like it.
I want a good mix of overworld and instance based content. Defeat X enemies on the overworld is a chore (especially when you can't find the ones you need), but fighting them when I feel like it is fun. Defeating all enemies in an instance is fun, and makes me feel like I've actually accomplished something.
Someone could make a purely lobby and instanced based super hero game, and it might work quite well, but that's not the game I'd be interested in.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Nah, no thanks. MMOs and RPGs....and MMORPGs... in my opinion, need a world for characters to exist in for a variety of reasons. Keep the lobbies for the MOBA's, RTS's and Shooters.
I basically agree, in that I like both open-world and instanced content. I could imagine situations where a 'lobby' would be a good mechanism - Where a team gathers, in prep for a dynamic event and launches to face it. However, that would be specialized 'Summer Movie Blockbuster' content and not the everyday missions. I could see instances of a 'virtual lobby', where the team goes about their ordinary adventures until the Event is ready, and they teleport in for the launch.
In any case, I envision a 'lobby-mission' as additional content, laid on top of, or Beside the more familiar content.
Be Well!
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I feel like this is sort of what WOW turned into. Where all players sit in their keep or base or whatever and wait for their turn in the queue. I don't play personally but that is what I've heard a number of times. I will suspend my disbelief at coming around every corner in the city to find criminal activity. Remember that if you are a villian, criminals are your friends, and the more the merrier.
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I've only played three MMOs online, ever. City of Heroes, Guild Wars 2, and Destiny 2. All are very different games, to be sure. One thing that GW2 and D2 do have in common though is the ability to join a pick-up team in order to participate in a repeating open-world mini event, of which those games have many. Some are bigger and only really run once to twice a day, some are smaller and fire off every 15 min or so, etc. But in both games you dont even have to formally join a team to participate in the event and get rewards. You just have to be in the area when the event is happening, and usually you have to have shot at or attacked at least one of the event's monsters/mobs. Then, when the end boss gets defeated, a treasure chest or ammo crate will appear and you can loot it by clicking on it. If you participated enough in the event (measured by some heuristics) you get loot from the object.
In order to accomplish this, they need to have zones that are populated, but not overpopulated, so to do that, they have to create and destroy extra copies of the outdoor maps on a continuous basis and redistribute people here and there as needed to keep the zones relatively "alive" but not overcrowded. In D2, I have not noticed any way to hop from one copy of the zone to a different specific one, but I assume if you are on a team, you'll be sent to the copy that the rest of your team is in. In GW2 you CAN hop to a different specific copy of the zone, but you have to be teamed with someone in that zone to do it.
I would love for CoT to have some version of this. I like that it gives people a reason to go and "play outside" so to speak, making the game look more alive.
I'd also love to have repeatable daily missions that I can access from the personal lair's crime computer or whatever. To make a CoH analogy, these would be akin to the missions you can do for Ephram Shah. He offers a menu of two different missions from a set of maybe 6 that rotate through his list as you do them. "Stop the Tsoo Mercy Killings" and "Destroy the Cask of Djer" etc. If my SG base or personal lair had a few missions that I could do for some rewards per day, that'd be nice too.
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