Something I realized that we don't have is a list of places and themes we'd like for the bases we know we'll have access to. Small and grand, they're places for us to be safe from the worries of the world... and maybe engage in a little RP, when the situation calls for it. A part of the point of this thread is that these sorts of locations are much more understandable to get to or to have exist in the player space; they have outdoor areas, after all. Entering a sewer grate and coming out in a pocket dimension is a tad weird and contrived after all ;D
And so, that's what this thread is for. If you have an idea for something you'd like see as a personal or group abode, please, let us know here. It'll give the Devs a point of reference if they need ideas, and who knows, maybe your request will make it into the game! Be sure to include props and furniture pieces you think would fit with the locale you're going for.
I'll start us off with a few ideas of my own:
1. A personal library or study. This wouldn't be very hard, I think, as the furniture and props you need for it largely come down to a desk, maybe a couple bookshelves, and a few other things to fill out the space. A computer to place on the desk?
2. An underground temple. Soaring walls and high arches made of stone, buried below the City proper, maybe with lit candles, an altar, perhaps a statue that can be placed behind the Altar?
3. A gym/dojo. Mats on the floor for sparring, some weightlifting equipment, maybe a mirrored wall. Could even include a boxing ring if you really wanted to go for it.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
steampunk, dieselpunk, 50's retro sci fi, abandoned subway tunnel, warehouse, mansion, crappy apartment, biopunk
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Volcano lair
Creepy castle
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I would love to see a variety of bases with various locations and costs and benefits!
An extradimensional space floating in the void with subtle unsettling movements barely discernible in the distant darkness.
An asteroid base.
An laboratory hidden behind a secret door in a public building (library? train station?) hidden in plain sight.
A TMNT style sewer base.
A cave or forest grove deep within a park.
A slum apartment.
A ramshackle abode in a shantytown.
An entire floor (high up) of a skyscraper for a high roller feel complete with tons of decorative options, perhaps a receptionist and helipad access, the works.
A survivalist doomsday prepper bunker (think burt from tremors).
A nondescript bungalow in the suburbs.
I could do this for days. Ideas for bases are easy, what I'd love to see is a compelling reason to have them and even a reason to have more than one. They could be a significant IGC sink and cash store option providing a variety of gameplay benefits while still being wholly optional.
GTA online, while having many problems, is one example of how a variety of player bases can be desireable. Many of them provide different benefits and gameplay opportunities to offset their purchase and upkeep costs. While most of them open up new lucrative opportunities for players to make money they also tend to have mechanics that prevent or discourage players from spamming one certain activity type. This encourages players to work in groups so they can leverage each other's assets as well as diversify their own assets.
Treehouse
Underground bunker
Mom's basement
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Underwater lair
Swamp base ala old Legion of Doom HQ
MEANWHILE AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE type base.
It'd also be nice to have outside areas to bases.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Yes, this, a thousand times this. Any base (space, underwater, lovecraftian void, surrounded by lava or a blizzard) that is kind of in a bubble and lets you see amazing stuff outside. You could even have a variety of underwater locales. Tropical reef full of colorful critters. Pelagic open ocean with whales and big schools of fish, sunfish, sharks. Deep in the abyss with horrifying monstrosities lurking just outside your window, only visible when they light up their bioluminescence or your base spotlights pass over them.
Yes.
Totally. Both in the caldera and below it.
This totally. I don't know if it was your intent, but I am thinking of a cosmic aesthetic. But would you have an up and a down, with walls and floors and windows, or would it be a seeming endless expanse with "invisible walls" to keep us from getting lost?
I love this idea and we could play it serious or in a tongue-in-cheek retro-cold war fashion à la Fallout. Also think of [url=https://youtu.be/yQy-ANhnUpE]10 Cloverfield Lane[/url].
- I also like the idea of something that starts off as a rough-hewn cave complete with stalagmites and stalactites and still pools of unlit mineral water complete with blind fish, but then as you go in you see an industrial dock with a submarine, a grotto, and a luxurious habitation with exquisite asian or other high fashion decor.
- A base that looks like a funhouse/arcade with all the clownish accoutrements like maybe a room that is a house of mirrors. Maybe even include rooms that look like the inside of huge circus tents with large center poles, elephants, lions, tigers, and maybe even a trapeze.
- I think there will be some nature-lovers or even agents of nature as characters. So I would like to see a base that looks to be the inside of an enormous tree. We could claim it is "bigger on the inside" like the TARDIS or that we got smaller when we went in, or that the tree really is that big.
- Along those same lines, a hobbit-like abode with round doors and windows, a cozy fire and a stocked pantry would be a nice place to call home when I'm not scraping my knuckles on some thug's five o-clock shadow.
- I want to see an M.C. Escher inspired base that adjusts the force of gravity depending on which surface we stand on. Kind of like this:
[img=480x480]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jrMwUnvHvDg/maxresdefault.jpg[/img]
You're right. We could go on and on with ideas, and I hope MWM will encourage an aftermarket community to keep producing more and more.
[hr]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.
To be fair I hope they give us a ton of leeway to customize the inside of a base first. With enough props, wall options, etc you could make the base look like just about anything. This includes bases in crazy locales like space or underwater since that is basically just a wall choice. Having outdoor areas in bases would again be a matter of aesthetics and decoration since everything would be contained within one instance that is otherwise cut off from the world. With the right decorations, lighting, and wall options you could make areas look like anything from endless desert to a hidden jungle temple.
If base decoration is really modular and highly customizable they won't have to hand make a million different bases, we can do that ourselves. I know a few friends that would happily spend countless hours painstakingly designing and decorating their lair with chandeliers and the like. To some people house decorating and the character designer would be the most exciting parts of the game.
Individual base locations could still have unique benefits and opportunities tied to them even if we design them ourselves. Whether we make it look like a cave or a moon base could be up to us. I really hope this is the case! Players would love the ability to go nuts with base design, especially if bases are tied to interesting and useful game benefits. I cannot stress enough how much a seemingly minor feature like player housing can add to a game like this. Much like the character creator in CoX a well done player housing system can really draw players in as much or more than the core gameplay and open up tons of monetization opportunities.
I guess I have to change my vote for base themes to "let the players go wild with their imagination".
You could still have pre-made base themes available for people as well. You could even let players save their base design and publish it to show off or trade it to others (just the layout, the decorations themselves could be distinct items with options to automatically buy them as appropriate if desired or links to them on the auction house) so particularly creative players could play as professional designers. Lots of games (even the old CoX) showcase impressive player base creations, this could be a natural evolution of that. This is a major feature of the game Crossout as a modern example. That game is about making custom vehicles, not housing, but the idea is the same.
Since you're bringing to discussion back into the realm of "what they will give us" rather than mining our creative idea-space which is where I thought this thread was supposed to go; MWM has told us that both the mission generator and the base designer will be capitalizing on the dev's own design tools, but with more end-user oriented UI. So we should theoretically be able to reproduce any in-game environments for our bases.
Here's one quote from 2016 on the subject:
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/103202#comment-103202]
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[hr]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.
Penthouse apartment.
Several of my characters would have this.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Fireheart, you bring up a good perspective than grounds me: What would my characters have?
[i]Trap Spider[/i] would have a crazy workshop that looks like a cross between a high school shop class and a silicon valley clean-room. (yeah, quite the juxtaposition there) and it would probably be in an abandoned building somewhere.
[i]Harmony[/i] the gynoid wouldn't actually have a base of her own since she doesn't have any down time, but would probably keep going back to the lab where she was made for repairs and upgrades, until she gets into to a superteam, then she would want to hang out with her teammates in the team headquarters.
I could go on, but I guess my point is that the characters I have in my mind right now have kind of unremarkable base requirements when it comes to base design.
But one of the things I love about character design is you never know where the inspiration will come from. Sometimes it comes from a particular costume piece that you just build on until you get a cool concept. Sometimes it can be a power set choice, or an image we see somewhere. And sometimes, the inspiration comes from base design ideas. Just looking at some of the ideas people have put forth so far has already given me some character ideas. So keep them coming!
Edit: Another idea: A Victorian smoking parlor. Maybe a gentlemen's club with hunting trophies, or an erudite study lined with bookcases, or a colonial plantation with wicker, linens, gin and sunshine, or all of the above.
[hr]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.
A lot of the suggestions here were ones that Champions Online had. Moon bases, penthouses, mom's basement, volcano/cave base, magic mansion.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I want a base that's effectively an outdoor area but with invisible walls on the outside so that it's technically it's own instance, I want this with all sorts of landscapes, like the jungle, or a forest, or a desert, or even the moon.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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I have characters that would be most comfortable in a 'medieval' setting, and others who freely adapt to wherever they are, equally at home with stone benches, roman couches, or beanbag chairs. I have a couple of characters who would be almost indifferent to 'settings and circumstances'. Some, would be able to comfortably adapt, whether they were in a pub or a villain's volcano-lair, but the setting would definitely modify their behavior - Hmmm, do I order a pint, or summon Pele?
Be Well!
Fireheart
for the win
[hr]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.
I love that Escher idea...
But mostly I want an overgrown lighthouse on a forested and rocky coast with mountains in the background
More BC than Norway, though both would be brilliant
I want a cheap mobile home base. Single wide with a sign out in front: Titan City Investigations.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
A small home office type situation would be neat. Like Jessica Jones's apartment.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Forgive my ignorance, but what are the benefits of having personal bases beyond the aesthetic? I've never bothered, in any game that offered bases, to build a base. I never understood the reason.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
Having portals to multiple sections of the city is very convenient particularly to the characters with limited mobility.
This was my favorite feature.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
In CoX you could get a bunch of stuff for your bases. Like storage, a revive point, etc.
Usually games that have bases will put some QOL features in them.
I think Champions Online had tailors in theirs.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
For practical purposes, it wouldn't be difficult at all to set up a fast travel system out of your base, letting it act as a hub spot for you. Depending on the level of customization, you could have access to the auction house, personal storage, crafting stations (if the game has crafting), a duel area where you can bring your friends for a spar and let other people in the group watch, Costume designer, and likely more based on some unique features to CoT.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Travel benefits. Storage. Revival/healing/buff benefits. Crafting. Group organization/travel. Temporary powers. Ability to unlock new costume pieces.
These are all old news though, there is certainly more that can be done. Other games have expanded bases to actually open up entirely new gameplay opportunities. This could be new types of missions directly linked to the base itself like a defense mission (which sounds like a ton of fun if we can build base defenses, tower defense games are a very popular genre!) or acquiring resources / power sources etc to keep the place running which could be optional and give a discount on base upkeep.
Bases could also open up new missions of other kinds. Let's say you want to set up a crafting workshop in your base for a variety of benefits. There may be missions to convince talent to join your base (wizards? engineers?). You could have missions to acquire a variety of materials for them including rare stuff that involves taking on boss fights or sneaking into major faction bases.
You could have liasons and "party member" npcs from various factions that you invite to set up shop in your base for ease of access to a variety of benefits depending on what factions you are friendly with as well as having easy access to missions related to those factions.
GTA online is one example of a game that opens up lots of different gameplay benefits and mission content based on what base(s) you control and allows you to share the benefits and content access with your group members.
This is of course on top of the very basic and arguably most important aspect of player housing, simply that a lot of people like to have and decorate something cool and show it off. It is kind of like a second character creator in a way.
I'll pass on missions linked to bases.
I wouldn't mind being able to populate the base with NPCs, the Justice League Watchtower has staff after all (in the cartoon at least). And it could be a nice bonus for getting high rep with a faction. Get high rep and you get their NPCs for your base. Even if those NPCs just walked around and said hello to you, it'd still be neat.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
In CO my moon base has a tailor and bank access. It’s pretty handy. Plus it’s a high tech dome on the moon.
It’s also a handy way to teleport. If I’m in Lemuria and want to go to Millennium City, I have 3 choices. One is to travel back to the submarine, zone in, then use the submarine to go to Monster Island, then from there take a jet. Or I can use a limited-use teleport item which isn’t free and takes up inventory space. Or the last option is teleport for free directly to my base then from there directly to the city. The base is maybe the biggest QOL change I experienced in my whole time playing that game.
I remember doing that to get back to MC.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
The key is to make them optional and make it feel like a bonus, not a punishment or requirement. You're right, if you can only do THE COOL THING (tm) by buying something for your base, it would feel like a punishment. But making it easier to do that cool thing? Reducing a cooldown on it, making it cheaper, making it easy to access? People like that. You can work with that in such a way that bases feel like you get your time and money's worth for your investment while still being optional.
People *love* building up personal spaces, decorating them, showing them off to friends, and defending them from baddies. There are entire genres of games that do nothing but this.
The Sims was a good game.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Before we derail this thread any further, you may want to check out the [b][url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/uses-base]Uses for a Base[/url][/b] thread, which is one of the threads that deal with your question specifically.
[hr]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.
Thanks Huckleberry. Lots of good stuff in that thread.
I didn't see base defense stuff mentioned in there though so I guess this thread has that to add.
I think CoX had PvP base fights? But PvE base defense could be super fun.
They tried to have PvP base fights, but I don't think it worked right.
It'd be neat to be able to have missions -in your base- that you could get the whole Super Team in on. Badguys/alien vermin/robots have over run the base, defeat them! A badguys infiltrated the base and now there's a bug somewhere inside, find it! Etc. All controlled by the Super team leader(s) of course, as in they'd decide when to have a base event. Having them be random would suuuck.
So I'd be on board with PvE base stuff.
Possibly also/just being able to save your base layout(s) so they could be used in Player generated content.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
By the same token, if you're on a mission, invade the bad guys' base, and like what you see, why couldn't you Take it. or at least take pictures to give to your own base architect? What if that was the mission? Clear the bad guys and move in to your new base?
Be Well!
Fireheart
Apparently base building in CoT will utilize the same stuff as mission building so it's possible you can take pictures and replicate a layout.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Which I believe uses the same underlying systems and assets as dev made missions, just a different UI or user facing tools.
They worked fine, but it became nearly pointless once they removed Items Of Power from the game, which the acquisition of was the end-goal of base raids. After their subsequent removal, it was only the PvP aspect that people continued to do it on an extremely rare basis.
Interesting. Please elucidate. Why were they removed?
Well, the Items of Power were obtained by doing the Cathedral of Pain trial. The Cathedral of Pain trial was removed because there was an XP exploit discovered. And since everyone couldn't get access to Items of Power due to their removal, the devs removed them from everyone else that had them already. Eventually, and we're talking quite a few years later, the trial was made available again (sans exploit of course) but Items of Power were no longer the reward from them. But by that point, we had the Invention System and (I think, if memory serves) the Incarnate System, so you really didn't need them anymore anyway.
Base Raids were Supergroup vs Supergroup PvP events that the invading group is trying to defeat the other SG with the goal of getting the IoP. There was even a very expensive base plot that had strong defense design in mind when it came to base raids, with chokepoints and the like. I also remember there being an event on another server hosted by a SG that managed to somehow not have their IoP removed. They invited people to transfer and get in one last series of base raids for the badge(s) associated with it. There was an extensive turn-out for it as it was (at the time) the only shot at getting those badges.
Neat. I can see why the idea didn't quite catch on. While group pvp can be fun it is usually better done in games built for it, so perhaps PvE base missions would be better received.
Planning and building defenses and defending with friends against waves of baddies is fun.
Fighting waves of baddies with friends is always fun. Hopefully we can get some team hold out style missions in CoT. It would work really well for villain stuff too, fight off the police till the safe cracker gets into the vault!
Then there's always the comic book staple of "you've been transported to some sort of gladiatorial arena, fight to survive!" Which could be a number of waves followed by or interspersed with boss fights.
Actually I'd just like that last one as a mission/trial anyway. Have differing versions of like 5/10/15/20 etc waves and of course adjustable difficulty. Just characters (heroes and villains alike) get transported to some alien wackjob's arena, where they need to fight for their freedom, facing the arena champions!
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
[img]https://i.imgur.com/BmciMaE.jpg[/img]
CoH/V had something like that, it was pretty nifty.
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Summer_Blockbuster_Event_2012 : Time Gladiator
I don't recall the xp exploit, I thought the exploit had to do with having multiple of them? Eh, it's been so long, but I do remember being part of a SG that had so many of them! :)
It wasn't just an xp exploit, it was inf/prestige as well. Basically you could turn in the same mission over and over again (until the trial timer ticked away) getting a decent xp and inf/prestige bonus. It was doubly bad because every team member (up to 24 of them) could turn in the mission and receive that bonus as many times as they wanted. The exploit allowed players to PL level 1 characters to max in a couple hours, ruin the SG ranking system and absolutely destroy the player market.
It was the worst exploit the game had ever seen and the only reason why it didn't break the game was because in order to use it you needed to meet a lot of prerequisites and you had to restart every 60 minutes.
Yeah among the prerequisites was needing a base capable of holding an IOP. Quite an expensive proposition under the initial base system. To help give context on how difficult, I played on Victory server which was in the middle of the pack for population. To have the OPTION to pursue base PvP on Victory, your SG had to be on the "Top 100" list. (The Top 100 was a publicly available ranking based only on the amount of prestige [SG currency] earned.)
Being that I was an avid base builder, and have never really cared for PvP, I was A-OK when they stopped supporting base pvp, because that allowed them to get rid of the pathing restrictions for base item placement.
Ideally, if anything like base pvp is included in CoT, they add a simple toggle for base owners when you can set PvP to OFF and any restrictions there might be on bases due to unfair player interaction or whatever will be turned off as well.
Such restrictions (and toggles controlling them) could be used for PvE base focused content too if that is pursued. A toggle is a solid idea. Some people just want a place to decorate and chill out.
While toggles and options are generally good, on this point it's moot. The devs have said for a long while there will be no base PvP.
Even if there is never base PvP we could still have base PvE. It would make for an interesting feature at some point in the future when they are on solid ground and looking to add variety to the game instead of "here is one more zone with largely identical gameplay".
That won't be the case for quite some time though.
If there is the possibility of PvP in user-generated content, then all that is needed to have the effect of Base PvP is to copy your base into the UGC editor, set victory conditions, and invite your adversaries. Tweak as needed to get more adversaries.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
I don't think we even need to wait after launch for 'base' pve. Base construction will use the same map tools that mission building will use. All we would need is a save function and we can transport our base into the mission creator and set up our own missions with our bases as the map.
Also, the devs have spoken about allowing players to design pvp scenarios using the same tools so with a save base layout feature we might not even have to wait long for base pvp.
Making user made content that looks like your base is fine but not nearly as engaging or user friendly as having a premade "base defense" gameplay option. Not only is that easier for a player to access with less learning curve and effort required but it is presumably balanced and tuned by the devs for a good experience.
In addition, defending your living room isn't terribly exciting. I was thinking more along the lines of having base building options that actually mattered for defense (traps, turrets, guards, doors, shields, whatever). Someone mentioned in a previous comment that CoX limited what you could place in your base specifically because decorative items could be abused for defensive purposes such as piling furniture in a doorway to block it off, and that limitation irritated people that were strictly concerned with decoration.
So having such limitations on a toggle means the best of both worlds, flip it off and you can decorate any way you want but you can't do missions with your base until you flip it back (which requires the base setup to be legal and should probably highlight whatever isn't).
I'm fairly certain I joined CoX after base PvP was 'a thing', or at least Items of Power, so I can't remember if a rather neat variation on the toggle system comes from there or another game (don't think I dreamed it).
The concept is you set 'windows of opportunity' for base attacks, from as little as 'an hour or two on a Saturday night' to 24/7. The broader you make the window, the more some benefit or benefits of the base are increased. I'm fairly sure you got a few minutes to respond to alarms when your defences are first penetrated, too. That way a giant superteam with players in multiple time zones can have a huge window. A few friends who play together or a solo lair can have a very small one that you know you're going to be on line for.
Note that this approach would work for both base PvP (which as noted above has been stated as a 'Won't happen' feature) and base PvE.
There's a bunch of balance considerations to make sure the 'increased rewards' scale proportionately and are diluted by numbers in the superteam (or there becomes a definite mechanical advantage to belonging to a giant superteam) but it struck me as an excellent attempt to preserve the 'do we stop what we're doing to go defend home base?' dilemma while ensuring there are actually some defenders around when these events happen.
I don't know how relevant to CoT the concept is, but I thought it was quite a clever idea at least so it stuck in my mind. No experience of the implementation though.
The window of opportunity works for PvP (lots of game do this, especially survival pvp games) but it would suck for PvE. If you want to do a PvE mission you don't want to have to wait for it. You want to do it when you are on, right now. You don't walk up to a quest giver and have him tell you "great come back in a week" because the immediate response of the player would be "great time to uninstall". You also wouldn't want a base defense PvE mission going off while you are offline and having your base get trashed without you.
It'd be neat to just have bases with windows, you know?
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
But my concept base wouldn't have a base! It's under a parking structure! I need cameras to the outside :)
Since we're getting something similar to the tools used to create the zones and game content for base building it stands to reason that our base building will be nearly as interesting and full of choices as our character creation, and as more content is added both should grow. Windows and outdoor environments with natural or invisible walls should be easy. I'm sure rocks and trees and water and such will already have been created for the game in one of the zones.
They will likely both be pretty robust at launch and get better from there. I can't wait to decorate heroic halls of justice and villainous lairs.
My only questions at this point is what kind of non-decorative perks and utilities we can build and if we'll get pve base defense gameplay, but that is something that doesn't really need to even be considered for a while until the core game is completely fleshed out.
'Garden' in an environment I'd like to have in/for my base. Also 'Forest' and 'Beach'.
Be Well!
Fireheart