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Discuss: Doorways to your Lair - Entryways to Housing and Bases

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Red Warlock
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Discuss: Doorways to your Lair - Entryways to Housing and Bases

read the original update here: https://cityoftitans.com/content/doorways-your-lair-entryways-housing-and-bases

Feel free to comment on the update below.

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So I played TOG but i think

So I played TOG but i think in all the years I played I only entered a base once...what are the benefits of having a base or spending time in a base? Is it strictly RP? or is it similar to WoW inns where you get rested xp? Can you eventually get vending machine-esque things to buy stuff from inside your base so you don't have to go find a vendor? or workbenches for crafting? I think bases are a cool idea i'm just not sure why I would ever go to one while I'm logged in and playing if it doesn't provide some kind of utility.

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Tannim222
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There are a couple of uses

There are a couple of uses for bases. The first is for those who enjoy creating their personal housing for their character. This can lead to RP but I isn’t required. Some people just enjoy that aspect.

But with regards to functionality, crafting, work benches and storage for crafted items are both good uses. A hospital bay for recovering from being defeated. Another possibility is a teleport system for fast travel.

I hope we can also include stuff like adding displays for Souvenirs earned through play. This is dependent on our Comp team coming up with enough such rewards. Think Batman TAS and his bat cave displaying stuff like the giant penny etc.

I also hope to incorporate ways for Super Teams to coordinate events using their Super Team “computer”. Where someone can set up an event schedule that alerts the Super Team ahead of time / sends reminders. There some other ideas we have as well.


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Lothic
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I guess one question I'd have

I guess one question I'd have is whether there will be anything that we could put in a supergroup base that we can't put in a personal base or vice-versa? It might be worth having some features that you can only put in a supergroup base so that people will be motivated to contribute to the building of a supergroup base.

As far as a suggestion for entrances for personal housing goes it might be cool if we could set a door for our personal housing to be INSIDE a supergroup base. That way we could have a base like the X-Men where it serves as both a base for the supergroup as well as a sort of dormitory for the members of the supergroup.

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This looks like a remarkably

This looks like a remarkably terrible place for a manhole cover (let alone a housing/base entrance). It's literally in the middle of a street that ought to have traffic on it (even if that traffic is intermittent). In order to access the manhole, you basically need to block off a section of the street in what looks like an intersection or perhaps even a parking lot which then obstructs regular vehicle traffic at that location. Far better to have manhole covers either in the sidewalks or along the shoulders of streets than in the center of them.

Imagine coming up out of this manhole just in time to get run over by a car.
That's not inherently safe ... either for the super or for the car driver.
Might want to review the locations of manhole covers in the city so as to usually put them in places that aren't going to involve vehicle crashes when accessed.

Quote:

Or, even for the darker and mystic inhabitants of Titan City, there may be many surprising doorways into another world

Faerie Rings

Croatoa had them and used them as Mission Doors.
No reason why rings of mushrooms and/or flowers on the ground can't be used as a "mystical gateway" into another realm.

Another possibility would be to move your avatar into a defined location/area and then ... simply spin 360º rather than clicking on something.
So you could stand on a clear spot in a field of flowers, turn all the way around (360º) ... and that's the action that accesses the entrance (you just disappear from the outside while spinning around).
Make it a 360º turn within 4 seconds and you should be good to go (so no need to be "twitchy" fast about it).

Quote:

Titan City has many futuristic buildings that place super bases in an almost space age environment for their activities.

Taking things a bit farther in a futuristic direction, there's always the "Beam me up!" option where the PC simply pulls out their communicator cell phone, waits a few seconds ... and then dissolves into sparklies to "enter" their instanced location.
This would essentially be a (future tech) version of the Faerie Ring type of entrance, where there is a defined open space the PC needs to be within so as to enable the action to "cross over" into the house/base instance.
Rather than being a kind of "beam me up from anywhere" type of deal, you'd be looking at using some kind of Pattern Enhancement Buffer tech local to the "beam up" zone, which could be disguised (as something mundane) or a kind of Das Blinken Lighten that is otherwise ignored by people who don't know what it is.

Quote:

The door to your super lair can be a secret that hides in plain sight.


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We’ve discussed “dorm” style

We’ve discussed “dorm” style connectivity. At the time we referred to it has “ad-hoc bases”.

At the most basic there isn’t a real difference between a personal lair and a super team base. One is an extension of the other. What really comes into play is upgrading the size of a lair to accommodate more base like features. The larger the base and more functions it has, the more upkeep required.

Keeping a personal in its starting size and with no base functions is essentially “free”.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

This looks like a remarkably terrible place for a manhole cover (let alone a housing/base entrance). It's literally in the middle of a street that ought to have traffic on it (even if that traffic is intermittent). In order to access the manhole, you basically need to block off a section of the street in what looks like an intersection or perhaps even a parking lot which then obstructs regular vehicle traffic at that location. Far better to have manhole covers either in the sidewalks or along the shoulders of streets than in the center of them.

Imagine coming up out of this manhole just in time to get run over by a car.
That's not inherently safe ... either for the super or for the car driver.
Might want to review the locations of manhole covers in the city so as to usually put them in places that aren't going to involve vehicle crashes when accessed.

Manhole covers are often in the middle of the street because the lines for water, electricity and other city infrastructure often need to be placed under the roads where the city has an easement. This is why roads and sidewalks often need to be shut down during construction related to water lines, electricity, etc. That said, we could place manhole entrances to bases on sidewalks and towards the side of the road where you wouldn't need to be a super speedster or have acrobatic abilities to enter your base... Good point...

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Lothic
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Red_Warlock wrote:
Red_Warlock wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

This looks like a remarkably terrible place for a manhole cover (let alone a housing/base entrance). It's literally in the middle of a street that ought to have traffic on it (even if that traffic is intermittent). In order to access the manhole, you basically need to block off a section of the street in what looks like an intersection or perhaps even a parking lot which then obstructs regular vehicle traffic at that location. Far better to have manhole covers either in the sidewalks or along the shoulders of streets than in the center of them.

Imagine coming up out of this manhole just in time to get run over by a car.
That's not inherently safe ... either for the super or for the car driver.
Might want to review the locations of manhole covers in the city so as to usually put them in places that aren't going to involve vehicle crashes when accessed.

Manhole covers are often in the middle of the street because the lines for water, electricity and other city infrastructure often need to be placed under the roads where the city has an easement. This is why roads and sidewalks often need to be shut down during construction related to water lines, electricity, etc. That said, we could place manhole entrances to bases on sidewalks and towards the side of the road where you wouldn't need to be a super speedster or have acrobatic abilities to enter your base... Good point...

I've seen manhole covers in ALL sorts of places whether in the middle of roads/intersections or off to the sides on sidewalks. There probably ought to be a mix of covers like that everywhere and let players decide what makes sense for them if they want to use them as base entrances or not.

As for another suggestion for base entrances I'd allow for things like laundromats or video arcades where one of the machines in the back of the business is actually a hidden slide-away entrance. It's basically what they had back in the first few seasons of Archer.

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Redlynne
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Red_Warlock wrote:
Red_Warlock wrote:

the lines for water, electricity and other city infrastructure often need to be placed under the roads where the city has an easement.

Depends on the city, of course.
One bit of civic engineering I saw out in Carlsbad California (in the 80s) was that they have a law out there which says that if you build something along a road (such as a house or a subdivision) it is the responsibility of the builder of that property to widen the road adjacent to that property. This took the form of extra wide shoulder lane areas beside roads next to properties that were wide enough such that you could, potentially, at a later date, repaint the lines on the road and have an extra lane without needing to do new construction or move buildings back from the road and the like. It was basically a case of building alongside a road meant you needed to widen the road there at the builder's expense and that widened bit of road was the easement for city services to run through. So you would see manhole covers in these extra wide shoulder lanes that would be in the asphalt but not within the driving lanes. Later, as the area grew in population and traffic, those extra wide shoulders could get repurposed as new extra lanes without needing to move sidewalks.

Red_Warlock wrote:

That said, we could place manhole entrances to bases on sidewalks and towards the side of the road where you wouldn't need to be a super speedster or have acrobatic abilities to enter your base... Good point...


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Redlynne
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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

As for another suggestion for base entrances I'd allow for things like laundromats

Click the image for the link to the youtube video.
This moment comes up at 4:30 into the video.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:
Lothic wrote:

As for another suggestion for base entrances I'd allow for things like laundromats

Click the image for the link to the youtube video.

Well to be fair I never said the "laundromat" idea was an original one. Doesn't surprise me to see a Japanese example of this. :)

You could do this kind of thing with all sorts of places such as libraries with doors behind bookshelves, in museums with doors behind paintings, in strange pawn shops or seedy nightclubs, and so on.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I'm really liking the sound

I'm really liking the sound of the stuff covered in this update. Even if it doesn't have a huge impact on the basic fightin'&levellin' core of the game, it's a welcome little addition. Being able to choose the entrance location is definitely one of those areas where I'm glad we're not doing it like the old game!

One thing I'm not quite clear about: is the personal housing (both entrance location and contents) something that's per-player or per-character?

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

Being able to choose the entrance location is definitely one of those areas where I'm glad we're not doing it like the old game!

It was actually one of the more common suggestions that came up on the old TOG forums. I saw variations of the desire to have selectable entrances at least several dozen times over the years.

Cinnder wrote:

One thing I'm not quite clear about: is the personal housing (both entrance location and contents) something that's per-player or per-character?

I believe it was meant to be per character but it might be per player. I seriously doubt it would take much disk space to store all the data needed to save a base per character - it'd probably be roughly the same amount of data as it'd take to store a costume slot for a character.

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Thanks for the update. Here

Thanks for the update. Here are my inputs:

I think Redlynne's Post #5 exceeds anything I could generate. While I agree with Red Warlock that in reality manhole covers are often found in the middle of the street, Redlynne's point about using them as bases in city with traffic is troublesome from an RP continuity point of view.

One idea I've had would be to have Tiny doors. Just do an internet search for "Tiny Doors ATL." In fact if I had ever gotten a Mogul I would have asked to make a tiny house somewhere, so it's only natural that I'd want there to be tiny doors around Titan City that players can use for bases or even for mission instances or even... a faction of little people... maybe mouse people?.
Redlynne also gave me an idea that we could have actual trees be doorways to a lair. Just walk into the tree like a dryad would and you're in your base.

In Tannim222's post, he mentions what we get for free. Does the location of our base entrance have any cost associated with it? Are some locations more expensive than others? Will some door styles be behind a paywall/ earning wall?

The video:

  • The Good:
    1. I like that we can place anything anywhere, and not just in reserved places like how DCUO does it; which always annoyed me.
  • Needs to be improved:
    1. The UI needs work. In fact it looks like something from the Unreal marketplace, because what is a "Plot Pole: Place this to reserve the area around it for the owners?" I have no problem with you making your lives easier by taking things from the marketplace, but here are my comments on it as it was shown in the video. I suspect you have your own list of customizations:
      1. It looks like that UI was optimized for controllers and not for PC keyboard+mouse. As a result there is missing functionality that I recommend you bring back. I will expand upon in the next few points
      2. Every time you select a new item you start at the beginning of the placement menu. It might be better if the menu opened at the place you were when it closed. Even better, don't close the selection menu at all and leave it up to the side and let the player use their mouse to select items from it. But since it's designed for a controller and not a mouse, there is no mouse cursor on the screen and the UI can't multitask placement and selection at the same time.
      3. Placement is center of camera, meaning that the mouse cursor is slaved to camera only, which means that the mouse cursor can not be used to select from any menus without swapping modes from placement to menu mode. While this seems to be a repeat of the point directly above, I mention it separately here because I think it can be improved by divorcing the placement from center of camera and instead making placement a press-and-hold mouse button instead. It could still slave the camera to the mouse this way, but as soon as you let go of the mouse button, the furniture is placed and the mouse cursor returns. If you don't like the placement, you can just grab and hold it again or you have the option of mousing over to the list of objectds and selecting another one. So much better than the either-or which was presented in the video.
      4. Having only 8 selections per page and the pages not organized or categorized in any way would be a nightmare of clicking to find what we're looking for as we decorate our bases. This is exacerbated by the fact that selecting the next page is never a single click operation. I'd prefer a single scrollable list to a bunch of pages I'd have to sort through. But even a single scrollable list is not very desireable. Which brings me to the next item:
      5. IF you're going to break the placeable items into a list that spans multiple pages, at least categorize them so we know on what page to find them. For instance: Structural items, Floor furniture, Wall fixtures, Ceiling Fixtures, Art, Lighting, etc.
      6. In the video, the placed items were all floor-placed furniture. The chair even disappeared through the wall when the character was too close to the wall. I suggest if items are going to be limited to what surface they can be placed upon, that the categories be broken down by surface, like I detailed above. However, rather than limiting items to what surface they can be placed upon, I'd actually prefer we can place any item on any surface. I recommend that the placement ghost traverses from surface to surface and the item orients itself respective to the surface. So in the example video you provided, as the character got close to and faced the wall the chair appeard on the wall in front of him, positioned normal to the wall until the camera panned over to the table, at which point the chair's ghost would be back on the floor again. While this seems an odd request while we're talking about chairs, when we start talking about lighting fixtures, art, rugs/tapestries and the like, the creative player will be able to make some interesting and attractive solutions if they are given the freedom to place any item anywhere.
      7. Another function missing from the console only UI that would be possible if the UI enabled keyboard+mouse is the ability to group items with click-and-drag-across or control+click. If I spent hours arranging a table and chairs with a couple candels and place settings, etc., etc, and needed to move it all a smidgen to the left to make room for a big aquarium piece I just got from raiding a villain's underwater hideout, I would want to be able to grab all those individual pieces together and them move them as a group. Just look at how MS Office groups and ungroups objects in applications like powerpoint to get an idea what I have in mind.
    2. Lighting. There is an ambient lighting to the base. Where does that light come from? Can it be adjusted? I recommend that the amount of ambient light be adjustable. This allows players to make brightly lit highrise lofts or dark bat-filled caverns requiring light fixtures to see in their limited coverage or anything in-between. In fact, I think it would be good to include "windows" among the lighting fixture options.
    3. Sectional furniture wasn't sectional. If you're going to have sectional furniture, at least break it down into independent sections.
    4. The ability to enable a grid on surfaces so when we are placing items we can snap to it or not, at our discretion
  • Materials? I noticed that some of the menu selections included what appeared to be a material cost to them. (e.g. "Wooden Foundation: 10x Wood (500)") Will this be a thing in CoT or is it just a vistigial carry-over from the asset you borrowed to make the video?

As I said earlier, I suspect you showed us an asset you got from the marketplace, and I suspect that you have barely begun to tailor it for CoT. So please take these comments as my own suggestions on how to do so and not as an unfair criticism you think you don't deserve.


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.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Thanks for the update. Here are my inputs:

I think Redlynne's Post #5 exceeds anything I could generate. While I agree with Red Warlock that in reality manhole covers are often found in the middle of the street, Redlynne's point about using them as bases in city with traffic is troublesome from an RP continuity point of view.

One idea I've had would be to have Tiny doors. Just do an internet search for "Tiny Doors ATL." In fact if I had ever gotten a Mogul I would have asked to make a tiny house somewhere, so it's only natural that I'd want there to be tiny doors around Titan City that players can use for bases or even for mission instances or even... a faction of little people... maybe mouse people?.
Redlynne also gave me an idea that we could have actual trees be doorways to a lair. Just walk into the tree like a dryad would and you're in your base.

In Tannim222's post, he mentions what we get for free. Does the location of our base entrance have any cost associated with it? Are some locations more expensive than others? Will some door styles be behind a paywall/ earning wall?

The video:

  • The Good:
    1. I like that we can place anything anywhere, and not just in reserved places like how DCUO does it; which always annoyed me.
  • Needs to be improved:
    1. The UI needs work. In fact it looks like something from the Unreal marketplace, because what is a "Plot Pole: Place this to reserve the area around it for the owners?" I have no problem with you making your lives easier by taking things from the marketplace, but here are my comments on it as it was shown in the video. I suspect you have your own list of customizations:
      1. It looks like that UI was optimized for controllers and not for PC keyboard+mouse. As a result there is missing functionality that I recommend you bring back. I will expand upon in the next few points
      2. Every time you select a new item you start at the beginning of the placement menu. It might be better if the menu opened at the place you were when it closed. Even better, don't close the selection menu at all and leave it up to the side and let the player use their mouse to select items from it. But since it's designed for a controller and not a mouse, there is no mouse cursor on the screen and the UI can't multitask placement and selection at the same time.
      3. Placement is center of camera, meaning that the mouse cursor is slaved to camera only, which means that the mouse cursor can not be used to select from any menus without swapping modes from placement to menu mode. While this seems to be a repeat of the point directly above, I mention it separately here because I think it can be improved by divorcing the placement from center of camera and instead making placement a press-and-hold mouse button instead. It could still slave the camera to the mouse this way, but as soon as you let go of the mouse button, the furniture is placed and the mouse cursor returns. If you don't like the placement, you can just grab and hold it again or you have the option of mousing over to the list of objectds and selecting another one. So much better than the either-or which was presented in the video.
      4. Having only 8 selections per page and the pages not organized or categorized in any way would be a nightmare of clicking to find what we're looking for as we decorate our bases. This is exacerbated by the fact that selecting the next page is never a single click operation. I'd prefer a single scrollable list to a bunch of pages I'd have to sort through. But even a single scrollable list is not very desireable. Which brings me to the next item:
      5. IF you're going to break the placeable items into a list that spans multiple pages, at least categorize them so we know on what page to find them. For instance: Structural items, Floor furniture, Wall fixtures, Ceiling Fixtures, Art, Lighting, etc.
      6. In the video, the placed items were all floor-placed furniture. The chair even disappeared through the wall when the character was too close to the wall. I suggest if items are going to be limited to what surface they can be placed upon, that the categories be broken down by surface, like I detailed above. However, rather than limited items to what surface they can be placed upon, I'd actually prefer we can place any item on any surface. I recommend that the placement ghost traverses from surface to surface and the item orient itself respective of the surface. So in the example video you provided, as the character got close to and faced the wall the chair appeard on the wall in front of him, positioned normal to the wall until the camera panned over to the table, at which point the chair's ghost would be back on the floor again. While this seem an odd request while we're talking about chairs, when we start talking about lighting fixtures, art, rugs/tapestries and the like, the creative player will be able to make some interesting and attractive solutions if they are given the freedom to place any item anywhere.
      7. Another function missing from the console only UI that would be possible if the UI enabled keyboard+mouse is the ability to group items with click-and-drag-across or control+click. If I spent hours arranging a table and chairs with a couple candels and place settings, etc., etc, and needed to move it all a smidgen to the left to make room for a bid aquarium piece I just got from raiding a villain's underwater hideout, I would want to be able to grab all those individual pieces together and them move them as a group. Just look at how MS Office groups and ungroups objects in applications like powerpoint to get an idea what I have in mind.
    2. Lighting. There is an ambient lighting to the base. Where does that light come from? Can it be adjusted? I recommend that the amount of ambient light be adjustable. This allows players to make brightly lit highrise lofts or dark bat-filled caverns requiring light fixtures to see in their limited coverage or anything in-between. In fact, I think it would be good to include "windows" among the lighting fixture options.
    3. Sectional furniture wasn't sectional. If you're going to have sectional furniture, at least break it down into independent sections.
    4. The ability to enable a grid on surfaces so when we are placing items we can snap to it or not, at our discretion
  • Materials? I noticed that some of the menu selections included what appeared to be a material cost to them. (e.g. "Wooden Foundation: 10x Wood (500)") Will this be a thing in CoT or is it just a vistigial carry-over from the asset you borrowed to make the video?

As I said earlier, I suspect you showed us an asset you got from the marketplace, and I suspect that you have barely begun to tailor it for CoT. So please take these comments as my own suggestions on how to do so and not as an unfair criticism you think you don't deserve.

All good points and all things I have planned in some form or another.

Senior Gameplay Engineer.

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AmiEvil provided the

AmiEvil provided the prototype of the system in a video so it could be shown in this update. As he said, there is a lot he has already considered. This is far from the final version, just the prototype of the system. It is almost (not quite) ready for an alpha once we hook all the systems to the world map, add a few more things, and make a few changes. From there it is iterating and bug hunting. All that comes at a later stage of development. The important thing was to show we have the prototype working sufficiently.

As to your questions about doors and the cost of doors. The starting locations are free, which includes your entrance. The Perk from KS gives you the second access point. Later on, when you choose locations with larger plot sizes or more unique locations within the city, there will be higher costs associated with these kinds of bases.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

As to your questions about doors and the cost of doors. The starting locations are free, which includes your entrance. The Perk from KS gives you the second access point. Later on, when you choose locations with larger plot sizes or more unique locations within the city, there will be higher costs associated with these kinds of bases.

If I understand you correctly, different door locations have their own plot sizes. Does this mean that plot sizes are static? Can we expand our lairs or do we have to upgrade to a new location for a bigger lair?


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.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

As to your questions about doors and the cost of doors. The starting locations are free, which includes your entrance. The Perk from KS gives you the second access point. Later on, when you choose locations with larger plot sizes or more unique locations within the city, there will be higher costs associated with these kinds of bases.

If I understand you correctly, different door locations have their own plot sizes. Does this mean that plot sizes are static? Can we expand our lairs or do we have to upgrade to a new location for a bigger lair?

They depend on the location.


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Well, this certainly changes

Well, this certainly changes things.

So now we know we're going to be looking at a progression system of lairs, not just a multitude of possible locations that only differ by flavor. It seems like a combination of DCUO and Black Desert. So there will have to be lairs of all different flavors at each step of the progression from entry-level to league in order to make sure that every character gets something in their price range from the high-tech spaceman who might have to start out in student housing at EU to the streetfighting boxer who calls a gym his lair at mid-level to a mutant sewer ape who will claim an entire abandoned subway station at max level.

I don't know what the sizes are going to be, for instance, are we given a set amount of square footage or will the floorplans be already established? If the latter, Will there be different floorplans for different door types at the same tier level? Or will all lairs of the same tier be the same floorplan? Will the aesthetics of the inside of the lair depend on the location? How much af the aesthetics can be modified by the player or is it just the furnishings?


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You will notice in the update

You will notice in the update that it says “ With the base Type, you will also be given a set of appropriate decor You can then begin to add areas to the base over time, growing it.”.

Everyone starts off with the basic plot size. The location chosen will provide starting matching decor which includes the map options.

Backers of a certain level I believe get to start with a penthouse starting lair which of course has a larger plot size.


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So it makes sense that larger

So it makes sense that larger plot sizes will cost players more.
It also makes sense that some types of "decor styles" (i.e. penthouse style) will cost players more.
It even makes sense that certain door locations might cost more simply because of their exclusive location.

But it sounds like certain decor styles will also be linked to certain size plots and/or locations. For instance if I wanted to use the "penthouse" decor would I have to use a large size plot and/or would it have to be at the top of a building? What if I wanted to pay for the "penthouse" decor style in a tiny basement apartment on skid row?

I guess my basic question (following closely to what Huckleberry asked) is whether things like "plot size" and "decor style" will be restricted to certain locations or can these variables be freely matched in any combination assuming the player can pay for it?

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If I'm not mistaken, I think

If I'm not mistaken, I think this addresses your question about plot size:

Tannim222 wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

If I understand you correctly, different door locations have their own plot sizes. Does this mean that plot sizes are static? Can we expand our lairs or do we have to upgrade to a new location for a bigger lair?

They depend on the location.


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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, I think this addresses your question about plot size:

Tannim222 wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

If I understand you correctly, different door locations have their own plot sizes. Does this mean that plot sizes are static? Can we expand our lairs or do we have to upgrade to a new location for a bigger lair?

They depend on the location.

No, it doesn't quite address my question here. That's why I'd like better clarity on this point.

Again let's take the hypothetical of the basement apartment on skid row. The obvious assumption (based on that location) is that you'd be stuck with a tiny plot size. That might be fine for a level 1 villain just getting his start. But what if I'm a level 50 mega-villain who wants to put a huge base underneath that skid row building to disguise my huge base of operations? Would I be unable to have a huge base there just because of its location? Would I also be unable to have a fancier decor there because of its location?

As another hypothetical let's say I want a "penthouse apartment" at the top of the tallest building in the city. Since that might be at the tip-top of a tall tower that's actually relatively small at that height maybe I don't want my penthouse to be "huge". Would I be forced to have a "huge" plot size when the building at the very top might only be a few dozen meters wide? For this example imagine the Burj Kalifa:

Sure the view at the top is amazing but if you wanted to be "realistic" about it the owner of the top floor residence is not going to have a very BIG space up there.

Basically I don't believe the "plot size" should be dependent on the physical location of the entrance door OR the decor style. If my character can pay for it I should be able to put ANY sized base ANYWHERE. Again I have no problem with having to pay more for bigger plots, fancier decor or special locations. But the "variables" of PLOT SIZE, DECOR and LOCATION should be able to match together as freely as possible without any undo arbitrary limitations.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

This looks like a remarkably terrible place for a manhole cover (let alone a housing/base entrance). It's literally in the middle of a street that ought to have traffic on it (even if that traffic is intermittent). In order to access the manhole, you basically need to block off a section of the street in what looks like an intersection or perhaps even a parking lot which then obstructs regular vehicle traffic at that location. Far better to have manhole covers either in the sidewalks or along the shoulders of streets than in the center of them.

Imagine coming up out of this manhole just in time to get run over by a car.
That's not inherently safe ... either for the super or for the car driver.
Might want to review the locations of manhole covers in the city so as to usually put them in places that aren't going to involve vehicle crashes when accessed.

As a former big-city plumber, manholes in such locations are sadly common, and yes, they are difficult to deal with.

In real-world situations: manholes are placed above where a sewer or storm drain line bends or significant lines merge. Which is dependent on what happens underground. Yes, ideally that would not be in the middle of the street but sometimes it is for a variety of reasons (other underground utilities, changes on the surface over time, etc).

It's often quite a mess.

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Still wouldn't mind

Still wouldn't mind confirmation from MWM as to whether personal housing is per-player or per-character, just so we're all clear. The wording of the update can be interpreted either way.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

Still wouldn't mind confirmation from MWM as to whether personal housing is per-player or per-character, just so we're all clear. The wording of the update can be interpreted either way.

Yes I agree even though I'm like 99% sure it's "per character". Many of the "heated discussions" that take place between the Devs and players on this Forum have their basis in things not being stated clearly or completely.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

You could do this kind of thing with all sorts of places such as libraries with doors behind bookshelves...

That was one thing I had considered for This Guy Book Wyrm I Know...

Lothic wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

Still wouldn't mind confirmation from MWM as to whether personal housing is per-player or per-character, just so we're all clear. The wording of the update can be interpreted either way.

Yes I agree even though I'm like 99% sure it's "per character". Many of the "heated discussions" that take place between the Devs and players on this Forum have their basis in things not being stated clearly or completely.

I'm hoping it's per character; most of the characters I have planned are in different areas.

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Foradain wrote:
Foradain wrote:

I'm hoping it's per character; most of the characters I have planned are in different areas.

That would definitely be a huge problem with the "one base per player" idea. I doubt any of my characters would ever end up being in the same place or wanting to share the same kind/style of base.

Of course assuming the game will offer bases "per character" there'd be nothing to prevent a player from setting up each character's base in the same exact place with the same exact setup so they could "pretend" they have a single base for all of their characters. ;)

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

Still wouldn't mind confirmation from MWM as to whether personal housing is per-player or per-character, just so we're all clear. The wording of the update can be interpreted either way.

From the update, “ Housing is a location in the game environment that each character can enter as their own private residence. ”


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

Still wouldn't mind confirmation from MWM as to whether personal housing is per-player or per-character, just so we're all clear. The wording of the update can be interpreted either way.

From the update, “ Housing is a location in the game environment that each character can enter as their own private residence. ”

Yeah that phrase is probably where I subconsciously got my 99% from. ;)

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

From the update, “ Housing is a location in the game environment that each character can enter as their own private residence. ”

Aye, that's the wording I was talking about. It doesn't specify whether that's a single shared space that each character can enter, with 'private' meaning just your current character and no one else's, or a unique space per character.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

From the update, “ Housing is a location in the game environment that each character can enter as their own private residence. ”

Aye, that's the wording I was talking about. It doesn't specify whether that's a single shared space that each character can enter, with 'private' meaning just your current character and no one else's, or a unique space per character.

Yeah I can see where the wording of that phrase can be vaguely interpreted. But again I'm like 99% sure Tannim's trying to tell us that each character will have their own personal base.

If it really were "one base per player" he probably would have used the phrase "each player can enter" not "each character can enter".

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Basically I don't believe the "plot size" should be dependent on the physical location of the entrance door OR the decor style. If my character can pay for it I should be able to put ANY sized base ANYWHERE. Again I have no problem with having to pay more for bigger plots, fancier decor or special locations. But the "variables" of PLOT SIZE, DECOR and LOCATION should be able to match together as freely as possible without any undo arbitrary limitations.

I imagine this will be a big deal for many people. Obviously some limits will need to be set (we probably won't be able to doll up the top five floors of the Baxter Building to mimic a sewer) but it would be awkward if players can't put some particular item in their base "because reasons".

Along the lines of arbitrary limits, I don't believe I've ever seen someone profess to be a fan of how housing was implemented in FFXIV.

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Beamrider wrote:
Beamrider wrote:

As a former big-city plumber, manholes in such locations are sadly common, and yes, they are difficult to deal with.

In real-world situations: manholes are placed above where a sewer or storm drain line bends or significant lines merge. Which is dependent on what happens underground. Yes, ideally that would not be in the middle of the street but sometimes it is for a variety of reasons (other underground utilities, changes on the surface over time, etc).

It's often quite a mess.

Oh I can easily believe that as urban areas evolve over time, streets get resurfaced/widened/etc. that access points can "migrate" into streets when the streets change but the city services under those streets are not relocated. That is totally believable! So it would make sense for manholes in streets to be a more common "feature" in the parts of Titan City that are older or which have been rebuilt (more than once) due to natural disasters such as Hurricane Atlas flattening an area which then has to be rebuilt afterwards. When you get to do wholesale urban renewal like that after a disaster, it can sometimes make sense to update the layout of city streets over underground features like subsurface infrastructure and you wind up with manholes in the streets after the rebuild when they would have been beside the streets before the rebuild. That makes complete sense.

However, as entrances to instanced housing, such access points would definitely be less than ideal, particularly in areas with even light intermittent traffic (vehicle or foot).
At the same time, such access points in dead end/cul-de-sac or otherwise abandoned locations where traffic is approaching nil would be perfectly fine.
So you don't want to eliminate the possibilities entirely, but you do want to locate them judiciously when designing the world.

And note that even if a specific manhole cover isn't used for a player housing access, it could still be used as a Mission Door for all sorts of in-game story reasons.
The first thought that occurs for such a mission story reason would be that the PC is denied entry at the "front door" to a building, so instead they attempt to enter via underground tunnels that can lead into the building from below ... hence a manhole cover becomes the "actual" Mission Door to enter an instance rather than the "front door" on a building (after having tried the front door and being denied entry).


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

So you don't want to eliminate the possibilities entirely, but you do want to locate them judiciously when designing the world.

I think it's quite likely that some base/mission entrances are going to be less practical than others by design. Having your personal base entrance be a manhole cover in the middle of the street might not be the smartest/sanest thing to do but I still think things like that should be possible in CoT. Perhaps I want to play a semi-crazy villain who's chaotic enough to believe that such an entrance is just "funny" and wants it regardless.

A game like this can't arbitrarily limit player choice just because that choice is not the "smartest" option. After all there's a reason why the "randomize costume" option in the Avatar Builder seems to be popular with some people even though I would never touch that GUI button with a ten-foot pole. ;)

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I think it is reasonable to

I think it is reasonable to have options for obtaining decor and aesthetic options for base interiors.

It’s far too soon to say how those will be accessed.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

I think it is reasonable to have options for obtaining decor and aesthetic options for base interiors.

It’s far too soon to say how those will be accessed.

I actually wouldn't mind if you approached this thing sort of like "real world real estate" does. It obviously makes some sense that larger plots might only be available at certain locations. It would also make sense that certain decor styles might only be applicable to certain locations.

But as always I would lean towards allowing as much player freedom as reasonably possible. I would rather people be able to create "weird/nonsensical" housing combinations just like I'd rather allow players to make weird/nonsensical costume choices. Sure it might be silly to have a "sewer" decor style linked a door location at the top of a building but again if a player wants that there probably isn't any game mechanic reason why that couldn't be allowed.

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I really hope we'll get to

I really hope we'll get to have hidden bases as a single player. It sounds like bases are more like apartments, which is cool but like... not what I envision when I think of bases. Now, if the apartment had a hidden door I could use to get to my secret base, that would work too.

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PrinceAuryn wrote:
PrinceAuryn wrote:

I really hope we'll get to have hidden bases as a single player. It sounds like bases are more like apartments, which is cool but like... not what I envision when I think of bases. Now, if the apartment had a hidden door I could use to get to my secret base, that would work too.

I think what would make a personal base be a "hidden base" would depend on which "world map" door you choose to be the entrance to you base. If you choose an entrance in some secluded back alley your base would effectively be hidden there.

Remember that our personal bases are going to be spawned instances that'll start out more or less as a cube of empty space. Based on which "decor style" you use you should be able to make it look like a standard apartment, a Batcave, a sewer or anything else they provide as options.

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I would happily be able to

I would happily be able to enter the super-base from any phone, like the Matrix.

In GW2 'teleport to base' is a useful feature.

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Fireheart wrote:I would
Fireheart wrote:

I would happily be able to enter the super-base from any phone, like the Matrix.

In GW2 'teleport to base' is a useful feature.

Back in TOG one of the 24 month vet awards was the "Base Transporter" power that let you TP to your supergroup base once every 30 minutes. I'd assume we'll get some kind of equivalent power (for both our personal bases as well as group bases) in CoT eventually. Maybe your "Matrix phone" idea would be one way to use that kind of power.

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I just LOVE the Abandoned

I just LOVE the Abandoned Warehouse lair. It brings to mind so many 60's Batman villains to mind. King Tut always had an Egyptian set built for his comfort.
~~I could expect mods would allow for exotic furniture to be added.
~~~~Combine this with player created adventures and you could have an Arcade of Death adventure with animatronic gangsters wielding Tommy Guns. The stills of wich could adorn your personal lair.
~~~~~~I am still partial to a Rockford Files style trailer Home lair. You could put up a Titan City Investigations sign out front.

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Cyclops wrote:
Cyclops wrote:

I just LOVE the Abandoned Warehouse lair. It brings to mind so many 60's Batman villains to mind. King Tut always had an Egyptian set built for his comfort.
~~I could expect mods would allow for exotic furniture to be added.
~~~~Combine this with player created adventures and you could have an Arcade of Death adventure with animatronic gangsters wielding Tommy Guns. The stills of wich could adorn your personal lair.
~~~~~~I am still partial to a Rockford Files style trailer Home lair. You could put up a Titan City Investigations sign out front.

So glad you like it! And we have lots and lots of unique spaces like the warehouse you saw in that picture, but not too much like it! We are building each neighborhood with lots of diverse architecture so things don't look like the 'same box building' everywhere, but each building will look like it has its own unique character and story...

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I want to enter my base

I want to enter my base through a casino/nightclub/strip club. Like Lucifer