Obligatory [b]WALL OF TEXT CRITS YOU!!![/b] warning.
So.
Levels.
What are they good for?
The best thing that Levels are good for is tracking PC advancement. They can be used to benchmark the difficulty of opposition to throw at the PC. And they can also be used as part of a mathematical function that determines the throughput the PC is able to generate with their powers and abilities.
The worst thing that Levels can be used for is to fix the range in which NPCs within a region are "relevant" to a PC. I say this because anytime you have NPCs spawning within a fixed level range within a defined region you have (as a developer) essentially built Planned Obsolescence into your game. This is because while the PC continues to advance in Levels, the content of a region does not ... by design.
Assigning fixed Level ranges to NPC spawn groups within a region, whether it be an instanced map or out in the larger shared world, creates a situation where it becomes possible (and sometimes even desirable) to trivialize content. Those of us who played City of Heroes for a long time remember Positron's catch phrase ... "All Grey To Me" ... explaining why Positron in Steel Canyon never did anything about the Rikti Invasions the players would cluster up around him clearing out. Just like many players, if there's no reward there's no reason to engage ... and if everything in the game is "Grey" to your character, you won't give a second thought about the world around you, because it's all (literally) beneath you.
It has been observed by the MMORPG creators of multiple games that they need to find a new paradigm for content creation. It takes them 4 months of intensive effort to generate 2 weeks of content. There are a lot of games where there are different zones for different Level ranges of players, but once you're done with those zones you never really need to come back [i]for the zone itself[/i]. Combine these factors and you wind up with a situation in which zone creation is essentially a [i]disposable endeavor[/i] ... because the contents of those zones themselves are inherently disposable (ie. use once and trash).
City of Heroes was "less bad" about this problem than some games, simply because it had different ways to route players back through earlier zones. Level 50 Tip Missions could send you to a mission door in Atlas Park, for instance. The Numina Task Force sent your team on a "zone tour" to defeat specific mob groups (most of which conned grey to anyone running the Task Force, so it was a pointless street hunt). But at the same time, there were entire regions of the game that people just hardly ever went to, and once they were done there they never went back to. Places like Faultline, or Terra Volta, or ... The Shadow Shard zones. Heck, even The Hollows was a place that pretty much NO ONE ever wanted to go back to!
And who remembers the fact that there was a Sewers map under Paragon City, that was annoying as sin to get around in ... with an almost identical Abandoned Sewers map [i]underneath it[/i] that really only existed to make the Mission Door to the Abandoned Sewers Task Force a pain in the posterior to get to? Once again, big maps that people visit once or twice and then just leave and never come back.
Indeed, once a game has been out for a long time and you have a lot of characters sitting at the Level Cap, you wound up with everyone hanging out in either Grandville, Peregrine Island, the Rikti War Zone or Cimerora, until the Dark Astoria revamp for endgame. Why? Because those were the Level Cap zones, and nothing else mattered ... unless you were on a Task Force/Strike Force or playing with a team.
So assigning Levels to particular zones winds up being counterproductive, methinks, due to the way that it segregates the population of players ... and because it means that the greater world is substantially disposable. Do it once and then never care about it ever again, because ... [i]"All Grey To Me."[/i]
Now, DeathSheepFromHell recently said something that I [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/69752#comment-69752]found rather interesting[/url] ...
An interesting tidbit about the engine: NPCs are the same as players except with an AI control rig rather than something that links to a client.
This brings up a potential opportunity that involves how NPCs get "defined" and recorded by the game. I say this because ... let's face facts here ... we [b]ALL[/b] want to have Super Sidekicking be a part of City of Titans!
Ah ... but what if Super Sidekicking applied [i]not just to PCs, but could also get applied to NPCs too?[/i]
Essentially what this would mean, in terms of the back end, is that every NPC in the game would get written up and defined, in terms of their powers and so on, as if they were a Level Cap character. That way, that NPC can be used, and be fought against, at anywhere from Level 1 all the way on up to the Level Cap. This would then mean that particular groups of NPCs wouldn't be "restricted" to the low Level zones of the City ... instead they could appear ANYWHERE.
In City of Heroes, you could find Outcasts in Paragon City from Level 1-19, and then Warriors from Level 20-29 ... but then they just inexplicably disappeared from the higher Level zones and you just simply never saw them again. Both groups were essentially Planned Obsolete opposition that were restricted to only certain regions of Paragon City.
But if you can Super Sidekick NPCs [i]to match the Level of the PCs engaging them[/i] you wind up with a set of rules that allows your Foe NPC groups to remain relevant not only to PCs of every Level but also not be "restricted" from appearing anywhere in the entire city.
The way this would work is that NPCs would get made up as if they were PCs, using the same Powers and so on as regular characters. Pets would be "totally gimp" builds, Minions would be "gimped" builds (they're both intended to be crunchies, after all), Lieutenants would be "slightly gimped" builds, while Bosses would be "not gimped" builds. Elite Bosses would then have "dangerously optimized" builds.
Heroes/Arch-Villains ... would be something of a misnomer under such a system ... but game mechanically speaking they'd be PC builds with special advantages not available to PCs.
Giant Monsters would be ... gigantic sacks of Hit Points with special advantages not available to PCs.
Now ... the way this would all work is that NPCs that are [i]out of combat[/i] would have NO LEVEL assigned to them. They'd have their ranking ... Pet/Minion/Lieutenant/Boss/Elite Boss/etc. ... but they wouldn't have a Level. What would assign them their Level would be ... entering combat. When entering combat, an NPC would run a check against the Level of the Team Leader attacking that NPC, and then the PC's Level would get assigned as the NPC's Level for the duration of the combat. If the NPC drops combat, then they drop their Level assignment too (and leash back to their spawn point).
In effect, the NPCs would "sidekick" themselves to the Level of the PC attacking them for the duration of the battle.
Now, this assignment of "NPC sidekicking" when engaging Foe NPCs could be modified by a Notoriety system, allowing Players to decide if they want to face opposing NPCs at -3 to +3 Levels of their character's Level. This would be an "always on" feature that would persist until changed (by going back to the registrar and doing the update). When dealing with Teams (and Leagues), the Level used for this "NPC sidekicking" feature would be either the Team Leader's Level and Notoriety Setting when in the shared world, or the Mission Holder's Level and Notoriety Setting when inside instances.
In other words, rather than scaling the PCs to the world ... instead the world would scale itself to the PCs.
This has some rather important consequences.
I remember running through Steel Canyon, a Level 10-19 zone, and sometimes finding abandoned Ambush groups standing around outside mission doors that were wildly over Level for the zone. Level 50 Malta in Steel Canyon, for example. Well, when the Level of the NPCs is "defined" by the reason they spawn, you wind up with a situation where these Foe NPCs persist until some other wildly over Level PC (usually also a Level 50) comes along and altruistically cleans them up (to protect all the lowbies in the zone).
If, however, you use the system I'm proposing here, those same Level 50 Malta would spawn as an Ambush at Level 50 ... but once they were abandoned and "leashed" back to their spawn point they would become Level Undefined. Their Level would then get reassigned whenever they entered combat next. This means that if a Level 1 PC engaged them, they would all be Level 1 Malta (then modified for Notoriety).
The flipside of this system would be that [b]There Are No Grey NPCs Anywhere[/b].
If you're a Level 50 and you go to Atlas Park ... you can fight Level 50 NPCs [i]in Atlas Park[/i].
In other words ... every Foe NPC you meet on the street is "fair game" for you ... and likewise ... you are "fair game" for them to engage too. This means that you wouldn't be able to take your Level 50 PC to Atlas Park, walk up to a group of Foe NPCs and [i]be ignored[/i] simply because your character is too high a Level for those NPCs to fight.
As a consequence of this, no part or portion of the City of Titans would be "segregated" into a sort of Level strata of Players. The motivating force to "churn" Players through different regions of the city would be the same reason Players go to particular locations in the first place ... [i]there's something to do there[/i]. You've been sent to a mission door at X Marks The Spot. There's a Contact to go meet and greet. You need to collect a courier drop by the mailbox on Y Street in Z Neighborhood. You need to deliver a pizza in 30 minutes or less or you'll get "whacked" by your employers (who have employment opportunities in their Independence Port location!). In other words, Players can get "tasked" to go all over without being segregated into low Level vs high Level zones.
Questions? Comments?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
That's a lot of words to basically say you want foe scaling. Its been discussed quite a bit before.
While I always hated outleveling content I am an old school RPGer...I like facing a couple goblins at low levels and a family of dragons at high levels.
I think there are very valid reason for having level set foes in the game. Things like exploitats, griefing, story concepts, pacing, power level representation and balance to name a few.
I do agree that zones on a whole can be utilized better than CoH did by using missions or goals for both high and low level players. Many of the zones you point out as being abandoned by high levels had little to do with the street mobs and more to do with no reason to go there that furthers their characters plot. And when they did it was usually a fetch quest or a instanced mission which had that character quickly on their way. Alternative or multiple reason for exploring the city on the whole would help alleviate this a lot more than foe scaling.
There are hundreds of ways that MMO people have suggested ways to track your growth and experience without a leveling system.. But I don't know of any that are so great without having a freeform type of powers choice system.
As for content you face.. I don't see any reason level 10 players shouldn't be able to do the same content as level 30 players. Damage for instance doesn't need to grow with levels but higher characters would do more damage due to their access to other powers (buffs, debuffs, etc). The suggested difficulty level of content however of any mission should be clearly marked.
While a single level 10 player would find a "RED Difficulty" mission hard to do alone a team of 6 level 10 players my find it easier. I always run in teams and almost refuse to solo PvE content so this sounds like a great solution for a player like me.
- -
One thing that you're not really touching on for us who immerse ourselves in roleplay is story reveals. Usually there's a larger narrative for players that comes with following threads of story based on level.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
To me, this is the best reason for levels in a game: To let the players know that mission [I]x[/I] with a level of [I]n[/I] is intended by the devs be done before the mission [I]y[/I] with a level of [I]n+1[/I]. Of course this can also be done by not making mission [I]y[/I] available until after mission [I]x[/I] is completed....
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]
I always liked that in a Rikti invasion, no matter where it took place, the Rikti scaled to your level. This seems to me to be close at least to what Redlynne is calling for, and if I get his point, then this example was certainly fun.
Of course, I personally also found the "huge group" battles to be some of the most fun content in the game -- ship raids, Hami raids, Rikti invasions, Halloween events. This was in part because I spent a lot of time soloing in COH but actually enjoyed large group play with minimum structure for the social side of the game. So the Rikti invasion was one of the most enjoyable activities, having huge scope and requiring only pick up teams. A new player on a scrapper could be useful on an invasion team -- and did not have to know any special tricks to be an effective contributor to team success.
But it also depended at least a bit on foe scaling, if there weren't enough 50's around...
Using whatever algorithm or what have you to make the badguys scale to the PCs is a great feature, and I could see it being used more in CoT than in it was CoX. As Red said, it gives the devs the ability to sick any type of foe on any PC of any level, so there's more possible variety in missions, etc which is definitely a good thing.
That said, I personally don't want to lose the PC levels as a thing either. For one, it gives your toon a sense of progress. Having an officially sanctioned S.H.I.E.L.D. security level or whatever you end up calling it not only gives you a sense of your toon's place in the world but defines a direction as "forward" as far as their development, story line and powers are concerned. Clearly we can have both levels and scaled foes, as CoX did that.
As for the abandoned zones of CoX, from my point of view (100% of my toons were on the Triumph server, which was not one of the most populated ones) they were pretty much ALL empty all the time, except when people were forming an iTrial, then there would be like 8-24 people standing around in Pocket D or Astoria or wherever, many of them AFK. What caused this, to me, was the rewards for doing group content, especially high-level group content. People weren't all flocking to one zone or another to solo against environment badguys, they were soloing missions of their own for rewards. They weren't coming together to play in large temporary pick up groups to street sweep (like the good old days in year 1 of CoX!), they were doing missions with those groups. I don't think they anyone was ever going to just fight the environment badguys anywhere very much when there were better swag rewards for doing other things, like TFs, Trials, and the occasional solo Alignment mission. Since most toons spent more time post level 50 than getting there, the iTrials were the most popular thing among VIPs for that reason. In the summer of 2012 I spent most of my time soloing my Mastermind doing Alignment missions by day and doing iTrials with my level 50s by night. Of course, I had taken a long break and had some catching up to do, but it was a great time to be doing it, as there were a whole bunch of my favority type of content pieces (trials and TFs) to pick from at that level. The fact that things like the Weekly Strike Target and the newer iTrials would tend to draw a crowd (and the movie summer thing they rolled out) was awesome for me, because it meant more people would be up for group content, which I found the most fun. It's always more fun to beat up thugs and chat on the team channel than it is to just beat up thugs.
Long story short, even in zones where the mobs that spawned were not grey to me, I still didn't spend a lot of time street sweeping, because it was boring and not as rewarding as group content. Occasionally I'd go to Warburg or Bloody Bay to get a nuke or refill my jellomen, and even then I usually had the ENTIRE zone to myself.
So if you want to have people out there in the streets fighting badguys, you need to incentivize it better. Just scaling the mobs and or getting rid of the PC levels isn't enough.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
All by itself ... no, it's definitely "not enough" as you say. But taken in aggregate with everything else, it is one of the deciding factors.
I know that in City of Heroes when I was Level +5 over the Foe NPCs in a zone I knew that I could safely cruise through that zone and ignore EVERYTHING along the way between points A and B. Every single Foe NPC standing around was IRRELEVANT. They just didn't matter. If I ignored them, then they ignored me. Simple as that. So traveling through a lower Level zone was a zero risk problem. I never needed to "watch out" for anything other than terrain. The Foe NPCs were [i]less of a problem for me than the terrain[/i], which ought to tell you something.
By contrast, in World of Warcraft, the Foe NPCs had fixed Levels too, but they never reached the point of "ignoring" overleveled PCs like City of Heroes did. They just had their aggro radius shrunk (by a divisor) so that it never became zero. This meant that even though that low level mob you just aggroed couldn't really "hurt" your high level character, you at least needed to "avoid" them and drive around them while riding your mount so as to not be harassed by them for (a few seconds). It meant that even in places where it was "safe" to travel you [i]still profited from paying attention to your surroundings and the Foe NPCs in it[/i]. So rather than riding around in straight lines between points A and B, ignoring (and being ignored by) every Foe NPC in the zone, instead you'd find yourself "riding the seams" around the aggro radii of the Foe NPCs so as to not disturb them, even though they weren't any real "threat" to you.
I want City of Titans to NOT have that same feeling of "[b][i]All Grey To Me[/i][/b]." that City of Heroes had because of the "rule" that Foe NPCs ignored anything +5 Levels over them. Making the NPCs automagically scale to the PC's Level is the best way to keep every single spawn group on the streets something that Players either need to respect or avoid (or go pummel for fun and profit!). It also means that you won't have Players developing a condescending attitude towards Foe NPCs spawns in the world at large and the content of different parts of the city. You don't HAVE a "lowbie zone" and you don't HAVE a "Level capped zone" like City of Heroes did. Instead, you have A CITY ... and you take on the city as a whole, rather than piecemeal, in segregated zones, like City of Heroes did.
I know WHY City of Heroes set itself up the way it did, back in the day, because of server limits and load distribution and so on. But City of Titans doesn't have to replicate those limitations ... and arguably, shouldn't.
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+1 on that statement redlynne
I am not exactly sure what it is you really want anymore....is it foe scaling or a new aggro system.
If its foe scaling I really am not a fan of this idea. I would hate to go against some elite armored foes with specialized training (like Malta) one day then have that level of challenge with a street thug the next (a hellion). It hurts the flow of the story to me.
Also there were many more reasons that just server load for why foes did not scale. Story was a big one but there was also quality of life, ease of play, foe concept and game flow.
If its a new aggro system I just am not a fan of avoiding street mobs or have them constantly harassing me during travel. Its too much like a fantasy game wilderness concept than a city themed superhero one. The idea is that in a fantasy game the wilderness is a wild untamed place...this is why almost all fantasy style games have safe areas in towns. It fits in that theme as many of the foes are bandits or monsters the motives are pretty clear.
In a superhero setting it just does not make sense for every foe to whip out a gun and take pot shots. It does not fit the theme of a superhero game to me.
Just not a fan of the idea.
Snipers on the rooftops always killed that pleasant "I can fly through here without worrying" feeling. However, I do think that there should be Some zones where, unless you're an old lady with a over-sized purse, you can patrol through without being bothered by thugs.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I'm with islandtrevor on this one. I like the sense of progress provided not only by the discrete level progression, but by the fact that said progression earned a character a lack of aggro in lower level areas. And, as islandtrevor has said, a story point of outlevelling certain groups of enemies was to show the character had risen above the street thugs and moved on to bigger challenges. The theory of use-once zones is applicable only on a per-character basis (and even that can be overcome in some ways, as you point out) -- but since MWM has stated that alting will be a significant element of their "endgame" plans, it's not like most players will see a zone only once. Besides, there are griefing issues: if all mobs scaled to their attacker, what's to stop a lvl 50 from going to a lowbie area and starting a fight, then pulling the now-50 mobs into an area where they would make mincemeat of the characters there? In short, aside from GM-type encounters, I'm opposed to any automatic scaling because it removes choice from the players.
Having said that, I would definitely support an option to auto-exemp one's character to the local level if one wanted to avoid having areas full of greys. That could make both groups of players happy. Same goes for missions: an option if one desires that, but I definitely would not want it to be automatic.
Spurn all ye kindle.
You say that as if the two were not connected. They are. If Foe NPCs scale through the entire game, then the aggro behaviors and assumptions are different. For one thing, they don't ignore you anymore when you outlevel them.
What "story" are you talking about? Be specific. Details matter.
If you're talking about a Mission given to you by a Contact, that Mission is a part of that Contact's story. If the Contact sends you up against different Foe NPC Groups as a part of their story, how would that "hurt the flow of the story" for you?
If you're just simply out Street Sweeping, I'd imagine that particular neighborhoods of the city would spawn Foe NPCs in particular settings [i]for that neighborhood[/i]. Like how you could find Clockworks on rooftops of Steel Canyon, or Vahzilok around sewer entrances. In other words, the [i]distribution of Foe NPCs wouldn't be random[/i] around the city. There would be an ... ecosystem ... of Foe NPC Groups occupying different environments in different places. So if you want to take down members of a particular group, you go look for them "around here in this part of town" just like you'd expect.
My point being that different regions would have different "stories to tell" based on who (and what) inhabits those areas. It wouldn't be a uniform random distribution of Foe NPCs in all regions across every part of the city.
But the Outcasts "grow up" to become the Warriors ... who get "replaced" by The Knives of Artemis and Malta ... does that make any more sense, as a "story" to you? The Freakshow "top out" in the 30s, but the 5th Column/The Council and of course the Circle of Thorns can all just soldier on forever because ... {skritch skritch} ... well ... just because?
What "story" are you referring to? Be specific.
Again ... what "story" are you talking about? It's not like any of the Foe NPC groups were ever "defeated" once and for all and removed forever from the game. Heck, even the Tsoo made a reappearance in the Dark Astoria remake after having been "banished" from the game post-Level 39.
Quality of life? You mean not having to worry about ankle biters?
Ease of play? You mean not having to have any kind of concern about drive-by aggro while traveling?
Foe concept? You mean like having Planned Obsolescence?
Game flow? You mean like encountering different Foe NPC groups in different parts of Paragon City?
Bear in mind that City of Titans will not be Alternate Earth Paragon City.
Except ... we're going to have an Alignment System. A [b]three axis[/b] Alignment System. Three! Could anything be done with that?
Well ... funny you should ask that ...
[list][*]If all three of your Alignments "match" that of the NPCs around you, they ought to be allies of your character and rush to your aid.
[*]If two of your three Alignments "match" that of the NPCs around you, they ought to be friendly to your character but won't necessarily fight for you.
[*]If only one of your three Alignments "match" that of the NPCs around you, they ought to be neutral to or wary of your character.
[*]If NONE of your three Alignments "match" that of the NPCs around you, they ought to be hostile to your character.[/list]
Does that make sense to you? It does to me.
Different neighborhoods in the city will be populated with Foe NPCs with different alignment specs. Whether they react in a friendly or hostile way to your character [i]depends on your reputation and Alignment[/i].
And that's before we even start thinking about Secret Identities reshuffling that deck of what your Alignments are so that you can move through "enemy territory" unnoticed (and unmolested).
And just think ... I'm actually in favor of the idea of having "capture the flag" Control Points in some neighborhoods in the city, so as to determine which of the Foe NPCs ought to be the dominant group in that region ... meaning that in some areas the NPC population could CHURN depending on "who's in charge" there.
The lawful?
The lawless?
The honorable?
The dishonorable?
The peaceful?
The violent?
Suddenly, having a story about needing a "campaign" to Take Back Our Streets doesn't sound quite so far fetched, does it? And note that the same kind of campaigning could be done by the Virtuous ... and the Villainous. You could have PvEvP ... in the larger world, rather than just in an arena. Players wouldn't necessarily fight each other directly, but they could participate in enabling the Movers and Shakers to consolidate their power bases and following in different regions of the city. Instead, there'd be an indirect competition, through the medium of the Environment, for "control" of the city ... its heart ... and its people.
Hmmm. Sounds like something that could be done as a Daily Mission for Repeatable Content.
"Help Keep Galaxy City Clean!"
Indeed.
I'm sorry, you were saying?
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If a foe scales with your level how do you outlevel it....even in your own statement you say you outlevel...that's not foe scaling. You described foes as not having levels... right here...
That's very clearly foe scaling. then you use an example of WoWs system implying it was superior to CoHs with a very good explanation which was not foe scaling. You used it as a condemnation of the CoH aggro system. This seemed like you were suggesting the WoW system for CoT. Both are very different ways to get what you are asking for and are not connected. One is a system where all foes are always level appropriate the other was foes that could be level 1 trying to fight your level whatever. This is why I am confused.
The overall story of the characters progression in the game. I dont know how my example was lost on you. A common street thug with very limited access to equipment of any kind vs a highly trained soldier that is extremely well equipped...they should not be in the same league...
The absurdity of those foes being equal challenges in the game ruins any kind of flow in the story for me.
I am not sure how any of this directly relates to the level of the foe. The vahz were at sewer entrances and the clocks atop buildings and they had a level range. How does making those foes scale to the character change this.
It makes perfect sense. A hero starts out stopping purse snatchings and feels good about himself...then he realizes the purse snatchers are only a symptom of a greater issue...the gangs so he takes the fight to them....growing in skill and confidence. Then after he gives them a whatfor locking up some key figure he decideds that the neighborhood he grew up in is not enough to protect so he moves on. Now he runs into the hellions..who have a larger powerbase. Works his way through a bunch of them and arrests a few bosses when he get a call from a friend who tells him how awful the vahz are. The hero cant be in two places at once so even though the hero knows that the Hellions will bounce back but are in no way the larger threat he makes a choice to work on the vahz problem. Which leads him to the Lost...then Outcasts...the circle of thorns...and so on and so on. All this time the hero has gained a lot of power and skill able to now fight hordes of foes and the world knows him as one of the titans of the city. At this point he realizes the biggest threat is lord recluse so he decides its time to do something about it....
That's the story....the overall progress of a characters advancement.
What you are saying is when the hero decides to face lord recluse one of those same purse snatchers from way back when he first started runs up to the hero who can now shrug off cannon fire and proceeds to give him a challenge....I do not like that idea.
That's just it....for all reasonable purposes they were gone. They no longer attacked me and I no longer attacked them. I as a player understand that they cannot be removed from the game as they are part of the content that other players will use. So I decided to treat them as a group I had broken....no longer a threat to me or the city....and I moved on to the next threat. There has to be a bit of give in a player....not everything has to be spelled out for the player.
No I mean quality of life in the sense that I can explore areas of the city after outleveling them without constant harassment. I can go to the bathroom in areas I outlevel without making sure I am in a safe area. I don't have to worry as much about griefing from high level players....
yes that kind of ease of play. If I want to street sweep I will...if I have a couple friends waiting at a mission door I don't want to always run the risk of being held up because a mook decided it was his lucky day.
Foe concept like street thug vs power armor.
Game flow like a story that does not have something like I exampled earlier.
I didn't but ok.... (meant as a light hearted joke not an insult)
This does NOT make sense to me.
Why would a group automatically decide to take my side just because we are both lawless, violent, honorless Why would we instantly be allies because we both are honorable nonviolent and lawful. Why would a lawful nonviolent yet dishonorable guy just automatically decide to take a swing at me whenever I am near.
-SNIP-
Sounds more like a world event along the lines of the rikti invasion. In fact sounds almost exactly like it. I am all for content that draws more attention to the under used areas of the maps I just don't think level scaling is the way to do it. I said this before.
Your entire reply had a condescending vibe to it. If that is how you want the conversation to progress I can do that. All that will end up happening is the thread will be closed and we will be punished. I would much rather continue to discuss it politely.
Let's see. You played the "condescending" card, so how can I explain this without being condescending?
[list][*]If Foe NPCs [b]do[/b] scale with your level [i]then you CAN'T outlevel them[/i].
[*]If Foe NPCs [b]don't[/b] scale with your level [i]then you CAN outlevel them[/i] and indeed will end up outleveling the vast majority of them, and many of them you'll be seriously outleveled for.[/list]
This seems inherently obvious to me.
I used the Compare & Contrast to illustrate and demonstrate what happens when you take away the "Ankle Biter Factor" like City of Heroes did. When you're +5 Levels to everything in the zone, everything in the zone ignores you. That is a consequence of having Foe NPCs spawn within a specific level range ... AND ... having a system in place which prevents Ankle Biter Syndrome. In City of Heroes, [i]there were no Ankle Biters[/i] among the Foe NPCs ... they all just ignored you (and most of the time, you ignored them too). The only time that PCs ever cared about the NPCs in a zone was when your PC was within the Level range of the NPCs, and that was a fairly narrow band of Levels.
Emphasis on [b]narrow band of Levels[/b]. You with me so far?
And WHY was this Level range so narrow?
BECAUSE the NPCs spawned with a specific Level assignment ... AND ... because the game mechanics enforced the behavior that I've just described.
So what happens when the Foe NPCs don't spawn with a specific Level assignment? Well, for one thing, you're no longer dealing with a potential "ankle biter" situation in every region except the one you're [b][i]supposed to be in[/i][/b]. And for another ... [i]as your character grows in power, so too do your PvE opponents[/i] ... keeping them "relevant" and current with the present state of your character's development.
In other words, to go meet new threats and challenges ... to "change the story" like you were talking about ... you simply venture into different parts of the city. If you never leave your (starter) neighborhood then you'll only ever be fighting the same Foe NPC Group(s). Why? Because YOU stayed put and never left!
So ... you're complaining that your own headcanon will get messed up?
And I don't know how my explanation was "lost on you" either.
[b]A common street thug with very limited access to equipment of any kind[/b]
Sounds like a low Level Foe NPC with very few Powers. Heck, it could even be a low Level [b]PC[/b] with very few Powers (yet). Everyone needs to start somewhere.
[b]a highly trained soldier that is extremely well equipped[/b]
Sounds like a high Level Foe NPC with quite a lot of Powers and Enhancements slotted in. Heck, it could even be a high Level [b]PC[/b] who has done all of the game's content and is now sitting at the Level Cap.
What's the difference between these two?
In City of Heroes it was merely ... Location, Location, Location. The street thugs were in Atlas Park and the Malta were in Peregrine Island. Want/need to face tougher opposition? Go someplace else.
In my system for City of Titans, the difference between these two is ... THE PLAYER CHARACTER. The opposition you face is "scaled" to the development and advancement of your character so that the Foe NPCs in the world at large never become irrelevant scenery. The difference between these two [i]is the journey, the [b]story[/b] that the PC has already traveled and experienced[/i].
City of Heroes had an "up and out" sort of Move On vibe to its zones. This is why I say that City of Heroes, and indeed most other games on the MMORPG market, build an awful lot of Disposable Content for their worlds. I'm fundamentally saying that THAT built in Planned Obsolescence is a Bad Thing™ which City of Titans ought to avoid. Rather than keeping only 15% of the City zones "relevant" to a character at the Level Cap, keep 100% of the zones "relevant" to a character at the Level Cap. Because when I'm at the Level Cap, I don't want to play just PART of the game, I want to be able to play ALL of the game!
Look, I can only explain things ... repeatedly ... so many times ... before you play the "condescending" card again.
You don't "get it" because what I'm describing falls outside of your experience and therefore doesn't align (neatly) with what you're expecting ... and more to the point [b]assuming[/b]. I'm challenging the underlying assumptions that underpin the understanding you're working from. I'm talking about shifting the paradigm and then explaining, behaviorally, what happens after that shift occurs. You're still operating on the unshifted paradigm and "don't see" what I'm talking about because you're looking at it from the wrong vantage point.
Your experience is in base-10.
I'm talking about (and in) base-12.
There are things you can "do" in base-12 that don't add up quite so neatly in base-10, and indeed can be problematic in base-10 (or are at least more trouble than they're worth).
In other words, we're talking right past each other because we aren't on the same page, let alone seeing the same things from the same vantage point.
And what you're saying ... here ... amounts to essentially Writer's Malpractice (the "I do not like that idea" part), and for the record I'm pretty darn sure that's not how it would go.
First of all, you're talking about a Hero (or a Villain, but let's stick with Hero to make things easier) essentially "circulating" their way through Paragon City, "growing up" to fight tougher opposition as they develop and gain experience, until finally the Hero is on their way to fighting The Big Bad™ and being able to take them on as an underdog (with friends helping).
But what was it that "sent" you to new zones and new regions of the city? If you're anything like me, it wasn't Street Sweeping, it was Contacts and Missions. I went to new parts of the city [b]because I was SENT[/b] by the game's PvE content. Why go to Faultline if you're not being "sent" to go "do" something there?
The simple fact of the matter is that it would be perfectly possible to set up the writing for all of the Missions offered by Contacts to do the necessary zone and Foe NPC Group circulation. Heck, we saw *that* side of thing in City of Heroes too.
"Okay, you've defeated the 5th Column here in Atlas Park. Now I need you to go over to The Hollows. They seem to have an Outcast problem there you ought to deal with."
"Alright. You've stopped the Freakolympics and saved the city. Go see Indigo in Founder's Falls, she'll have something for you to do."
Now drop the Level range banding requirement(s) on being able to do that content.
So ... headcanon again. You didn't see them anymore, so you figure YOU had beaten them.
How is that any different from NOT being handed Missions by your Contacts to go up against them anymore?
So you want entire regions of the city to become obsolete? Harassment can only be constant if you "go" where the Foe NPCs are. In many places in Paragon City, the safest place to be was (ironically enough) either in the middle of the street, so you don't aggro everything on the sidewalks, or perched on a building ledge somewhere up out of the way. Heck, if you had Hover/Fly you could just "hang in the sky" and nothing would come near you or bother you. Streetlights and power lines were a favorite "high perch" of mine if I needed to go AFK.
The "safe area" you're talking about was essentially anywhere that Foe NPCs weren't around or likely to venture into. Such locations were all over the place. The spawn density in City of Heroes wasn't such that you couldn't move around without aggroing something of your Level, and I'd expect City of Titans to be similar in that regard.
I've seen PLENTY of Mission Doors that had a spawn group of Foe NPCs "too close to the door" for everyone to stand at the door waiting for everyone else to arrive. It was the easiest thing in the world to wait for teammates to arrive a short distance away within sight of the door ... or just go clobber the mooks because we decided it was OUR lucky day while we were waiting for someone else to show up. Again, in my experience the situation you're describing was a NON-PROBLEM in City of Heroes ... and by extension I'd expect it to also be a non-problem in City of Titans.
Sounds like the difference between low Level [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Goldbrickers]Goldbrickers[/url] vs mid Level [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Sky_Raiders]Skyraiders[/url] vs high Level [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Malta]Malta[/url] to me.
By the same token though, it was also the difference between low Level [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Lost]Lost[/url] and high Level [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Rikti]Rikti[/url]. At low Levels, starting in King's Row, you could go up against The Lost. At higher Levels, starting in the 30s, you stopped seeing Lost and started seeing Rikti, and The Lost just vanished. And the story was that The Lost were humans in the process of [i]becoming Rikti[/i] ... so they literally went from being (homeless) street thugs to having power armor. The difference? Levels ... and Locations (which were tied to Levels in City of Heroes).
So in a City of Titans context, using the system I'm describing here, you could do exactly the same thing as [b]The Lost Become The Rikti[/b] with just a little bit of finesse and story writing. It would be easy as pie to use a Mastermind Upgrade Power effect to alter the appearance of The Lost into becoming The Rikti once a particular Level threshold had been reached. That way, they spawn in as Lost but if you're high enough Level they'll do a costume change and transform into Rikti once they're engaged (ie. enter combat) by PCs of a high enough Level. And mind you, that's merely ONE option among several, not an EXCLUSIVE "it can only be done this way" of solving the problem that you cite.
Options are supposed to be good, right?
Game "flow" ought to be controlled by the Mission Content being handed to you by your Contacts. It can also be handled by having an "ecosystem" of Foe NPCs in the world at large you can engage that isn't just random scramble, so that you'll find specific groups in similar environments in neighborhoods of the city. You don't find Longshoremen and Dockworkers just ANYWHERE in the city, you find them down at the docks ... and so on.
The "story" of the city would still be getting told, neighborhood by neighborhood. The "stories" of the city would still be "local" ones to that particular region. The difference is ... with my system you don't have entire regions of the city becoming progressively obsolete because of "[b]All Grey To Me[/b]" syndrome.
Good, because I was joking around too.
"[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ojWaDOVR8&t=662]If none of this makes sense to you, it may already be too late.[/url]"
- Shadoevision
(sorry, couldn't resist the reference...)
Yeah, sounds like you're not following me.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Um, Red, Clockworks would attack you regardless of level disparity.
Sometimes they'd even win:
[URL=http://s105.photobucket.com/user/fireheart5150/media/ClockworkApocalypse.jpg.html][IMG]http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m207/fireheart5150/th_ClockworkApocalypse.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Be Well!
Fireheart
I wouldn't want to have trouble fighting some thug on the street, if I am supposed to be some super hero, with power from the gods or whatever. Just wouldn't feel right. Imagine Superman having trouble fighting a thug on the street, really? "but it's a lvl 50 thug" :P
Also, why must there be mobs hanging around city streets all the time. We would call them "trash mobs". They just got in the way. They were annoying.
I wouldn't go as far as eliminating them, but I wouldn't be saddened if they were very few. One thing I loved about COH compared to other MMOs was that most missions were instances that scaled. The outside mob kill missions were just boring. Kill x of these guys, blah blah blah. Boring...
It also seemed to make the City feel less real. I mean, here's a bunch of demons or rikti standing around waiting for what? And people would be walking about, minding their own business near these mobs, like nothing was going on. Sometimes they'd react, but it still didn't feel right.
I'd rather have very few mobs in the streets, (or maybe it scales to how much the area is being ignored by heroes, etc), and have the mobs that do appear doing something. I liked the purse snatches (in early levels). If the areas were not filled to the brim with leveled enemies standing around waiting for some hero to punch their faces in, then no one would have to worry about what "level" the zone is.
I would say little to no "trash mobs" with some known "bad" areas or zones.
As long as the thug has Krytonite on him. :)
This is not how the statement I replied to was worded but ok I understand now.
As I understand it you are looking at each mission arc as a complete story in and of itself. I am looking at the characters entire experience as the story. If I am wrong about what you are saying please explain it further.
No, I am talking about how the logic of it does not make sense. If a foes scales to your level it is considered to be level appropriate foe. Or to put it another way...if a foe is scaled it falls in the current characters range of appropriate challenges. A foe that is written to be a common street thug with no special abilities should not scale to the same challenge level as a foe that is written to be highly trained and specially equipped to combat a super powered opponent. In your system of power scaling it is entirely possible that while I am on a quest to stop the highly trained foes I can accidently aggro a group of the street thugs. If they are scaled to be a power level appropriate foe then the logic of the highly trained foes get lost.
I understand that those street thugs would not be in the same zone as the highly trained guys as you pointed out but it is not uncommon for a character to take a detour between missions that can take them to other areas for things like shopping, respecs, costume changes, base visits, trade invites or any number of other reason. This is my point....when the game lore states something that is integral to the foes concept it can get lost very easy when it does not follow its own logic.
That is not the only difference between the two. One was written to be an intro challenge, the start for a character in the game. The other was meant to show how a character is now facing foes specifically trained to combat the super powered foe. If every foe group has foes scaling then the logic of lore gets muddled. You cant look at each group in the game individually. If the world has both of these foe types there needs to be a reason why they have comparable power levels as defined by their lore. Yes you can write each group with this in mind but that is more limiting than helpful.
The only way I can see this being done logically in your system is to make the street thug able to affect the high level player but never be a threat....in essence just become a chore to defeat. In that situation its a waste of time.
No I don't get it because you are trying to separate each individual foe from the overall lore of the game. Your not challenging assumptions, your disregarding the whole of the foe dynamic in relation to one another. This is not a visionary concept its been done before in other games. Even City of Heroes used the idea of foe scaling but they used it in a way that did not interfere with the overall lore and foe relations as it was not all encompassing.
The foe scaling system works in some game settings where the foe lore of power structure is not as defined as it is in a superhero setting.
You are right I am saying I do not like it....its bad writing. Without a reason for that guy to now be a challenge to a character who has vastly grown in power it makes no sense.
-SNIP-
Yes I am talking about a hero that is growing up because that is exactly what happens when you have a leveling system for the character. They start out relatively weak and grow in power. Its one of the defining facets of the character....power growth. This was seen by both the abilities you gained and the foes you faced.
When you say all foes are power level appropriate challenges then you remove one of the ways to illustrate character growth without replacing it with anything else.
The other point you make in here is that the reason you face a foe at a specific time is because the contact sent you to them and say that this does not have to be linked to the character level. I get that as I said in my first post I do not like outleveling content. However it is preferable to the alternative IMO. Once the game includes a growth concept for a character there needs to be a growth system for the foes faced. It can be done in the way you suggest....a level scaling system for foes. Which in turn means that foes must either be linear in introduction and removed upon completion or they must be written with all other foes in mind so that the individual foe lore does not contradict itself. Or it can do it by having level ranges for foes based on the games overall lore.
To put it another way, the game must either write it in why those street thugs provide the same challenge as the highly trained foes or those street thugs cannot be encountered again once I meet the highly trained ones lest the challenge comparison interfere with the foe lore. Neither of which interests me as an alternative option to a level range for foes.
No, in direct response to your statement of how the foes were not defeated I argued they were within the mission arcs stories AND mechanics of the game. Sometimes a player has to work WITH the devs to allow for certain limitations in game design that are unavoidable.
In your proposed system the stories I faced and results I got would have been meaningless as the foes were still an ever present danger.....Nothing would ever get a resolution.
It is different because door missions are not the only place foes exist. Street mobs.
How is any of what I am saying making the area obsolete. I am in fact saying that I do frequent the areas ....I just don't want to be harassed by the inhabitants. As far as the afk situation. There were wandering mobs in areas, respawning mobs other players aggroing groups which happen upon you ect. Sure in CoH it did not take much to avoid it but I personally liked not having to worry about this at all.
I didn't say it was a problem, I said it was an ease of play. I found this to be an annoyance when I was in a zone that featured street mobs that would aggro on me....I do not want it to be compounded by being a possibility everywhere.
The Goldbrickers were thieves not trained soldiers whose equipment had limited combat abilities. The Skyraiders were highly trained soldiers for military conflicts with cutting edge equipment that went awol stealing that equipment.....and still using that same equipment that is becoming outdated. The malta are a shadow organization whose operatives are specifically trained to combat super powered foes with the very latest and most advanced equipment designed for that goal.
This is EXACTLY what I am saying. The power levels of the foes is directly related to the foes lore which in turn is related to the lore of other foes. a system wherein they are all equal ruins that lore.
Here is a quote in one of the links you provided....
That sounds like they are right in the same area and that the Goldbrickers are better equipped and more powerful than the other foes in the area as a story aspect. How can you illustrate this dynamic to a character without making the 'street thugs' weaker than the Goldbrickers who are in turn weaker than the skyraiders who are in turn weaker than the Malta (all of which can be encountered at any time in the characters career) and still offer a level appropriate challenge to the player through ALL levels including max level.
The reason this happened was because they were written this way. its part of what made them a unique group. If every group has a similar lore attached to them to facilitate level scaling then it limits the context those foes can be used. The foe group that is bullied by other foes groups stops making sense when both have equal power for example. I have no issue with some groups that span the much of the game similar to CoT, Arachnos and the lost/Rikti did. I just am not a fan of a system that makes every group do so.
I will explain what I mean by game flow better as I have not really done so. When I use the term game flow I am talking about each story in relation to one another as well as all the experiences one would encounter along the way.
So I can agree that WHEN you get your missions has a direct influence on how one story precedes another. But in relation to game flow, everytime I accidently aggro a mob that the lore of the game states is of a lesser power makeup in relation to other foes I have already experienced it creates a jarring experience. I am talking specifically about street mobs...the random spawns around town. These are the foes this system will have the most pronounced effect on as they are random encounters not directly tied to a story ( the story can be written to include a reason why this foe group suddenly has had a shift in power level while the street mob does not have this benefit)
What I am saying is the system you are proposing has some drawbacks I do not like for a gain that seems small in comparison.
The gains are that you do not outlevel content making it something that can be done at any time in a characters career including street level spawns. Essentially opening up the entire game to be experienced by any level for character gain be it loot, experience or challenge. I do like this aspect of the idea a lot.
The drawbacks to me are that it limits the lore that can be attached to a group. A group can be designed to span the level range ala the circle of thorns but with this system you limit the stories of a weak group vs a strong group. Something that is a staple in storytelling in general. This is limited because all groups now can span the level range. Even if you create lore with this and enforce it by making one group much weaker than the other it still has to be balanced against the player....both groups have to provide a challenge not just at one level range but all level ranges. Its too much work for what is gained IMO.
You keep saying an area is all grey to you which makes the area obsolete. All that becomes obsolete is street sweeping for tangible gain. You can still get door missions in that area and those door missions can still include a beefed up version of the same foes on the street. There can still be contacts, location badges, minigames or any other activity in the area.....plus you can still go and beat the tar out of all those street guys....the only thing you lose is the tangible rewards for doing so.
That was hilariously pointless (in a good way).
But I was actually serious about my questions....
The proposed alignment system is divided among three sections...Lawfulness, Violence and Honor (for those who want to read it ... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/629385 )
The way you are suggesting using it for creating foes and allies is far too simple for my taste. Just because someone is law abiding yet violent does not automatically make you and him friendly.
As an alternative I would rather see foes react to a character based on that's characters relation to the foes.....if the foe spent all his time murdering every hellion he saw it would make him unlawful and violent just like the Hellions but it would not make the two of them friends. I remember reading a small hint at a reputation system somewhere but cannot find it now.
The rikti invasions were thos zone events where rikti would spawn in around characters...be level scaled and players fought them back.....Your 'take back the zone' situation seems very much the same when you make it feature level scaled foes....level scaled foes that the players would have to drive back with the added component of indirect player opposition and a rotating foe type. If there is more to it please enlighten me.
Im all for having players influence the world in general and overall this seems like one of the better ways to do it but it in no way NEEDS the level scaling component to be interesting. I said in my first post that I wanted more ways to use the entire city and things like this is a great way to do it but it does not change how I feel about level scaling foes.
I've ignored this thread, mostly because of the massive walls of text which is saying something coming from someone as verboginous as myself, but I thought it was time for me to chime in.
When was the last time Superman or the X-Men were shot at by neighborhood hoodlums? The reason they aren't is twofold: first, their stories are far too important for them to be wasting time on such trivialities and second because such no-accounts see the heroes coming and scatter for the shadows like so many cockroaches. That's as it should be. If I'm so "super" and I've spent so much time and effort working on developing ever greater powers and reputation, why are these same street thugs I fought when I was comparatively week and unknown still able to stand up to me now that I'm vastly more powerful than I was when I beat them up before? How "super" will I feel if those curs from my past are still able to make me cautious about on which side of the street I'll walk? That's just not acceptable for a game based on comic book superheroes. Much worse for villains who should be striking terror in the hearts of common citizens and rookie cops alike.
Quite the contrary to your level matching idea, I must say when my level 50 Bada$$ comes walking down the street in "Start-out Port", I want to see those street thugs that are trying to steal purses run for the hills! Let it be known that my character has built a reputation among the villains and should be avoided at all costs lest you be crushed beneath my heal! Or something like that...
Outleveling enemy groups is absolutely necessary in any game where character advancement symbolizes both an increase in power and an increase in reputation. If you'll remember from CoX, the standard monetary unit was Inf. That was short for Influence and Infamy. Both were indicators that the character had become known and could pull strings. CoT will no doubt also take into account that being Super Powered also means being extremely famous or infamous. In either case, it is necessary to show that by making the character so potent that older foes would never deign to bother them again.
CoyoteShaman
PS, I just noticed that Bloodwidow already brought up the Superman point. I've left it in here because I believe I've expanded upon it slightly and even if not it does bear repeating.
I totally agree with Winterset.
Don't take the "Super" out of our Supers. :)
But Superman has trouble fighting Batman, and Batman is essentially a (well financed) anti-hero "thug on a street" type of character.
Look ... pulling out arguments of "but it works like this in comics and movies!" doesn't work all that well when you're talking about games and game balance. In a comic book (or a movie), if the WRITER wants Superman to have trouble fighting a street thug then Superman has trouble fighting a street thug. That's because those mediums are one where the story is already DECIDED before it gets told to you.
Games are different. Games are a collaboration between the developers and the players. What "happens" isn't really "decided" until the player goes and does it. Indeed, players tend to complain when a story is being told to them "on rails" and they feel like they're just going through the motions to progress through a pre-written plot that they have no influence or control over. Gets even worse when the game pulls an Etch-a-Sketch and pretends like what you did has had absolutely no influence on the game world, at all, of any kind, ever. You foiled the Big Bad™ ... who cares? Nothing has changed.
By the way, [b]major props[/b] to the design of Praetoria for giving players choices that [i]eliminated NPCs from the game world[/i] as "proof" of what you'd done. That kind of storytelling, that had CONSEQUENCES, was incredibly important.
I'm saying this because the entertainment mediums are different. It's like how you can do things in text, in a book, that would look absolutely ridiculous if you try to show it on screen. John-Rhys Davies talks about one of these for The Fellowship of the Ring movie. In the book, Galadriel gives Gimli locks of her hair ... which works fine in a book, because the text makes it clear. As the actor explained in this DVD extra, you just can't SHOW that sort of thing on screen. Why? Because the hair will be invisible to the camera (it's just too small and fine to see except in disturbingly close close up). So what you'd end up with is what [i]looks like[/i] two characters miming that they're transferring something invisible from hand to hand. It just doesn't work ... on film. It's perfectly fine in a book, but on film it's just impossible to show it adequately.
The same thing happens when comparing comic books (or movies about comic book characters) to games. In books and movies, what "happens" is controlled by the writer. In games, what "happens" is governed by the rules. Books and movies have the luxury of being able to skip over "the boring parts" (such as traveling) while you can't often do that in a game. Books and movies can "skip ahead" down the timeline, while you can't really do that in a game (or at least, not in the same way). And let's not even get into "rewinding time" like you can in a book or a movie, where the writer is in control of everything that happens, versus in a game where at best the writer can "set the stage" but can't necessarily manipulate the players into "complying" with the plot points in the manner that is intended.
Ain't that the truth! I always wondered how employees of the Terra Volta power station were supposed to get to work! First they had to run a gauntlet of the Independence Port Bridge that was covered in barricades while the Family and Tsoo duked it out everywhere. Then they got into the Terra Volta Hazard Zone itself and the place was simply CRAWLING with Lost, Skyraiders and Devouring Earth EVERYWHERE. Oh and Freakshow too, can't forget them.
Nuclear reactors aren't supposed to "run themselves" without trained employees you know ... especially not for years and years on end without suffering a shutdown of some kind. And that's not even including all the damage to the infrastructure that the Devouring Earth were ACTIVELY sabotaging full time.
Oh and Terra Volta used "Time Lord Technology" so that the zone was [i]bigger on the inside than on the outside[/i]. So ... yeah ... plenty of believability FAIL to go around there!
For what it's worth, I agree with you ... for SOME regions of City of Titans. I'd prefer it if some neighborhoods are Foe NPC sparse, while other neighborhoods are Foe NPC rich. Gets even better if you're playing Hero and Villain in the same zones and the target richness for "your side" is in an inverse relationship with the target richness "for the opposing side" (so to speak). So a zone with lots of street cops has hardly any criminals for a Hero to arrest, but is absolutely LOADED with police for a Villain to mess with. That kind of thing. You follow me?
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Game first. Comics second.
There will be no "supermen" who are much stronger than other characters. Your characters will be unique but parity dictates that heroes be comparable to each other. Bringing up comics to explain what works in a game setting is backwards thinking. Instead think of game settings that work with comics.
To explain better.. would you play chess if the black pieces required being taken 3 times and the white pieces only once and then someone explains it by saying "well the Sith could take more hits than the Jedi".. you likely would not.
Create the game then translate it to western comic book/superhero lore as best you can.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Superman doesn't have any trouble fighting Batman - Superman has trouble fighting kryptonite. Take that away and Batman is a greasy spot on the sidewalk. You say to think about this in terms of "game first" after using a comic-only situation as example? (And this doesn't even address a Superman who simply heaves cars at the Dark Knight from well outside the radiation zone). By your reasoning every street thug would need to be wearing powered armor and packing superweapons to make your foe scaling remotely believable. Phasing or an instanced world like GW uses would be easier to accept than a L1 and a L50 fighting the same enemies right next to each other. And what happens when you have parties of mixed levels? There's only one way to make it work (and a couple games have implemented it): temporary level caps and boosts. Level reduction can work if all powers that are beyond the character's current level are temporarily disabled. If the designers [b]don't[/b] do this you'll have people with CC and other abilities that can't be easily scaled down. OTOH, level [i]boosting[/i] doesn't work well at all. The lowbies will have limited upscaling of gear (if any) and probably won't have all the powers of their higher level teammates. The powers they do have probably have ceilings for advancement. Upscaling could be made to work if we were allowed to choose our max level build at character creation and had the cash to carry around a set of l337 gear. But if that were possible then missions where you get boosted would be the only thing players would be doing (esp. if they got XP for them).
The bottom line is that mob difficulty scaling is a pointless nightmare that kills immersion. Just have high level events or instances in the lower level zones if you want to see endgamers in all areas. (DC, for example, has world bosses that are much higher level than the areas they haunt.) Its not too hard to make level capping functional but level [b]boosting[/b] requires a lot more coding to really work correctly. FFXI does a pretty decent job with capping..higher level spells and most powers are disabled and everything else is scaled down. Conversely, the boosting Champions uses in "alerts" simply raises your level and scales up the base stats for your powers: if you're not [b]really[/b] max level you're a fifth wheel 99% of the time. But let's face it - most devs won't bother with properly implementing ANY kind of scaling when they can keep cranking out cash store theme parks. Its ugly but its true.
And I too hate tiny buildings that have massive levels within them. Almost as much as I hate cities where 99% of the buildings can't be entered and there's no day-night cycle.
Another alternative would be to apply the same concern to mobs as is felt by PCs. A lvl 45 mob sees a lvl 42 PC: The Fight Is On! Same lvl 45 mob sees a lvl 30 PC: Why bother, that punk isn't worth my time.
That way you could put high level mobs in low level zones and still have freedom from one-shots for the level appropriate PCs. Zones would be story-based instead of level based so even lowbies could have missions in every zone and people would be able to see the whole city as well as getting sneak peaks of some of the non-zone-specific street crawling NPCs.
Wouldn't that please both types of players?
CoyoteShaman
NOW you're getting where I'm coming from.
The one caveat I'll make to this is that I'd prefer a "seamless" zoning like World of Warcraft has, where you don't encounter loading screens unless you're going REALLY far (usually by "boat" to another continent). So in that respect I'd prefer not to have "zones" with loading screens like City of Heroes did it, resulting in a sort of balkanized world of disconnected city regions. I'd prefer to have neighborhoods that "blend" into one another seamlessly, giving you the sense that this is all one big (contiguous) city.
Part of that desire comes from the fact that in City of Heroes I always felt like all of Paragon City was a PRISON that needed to keep all of the supers "inside" so as to prevent them from getting out into the wider (happier?) world. Didn't help that the War Walls reinforced that impression relentlessly (for reasons I understand, but still).
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I believe I'm in agreement with Redlynne and here is my "summary" of the idea:
I support systems where players level but zones, gear and enemies do not. Leveled zones, enemies and gear are the bane of MMOs. They essentially mean that developers are spending resources on something that quickly becomes obsolete. Regardless of how much people tout the "it's the journey that matters" the fact is that it's not so in practice.
Upsides of character levels:
Ding is a nice short term goal that gives a sense of progress
A good tool for unlocking abilities and content
Downsides of leveled zones, enemies & gear:
"Graveyard" zones when the game matures which also affects negatively new player experience and makes it hard to find teams if you start a new character
The drag of going through the low level zones again when you play alts (leads often to powerleveling). Essentially a rush to "real" game.
Resources spent on soon to be obsolete zones, enemies and gear affect quality and variety of the end game content
Outleveling content
The huge advantage of leveless zones, gear and enemies is that you can spend more resources on providing interested and varied content for characters of all levels. More zones accessible to all and more enemy types accessible to all. Not to mention you don't constantly need to upgrade gear. The difference between zones should be thematic as opposed to level based.
The sense of power should come from enemy types that are categorized by a hazard rating. A green enemy is going to be less dangerous than a red enemy for example and the advantage of higher level players comes from a more extensive "toolkit" (more powers etc) rather than outright power. Essentially a thug with a gun would be green while a supervillain would be red.
A red enemy might wipe out a low level character on their own but if said low level character brings a few teammates they should be able to take the enemy down. A higher level player with more extensive toolkit on the other hand can take them down on their own. This is not possible in a system where enemies level as well. There's no chance for a level 1 hero to take down a level 50 enemy - not even a thug with a gun. Comparatively level 50 thug with a gun is still a threat to level 50 character. Think Family in CoH. In a system without levels a family thug would be a green opponent. Even a newbie hero can take them down in a fair fight where as higher level heroes can defeat them easily but they never become fully obsolete.
Also I would like to point out to those who say they wish to see level 1 thugs to cower or scatter when faced by a level 50 hero. What about a level 50 thug then? Again to point out the family example. You could be a level 50 hero in CoH and still face family thugs with guns that were of equal level. Doesn't it break your sense of power over them to know that sure, those family thugs in Talos may cower before your awesome might but the level 50 thugs in peregerine missions do not.
Unfortunatelly because of limited resources the goblins at low levels and dragons at max level never happens in practice. Instead of that we get level 1 goblins and palette swapped level 50 goblins - or in the case of CoH thugs with guns.
However even a fully level-less system does in no way prevent a sense of growing power. I'd say it makes it easier. For example NPC reactions could be tied to fame/infame in combination of enemy rating. A system I support where characters level but enemies not has it even easier. A level 50 character facing green thugs? Those thugs would cower in fear and only attack if they are attacked. A nice level perk if there is one - being able to drop an alpha shot on them. Heck perhaps there is even a courage rating that increases based on enemy rank and numbers which gets compared to hero level. Essentially encounter "challenge rating". Meaning that greenies likely cower or even run if a higher level hero approaches. Unless they are in large groups.
That being said. The scatter thing probably won't make it because of griefing potential. Seeing weaker foes cower in fear as you pass sounds good enough to me. Paralyzed by fear and all that... until attacked.
A zone can be both story based and have foes with level ranges. It was never the idea of story based zones it was the all encompassing level scaling foes that I had an issue with.
I also think superman is a bad example. We are not going to be playing superman. He is way overpowered compared to anything else. Reasonably thinking we are going to be playing CoH level heroes and even the AVs in CoH were significantly weaker than what superman is. Superman works in a single player game. He does not work in a game where supposedly daredevil/wolverine level characters can go toe-to-toe with supposedly superman level characters. Unless you explain to yourself that every thug has a gun loaded with "cryptonite".
I'd say the players are going to be closer to regular X-men level with each having their own strengths and weaknesses. Thugs with guns are still a threat.
Of course but without levels there can be more zones available for characters of all levels. More varied stories to be told. Level gating the zones limits the access to those zones by default. Level gating content will always be a limiting factor - and imo a waste of resources that could be spent on more varied content that persists longer.
Edited to include-
I was replying to your comment as you posted the above one....here is an answer to it in what follows.
This is only true if you consider the street mobs to be the only content a zone can carry. A city zone can be written with pretty much any instanced mission in it. The streets may be full of low level thugs but inside the mission you find the puppet masters and his well trained well armed guards. All level scaling does in this case is make those well armed and well trained guards look less powerful in comparison.
This is just another version of the level range concept but one that is more limiting. And this exact system was used in CoH with the level range mechanic to provide more options and diversity in foes.
No it does not. The reason is with the level designation I know as a player that this Thug has more experience than that thug. In a level scaling system every thug has the same experience. (and no I do not mean experience points...) in essence level range foes are designed to be foes that fall in a certain level range and as such the lower level ones are not as skilled as the higher level ones. Level scaled foes have no distinction in relation to the player as they will always provide a level appropriate challenge.
I do not remotely agree that the only difference we will see in CoT foes at varying levels is reskinned foes. There may be some but the lore will provide a reason for it. I think ...just as CoH did...there will be a variety of foes with different powers, goals, lore, tactics and locations.
I said this before in relation to comparing comics to the game.
I personally think that when you play a game with roleplaying elements you are actually entering an agreement with the devs, game master or whatever. In PnP table top games the game master should not seek to punish or win but to help the players tell a story. The dynamic is a bit more static in a MMO but it is similar, the devs are trying to provide a playground for us to tell our stories. We as players should not demand everything be spelled out in clear black and white but understand that some things are ambiguous to allow the devs or game master to provide us with more room to play.
So when someone wants to say ...in comics there are no...whatever it rings hollow. A comic is a story being told to you....a game is you co-writing the story with the devs. They are not interchangeable. They simply have different rules to follow.
Streets are what gives the game a sense of presence. You don't see the people in instances unless you team with them. Again I'm not sure what would be the advantage of levels over not having levels. You can easily have both street and instanced missions in both. The significant difference is that in a system without enemies leveling you can easily mix the content both in and out of instances making the zones universally more viable. Essentially you utilize the full zone as opposed to making it merely an entry way to different instanced zone.
Also again the disadvantage of levels is that unless you split the same theme across multiple zones you are going to have people outleveling that theme without any significant reason to look back. Why would my level 50 character go to a level 10 zone? Other than to zip through it to instance portal.
You definitely have to elaborate this because that's not my experience. CoH had leveled zones with leveled mobs and once you left those zones you would not be back other than to enter into instances. The hazard rating system does not limit anything. It expands. It allows you to mix all kinds of content within actual zone without need to worry that level 1 players getting instantly killed by level 50 mobs.
What CoH had was green, yellow and red areas. Those were marked by how dangerous they were which was in fact represented by levels. A red area had highest level mobs. Yet if a level 10 character popped into Talos island it didn't really help that the area around station was green. Those mobs would still kill said character instantly. This does not happen in a zone where enemies scale based on a hazard rating.
CoH lore did not provide a good reason for family thugs being a similar threat than malta for example. Yet you would see both in missions even at level 50. For me it completely killed the sense of character progression. I could agree on the "more experienced" thugs if they actually didn't look exactly same as the family things in all other areas, using same weapons.
This is partially why I feel a hazard level works better than an enemy level. A family thug would be a green mob. A family super-powered boss would be red. A malta as an elite force would start white or yellow even for lower ranking enemies since they are highly trained military force using futuristic weapons.
Agreed but then comics should not be presented as an argument. Either towards or against something suggested. The fact remains that superman and thugs were brought up to point out why there should be grey mobs fleeing or cowering when higher level hero approaches, so that opened a room for a counterargument.
Of course it doesn't really depend on enemies and zones having levels or not having them. You can design a system where weaker enemies cower regardless of if they have levels or not. The system is essentially the same in both.
Really it should be presented as an idea as opposed to an argument. I think we can all agree that it would be cool and fitting for a superhero game if weaker enemies fled from more powerful heroes and villains.
I agree the street does give the city its presence. This is why I say that if every street you go to has foes that will offer a level appropriate challenge you are limiting one aspect of diversity. The only ways to show one area of the city is more dangerous than another is with a gimmick. Things like dense mob dispersal....mobs with bosses only....overpowered mobs.... the reason why you have to do this is because the character can go from one area to the next are be directly confronted with difficulty. If both areas just have mobs that are equal then your story of the tuff area of the city falls flat. In a leveled system you can use these gimmicks as well as just make it a higher level.
The signifigant difference between scaled foes and leveled foes is not IMO the fact that scaled allows you to mix and match easier...its that every story must now incorporate WHY that foe is the same challenge to your low level and high level character and thus limits many of the stories that can be told....or at the very least the impact those stories can have.
Each character is very obviously much more powerful by the time it reaches level 50 than it was at level 1. You watch your level 50 shrug off stuff that would have atomized his level 1 version. What reason is there that the foe you cut your teeth on at level 1 is now an equal challenge at level 50. This is how Redlynn described his system....the foes are treated as characters who grow and gain powers as you do. This is a great system if there is only one foe type or if none of the foe types have any connection to any other foe type.
When you introduce dynamic storytelling to include a relation amongst the foes like the ones you find in a superhero setting (groups that bully other groups for example) yet give every group the ability to level scale then all you have done is undermine your own lore.
I gave a single example of how a zone can incorporate multiple level challenges without resorting to level scaling. This is not the only example I have given in this thread of ways to utilize the zones across levels. I have suggested mini games, zone events, instances and badges, as well. I said in my first reply that I agree the zones can be used better than CoH did and support efforts to that goal. I do not think level scaling is the way to do it.
You said that you prefer a system where a foe was graded on its difficulty...you used thug and supervillian as distinctions in your system. In CoH you had similar distinctions. Minion, luet, boss, EB, AV, Moster and whatnot. CoH used this distinctions to further define the foes into threat levels.
The system you describe has two ways it is defined to the player. One is the color coding and two is its relation to the character. The color coding would have to be quite elaborate to reach the same diversity of a level based system at least 50 if the level cap in CoT is 50. The other way is the relation it has to the player. In a level based system I know the foe before me is level 22 and will always be level 22. It is its own distinction. There can be 50 distinctions of that foe that are all separate 1-50. I can actually see that distinction at any time in relation to my own character.
In a scaling system coupled with the fact that there is no mechanic to reverse level that same foe will never be seen as a level 1 again. In essence it has lost that distinction.... The only distinction that foe will ever have is of your current level.....even when you SK down or up that foe will always be your level. It has one distinction in relation to your character.
To put it another way... 50>1.
Yet you want to compound this by making everything do this?
Joking aside, The idea of malta and family being equal threats was explained enough for me. Both are well trained and well funded. I am not sure but I think your main complaint in this is not that they were leveled but that they looked the same. I don't even know how to respond to that in the context of this argument. That's an issue with model diversity and not level vs scaled foes. Besides....how different should they look? They are still just thugs with guns they just can take a bit more of a pounding and know how to use the gun better. Let me ask you this in relation to the topic...how does the foes appearance change in a level scaled system that cannot also be used in a leveled one?
That's fine. We are just discussing our personal opinions after all. I personally think that a color coded system like you describe is exactly like the leveling one...its just more limited.
My comment was a general one not directed at you. Comics can be used as points if its one of concept (superheroes should have powers that elevate them above normal humans that's why they are super) but not direct comparisons (spiderman can swing on a web while kicking so my hero should be able to as well). Comics do not share the same medium and as a result have different rules in how the story can be told.
Actually, I saw where you were coming from all along; I just disagreed with your concept of how to arrange it. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said in the quote above, and in fact I have always respected your opinions and taken them seriously.
Please keep in mind when I say "zone" I most certainly do not mean a discrete map separated from other maps such that one must use a zone-traveling method to move from one to another (such as the trams or highways in CoX). I'm using the word "zone" to indicate a specific neighborhood with a set of interrelated stories which set them apart from other "zones". From everything you've said I believe we both agree on that, on the fact that it is very important that they not be CoX-like (especially with a War Wall; your description of its impact on the atmosphere of the game could not have been more correct), and that our goal should be to find a way to make that possible without either detracting from the "superheroic" atmosphere or adversely impacting the desire to team and develop social bonds.
Towards that end, could you please give me your opinion on my suggestion to have level-mixed villains in story-appropriate areas which simply wouldn't agro on toons too far below their level just as they don't for those too far above their level? I would like your thoughts on that.
Thank you.
CoyoteShaman
One of the cleverer ways you could do that, although it would be "expensive" to the server side of things, would be to use Phasing. Essentially, you'd only encounter Foe NPCs that are within Level range of your PC ... and you wouldn't see the ones outside of that Level range. Problem with that idea, of course, is that you should also Phase the other PCs outside your Level range too (so you don't see other PCs fighting non-visible opponents, which gets really immersion breaking too).
Your idea has merit, but runs up against a logistical problem of Foe NPC spawn point placement. Just about the only way I can figure it working out is either through use of a sort of "time share" system of having particular Foe NPC groups spawn only "part time" rather than full time. Kind of like how in some places the Clockworks came out at Night but were rarely around during the Day. The same thing was done in Croatoa, where you'd only see Ghosts at Night and not during the Day.
So it's a good idea, but needs more nailing down of details (such as spawn maps) to know if it would really "work" or not.
Of course, I still love the idea of using Control Points (ala Tabula Rasa style) to determine which NPCs dominate or control particular neighborhoods so as to be able to "churn" the contents of various regions throughout the city. That then gives players a Zone Event to participate in, to aid and abet (or hinder and thwart) their preferred NPC Factions. Tie that in to a sort of Reputation System that keeps track of your relationship with various NPC Groups and ... you've got a way to Gain Faction with the different Power Brokers in the city.
So yeah, the idea has merit. Depends on how you finesse things, but it has promise.
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Edited to expand on my initial post
None of this really applies to his suggestion. He said put level 10 and level 40s in the same zone but give them aggro controls so they only initiate combat with players whose level falls in a preset range. There is nothing about phasing or invisible foes in the suggestion. Why would this be a clever way of doing it? It seems to me to be an overly complicated way of doing it.
For the record I like the idea. All I would want is to make sure there isn't a way for it to be used in griefing.
When I played CO, we would be doing our little level 15 missions, collecting comics. Oh look, that minion is running for help. OMG, the doofus just dragged some level 50 Nemesis minions back over and I died so fast I couldn't take a breath.
Felix
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"Preliminary optimization is the root of all evil." -Knuth
[color=#FF0000]Coding Lead[/color]
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I really like this idea a lot so did not want to include it in my previous post. Im not sure I would want it for every area of the city but would still love to see it in the game.
Would love to see you expand on it more.
Like ...how would you deal with stories based around a certain group that take place in the contested area when that certain group is not in charge? Heck would the area actually contain missions at all?
What about street hunt missions?
Would this be a constant activity or would it be on a timer?
How would you show the change in zone control? What I mean is would it be a gradual thing or would it just happen when certain conditions were met ala Recluse Victory?
And there's the rub, isn't it? Almost ANYTHING can be used for griefing. Heck, Knockback could be used for griefing! I don't know how many times I'd be fighting a Foe NPC on a high catwalk with my Scrapper or my Tanker, using my Jackie Chan Bind of targetenemynear$$follow to stay automagically glued to them in melee range ... and have someone Knock them off the catwalk ... and down I'd go with them, over the edge, into the void ... landing in a heap below. Then I'd either be surrounded by more opponents than the AoE Cap or I'd be taking damage from terrain because I was waist deep in lava (and still having to fight).
There really isn't a way to 100% proof things against griefing ... because Players are crafty little devils (and there's a lot of them, and they can internet).
Heck, the first time I got Defeated by griefing in City of Heroes was as a Level 13 in Steel Canyon ... when a train of Level 36 Devouring Earth ran up the street and one-shotted me as they cruised on by while I was waiting at a Mission Door. Total drive by ambush train wreck. The NPCs didn't even slow down to curbstomp me along the way. It happened so fast it took me a while to figure out what just occurred.
To answer your question more directly, one way that I can think of to mitigate griefing potential is that for NPCs their AoEs can only affect $Targets on their Threat List. That means that if you have generated zero Threat to an NPC (because you haven't engaged it) and that NPC uses an AoE attack and you're caught in the AoE ... you'll take no damage. It would essentially be an extension of the Friendly Fire coding, where you can't inflict damage on other PCs within your AoEs. Couple that with the fact that the only way to be on the receiving end of a Single Target attack is to generate Threat above zero and viola ... hard for another player to Grief you by training Foe NPCs ... so long as YOU keep your wits about you and don't engage what is wildly Level inappropriate for you.
That seems like it might work, now that I've thought about it a little more. Good question, islandtrevor72.
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Answering all of these questions really ought to be done in one of my historical threads I wrote about this very subject last year.
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/control-points-how-tabula-rasa-did-it]CONTROL POINTS ... how Tabula Rasa did it ...[/url]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/world-pve-control-points-city-titans]World PvE ... CONTROL POINTS for City of Titans[/url]
I'll just do a Thread Necro of the latter thread, which was something of a continuation of the first, and address your question over there so as to not clutter up this thread with what is essentially a digression. Sound alright, islandtrevor72?
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Sure...I will read em a bit later...been at this for hours so need a break.
Redlynne,
First just let me say Wow! I'm practically buzzing from reading that (and I didn't take the time to watch the video). I did read both of your initial posts to the two threads you linked, however, and I'm simply stunned.
These are, for all intents and purposes, mini and triggerable zone events! I see only two problems which would need to be overcome and I doubt they'd be remotely insurmountable.
1) CPE (Control Point Event) size: if it's too large it would take up too much space in the zone but if it's too small it would leave little room to maneuver.
2) CPE level limitations: Keeping toons of too high or low of a level from either triggering or participating in the event.
For problem 1, my first thought is that the trigger could be not just any foe group mob throughout the control point, but only very specific ones (clearly marked in some way), perhaps even at very specific locations. That way practically the entire zone could have both normal PvE and CPE play at the same time. If one includes your thoughts on Friendly Fire limitations it would be a simple matter to make the trigger mobs not agro unless engaged.
For problem 2, CPE level scaling just as in CoX events. While I'm wholeheartedly against this method for normal PvE, I strongly support it for events.
For Devs' Sakes, Red, that could very well be the coolest possible feature I've ever heard of.
Even if it doesn't get implemented it'll be in my hopes for as long as I'm playing any MMO ever. Thank you for presenting it (but don't get a big head about it. :))
CoyoteShaman
Again, to keep this topic on [b]Levels. What are they good for?[/b] from digressing, I'll respond to your post Winterset over in the World PvE ... CONTROL POINTS for City of Titans thread instead.
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The reason why game developers choose level systems in games is to give the players a sense of vertical progression. That’s literally what they’re designed to represent - a level one character is supposed to be of a lower tier than a level four, and this very system is what allows you to determine what is an appropriate challenge for a person of that level.
With the introduction of level scaling, levels themselves become meaningless, and that sense of progression is lost. Just look at the most recent Elder Scrolls games, or Guild Wars 2. Leveling actually doesn’t help you feel any stronger in those games, because all of your enemies just get stronger with you. It invalidates the entire concept of using levels in the first place. Speaking purely from a game design perspective, it’s a huge misstep.
If your game has no levels in the first place, then a static “challenge” system across the board works, but lacks the feeling of truly increasing in power. This works for games where getting mechanically stronger isn’t a major draw or theme, but most MMORPGs are not that sort of game. The thing that keeps people coming back is the feeling that they’re making progress, and a game-wide scaling system means that you’re essentially limiting the game to a single level, which runs the risk of making the gameplay become quickly monotonous.
There’s no reason to have level-ups in a system that doesn’t reward it.
The proper way to introduce “scaling” into a game with levels is to do it selectively, not zone-wide. Certain overworld bosses scaling, instanced missions scaling… This works well as a start. To accentuate the scaling, you make zones that aren’t one static level, so that there’s content for people of higher levels to come back to once the idea of going into the radiation-monster deathzone or the cultist hotspot no longer frightens them.
Flat scaling is [i]never[/i] a good idea in an RPG with level progression. It should be used to bolster the existing system, not to invalidate it completely in that way. If Joe Thug is just as dangerous in 50 levels as he was when I fought him at level 1, then the levels are ultimately meaningless.
Levels exist, and have always existed, as a way to gauge a character’s power. I feel like that’s started to get lost somewhere along the way, and in recent games it’s just being used as a way to gate player abilities.But that forgets that without actual tangible levels, these abilities don’t have a notable impact on the continuing gameplay. It’ll always be one-level you fighting one-level enemies, just sometimes you throw fireballs now. Without a frame of reference for how much stronger you’ve become, no challenge will be notable to the players. That’s what is lost from the use of global level-scaling, and it’s a doozy when it comes to staying power.
I am not a clever man.
Here I disagree. First I didn't mean as much enemies giving the street presence as players affecting it. Players tend to flock where the rewards are (not necessarily where other players are but that also plays a part) and leveled zones by default mean that people gravitate to endgame zones leaving the earlier zones empty.
As for the level difference of enemies within a single zone. Again I've to disagree. To make the level distribution "fair" you will hardly see enemies on lower level zones that instakill your character. Granted this somewhat happened in CoH but usually does not happen in MMOs. Usually zones tend to be split into level ranges 1-5, 6-10 etcc or then use significant bottlenecks to make sure level 1-5 players don't accidently wander where level 10+ enemies are. If you reduce it to level appropriate range you essentially have a hazard level/difficulty class system.
The same end result can be achievd if mobs are split into 5 or so difficulty classes and villain groups designed around the concept that some have more 1 while others lean towards 5. For example CoH street thugs would be filled mostly with 1s (greens) where as groups like Malta would be mostly formed by 3 (yellow). Add archvillains and giant monsters as special encounters & event monsters and you cover the range very well with the added benefit of not having to worry about the graveyard effect.
Ah but here's where I somewhat differed from Redlynne's system. I prefer a system where players level but enemies don't. Levels lead to more powers, more enhancement slots to those powers and better "gear". Add a system which gates the more powerful abilities towars higher level and there's undeniably difference between a level 1 and 50. It follows a simple path of growing in power as you level. It''s just that the difference is not crippling.
Guild Wars 2 does this to some extend. First of all it scales your character down to the zone level so technically speaking even the regular content is not obsolete there. It also provides jumping puzzles, achievement hunts, world events, living story missions, and has dungeon entrances all within lower level zones. The end result is not as great as you would expect.
The reward structure is built around the idea that low level zones offer low level threats and lower rewards. People don't actually spend time doing the low level dynamic events. The only interest for high level players are the world boss events which means that a swarm of players ports in to attack the world boss based on timers and then continue to the next zone. Most of the zone remains empty and even the hotspots see only a few minutes of action every few hours.
The issue is that it doesn't actually do much to make the zone feel alive for those who use them for leveling. Add the fact that there are multiple zones within low level range and fewer within high level and the player-base on lower levels is even more split. Furthermore the guys who create alts don't spend time in those low-level zones either. They use convenience items to pop to level 20 and after that use world events to grind quick exp to max level. What surprised me is that developers were "surprised" when no one even noticed the new dynamic events added to low level zones. The reason is simple: no one plays them. The zones stagnate when players are not interested lower level content which meands no point spending resources on improving or adding new low level zones. The resources are pushed to build new max level zones.
Makes me wonder why not skip the hurdle of having separate low level zones and gearmill in the first place because the end result is that all work spent on those becomes obsolete in a few short months. Even worse the segregation of veteran high level players vs newbie low level players makes the experience rather unappealing for newbies.
As for the other stuff in your posts. I feel I've largely explained the relevant parts here without bloating the post too much. The rest are more a matter of preference. I do not claim that a level-less system solves everything. It has its own weaknesses as you have pointed out. However from my perspective it's much preferable for reasons mentioned.
As you yourself pointed out the issue here is that this largely does not work. The leveling speed in games has grown significantly. You can usually level up to max level within a very short time. It might have worked in games where it literally takes months even for hardcore gamers to reach max level. Now it usually tends to take days or weeks even for casuals - and many games introduce items which allow your to skip portion of the level grind altogether when you roll an alt.
When your gear is outdated and zone mobs grey after an hour or two of gameplay that's really wasted resources.
I disagree here as I've mentioned. I can't speak for ESO but GW2 does not have a level-less enemy and zone design. Enemies do not scale with you. You scale to their level. The difference is that by default they are not split to categories where some enemies are stronger and others weaker by design, and the zones themselves are not equally rewarding to play in.
That being said I never really felt the growth of power even in older MMOs I played. The "power" was merely number when in practice the foes were same. Great. A level 1 snake... ooh a level 50 snake. Besides doesn't anyone feel it odd that a level 50 snake can kill a level 10 bear that is 10 times its size? I personally never have played a MMO where I've truly felt my character growing stronger. Sure they get more powers but the actual foes remain largely same.
The reason is of course the lack of unlimited resources. You have to recycle most foes through all levels to get most out of them. Again why not skip this and design a system where enemies are valued on their hazard rating? A gang of street thugs should feel weaker than highly trained military force. Most games they are identical because there is no real difference between level 1 thug and a level 50 thug other than the number.
ESO has Levels pegged onto everything ... and no Flashback system or even Super Sidekicking. Want to do this Group Dungeon over here? Are you Level 28-30? No? Well then you can't use the LFG tool to get a group together or join a group. If you're over Level 30 then all of the rewards of doing that content are nerfed. If you're under Level 28 you'll be curbstomped by everything. EVERYTHING.
ESO is one of the most grouping UNFRIENDLY games I've ever played. The developers of ESO have figured that out, after the game went Live, but they're having to do a massive rewrite of their systems, including the Phasing system, to make the game even approximately group friendly. It's really quite amazing. Most of the time you're playing a MSORPG rather than a MMORPG. Grouping is rare, fleeting, and almost always pick up groups because everyone solos everything except the group content.
So they're 10 years behind the City of Heroes curve on that score, and are only now trying to catch up.
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Then the 'problem' seems to be that leveling speed is too fast.
How can there be a 'level 50 thug'? If a thug is level 50, he's either a Monster, or a super-villain. Otherwise, he'd just be a giant bag of HPs with a pop-gun and a bat.
General, worldwide Scaling just does not make sense.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Which is why you include activities that do reward the higher levels.
I am having a major disconnect with your thought process. You keep talking about a zone as being leveled in CoH And how players stop going to a low level zone because of this. The only zones that were leveled were the PvP zones. The only thing that was leveled was the foes in the zone. You could include any level of content in any zone other than street mobs and it will draw the higher players to the zone. You discredit instanced missions by saying they are gates to other zones. I cant follow the thought process.
Was not the majority of CoH to be found in instanced maps....regardless of level? How many high level character spent a serious amount of time street sweeping? When a level 50 was no actively playing the games missions were they not under Atlas?
I understand Reds reason for a level scaling system but do not understand yours. Can you give me what you think is the gain of a level scaling system without examples or flair...just a point by point....just so I can follow your logic.
Please understand I am not trying to be insulting and if I am I do apologize. I genuinely just want to understand.
I am beginning to understand your thoughts on how to do foe comparrisons now. It is a fairly clever way to treat the groups as a whole and would have liked for some groups in CoH to have mob makeups that followed this concept. Instead of the standard bunch of minions couple luets and a boss mob it mixed it up. This does on the surface make sense as to the relation of one group to another group.
It gets a bit bogged down when it comes to individual foe comparison in the sense that the lore of a street thug minion is comparable to a highly trained well equipped minion. This would probably come down to what the individual player wanted, a personal opinion if you will, as to if it was a good enough distinction overall....me I prefer the greater distinction of levels personally...you do not...arguments on this are unlikely to sway opinion.
So you are saying that enemies stay exactly as they did when you face them at level 1 ...hp, damage, attack types ect..... what is the point of that? Just so they attack you when you get close? That's silly so I hope you actually mean...
The foes grow in HP/resistance/damage but not attack types.
I guess this would fall into if a player found the distinction enough or not like before.
You either missed or ignored the part about the higher level foes will not initiate combat with a lower level character. This argument is a non starter as the only way your character will be insta killed is if you attack the high level foe (in which case you deserve it) or someone drags the foes to you in an attempt to grief you which I have sid this system needs to be protected against.
Its one way to do it, in CoH there was the flashback system...amount to something similar...not exact but similar. Not a huge fan of either as a way to make a zone viable for all levels.
How? This has been said a lot. But no one has given a reason other than a vague why would high level players go there idea. Do you think that making the street mobs level appropriate will bring the high level players to the zone? Because that is all this system does....change what a street mob is. Missions in both systems can incorporate high level versions of low level street foes and it can offer a reason why they are now high level.
Street mobs story has to incorporate all its power makeup lore when you encounter it. Its core concept wont change so if it is written to be a weak foe it has to stay weak...if it says it is weaker than this group it has to stay weaker....whats more it now has to be weaker than all the groups the second one is weaker than and so forth. Your color coding system just cannot incorporate the same nuances a level system can.
So if your goal is to make a zone more appealing to higher level character how will making all the street mobs level scaled do this beyond street sweeping which I suspect that not very many players do as a major goal. We all engaged in it somewhat from time to time but it wasn't exactly the gameplay that had a drawing power to it. I think having other more unique activities in all the zones will draw the high level players to a zone because it is different than what they get elsewhere. And it wont take anything away from the game.
The rest of this post is between the two of you so I'll bypass it. In reference to this particular point, however, the simple answer was forwarded by Redlynne: the same Friendly Fire code that prevents certain attacks from landing on "allies". Attack the high level mob, you trigger the agro and the mobs ability to hit you (and as you said, you deserve to die). Someone pulls the mob past you and you ignore it so it ignores you.
CoyoteShaman
To be charitable, I think the thought process is the same while the semantics are different. It's one of the things I often fall afoul of when I tell people "same results but different means" as an alternative way of doing things. It often results in a response of "well why change anything then?" ... to which the (in)obvious response is because the alternative means offers value beyond just getting the results you're after.
You're right that the only zones that were Level Bounded were the PvP zones in City of Heroes. Those zones forced your character to exist within the Level boundaries of the zone you'd entered. The idea was to level the playing field for PvP. Didn't work out that way, of course, because the problem is more complex than that, especially after the introduction of Invention Sets ... but that was the notional idea and purpose.
Hazard Zones had minimum Level requirements to them of the "you must be this tall to ride this ride" variety. "Foggy" [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Echo:_Dark_Astoria]Dark Astoria[/url] was originally a Level 21+ Hazard Zone that wouldn't even let you enter if you weren't Level 21 already.
These sorts of game mechanics work perfectly fine when you have a compartmentalized set of discrete Zones that contain characters in highly explicit ways (see: [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/War_Walls]War Walls[/url]). The result is a segmented map of the city, with each part of the city being its own "thing" not affected by other parts of the city (or even needing to be contiguous with one another), as you can plainly see on this [url=http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//6/6c/CoH_GvE_Map_1_Front.jpg]map[/url].
Those kinds of assumptions start breaking down as soon as you say that you want the entire City of Titans to all be one big mega-zone of lots of neighborhoods, all contiguous with each other and without loading zones. No really ... TAKE THE WAR WALLS DOWN from Paragon City and what have you got? You've got city "zones" that confine themselves to particular Level ranges for no readily apparent reason.
Gets worse if you take the GW2 or the PvP Zone solution and say that if you're on this side of the street you're Max Level X but if you're on the other side of the street you're Max Level Y. Literally, you can change your Max Level by crossing the street ... because the world is "seamless" and isn't chopped up and put into little boxes.
For the record, I'd prefer City of Titans to be done as a "seamless" large city environment, with lots of different neighborhoods in it. That's why I keep using the word "neighborhood" rather than "zone" do describe my thoughts about different parts of town. You might face a zone loading screen if you go to a [i]different city[/i] in some other part of the world ... or enter an Instance because you've passed through a Mission Door ... but the City of Titans itself ought to be a single large shared world that isn't divided up by invisible walls (hate those) within the confines of the city itself.
City of Heroes did the best it could with Praetoria and its zones, approximating a "seamless" transition between adjacent zones that really were adjacent (up top, the sewers were a different mess). Still, that was more a limitation of the antiquated game engine than anything else.
This is why it's hard for me to make myself (completely) understood at times because I'm seeing issues beyond the narrow scope of what's being discussed. I'm thinking holistically about how EVERYTHING ties in together, and what the long term effects of certain assumption are.
One of the assumptions that City of Heroes had was that the city was essentially "static" and eternally unchanging. That way the experience that YOU had in the world would be broadly similar to the experience that everyone else had in the larger world (ie. the shared city zones). The mobs always spawned in the same locations every day/night. They always spawned at the same Level, so that they could be there for the next Player to encounter, and so on. There was a sort of "permanency" baked into the design so that no one got left behind, but rather they "circulated" their way through the city on to newer, bigger, badder content, until you were fighting for the entire dimension and future of humanity (which is not bad after starting out beating up purse snatchers, eh?). But everything was kept in segregated "layers" of the game's content so that as your character progressed in Levels and power(s) you were constantly moving Up And Out of the places you had been before.
Which is fine if you've got 33 Zones serving Levels 1-50. Yeah, you read that right. Paragon City had 33 Zones for Levels 1-50, if you include the 3 PvP Zones and the Shadow Shard and the Echoes of Galaxy City and Dark Astoria and Ouroboros and Cimerora and the Sewers+Abandoned Sewers and everything else on the map. That's an average of 2 Zones every 3 character Levels ... an unsustainable amount of investment for a city as "big" and yet as "small" as Paragon City was. But if you're dealing with a single big city mega-zone ... a lot of the assumptions that make the compartmentalized Level ranging "work" starts breaking down fairly rapidly. Hence why I started this thread.
It certainly was for me. I spent the overwhelming supermajority of my time inside Instances doing content. Never meant that the shared world was irrelevant ... or in my mind [i]shouldn't have been irrelevant[/i]. But once you outleveled a particular city zone, the only obstacles you had were terrain ... not NPCs. The "[b]All Grey To Me[/b]" syndrome that Positron gave voice to but which almost all players were familiar with and understood. If you want rewards for doing things in the open world, go to the zone that matches you Level.
For a very long time there were Content Doldrums in the late teens and mid-30s(!) where you could simply run out of Missions/Contacts before reaching the next Tier of Missions and Contacts ... leaving you no choice but to Street Sweep for XP until getting over the Level threshold into the next set of story arcs. For a while, in the early days, Street Sweeping wasn't so much optional as it was a requirement in order to get past some content gaps and reach the next Level. Heck, I even spent a fair amount of time "sweeping" out in the Shadow Shard for XP in order to finally get to 50, because the content offered by Contacts couldn't get you all the way there.
Later on, the XP climb got significantly lowered, so this became less of an issue, but those of us who played pre-City of Villains can remember the long slog to get to 20 (and Stamina!) as well as the long slog to get to 40, and a whole new set of content to do after being "stuck" in Founders Fall/Eden and Brickstown/Crey's Folly for so long in the 30s.
Just because City of Heroes "solved" this problem later in life (by making the XP grind almost 50% faster) doesn't mean it won't rear its ugly head in City of Titans. Because of that I'd rather be prepared than stick my head in the sand (again).
Eventually I wound up hanging out either in Dark Astoria waiting to join Incarnate Trials or in the Vanguard Base waiting for Incarnate Trials or a Lady Grey Task Force or in Ouroboros so I could travel almost anywhere as quickly as possible. I hardly ever took my Level 50 characters to Atlas except when I was sent on a Mission, needed to spend a Hero Merit for a Set Recipe or had to go pay SG Base Rent every few weeks ... of if I wanted to hang out with a Cape Radio DJ who was putting on a show in Atlas.
There were, of course, a lot of Level 50s who hung around Atlas because it was the social hub zone of the game ... but leave the City Hall Plaza and the Level 50s were only around if they were street hunting as part of an event (such as Winter Lord).
Well that's a relief!
Yeah ... that doesn't sound right.
I was talking about if you're a Level 1 then you'll face opposition that is also Level 1. If you're a Level 50 then you'll face opposition that is also Level 50. And just as your character will gain Powers and Slots and all the rest of the stuff that comes with advancing in Levels ... so too will your opposition. That way the Level 1 PC faces a Level 1 Thug NPC ... while a Level 50 PC facing off against that same Thug will be facing a Level 50 Thug NPC ... [i]provided that the Level 50 character "taps" the Thug first[/i], thereby "keying" that NPC (on the fly!) to the Level 50 PC rather than the Level 1.
If the Level 50 Thug NPC defeats the Level 50 PC [b]and drops combat[/b], the Level 1 PC can step up and "tap" [i]the exact same Thug the Level 50 PC had been fighting[/i] and now the Level 1 PC is fighting a Level 1 Thug NPC where the Level 50 PC just faceplanted.
So the Foe NPCs you fight will "sidekick" to your character's Level at the time that you engage them (and go on their Threat List). And just like with Sidekicking ... if you're high Level there's access to all of your Powers, and if you're low Level there's access to remarkably few Powers. Side effect? No more "orphaned" spawn groups of high Level to be found in low Level areas. Instead, "orphaned" ambushes become Level-less until (re)engaged by any PC (no need to call for a Level 50 to do clean up of someone else's mess), at which time the ambush group scales themselves to whoever is attacking them (or got noticed by them).
So instead of being a case of "I'm Level 17, where do I need to be?" getting an answer of "Steel Canyon/Boomtown or Skyway City/Faultline" ... instead the answer would be "Fight anything you feel like, they're all Level 17 to you!" because you can go anywhere in the city and fight Level 17 Foe NPCs, not just in specific zones (and even then, only specific portions of those zones!).
Insert caveat of having a Notoriety system that could adjust the Level of Foe NPCs to be -3 to +3 of your own for this.
More like it's a notion I had of how to solve the problem you presented. That's quite a long way from being a "done deal" of any kind. Such a thing isn't even "set in mud" at this point. That was just me hand waving and scribbling on a white board. Sure, it might "work" but there's been no commitment to the idea (yet) by the Powers What Do in this thread.
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Well, I think the only thing left to say is something I expect many, if not most, players will think:
If there is never a time when my character is so powerful that some foes refuse to attack them then I will not feel super and I will have no reason to play the game. Super is part and parcel of SuperHero/SuperVillain. Without that feeling of being an overwhelming force there is no feeling of being Super and the game is nothing but just another Swords and Sorcery MMO. If we wanted that we'd play the other games.
CoyoteShaman
When I said I understood what you wanted I was wrong. Its not until now that I understand you want both level scaling and seamless zones.
To be fair nothing in your original post suggested this nor did you reinforce this concept clearly until far past when it would have been useful.
Now before I post anything more on the topic I have to go back and read everything with this new to me information and see how I feel about it.
I'm sorry, but I much prefer to have levels. I don't like scaling enemies unless it's some kind of zonewide event going on like the Rikti Invasion or the Zombie Invasion. I guess I'm just old school. But I like having a hard number attached to my hero that tells me how bad ass he or she is. I like having something that says, "Hey, it's okay for you to travel through here, but not here!". It doesn't feel Heroic to me if a level 1 person takes down some giant super-villain at level 1 just because that villain scaled down for them. Likewise, I don't like the thought of some low level thug scaling up to be as strong as my Hero with all his powers available. It just feels wrong to me. I vote for keeping levels and having levels define and dictate how strong a character is.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm too lazy to look through all these posts to see if someone has already said this, but here it goes.
I don't want to be a hero able to lift small mountains getting beat down by the graffiti artist on the corner.
Even batman, arguably one of the least powerful superheroes, can beat down a group of thugs without skipping a beat. He only runs into trouble when he runs into huge amounts of lowlifes.
So, my recommendation is that mobs get level bumps based on the number of other mobs in their immediate vicinity, maybe up to the heroes' level +3. That way, people still have to pay attention in zone, but don't feel like pushovers. Plus, it also gives people a way to continue leveling in low-level zones in a way that makes them feel powerful, i.e. clearing out huge numbers of mobs at once. This idea needs some tweaking, but think the basic premise is sound.
ShouLung,
While playing CoX, I often thought that the same mechanic used for certain powers, which gave a character a buff based on the number and type of teammates, should be used for mobs. For one thing it would certainly curtail the tanks that could run in and gather up tons of mobs without getting a scratch. I think the same mechanic could be used to promote the kind of situation you're getting at, if I correctly grasp your point. Obviously the manner in which this mechanic would be applied in Open World PvP is something the Devs would have to think on.
CoyoteShaman
Ok, reread and thought about it and pretty much my position and arguments against are the same. (broken into easy point form in case anyone wonders what they actually are after all the massive posts)
-Level scaling does not have the diversity in distinction that leveled foes have.
-I like the fact street mobs are no long a worry for me in certain areas and do not want travel to mirror wilderness travel in fantasy games.
-Power structure lore is very clearly represented with a leveled system of foes. Both in relation to the players current power level and foes written power level.
-Any story or mission can include any foe of any level in either system but there are stories in a level scaled system that cannot be told in the level scaled system.
-Much of the desired effect from a level scaled system can be done in ways I consider better than level scaling including zone events, minigames, mission arc storylines and alternate goal options.
-I wholeheartedly agree in losing the walls around the city making travel seamless but do not think that the only way this will be logical is if foes are level scaled.
Overall the gains I see in a level scaled system (street mobs are now players level and out leveling content) do not outweigh these drawbacks.
+1 very much, Trevor. +1 on all points.
I guess then the only way to convince you otherwise would be to actually DO IT and show you the results on a test server so it all fits together in context.
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Circle_of_Thorns]Circle of Thorns[/url] was a Level 5-54 Foe NPC group. Didn't ever seem to hold back their diversity. In fact, you didn't even get to see certain "flavors" of Circle of Thorns until different Level bands (the Earth/Air/Fire/Ice Mages didn't show up at first but came along later at different Levels).
Same thing with the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/5th_Column]5th Column[/url] Foe NPC group. They were a 1-54 group too. Didn't start seeing their Vampires until higher levels either. Heck, they were even the Foe Group you went up against in the Khan Task Force and parts of the Imperius Task Force and were the ones guarding Trapdoor for kicking off the Incarnate Alpha Slot story arc. Didn't matter that I'd been kicking their butts since [b]Atlas Park in Issue 2[/b]. They were still a force to be reckoned with.
[img]http://srv.fotopages.com/images/2/7/9/6/3/3336972.cmp[/img]
But just because I know of a way it could be done ... and know that City of Heroes already did it and pulled it off ... doesn't mean that that "way" of doing things is obvious to everyone else. If you don't see it then you won't "see it" ... so to speak ... because you don't believe it can be done. And that's fine.
One vote FOR world content Planned Obsolescence because it makes the game easier to play.
Power structure lore can be anything you want it to be. It just depends on how you design it. You want it to be useful only part way and are grabbing onto Planned Obsolescence with both hands. Fair enough.
I think you're missing a word in there and that you might want to rephrase ... otherwise you're outright contradicting yourself by having it both ways. May want to clarify?
Hey, anything to keep from needing to pay attention to or respect your surroundings, eh? Unbreakable terrain geometry is the only thing that can stop you, or at least distract or harass you, right?
I'm merely offering this as one possible solution. I'd love to hear other theories and ideas, because if there's a better one I'll latch onto it instead!
I still think you (and other people) are getting way too hung up on the 1 vs 50 thing. City of Heroes DID THIS. They were called the 5th Column. Reichsman was their LEADER in an alternate dimension!
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The enemies in CoX Leveled up as you leveled up. Yes. But not scaled up. You never saw a level 1 Circle of Thorn at level 54 that was the same Circle of Thorn with the same attacks and powers. You were introduced to NEW enemies as you increased in level. How do you propose they do that? How can you suddenly take the level 1 Wizard and turn them into a level 54 Incubus?
I think that is the disconnect. We can't seem to wrap our heads around how a low level Thug suddenly becomes a high level Capone in the blink of an eye. You would basically be making the same enemy for the entire game with the same attack powers and just adjusting their damage, defense, and hp. That's boring to me. I loved seeing the new versions of Circle of Thorns, 5th Column, Council, Arachnos, Freakshow, etc. It was fun running into a mob of enemies you thought you knew then see something new in there and think, "Hold up! What's that!?!"
You can still make lower level enemies agro onto a high level person, you'd just have to make it so that it's a large mob of them. You can still make it so that low level enemies can do damage to a high level hero, it just won't be a lot. Get enough of those low level mobs together and it could be trouble for a high level hero. We don't have to make it like CoH did where they became Gray and ignored you. They don't have to be no xp gain from them. There are ways to keep levels and still make enemies, enemies. Once in a while even a lowly thug got lucky and hit Batman just right to knock him out.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I had written yet another giant post but the truth is I am done. Its hard to discuss something with you when much of your arguments resort to dismissive responses that have little if anything to do with the what I say.
In the end neither is right or wrong we just want different things and I have stated my position.
Okay, how does DCUO manage, then? No War Walls there. Huge contiguous city areas that can take a Looong time to cross. Enemies definitely rise in levels, the farther one gets from the starting zones. Why aren't they self-destructing, the way you predict?
I think this problem you see is not so much of a problem and relatively easy to deal with, simply by not putting a level 50 area next to a level five area.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Actually I found DCUO to be closer in foes to what Red is advocating. The difference is they do not scale with the player...not really. DCUO predefines every foes attributes which do not change. They can do this because the overall change in a characters power does not really grow that much. Level growth in DCUO is about new power uses (and of course gear) and not health and damage ramping. Its a neat way to make a character fit in the overall concept of the DC universe in that the characters in the comics do not get stronger they just learn new tricks. (this is purely by memory of the game as I quickly grew bored of it).
The system itself is fairly good but would not fit in with the kind of character power ramping you saw in CoH as you progressed through levels IMO. I would not be that opposed to this system of continued foe viability if CoT changed the concept and mechanics of leveling characters to one where you did not see an increase in damage and health per level. The end result would be that characters would do comparable damage at level one as they did at level 30 (is that still the max level in DCUO?) Which would be adjusted purely by enhancments for an overall smaller variation.
I doubt that CoT will go that route as it is a large departure from CoH's general design though.
I take the side of levels, in large part due to the cognitive dissonance it forces upon the player.
Malta is a conspiracy primarily. At the point where they actually sent in their own forces (instead of unwitting pawns), you have been so inconvenient that they feel that they have to act now. Their agents are trained and equipped specifically to fight superhumans considered too powerful to control or eliminate in a more... subtle... way. And then, they get bet up by someone who does not even yet know how to shoot their webs.
Grizzly Girl could easily rend apart a grown men with a single strike, can run nearly twice as fast as Usain Bolt can sprint, and has been through fights where super soldiers in powered exoskeletons were considered cannon fodder. She gets beaten to death by some just initiated thugs with their bare hands and an air pistol.
As has been said, most factions in City of Heroes that actually were written with wide level ranges were designed in tiers, and the factions of City of Titans are designed that way as well. On the other hand, some factions have a clearly defined power level and should stay there. You should not be able to challenge the most powerful NPCs until you are close to the final level, and at level cap, fighting petty thiefs should not be a story worth telling.
The "recoloured Family goon at level 50" to me seem closer to bad writing, bad art or laziness than a systemic problem. With our [insert long list of grandiose descriptors here] character creator, it should not be hard to come up with a better progression than new colours.
And by the way: I admit that I am ignorant of Batman, but from what little I know, when considering power level, he is similar to Malta: very experienced in and specifically equipped for fighting superhumans.
Also, if you can directly fight tanks and dragons, you are not a mere mortal; you are at least preternaturally skilled or lots of luck/Destiny/plot armour.
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Quest Design I - Why Many MMOs Rely on Repetitive Grind Quests - Extra Credits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur6GQp5mCYs Quest Design II - How to Create Interesting MMO and RPG Quests - Extra Credits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur6GQp5mCYs and Extra Credits: Differences in Scale vs Differences in Kind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur6GQp5mCYs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBR1z-ue-I
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
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I believe this argument has devolved into an exchange of "you're wrong", "no, you're wrong", ad infinitum, without any compromise or new information. It's simply one side's opinions/preferences with self-referential reasoning voiced repeatedly against another side's opinions/preferences with self-referential reasoning voiced repeatedly. In these situations there is no longer a debate and it becomes obvious that neither side will convince the other of anything.
For that reason, I shall remove myself from the argument before it devolves further towards ad homonym attacks. This, simply put, is another academic topic as it's obvious that the Devs have their own opinions which will not be swayed into altering one of the most fundamental aspects of game play. In essence, no verbal or written game of chicken can have any result other than one side walking away in disgust or both sides being hurt.
Good day.
CoyoteShaman
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-kgrl9vKxI/]There is nothing 'mere' about that mortal[/url]
Thank you for givin us a little insite to the foe power level system you are using.
I watched the first of those. Granted it's just an initial viewing but I can't say it impressed me very much. As near as I can tell, the examples are no different from WoW quests except for the fact that the game doesn't [I]tell[/I] you there are quests to be found somewhere. The example of finding the ring could exist almost identically in WoW, except the item would tell you there is a quest to speak to the barkeep. Whether or not removing that information is a good thing is a matter of opinion, but to me it's certainly not. All it results in is slogging through talking to everyone in sight trying to figure out what I can do, or (the much more problematic and likely result), checking online for information about what I'm supposed to do next.
To my mind, good quest design doesn't come in the form of trying to figure out what to do next [I]unless that is its specific intent[/I], in which case the mystery should come in doing the quest itself, not figuring out how to get a quest in the first place. Ultimately we should accept the fact that MMOs (and, when you think about it, just about all games) are based on repetitive structures, and so it is creating compelling, dynamic situations within those structures that will keep a game rewarding.
TL:DR: The video seems to suggest figuring out [I]what[/I] to do next is good quest design. I think knowing [I]what[/I] to do next should generally be obvious. The question (if any) should be [I]how[/I] to do it.
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And this is the exact reason why those little exclamation points were invented. Because people were unable to proceed on those side quests due to them being too obscure. The issue now is that players have become in part lazy and now expect to be ushered through the game with everything pointed out. The example of the ring quest was not to illustrate a good quest but to show how a quest does not have to be spelled out and that it will immerse players deeper into the world.
His examples of the secret world quests are much better examples of how to use quests and the world together. I will grant that much of the appeal of the secret world quests is only found in the initial play through as the mystery and puzzles stay the same.
The point was that there are ways to immerse players in the world that do not rely on just fighting and travel... how a quest is given, how that quest interacts with the world and a variety of quest styles can all be used in conjunction to create a much more immersive world. A world the players actively explore because there is a gain in it that is less tangible that just fighting street mobs.
I do agree that unless the specific goal of the quest is to try and figure out the quest (puzzle quests for example) the quest should include more direction than the ring example in the video.
Think of a Player Character.
At Level 1 a Player Character can barely "do" anything (in City of Heroes). You had 2 Powers to choose and your Origin Power and Brawl. That was pretty much it.
At Level 50 a Player Character had dozens of Powers and could do an awful lot. Hardly anyone used their Origin Power anymore (except for lighting up Oil Slick) and only a few specialty builds used Brawl.
Now ... understand that a Foe NPC is really "just a PC being driven by an AI" and think about what that could mean. It could mean that Foe NPCs ought to gain Powers (and Enhancements for those Powers?) as they Level up. A Level 18 Tsoo Minion could (and should!) therefore be able to "do more" than a Level 10 Tsoo Minion. Why? Because the Level of the Tsoo Minion has increased.
So I think the question as asked ...
... in somewhat framing the question the wrong way. It's a question of how to turn an apple into an orange.
The way the question should be asked is ... what's the difference between a Level 1 Minion NPC of Foe Group {insert name here} vs the exact same Minion NPC type at Level 50? The answer is, of course ... more Powers and more Enhancements for those Powers, creating an "evolving" NPC that grows much LIKE (but perhaps not at the same rate or in the same way that) a PC would. You'd then have guidelines laying out how to "gimp" NPC builds so as to render them to be Pet/Minion/Lieutenant/Boss rank and so on.
So to answer the question directly ... it wouldn't work the way that you're describing. The Level 1 Wizard would "grow up" to be a Level 50 Wizard with a much larger toolkit of Powers and effects.
So NPCs would have "builds" just like Players do (because to an extent they "are" players that aren't being played by humans) and as the Levels go up their Powers would grow and evolve and extend. It ought to even be possible to put some very simple programming into the AI that controls them which defines which Powers an NPC has can be used within which Level range ... so the lowbie NPC can use Brawl but the at the Level cap that same NPC doesn't bother with it anymore.
Yes, I just offered a way to prevent Robot/* Mastermind Minions from rushing forward to Brawl like idiots after they've been fully upgraded. You're welcome.
Please tell me this idea is not a surprise to anyone.
The "thug" would still be a thug at all Levels ... barring use of a "transformation" of some kind to reveal an unexpected adversary you weren't anticipating (which, by the way, would also be theoretically possible). You attack a Lost homeless man and a Rikti Soldier teleports in to replace him. The NPC would essentially make use of a Costume Change set up for them, which could also be done as a Costume Change Emote ... just like Player Characters can use.
The one thing that I'd mandate remain constant is the "ranking" of being a Pet/Minion/Lieutenant/Boss. A Capone was a Boss of The Family. Only way a low Level Family NPC could transform themselves into a Capone is if they were already a Boss Ranked NPC before they engaged any PCs. That way, a "low Level [b]Boss[/b] Thug" could become a "high Level [b]Boss[/b] Thug" ... AFTER ... having dropped combat with the low Level PC(s) that engaged the "low Level [b]Boss[/b] Thug" in the first place.
Remember, what Level an NPC "is" remains fluid until they're engaged in combat, at which point it is set to match the PC (Team) opposing the NPC(s) in that spawn group. The Level that an NPC is "at" gets cleared when the NPC drops out of combat (and leashes to return to Spawn Point).
That would be boring for me too. Good thing that's not what I'm advocating for then, is it?
How is that not what I'm advocating for?
Because Foe NPCs would have BUILDS for their characters ... just like PCs do. And those Builds would describe which Powers those NPCs have access to [i]in which Level ranges[/i].
Want a Foe NPC to use different Powers at low and high Levels? Simply create them so that's how they work. They're still the "same" NPC, under the hood, as far as the game (and more importantly, the database!) is concerned ... but what they can DO and how they'll behave/react will be different at different Levels. So as the PC grows and evolves and changes, the NPCs opposing you [i]also grow and evolve and change[/i] right along with you ... and they do so at the same "rate" that the PCs do.
Was this not understood?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I understand, but disagree.
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I'm with Xnarl on this one. I get where you are going with the idea, but I don't think it would work. You'd be asking a lot from the AI, and from what some of the Devs have said the AI is too smart. They are having a difficult time in dummying it down. I'd still rather just stick with the levels and enemies being level based. I'd like to see new types of enemies within the enemies at differing levels like CoH did instead of the same enemy with new powers throughout the entire game. I like variety.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
This reminded me of a game that I enjoyed playing immensely (Red Dead Redemption) but after a few days of playing.. i could not find the quest giver. I traversed through the WHOLE MAP, even across allot of the baron landscape, to see if a quest giver MOVED to a secret location not marked on the map. I gave up and didnt play the game for a long time. And i really wanted to get to fight in the ALAMO and set out on a river raft and chase the villain into MEHICO! >:(
It would have been NICE if a hint system existed... even if it meant me having to spend some In-Game currency to discover it. I Dont have 3 days to track down this crap. I'm mostly Busy. So, hiding Quest givers is a Big No No for me. >:(
Well, I know that's why the quest icons were invented (or at least I assume that was the motivation); I played some WoW back in the relatively early days when very few things were marked on the map, and it could be frustrating as all heck sometimes.
The thing is that I agree with the sentiment of integrating quests into the game world and using a variety of styles, but I don't agree with the way the video presented it. The Secret World quest in the second part is a lousy example because what it really represents is a [I]different[/I] kind of quest: mystery and/or research. That's all well and good, but it is presented as if those things make a quest categorically better, when in fact they just put it in a different category. Whether or not these kind of elements are a good thing depends largely on what you're going for; I don't think doing online research on a historical figure for a clue as to the next step in the quest is generally suitable for a spiritual successor to CoH for example, and it's not the kind of game I'm looking for.
I would have found the videos much more compelling if it had considered two quests that largely fit into the same category, such as two fetch quests, and showed how one used more compelling design than another. There are many aspects of what I would consider good quest design that have nothing to do with solving riddles (in the sense presented) or doing research. Much of it is simply the use of good writing, visuals that match the writing, or techniques such as branching. And there are a lot of ways to make combat-driven quests engaging and unique, such as combats that evolve in some fashion, finding allies along the way, terrain advantages and disadvantages, protecting key locations, having multiple simultaneous tasks, and so on.
The video just smacked of--as a primary focus of a quest--puzzle good, combat bad.
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I personally think that most of the publicly accessible outdoor shared zones, e.g. Atlas Park in CoX, may as well be more or less clear of any real PVE threats most of the time in the first place. Its not like anyone spent a lot of time street sweeping in CoX, or ever had to. I mean we all did that from time to time, but it did not need to me a major component of your leveling up if you didn't want it to be. Also, the amount of thugs on the "safe" streets in CoX was staggeringly unrealistic for any kind of "normal" city backdrop, when you think about it. I'd be okay with the occasional, well hidden random encounter you might find in the darkened alleys and rooftops, if you go looking for them, but I feel that the main public parts of the city that are presumably inhabited by mostly normal people should look fairly clear of deadly threats practically all the time, except for the occasional invasion, zombie apocalypse, etc.. That said, some areas can and probably should be "rough neighborhoods" like Boomtown, Crey's Folly, The Crash Site, etc in CoX, but those are places you go looking for a fight because they're level-appropriate "war zones". you go there and you fins other heroes your approximate level and you maybe team up and fight or whatever. Now, having no levels would mean that you COULD have just ONE "level-appropriate war zone" and let the baddies scale to the PCs fighting them, but then you wouldn't need more zones, and more zones is more fun, to me. You could also make the few random encounter baddies in the "safe" public areas scale, but then you end up with "Super" heroes that are finding it equally challenging to defeat a purse snatcher no matter how experienced or powerful the hero is. I mean, The Silver Surfer ought to be able to walk up to a mugger and say "Mine is the Power Cosmic!" and just watch the guy mess himself as he runs away, not have to pull out all the stops to fight him.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
In the ideas business there are some very important questions:
Is this a solution to a problem or just an auxiliary feature. (in this case "Is leveling a bad structure?" is the first question. I see level-less gaming as more of a feature with no single solution.
BUT it does come with its own set of rules and problems to be solved. Because of the limited nature of City of Titans launch content I completely rationalize that a level-less structure is an auxiliary system that can greatly improve the long term future of the game. Then the cost/benefit structure comes in.. how much work for how much benefit?
I think to create a system like this would permeate the power selection model, the NPC AI, and even the story model. I believe having story pre-requisites is enough to solve the lore/story model issue. But how to deal with NPCs and character/build creation is a very touchy subject that could take a lot of programming.
Is it worth it.. in my mind i can see where it would be. Seeing as CoT announced they are nearing (or at) the end of Pre-Alpha and have established a 30 level cap at this time there may be better ways to deal with the auxiliary features we want while minimizing the amount of work/rework that would be required, such as:
1) a NPC system that can scale to a players defined level
2) Story progression that encourages taking a break in one story to continue it in another zone (hoping that player behavior is to complete the quests in one zone before continuing to the next)
3) an XP system that scales new (not previously completed) missions to your level
some of these smaller auxiliary features would create some of the desired effects without needing to re-invent the wheel.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
The video was about alternative quests. He explained how the majority of games use combat in all the quest types they provide and gave examples as to alternative quests and how they offered more opportunity for player immersion in the world. It was about breaking away from the stereotypical rinse and repeat of combat. He has other videos that speak about how combat can be made more rewarding and diverse as well...check them out.
But, that's only kind of what it's about. Looking at Part 1, if you actually consider the ring quest it's not a different kind of quest. It's still "go here, talk to this person, deliver this item to that person over there," a Fed-Ex quest as he termed it. The only real difference is the addition of a step in which you don't know whom to talk to in order to figure out where to go. You have to figure that out "without the game giving you any hints or prompting," which ultimately means asking everyone you meet about every item you've found until you stumble upon it. Further, there's no reason that this provides any deeper sense of immersion; the game can avoid this annoyance and still give you just as much of the story. It actually strikes me as decidedly crappy quest design.
A much better example would be Vistas in Guild Wars 2. Ultimately these are just traversal quests--go here. And the game tells you where you're supposed to go, though not necessarily how you're supposed to get there. It may involve some puzzle or reflexive tests in the style of old Mario-like platformers, and may also involve some combat along the way. What are the rewards? A little xp. For completists, one step closer to 100% on the map. But most importantly in this conversation, it provides a visual of the surroundings. In some cases these can be quite stunning, and provide a great sense of immersion and wonder in the world. They accomplish this without offering anything categorically new, and without hiding the ultimate goal, but by presenting the "same-old" in a compelling way.
The second part of the video, as I take from the name, is about "How to Create Interesting MMO and RPG Quests." But the example from The Secret World is a puzzle problem, which the video then claims is good because it's not combat or traversal. That doesn't make it more interesting; that makes it categorically different. The thing is, I like combat. I'm willing to bet most people on this forum do too, since almost all the quest/reward activity in CoH was focused on combat*.
It's a bit hit-and-miss in City, with I suppose more misses in the early years, but there are plenty of examples of immersive, compelling, combat-centric quests. Croatoa chains are the first that spring to mind. You got to experience battles between Tuatha and Fir Bolg. Quests like Stop 30 Fir Bolg and Stop Takeover of Salamanca were still about "go there, kill everything," but did it in a different way, and I really enjoyed them. There was also the last mish in the STF. There was some nice ambience in the form of the speech over the PA system; while this is still a combat setting I get a sense of placement in the world. Further, the final fight was quite interesting in that you had to deal with multiple problems simultaneously: taking down the towers (and stopping repairs) while keeping Lord Recluse busy. None of these examples move away from the paradigm of "standard" quests, but they present the tasks in an interesting, immersive way.
The videos I think have some valid points--and indeed I think the video on differences in scale and kind is much better--but I find the explanations in the quest design lousy. I don't accept the premise that hiding quest locations somehow makes them more rewarding to find; nor do I accept the premise that breaking out of the "standard" quests somehow makes a quest more interesting. Whether it's one of the five types presented or something else, a quest can be interesting or not, immersive or not, depending on how it's presented. For that reason I would have found the video much more compelling if it hadn't felt the need to go in a completely different direction to explore good design.
*Of course there was plenty of activity in CoH that wasn't spurred by the quest/reward system, but mostly came from the community itself. Some were combat-focused, such as the RWZ and Pylon challenges. There were also costume contests; some people roleplayed. And then there is badging, which is basically its own reward, a weird grab-bag of tasks.
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