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It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
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This will sound rude: How long you have been playing the game should be irrelevant here.
Anyways, I feel that this was more of a general issue with how the random locations were set up for City of Heroes. For me, I find that the "fedex" missions in other MMO's generally are there to get you from one location to another, to make you go down the beaten path.
Sure, some of the missions in the new area might be locked out because you haven't completed a certain quest (possible annoyance), but most generally tend to use the fedex quests to get you aquainted with the area.
I know that Blizzard got flack for "forcing people to trudge through area's when they already have a flying mount" but on the flip side, especially in an *open world game" like WoW, at least means that people have to "play the content" in the zone, instead of just skipping all the mobs between quest giver and "target location", and rapidly moving on.
This is more of a problem for the "new zones" that get introduced into a game that is already established, but not so much of a problem for the older existing zones.
So to an extent, Blizzard actually try to make people "play the content that is there", instead of just skipping all the other stuff.
((Side note: and with the latest patch of WoW, where they introduced the Timeless Isle, they have made it a "no fly zone", so that once again, you cannot just skip and get all the chests within 30 seconds of landing)).
Frankly, I don't see why we can't have contacts just be contacts.
Not errand givers, contacts. They're people you go to when you don't know where to go, and they give you a hint. But similarly, I shouldn't have to talk to That Guy Who Hates Council if I want to get a mission involving some Council, I should be able to beat up Council until they drop a tidbit that leads me to the same mission, or I should be able to witness them doing a nefarious act and follow them to that mission.
It can all be the same mission, but I should be able to progress through the game by just watching enemies, without necessarily needing to report back to Noob McGuffin the Contact to advance the story. This is PAINFULLY blatant when you're playing a villianside character. When I -do- go see a contact, they should treat me like they're feeding me information for my own purposes, not just YAY GO GET MY COFFEE. And I should never be reduced to something like 'bug five phones'; that's beneath me since level two.
Maybe the contact DOES hate council, and that's why they feed me information on where to go to punch council, that's fine and can play a part. But I'm not punching council on their behalf; I'm punching council because I am a hero and the council are bad (or I am a villian building a super-weapon and the council has the toys I need).
And in that superweapon example, as a villain, I need to be building the superweapon, not giving someone else the parts to build their own superweapon. CoV was PARTICULARLY bad about this. Redside was really Stoogeside.
Lastly, never EVER require me to physically walk back to hand something in unless something is about to happen at that location. Traveling to talk to someone is just a time waster from playing the actual game itself; I'll just text Council-Hater Bill Bones that I got the laser array.
basically what I been saying on that matter.
I want to be a hero.
I want to be a villain.
I don't want to be running errands because the contact have personal vendetta against a group. If anything, they should be reporting to ME not me reporting to them. Especially as a villain.
And if Azuria loses that book one more time, I'm going zap the stuffing out of her, and then super glue the book to her palms. Or just teleport her into the middle of the oversized CoT mobs she want us to fight through for that book for the umpteenth time.
I know that I'm only on post 30/90 on this thread and as I catch up I';ll probably just edit in more to say. I'm going to start with my own thoughts and you all can catch up from there. I'm a table-top roleplayer, I've been blessed to have many very talented writers and DM's to play with., my feeling is that you are all limiting yourselves to 'the invisible box'. The invisible box is your own expectactions and paradigm on how quests are programmed, written, and done, and that they cannot be done any other way. Please open your minds and read what I have to say before telling me 'that can't be done'.
Why can't adventures and quests be done as "Choose Your Own Adventure" style books? Why can't the writer make predictions about how you might react to any given situation? Because I will tell you that a psychologist you have never met, and doesn't know you can write a prediction about your behavior and how you act from the other side of the world without ever having met you, or knowing your name.
The most ingenius writing is the hardest, the one that gives you multiple story-arcs, and tails to follow. If you want to see an example of this on TV check out Joss Whedon's Angel series. He gave his characters mutliple story arcs, some started in the beginning and play out until season 6. In every next adventure through season 1 he was setting the seeds and threads for seasons 2 - 4. Absolutely brilliant because you didn't know that the person who helped you back in season 1 was going to stab you in the back in season 3 over something you did in season 2. But that was the brilliance in the writing.
Now, as I understand it we are talking about quests, quests from other games, and forced linearity, and overcoming forced linearity.
A game that did this too well was DragonRealms, you started out as your profession, maybe one of your guildies handed you a knife and you went off to forage for wooden sticks, you would then hand these sticks off to Ms. Mags for a few copper. If you were smart you'd go to a Ranger and ask them to forage you a big pile of sticks, and then you'd just pick them up and make your run. By level 2 you had enough skills to go hunt a rat or two in the docks. But, often they had these wandering mobs spawn right before the docks, giant silverfish, killed you dead before you ever made it to kill a rat if you were just unlucky.
There wasn't any quota you had to meet for anyone, you just killed your rats, botched your 50 attempts to skin one, and sometimes maybe a kind person would help out and skin a nice one for you. Then you'd take them to the pawn shop and sell them for 20 copper each. If you wanted more money you were running back to kill more rats.
I liked the system style because it allowed you to choose how many you wanted to kill and there were no penalties to exp if you decided that you were going to stop killing rats forever on the 19th rat. Also the pawnshop dealer would look you over and give you hints, one day he said to me, I think you might be able to take on a goblin or two today, when I had 20 skill in stealing he suggested that I go talk to a different NPC for joining thief guild but anyway, we don't talk about that because it's a secret quest ;)
Back to killing rats, you gained xp towards your next level with each kill. Okay static yes, but it was as non-linear as you could get, and you know maybe if you wanted it as an exp reward then when you turned in your little pelts then the NPC might say, oh! My! These are so nice! Thank you!, and that would be you receiving your experience reward, maybe an extra reward if you turned in 1.000 of them.
One of the things Senior players would do for noobies is we'd stand around town and we'd be like, find me 200 alder sticks and I'll pay you 2 gold. Then we'd take the sticks and craft them into high quality noob weapons and give them away, the reason we did this is to advance our crafting skills we had to gain exp for doing them, and sometimes it's easier when you have 10 new players running around town to get you things acting as runners than to pick up your crafting tools, and your herb-crafting tools which had to be laid out in the sun, a burning stove, and totter off with 800 lbs of herb weight to the outer gates and then find 200 sticks and then totter back to your favorite crafting spot next to a safe water source, the local fountain for your cooking needs. Usually it would be something of a community effort to keep the healer's stocked with the necessary quality potions. So it might be possible to create, player-created quests if higher leveled folks had reasons not to leave a zone and employ runners.
Now, back to the psychologist that can from the other side of the world predict you. Zodiac of the month, luckiest day of the month. Those sorts of writings are always upbeat, positive, and could fit with anyone's generic mood and how they are feeling at the moment. So okay, a favorite charismatic NPC dies in the game this NPC has been with you as a quest guide, a mentor, possibly even healing you once you reach a certain favorbility. I can predict that you are going to be sad at the loss. Your going to want to attend the NPC's funeral say some words, how much that NPC meant to you (Aeris's Death Final Fantasy VII) . I can predict that the player will want to exact some ugly revenge, at which point the choose your own adventure lines would only be directed on how, with of course 1 possible out. You admit to yourself that you really hated that character, or that she didn't matter to you, however you could always pick up the quest later in a moment of remorse or reminisence to make things right.
course you can't have characters die off but bad things happen to good people all the time, and it's the heroes job to either make things right, or seek personal understanding of why and how things went awry. Some of the best quests are those that have no right answer, those that always fail but still reward xp.
Please discuss what do you like, not like about this post? What do you disagree with?
Imaginitive young lady looking for clients, talents are imagining the realistic possibilities of practically anything, and applying new technologies to practical applications in all types of business.
This is a pretty old post to be written upon with so much passion but I agree with a lot of what you have added Miss Skaldi. I definitely like the idea of mutliple outcomes depending on the choices made through missions/quests/etc. I'm pretty sure the Devs. have these things in mind as well. The few bits of discussions I've read in the forums suggest they are open to making the game very engaging to a variety of playstyles/variability including back story, lore, and NPC contacts. From character creation to game mechanics to business models, the Devs. appear versatile and forward thinking.
I hope they are developing story arcs with "the players choices matter" in mind. I agree with you that those are the most meaningful storylines because the protagonist has to live with the outcomes good and bad. Personally, I love this feature even though it can add a level of challenge not easily overcome. It seems that many games make it very difficult to overcome your disadvantages once you've thwarted yourself with an unwise decision. Still it adds depth to your character if you look back at what you went through to get where you are in the game and find there is much more history now than when you wrote your original back story for the character.
It would be neat if they had a "story board" history of the events/choices you made that followed through the game. Something you could have in your superbase or the like. Something that gave a kind of telling of what you went through. Then when you read someone elses Story Board you could see how they did things differently through the same story arcs. Maybe write it up as a "Lessons Learned" or something for the base constituents. In fact, it could be a way to make the base feel less "empty" by having it on a wall or desk and seeing NPC "Inductees" or whatever reading it whenever you are passing thorugh your base.
Another nice feature would be for the Devs. to track what missions and quests get dropped versus the completions. Maybe poll the drops and identify what is working and what is not as people play the story arc/game. Then they could alter story arcs or other mechanics as needed before players become disenchanted with them. I know there were plenty of missions in CoH that I would avoid just because they were boring or just too much of a pain in the butt unless you had a good group teamed up. The Big Cave troll mission in the Hollows comes to mind. Too few people and it would likely fail, too many and it was way too congested. It had a sweet spot of about 3-6 people. But as far as I know they never did anything to fix it or make it any more fun. I guess they liked it the way it was but I remember everyone complaining about that one a lot. It was far far away in the far end of the Hollows, at a time when you didn't have a travel power yet or were just about to get it and often died at the worst possible time just before completion so you missed the bigger experience drop for completing the mission while running back from your recent death. In fact, I think that mission had a lot to do with why most people hated that you couldn't get a travel power until level 14 but there were plenty of reasons not to like that stipulation. Man even complaining about it, I still miss that game.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
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