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Night. Day. I'm the villain with the Fog Machine ...

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Redlynne
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Night. Day. I'm the villain with the Fog Machine ...

In City of Heroes, there were basically two Spawn Maps for every Hero and Villain Zone. A Day Map and a Night Map. Some things only appeared in the day on some Maps. Some things only happened at Night.

City of Heroes also worked on a 1 second = 1 minute time dilation. This meant that you got 12 minutes of daylight followed by 12 minutes of night, and one entire "day" of game time happened in 24 minutes of real time.

I've been reading (and rewatching) the Sword Art Online novels and anime, and it kind of goes without saying that there's some really good ideas in there. The one that I'm interested in for the purposes of this thread is ... the Day/Night cycle. In ALfheim Online, complete day+night cycles last 16 hours ... not 24. The reason for this is that Players who are only ever able to log in at specific times each day (such as public school students) would thus be able to experience both night and day conditions that way at different times. So 500p today is night time in ALO, but 500p tomorrow is daytime ... that sort of thing.

Now, thinking about this in context with Spawn Maps, if City of Titans were to adopt this idea, there would have to be a way to divorce Spawn Maps for Zones away from a strictly day/night cycle only, since you'd have 8 hours of daylight and 8 hours of night per game day, and that's potentially too long to wait for an alternate Spawn Map to come into play like City of Heroes did every 12 minutes.

So what if Spawn Maps for City of Titans WEREN'T keyed to the Day/Night cycle, but were instead keyed to something else? Well, the first and most obvious question is what could be used instead of Day/Night for the keying of Spawn Maps?

I'm thinking ... WEATHER.

Clear.
Partly Cloudy.
Overcast.
Foggy.
Windy.
Drizzling Rain.
Hard Rain.
Hail.
Sleet.
Snow.

If you look closely, you'll see that this list forms something of a continuum (kinda sorta), which in a pinch could even be used in a +1/-1 step sort of way. So if the weather starts out as being Clear, it either stays Clear or changes to Partly Cloudy, but doesn't go straight to being Windy (that's more than 1 step).

Set things up such that the weather can change every ... oh, let's say ... 10 minutes ... by +/- 1 step on the current conditions, and that the direction it changes is determined randomly.

What you do then is design the Spawn Maps for Zones and index them by NPC Faction. So you have a Skulls Spawn Map. You have a Hellions Spawn Map. You have a Warriors Spawn Map. And so on. And THEN you have a parameter on each of those NPC Faction Maps that defines under which Weather conditions that NPC Faction Spawn Map will be used.

So let's say we've got a Spawn Map for Malta and define them as only appearing in Clear, Partly Cloudy, Overcast, Foggy and Windy conditions. Well, that's fine for game launch, but later on, an overachieving MWM Dev decides to vary things up a little bit so this NPC Faction isn't quite so predictable. They take the Spawn Map as it exists, duplicate it, and then tweak it so that there's a Clear, Partly Cloudy, Overcast Spawn Map for the group, and a Foggy, Windy, Drizzling Rain Spawn Map that's different in which the NPC Faction exhibits different behaviors, spawns in different locations, and so on.

These Spawn Maps can then be thought of as "overlays" on the City, in which the current weather conditions are used as a "key" for determining which NPC Factions are present in the streets AND what that faction is "doing" at the time. Are they hiding out? Are they taking shelter? Are they rampaging through the streets? Are they just loitering? Are they selling stolen audio equipment on the sidewalks?

With a system like this, there would be a wide variety of possible "looks" to the City of Titans in terms of who is where (and when, and why). Ghosts only come out when it's Foggy or there's a Drizzling Rain, for example.

For extra bonus points, these Spawn Maps could even include conditionals such as "only during Night" or "only during Day" for things like Ghoulies and Ghosties and things that go BURP! in the Night.

Such a system would give a lot of flexibility to MWM to vary and "tweak" the appearance of the neighborhoods around the City of Titans, in addition to adding a lot of atmospherics (and the pun is unintended but also unavoidable) to the game which could engender a lot of interest in its variety. It should even be possible to "reserve" things like Sleet and Snow for certain times of the year (northern hemisphere winter, for example).

Note that as far as I'm concerned, having Weather in any way affect how Powers "work" or function is off the table. Game mechanically, at a tactical level, Weather would have No Effect whatsoever. The only effect that Weather would have is in determining "what's out there" on the streets and alleys and so on around the City of Titans. Weather would influence the die rolls for "wandering monsters" ... in effect ... by determining which NPC Factions are spawning and what they're doing at any given time.

And yes ... implementing this idea would almost certainly lead to NPC on NPC conflict of some form or another when the weather "turns" and a new Spawn Map comes into play, with the new spawns "driving out" the already existing spawns from the previous conditions. Set up the NPCs to spawn by exiting doors, gather up into a group and then go wherever to do whatever activity they're programmed to do ... whether that be vandalism, patrolling the neighborhood looking for a hostile Faction to fight, lockpicking to open a locked door or trying to break into a tree stump (really, some people just need help).

Ideally speaking, over time, MWM could potentially develop variations of behavior patterns for NPC Factions keyed to each and every Weather condition, yielding a very fluid and dynamic feel to the City of Titans when it comes to street sweeping ... possibly even to the point where Players don't see the same NPCs spawning in the exact same spaces all the time. Fortunately, such a laudatory goal would be something that could be worked towards over time, in bits and pieces, with the structure I'm outlining here, rather than needing to be something that gets developed all at once and has to delivered in time for game launch (or else!). Thus, it could be a work of refinement in the evolution of the game world in reaction to discoveries, datamining and even storytelling developments.


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peanut butter is bad for you?

peanut butter is bad for you? i mean i like it

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I like the idea of a longer

I like the idea of a longer day/night cycle, and a shorter weather cycle to tie into that. I'm not sure on the current progression you have laid out in your initial post though. Rather than hail, snow, rain and sleet as separate options, instead bundle them and make them change seasonally. Then the various precipitations get bundled together, and placed under light, normal, and heavy precipitation. Tieing mob spawns to specific day/night and weather combinations may also lend itself to be a tad tricky, but if only certain mobs were altered, and a large portion were standard, 24/7, such as Mobs needed for missions, then I could get behind the idea. For example, if I got a mission to "interrogate" 10 Ghouls, but they only spawned at night, and it JUST dawned a new day, I might be in trouble. However, if the ghouls were permanent residents of a nearby graveyard AS WELL as becoming more prolific at night, I could totally see that working.

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Redlynne
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Stalker wrote:
Stalker wrote:

For example, if I got a mission to "interrogate" 10 Ghouls, but they only spawned at night, and it JUST dawned a new day, I might be in trouble. However, if the ghouls were permanent residents of a nearby graveyard AS WELL as becoming more prolific at night, I could totally see that working.

This is where you intersect conditions and locations in the matrix of options. You've got a Spawn Map of JUST Ghouls that specifies "only at night" (for example) and has a range of weather conditions that permit them to spawn as the "normal" for them. But then you ALSO have an additional supplemental map specifying that Ghouls are present in Moth Cemetery in Dark Astoria in all weather conditions regardless of day or night. There would even be the option of having a variety of Spawn Maps for Ghouls in the Moth Cemetery location such that under certain conditions, Ghoul spawns are present in greater numbers (Clear and Partly Cloudy, at Night, or in Foggy and Drizzling Rain conditions during the Day) along with other Spawn Maps in which Ghouls are still present at all times but their population is reduced, making them harder to find. That way, Ghouls will ALWAYS be present in a specific location, but the "spawn density" of them in that location can still vary with time of day and current weather conditions.

The key point here is that the system I'm offering allows that level and degree of flexibility to be POSSIBLE. At the same time, the exact same system allows the absolute minimum variation as well ... such that a NPC Faction spawns the exact same way in ALL Weather regardless of Day or Night in all locations, meaning that there's no variation at all. It's just a matter of checking ALL the checkboxes and leaving it at that. However, even if that "lazy" course of checking all the checkboxes is used, that doesn't preclude coming back in later on in a future review pass and having a Dev duplicate the existing Spawn Map (so you don't have to start from scratch) for an NPC Faction and then start making limited changes, so as to "evolve" that specific NPC Faction in a directed and controlled manner, so as to "weight" their Spawn Behavior in specific ways and for specific purposes.

In other words, I'm looking for a Spawn Map system that is inherently extensible and which can "evolve" over time as the game ages and changes. I want a system that has "design space" built into it from the start, intended to be filled out over time after the game launches, so as to help the game GROW and become a more robust and varied playing experience. Why? Because familiarity breeds contempt. When there's only "two ways" the game world is populated (night and day), it doesn't take long to learn the pattern(s) of the Spawn Maps.

Yes, I'm talking about a system that ... if FULLY exploited ... would be a hell of a lot of work. But then, pretty much ANYTHING that introduces that level of variability into the game playing experience would REQUIRE something on the order of that level of work, wouldn't it? And the system I've described can be either as varied, or as unchanging, as the Devs have time to work on the issue, so it's flexible ... and even more important, extensible and relatively easy to modify. Each moving part is, in and of itself, relatively simple. The complexity comes in with making "all the gears mesh together" so that the entire clockwork runs smoothly as a functioning whole.


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While an initially good idea,

While an initially good idea, it does run into a few issues.

Firstly, to revisit your original post, the prior system, of days and nights lasting only 24 minutes would seem to work fine for the most part as very few gamers who sit down for a dedicated play session will stay in game for anything less than that. For a larger game, especially one that demands as much dedication as an MMO, the average play time in a single session by the vast majority of players will be at least one hour, possibly a little bit less than that if rushed for time. There also wasn't much of a need for players to map out day/night cycles for spawns because missions in the local area that required that type of mob would have dedicated locations which would have continuous spawn points.

If we take that same group of people who can only play the game for about half an hour at most, then add in that the random nature of the weather affects spawns, then there's the possibility that a player will not be able to see the enemy group they need for the entirety of their play session. Instead, they'll go to the dedicated location, and progressively become tired of the scenery as it might be all they see. It also leads to dominant strategy; why gamble on the weather when there's a warehouse full of Malta that spawns there 100% of the time? A large stack of players, regardless of how long they each have in a play session, will congregate in that location because it's guaranteed Malta. If the goal would be to have players explore the map freely, you'd want them to be able to go anywhere to find what they need.

Finally, I guess this is more of a contextual thing than anything, but wouldn't it make certain villain groups look a little... pathetic? I can understand a group of ice villains wanting to wait until the snow kicks in, but can you imagine the Council, this legion of ultra-prepared, super powerful fascist soldiers not going out to prove their dominance with their amazing technology and strength because it's looking a bit damp outside?

The system itself looks well designed, and changing weather of that variety would make the game feel more vibrant, but I don't think spawns should be focussed on weather, at least not universally. Certain groups might, like elemental based groups, or even gangs of thugs and brutes wanting to hang out inside because of the rain, but others will likely be to driven/organised/mindless to notice it.

Instead what I suggest would be a singular spawn map with each significant spawn group of that map being rolled randomly on a table, starting from singular, major points in each neighbourhood. Then, it moves on to adjacent spawn locations, with a slight modifier being added in favour of the group that took the initial spawn location, and then continues on and on until each spawn location has been appropriately filled.

That can progress as a base, for example. As an additional modifier, you can have two groups who roll equally on the table of Minor spawn locations spawn in already conflicting over it.

Finally, you could have two or three patrolling groups of enemies originating from their faction's Major Spawn location and moving around the map with little limit, besides avoiding zone entrances and safe zones. Then, when they encounter an enemy faction that came in a Minor Spawn, they engage in combat. Should the patrolling group beat the enemy faction in that point, that Minor Spawn is captured by the patrolling group, so when enemies respawn there, it will be of that faction. Patrols that meet and fight each other will have no effect, and defeated patrols will respawn at the Major Location, which cannot be captured.

Have this be the status quo for about 3 to 4 real time days, at which point there's a reset and you have a faction war that manages itself. To ensure that the re-rolls are fluid and believable, as well as guaranteeing those spawn locations for certain groups, you could have the Major Spawn locations remain stagnant, with only minor spawn locations changing. The effective 'changing of the guard' would likely be one of the bigger complications in this, as that that might be accomplished through the help of the players themselves, with untouched groups changing automatically out of sight of the players (if possible) while those in sight will change when a player takes that group out.

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Then there's the question of

Then there's the question of PC effects and whether it would become mandatory to have a Storm Summoner on the team, in order to get the right spawns.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Redlynne
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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Then there's the question of PC effects and whether it would become mandatory to have a Storm Summoner on the team, in order to get the right spawns.

No offense, Fireheart, but this makes no sense. Are you honestly expecting a single PC to be able to use their Powers to affect the entire playable volume of the game (ie. the entire city)?

If you're talking about being able to CONTROL the Weather (for the entire northeastern US?) ... it would seem to me that such a thing ought to be "permitted" as an outcome of a specific story arc (think Task Force), kind of like how completing a Lady Grey Task Force would spawn a Rikti Invasion. That's just about the only possible excuse I can come up with for allowing Players to "choose" what the Weather is going to be ... and even then it would be a "one use" upon completion of the story arc and not something that you can "bank" for use whenever you feel like it.


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Redlynne
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ArticulateT wrote:
ArticulateT wrote:

I can understand a group of ice villains wanting to wait until the snow kicks in, but can you imagine the Council, this legion of ultra-prepared, super powerful fascist soldiers not going out to prove their dominance with their amazing technology and strength because it's looking a bit damp outside?

Um ... there's nothing which says that the legion of ultra-prepared, super powerful fascist soldiers CAN'T BE an "all weather" NPC Faction.

At the Dev Tools level, all it would take is checking all the checkboxes to make them an All Weather type of NPC Faction. Totally permitted and permissible. Indeed, I would expect this sort of thing to be the "norm" until additional development of additional variations can be undertaken, simply because the All Weather setting is the simplest and most consistent and therefore the least amount of work on the Dev side of things.

Conversely, it would also be possible to set up NPC Factions as being Weather conditions dependent, so that they are only intermittently present, instead of all the time present. The trick is, One Size DOES NOT Fit All.

If you want the NPC population of a city to be something that isn't constant and static, you're going to have to find a reason/rationale for an ebb and flow behind who is where, when, and in/under what conditions. If you don't have that ebb and flow, you'll just have Foe NPCs standing around in the streets waiting for a PC to come along and knock them over. Which then gets to the question of ... do you want a LIVING city, or not?

ArticulateT wrote:

The system itself looks well designed, and changing weather of that variety would make the game feel more vibrant, but I don't think spawns should be focussed on weather, at least not universally. Certain groups might, like elemental based groups, or even gangs of thugs and brutes wanting to hang out inside because of the rain, but others will likely be to driven/organised/mindless to notice it.

Fine then ... think of it this way.

Are there people in the public parks when it's Sunny or Partly Cloudy? What are they doing there?
Are there people in the public parks when it's Raining Hard? Why not?

In most cities I've been in, when it starts raining, people tend to seek shelter rather than remain out on the streets. In other words, rain tends to (note: tends to) thin the herd of humanity outdoors.

City of Heroes sidestepped this problem entirely simply because they didn't have Weather in any meaningful sense. Every day was sunny. The only places that saw rain and snow precipitation were instances. Yes, there was a snow Temp Power, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking entire Zone level of Weather events. Heck, for the longest time, the only place to see "fog" in Paragon City was in Dark Astoria ... until even the fog was banished from there.

The key thing I want you to consider is that seeing Purse Snatchers and civilian pedestrians doing a contest of strength over an object on sidewalks and in alleyways is something that "makes sense" when the streets are dry. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense when the rain is pouring down. When it's foggy out, I'd expect the Snipers to pack it in for a while until the Weather improves, simply because the limited visibility is ruining their long range shooting potential. Perhaps when it's pouring down Heavy Rain, there might be fewer Snipers around, but there's still some.

In other words, the system that I'm proposing gives Devs the options and tools to alter the behavior and "presence" of NPC Factions on the map in response to variable conditions, and be able to tailor those patterns in ways that can be keyed to an obvious "tell" for Players to notice ... Weather conditions.

Also, how quickly the Weather "turns" between states and stages is something that could be sped up or slowed down. Set the Weather to "move" every 5 minutes and you'll have 12 changes in an hour. Dial it back to every 6 minutes and you've got 10 changes per hour. Do it every 8 minutes and you'll have 7.5 changes per hour ... and so on.

So to take this full circle ... let's say that there's Contact NPC you need to meet in the public park. If it's Sunny, Partly Cloudy or Overcast, you might find this Contact NPC actually out and about in the public park. But if the Weather conditions are nasty/yucky, instead of being out and about in the public park somewhere, this Contact NPC is *instead* found sheltering nearby, perhaps at the "clubhouse" for the park or under a nearby overhang somewhere around the perimeter of the park. The Contact NPC still exists, regardless of the Weather conditions, but when it's raining or nasty out they don't just keep walking around on the gravel trails through the public park like a moron. Instead, the Contact NPC does the "sensible" thing and heads for shelter to wait until the Weather conditions improve.

People go to the park to play frisbee golf when it's nice out ... not when it's foggy or raining.


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One thing the original post

One thing the original post (tangentially) pokes at is the question of how long the 24-hour cycle will take to animate in game. I think 24 minute days were too fast in CoX. I would say maybe a 4-8 hour day would be better.

As for weather, it sounds interesting, but you'd have to add some sort of annual weather table where you go from winter to summer and back on a regular cycle I think. I mean, we don't want a hard freeze winter day to come right after a really hot summer, etc. All of this sounds cool. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do and I have no idea what priority I would assign to it in terms of time frame to get it rolled out.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

One thing the original post (tangentially) pokes at is the question of how long the 24-hour cycle will take to animate in game. I think 24 minute days were too fast in CoX. I would say maybe a 4-8 hour day would be better.
As for weather, it sounds interesting, but you'd have to add some sort of annual weather table where you go from winter to summer and back on a regular cycle I think. I mean, we don't want a hard freeze winter day to come right after a really hot summer, etc. All of this sounds cool. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do and I have no idea what priority I would assign to it in terms of time frame to get it rolled out.

We thought about a 4 hour day, but what we figured out is that if you have to wait for day or night, then your average wait time would be 2 hours, and it would matter what time zone you were in. We are seriously considering 1 hour = 1 day, which would mean you would know, by looking at a clock, what time of day it is in game. For example, X:00 could be noon, and X:30 would be midnight. (The hour hand points to the elevation of the sun). This has not been finalized.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

No offense, Fireheart, but this makes no sense. Are you honestly expecting a single PC to be able to use their Powers to affect the entire playable volume of the game (ie. the entire city)?

Nah, just summon enough Steamy Mist to confuse the 'Ghouls' into coming out to play.

But, then, over on the next block, 'The Weather Girl' is making it 'sunny and warm' because her team wants to fight 'Penguins'. Or whatever the villains are.

I'm just thinking that Weather is too complex a mechanic to attach spawns to. I mean, First it assumes that the game will Have weather, in some significant way. Then, that there is some effect from the weather, other than graphical. Finally, there would have to be a mechanic for tracking what the weather is like, locally, to apply modifiers to spawns.

You're not just asking for a single simple system, here.

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Felix wrote:
Felix wrote:

Radiac wrote:
One thing the original post (tangentially) pokes at is the question of how long the 24-hour cycle will take to animate in game. I think 24 minute days were too fast in CoX. I would say maybe a 4-8 hour day would be better.
As for weather, it sounds interesting, but you'd have to add some sort of annual weather table where you go from winter to summer and back on a regular cycle I think. I mean, we don't want a hard freeze winter day to come right after a really hot summer, etc. All of this sounds cool. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do and I have no idea what priority I would assign to it in terms of time frame to get it rolled out.

We thought about a 4 hour day, but what we figured out is that if you have to wait for day or night, then your average wait time would be 2 hours, and it would matter what time zone you were in. We are seriously considering 1 hour = 1 day, which would mean you would know, by looking at a clock, what time of day it is in game. For example, X:00 could be noon, and X:30 would be midnight. (The hour hand points to the elevation of the sun). This has not been finalized.
Felix

Sounds like a good idea would be to go 2 hour days! One hour of day and one hour of night!

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Nah, just summon enough Steamy Mist to confuse the 'Ghouls' into coming out to play.
But, then, over on the next block, 'The Weather Girl' is making it 'sunny and warm' because her team wants to fight 'Penguins'. Or whatever the villains are.

That's just weird. At that point you're basically granting a single Powerset the ability to "summon" Foe NPCs almost at will. Not recommended, game mechanically speaking.

Fireheart wrote:

I'm just thinking that Weather is too complex a mechanic to attach spawns to.

What I'm actually talking about is the disposition and behaviors of spawns changing when the Weather changes ... kind of like you'd expect if these were actually people (or robots, or whatever). I'm looking at a behavioral model of when (and why) NPC Factions get out and about all over town, so that you don't have a nigh constant eternal "sameness" to the NPC population of the city.

Think of it as being like the tide coming in and going out. Sometimes the water is high on the beach, and sometimes it's low and far from shore, meaning that there's a variation. If the height of the water moves, but the NPCs *DON'T* move relative to what the water is doing, all kinds of wacky things start happening, simply because the NPCs aren't reacting to changes in the environment. Either there's no low/high tide at all (because that takes work to do), yielding an eternal sameness at all times ... or ... there is a low/high tide but there can't be anyone/anything within the region of variability (because, again, extra work for the Devs to account for).

Remember how whenever there was a Rikti Invasion or a Zombie Apocalypse or a similar Event how all of the Civilian NPCs would suddenly run away screaming off the streets and pile into the doors of buildings and within a minute of the even starting the only people around were PCs? Now imagine that DOESN'T happen when it starts to rain (Rikti Bombs!) ... and all those people just keep walking around (without umbrellas) like nothing has changed. Kind of immersion breaking if you ask me.

Fireheart wrote:

I mean, First it assumes that the game will Have weather, in some significant way.

Let's just say that if City of Titans doesn't have any weather at all, it'll be representing Southern California (particularly these last few years) rather than Massachusetts. Why? Because (say it with me) ... "It never rains!"

I mean ... it's not as if this isn't a problem that people have no interest in solving ...

https://www.google.com/search?q=ue4+weather&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Suffice it to say, the resources and tools necessary to create Weather in UE4 are going to be available. Indeed, it's almost an insult to the engine to assume it CAN'T do Weather ...

Fireheart wrote:

Then, that there is some effect from the weather, other than graphical.

As I've already stipulated, Weather would affect graphics and sound (obviously) and I'm proposing that it also modify the BEHAVIORS of NPCs in the city ... even if that behavioral change is something as simple as "get out of the open and get under cover" while waiting for rain showers to stop. The way to effect that behavioral change is through the NPC Spawn Maps, which control where the NPCs show up and what they "do" once they're spawned (remain stationary doing emotes? move around? patrol? etc.?).

Likewise, I've stipulated that Weather would have NO EFFECT on the game mechanics of how Powers function. Weather would neither buff, nor debuff, the game mechanical parameters of how Powers "work" per se. Weather *could* cut down on visibility (Foggy for example) and be noisy (Rain for example) adding extra "clutter" to the environment that wouldn't be there under Clear conditions, but they wouldn't be debuffing the effects of Powers or how they function. In other words, the Perception stat would be unaffected, game mechanically (see: no debuffing).

Fireheart wrote:

Finally, there would have to be a mechanic for tracking what the weather is like, locally, to apply modifiers to spawns.

Actually, yes and no. Tracking what the Weather is like at any given time could be a single integer variable storing the current state of the Weather, with each value corresponding to a specific type of Weather condition.
0 = Clear
1 = Partly Cloudy
2 = Overcast
3 = Foggy
... etc.

THAT is pretty trivial to program. That value for the current Weather state then gets used to look up the Spawn Map(s) for each NPC Faction to determine what is available to spawn in the local area, and once the NPC(s) have been spawned, what they'll be doing.

Fireheart wrote:

You're not just asking for a single simple system, here.

I know ... but I'm trying to make it as simple as I can. The thing is, ANY system that tries to handle variables, including variations in behaviors and dispositions, starts becoming complex in a hurry if your intent is to "subsidize" immersion into the game ... which is what I'm really after.


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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Felix wrote:
Radiac wrote:
One thing the original post (tangentially) pokes at is the question of how long the 24-hour cycle will take to animate in game. I think 24 minute days were too fast in CoX. I would say maybe a 4-8 hour day would be better.
As for weather, it sounds interesting, but you'd have to add some sort of annual weather table where you go from winter to summer and back on a regular cycle I think. I mean, we don't want a hard freeze winter day to come right after a really hot summer, etc. All of this sounds cool. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do and I have no idea what priority I would assign to it in terms of time frame to get it rolled out.

We thought about a 4 hour day, but what we figured out is that if you have to wait for day or night, then your average wait time would be 2 hours, and it would matter what time zone you were in. We are seriously considering 1 hour = 1 day, which would mean you would know, by looking at a clock, what time of day it is in game. For example, X:00 could be noon, and X:30 would be midnight. (The hour hand points to the elevation of the sun). This has not been finalized.
Felix

Sounds like a good idea would be to go 2 hour days! One hour of day and one hour of night!

And for those with analog clocks and/or watches, the minute hand points to where the hour hand would be in Titan City.

Well, except for players from fractional time zones.

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Felix wrote:
Felix wrote:

Radiac wrote:
One thing the original post (tangentially) pokes at is the question of how long the 24-hour cycle will take to animate in game. I think 24 minute days were too fast in CoX. I would say maybe a 4-8 hour day would be better.
As for weather, it sounds interesting, but you'd have to add some sort of annual weather table where you go from winter to summer and back on a regular cycle I think. I mean, we don't want a hard freeze winter day to come right after a really hot summer, etc. All of this sounds cool. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do and I have no idea what priority I would assign to it in terms of time frame to get it rolled out.

We thought about a 4 hour day, but what we figured out is that if you have to wait for day or night, then your average wait time would be 2 hours, and it would matter what time zone you were in. We are seriously considering 1 hour = 1 day, which would mean you would know, by looking at a clock, what time of day it is in game. For example, X:00 could be noon, and X:30 would be midnight. (The hour hand points to the elevation of the sun). This has not been finalized.
Felix

I don't follow your math on that example. I mean, assuming a 4-hour day (meaning 4 hours = 24 "game hours") with "dawn" at, say, 12noon in real world time then the next dawn would come at 4pm. Assuming 2 hours of daylight and 2 hours of night in every 4-hour cycle, this means that the LONGEST anyone would ever have to wait for daylight would be the full 2 hours of night that you have. The AVERAGE wait time would presumably be closer to one hour, by my thinking.

In any event a 1 hour day is intriguing though.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Felix wrote:
Radiac wrote:
One thing the original post (tangentially) pokes at is the question of how long the 24-hour cycle will take to animate in game. I think 24 minute days were too fast in CoX. I would say maybe a 4-8 hour day would be better.
As for weather, it sounds interesting, but you'd have to add some sort of annual weather table where you go from winter to summer and back on a regular cycle I think. I mean, we don't want a hard freeze winter day to come right after a really hot summer, etc. All of this sounds cool. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do and I have no idea what priority I would assign to it in terms of time frame to get it rolled out.

We thought about a 4 hour day, but what we figured out is that if you have to wait for day or night, then your average wait time would be 2 hours, and it would matter what time zone you were in. We are seriously considering 1 hour = 1 day, which would mean you would know, by looking at a clock, what time of day it is in game. For example, X:00 could be noon, and X:30 would be midnight. (The hour hand points to the elevation of the sun). This has not been finalized.
Felix

I don't follow your math on that example. I mean, assuming a 4-hour day (meaning 4 hours = 24 "game hours") with "dawn" at, say, 12noon in real world time then the next dawn would come at 4pm. Assuming 2 hours of daylight and 2 hours of night in every 4-hour cycle, this means that the LONGEST anyone would ever have to wait for daylight would be the full 2 hours of night that you have. The AVERAGE wait time would presumably be closer to one hour, by my thinking.
In any event a 1 hour day is intriguing though.

Yeah, brain fart on my part, I meant to say an average wait of 2 hours to the beginning of the time period. Not at all sure why I thought that was relevant. But even an hour may be too long for the more casual players.

Just my 2 IGC.

Felix

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Felix wrote:
Felix wrote:

Yeah, brain fart on my part, I meant to say an average wait of 2 hours to the beginning of the time period. Not at all sure why I thought that was relevant. But even an hour may be too long for the more casual players.

Unfortunately, there's kind of a limit to how far you can go chasing after ever more casual Players.

As I mentioned in the beginning, City of Heroes worked on a 1:60 time dilation. 1 second of real time equaled 1 minute of "world rotation" in Paragon City. Thus, 12 "hours" of daylight passed in 12 minutes of real time ... and 12 "hours" of night passed in 12 minutes of real time. It was why you could stand in one spot and watch the shadows on the ground VISIBLY MOVE as the "day" progressed. It was why you could look up into the game sky and see the Sun or the Moon VISIBLY MOVE across the sky.

The net result was that the Spawn Maps for all the Zones in the game "switched" between Day and Night every 12 minutes. This yielded a rate of turnover of 5 changes per hour of real-time. Also, since there were only 2 types of Spawn Map, if you needed the "other" time of day's map, you only had to wait 12 minutes at the most for it to arrive. This was a consideration for the Numina Task Force where one of the NPC groups you needed to rack up a kill count on was hard to find (in quantity) during the Day but were relatively easy to find at Night. I have personal experience of being on a Numina Task Force where everyone on the Team got assigned a Zone to clear so we could bulldozer through the street sweeping assignments as quickly as possible ... and then got hung up on "it's daytime, we'll have to wait until nightfall in order to street sweep these mobs" on a couple of runs. And that's not even including having a Rikti Invasion or a Zombie Apocalypse happen during the Numina Task Force "clear mobs in every Zone" stages ... which of course emptied the streets, effectively halting progress until the Event was over and the "regular" mobs respawned again so we could get back to clearing them.

City of Heroes had a legitimate reason for running their "daylight wasting" clock as fast as they did. They had 2 Spawn Maps (Night and Day) and they needed to rotate between them quickly so as to at least pretend that the game wasn't completely static in terms of mob spawns.

I'm thinking that City of Titans can do better than that. We can have more than 2 Spawn Maps for different conditions. The thing is, once you get beyond 2 Spawn Maps, you can't just be doing Night and Day anymore ... you have to have more variety than that. And if you've got more than 2 Spawn Maps, why have them explicitly tied to Night and Day anyway, except for specialized NPC Factions (such as Undead, etc. that need to be spooky at Night specifically). So if you're doing more than 2 Spawn Maps, what else is there to tie them to besides the Night/Day cycle that provides enough variety to justify having more than 2 Spawn Maps?

At this point, my answer to this question ought to be obvious ... ^_~

But the other thing is that if Night/Day really has very little bearing on what NPC Factions spawn out on the streets, then there's no reason that the Night/Day cycle can't be lengthened in real/time terms so as to take longer than 24 minutes to complete an entire Night/Day cycle. How much longer can be a matter of debate, but bare minimum I'd want it to be something that winds up being a fraction of 24 hours that doesn't line up perfectly every single day at the same time. That's why I cite the example of ALfheim Online out of the Sword Art Online franchise, which ran on a 16 hour day. It meant that if you logged in at the exact same time daily (real-time), you'd see Night and Day conditions on alternating days of the week. And if Night and Day are no longer a major determinant for what NPCs are spawning at any given moment, you have the "luxury" of having a system that runs on a 16 hour day cycle so as to offer a wider variety of "looks" to the game than just the Same Old, Same Old every single day ... day after day after day after day.

We have the technology. Why are we afraid of using it?


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Not a fan of long day/night

Not a fan of long day/night cycles.... I would prefer a complete cycle fits in an average game session.

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Define "average game session"

Define "average game session" please. Use numbers and units.


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There have been many studies

I left it deliberately vague as to not start an argument on the definition of 'average play session. The devs would use data mining to determine what the games 'average session' would be and could adjust the day/night cycle accordingly.

But...

There have been many studies on average play sessions....just with a quick search I found this one on computer addiction...

http://internetaddictiondisorder.org/computer-game-addiction-mmorpgs/

In this you see average time per week is 25 hours....between 3-4 hours a day. While I don't agree with the idea that 3-4 hours warrents an addiction label this seems to be a fair estimate of an average game session (a bit higher maybe but that's ok).

So I would personally think no longer than 2 hours per either day or night. 1 is better IMO. I don't want to worry that I might spend an entire game session in one cycle or the other.

There is more to consider than just average play session though. There is mission designs, side quests, mob spawns, instances, mini games.... ect. If the time of day has an impact on if you are able to participate in any of these. In short...if time of day (or your weather system) last so long that I either waste time waiting or seek other goals then I would be disappointed. The quick days and nights in CoH did not overly affect the completion or participation in an activity and with the majority of missions being inside instanced missions the day/night cycle was largely unimportant.

If CoT lends more weight to the day/night cycle (as I think your intention was Redlynne), then I don't want it to make me enjoy my game session less because I cannot finish a quest, find a contact/mob or participate in some activity.

It might seem obvious but sometimes people forget that you play the game to have fun and immersive elements like this should not affect gameplay (for gain or ill) UNLESS its a specific focus of the game. Just my opinion.

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On the subject of weather and

On the subject of weather and seasons, should we just go with "1 year = 1 year" for that?

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On the subject of spawn maps,

On the subject of spawn maps, I think it would be good to have some place to find each type of mob at all times. Maybe not the SAME place at all times, but I mean, no matter how nocturnal something is, even if it's the Bat People, they gotta BE someplace even during the day. Maybe that place is a system of caves or sewers, maybe it's considerably more dangerous than the back alleys and darkened forests they prowl at night, who knows. In the Numina example, it would have been better, in my opinion, if those of use who are level 50 could just go to the place where we KNEW the Bat People could be found at that time of day and defeat them. On the other hand, if you''re they're level or lower, that might be really hard to do / suicidal to even attempt based on how hazardous that area is, etc.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Maybe not the SAME place at all times, but I mean, no matter how nocturnal something is, even if it's the Bat People, they gotta BE someplace even during the day.

The Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas is home to a bat colony of up to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats that migrates to the city each summer.

I bring this up as a reference to Radiac's point, that it ought to be perfectly fine for a NPC Faction to be "roaming the skies at night" on various patrol patterns, but then "sleep" during the day in a location that isn't frequented all that often by humans (ie. the UNDERSIDE of a bridge over water).

Trivia note: the bat colony under the bridge consumes 10,000-20,000 lbs of insects PER NIGHT in the local area, including pests that would otherwise devour local crops. That's 5-10 TONS of insect pests per night eradicated per night from the local area during the summer months while the bat colony is in residence, which is something I understand the locals actually appreciate (now that they know). Who needs insecticide when you've got a hungry bat colony hunting down the pests for you, eh?

/em ends digression


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Define "average game session" please. Use numbers and units.

I'd say 2-4 hours.

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2-4 hours sounds like a

2-4 hours sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption for an average gaming session. What say we call it 3 hours just to split the difference?

Now assume that a complete Night/Day cycle takes 90 minutes of real time, such that a 3 hour playing session spans across two complete "days" of Night and Day. That would then mean that daylight would last for 45 minutes and night would last for 45 minutes, lending a certain amount of continuity to what the city is like (and what it is inhabited by) at any given time. And again, assume that Night/Day is only determinative for NPC Faction spawning of a specialized subset of NPC Factions (ie. a superminority), as opposed to the de-facto standard for all NPC Factions. Instead, assume that some other factor is determining which Spawn Maps are in place at any given time besides Night and Day for the supermajority of NPC Factions in the game.


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Maybe its just me but I don't

Maybe its just me but I don't see an overwhelming need for the 'supermajority' of mobs to have a lot of things that affect their spawning. One maybe two but no more than that....and they should not happen every 10 minutes. I don't want to have a chart in front of me so I can go find where a mob will spawn when one of these effect arise. That's not to say that a few mobs cant be directly tied to certain situations and only show when those conditions are met....just so long as they don't become a requirement for anything (including badges).

Really, I think much of the living city feeling that I think you are going for could be done with NPC citizens. Using your weather idea (as only one of many possible examples including events and such), if its raining you shouldn't see people at the park playing catch, if its snowing some of the hills can have toboggans. Have the random speech popups reflect the weather.

Beyond that I don't know if its needed. Or rather it would not positively affect my personal game experience. Just my opinion.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

On the subject of weather and seasons, should we just go with "1 year = 1 year" for that?

That is the way I am leaning.

Just my 2 IGC.

Felix

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Note to self: getting

Note to self: getting opinions from people is a possible IGC sink.... :)

As far as badges for defeating numbers of specified mobs are concerned, I'd be fine with it if there were badges for defeating the "only spawn at night/daytime/rain/whatever" type mobs. Badges are meant to be something you have to go out and get, and maybe have to plan for, work around your schedule, etc. I remember getting up early in the morning a few Saturdays just to get the Rocketman badge on my one toon by doing rescues in Warburg when nobody else was on. And I don't even consider myself a "Badge Hunter" by any stretch. I wasn't tracking it, I wasn't registered on any website for it, etc. That particular toon needed Rocketman because he was my "space guy" toon.

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Quote:
Quote:

As far as badges for defeating numbers of specified mobs are concerned, I'd be fine with it if there were badges for defeating the "only spawn at night/daytime/rain/whatever" type mobs. Badges are meant to be something you have to go out and get.

The reason I said I didn't want them to be a badge mob is because I would hate to see groups of people hanging around known spawn points waiting for it to rain just so the gutter beasts rise. That isn't in the spirit of the 'earning' the badge to me.

Keep in mind this is only for foes that ONLY spawn during those conditions...not ones that can be found elsewhere but are more common during these conditions.

Your example does not exactly relate as that badge is possible anytime its just easier when you did it. Sally or contaminate mobs fit and those were camped at times...

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When you say "badge mob" my

When you say "badge mob" my first thought is Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls. where the objective is to defeat 500 members of the NPC Faction.

City of Heroes had a LOT of Defeat Badges.
City of Villains had a ... shorter list of Defeat Badges.

If you're talking about NAMED Enemies (see Defeat Badges lists) ... that's different. I wouldn't expect them to be spawning on a Night/Day trigger to begin with. To be fair, I'd fully expect the "Named Enemies" to have a completely different trigger for spawning ... AND ... that the trigger would have essentially nothing to do with changing over Spawn Maps based on Night/Day or Weather or anything else (ie. the "normal" state of affairs). Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is ... completion of Task Forces ... being the trigger for this sort of thing.

Also consider that it's perfectly "fair" to have Badges for NPC Groups that aren't spawning all the time. Zone Event stuff can spawn NPCs to defeat too, and those Zone Events don't have to have anything to do with either Weather or Night/Day either. Case in point ... the Ectoplasmic Badge ... which required defeating Foe NPCs spawned in the wake of the passage of a Ghost Ship that was a Zone Event in two different Zones.

In other words, there's plenty of ways to finesse these things.

Take a look at the Banisher Badge for defeating 200 Banished Pantheon Bosses and notice something about where they spawned. There was a location for them in Talos Island, but they were only active at night ... meaning that they were only present Part Time. In the Echo of Dark Astoria, however, they had a more permanent presence, so they could be found Day or Night ... but if you wanted to find them in the highest density there was a spot in the graveyard in the Southeast corner of Dark Astoria that was the best bet for finding them to hunt and sweep. The thing is, they were low density in the daytime and high density there at night, so even then their presence/footprint varied based on conditions (ie. Night/Day in this case).

My point being that the differences between Spawn Maps used in varying conditions don't have to be a Boolean "all or nothing" kind of setup. You could do high density versus low density in different conditions, instead of merely present versus not present when conditions change. Think in terms of a continuum of possibilities, rather than just an On/Off switch.

Radiac wrote:

Note to self: getting opinions from people is a possible IGC sink.... :)

/em snerk ^_~


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Fireheart wrote:
Then there's the question of PC effects and whether it would become mandatory to have a Storm Summoner on the team, in order to get the right spawns.
No offense, Fireheart, but this makes no sense. Are you honestly expecting a single PC to be able to use their Powers to affect the entire playable volume of the game (ie. the entire city)?

Redlynne wrote:

... I'm the villain with the Fog Machine...

And my Storm Summoner is the Hero with the Fog Machine powers. Just responding to the idea, there.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Heh. And I was just riffing

Heh. And I was just riffing/filking this mildly famous meme ...

... to achieve a catchy thread title.


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Excellent! Be Well! Fireheart

Excellent!

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Quote:
Quote:

When you say "badge mob" my first thought is Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls. where the objective is to defeat 500 members of the NPC Faction..

Obviously this is what I am talking about.

Quote:

Also consider that it's perfectly "fair" to have Badges for NPC Groups that aren't spawning all the time. Zone Event stuff can spawn NPCs to defeat too, and those Zone Events don't have to have anything to do with either Weather or Night/Day either. Case in point ... the Ectoplasmic Badge ... which required defeating Foe NPCs spawned in the wake of the passage of a Ghost Ship that was a Zone Event in two different Zones..

Never said it wasn't 'fair'....said I don't like it and said why I don't like it. The idea of a bunch of players sitting around waiting for a mob to spawn is a bad design to me. It was not common in CoH but there was a few instances of this.

Quote:

My point being that the differences between Spawn Maps used in varying conditions don't have to be a Boolean "all or nothing" kind of setup. You could do high density versus low density in different conditions, instead of merely present versus not present when conditions change. Think in terms of a continuum of possibilities, rather than just an On/Off switch..

Let me say this again

My issue is for foes that ONLY spawn during those conditions...not ones that can be found elsewhere but are more common during these conditions.

Overall I don't think that every foe....or even the majority of foes need to have things that affect their spawn rates.
Using CoH as a metric, the only activities that variable spawns would affect is hunt missions or street sweeping...and I don't think they would do so positively.

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As a non-badge hunter my

As a non-badge hunter my opinion might be moot anyway, but I still like the idea of having badges for the rarer "only spawn at night" type baddies, even if that DOES cause people to band together in groups and camp those spawns at the appropriate time and place. I mean, the purpose of designing an Easter Egg hunt is not to make the eggs EASIER to get, right? If the badge hunters have to employ some thinking, strategy, good timing, teamwork, or have to wake up at a weird time of day where you live to get a certain badge, that's fine, that's part of the badge hunting hobby, right? You want to avoid treating different toons unfairly in terms of what they have to do to get the badges (Isolator being an example, easy enough to get for Heroes,. a lot more grindy for Villains, and you could have missed your chance as a hero early on) but that doesn't mean you have to make all the badges easier to get overall.

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I am not saying make it easy.

I am not saying make it easy....but sitting at a known spawn point waiting for a specific condition to be met so that you can hopefully beat out the others who are waiting at that spawn point just so you can get one step closer to getting the badge is just not my idea of badge hunting. You don't exactly band together, hardly have to think, don't employ any true strategy or teamwork and the good timing is more who shoots first.

I am not a fan of hunt badges for any rare foe to begin with because obtaining the badge stops being fun and becomes a chore to actively pursue so If you start adding more conditions and make the foe even more rare then it only adds to the frustration.

You want to make a hunt badge require thinking, teamwork ect then make the actual hunt for it require those things or at the very least the defeat of the foe require it.

The foe could be in a dangerous area or be surrounded by allies that don't count to the badge.

The badge itself could have triggered events that happen at various stages...ambushes that happen periodically when defeating large groups in a row. Missions that pop up after so many defeats, milestones in the badge where after so many foes you need to face a stronger foe (Boss, elite or AV whichever) before you can proceed to the next milestone.

Use the badge progress to simulate that group getting to know you as a threat....like an increased perception range vs you...increase damage bonuses/defences/ect vs you...traps set for you (think the warwolf morph council did as a tougher foe in disguise...tripwire mines from the traps powerset).

With these 'conditions' a player is free to actively pursue the badge without periods of waiting around....and they still have an increased difficulty.

Back to the OPs suggestion. I don't see a big reason to put a lot of conditions on where and when foes will spawn. It just does not add enough to the game IMO especially considering that the same living breathing city feeling can be done by just using the NPC's alone (as Redlynne included in the suggestion).

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I still like the idea of having badges for the rarer "only spawn at night" type baddies, even if that DOES cause people to band together in groups and camp those spawns at the appropriate time and place.

I still remember the time I decided to just "go for it" and hunt down enough Banished Pantheon Masks (200) to get the Badge for defeating them. Can you say GRIND? In the end, I settled for grinding SE Moth Cemetery in Dark Astoria during the day and SE Talos Island just so I could have a variety of spawn groupings to grind through to break up the monotony. It didn't help that the Masks were effectively a "rare" spawn on top of everything else.

It was almost the same deal trying to get the Illusionist Badge where you had to defeat SUMMONS cast by a Master Illusionist(!), and to make it even more exciting, you had to do so before they despawned(!) since they stuck around on a timer ... and part of the time they were present they would Phase so you couldn't hit them but they could still hit you! Needless to say, the hardest part was actually FINDING Master Illusionists to "farm" for their Summons so as to achieve progress towards completing the Badge. That was even worse than the grind for the Banished Pantheon. Why? Because Master Illusionists were a VERY RARE spawn out on the streets of Peregrine Island, just about the only place they could spawn at all ... and Day or Night made absolutely no difference. At any given time, the entire zone of Peregrine Island would have 0-1 Master Illusionists somewhere on the entire map. How do I know this? I went to the trouble of grinding them out, so I have personal experience with the phenomenon.

Radiac wrote:

I mean, the purpose of designing an Easter Egg hunt is not to make the eggs EASIER to get, right?

It's okay if some of the Easter Eggs are "relatively easy" to get simply by doing the content as intended. The Mongoose was a good example of this in Mercy Island (originally) where simply doing the Missions your contacts handed you and employing a Clear All strategy in instance maps would easily push you up towards 50 Snakes defeated by the time you were done with the story arc concerning them.

Contrast that with the Zookeeper Badge which prior to Issue 5 required defeating 10,000 Rikti Monkeys! Needless to say, for a good long time, just about the only way to achieve that Badge involved farming the Cutlass Isles north of Portal Corp which were simply overrun by Rikti Monkeys. Needless to say, Single Target Specialists were in for a rather grueling grind to get THAT Badge!

Radiac wrote:

If the badge hunters have to employ some thinking, strategy, good timing, teamwork

Sooth! Heaven Forfend!
Are you completely *MAD*?!?

NONE of those elements belong in a game about superhe-

Oh.
I see what you did there.

/em glares balefully

Radiac wrote:

or have to wake up at a weird time of day where you live to get a certain badge, that's fine

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far as a REQUIREMENT to get a certain Badge. However, if that's what people decide to do simply because it's the most convenient option (out of many) for them ... that's fair game.

Radiac wrote:

You want to avoid treating different toons unfairly in terms of what they have to do to get the badges (Isolator being an example, easy enough to get for Heroes,. a lot more grindy for Villains, and you could have missed your chance as a hero early on) but that doesn't mean you have to make all the badges easier to get overall.

It's perfectly fine to set up a Defeat Badge in such a way that it can't be (or at least, shouldn't be) accomplished in a single sitting or in a short amount of time. The Ectoplasmic Badge required defeat of 50 Ghosts spawned by the Ghost Ship ... a feat that could not be accomplished in a single Event. It usually took 3-4 Ghost Ship Events spawning Ghosts to fight in order to rack up the required number of defeats to earn the Badge. That's FINE.

Intermittent availability of an NPC Faction is perfectly fine.

"Limited" availability of an NPC Faction in a "blink and you'll miss it" fashion however is NOT fine where access to that NPC Faction is limited in the way that the Contaminated were for the Isolator Badge. In that case, if you missed your chance (mainly because you didn't know about it) you'd have missed your chance forevermore. Putting an NPC Faction into a limited access area (a Tutorial counts for this), putting a Badge there, and then never allowing PCs to return to that area under any circumstances falls towards the "not cool, man" end of the scale when it comes to Badge Hunting.

So in that respect, I'm perfectly fine with letting some NPC Factions be "rarer" spawns than others, while other NPC Factions can be more "common" and ubiquitous. The thing is, in order to do those differences "right" you need to have more than one Spawn Map going on ... which then gets into "triggers" for what causes a change from one Spawn Map to another ... and if you've got more than two Spawn Maps, you're going to need something other than Night/Day to determine which Spawn Map is being used "right now" in the game.


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So in that respect, I'm perfectly fine with letting some NPC Factions be "rarer" spawns than others, while other NPC Factions can be more "common" and ubiquitous. The thing is, in order to do those differences "right" you need to have more than one Spawn Map going on ... which then gets into "triggers" for what causes a change from one Spawn Map to another ... and if you've got more than two Spawn Maps, you're going to need something other than Night/Day to determine which Spawn Map is being used "right now" in the game..

I think I see why we are having a bit of a disconnect.

How many mobs groups do you think there will be? Do you think each mob group will span the entirety of levels? Do you think foes will be 'levelless'?

For my assumptions and concerns I am using CoH as a kind of template. For example, The common foes in Atlas were hellions, skulls and clockwork with a few other groups here and there. So if we apply your idea of variable spawn maps....there is only so much variation in mobs active you can have before you need to add more foe groups. If you just want them to move spawn locations from one part of the map to another then just how many 'other locations' do you think a map will logically have? If its raining the hellions decide to spawn under awnings and in door wells while the clockwork hide cause the water will hurt them and the sewer beasts rise up cause the sewers flood as an example.

To me its over complicating the idea of spawn placement.

That's not to say that there cant be some variation when certain conditions are met, like the sewer beasts rising and fighting the already spawned hellions for example....but I prefer this to be limited to only a few zones and it not be all encompassing (meaning it does not change the dynamic of the entire zone like rikti invasions or the zombie horde).

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islandtrevor72 wrote:
islandtrevor72 wrote:

I am not saying make it easy....but sitting at a known spawn point waiting for a specific condition to be met so that you can hopefully beat out the others who are waiting at that spawn point just so you can get one step closer to getting the badge is just not my idea of badge hunting.

Of course not. What you're describing isn't Street Sweeping ... it's Camping Spawn.

Quote:

Camping
A controversial strategy in which a player stays in one place – preferably a fortified, high-traffic location – for an extended period of time and waits to ambush other players. It is most common in first-person shooter games. Spawn camping, or spawnkilling, is a related strategy in which players camp at a spawn point.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

You don't exactly band together, hardly have to think, don't employ any true strategy or teamwork and the good timing is more who shoots first.

In a MMORPG, and City of Heroes specifically, this tactic could only have been useful for dealing with Named Enemies (such as Lusca) and is only useful if the Named Enemy spawns on a timer and only appears in a single known location, as opposed to randomly appearing in a variety of locations (like Lusca did). This sort of thing may have been a regular staple of Everquest and World of Warcraft, but was not a regular thing for City of Heroes. Hardly anyone sat around camping a spawn point, simply because what could spawn from a specific spawn point was somewhat randomized (defeating the purpose of camping).

Instead, the much more common tactic was to Street Sweep, which involved mobile hunting instead of pup tent warfare against the NPCs on the streets. Street Sweeping even extended to "steamrolling" anything and everything in the target neighborhood so as to "reroll the dice" thrown on what spawned where when searching for a specific rare NPC.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

I am not a fan of hunt badges for any rare foe to begin with because obtaining the badge stops being fun and becomes a chore to actively pursue so If you start adding more conditions and make the foe even more rare then it only adds to the frustration.

Objecting to being "forced" into grinding for defeat Badges is a fair criticism ... except that in practice, the only defeat Badges that awarded you with a game mechanical advantage were things like the Atlas Medallion which required defeating War Wolves and Vampires (200 each).

Given how things turned out in City of Heroes, I think it's fair to say that there should NOT be any "stat boosting" Accolades (the way that City of Heroes defined them). That way, Badges remain purely voluntary and essentially amount to "bragging rights" at heart for having played the game a whole heck of a lot ... and something to customize your PC's moniker with, maybe.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

Use the badge progress to simulate that group getting to know you as a threat....like an increased perception range vs you...

Personally, I'd prefer to use such more in keeping with a sort of "reputation" system of sorts, where there's a record kept of how many members of an NPC Faction your PC has defeated since a member of that NPC Faction last defeated your PC. Essentially a sort of "hardcore" meter that keeps track of how long you've gone undefeated against an NPC Faction ... and the higher that "hardcore" meter goes, the more than NPC Faction will fear/hate your PC.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

Back to the OPs suggestion. I don't see a big reason to put a lot of conditions on where and when foes will spawn.

The same can be said about the animations for Powers. Why let the use of a Power animate in more than one way? And yet, people keep saying (pretty consistently) that having more options available is a good thing and will make the gaming experience richer. It's even become its own mantra/meme ... More Options Good.

So I've outlined a way to achieve more options with how, where and why NPC Factions spawn in the game in way that is inter(re)active with the game's environment, allowing for a spectrum of options instead merely 2. I'm saying ... More Options Good. Even if some of those options hardly ever get used, the fact that they're THERE has value, and increases the value of the entire game overall.

You're saying ... More Options Bad ... even if not all of the options HAVE TO be exercised to the fullest extent permissible. Indeed, I would even consider it to be counterproductive to exercise and make use of *ALL* of the possibilities I'm making available right from the very start.

However, I am arguing that by defining a broader "space" to work within NOW will pay off down the line as the game evolves and changes and grows because there will be options available.

It's kind of like how City of Heroes originally started with all of the colors "baked into" the visual FX of the Powers, but then it took a major development effort to "undo" that and allow for the customization of colors for Powers. Why would anyone ever want to do that? After all, not everyone is going to want to customize the colors of all of their Powers. And yet, it didn't stop a lot of people from appreciating what was ultimately a purely cosmetic, quality of life, update to the game. Indeed, once it happened, a lot of people were left wondering what took them so long to actually deliver on something as "obvious" as Powers Customization.

What I'm talking about here in this thread is essentially the same thing ... but for Spawn Maps. Design the customization options in from the start so you don't have to go back later and undertake major redevelopment effort later to switch to a different system that grants more options. Design the Spawn Map system with more capability than you're initially going to use because later on, down the line, somebody is going to find an application for using the additional functionality in a way that will make all of us just OOOH and AHHHH.

In other words, build a strong foundation for the game you want City of Titans to BECOME ... as opposed to just merely working towards what City of Titans will launch with (only).

In other words ... the time to start planning ahead is NOW ... because the Development team always lives in the "future" of the game, rather than in the "now" of the game ... as peculiar as that might sound.

Which makes me wonder if I owe DeathSheepFromHell a 2 IGC payoff for inadvertently possibly making one of his arguments for him by accident.


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islandtrevor72 wrote:
islandtrevor72 wrote:

How many mobs groups do you think there will be?

In total, City of Heroes had 151 NPC Factions.

If memory serves, the typical population of NPC Factions within any given Zone was usually between 3-12. Atlas Park had 6. The Hollows had 11. King's Row had 5. Steel Canyon had 9. Perez Park had 7. Skyway City had 3. The Sewer Network had 3, as did the Abandoned Sewer Network. The Rikti War Zone had 10. Founders' Falls had 7. And so on and so forth ...

My baseline assumption is that City of Titans will launch with perhaps as many as 50 NPC Factions (total) ... and that any given Neighborhood within the city will have anywhere from 3-12 of those NPC Factions represented.

In other words ... One Size Does NOT Fit All.

Mind you, in this context, I'm equating City of Titans to all of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles and Praetoria (ie. "the city") and equating individual Neighborhoods within the city to the individual Zones within City of Heroes. The difference of course being that we aren't going to be having War Walls between Neighborhoods in City of Titans, so I'm anticipating a much more ... contiguous ... experience in City of Titans than was possible in City of Heroes. In that respect, I'm expecting City of Titans to be laid out more like World of Warcraft, with a contiguous set of regions that can be moved among freely, than the compartmentalized/zoning structure of City of Heroes.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

Do you think each mob group will span the entirety of levels? Do you think foes will be 'levelless'?

Some could, but I wouldn't necessarily want to assume it for all of them. The Circle of Thorns spanned the Level range from 5-54. The 5th Column spanned a Level range of 1-54. So there's certainly a precedent for having a particular NPC Faction remain a constant presence throughout a PC's entire "career" of playing the game.

At the same time, such a broad scope is not NECESSARY, and thus some NPC Factions could potentially be limited in any of a variety of different ways.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

For my assumptions and concerns I am using CoH as a kind of template.

For what it's worth, so am I, with some creative interpretation for things that can't be exactly the same simply because computer technology and software has moved on since 2004.

islandtrevor72 wrote:

To me its over complicating the idea of spawn placement.

Probably because the sort of thing I'm talking about probably can't be conveyed with a high degree of completeness in a purely text based format. It's one of those things where if I could draw a map and show you, it would make a heck of a lot more sense. This is a case where illustration would clarify a lot of things.


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Of course not. What you're describing isn't Street Sweeping ... it's Camping Spawn..

Yup...I said so too ... so Im not sure why you felt the need to put a description of it.

Quote:

In a MMORPG, and City of Heroes specifically, this tactic could only have been useful for dealing with Named Enemies . (SNIP)
Instead, the much more common tactic was to Street Sweep, which involved mobile hunting instead of pup tent warfare against the NPCs on the streets

I specifically said this was not common in CoH because the foes did not have conditions to the spawns...but some did....and they were camped. I did not want to see more instances of this type of camping.

Quote:

Objecting to being "forced" into grinding for defeat Badges is a fair criticism ... except that in practice, the only defeat Badges that awarded you with a game mechanical advantage were things like the Atlas Medallion which required defeating War Wolves and Vampires (200 each)..

Did not say it was forced...said it became a chore.....as in less fun. I don't care if you get stat boosts or not but if I set a goal for myself in the game I would like to actively pursue that goal....not wait for something to spawn.

Quote:

Personally, I'd prefer to use such more in keeping with a sort of "reputation" system of sorts, where there's a record kept of how many members of an NPC Faction your PC has defeated since a member of that NPC Faction last defeated your PC. Essentially a sort of "hardcore" meter that keeps track of how long you've gone undefeated against an NPC Faction ... and the higher that "hardcore" meter goes, the more than NPC Faction will fear/hate your PC..

Why not both? The point I was making is there are better ways to make hunt badges more challenging than just upping how many you have to defeat or making them hard to find.

Quote:

The same can be said about the animations for Powers. Why let the use of a Power animate in more than one way? And yet, people keep saying (pretty consistently) that having more options available is a good thing and will make the gaming experience richer. It's even become its own mantra/meme ... More Options Good..

These don't even compare. More animation options is about customizing your personal game experience. Variable spawn maps are game design options for the devs to change our game experience for us. Having player options in regards to spawn maps would be if my actions in the game determined the spawn map....not an RNG, weather table or whatnot. But giving players the ability to affect spawn maps is an ENORMOUS undertaking to do right....so much so that I doubt it can be done well in an MMO setting as things stand.

One is to give the player more options...the other is to give the devs more options.

Quote:

You're saying ... More Options Bad ... even if not all of the options HAVE TO be exercised to the fullest extent permissible.

I don't know what colored glasses you view my posts in but I have not said anything of the sort. In fact I have not even said that your suggestion should not be explored. I question the scope of it and of how much value it will add to the game vs how much effort it would take to make it a reality.

As I said before I don't disagree with it I just don't think it should be all encompassing or even a major factor in spawns.

Quote:

However, I am arguing that by defining a broader "space" to work within NOW will pay off down the line as the game evolves and changes and grows because there will be options available..

And I don't disagree with that in theory. But is it worth the time and effort now for some hypothetical gain in the future.

The system you have described does not add significantly to me. I do not foresee a new technology that make variable spawn maps a must have design choice. I don't see how this system of variable spawn maps would be overtly difficult to include at a later date.

Without any hint of possible future gain the cost now does not seem worthwhile.

Quote:

Probably because the sort of thing I'm talking about probably can't be conveyed with a high degree of completeness in a purely text based format. It's one of those things where if I could draw a map and show you, it would make a heck of a lot more sense. This is a case where illustration would clarify a lot of things..

You explained your idea clear enough in the original post and the followup.

I expressed my concerns with this type of system from a player stand point ....or to be clear...how it would affect my personal game experience. Without there being some new information....as things stand now....I don't see this system as needed right now or the foreseeable future.

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Multi-spawn maps with tables

Multi-spawn maps with tables for events such as weather do provide certain intersting opportunities. Designing and testing the system as in depth as the op intones however is not a simple matter by any means. Certainly not for this stage of development, at best I could say if it were implemented in simple ways we would look outward towards beta.

And by simple i mean that weather would probably affect not adversary pawn spawning but environmental changes and non-adversarial pawn spawns (civilians and animals). Things like people use umbrrellas, civvies aren't hanging out in the parkmor out door patios.

Now if we were to delve deeper I don't think comp has written out specific weather bases factions, nor speciifc attached stories which could acommodate long term play. That is if we do implemt weather and it does morror the seasonal changes near real time of the N.A. East coast then the game aould have heavier seasons of rain, thunder storms, and winters. And during tjise times thee may be certain spawns but not a specif c change in all spawns as it could possibly lead to a hinderence of time gating a fairly decent amount of content.

What could be possible, or I should say what. I would like to see, is certain factions havng codtumes appropriate for the westher. That proto-militant group goes from urban fatigues to say winter fatigues. And then tying winter themed badges to unlock those costume pieces.

And seasonally speakjng, there could bery well be limited spawns and content hat appears at other time of year. Thst is after all what seasonal and holiday events provide.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Multi-spawn maps with tables for events such as weather do provide certain intersting opportunities. Designing and testing the system as in depth as the op intones however is not a simple matter by any means. Certainly not for this stage of development, at best I could say if it were implemented in simple ways we would look outward towards beta.

The best that could be hoped for at this stage would be a simplistic implementation that could be further refined and built on over time (after launch) so as to "fill in" the available gaps in capability later on. Yeah, sure, you might not need or make use of EVERY socket in the socket wrench set, and certainly not for every job you do, but you're still going to want to have a "complete set" available Just In Case.

Again, my effort is carve out a very large design space within which to work, even if only 10-20% of that design space is actually made use of at first. I'd rather plan for Growth as the game ages and evolves, and this would be one way to accomplish that.

Tannim222 wrote:

What could be possible, or I should say what I would like to see, is certain factions having costumes appropriate for the weather. That proto-militant group goes from urban fatigues to say winter fatigues. And then tying winter themed badges to unlock those costume pieces.

Is that ... whimpering ... I hear, coming from the Art Assets Department?

^_~


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While this is not, admittedly

While this is not, admittedly, related to the OP, I just want to state for the record that I had no problem with the 10,000 monkey badge. I mean, yes, that's A LOT of monkeys, but then on the other hand there was a whole island that just spawned monkeys all the time, and in large group sizes, and at that time you still had the fire tank "herd and burn" strategy in efect. I think complaining about that is tantamount to saying "Give me that badge already, and stop making me have to WORK for things I want, JEEZ!" To which I say "That's the Badge Hunting hobby for you. They don't just hand out the badges to everyone for showing up the first day, going through the motions in a half-@$$ed effort and and phoning it in." If the badges were easy to get, Badge Hunting wouldn't even be a hobby.

As for the Accolades, I personally liked them and would point out that those badges were the only ones that I, a non-badge hunter, ever cared about. As such, I was a willing accomplice to any Badge Hunter trying to get those badges if they wanted to team up. I mean, a team of 8 people, 7 of whom just want the Vanguard Medallion power and the eighth wants the Zookeeper badge just for badge hunting can all get the badges they want faster as a group than they can individually. If they don't team up, they're competing against each other for monkey kills, if they do team up, they each get credit for every kill, which is a force multiplier.

Badge Hunters want all the badges on a single toon, min/maxers want every toon to have the badges that give the buffs and long-recharge temp powers. I think there's room for a symbiotic relationship there. I like that. I hope CoT has more of that actually.

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Agreed, Radiac. Badge

Agreed, Radiac. Badge Hunting is a related but dissimilar topic.

And I agree that pretty much the "value" of having a particular Badge is quite dependent upon the amount of effort/investment it takes to achieve that Badge. If you have to do "nothing special" or go out of your way to get it, then the "value" associated with it essentially just as meaningless. There is therefore something of a "sweet spot" for these things to be attuned to which is best exemplified by the age old maxim for addictive behavior in videogames ...

Bitter.
Bitter.
Sweet.

Anyway, I'd recommend that any discussion on the "merits" and structuring of Badge Hunting happen in a different thread, simply because it IS a different topic ... even if some of the logistics involved with Badge Hunting are related to the disposition of NPC Factions as controlled by Spawn Maps.


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I like the idea of a 90

I like the idea of a 90 minute Day/Night cycle (45 mins. each). Most of my gaming sessions run about 3 hours, so a 90 minute cycle would fit my playstyle perfectly.

I also like the idea of different NPC groups during the day and night (both civilians and enemy groups). It would add a great deal of verisimilitude without interrupting gameplay for the vast majority of players. To avoid spawn camping simply insure there are multiple locations where day/night specific enemy groups can be found. It also helps prevent camping if those groups are more dynamic (patrolling, surging gang battles, etc.) and move about while they are present. I recognize that none of this is trivial to program. However, if possible within the constraints of time and resources, I would very much like to see this happen. It would also be nice to have these options available as part of the UGC tools.

Having different enemy groups related to weather patterns, on the other hand, is not something I personally would favor. At least, not at launch. If this paradigm is taken up by the development, then perhaps have only one or two groups (with no related badges) as a kind of "proof of concept". If it proves workable and if players respond with enthusiasm, then the mechanics will be in place to expand this out into dozens of groups with later expansions.

The idea of NPCs opening umbrellas and dawning panchos in response to weather is an interesting idea. It would certainly add a new level of dynamism to the game that as far as I know no one has ever tried to do. However, this also involves having multiple sets of identical character models in different costume as well as multiple variations in animations (hunched over against the wind, struggling to hold carry items under the umbrella, etc.) which will have a huge impact on the art asset team. Rather than having a handful of NPCs that change clothes when the weather changes, I would rather see a greater variety of NPCs out and about in the city.

And, in line with all of this, I'm still in favor of children NPCs playing in the parks (and immune to any kind of player actions). If, and it's a big if, NPCs are programmed to respond to weather than perhaps children playing in the parks should run inside when the rain starts and slowly return after it ends.

Responding to the Day/Night cycle with different types of NPCs for each is far from trivial, but very desirable. Expanding that out to include different NPCs in response to weather cycles would add a huge layer of development complexity. If it is decided that this is desirable, then perhaps it could be added as part of a later expansion?

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90 min is good too! Better

90 min is good too! Better than 60mins for sure. And if 2 hour is to long, then 90 is the good inbetween.

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I sure hope that our

I sure hope that our civilians look healthier than they did in CoH.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Redlynne, great points and

Redlynne, great points and well put. I believe that it helps to create a "real" and "alive" feel to the game. I played another game in which certain enemies only spawned at night. I think it added to the sense of realism. After all, Vampires during the day doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It seems to me that adjusting spawns and activity based upon time of day, weather, or even other environmental events such as a big sports game makes good sense. My 2 IGC worth:

1) I personally like a 2 hour day cycle. I can check the time and know how much I have left before the other half of the cycle, it gives me a full hour to grind on special spawns, and anything much shorter is too short to maintain realism for me.
2) In game season matching current season cycle seems good to me.
3) There probably needs to be some overarching mechanic that keeps spawn volume between certain min and max values.
4) I think it would be great if there were more "roaming" NPCs especially enemies in the zones.
5) As always I hope the devs focus on day one deliverables while keeping features like this in mind. If we build it with such features in mind it should be easier to expand on it in a later issue.

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Hero_Zero wrote:
Hero_Zero wrote:

I think it would be great if there were more "roaming" NPCs especially enemies in the zones.

Croatoa was a fine example of this sort of thing in action. There were 5 NPC Factions, none of which were "friendly" to each other, and some of the spawn groups would "patrol" the Zone in search of opposition, regardless of whether the opponent was PC or NPC. So it was reasonably common to come across a group of Cabal flying on their brooms who would aggro onto a spawn group of NPCs aligned with a different faction and start going at each other. Red Caps would make forays into the surrounding territory, looking for someone (or something) to fight.

I'm conceptually including all of those details under the control of Spawn Maps, which designate not only where specific NPCs are supposed to be spawned, but also what they are supposed to "do" once they have been spawned (including just simply loitering and waiting for a PC to come along and clobber them).


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.