One of the core things that CoH got right (other than a classic Silver/Bronze Age look and feel, and truly Heroic feeling movement and action) was that, while it was in essence a Theme Park game, it FELT free and open like a Sandbox game.
I think this was due to:
1) The freedom of choice in both look and playstyle
2) The vast, engaging, and open-ended Lore/Story that you could participate in or totally ignore, at your preference
3) Multiple truly huge maps/zones with interesting, sometimes hidden content that you could freely explore
CoT's emphasis on the Character Creator, Lore, and Power/Playstyle Versatility seems to be fulfilling the first two criteria admirably, but I have to wonder if the single city/zone world will be big enough for the third.
Many on these forums have expressed the feeling that "empty zones" are bad (I loved the Shadow Shard, First/Night Ward, etc., and spent untold hours there exploring and weaving them into my backstories), but I hope that of our City of Titans will exist within a much, much larger world that is open and rewarding to exploration.
By the way, this whole "vast world to explore" thing has gotten a lot of serious attention in newer games--some using procedural areas and even entire procedural worlds. So it IS a "thing", and it's an up-and-coming thing that any next-gen game has to at least take into consideration.
I guess, in a way, the success of a game all comes down to fun time-sinks.
And free character creation in regards to look and playstyle to fiddle with, personal storytelling within and outside of game lore, and the ability to spend time ingame doing things other than just "playing" (like RP or simply exploring), help provide these ON TOP OF actually "playing the game."
So... do you agree that CoH had a faux Sandbox feel? Was it important to the spirit of the game? If so, what does CoT need to be sure to do to have it? And what key, fun time-sinks should this create?
Hope this generates useful discussion! Thanks!
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
City of Heroes began as more of a sandbox, I think. In the first year or two, people did street sweeping a lot. You used to go to the Atlas Park - Perez Park junction, on the Perez side, to look for teams at a certain level. Then the Steel - Boomtown spot for that zone, etc. After a while, it morphed into a game where you did more TFs and trials, or more soloing, making it more of a theme park.
I'd like to see CoT have more to do in the outdoor areas than CoX had. In CoX, you basically had mobs that spawned to street seep, or maybe a kill quota mission to do and that was about it. GW2 has opened my eyes to a whole new world of limited, smaller events to do that fire off every hour or two and you can get sucked into them really easily. At any given time in that game, there are like a dozen different event chains you can jump into, and there will generally be people there doing them most of the time. Some of these events are bigger ant more lucrative than others, and can tend to take over the zone when they happen (like the Octovine in Auric Basin, fires every 2 hours, has some prelim events to do , the whole chain lasts like 30 min, and nobody can find anyone to do other stuff in that zone while it's happening). Those events also require more people to do them successfully, so they need that to make them doable in the first place really.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think something that contributed to CoX feeling more sandbox was that it had multiple zones for many level ranges, and multiple storylines within most of those zones(generally tied to character Origin), so it was possible to play multiple characters through the game and get wildly different experiences (beyond just the individual playstyle). You got the sense that you were "going somewhere new" and "Doing something different" even though you were following a relatively linear progression.
Sidekicking also contributed to this, because by joining a higher level team you got to experience content out of order. Each overall story arc was still linear, but if you played 5 story arcs it was possible to experience them in completely differing orders. You might do 1, 2, 3, 4, then 5. You might do them 4, 2, 1, 3, 5. You might do them 1, 5, 2, 4, 3. Or any number of possible permutations.
Too often in games, every character does the same thing. Follows the same storyline. Plays the same way. It just feels "been there, done that" no matter what you do.
I think with the alignment system and different mission outcomes, we could really get a themepark that never plays the same twice. And if they keep mission arcs to five missions and less, then it really will be a sandbox feel, too.
It would be like the new format of prime time dramas where you could have standalone 1-hour episodes, or maybe some two-or three episode arcs, but there would be some hints and views of a bigger plot hiding in the background.
CoT could be like that.
[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.
If CoT had less indoor missions, private instances, etc and more outdoor missions, not just kill quotas, but stuff you can start and finish in the shared outside world, I think that would be good. GW2 is like that. Leveling a toon generally means staying in the outside world and doing all the content in the sandbox, then when at the level capo, you do a lot of other stuff, but still the outdoor stuff too.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Champions also had super villains randomly spawn, like Armadillo showing up in the middle of the street.
A good stable of villains is what every super game needs.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
I think there is a lot of truth to this.
[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 big enough sandbox allows for multiple theme parks to exist concurrently.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I'd personally like a mixture of both. I like how personal indoor missions made for you and the team. Once in the mission you were sucked into whatever situation you were in, whether it was caves, taking down the Archanos army. I don't always want a hundred people around doing nothing or interfering with the plot of the story that I am immersed in. Sometimes it's nice, but not something I would want 100%
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
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Honestly I'm very pro-instance because I hate a lot of factors with open world quests:
1) competing with other players for those "Kill 20 rats" quests
2) fighting the mobs standing by/guarding the chest/resource/glowie/etc just to watch some ass swoop in and steal it
3) having to fight all the way across a map full of mobs so that i can click a glowie, then turn around and all those mobs have respawned and now I have to fight my way all the way back out*
4) griefers
*admittedly less an issue with games that provide travel powers
In GW2 (my new catch phrase!) everyone gets to loot the treasure chest after the boss goes down. And the game drops treasure from the sky on people directly too, in many cases. So you can't steal anyone else's loot. That's the system I'd want.
And I'm not saying to get rid of indoor missions. Just to have less of that and more of the fun, different outdoor stuff like GW2 has. GW2 HAS indoor stuff for soloer and for teams. There's the personal story, the various Living World missions, and the Fractals and Dungeons. I'm not saying to ditch that stuff, just that if you have to make fewer indoor missions in order to free up designer time to make more outdoor stuff, I would do that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Yeah, I've played GW2 a good amount, I do like that loot/resources are handled on a per player basis. I wish more games behaved in this manner, sadly games that do are still a tiny minority.
Like Oath, I prefer instances, but I do agree with Radiac that more of a balance between instanced and open than CoH had would probably be best for the game. So, +1 to mixture like Kiyori said.
You know, I just remembered I saw CoH described somewhere--maybe Metacritic? or something--as being a "Theme Park with Sandbox elements". Guess that was true enough.
CoH was per-player based loot too basically, right? So I'd figure that's what MWM is going to do at least for the most part.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Agreed, though I prefer the more personalized instances. That said open world events can be really fun at times.
I believe so. None of this "Need or Greed" competition between players.
I think when it comes to rewards, there will be a large number of individual events that drop treasure on you in a game like this, no matter what. CoX didnt have looting of bodies, maybe this game won't either, maybe it will, I don;t really care. In any event, you'll have a lot of individual "you got treasure" moments happening to you. You have to then limit the quality of those rewards to some extent.
In GW2, they have a "Daily Game Reset" that happens every day at like 7pm Eastern Daylight Time (was 8pm EST until last week, the game doesn't do Daylight Savings). So when this happens, any treasure chests you opened before the reset are now re-set and can be opened again, but you'll have to redo the event or whatever that you had to fight to get at them again too. There are many events that happen like every 2 hours, but can only dump the really good rewards on you once per day, like Tequatl the daily dragon, etc. In the Octovine raid, there are like 29 treasure chests you get to open in Tarir at the end, during the treasure-palooza part, those all reset every 2 hours with the event, but the one really good item you usually get (Amalgamated Gemstone) will only drop once per day. It will definitely drop the first time you loot the treasure rooms, out of one of the 29 chests, but it will only drop once per daily reset. So if you didn't log on at all Monday, you could log on early in the afternoon on Tuesday and do the Octovine raid and get the Alamgamated Gemstone drop, then wait for the Tuesdsay night reset and do it again after 7pm and get that drop again, but you can't get that item drop again until after the Wednesday night reset.
I think that's a good way to do that. Also, the "Daily Log-in Rewards" are dropped at reset time, or when you log in, if you log in after the reset. Also, the Daily Bonus Rewards (extra treasure you get for doing specific content du jour) reset to a new menu at that time as well. It's like having a Veteran Reward not for months of sub time, but for each and every day you log in, and then also getting a menu of like 4 Weekly Strike Targets that changes every 24 hours.
None of that is insanely valuable, but the stuff that resets, like the Tequatl raid, can drop some very rare stuff occasionally, on you, but only once per day does that drop possibly happen.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Isn't that 'once per day, Per Character'? I suppose the top-end raids might be account-based, but since I never do those, I wouldn't know. In my experience, one can do the 'Shadow Behemoth' (for instance) on one character, and then do it again with a different character, and get the big chest each time. In fact, I suspect there are players who do just that, run a character around the giant monster events and then switch characters and repeat.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Something nobody bit on in my original post is that I am wondering if the planned world will be "physically" (or, I guess, virtually) big enough to give that open, exploratory feel that CoH had. CoH was pretty decent size even at launch and it just kept growing zone by zone for it's entire run.
The three things I cited that I thought helped contribute to giving CoH that "Sandbox" feel were 1) freedom and versatility of look and playstyle (check!), 2) a large, engaging, and, most importantly open-ended lore to interact with (check again!), and 3) a large, open world to explore (less sure about this one).
Now, two out of three ain't bad (it's actually pretty awesome), but I do know MWM is limited in resources and it makes me wonder if City of Titans will actually feel more like "just a city" than City of Heroes did.
Not trying to be pessimistic, because, as I said, two out of three are looking amazing, and that's already awesome. But I wonder what the actual size/zone count will be at launch and if the plans are for it to grow--and if so how much of a priority those plans are?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I think I can assure you that it will be very large. Most zones I think will be comparable in size to IP in COH. There is an old update with a rough map of the city and the zones. Each of the zones is planned to be open to the next with no loading or "live loading" between the zones. IE no loading screens. I think they said something like there will be 15sq miles of explorable area (maybe not right away but eventually). This is similar to SWG where each planet was like a 20km square. Even with a speeder it took 10-15minutes to travel from one town to the next. To the point where they could have shuttles come every 10 minutes and still be faster than hoofing it. They also plan to have only a single server so hopefully there will always be people around and you'll never be on a "dead" server.
Does that help?
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Yep :D. That sounds pretty great. Three for three!
I'm also curious about their plans for non-contiguous zones--like in other parts of the country, world, or even the solar system or multiverse--but I'd assume that's more for post-launch.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I'm sure they've mentioned that they have at least looked into it, but as you say it is a post-launch issue.
Wouldn't really be a "proper" superhero setting without at least one space and/or oceanfloor zone. :P
They did mention that there will be two places where "travel" could occur. The first is the airport. The second is the scientific campus. At launch these places may not have that capability but they offer room to thematically add remote location travel to the game at a later date. And like COX there's always the possibility to drop a mission door on a truck and load a remote instance and "ignore" the travel portion of the travel.
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I can't put my finger on why, but I really liked the Gold Side sewers. I hope CoT someday has a similar feel to their underground zones too.
maybe it was the build up of anticipation, as you traveled down a poorly lit curvy train tunnel, with the visibility diminished in the distance, seeing if a pack of feral transmorphed dog like beings would leap out and attack you any second. And You, would head straight into the darkness, looking to face them, risking your own well being, where others might fear to tread. *BOOO!* ;D
Me too!!!
I LOVED the goldside sewers. Genuinely spooky and fun as hell. And I HATED (read--LOVED) those damned ghouls! They were an enemy I truly respected and at times feared. When at a low level, they were tough and creepy as hell. It's the way they moved and fought.
I remember a lot of people, or at least a vocal minority, really disliking "gold side" (thought there were always people around when I went there). I liked it fine, and was glad it was there to enlarge both the lore to interact/integrate with and the physical world to explore.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)