In city of heroes there were some areas of town that it's hard to believe people lived in. You couldn't possibly walk down the street without running into werewolves, vampires and giant demons. Yes, I'm describing Founders Falls, but there were other places almost as bad.
It made sense for there to be monsters all over the place during special events like the Rikti invasion or when the ghost ship passes through, or a halloween event, whatever, but for it to look like that all the time was just insane!
I like monsters as much as the next guy but for the sake of believability keep them in out of the way places like dark alleys, up on the roof tops, down in the sewers, lurking in the park or the garbage dump, and above all on mission maps.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I agree. Hopefully the placement of villains will make sense and kept to certain zones or areas.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Guess playing lots of Villains where the place was mostly suppose to suck and be scary, kind of desensitized me.
Strategically placing mobs in places that make sense is a start.
Having critters appear to be doing something relevant helps too.
If the daylight cycle provides us with some nights that are darker than others, and the occasional full moon, then those are the times for baddies to own the streets.
I rather like the concept of spawns being connected to the time of day. For example, a full moon would be the perfect time for werewolves to spawn, and could even be a monthly event sort of situation. Additionally, it'd mean that if you want to find baddies during the day, you may want an actual mission, and would allow players to make relatively unhindered trips across the overworld if they do it during the day, which any CoX player will tell you had to be done many times in the early levels, if for no other reason than to hit up the not-so-local costume shop.
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".
This is one of those areas where "realism" will conflict with "gameplay mechanics". True, CoH was kind of silly at times with muggings going on every 5 or 6 meters - but that was mostly a holdover from the very beginning when street-sweeping was envisioned to be a much bigger part of the player experience. Still - people did enjoy street sweeping at times, and it was a great way to finish off those last few XP points till you level, and it also helped to "fill out" the zones with activity other than npc civvies and cars randomly wandering around.
It might be a little silly to see enemy mobs stealing a purse on every street corner, but it can be downright annoying if you actually have to put effort into finding mobs to fight - so care has to be taken to get that balance right.
I wasn't complaining about mobs just monsters
If they're not expected to play as big a role in the game there shouldn't be as many of them anyway, and they should probably be hanging out in smaller groups most of the time.
Personally though I'd like to see a game mechanic where we would get tips from street punks after we beat them. (Where did you get this gun or these drugs or whatever?) This could lead to missions without needing traditional contacts
. I'll start a new thread about this idea.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber