One thing DCUO did that I actually liked is scattered question mark icons throughout the city. For those who don't play it, players find these throughout the city and they have an investigation storyline to them. Collect them all and you usually get a costume unlock of some kind. These icons make travelling across the city a lot less tedious, and are particularly fun if your hero has a detective slant. I would love to see these in game, but PLEASE make unlocking the icons account wide (the downfall of DCUO).
Tue, 02/06/2018 - 19:15
#1
Investigations and collections
As long as there is an option to hide them if you don't want things cluttering up your mini-map. If they are self initiating, or in other words if new ones continue to appear and old ones don't disappear, I could definitely see it covering up the map pretty quickly
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
Avatar by lilshironeko
The thing is they don't show up on minimaps (in DCUO, anyway). You have to discover them hidden in certain areas.
We won’t be replicating that exactly. We do have something called Tips which can be obtained a number of ways. A Tip can lead to a Plot or even a Story. Plots are one-time single pieces of content. Stories have more than a single piece of content.
They may or may not be part of unlocking costume pieces.
This is separate from our Schemes and Investigations where you obtain Clues and can piece them together to “craft” a plot.
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Ah, I thought by this you meant it was on the mini-map. So instead it would be like a NPC with a question mark over their heads?
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
Avatar by lilshironeko
Sounds good to me. I think it's a great addition, especially for pound the pavement, gumshoe kind of heroes.
Question: Are you planning to randomize tips and clues, as far as locations and whatnot?
For those of us who haven't (and won't) play DCUO, can you please clarify something?
Were these icons essentially functioning the same way as Location Badges did in City of Heroes? Basically, go to a specific location, get a Badge, collect enough Badges and unlock something else (like a Teleporter destination or as you specified a costume unlock). Or was it slightly more elaborate than that in the sense that the "go to location" part is functionally the same, but then in that location there's an item (with a mission ? marker over it) for your PC to click on to "verify" that you've actually "investigated the Thing™" at that location ... put them all together and get the unlock?
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Pretty much the second one, but the investigation icons were either in plain view (for main missions, like the Book of Blood chapters during the Cult of Blood mission series) or generally out of the way (like Jack Ryan's interviews with various heroes and Braniac's exobyte data). So in some areas you'd have to destroy a box in a corner to find the icon and in others it'd be as you walked in and in still others they would just be in a random alley that served no purpose and was so out of the way you'd have to either know it was there or be purposefully looking everywhere.
Then you had collections ones which worked off the same principle but spawned randomly around the world and were things like team pennants or Joker cards.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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It's more so the latter. The icons were hidden throughout the map and sometimes they could be found near landmarks, but often times it seemed to be random. You clicked on the icon and it would continue a section of an overall story. Collect all of the sections for a particular story and you unlock a costume or device, etc. The fun part is the icons all looked the same (there were three different types of icons with dozens of stories each) so you could have several stories, or investigations, going at once.
I hope that clarifies. I'm usually pretty bad at explaining things
[tangent]
Speaking of floating symbols, would it be possible for CoT to avoid such indicators hovering over contacts as every run-of-the-mill, quest-hub MMO seems to have nowadays? Or at least an option to turn them off? If we have introductions and nav points like the old game, that should suffice. (Never understood why the old game added such floaters in the final year or so.)
[/tangent]
Spurn all ye kindle.
I'll lay down a marker of personal preference that having a big yellow ? or ! over the head of an NPC is ... a bit much. In fact, I honestly think it's the only element missing from the scene of Rey handing Luke Skywalker his father's lightsaber, because that scene totally needed to have a big glowing bouncy ? over Luke's head, just like a "real" game would have done for turning in the Quest Item.
I honestly preferred the way that City of Heroes did it with a ring of light around the the feet of important NPCs you ought to be paying attention to. Much less obtrusive than putting animated [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJiHlt8NRqk]punctuation[/url] bouncing over their heads to attract your attention.
[img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//archive/5/5e/20120825164449%21Ms._Liberty.jpg[/img] [img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//archive/f/f7/20110903080902%21Back_Alley_Brawler.jpg[/img]
Now, if you want to animate those light rings on the ground such that they slowly "swirl" around the NPC's feet ... I'm perfectly fine with that. You could even introduce a "notification color language" into it, such that different colors mean different things (yellow means I have a mission for you, blue means you need to return your a mission to me, purple means you've completed your mission so talk to me already, and so on). But please ... no more animated punctuation overhead for NPCs.
Note that such a system of Highlight Rings on the ground could be extended to some objectives like are being talked about in this thread, rather than limiting it to NPCs only, and that it would then even be possible to set things up such that you need to (for example) break open a wooden crate in order to see the be-ringed object inside the (now) broken crate that you need to interact with in order to "get" the Item Clue. That would work too.
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I quite like the idea of NPCs not just standing there like lawn gnomes waiting to be clicked on but rather drawing attention to themselves when you can begin their missions. Like an Arachnos Arbiter barking that you see them or one of those Longbow geeks waving you to them as they over. Combine that with the highlight rings similar to CoH.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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In GW2, some quest-givers hang around an area and then run over to passing heroes, shouting out a greeting/plot-hook, or they beckon/wave to get your attention. "A giant shark is attacking the shipyard! Can you go put a stop to it?"
Be Well!
Fireheart
Yeah. It did get annoying though when farmers or soldiers would randomly run up to you to remind you an event is going on. Or a quest objective kept talking.
PICK UP A RIFLE AND GET IN FORMATION. YOU MUST LEARN TO HOLD UNTIL COMMANDED.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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Oh don't get me wrong: I certainly wouldn't mind if contacts were more animated, but I'm hoping CoT is enough like the old game, where gamey visual indicators are mostly unnecessary because we'll be introduced to our next contact and given a location instead of going to a garden of NPCs and harvesting a crop of random quests.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I think it would be good to give players some sort of reward, be it XP or whatever, for exploring the whole outdoor map (or at least whatever's there when the game rolls out).
GW2 has this. It also has more than a few places that are not 100% easy to find/get to. It has a stat that it tracks that tells you how much of the full game map you've explored, and it has a similar tracker for each sub-map, which makes it easier to figure out what you need to do to get 100% completion. In some cases, you need to find the well-hidden secret passage and go to the "secret" cave/whatever.
Apart from the XP and item bonuses you get when you complete the individual maps and the entire world map, there are also things out in the world that you probably want to find anyway, like teleporters that will allow you to go back to that area once you've found them, Hero Point encounters you can do to unlock talents you can get from spending Hero Points, and Gold Heart missions you can do to unlock vendor functions and such.
I really liked being able to explore the maps, get the hero points I needed in the process and unlock the telelporters all as a way to level up my character. That said, it's nice to do that once, but after the first toon it get's tedious. At that point you know where everything is anyway.
I think it would be good to have the ability to level a toon to thge cap just by exploring the outside woprld and doing the missions it has to do, local stuff, cats in trees, etc. But you also want a lot of mission arcs, task forces, etc to do as well.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
IIRC They sold quite a few exploration badges during the Kickstarter, so there are those to begin with.
And I really wouldn't mind a small wad of XP for finding one... or maybe a little extra when all badges in a zone are found.
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
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Well, there's a couple of ways you could do that. You could basically allocate a discrete "share" of XP upon finding each one and then award an extra "share" of XP upon finding them all. So if there were 7 Badges in a zone and they awarded 100 XP each, finding all 7 would award 100 XP each plus a bonus 100 XP on finding the 7th for a total of 800 XP. That's one way of doing it.
Another way of doing it would be to add the number of Badges you've already found in a group and multiply by a constant (say, 30). So the first Badge in a group you find is worth 30 XP. The second you find is worth 60 XP. The third is worth 90 XP ... and so on. After finding the 7th Badge, worth 210 XP, the total gain for all of the badges combined would be 840 XP because of how everything adds up.
Either way, you're looking at a system of increasing returns for "finding everything" in a zone. The first method is a "flat" award for each but with a bonus only at the end. The second method is an increasing award that goes up with every discovery made along the way. Either method provides the "incentive" to keep looking for more Badges, and the only real difference between these two examples is the psychological response to those incentives the methods engender in Players. Basically, do the breadcrumbs get "tastier" the further you follow them along the trail?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Could have area badges give you a small XP boost while in that area.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Well there's an exploit waiting to happen (forever) ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Basically, our Challenges and Achievements...
Exploration Badge finding can be a Challenge. Finding alll rhe Exploration Badges in an area can be an Achievement resulting in an additional reward. Keep doing that for more areas and the Achievement bonus increases.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I don't see how a small XP boost could be exploited. Let's say at most it's 5% more for getting all the badges in a zone. The only exploit would be having someone run you to all the badges when you get to that zone. Oooh. And it might only be XP gained -in the zone- so like, street sweeping. Not instances. Maybe, maaaaybe granting it on turn ins.
Not seeing how it would be exploitable.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
The 'problem' may be that there's always someone who will TRY to exploit the mechanics of the system. And they might succeed.
Be Well!
Fireheart
So clearly we need a system free of mechanics, then it can't be exploited!
Joking of course.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I may be a [b][i]former Rules Lawyer[/i][/b] but I still do work [i]pro bono[/i] on occasion ... ^_~
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yes those people will always exists so the trick is then to make it so that when they do "optimize" (I only consider bugs/glitches to be exploits) the impact is still within the devs expected range of performance.
... “former”?
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