Morning all,

I have mentioned this before but normally in a post surrounded by tons of other ideas.

I would like the idea of secret Identities to be not only embraced but actually fit into the game. I would like to see an option of assigning another name to your hero. This one would be disconnected from your global handle or whatever unique Identifier you are using. I would propose that in character creation you get an option for a secret Id. It would be much like the custom skins options in other games. Basically it would be something you could toggle on and it would change your costume to another set, selected from normal clothes, perhaps you could alter the clothes in game. Most importantly your displayed screen name would change to the new one. How this would effect game play is that there would be a chance that street encounters would ignore you. This would make the game seem less overloaded with Supers and add normal people discussing normal things. You can of course add on to this in many ways, but basically it allows you to play at being a non-super in a super world or a disguised hero.

In pvp I have always thought there should be a system set up where people were given the chance to play bosses or single mob encounters. I would suggest that you be allowed to enter a pool. You get an assignment for a certain period of time and you are basically given that character to play. There would be a rating system for the players after the mission run and as you gained reputation the GMs or system would allow you to start accessing better mobs to play. Basically you would be rewarded for making it fun for the other players. The mobs that you are assigned would have limitations to play, example certain area they could not leave, power options etc. This makes a run in the same mission change as you get different players with different skill levels and different rpg styles. Allows the pvpers to have some pvp, allows the rpgers to actually have banter with the bad guys and something I personally have not seen in a game to date.

Not sure how difficult coding either would be, but the secret id one should not be that hard, since I have seen parts of it in different games.
Some additional thoughts about Secret Ids: Secret Ids open up some of the old UO options of store ownership, opens up some of the ideas behind secondlife, a job option actually make sense. I know my daughter used COX as a place to hang out more than a place to run missions as the game matured. UO is still around despite being, to my knowledge the first modern mmo. Much of its longevity comes from the players being able to do things like entertain at home, run bars and I have seen entire plays done with macros keys at the theater in Britonia. Secret Ids are important to the hero genra and it has been completely ignored. COT can be a ground breaker just giving us an actual working Secret Id, coding should not be that hard... Some of the other ID ideas, would be system wide effects and might be impractical. Just the mention of this idea creates new possibilities... just thought of cabs to burn game money, in a SID, you would be able to use a cab. Maybe as a replacement or at least an option vs COX tram?