CoX had 3 very different starting areas *. Atlas Park (AP), Galaxy City (GC), and Mercy Island (Mercy). Each had a distinctly different feel to it and served different functions in the game.
AP was the most lively. Not only was it the more popular hero starting area, but contacts throughout the game would send you there for 1 reason or another. It was also a social center for heroside.
GC was AP's poorer relation. Meant as an alternative to AP that turned out not as needed as originally hoped, it nonetheless had it's own quiet charm. Eventually it was scrapped, declared devastated by Shivan meteors, and turned into the new tutorial zone.
Mercy was the villain starting area. And it was designed by story to be a place you wanted OUT of. The trainers, stores and other functions were much more tightly spaced than the hero counterparts. Villains were not sent back often, but it did happen. It was also very minimal for social gatherings. (Costume contests happened by Kalinda, but that was pretty much it aside from SG recruiting.)
* Alright, Goldside had a starting area too, but I can't remember it's name and it had almost ZERO social interaction. Feel free to provide any details you may recall though.
What are we arguing? Which one was better? I personally liked AP
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Personally my favorite was Mercy. This is because I liked to do drive by buffing. (Speed Boost mainly.) Which was something you couldn't really do in AP because folks would feel you were interfering with their RP. But in Mercy almost everyone LOVED the short term Super Speed as it cut their travel time to missions greatly. It also killed time in between my SG recruitment broadcasts. (Folks were also more willing to put up with me since I was actively helping.)
Features we liked and did not care for.
I'll elaborate then... My preference was AP simply for the fact that it had a lot of open space, and it was usually very bright and clear to see. The spacing between mobs was good enough so that I wouldn't accidentally aggro too many bad guys or turn a corner and run into a mob. And I could clearly test out my powers when rolling out a new toon. There also seemed to be the most action in terms of other players so it was easy to get a team in broadcast and travel the short distance to the hollows from there.
I don't think I really tried Galaxy too much, it was usually dead when I went, and Mercy, while I did have some villains, I really tried to get out of there. It was just too unwelcoming and I hated falling off the edge and having to walk long distances around the cliff.
Whatever starting area you guys make, please don't do what Champions did. It was so busy I couldn't enjoy my own toon with all the NPCs, mobs, fires, contacts, destroyed landscape. Just way too much.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Atlas Park had lowbies mingling with maxed level players all the time because not only was it the social hub of Blueside, but it had some pretty high level invasions right there. This intermingling of the entire level spectrum was a double-edged sword, though. On the up side, lowbies got to see the community in action and the kinds of things they be getting into when they got more powerful. On the down side, they had to confront in no uncertain terms that they were not at all powerful like they wanted to believe they were. Their hero mojo was a bit tainted from that.
On Mercy Island, it made more sense, since we were supposed to be impressing the heads of Arachnos, so it was natural that we started small to make our mark and get bigger things. But Mercy Island didn't force us into the same melange of player levels that Atlas Park did.
In the end, I think the social gravity of Atlas Park more than made up for the emasculation of our hero mojo.
But when it comes to the feeling of being less powerful than all the other characters around you, we could either ignore it or embrace it. Ignoring it is relatively easy. Just let people explain themselves in their character background narrative and there you go. But embracing it could work, too. Give the players an actual selection for why they are starting out with just the most basic abilities and are weaker than everyone else in the game. One size would not fit all, but with a few choices to pick from, nearly every concept could be represented and expounded upon in the background narratives.
For instance:
CoX didn't have to deal with origins like this; and heck, there was a biography section that allowed us to craft our own origin story, so why would I propose coming up with something like this? The reason is to give the players the satisfaction that the game knows they are starting off with minimum power level; that they don't start the game as a super hero who is already powerful and renowned.
It would be a waste if it was just a single choice you make at creation and never see again. In order to make it really work, it would require the game to know and respond to the choice. So when you level, interact with your trainers, and especially when you interact with NPCs, the game could have some tailor-made dialogue depending on the choice you make.
For example:
So rather than just turning a blind eye to the whole power advancement trajectory of everyplayer character, we just openly admit that you are not the be all and end all when you start off, and then we tailor the dialogue to reinforce your growth potential.
This was all a brainstorm, and I couldn't stop jotting down my mental leakage once I got started. My apologies to all who read this far and don't see any merit in the ideas.
[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.
Discussion >> Arguing. Just saying.
(insert pithy comment here)
LOL yeah that's what threw me off at first which is why I needed clarification. I think its more of a discussion than argument.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Galaxy was better, but I liked Liberty better than Brawler and Mercy was better than AP. However, AP had all the action really.
Sure, having some tailor made dialog that reflect some specific choices and/or "life situations" (for a lack of a better term) would always be nice but there is one thing that I feel most who implement this gets wrong and that is that you're an open book to everyone you ever meet, even the bum on the corner knows you without any introduction when you've just started the game and you're still essentially a nobody.
Take the amnesia example. If you grew up there then perhaps you would have trained under Bob before getting the amnesia but it is very unlikely if you moved cities due to the amnesia and wanting to really start fresh.
Not sure how to fix this kind of thing but it would most likely end up over complicated to be worth it.
Yeah, that's the crux of the whole idea.
There are so many things that could bring this game to 11, but what really is the return on that investment? How much more effort is required for that last bit of oomph compared to the effort required to take it to being good-enough?
[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 winds up like CoH, there is no point to multiple starting areas. People who still flood the one deemed the gathering site.
Galaxy City may not have been as populous as Atlas Park, but it was *my* city! With fewer other heroes, BABs and I had our paws full!
I blame myself for the Shivan attack on my adopted city, but, on the positive side, Galaxy was *obviously* of more strategic importance than Atlas!
*sage nod*
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Galaxy City wasn't a city. It was a neighborhood.
Paragon was the city. :p
It was called Galaxy City. It would seem odd to name a neighborhood a city.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Paragon City was sectioned off into areas. Like San Diego has Pacific Beach, Clairemont, La Jolla...etc. You're in a different part of one city.
Galaxy City was part of Paragon City. Why they decided to add the City part, because why not. :p They were odd.
I always thought Galaxy City was dark and dreary, until the day I landed in Mercy City! At least in Mercy City there was a reason for the dark landscape (villains, underside of life, all that jazz).
But Praetoria was by far my favorite starting zone, even though it arrived late in the game. I enjoyed the missions more, the NPCs had more character, and no matter which side you started on you were never quite sure who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. In so many ways, both sides were honorable warriors seeking to protect what was left of humanity and yet, both sides had elements that were irredeemably evil and in some cases, downright sadistic. Golden and shining in the sun, but filled with personal agendas, ambitions, and cutthroat politics. I felt right at home there.
Which probably says more about me than I care to admit.
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A starting area should relax players into the game and not try to excite us with flashy action such as, "THE BLEEGORPS INVADED THE CITY!" People running around frantically, fires and damaged cars all around.
I hate that soooo much. Please just let us get into the game first before any of that happens.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
I don't know if CoT will have standard starting (or low level) zones like CoX.
The branching for your contacts will probably spread people out a bit (alignments, etc). Sure there would/should be common areas, but I don't think there will be a lot of commonality between missions from one character to the next. It might be difficult to help people figure out how & what to do with their missions.
I remember liking AP more than GC. It had more to do with visibility in the zone. You could see the statue. Your sight lines for distant locations in the zone weren't too obstructed. AP just felt more like a starter zone whereas GC felt more like a city.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
I always enjoyed the reversal of the names of Outbreak and Breakout in regards to heroes and villains being reversals of each other. I thought that was smartly clever, and I do enjoy some witty word-play.
As for Atlas Park versus Galaxy City, AP had the statue and the music and just everything right about start of a superheroing career. I still love hearing that music, and it fills me with heart-warming nostalgia (another thing I'm fond of). I never really played through CoV content, aside from the Patron arcs and Strike Forces, from the ground up such as Mercy Isle despite growing to being a fan of their ATs (brutes, doms, and corrs mostly, along with my amazing Bane VEAT) in my later years of CoH/V. I don't think I stuck with a villain long-term before Going Rogue, so before you could start as any AT on any side, I would start goldside and then push to blue through the morality system as soon as humanly possible. I usually sat at Vigilante or the rare Rogue to be able to cross back and forth as I pleased to do content.
I wasn't remiss when GC got Shivaned. I thought it was a good way to introduce new content, although it did make it seem like the character was far more awesome than they actually were at level 1 or 2 because directly afterwards you were on the AP streets, fighting purse-snatchers with handguns compared to the radioactive jelly-bean aliens from outer space that just nuked a neighborhood.
One of the things I think they improved with Redside and Goldside over Blueside, was that there was less immediate need to go indoors for basic functions. This helped players with lower end systems not feel the pinch as much. Going inside to meet your 1st contacts Blueside DID make sense in context, but 2 or more map loads for each mission could break immersion and player engagement.
At some point, you need to worry less about the low end systems. I'm not saying, don't make the game playable for low end systems, but never pick that 386 :p Pick a system that's 2-3 years older than when you start making it :)
I agree Brand X. And I feel that pretty much everyone likely to be on these forums will agree as well. I just also recall how utterly new I was to computers when CoH was announced and how confusing the hardware was.
All I am saying is that placing the trainers, contacts, and stores outside in the starting area at least, is a good way to help ensure the most players can enjoy themselves and become regular customers.
I always felt it was opposite but still the same for the wordplay, like "heroes and villains are made of the same thing."
20041004-20120910
I preferred AP. I could quickly grind out a few levels without dealing with the back and forth of missions.
I always did the tutorial for the great big green. I would keep it and sell it in Atlas for 5000+ cash, enough to keep me in enhancements for a while.
The open setting of AP was welcome, I could always find a few villains all for myself.
Mercy lent itself for roleplaying very well. nice and gritty. I just wanted to throw a bum out of a shack and sleep the night away in peace.
still, I spent as little time there as possible.
In this game, I sure would love to have a reward for completing the tutorial...something I could sell.
Further I would like a separate tutorial for villains. sneaking about the sewers and a hidden entrance into a casino.
for starting areas...Missions and grinding ought to be available. I would love an Azuria character always losing artifacts of power.
For villains, taking over a gang should be the end of a mission arc and it would open a new series of missions.
Vigilantes and heroes need to be able to earn a bounty on their heads from the villains they fight and low level supers will show up to cash in.
signature NPC super villains need to be available at low levels. Players can feel they accomplished a solid comic story even at low levels. These would not be a nemesis. They instead would be a series of NPC villains that can be encountered again and again as players level up.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Like the Amerikatt Revenge Squad?!
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(Tosses Catnip coated squeeky toy)
Why yes, it does.
(opens door for Revenge Squad whilst AmeriKatt is distracted),
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
(The Amerikatt Revenge Squad moves into position, except for the one villain who remembers what happened to Amerikatt's first sidekick, and what Amerikatt was like afterward. Captain Wren, the greatest Space Pirate in the Western Spiral Arm, fades back and quietly calls for a beam-up back to her ship...)
"No, Twelve, we're leaving. Now. Out there, thataway, where it's safe. Oh, and activate the databombs in those emails; hopefully none of those poor fools will survive to tell her we were even here today."
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Mwrrrrrr! ["Must ... fight ... this ... mutant strain ... of catnip!" -- Translated by your friendly neighborhood Editor]
*makes her saving throw vs. catnip*
*removes a vial of Anti-Catnip Katt Serum from the secret pouch in her utility cape*
*tosses super-catnip coated squeaky toy at the Amerikatt Revenge Squad*
*shakes her paw at the Naughty Spawns*
*leaves the Forums and disappears into the night*
[Flashback sequence]MRRRRRRRRWWWW!!! ["TIMMY! WHAT HAVE I DONE? TIMMYYYY!!!"*]
[*Timmy fell into a vat of enhanced high-grade catnip, becoming a catnip junkie in the now-classic [b][I][u]Amerikatt and Timmy Terrific[/u][/i][/b] #85 (August 1971). He eventually became the Kitty King of Krime known as Timmy The Tabby Terror. Amerikatt has never forgiven herself for putting such a youngling in harm's way and turning him into a public menace. -- Editor]
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Why not have *n* available starter areas- even if they're just different spawnpoints in the same 1 or 2 zones- and let you select where you start based on your own personal backstory? If you're a sciency-type, maybe near or at the Universtiy. Natural beastie? Spawn in a park. etc.
I am [b] not[/b] an altoholic! I can stop whenever I want. No, really...
One of the things I like about DCUO is that you get to choose where your base is. Depending on the type of base you choose (penthouse, bunker, cave, sewer, industrial, or modern), you get a different kind of front door; and then you get to pick from among dozens and dozens of that particular front door throughout the neighborhoods of gotham and metropolis.
While MWM has outright stated there are no "origins" for player characters, I do think that Conquererworm's idea of a different starting location could still be a worthwhile idea. But I see it being done similarly to how DCUO does bases.
In this case, the way I'm picturing it, you get to pick from a bunch of choices for your starting area, similar to how you get to pick where you want your front door in DCUO. I would even set up some pre-selected templates for specific superhero stereotypes for the players who just want to jump in. So rather than asking what your origin is, you get to browse through several starting points and the game shows you a screenshot of the area, tells you about each one, the neighborhood it's in, the predominant factions in the area, most likely paragons or arch villains you may run across and etc. Then when you pick one, it throws you into the introductory scenarios but in that location with that location's specific NPCs. MWM wouldn't even need to change the first introductory missions or the dialogue, they would just change the names of some of the NPCs and organizations like Mad Libs for your specific starting area. Later on in the development process they could differentiate a little bit more, but we really wouldn't need that kind of differentiation until we start working on our third or fourth alts, right?
I think that would be really cool, because for the rest of your time on the game, you kind of get a feeling like this one neighborhood is YOUR neighborhood, where your roots are, where you started out, with your memories that are your own.
[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.
Yeah, I kinda like the idea of a 'Toggleable Tutorial' that's simply overlaid on whatever mission you're doing. That way, it's starting-area agnostic and basically mission agnostic. If you're doing the tutorial, then there's no 'extra mission' you have to do and if you're Not doing the tutorial, then there's no mission you're Missing.
Devs could write a bunch of 'tutorial flags' into the script of dozens of missions, which would trigger appropriate extra information. And, if somebody had decided to skip the tutorial, but then realized they needed a refresher, they could just toggle it 'on' and keep going. Some parts of the tutorial might be captured as video clips, or slide-shows, or just a 'manual', which could be accessed either offline, or in down-time between missions. That guy in the cafe, having that intense session with his PDA? He might just be running a quick tutorial refresher.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I don't like tutorials. I liked the freedom of immediately loading a character into Atlas Park on COH. Don't have to read pop up windows, or be forced to do a mission where you have to kill bad guys a certain way(first kicking them, then with your ability, etc), pick up an item (to teach you how to click on something, add it from your inventory, etc).
The only thing important about a starting area to me, is to have the choice between two different zones.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
I think they decided that the first tutorial mission was going to be the bank robbery mission that they featured in one of the live streams. Where the story lets you chose your initial alignments and caps with travel power selection.
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I am looking forward to thwarting the bank robbery in Kytonopolis, the capitol of the City of Tabbies!
*pats Sir Timoteo Montenegro the 3rd on his furry little noggin and watches him spin through the air ... horizontally!*
"Go for the beltline, Timmy! Go for the beltline!"
[center][color=purple][size=16][b][I][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78N2SP6JFaI]Just a cat from another star![/url][/I][/b][/size][/color][/center]
That map looked stunning. I don't know if the rest of the game will have maps with that level of realistic looking furniture, flooring, walls, etc, but it was visually impressive to me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'm confident it will. The bits they showed of the research lab were great as well. I must say the attention to detail in the environments that I have seen so far have impressed me more than the other offerings.
Random encounter in Research Lab: Chance of being bitten by a radioactive kitten!
#RandomRoentgens
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Well whatever it is, part of making a fantastical genre like supers, well fantastical, is to push the line of disbelief down, so as the first introduction to this world, I would probably recomand that the first contact is someone, not human, maybe they're a robot, maybe they're some sort of fantasy creature like and elf or a troll or something. He doesn't have to be powerful, maybe he's just like a police officer or something for heroes, or a low level hoodlum for villains, just something that tells the player immediately that this isn't our world. Second I'd personally use more comedy in the beginning, not enough to overshadow the drama, but enough that the work can effectively go "hey, you know, don't take this thing entirely seriously, okay?" comedy and reminders that this isn't our world are very important pieces for fantasy, and it's necessary that such things be noticeably present as soon as you enter that world.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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I think the starting area should just be in the main city, in the low level area. Not a separate instance.
I prefer Atlas Park, solar, clean, full of old women to rescue with my superpowers.
This is one of the images that still makes me dream for the future (and the reason is that Atlas Park felt like "home").
Is there any video of what they showed on the livestream??
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
https://www.twitch.tv/missingworldsmedia/videos/all
I think the one you want is
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/162768297
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]
Yeah thanks, now I know what they're talking about and I 100% agree about how beautiful the instances were. The slight glow and the reflections were done so well.
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
While these points *might* work for a medieval-fantasy game, I'd advocate the exact opposite approach for a superhero MMO. Although Titan City will be in some sort of parallel universe, I believe it should be as close to a real world city as possible, because the impact of superheroes comes from their very contrast with the real world. Look at how well the MCU films are doing precisely because the fictional characters and events are so well intertwined with real world elements. As for comedy, while I don't mind it if done with restraint and intelligence, too much can sink an entire world. Look at how many people complained about the silliness of CO, where everything seemed to be repeating that idea of "don't take this too seriously." I think the success of the old game was partially based on the fact that it did take itself seriously for the most part, leading players to become more invested in their characters, the world, and the game.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Well what works for a movie, doesn't really work for a game, especially when the movies where targeted to people who didn't know much about comics in the first place. Second I agree with you on the second thing, that why I said "Not to much that it takes away from the drama" superhero media fails when it doesn't strike that balance between light hearted and dramatic. I wasn't going "Hey you know what this game needs out of the gate? ALIENS AND SHOWTUNES!!" I'm just saying that there needs to be something there to remind people right out of the gate that this isn't our world
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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I think I may have found my starting area!
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
[youtube]RrxlbLVcpqI[/youtube]
Just had to at the mention of aliens and showtunes.
Sure, not everything in film translates to an MMO, but I'd point to our old game as evidence that it does for this particular case.
Can you explain why you feel this is important? I'd argue the opposite is essential: that the game should blur the line between reality and the fictional world as much as possible, especially at the start, in order for our characters to feel 'super.'
Spurn all ye kindle.
The planets are in alignment, blacke4dawn, and you have just had your perfect moment in the universe.
[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.
Let's look at it from three main aspects of story-telling: Setting, Character, and Plot
[b]Setting[/b]
Valiance Online is set in the future. Ship of Heroes is, well, on a starship. Champions Online is Epcot Center for urban planners.
Keeping CoT grounded in a contemporary urban setting actually sets it apart from it's immediate competitors, and probably makes the strongest callback to CoH. And I think there's a good case for starting in a more mundane area, at least at first. Thor may have come from Valhalla, and Iron Man from a cliffside California mansion or a New York penthouse[sup]*[/sup], but Spider-Man started in Queens, and Netflix built a superhero empire on the Lower West Side. That "started from the bottom, now we're here" arc makes a nice lampshade on the early leveling experience.
[b]Plot[/b]
Here's where we can't really get into what's going on in VO or SoH. We still have CoH and CO as references, and they certainly learned from each other. You could see the tutorials escalate, from Outbreak to Breakout to CO's Qularr invasion to CoH's reworked Shivan attack. It's their post-tutorial experiences that should inform CoT most.
CoH's original blueside missions mostly felt lonely and menial. Adding Twinshot and the Shining Stars gave your early Atlas Park jobs a better sense of fitting into a larger superhero world, and it's a shame redside never got that level of care. If you've rolled a new character in Star Trek Online since Legacy of Romulus was released, you can see how Matt Miller applied the lessons he learned from the Shining Stars missions. Cryptic didn't plan on reworking the Fed tutorial until Posi's work on the KDF and Romulan ones completely out-classed it.
CO, on the other hand, went from bad to worse. Originally, you ended the tutorial by choosing which helicopter would take you a few time zones away from Millenium City: a US Army base in the New Mexico desert or a Canadian Forces base in Waytheheckout, Yukon. At least the villains you fought made sense: radioactive disciples of the cosmic-level supervillain Grond trying to detonate a nuke in the desert, a right-wing militia being infiltrated by evil geneticist Teleios in Canada, and [s]Hydra[/s] VIPER in both. When they flipped the out-of-tutorial and mid-teens quest lines, and sent you to MC's west side after the Qularr attack, the setting got better but the plots got worse. It's all so cartoonish that it creates a horrible first impression: An organized crime ring with a wardrobe stuck in the late-90s swing revival[sup]**[/sup]; a blatant knock-off of Big Trouble in Little China; and Foxbat, with his fourth-wall breakage and ACME prop-comedy power set on full blast, inserting himself into an Anchorman ripoff. You have to wade through an ocean of nacho cheese to get to the proper apocalyptic, genocidal villains approaching the endgame: Therakiel, Mechanon, Shadow Destroyer, the various Qliphothic shenanigans they've added lately.
[b]Character[/b]
Here's where you can deliver some humor and keep things from getting too grimdark while still delivering a sense of stakes. Vivid personalities like Flambeaux and fantastical aliens like Dillo (*hoorb*) can give new players the sense that there are wild, wonderful, fun things to come as you play through the game, even if you're standing in front of a typical bodega in Olympia at the time. (Or you can just watch that live-action Destiny 2 trailer. All hell may be breaking loose, but that doesn't mean that Cayde-6 can't be his usual snarky-ass self.)
[sup]*[/sup] Technically, Iron Man started in a [i]cave[/i]. With a box of [i]scraps[/i].
[sup]**[/sup] So much wasted potential there, since they're based on an actual Detroit Prohibition-era gang that smuggled whiskey across the river from Windsor.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
No matter how many times I "rolled an alt", there was nothing like spawning at the feet of Atlas in the middle of Atlas Park with that heroic music. Hopefully CoT can replicate that experience.
As for setting - I 100% agree with Sister Silicon: having CoT grounded in a contemporary world will give CoT it's unique feel compared to the other games, and call back to CoH most strongly. It will also match up nicely with the current superhero movie genre which is for the most part pretty grounded. Now that doesn't mean you can't have an Oroborous or Shadow Shard, cops in power armor or a high-tech Portal Corps district - elements of sci-fi, magic and the fantastic are all over this genre after all and it's interesting to see how it bleeds into the norm - but for the reasons above I think keeping the city itself more on the contemporary side of things is the best way to go.
Still working on it.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I certainly agree with SisterSilicon's points, though I would add the caveat that I definitely disliked the way Twinshot 'talked down' to us. I'd have preferred a little more positivity and acknowledgement of my help.
I'd like to differ, though, about the way that the post-Feedom tutorial put us on rails. There was only the One path through those introductory missions. I definitely preferred the multiple-paths available in the 'old days' of CoH. That encouraged me to make multiple characters and try different contacts. I also liked the way the old contacts offered to pass us on to Different next steps and gave us a quick rundown on their available plots and opponents. There were times when I wished they'd actually connect us to Multiple contacts at a time - there was so Much to Do in CoH! I swear, there must have been a dozen story-arcs I never unlocked, despite my multiple characters. Knowing all of those other stories, I admit I often just ditched Twinshot and her crew, and went to fight goons in KR and Skyway.
Be Well!
Fireheart
NICE! And I agree with Cinnder and others--the "almost our time and reality but with some extras" setting that most classic comics use is one of the things that makes CoT the game I'm most interested in.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
In the old game, when the game first started, your character was effectively fighting zombies what with the contaminated, when you could start playing villains, you where introduced to the ways that your powers where taken from you and you where introduced to superadine, a drug that can turn you into a green caveman with super strength if you tok too much, and then eventually, the starting zone was the aftermath of galaxy city being destroyed by the City of heroes version of parallax. When you started off the game, you where introduced to these fantastical elements right off the bat, and I'd say that it is important because it helps the player feel more like he's in the world when he's introduced to it right away.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
I hope we spawn at the feet of that awesome phoenix statue, god it was glorious.
Although, I know it was heavy on polys lol
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
[url=https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//1/14/AtlasPark_AtlasPlaza.ogg]Issues 1-20[/url]
[url=https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//e/e3/AtlasPark_N_AtlasPlaza.ogg]Issues 21-23[/url]
Some of us however based ourselves out of [url=https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//4/45/GalaxyCity_FreedomCourt.ogg]Galaxy City[/url] instead of out of Atlas Park.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I agree that having multiple mission chains was a boon in that it kept things fresh with new characters, even though the story arcs introduced later in the game's life were generally superior. Fortunately, this is something that can be dealt with in time as new missions are added (if necessary - we still have little info on the amount of content that will be available).
Ah, I see what you mean. That's fair enough. Small but significant things that don't really make the whole world seem different from the real one, but add a specific unique comic-booky aspect.
I'm completely with you here. I thought the Twinshot arc and characters were some of the worst writing I've ever seen in an MMO. Not only did she talk down to us, but the whole starting arc consisted of Manticore duping us instead of our actually fighting villains.
Yep, I did a calculation once re the number of choices we had in the first 10 levels or so pre-Freedom compared to afterwards. I can't find the figures now, but it was something like a couple dozen possible decision points pre-Freedom before you even got out of the starting zone. (Not for one character, but a potential of that many different paths each new character could follow.) This was reduced to a grand total of 1 decision with Freedom, where on both blue and red sides you had a choice between 2 very short mini-arcs before it put you back on the rails.
As far as I was concerned, Freedom tried to improve the starting experience over the original random-self-contained missions, but went wildly wrong in other ways. I hope CoT can avoid those mistakes.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Yep, the first time ! ^^ Spawing at the feet of this huge statue was really exciting :) Indeed, this will stay as a game experience to me. But after 2 or 3 reroll, It's not the same experience. less surprising, less exciting.
But, this was THE point to reach, the cross point for heroes :) villains never had this kind of cross point.
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Atlas Park and Galaxy City (with consequent Kings Row quests) were probably supposed to represent Metropolis and Gotham, the solar city and the dark city, the first perfect for super-powered heroes (Superman-Thor-Ironman like), the second perfect for street-level vigilantes (daredevil-batman-punisher like), Spiderman would be perfect in both^^.
Anyway it's not really necessary to do two starting places, you just need to put some early-choice that leads you to some kind of quests instead of others, more street-like or superpowered-like missions/opponents that you feel are perfect for the story of your hero (a choice like: do you want to stop a drug-leaders-meeting or a mad scientist doing experiments? Both things must be put with the same importance as life-saving events). This division of quests can be done even in the same zone.
Also pretty much all the MMORPGs which started with more than one place, slowly reduced the starting points to one, the obvious main one (obvious because those devs never tried to hide that one spot was so much better and updated and supposed to be the true-starting-point than the other/s). That's done also for the new players which join the game, forcing all players to start in one place makes it more crowded and the game apparently more successful (the unlucky newbie which starts in a deserted area, not knowing the community prefers the other, may uninstall the game thinking nobody plays it).
The same might be said for someone who logs in after U.S. Midnight on a Wednesday, they're unlikely to find a bustling crowd. I don't find your scenario compelling, though. I mean, I suppose it could be countered by putting up a Log-in Counter in 'Times Square'... "There's 2,201 Titans in Titan City now and 53,622 have visited today."
Be Well!
Fireheart
I much preferred having Galaxy City as AK's home base, particularly because it was less populated. That made it feel like AK and BABs were GC's protectors, as opposed to the glut of hero(in)es in Atlas Park. It was much more personal in GC.
[center][color=purple][size=16][b][I][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78N2SP6JFaI]Just a cat from another star![/url][/I][/b][/size][/color][/center]
No matter what happens in the starter zone, tutorial or whatever, it will more than likely be the same experience no matter what you think your character is or will become. We decide if we are good, bad or misunderstood. The game doesn't care beyond what we choose in character defining NPC interactions. That more than likely will not happen in the opening moments of a character's existence. The player won't have a firm grasp on what their choices mean that early in character development.
The starter zone will more likely than not be an introduction to what [I]could[/I] be possible based on your choices at critical junctures of a character's development. If there is a hard trinary switch (good/neutral/evil) in the intro scenario I am sure there would be a lot of grumbling from the playerbase.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
With the technoligy, now, you can display as many players as you want :) If it's on 30 by default, the (unique) spawn point after the starting area will be not overpopulated ^^ (this is only my opinion ^^)
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The could always add an extra bit to before the bank robbery/bank rescue, how we came to the city.
-Where we residents, so we would leave a building in the city.
-Did we arrive from another nation arriving by air
-Did we travel in by boat secretly or travel in from another destination by vehicle or train etc
Something like that would help flesh out our starting, though id also like to have 2 costumes when we start one "hero/vill/merc uniform" and a casual civilian type one.
I think that the spawn point just after the bank rescue, linked with the area with some unmissable/important NPC will be a place which gather people :) Think about Atlas statue, the city hall and Miss Liberty, that was THE point to reach, the point of "rendez-vous", the point you see when you arrived and make you unconsciously keep in mind as THE point to meet people.
That could be a great thing to retrieve in CoT ^^ (even if the phoenix plaza is already the place to be :p)
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Most of my characters started in AP, but I liked the fact that GC existed, and I did start quite a few characters there, for exactly the reasons AK gives above. Sometimes, I just didn't want to deal with the crowds. It was a lot easier to feel important right out of the gate in GC.
But I think most importantly, I liked having the -choice- between AP and GC. I really kind of hated how they redid the starting sequence and blew up GC.
I think choices, even ones that might seem meaningless if looked at in a "big picture" way, are important. Each of my characters in CoH was an individual, and they built their own individual histories mission by mission. Even if I took the more common route, and chose AP over GC, that was still a choice. It helped give me a sense of having some control over my character's path.
And that's one of the things I loved about CoH from the very start. I almost always felt that I was playing the game, not that the game was playing me. Way too many of the other MMOs I've tried have been the other way around.
I think that sense of being a unique character on a unique path should start right away at level 1.
I couldn't agree more. Even though the starter missions we had pre-Freedom were nothing much to write home about, the mere fact that we had such an array to choose from was something I found significant.
Spurn all ye kindle.
There are plenty of neighborhoods in the real world with similar names. There's an Ohio City in Cleveland, for one.
On the main question:
For a while, I was using a barely-adequate computer and the crowded zones like Atlas had an annoying lag, so a lot of my characters started in Galaxy City just to avoid that. After that, I had kind of a sentimental attachment to the zone, combined with a stubborn pride in liking the one nobody else cared about. Atlas Park was really striking, though, and as a couple of other people pointed out, the music combined with the statue was quite a thing.
I loved Mercy. The burnt-out wreck of a town, dotted with sinister outposts, was a such a great place to start being a villain. "Yeah, you escaped the Zig, but now you're here."
I never really got to know Praetoria. It was pretty, but I didn't play in it enough to become attached.
(Robin) Christina Lea
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