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The magic number 30

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jessejame
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The magic number 30

So, I wanted to know why level 30? I know the cap will be increased in the future, and there will be more to pick from, but what's so special about the 20 levels above 30?

What would be the estimated time before the next level cap at most, and what would we be gaining from it?

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Interdictor
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It may have something to do

It may have something to do with amount of content (story arcs, missions, raids/trials, etc). Personally, I think it's better to ship with lots of content with a lower cap (and raise the cap/add more content later) than to ship with the full caps but bare-bones content.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

It may have something to do with amount of content (story arcs, missions, raids/trials, etc). Personally, I think it's better to ship with lots of content with a lower cap (and raise the cap/add more content later) than to ship with the full caps but bare-bones content.

I agree. With abundant content, fun combat, powerful um...powers, and fascinating exploration, altitis will abound. I'd happily take 7-10 toons through 30 levels of awesome as the Devs develop levels 31+ in the background.

(Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative)

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Other games...,

Other games...,

- ...adhere to a 20 level cap limit, and that works out somewhat in limited genres with a vast ability to diversify through external acquisitions (...i.e. - 'lewt'...). Now, with that said...unless there's going to be a massive ability to diversify (...which it seems that's most likely the case with CoT...), having 10 levels more may not seem like much. Then again, we're talking about having access to not only primary and secondary powers, but also tertiary powers early on along with power pools (...and travel powers at the very beginning...). So, there's a lot to work with...I'm just moderately concerned with low level caps because it could either mean a) levels take forever to reach or b) they're acquired too quickly leaving low end content largely unexplored.

- Speaking of leveling...while gaining a level is seldom insignificant, I always felt kind of jaded when I went up a level in CoX - only to gain power slots. Yes, those power slots are exceptionally vital and key to unique character customization...it felt odd that in gaining a level in one particular instance, I gained an entirely new and unique ability...yet the next time I progress, one of my abilities just became more specialized. How about this...disperse the slot gain THROUGHOUT the level, allowing for a slot to be attained every third or quarter of the way through the level. It would represent the character becoming more specialized as they progress (...making the process of gaining experience seem more tangible...), while still leaving the overall level gain to provide the player with a new and unique ability.

- Just a thought... ^_^

jessejame
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Thunder-Puncher wrote:
Thunder-Puncher wrote:

- Speaking of leveling...while gaining a level is seldom insignificant, I always felt kind of jaded when I went up a level in CoX - only to gain power slots. Yes, those power slots are exceptionally vital and key to unique character customization...it felt odd that in gaining a level in one particular instance, I gained an entirely new and unique ability...yet the next time I progress, one of my abilities just became more specialized. How about this...disperse the slot gain THROUGHOUT the level, allowing for a slot to be attained every third or quarter of the way through the level. It would represent the character becoming more specialized as they progress (...making the process of gaining experience seem more tangible...), while still leaving the overall level gain to provide the player with a new and unique ability.
- Just a thought... ^_^

You make a valid point there, I like this idea of having dispersed specializing slots throughout the level. Although I have no clue how they want the leveling system to work with all the powers and classifications, so it's really hard to say unless there'd be a new power at each level, then we would end up with at least 30 come the cap, so it really doesn't make any sense.

However, some of those powers could be passive abilities, several attacks, the pool powers, and much more, so what do I know?

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Thunder-Puncher
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jessejame wrote:
jessejame wrote:

You make a valid point there, I like this idea of having dispersed specializing slots throughout the level. Although I have no clue how they want the leveling system to work with all the powers and classifications, so it's really hard to say unless there'd be a new power at each level, then we would end up with at least 30 come the cap, so it really doesn't make any sense.

I know...,

- ...it's been a concern for me as, looking over Mids, even without Incarnate abilities...at the end of 50th, a player has approximately 49 powers - that's almost 1.5 powers per level in CoT (...not including enhancement slots which would probably have to be interdispersed throughout the level gaining process, or provided once the character gained a level...). Two powers every other level plus enhancement slots...that's a bit much to dump on someone once they gain a level.

- I would advise against this...part of the uniqueness with CoX was the sense of gradual improvement, and while level gain was somewhat extensive - you could see your character improve feeling that each enhancement slot earned and knew where you wanted it. Be very, very careful about putting too much in the hands of the players right from the beginning...starting out with inherent abilities (...AT specific inherent, Brawl and Rest...), a travel power (...Sprint maybe considered a 'travel power'...), plus primary and secondary powers...with tertiary and power pools becoming available soon thereafter, as well as enhancement slots, is an awful lot...

- Starting out with 3 powers from the gate is fairly impressive...a first level Guardian (Sentinel) could Fly above a group of thugs and let loose with a tremendous Gale and a series of Charged Bolts! Well, at least we won't be starting out with characters who had to run wherever they went...was kind of silly, especially for characters who started out with wings. Still, that's squeezing a lot of powers in a relatively short period of time with only 30 levels...even if there's only 8 powers per power set. I just hope I'm giving you guys something to think about. Would like to see CoT be a successful successor...

jessejame
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I have to agree with you

I have to agree with you Thunder about putting too much in the hands of the player could be a negative effect. I know that each level I got slots for I carefully placed them where I thought would be best, and generally speaking it was.

Respecing on the other hand without mids? Well that's just craziness, and that's how I started a long long time ago. Honestly it was too much at the time, until I matured a bit, played around some and learned from my mistakes, and eventually found mids.

Now I know respecing doesn't have as much in common as giving the player too much power from the get go and here on out, but the idea is the same in that it is overwhelming to first timers.

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syntaxerror37
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I'm guess 30 was picked for

I'm guess 30 was picked for the starting cap based on how many CoH players never got past 30 anyway. So it is sort of an in-joke, but also quite practical.

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

I'm guess 30 was picked for the starting cap based on how many CoH players never got past 30 anyway. So it is sort of an in-joke, but also quite practical.

That's what worries me...,

- ...I never stopped playing a character until I had access to the Tertiary Power Sets as I felt that would be a truly defining moment to see how effective a certain build would be if access to other powers were available. That's about 35th-38th level...and why I never got my Fire/Fire Blaster higher than that...even with Fire Shield, he was still a roasted duck on most occasions (...and getting access to Rise of the Phoenix was a poor consolation prize for face-planting...).

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We also don't know how these

We also don't know how these new power systems really work. When do you gain access to the Tertiary power Sets? When does the power sets hit the "Good" zone an example are the Tanks they were from my experience late bloomers. However we don't know how the game system works so the issues players have in early and mid levels might not be there.

It's also logical for 30 for launch enough levels to be challenging but not to much. As soon as possible add 10 more then another 10 and boom Level 50.

We can also think about Content wise. Before 30 leveling was fast, later however stories needs to be longer and more filling to last longer for the level range. 30 might have been chosen for this reason.

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The "number" of levels is

The "number" of levels is kind of irrelevant until you find out what the character sheet looks like. Also gear will play a large part. In many games gear is only really desirable at endgame because characters outgrow the gear.

There's alot that goes into character creation in a custom superhero RPG. I don't think the arbitrary number really tells the story.

Thunder-Puncher wrote:

Other games...,
- ...adhere to a 20 level cap limit, and that works out somewhat in limited genres with a vast ability to diversify through external acquisitions (...i.e. - 'lewt'...). Now, with that said...unless there's going to be a massive ability to diversify (...which it seems that's most likely the case with CoT...), having 10 levels more may not seem like much. Then again, we're talking about having access to not only primary and secondary powers, but also tertiary powers early on along with power pools (...and travel powers at the very beginning...). So, there's a lot to work with...I'm just moderately concerned with low level caps because it could either mean a) levels take forever to reach or b) they're acquired too quickly leaving low end content largely unexplored.
- Speaking of leveling...while gaining a level is seldom insignificant, I always felt kind of jaded when I went up a level in CoX - only to gain power slots. Yes, those power slots are exceptionally vital and key to unique character customization...it felt odd that in gaining a level in one particular instance, I gained an entirely new and unique ability...yet the next time I progress, one of my abilities just became more specialized. How about this...disperse the slot gain THROUGHOUT the level, allowing for a slot to be attained every third or quarter of the way through the level. It would represent the character becoming more specialized as they progress (...making the process of gaining experience seem more tangible...), while still leaving the overall level gain to provide the player with a new and unique ability.
- Just a thought... ^_^

I think myself (and many RPers) wouldn't mind having our abilities earlier and having them become more useful over time. In many Tabletop games this comes in the form of "enhancements" to original powers that cost points.

My personal Ideal is to have my character know all of their base abilities by 1/2 of the endgame goal and then specialize how these powers work later. This also would lower the need for high level re-training (and could make high level retraining more attractive in the cost/benefit model) because you get used to HOW your character works early enough to be able to change direction (or start over if you desire).

Unlocking "ultimate" powers or strengthening a certain aspect of gameplay later on always feels good late on tho.. It has really made Marvel Heroes fun!

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I often wished that as we

I often wished that as we leveled up in CoH we could choose whether to take a new power or slots instead. So what if I want all my Powers up-front? I'll only have a few slots to spread between them so it can hardly be considered OP. Or if I have 4 really good powers, why am I forced to choose more so soon? Why can't I pick another two slots and take the Power later?

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Me personally hopes that when

Me personally hopes that when new content is added its not a bunch of stuff for the low lvls. I hope its more endgame for the whatever the current cap is. As well as new content for cap increase. I'm not really a fan of getting to the end and waiting months to a year for new content and when we get it, its new content for lvl 10s. o.o I don't wanna go back. I wanna go forward.

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Interdictor
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Considering the devs are

Considering the devs are expecting people to succumb to altaholism in a big way (in fact I've seen a few of them mention that at least one facet of the "endgame" is rolling a different character) - I'm betting there will be a healthy infusion of content for ALL levels. While I'd certainly like lots of things to do at max level, I also expect them to fill out the lower levels as well to enhance replayability.

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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

Considering the devs are expecting people to succumb to altaholism in a big way (in fact I've seen a few of them mention that at least one facet of the "endgame" is rolling a different character) - I'm betting there will be a healthy infusion of content for ALL levels. While I'd certainly like lots of things to do at max level, I also expect them to fill out the lower levels as well to enhance replayability.

I wouldn't mind for low lvl stuff if the end game got stuff as well. When wow introduces a new race to play. They give out this nice new area to play and start out this race. But also, they add in some awesome stuff for when you get further in the game. least normally they do.

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syntaxerror37
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Ellysyn wrote:
Ellysyn wrote:

Me personally hopes that when new content is added its not a bunch of stuff for the low lvls. I hope its more endgame for the whatever the current cap is. As well as new content for cap increase. I'm not really a fan of getting to the end and waiting months to a year for new content and when we get it, its new content for lvl 10s. o.o I don't wanna go back. I wanna go forward.

I would assume that when the cap is raised there will by necessity content added to get you to the next cap. Once the final level 50 cap is reached it would make sense to add content at all levels. I mentioned this in another thread but every time CoH released content in a given range (low, mid, high, incarnate) someone would complain why another range wasn't getting content. You can't please all the people all of the time, but no one should be forgotten when it comes to new content, at least over the course of a year.

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Ellysyn wrote:
Me personally hopes that when new content is added its not a bunch of stuff for the low lvls. I hope its more endgame for the whatever the current cap is. As well as new content for cap increase. I'm not really a fan of getting to the end and waiting months to a year for new content and when we get it, its new content for lvl 10s. o.o I don't wanna go back. I wanna go forward.

I would assume that when the cap is raised there will by necessity content added to get you to the next cap. Once the final level 50 cap is reached it would make sense to add content at all levels. I mentioned this in another thread but every time CoH released content in a given range (low, mid, high, incarnate) someone would complain why another range wasn't getting content. You can't please all the people all of the time, but no one should be forgotten when it comes to new content, at least over the course of a year.

@Ellysyn
From what I've read on these boards you're in the minority. Being an altoholic is one way for the devs to extend the life of the game more easily.

Yes, more content should be added to the lower levels (after the level cap has reached its intended level, 50 or whatever) as additional powersets are added to fling fuel on the fire of alt-ism.

Prior to the planned level cap being developed, obviously all story arc, powerset, and end game loot (e.g. IOs) development to for the level cap should take precedence.

Which leaves, in my mind anyway, the question of where should end game content (e.g. raids and zones for raiders) fit into the development plan? But that's a question for another thread.

However, back on track, I'm a bit concerned about the number of zones planned for release. Twelve zones, IIRC, (+1 for stretch goal, ignored for simple math) split between Heroes and Villains (assuming that Heroes and Villains have separate zones), and 30 levels means you'll be changing zones ever 5 levels on average. Or it means redundant zones. Remember how Talos was always crowded but the only reason to go to IP was to have a long race from one end to the other, unless your story arc or TF forced you to go there?

The other concern I have was the Feeling of Power syndrome I kept bumping into in CoH. You'd hit the level cap for a zone and go from wreaking havoc in the zone to being the wimpiest thing on the planet in the next zone. NCSoft got over that by putting in some zones with 5 level offsets (Faultline, Croatoa) from the original zones.

Well I have no idea how this will play out when we see the (semi) final design. But those are my concerns with the number of zones. The rate of leveling and how much overlap in the levels between zones are issues that concern me, given the number of zones scheduled for launch.

Edit:

I completely forgot, while CoH was designed for Heroes only, CoTi will have both Heroes and Villains at launch. So that's 5 levels per zone, a bit more reasonable. I've edited the above to correct my lapse.

I still feel that my concerns are valid, pending more information from the Devs.

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From what I've heard zones

From what I've heard zones are not going to be Hero/Villain segregated.

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Then that brings us back to 2

Then that brings us back to 2.5 levels per zone. That's either a very slow leveling rate, a lot of redundant zones, or not much time spent in each zone.

Given the amount of time it takes to create a zone, the only one of the 3 options above that doesn't equate to a ton of wasted work by the devs is a very slow leveling rate.

And while I don't want to ding once an hour, if this game is to be enjoyable by a more casual playerbase the leveling rate needs to fast enough to keep the casuals interested.

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Let's turn this upside down,

Let's turn this upside down, shall we?

Speaking just for myself, I'd prefer it if City of Titans got AT LEAST 1 CONTENT TEAM for each Level Range of Zones ... and that if there weren't enough people creating content for a Level Range of Zones, then those Zones don't get added until they can get a Content Team dedicated to working on (and for) those Zones in a self-perpetuating manner.

So if you've got a 1-30 Level Range game ... have a Content Team doing 1-10 work, another Content Team doing 11-20 work, and a third Content Team doing 21-30 work. If you're going to raise the level cap from 30 to 40, make sure you can add ANOTHER CONTENT TEAM to be responsible for the 31-40 range. So instead of having one Content Team that just keeps spreading itself thinner and thinner and thinner as more Zones and more Content gets developed and added into the game, creating "competition trade offs" between Level Ranges where entire areas get neglected for long periods of time (*cough*) Shadow Shard (*cough*) to the point where you wonder if the Devs are ever going to touch that area ever again ... instead you have multiple Content Teams which can then SPECIALIZE in the Content and Storylines that run through particular Level Ranges and Zones of the game. You aren't pitting the Endgame vs the Early Game, because you're doing them in parallel ... not in serial/sequential fashion on a round robin basis.

Ideally speaking, that's the way you'd want to allocate your resources, as a Development Team, for Content Creation. The trick, of course, is that most Developers are starved for resources and simply can't afford to do this so they're left with a situation where their Content Team is often times only able to do ONE thing at a time, rather than doing several things at once across a broader swath of the game's environment.

In one of Positron's interviews after Paragon Studios got hit by a Shivan Meteor, he said that Content Creation was just a ravening beast that could never be satisfied, because the game industry standard that couldn't be improved on right now was that it took 4 months to create 2 weeks worth of new content, and with an 8:1 ratio like that you're just never going to be able to get ahead of the curve. To which my response is ... MWM needs to make "more baskets" instead of simply going for the "biggest basket" it can get (or make) in terms of Content Creation. Sure, you'll still have a Content Lead responsible for overseeing the various Content Teams, but then you'll have another layer of Content Specializing Teams who create content for different Level Ranges in parallel, rather than sequentially (if/when they can get around to it). The basic idea though is that you don't want to spread your Content Creators "too thin" ... so don't add New Zones or raise the Level Cap (to make room for New Zones) until you've got the resources lined up to give those new areas their OWN Content Team to fill them up, rather than pulling from the other Content Teams still working to add content to other areas of the game.

In other words ... Don't Eat Your Seed Corn.


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Fancy that. I just watched a

Fancy that. I just watched a video of a talk held at GDC Europe '13 called F2P the Wrong Way in Age of Empires Online that does tough on content creation. It is 45 minutes long but I found all of it interesting.

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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

However, back on track, I'm a bit concerned about the number of zones planned for release. Twelve zones, IIRC, (+1 for stretch goal, ignored for simple math), and 30 levels means you'll be changing zones ever 2 1/2 levels on average. Or it means redundant zones. Remember how Talos was always crowded but the only reason to go to IP was to have a long race from one end to the other, unless your story arc or TF forced you to go there?

I think you hit on something when you mentioned the off-by-5 zones and the Feeling of Power effects. It would seem the way out of that would be to overlap the zones' levels. So when you're soloing and finish a zone, you get to the next zone and you're already a couple levels into its progression. Or if you're grouping then you'll finish a zone at a lower level than you would have soloing, but that's okay since you'll be entry level for the next zone and not overwhelmed.

Some "redundancy" and overlap is appreciated so you don't have to follow the same path with every character. It was unfortunate that CoH made Skyway and IP so inferior to Steel and Talos, respectively, but Atlas and Galaxy were pretty well balanced to each other so one didn't seem overwhelmingly superior to the other. (And, honestly, I think the big reason people disliked Skyway and IP wasn't level range or mission sets, but the sheer difference in travel within the zones.)

Thinking out loud here... 12 zones across 30 levels, with 5 levels per zone gives us an initial level set of 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, and 26-30 with 6 zones left over. Double up the 1-5 zone and add 3-7, 8-12, 13-17, 18-22, and 23-27 makes 12 zones and you'll almost always have at least two zones in your level range: one where you're in the low half and one in the high half.

Change the overlap to two levels and you get 1-5, 4-8, 7-11, 10-14, 13-17, 16-20, 19-23, 22-26, 25-29, and 28-30, 10 zones with less overlap, though the last zone is a "runt" that could be hard to change to 28-32 later.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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We all know eventually there

We all know there will be people who'll be able to power level a new character up to the level-cap of this game in matter of hours. It's going to happen so I won't dwell on it too much.

Having said that I'd rather it take a "typical" player 3-6 months of real time wading through a bunch of great content to get to level 30 than have it be something that anyone could causally get to in a week or two. Hopefully the game will be geared that way so the Devs won't have to rush to raise the cap every couple of weeks to keep players interested.

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

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I'm with both Lothic and Col.

I'm with both Lothic and Col. Kernel on leveling rate. Since there will be no end game at launch there is no need to make leveling a quick process (nor an inherent benefit to rushing to the level cap), yet the leveling should not be so slow that players will feel a lack of progression.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

It was unfortunate that CoH made Skyway and IP so inferior to Steel and Talos, respectively, but Atlas and Galaxy were pretty well balanced to each other so one didn't seem overwhelmingly superior to the other. (And, honestly, I think the big reason people disliked Skyway and IP wasn't level range or mission sets, but the sheer difference in travel within the zones.)
Thinking out loud here... 12 zones across 30 levels, with 5 levels per zone gives us an initial level set of 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, and 26-30 with 6 zones left over. Double up the 1-5 zone and add 3-7, 8-12, 13-17, 18-22, and 23-27 makes 12 zones and you'll almost always have at least two zones in your level range: one where you're in the low half and one in the high half.
Change the overlap to two levels and you get 1-5, 4-8, 7-11, 10-14, 13-17, 16-20, 19-23, 22-26, 25-29, and 28-30, 10 zones with less overlap, though the last zone is a "runt" that could be hard to change to 28-32 later.

I feel pretty strongly that the longer distances in IP and Skyway were the reasons those zones were not as well populated as Steel and Talos. I alluded to it, but didn't actually state it. There are things to be said in favor of some larger zones as well. Talos wasn't exactly small, but most of the content was on the main island or that southern land mass. And part of the mystique of the Shadow Shard was the distance. I mean you are in a completely different dimension, it SHOULD be huge.

I like the big overlaps in your leveling scheme. And I don't believe there'd be as much difficulty adding the additional 2 levels to the 28-32 zone as you say. That content would just have to be written into the zone at creation, just not made available until the level cap is raised.

Another thing I'd like to see regarding zones is an extensive sewer system like Paragon City had. That would be a great place to put villain hideouts/lairs and would make an extensive zone or zones in its own right. I loved that you could travel from one of Paragon City to the other in the sewers alone.

Although at this point I'm afraid I've gone beyond the scope of this section of the board.

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Actually, if MWM is really

Actually, if MWM is really serious about their Law, Violence, Integrity scheme for Alignments (plural) ... why not run the Zones on those schemes as well?

1-10: Low Law, Medium Law, High Law
11-20: Low Law, Medium Law, High Law
21-30: Low Law, Medium Law, High Law

1-10: Low Violence, Medium Violence, High Violence
11-20: Low Violence, Medium Violence, High Violence
21-30: Low Violence, Medium Violence, High Violence

1-10: Low Integrity, Medium Integrity, High Integrity
11-20: Low Integrity, Medium Integrity, High Integrity
21-30: Low Integrity, Medium Integrity, High Integrity

That gives you 27 potential zones to work with (understanding that not all of them will be used by Launch, since some will get skipped). Each Zone has multiple neighborhoods in it, which can then vary on the other two axes for Law, Violence and Integrity so that even within a particular Zone you can get a variety of looks and environmental character to those parts of the city. So a place like Boomtown, for example, might be a Low Law (meaning law enforcement avoids the area, giving it over to the gangs and cults), High Violence (it's a "rough" neighborhood, enter at your own risk), that has a Medium Integrity (so some people keep their word, but others will gut you to take everything you've got if they can). You can then play off variations on that with the different neighborhoods of Boomtown, where some are more Violent than others, others are filled with gang wars that result in Low Integrity because there's internal feuding within the gangs themselves, and so on.

Or heck, if you just do the Law and Violence Zones and skip all the Integrity ones, that's still 18 potential Zones you can make, which ought to be PLENTY.

As for the notion of why Talos and Steel were so popular compared to Skyway and Independence Port ... you have to remember that in Talos, all of the NPC Vendor Stores were all conveniently located within a very short distance of each other. In fact, the Tech Store was the only one that was "far away" from all the others, and even then it was still pretty close to the Tram. Steel Canyon was more popular than Skyway for the simple reason that for a very long time it was the only zone where you could transfer between the Yellow Line Tram and the Green Line Tram, because at first, Skyway didn't have a second station at the south end of the zone. Independence Port ... well ... unless you were wanting to buy/sell Enhancements that were either Magic (Brickstown entrance), Science (Steel Canyon Entrance) or Mutant (not TOO far from the King's Row entrance), you basically weren't going shopping in Independence Port. Most people didn't even KNOW that there was a Tech Store in Independence Port (and I'll bet their "sales" figures were the worst of any location in the game!). Likewise the Natural Store and the Freedom Corps store on the north wall of the zone, were just so far away that most people forgot they were even there. And Skyway City was an okay place to visit ... but a chore to try and move around in and find things, since it suffered from a version of the Wedding Cake problem (especially when trying to find Mission Doors that were below street level!).


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Bellerophon
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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
It was unfortunate that CoH made Skyway and IP so inferior to Steel and Talos, respectively, but Atlas and Galaxy were pretty well balanced to each other so one didn't seem overwhelmingly superior to the other. (And, honestly, I think the big reason people disliked Skyway and IP wasn't level range or mission sets, but the sheer difference in travel within the zones.)
Thinking out loud here... 12 zones across 30 levels, with 5 levels per zone gives us an initial level set of 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, and 26-30 with 6 zones left over. Double up the 1-5 zone and add 3-7, 8-12, 13-17, 18-22, and 23-27 makes 12 zones and you'll almost always have at least two zones in your level range: one where you're in the low half and one in the high half.
Change the overlap to two levels and you get 1-5, 4-8, 7-11, 10-14, 13-17, 16-20, 19-23, 22-26, 25-29, and 28-30, 10 zones with less overlap, though the last zone is a "runt" that could be hard to change to 28-32 later.

I feel pretty strongly that the longer distances in IP and Skyway were the reasons those zones were not as well populated as Steel and Talos. I alluded to it, but didn't actually state it. There are things to be said in favor of some larger zones as well. Talos wasn't exactly small, but most of the content was on the main island or that southern land mass. And part of the mystique of the Shadow Shard was the distance. I mean you are in a completely different dimension, it SHOULD be huge.
I like the big overlaps in your leveling scheme. And I don't believe there'd be as much difficulty adding the additional 2 levels to the 28-32 zone as you say. That content would just have to be written into the zone at creation, just not made available until the level cap is raised.
Another thing I'd like to see regarding zones is an extensive sewer system like Paragon City had. That would be a great place to put villain hideouts/lairs and would make an extensive zone or zones in its own right. I loved that you could travel from one of Paragon City to the other in the sewers alone.
Although at this point I'm afraid I've gone beyond the scope of this section of the board.

I think the travel problems are exactly the cause of the popularity difference between Steel/Talos and Skyway/IP. In order to effectively get around Skyway, you needed to either have flight or teleport, and to get around IP, Superspeed or TP.

I played some of the arcs in Skyway and IP, and I actually liked them, but they were just so PAINFUL to get around that it was rare that I'd go there if I didn't have to.

Triplash
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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Change the overlap to two levels and you get 1-5, 4-8, 7-11, 10-14, 13-17, 16-20, 19-23, 22-26, 25-29, and 28-30, 10 zones with less overlap, though the last zone is a "runt" that could be hard to change to 28-32 later.

You wouldn't necessarily need to restrict that last zone to 28-30. It might not have the full range of content from the start, but it could well allow the enemies in the zone to continue up to level 32. For example, in CoH the player's level cap may have been 50, but there were zones where the enemies' level continued up to 54. Letting this last zone have enemies that will always be at least +2 to the player is a great way to maintain some challenge even to level-capped characters.

Also, as an interim gap-filler until the higher level content arrived, that zone could feature a random repeatable mission giver. Through the difficulty system or the contact itself, those repeatable missions could be set at either 30, 31, or 32, giving the character a continuous stream of things to do if they wish, and at their preferred rate of challenge. Of course any set of repeatable missions will eventually get... well, repetitious, but it would allow the character to continue collecting drops and currency without being reduced to fighting "greys". Sure, it's not as good as having new content to move on to, but it's much better than stopping completely.

There is no Triplash, only Zuul.

Cedd66
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Please let the final level

Please let the final level cap be 50 like COH it make it felt worth while to have a 50

Redlynne
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50 is just an arbitrary

50 is just an arbitrary "round" number.


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JayBezz
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The devs have said they want

The devs have said they want to expand to level 50 but the game will launch with 30 (at least at alpha and beta). The honest truth is that this is just an arbitrary number. What it represents in terms of gameplay is what matters and we wont know that until we know more about character development and mission structure.

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Brand X
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Level 30 in CoT could easily

Level 30 in CoT could easily made to be Level 50 in CoH. In terms of time, power strength or even both.

Could be a good way to give more power options early on.

oOStaticOo
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People tend to like big

People tend to like big numbers. The bigger they are the better it sounds. Again, as others have pointed out, it's just a number. It could just as easily be like WoW and end up with over 100.

I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!