Announcements

Join the ongoing conversation on Discord: https://discord.gg/w6Tpkp2

Please read the current update for instructions on downloading the latest update. Players with Mac versions of the game will not be affected, but you will have a slightly longer wait for your version of the new maps. Please make a copy of your character folder before running the new update, just to make sure you don't lose any of your custom work.

It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.

To purchase your copy of the City of Titans Launcher, visit our store at https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/ A purchase of $50 or more will give you a link to download the Launcher for Windows or Mac based machines.

Giant Monster Attacks

30 posts / 0 new
Last post
FloatingFatMan
FloatingFatMan's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 9 months ago
kickstarter
Joined: 10/07/2013 - 10:28
Giant Monster Attacks

A core tenet of comic books throughout history has always been attacks of giant monsters or invaders. Huge events that take multiple heroes to deal with.

City of Heroes had them, but they were always very much a lame duck, with the monster location being pretty static and them being of no threat to the city really.

What I would like is a much bigger event, rare to happen but quite damaging in its effects. The monster should be:

a) Giant. I mean really giant. If it's not towering above at least SOME buildings, it ain't a giant!

b) Mobile. It must move through the city, trashing the place as it goes!

c) City damage! It means more models, but the city should change to show damage and then after the attack, slowly be repaired over time. Perhaps even additional graphics to show construction in progress. If the event is monthly in RL, take a week to fix it up, which should work out to several weeks in game time.

d) If PC heroes aren't responding, then NPC heroes should. You should have some of the big ones there anyway as well as police and maybe military with helicopters and jets, just like in the comics. They don't have to be doing it much damage though, unless there are no PC characters around.

e) It needs to be an EVENT! Something everyone would WANT to take part in with huge guaranteed rewards to make it worth their while. .CoH's biggest GM event problem was the rewards getting nerfed into oblivion. After that, people just ignored the things.

f) It shouldn't happen often. Perhaps no more than once a week, in a different part of the city. It would be good if it had completely random spawn points that can't be mapped and not have any set routing either. It should just rampage randomly, as a monster would!

For a good idea of how they should go, watch a few old Godzilla movies. ;p THAT'S a giant monster attack!

Of course, to do it right would take a lot of resources, but I firmly think it's worth doing.

Redlynne
Redlynne's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 day 21 hours ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/28/2013 - 21:15
FloatingFatMan wrote:
FloatingFatMan wrote:

b) Mobile. It must move through the city, trashing the place as it goes!

Requires: Destructible Environment which can only be damaged by NPC Giant Monsters, so as to prevent PCs from inadvertently accomplishing Destructions.
Note: Enabling such Destructible Environments would make it possible to include "terrorist events" in World PvE where "bombs go off" and destroy buildings. This could then be a source of "PvEvP" situations, where the Players don't attack each other directly (so not "true" PvP) but they work to either destroy or save parts of the Zone Environment and are thus allowed to "compete" against each other through the medium of the Environment, rather than going head to head.

So a Set The Bombs scenario for one side becomes a Defuse The Bombs scenario for the other side, and the whole thing runs on a timer (say, 5 minutes) that gets "started" by a "Villain" actually Setting The Bombs and then anyone else in the Neighborhood (not the Zone, just the Neighborhood) gets a notice that there is a Player Initiated Event going on, and that they can either participate or ignore it. Participation simply involves going to the Event Location marked on the minimap. The way the Glowies would "work" for this scenario would be that once the Event is counting down, no PC can click the same Glowie (to either Engage the countdown, or to Halt it for that bomb) twice in a row, as a very simple Anti-Camping measure. If there are enough Bomb Glowies to choose from, it could even be set up as needing to click two OTHER Glowies first before returning to the First Glowie, thereby forcing a "keep moving" dynamic so PC's don't just pick one bomb and sit on it.

Glowies that are set to explode will be opaque, and Glowies that are set to be inert will be partially transparent, so that it's easy to tell at a glance whether a PC will need to "flip" a particular Glowie to "their side" of the event or not.

Why would this be useful? For one thing, it gives the Developers multiple reasons to enable such a feature and gives the Content Creators multiple stories they could tell that involve Property Damage pertaining to different buildings. It allows for the creation of Player Initiated World Events, rather than the Events happening "randomly" or simply on a Timer. And best of all, if there are "enough" of these kinds of Destructible Environment locations set up (up to and including "all buildings" in a Zone, even if not all of them have Events written specifically for that building) then you can do the Giant Monster Rampaging Through The City sort of Zone Event as a very easy byproduct of this kind of formulation.

FloatingFatMan wrote:

c) City damage! It means more models, but the city should change to show damage and then after the attack, slowly be repaired over time. Perhaps even additional graphics to show construction in progress. If the event is monthly in RL, take a week to fix it up, which should work out to several weeks in game time.

The extra content creation involved would be ... prodigious ... although it would arguably be relatively "simple" to do as a stretch goal. After all, even SNES games managed to do the "Castle sinking into the sand" routine with 8 bit graphics, so doing a "demolition" of a building could be as "easy" as just making the building "move" underground (where it can't be seen or interacted with) while throwing lots of smoke and particles in the air until there's nothing but a heap of rubble left behind where the building had been standing, thereby "hiding" the Sink Into Ground effect of moving the geometry of the building underground.

Downside to doing something so simple as that would be needing the amount of space "under" the ground/street level to be at least as high (if not higher) than the height of the tallest destructible building in the area ... so you don't wind up with the building sinking only PARTWAY underground, rather than all the way underground.

FloatingFatMan wrote:

d) If PC heroes aren't responding, then NPC heroes should. You should have some of the big ones there anyway as well as police and maybe military with helicopters and jets, just like in the comics. They don't have to be doing it much damage though, unless there are no PC characters around.

I'd only want to see the NPCs responding if the Event is something that is Persistent Until Stopped. That way you don't wind up with a Rampaging Giant Monster that just Rampages until the PCs can be bothered to respond. Remember, the Seed of Hamidon in First Ward pretty quickly turned into an "Event" that no one was interested in doing after the first rush of people getting their badges for completing it ... so all it did was circle the Zone making noise and being a "Non-Event" ...

FloatingFatMan wrote:

e) It needs to be an EVENT! Something everyone would WANT to take part in with huge guaranteed rewards to make it worth their while. .CoH's biggest GM event problem was the rewards getting nerfed into oblivion. After that, people just ignored the things.

The only meaningful reward to taking on the Giant Monster Events in City of Heroes was the Badge you got for completing it. Once you got the Badge, there was no real replayability to the Event. Got your Devilfish for defeating Lusca? Thanks, been there done that. Got the Paladin in King's Row before construction was completed. Been there, done that.

FloatingFatMan wrote:

f) It shouldn't happen often. Perhaps no more than once a week, in a different part of the city. It would be good if it had completely random spawn points that can't be mapped and not have any set routing either. It should just rampage randomly, as a monster would!

A week is too long a time span. It practically guarantees that a substantial portion of the community will simply never see the Event because they weren't online at exactly the right time (and in exactly the right place) to participate in it.

No, better to put it on something like a 25-27 hour schedule, so that it "rotates" through the hours of the day over time, rather than only happening at a particular "set" time on any given day. That way, the Event would occur "daily" but only happen at any particular hour OF the day approximately every 2 weeks or so.


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
I like this idea, especially

I like this idea, especially that it would involve actual city damage that might take several real days to repair. That would add some good realism and consequence to the event - the longer it takes the heroes to kill the monster the more of the city would be affected.

It might be hard to to have something like this be possible in every zone because it would mean the Devs would have to develop "battle damaged" versions of every zone which would be prohibitive to do. Therefore this kind of zone event might have to limited to only one or a few dedicated zones.

The other slight problem I see with this is the idea that it "only happens maybe once a week" and presumably that means completely randomly. The Hamidon from CoH might have had its problems, but the one thing that helped it was that it was something that a group of players could schedule for and kick off on their own. I realize that being able to control when the giant critter comes is a tad unrealistic, but if we have to deal with a Godzilla-type monster that appears randomly it might easily be 12-24 real hours before enough people arrive in game and organize to be able to defeat it. With such a random appearance I could imagine there might be some players who get unlucky enough to hardly ever be online when it happens or at the very least might be too busy with something else to help out.

Again I like the idea in general. I just think it might need to be linked to some kind of activity that the players could control. Maybe it could be spawned as a consequence of doing some kind of Trial or other activity that would start some kind of timer that would make the monster sure to appear in 24 hours. This would at least give people a "heads-up" so they can schedule real-life time for it and it would still be semi-realistic because it'd be like the MegaMonster was "sighted off-coast" and it would take it a full day to reach the city.

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

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

The only meaningful reward to taking on the Giant Monster Events in City of Heroes was the Badge you got for completing it. Once you got the Badge, there was no real replayability to the Event. Got your Devilfish for defeating Lusca? Thanks, been there done that. Got the Paladin in King's Row before construction was completed. Been there, done that.

This is a valid concern. Perhaps they could come up with some kind of nice reward (other than just a badge) that would motivate people to want to do it. I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.

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

Khaos
Khaos's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 months ago
kickstarter
Joined: 10/07/2013 - 14:58
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
The only meaningful reward to taking on the Giant Monster Events in City of Heroes was the Badge you got for completing it. Once you got the Badge, there was no real replayability to the Event. Got your Devilfish for defeating Lusca? Thanks, been there done that. Got the Paladin in King's Row before construction was completed. Been there, done that.

This is a valid concern. Perhaps they could come up with some kind of nice reward (other than just a badge) that would motivate people to want to do it. I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.

There could be some variations on badges - defeat Lusca, defeat Lusca in "X" time. Defeat Lusca with X number in your group. Defeat Lusca without dying. Collect them all and then there is a greater reward.

Artillerie
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 11/04/2013 - 06:59
Sounds like a great idea, i

Sounds like a great idea, i could really get behind something like this. As for repeatability, plenty of people just enjoy doing events now and again just for the fun. Others like to tackle these things multiple times to refine the 'dealing with it' process.

FloatingFatMan
FloatingFatMan's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 9 months ago
kickstarter
Joined: 10/07/2013 - 10:28
All great ideas, especially

All great ideas, especially the PvEvP one, I really like that.

Timing of the event would of course, be adjustable to whatever is best. Even a trigger that would set it off within X hours or something would be good. Perhaps it could be a supervillain's monster and it escapes during a taskforce to stop him, perhaps as a result of taskforce failure or something like that?

The key part is, of course, a giant monster and destructible environments for it to romp around in!

Redlynne
Redlynne's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 day 21 hours ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/28/2013 - 21:15
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.

Do that and you might as well hang a sandwich board sign on them that reads:

FARM ME!!!


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
FloatingFatMan
FloatingFatMan's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 9 months ago
kickstarter
Joined: 10/07/2013 - 10:28
Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Lothic wrote:
I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.
Do that and you might as well hang a sandwich board sign on them that reads:
FARM ME!!!

Nothing inherently wrong with farming, but it shouldn't be encouraged TOO much. I initially stated a good reward because such an event would be difficult and if there's no good reward, no one will do it. Perhaps a pot of different rewards so that you get either a rare or ultra-rare, or a big pile of cash or influence.

The details of the reward don't matter too much at this stage, just that it always be worthwhile fighting the monster!

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Lothic wrote:
I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.
Do that and you might as well hang a sandwich board sign on them that reads:
FARM ME!!!

Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

At any rate if this new CoT Monster event seems too prone to be over-farmed it could easily be limited to something that could only happen once a week like the OP suggested. Even if it were something that could be triggered by players a once a week thing doesn't seem too abusable to me.

P.S. As I recall the folks on Virtue only got together once a week for Hami bashing anyway so the idea of something like this being limited to "once a week" by the game was already de facto back in CoH.

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

Comicsluvr
Comicsluvr's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 3 months ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 09/07/2013 - 03:39
If the event (and why does it

If the event (and why does it need to be just one?) is time-gated so you only get the benefit drop once per 24 hours or whatever then farming it is very limited. Anyone doing it again gets xps and cash as per normal foes. As much as I know that a destructible environment will be time-consuming to create, doing so early on will open endless doors for later content. Likely not do-able at launch but later on I see this as being WAY fun.

Better: Two-tiered events. I'm gonna make a thread about this!

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

JayBezz
JayBezz's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 8 months ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/08/2013 - 14:54
Open missions are fun. Give

Open missions are fun. Give us LOTS of them and make them have multiple tiers in each rotation.

1) Save Civilians
2) Attack Invading Robots
3) Attack Leader/Shut Down Factory
If Successful shutdown within time limit then event has 10 min reset time. If not successful event goes back to stage one.

I want the homeostasis of combat open zones to be in constant flux of events to do EVEN IF you don't have regular missions. Some find so much going on to be busy, but with your idea to keep all players on the same server we don't want to miss out on the ability to all get a piece of the open world action.

Crowd Control Enthusiast

chase
chase's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/23/2013 - 11:11
Quote:
Quote:

a) Giant. I mean really giant. If it's not towering above at least SOME buildings, it ain't a giant!

I've never liked "too giant" GM's--nothing feels heroic like punching a giant monster in the big toe. We had that for one halloween event with the oversized enemy type. Cute the first time it happened, damn annoying after that.

Of course, you could have other activities-- things like heroes on the ground doing more to evacuate civilians, set up "traps" (telephone poles make good caltrops) to creatively harm the monster, give them alternate actions, so we're not just battling godzilla's toenail fungus, but many of the other elements you're requesting are such orders of magnitude of effort beyond anything CoH did, so I'd be wary to add more.

I'd much rather see much of what you suggested in the form of zone events against smaller-sized enemies- Gang riots, Mechatron bots the size of a taxi swarming over the city, an army of 10-foot-tall sea beasts, etc.

This makes the entire zone a battlefield, and lets people spread out, rather than concentrate in FPS-draining cluster f's. Never understood the enjoyment of playing an unresponsive game with a framerate that updates less frequently than my screensaver. If it weren't for how these often require clustering for certain badge-hunting, i'd much rather break away and battle stragglers away from the central battle.

Lin Chiao Feng
Lin Chiao Feng's picture
Offline
Last seen: 5 days 19 hours ago
Developerkickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 11/02/2013 - 09:27
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

For the record, that was after they changed it so that killing the Giant Monsters in the zone triggered the Hamidon to spawn.

Prior to that, the Hamidon would spawn regularly, and one SG (Evolution, IIRC) on Virtue had players that would camp the zone in shifts so they'd be able to call out the SG, swoop in and kill it before anyone else got a shot. (This was pre-Inventions, so Hami-Os were quite valuable.)

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

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

For the record, that was after they changed it so that killing the Giant Monsters in the zone triggered the Hamidon to spawn.
Prior to that, the Hamidon would spawn regularly, and one SG (Evolution, IIRC) on Virtue had players that would camp the zone in shifts so they'd be able to call out the SG, swoop in and kill it before anyone else got a shot. (This was pre-Inventions, so Hami-Os were quite valuable.)

For the record I already implied that "things changed" with Hami after Issue 9. Also for the record I was not a member of Evolution but I regularly attended raids prior to Issue 9 and was able to get my share of Hami-Os regardless of any shenanigans they tried to pull off. Remember that the strict "total number of people allowed in a zone" rules were much more relaxed in the early days. I never had to "camp" the zone to get the Hami-Os I got.

At any rate Issue 9 launched on May 1st, 2007. That means Hami was "farmable" in its more traditional MMO sense for roughly 5.5 years, making what I said factually correct as well.

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

Gangrel
Offline
Last seen: 1 week 3 days ago
11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 09/15/2013 - 15:14
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

For the record, that was after they changed it so that killing the Giant Monsters in the zone triggered the Hamidon to spawn.
Prior to that, the Hamidon would spawn regularly, and one SG (Evolution, IIRC) on Virtue had players that would camp the zone in shifts so they'd be able to call out the SG, swoop in and kill it before anyone else got a shot. (This was pre-Inventions, so Hami-Os were quite valuable.)

For the record I already implied that "things changed" with Hami after Issue 9. Also for the record I was not a member of Evolution but I regularly attended raids prior to Issue 9 and was able to get my share of Hami-Os regardless of any shenanigans they tried to pull off. Remember that the strict "total number of people allowed in a zone" rules were much more relaxed in the early days. I never had to "camp" the zone to get the Hami-Os I got.
At any rate Issue 9 launched on May 1st, 2007. That means Hami was "farmable" in its more traditional MMO sense for roughly 5.5 years, making what I said factually correct as well.

3 years... the game was released April 2004

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

For the record, that was after they changed it so that killing the Giant Monsters in the zone triggered the Hamidon to spawn.
Prior to that, the Hamidon would spawn regularly, and one SG (Evolution, IIRC) on Virtue had players that would camp the zone in shifts so they'd be able to call out the SG, swoop in and kill it before anyone else got a shot. (This was pre-Inventions, so Hami-Os were quite valuable.)

For the record I already implied that "things changed" with Hami after Issue 9. Also for the record I was not a member of Evolution but I regularly attended raids prior to Issue 9 and was able to get my share of Hami-Os regardless of any shenanigans they tried to pull off. Remember that the strict "total number of people allowed in a zone" rules were much more relaxed in the early days. I never had to "camp" the zone to get the Hami-Os I got.
At any rate Issue 9 launched on May 1st, 2007. That means Hami was "farmable" in its more traditional MMO sense for roughly 5.5 years, making what I said factually correct as well.

3 years... the game was released April 2004

The timespan between May 1st, 2007 and November 30th, 2012 was again roughly 5.5 years. This means that the "final farmable" version of Hami was around a lot longer (and obviously more recently) than the original version.

I'm sorry I somehow confused everyone with the actual dates involved. *shrugs*

P.S. Did you even check my signature line first? I did happen to recall when CoH launched. ;)

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

Gangrel
Offline
Last seen: 1 week 3 days ago
11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 09/15/2013 - 15:14
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

For the record, that was after they changed it so that killing the Giant Monsters in the zone triggered the Hamidon to spawn.
Prior to that, the Hamidon would spawn regularly, and one SG (Evolution, IIRC) on Virtue had players that would camp the zone in shifts so they'd be able to call out the SG, swoop in and kill it before anyone else got a shot. (This was pre-Inventions, so Hami-Os were quite valuable.)

For the record I already implied that "things changed" with Hami after Issue 9. Also for the record I was not a member of Evolution but I regularly attended raids prior to Issue 9 and was able to get my share of Hami-Os regardless of any shenanigans they tried to pull off. Remember that the strict "total number of people allowed in a zone" rules were much more relaxed in the early days. I never had to "camp" the zone to get the Hami-Os I got.
At any rate Issue 9 launched on May 1st, 2007. That means Hami was "farmable" in its more traditional MMO sense for roughly 5.5 years, making what I said factually correct as well.

3 years... the game was released April 2004

The timespan between May 1st, 2007 and November 30th, 2012 was again roughly 5.5 years. This means that the "final farmable" version of Hami was around a lot longer (and obviously more recently) than the original version.
I'm sorry I somehow confused everyone with the actual dates involved. *shrugs*
P.S. Did you even check my signature line first? I did happen to recall when CoH launched. ;)

I get the way in which you were referring to it now... i was going the *other* way. Brain fart on my case

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Lin Chiao Feng
Lin Chiao Feng's picture
Offline
Last seen: 5 days 19 hours ago
Developerkickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 11/02/2013 - 09:27
So "farmable" in the "more

So "farmable" in the "more traditional MMO sense" was when it was triggered by killing GMs? Wow, traditional MMOs are better than I thought, because I thought "farmable" usually meant "it randomly spawns all on its own so camp it" which is what the Hami did those first three years.

And those first three years are the only thing I was talking about. In that time I went on Hami raids a total of three times because the random spawn rate and the fact that people would have the zone filled in a few minutes led to very few opportunities for non-campers like myself who had far better luck finding TFs.

Please don't take it like some kind of craven insult that must be responded in kind.

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

Wanders
Wanders's picture
Offline
Last seen: 6 years 1 month ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/25/2013 - 20:12
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Hamidon was farmed regularly for years (at least on Virtue) and it didn't seem to hurt the game too much. I never got into doing that on a regular basis (especially after Issue 9) but I know there was a subset of the playerbase who liked it quite a bit.

Yeah, I didn't participate regularly, but I enjoyed it when I did. For most of the servers I was on it was a pretty relaxed social event prior to i9, which was fun in its own way. Speaking of SGs running it regularly, there was one on Guardian that did and, iirc, they did it at a particular time of the week, so folks just knew to leave them be then. Since it was more doable to spawn a separate zone after the capacity limits you mentioned for i9, folks who wanted some privacy could spawn a zone 2 and then move their party into there, leave zone 1 for other folks.

So, all-in-all if we wanted to consider Hami a dire example of a farmable monster, I'd have to say it could be a lot more dire than that.

Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

So "farmable" in the "more traditional MMO sense" was when it was triggered by killing GMs? Wow, traditional MMOs are better than I thought, because I thought "farmable" usually meant "it randomly spawns all on its own so camp it" which is what the Hami did those first three years.
And those first three years are the only thing I was talking about. In that time I went on Hami raids a total of three times because the random spawn rate and the fact that people would have the zone filled in a few minutes led to very few opportunities for non-campers like myself who had far better luck finding TFs.
Please don't take it like some kind of craven insult that must be responded in kind.

For something to be "farmable" in a MMO it usually involves something that players can "reliably and repeatedly" do to get a reward - like the newer version of Hamidon was for 5.5 years. To be picky the original version of Hamidon was more of a huge random MOB camp, not a farm.

But I don't really care about quibbling with you over the differences between Hamidon Ver1.0 and Ver2.0 or the precise definitions of "farm" and/or "camp" as they relate to MMOs. If you'll notice I didn't bother to differentiate between any of that in my first post on the matter. You decided to jump on that tangent which as far as I was concerned wasn't really important to the topic at hand.

While I'm on that tangent myself I'll say I'm sorry your pre-Issue 9 experience with Hamidon was as disappointing as you imply - YMMV of course. I can only convey my experience with something like 300 Virtue server Hami raids throughout the history of the game. Of those maybe 100 were of the pre-Issue 9 variety. Yes the zone usually did fill up pretty quickly (for both V1 and V2 Hami) but that did not mean that you HAD to be a camper to have had any chance to get in. I think I actually "camped" in the zone maybe 5 times total - the rest of the time I simply made my way there when the news spread around the server about it or it was the right time of week when it was scheduled.

To get back to my original point (before you hijacked me with your bad memories of a few failed Hami attempts) the fact of the matter was that for MANY YEARS Hamidon was the perfect working example of a "giant monster event" that was successfully farmed by the player community (of at least Virtue) on a regular weekly basis. For MANY YEARS like clockwork you could plan to go on the Saturday night raids and get your weekly Hami-O. I think the point Redlynne was trying to make was that somehow making a new Godzilla-type monster event in CoT a "farmable event" would be bad idea. I simply mentioned Hami as a counterpoint example of a monster farm from CoH that generally DID work.

I didn't take what you said as a "craven insult". I simply realized I had better info on the topic at hand based simply on having experienced more successful Hami raids than you did.

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

FloatingFatMan
FloatingFatMan's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 9 months ago
kickstarter
Joined: 10/07/2013 - 10:28
Hey guys, who gives a

Hey guys, who gives a whether Hamidon was farmed or not? CoH is done, it's gone, it's end of life. Let's talk about NEW giant monster attacks for City of Titans, please?

Comicsluvr
Comicsluvr's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 3 months ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 09/07/2013 - 03:39
FloatingFatMan wrote:
FloatingFatMan wrote:

Hey guys, who gives a whether Hamidon was farmed or not? CoH is done, it's gone, it's end of life. Let's talk about NEW giant monster attacks for City of Titans, please?

Agreed!

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

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

FloatingFatMan wrote:
Hey guys, who gives a whether Hamidon was farmed or not? CoH is done, it's gone, it's end of life. Let's talk about NEW giant monster attacks for City of Titans, please?

Agreed!

Fine with me. Again the only reason I even bothered to mention Hami at all was as supportive proof that if something like that worked for many years in CoH as a weekly, repeating "event" that some people liked to F*RM then a Godzilla-type monster in CoT could be similarly F*RMED without any harm to the game.

My reference was clearly in regards to latest Hami Ver2.0. There was absolutely no reason why I would have had to make any distinction about that. The only thing that any person could logically draw from CoH to CoT would be the very LATEST versions of things in that game as of November 2012 - why would any discussion of CoT's potential Godzilla-type monster event have any relevance or connection to an older version of something that has not existed for well over 6.5 years at this point?

Sure Hami Ver1.0 might have been bad and/or broken in many ways, but who cares? The Hami Ver2.0 that existed for the last 5.5 years of CoH worked just fine and was highly relevant to this CoT discussion.

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

Comicsluvr
Comicsluvr's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 3 months ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 09/07/2013 - 03:39
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Comicsluvr wrote:
FloatingFatMan wrote:
Hey guys, who gives a whether Hamidon was farmed or not? CoH is done, it's gone, it's end of life. Let's talk about NEW giant monster attacks for City of Titans, please?

Agreed!

Fine with me. Again the only reason I even bothered to mention Hami at all was as supportive proof that if something like that worked for many years in CoH as a weekly, repeating "event" that some people liked to F*RM then a Godzilla-type monster in CoT could be similarly F*RMED without any harm to the game.
My reference was clearly in regards to latest Hami Ver2.0. There was absolutely no reason why I would have had to make any distinction about that. The only thing that any person could logically draw from CoH to CoT would be the very LATEST versions of things in that game as of November 2012 - why would any discussion of CoT's potential Godzilla-type monster event have any relevance or connection to an older version of something that has not existed for well over 6.5 years at this point?
Sure Hami Ver1.0 might have been bad and/or broken in many ways, but who cares? The Hami Ver2.0 that existed for the last 5.5 years of CoH worked just fine and was highly relevant to this CoT discussion.

No offense, you could have stopped at 'Fine with me.'

Please take the whole 'To Hami or Not to Hami' to a PM if you guys wanna fight over Hami ver 1.8.6.5

Now then, our topic was Giant Monsters in THIS game...

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

Lin Chiao Feng
Lin Chiao Feng's picture
Offline
Last seen: 5 days 19 hours ago
Developerkickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 11/02/2013 - 09:27
Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

Now then, our topic was Giant Monsters in THIS game...

My position is "Yes, please, where do I sign?"

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

Redlynne
Redlynne's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 day 21 hours ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/28/2013 - 21:15
Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Lothic wrote:
I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.
Do that and you might as well hang a sandwich board sign on them that reads:
FARM ME!!!

Actually, what I was suggesting was ... if you put a rare/unique Loot Drop onto an Event Target that can only be obtained from that Event Target then that Event will be put onto Farm Status.

We saw it happen with BAF and LAM Trials, where even the Devs in Zwillinger's weekly broadcasts would admit that the Incarnate Trials had ALREADY been moved into Farm Status incredibly quickly after release so that people could climb the reward tree and get to their maximal destination as quickly as possible. While Hamidon was able to drop the "unique" Hamidon Origin Enhancements that were obtainable nowhere else in the game ... Hamidon was put on Farm Status so as to be able to obtain these Rare Items. Later on, Synthetic Hamidon Origin Enhancements got added to the rewards for the Lord Recluse Strike Force and the Statesman Task Force, and for a while THEY got put on Farm Status because there was a Demand for these items and the only source of Supply was to Farm for them through these sources.

My warning is that ANY TIME you try to control the supply of a "unique" or otherwise "rare" Item by limiting it to a single source (ie. Event or Trial or Task Force), you're going to be hanging a FARM ME!!! sign on that activity ... and the writing on that sign gets bigger if you make it a "guaranteed rare" Item or Drop. It doesn't matter if it's an Event or whatever, the fact that the Item is "gated" behind completing a particular piece of Content effectively creates the necessary conditions to turn that Content into something that WILL be Farmed. Therefore, the entire notion of a "guaranteed rare" needs to be looked at with suspicion and an appreciation for the behaviors it will encourage and engender in a MMO Playerbase.


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:
FloatingFatMan wrote:
Hey guys, who gives a whether Hamidon was farmed or not? CoH is done, it's gone, it's end of life. Let's talk about NEW giant monster attacks for City of Titans, please?

Agreed!

Fine with me. Again the only reason I even bothered to mention Hami at all was as supportive proof that if something like that worked for many years in CoH as a weekly, repeating "event" that some people liked to F*RM then a Godzilla-type monster in CoT could be similarly F*RMED without any harm to the game.
My reference was clearly in regards to latest Hami Ver2.0. There was absolutely no reason why I would have had to make any distinction about that. The only thing that any person could logically draw from CoH to CoT would be the very LATEST versions of things in that game as of November 2012 - why would any discussion of CoT's potential Godzilla-type monster event have any relevance or connection to an older version of something that has not existed for well over 6.5 years at this point?
Sure Hami Ver1.0 might have been bad and/or broken in many ways, but who cares? The Hami Ver2.0 that existed for the last 5.5 years of CoH worked just fine and was highly relevant to this CoT discussion.

No offense, you could have stopped at 'Fine with me.'
Please take the whole 'To Hami or Not to Hami' to a PM if you guys wanna fight over Hami ver 1.8.6.5
Now then, our topic was Giant Monsters in THIS game...

No offense but you could have stopped reading my last post after I said "Fine with me" too. *shrugs*

For what it's worth until CoT actually exists as a game our best reference for how it may work or how we may want it to work better is to discuss relevant aspects of the OLD game this NEW game is being built from. If you can't see the similarities between Hami and what this new Giant Monster event might entail that's not really my problem.

Frankly I'd rather openly discuss the past of CoH so that we won't be doomed to repeat mistakes that were made there...

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

Lothic
Lothic's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 months 3 weeks ago
kickstarter11th Anniversary Badge
Joined: 10/02/2013 - 00:27
Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
Lothic wrote:
I'm not suggesting they go as far as create a new Hami-O for this, but maybe some kind of "guaranteed rare" or some-such that applies to the new game.

Do that and you might as well hang a sandwich board sign on them that reads:
FARM ME!!!

Actually, what I was suggesting was ... if you put a rare/unique Loot Drop onto an Event Target that can only be obtained from that Event Target then that Event will be put onto Farm Status.
We saw it happen with BAF and LAM Trials, where even the Devs in Zwillinger's weekly broadcasts would admit that the Incarnate Trials had ALREADY been moved into Farm Status incredibly quickly after release so that people could climb the reward tree and get to their maximal destination as quickly as possible. While Hamidon was able to drop the "unique" Hamidon Origin Enhancements that were obtainable nowhere else in the game ... Hamidon was put on Farm Status so as to be able to obtain these Rare Items. Later on, Synthetic Hamidon Origin Enhancements got added to the rewards for the Lord Recluse Strike Force and the Statesman Task Force, and for a while THEY got put on Farm Status because there was a Demand for these items and the only source of Supply was to Farm for them through these sources.
My warning is that ANY TIME you try to control the supply of a "unique" or otherwise "rare" Item by limiting it to a single source (ie. Event or Trial or Task Force), you're going to be hanging a FARM ME!!! sign on that activity ... and the writing on that sign gets bigger if you make it a "guaranteed rare" Item or Drop. It doesn't matter if it's an Event or whatever, the fact that the Item is "gated" behind completing a particular piece of Content effectively creates the necessary conditions to turn that Content into something that WILL be Farmed. Therefore, the entire notion of a "guaranteed rare" needs to be looked at with suspicion and an appreciation for the behaviors it will encourage and engender in a MMO Playerbase.

I would agree that taking anything to an extreme in an MMO setting would be bad, including any version of anything you might consider to be "farming".

The key question here seems to be "How do you make something like a Giant Monster event be something that players would want to occasionally repeat but at the same time discourage players from wanting to do it excessively or end up being the only means to get some kind of unique reward?" and admittedly that's a fine line to ponder.

Perhaps the compromise is to have the Monster event offer some kind of reward that is relatively rare but would not be the only way to get it. Sure that still might mean that it'll be farmed to some degree, but if it turns out that it would be only one of several ways to get something then it doesn't seem like it would get out of hand. Obviously the Devs could always adjust things if needed.

I suppose I come from the point of view that farming in and of itself is not necessarily evil. I tend to think that no matter how a MMO is put together there's always going to be some scenario/situation that offers players the best "reward vs. time" ratio and whatever that thing is will be what the players will to gravitate towards the most. The trick as you imply is for the Devs to figure out how to make those things not end up being so incredibly good that they'll be the only thing anyone wants to do. I tend to think the Devs of this game will be savvy enough not to let any "major game event" get out of hand that way.

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

Artorios Rex
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 11 months ago
kickstarter
Joined: 10/28/2013 - 08:05
LOVE the idea of building

LOVE the idea of building damage, *especially* if it leads to extra missions/minigames as the heroes help rebuild them (or villains hamper or foil the rebuilding efforts).

Click glowies (in certain order? Time-limited?) to advance a building phase
Guard workers from gang/villain ambushes
Protect shipments coming from 'cross town
Roust super-powered squatters
???