The over-arcing theme behind many of our current threads is about xps and how fast they can be earned. Some of these conversations deal with specifics like AoEs and how effective they should be and so on. However they all come down to the same things: What is considered FUN and how can we promote player fun without allowing teams to roll over enemies and thereby level far too fast? As a sidecar topic to this: How do we keep AoE damage/effects from dominating the game versus ST damage/effects?
I have an idea that comes to me from Left 4 Dead known as The Horde. In that game when the team is doing well, most of them have full or nearly full Health, lots of ammo and first aid kits then the game will send a rampaging horde of zombies at the party. I'd like to explore this as a mechanic for CoT.
If a team is having trouble coping, many of them low on Health and End, some of them down, Powers in mid-recharge then no additional spawns will appear. However if a team is rolling too well, most or all of them with full Health and End, most of their Powers Recharged and ready to fire, additional mobs will spawn. As an optional idea, instead of spawning MORE mobs how about if the existing mobs had more Lts and/or Bosses?
All of this would be adjustable with the Difficulty Slider as usual. On Easy, this option could be disabled completely. Higher Diff would result in larger and more frequent mobs, more Lts/Bosses or both.
This idea struck me just this morning so this idea is very rough but I think it bears looking at.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Okay, so would this additional spawn act as a patrol, or would it be targeted on the group, like an ambush? Besides group health, what other triggers would there be? And what sort of warning, if any, would the team get?
Be Well!
Fireheart
I was thinking of an ambush since this would not be triggered if the team was doing well. I was thinking of the trigger being wqeighted by current Ht level, Current End level and current level of Recharge (this last one is optional) because if you have someone spamming Heal AoEs and the team's health is good but they're all exhausted then they're not very effective in combat are they?
As I said, this idea is rough. However I like the idea that teams that roll well can dial up the challenge while teams having a rough go of it can throttle back a bit.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
This idea makes no sense to me in a context of a City of Heroes styled MMORPG. If you're talking about the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead_2#The_AI_Director_2.0]AI Director[/url] used in Left 4 Dead, that's something which essentially requires a "go from here to there" style of mission play and scripting which isn't necessarily applicable to a City of Heroes styled game environment, simply because Missions are rarely set up as a "run for your life" style thing (or at least, rarely were). I can only imagine that this sort of feature could be used on pre-designed instanced maps that have all of the features enabled and laid out by the Developers, creating a truly massive content multiplier factor in terms of what needs to be successfully QAed to verify a lack of bugs.
This is the kind of feature you'd need to build the game around from the ground up. In this case, I have a hard time understanding how you'd be able to make this work in City of Titans.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I'm going to address your points a bit out of order so you'll forgive me:
The setting is irrelevant IMO. In most instanced missions you have the Team moving into what amounts to 'enemy territory.' The form of the enemy makes no difference.
The number of enemies is usually adjusted by the size of the Team and the Diff setting. My idea would require that the game track the Team's Health and End but that's all. If either of these things drops below a certain trigger point the ambushes stop. If they rise above that point the ambushes start again. A certain timer could be set so that if the Ht/End factor stayed above the trigger point for too long it spawns another ambush.
As for QA, yes it would be more intensive but not overly so. In instanced maps in CoH the spawns didn't appear until a character actually breached the 'fog of war' and could see the spawn. This is why Stalkers would often race ahead to spawn the entire map. I don't see this as being any different.
Within the context of the genre, I see this as the enemy piling on the team in an attempt to overwhelm them...plain and simple. If the enemy is not making a dent, they might throw in more forces, hoping to wear down the team through attrition. Mechanically speaking, it's a way to provide an additional layer of challenge in any mission as opposed to having to script specific patches of enemies for specific missions.
As I have already sid, this is a rough idea. The original concept is to provide one possible counter to some of the fear that certain mixes of powers (namely massed AoE) will be powerful enough to steamroll the content. My idea would adjust for how well the team is doing at any particular moment. If two members of the team drop and suddenly they're hard-pressed, the spawns return to normal. If they're rolling over the enemy then more enemies are added.
I'm not sure about the makeup of the spawns (i.e. adding additional Lts and Bosses to existing spawns) but I'm certain this can be coded in.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
One thing that would make this a really Bad idea, is if the team wanted to 'Pause for RL'. Call a short break in their progression for bio and whatnot. Under this system, the team would be ambushed just for standing still.
Rather than calling the idea 'bad' and dismissing it, let's take a moment and discuss the problem or issue that this mechanism is supposed to address. Can you define that? Is this just a way to toss more XPs into the grinder?
Be Well!
Fireheart
Supporting Fireheart here, I agree that I just don't see the purpose behind doing such a thing in the context of the game we're wanting to play here. It makes sense in Left 4 Dead which is essentially set up to operate as a kind of "pressure cooker" where you're supposed to have the sense of needing to keep moving because "the zombies are out to eat our brains!" and all that jazz. For a game where the idea is to "pressure" your Players into action, the AI Director system has a lot of merit to it.
The thing is, City of Heroes was never set up for that kind of "pressure" type of mission environment ... except for the Timed Missions (and even then, most of the timers were so long it was rare for them to be a factor). Indeed, the only Timed Mission that I can remember being problematic due to time pressure was the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Tina_Macintyre/Flashback#Secure_network_in_lab_-_10:00]10 minute Tina Macintyre[/url] storyarc mission in Peregrine Island, which got revamped to remove the timer. That's pretty much it for "pressure" missions that I can think of in City of Heroes (and it was more annoying than fun because completion of it essentially required Stealth and/or Phasing in order to complete it in time).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Remember how some complained about Praetoria being difficult? I liked it :p
I would say toughen up the bosses/elite bosses compared to what they were in CoH, AVs need to be built to be tough, but able to be soloable if the player invests into the build, and then things like COSMIC RANK (from CO) should be what giant monster should've been in CoH. Going to need multiple heroes!
This is of course assuming equal or greater level.
But when I get to that Cosmic rank/giant monster level...giant monsters should be GIANT! In CO, those giant robots look like they would tower over all the giant monsters in CoH :p
Cosmic/Giant Monsters should be steps above AV, but those types of heroes/baddies that require many to take down. This should be the Superman who villains will need to gang up on. This should be Godzilla level monster. This should be Galactus!
Even Elite Bosses should be a bit of work. Not "oh I have my powers slotted with SOs, so I should beable to do it" EB level should be "A little bit of investment or some proper power choices for this EB"
I don't think the core idea (additional spawns to add challenge for teams who are "too good" for the current threat) is particularly bad... I like the idea, honestly....
To me, it's sort of what I always expected out of "difficulty settings" in COX and CO... and I have always been grumbly about easily portioned out mob groups waiting to get pulled or kited or steamrolled or whatever....
One of the best times I ever had in one of the superhero games was during the Champs beta when the Necrul dungeon was broken and was spawning zombies like crazy, or more recently when a Mr. Gemini dockside dust up goes crazy and spawns his clones like mad!
There should be a sense of "impending threat" (what Red calls "pressure") in most instanced missions, imo... even if that isn't how it played out in COX, it's how it SHOULD have played out.... that's how it is in comics...
either it's a "sneak around and see what's going on" infiltration mission into an enemy base//complex//country//whatever....
or it's an assault, and all of COBRA!!!!!'s forces storm the heroes who fight through all but impenetrable waves trying to get to the bad guy//doomsday device//human sacrifice before the worst comes to pass...
we HAVE patrols. those are "passive", so to speak... they involve the player tackling threats s/he knows s/he can handle (or is willing to try)
I would personally love to see a sense of danger exist in ALL instanced missions..... but more realistically, i really REALLY wish there was a means to "turn on" such a horde-like system... like Easy/normal/hard/extreme.... and then Easy-HC/Normal-HC/Hard-HC/Extreme-HC
hell, it wouldn't even bother me if "horde spawns" only provided half or quarter (or less) experience, that they existed as a means of changing game dynamic, not gaining more XP.
I don't know, I'm all for a system or adjustment to the status quo that carries over the "sense" of the horde idea in some way. I think it's really neat. (and this from a guy who HATES "challenges"... I like being a god of war, like a max-level general in dynasty warriors!)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
To begin, I never intended for this to be a way to just earn more xp and I resent that implication.
I wanted to cite the source of the idea but I never intended to turn CoT into a pressure-cooker game. Kind of wish we'd acknowledge the L4D source and move on without getting stuck on that theme.
Now as to the reasoning: Anyone remember being on a really good team and just rolling over anything? Yeah, I do too...it was a blast. Then it started to get a bit dull...too easy. But what if you're already at the +4/x8 setting? Or what happened when your team is rolling and two of them drop? Then it gets tougher...sometimes a lot tougher. You guys wanna stop and reset to a lower Diff or try to rebuild the team? More like as not the team came apart.
But what if you could adjust the difficulty of a mission in the middle as the team moved on? What if the team was doing really well...so well that they just get BURIED in enemies to keep the challenge high? On the flip side, what if you were down 3 guys and getting pasted? You could handle the spawns...slowly...but any sort of ambush would be too much? A lot of discussion going on right now is looking at AoE and whether they're OP or not. Maybe they are...for a normal-sized spawn. But what if a swarm comes in and the AoE can't HIT everyone? Not so OP now are they?
I hit upon the idea as a way to enable good teams to stay challenged. If a team is doing poorly they won't get jumped. If they WANT to roll easily then turn off the ambushes. It was a way to keep tension high if that's what the players want.
However, a good point was brought up. What if the team is taking a bio? Not fair to get ambushed for that. So what if the ambushes were not spawned in any zones that had been 'cleared', only new areas where there are still spawns active?
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Would something like that be difficult to manage, code-wise... to define what is a "cleared area" and what is an area with "mobs still in it" ?
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
At that point, all you're doing is setting up trip wires that induce extra spawns (presumably ambushes). Enter a particular region of map to trigger ambush.
The point about XP essentially flows from the fact that if you're (voluntarily by difficulty setting) doing extra "work" defeating extra Foe NPCs, the expectation is that you're going to be getting "paid" for going to that extra trouble ... which means Loot, Inf and XP (otherwise, why bother?).
Although this sort of thing could be made to work for a particular type of instanced mission, where it comports with some kind of story driven context, I really don't see much of a point for it as something to be used generally in all instanced missions. Heck, you'd be able to achieve much the same sort of an effect just by respawning groups of Foe NPCs on a timer after their group has been defeated, and then writing the mission to be a sort of "fight your way in, then fight your way out" sort of task and setup.
Also, don't forget the "cockroach" phenomenon of Freakshow getting back up after having been defeated, allowing you to win "double prizes" for defeating them twice.
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With regard to coding I have no clue how tough it would be. I just like the idea.
With regard to the point in all instanced missions: Remember all those scenes in the comics where hordes of bad guys are boiling down the hall and the team is rucking up for one last charge? Yeah...that's what I'm thinking about.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Okay, it seems like you're trying to address the possible 'this is too easy' factor of missions that may already be set to the highest difficulty. I've never had that happen to me, unless I had already out-leveled the content.
It seems like this would be a feature you would want to activate when you're already half-way into a mission instance. I could definitely see a 'double the spawns' thing, maybe a 'spawn more patrols' option. It might make sense to either 'make all the enemies +1' or 'make the Team -1 level'. I'm just uncomfortable with the idea of the game deciding to toss random ambushes at me, because I'm not being challenged enough.
Because, from a different PoV, if the team is steamrollering because they're really good, then that fact is a Reward for being 'really good'. "Hey, remember that time we just blew right through that TF on 'ultimate-hard' setting? Damn, we were SO Good that night!"
Hmm, Ouroboros missions let us choose to add restrictions on the team, in exchange for some benefits. Would being able to do that 'on the fly' suit your purpose?
Be Well!
Fireheart
I think the op was considering something more organic..... in that the game would respond, self-regulate to some degree, to your competency....
for myself, i'd just want a way to feel like a godling, mowing through untold masses of minions and lieutenants who came after me in a rush, rather than waiting around to die. i'm not looking for difficulty, so much as epic awesome ;P
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
+1