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Steamtank
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Should also note warhammer

Should also note warhammer online had great little side quests. In conflict zones they changed gameplay for the other side. The game was fantastic except it's 2 faction system which led to imbalances on svery server. One side would continually sweep the other and population would get worse on the losing side.

So when I mentioned that effects should be noticble they also shouldn't keep players helping other factions from achieving something similar even if it takes longer.

Supporting how I can, Starting up a DA group for art, stories, and concepts to be collected
http://city-of-titans.deviantart.com/
Please join up if you plan to make or collect CoT related art.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Well, I don't know what to say to this. I thought attempting to understand the other persons words and then formulating a response based upon that understanding is what discussion is all about...

It is, but what you did was take words directly related to one aspect of my opinion and applied it in a larger scope than was obviously intended. You then used that misinterpretation as evidence that the fault for misunderstanding you is a result of my bias. I assumed that you were not actually trying to misrepresent my words and instead it was a case of a misspoken argument. Which is why I tried to be as polite as possible.

I am still willing to start new on equal footing if you wanted.

Huckleberry
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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
Well, I don't know what to say to this. I thought attempting to understand the other persons words and then formulating a response based upon that understanding is what discussion is all about...
It is, but what you did was take words directly related to one aspect of my opinion and applied it in a larger scope than was obviously intended. You then used that misinterpretation as evidence that the fault for misunderstanding you is a result of my bias. I assumed that you were not actually trying to misrepresent my words and instead it was a case of a misspoken argument. Which is why I tried to be as polite as possible.
I am still willing to start new on equal footing if you wanted.

??? I figured you were just still raw from the beatdown Redlynne gave you.

While what I was suggesting would work just fine with Redlynne's idea of PvEvP with control points and such, once Tannim came out and positively informed us that level of player interaction would not exist, I continued to make a point that player influence upon the world would still be nice to have.

Let's call it PvEvE instead. It wouldn't be limited in scope to dedicated content like what Redlynne or Radiac mentioned, it would be whole-world and it would be persistent, with a constant ebb and flow across days, weeks and years. Based on what you wrote, Brainbot, it sure seemed like you were still using arguments against what Redlynne had been suggesting before Tannim shot down that idea. If not, then here's your chance to tell me why you don't want the kind of player influence upon the world I that would like to see.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

??? I figured you were just still raw from the beatdown Redlynne gave you.

Your perception of what occurred between Redlynne and I is, to say the least, different than mine. Best to move on.

Huckleberry wrote:

While what I was suggesting would work just fine with Redlynne's idea of PvEvP with control points and such, once Tannim came out and positively informed us that level of player interaction would not exist, I continued to make a point that player influence upon the world would still be nice to have.

You have chosen to revisit the past instead of starting fresh, which is not an accusation. It is just a statement of fact. I would like to point out that after Tannim made his post you continued to support competition between players with a reward system based on involvement and faction control. In essence you still wanted the same thing you had been discussing before Tannim's post.

Huckleberry wrote:

Let's call it PvEvE instead. It wouldn't be limited in scope to dedicated content like what Redlynne or Radiac mentioned, it would be whole-world and it would be persistent, with a constant ebb and flow across days, weeks and years.

Taking just what you say here and nothing else, this is an interesting way to create a dynamic world.
I do have questions and concerns with it that I would like to hear your thoughts on.

First is how easy do you envision it would be to enact a noticeable change in the city? For example, would a small group of dedicated players be able to change large portions of the game in a short period of time? Would High level characters have greater capacity to enact change than low level characters?

Would faction control be something that players were able to work directly for or would it just happen as a result of normal gameplay?

Is there a hard limit to how far reaching a faction can spread? Can any group spread across and control the entire city?

How do you propose to deal with factions that do not seek greater territory? What I mean is it is easy to picture street gangs and mobsters going for a power grab, but sewer mutants who require the sludge runoff of a power plant are unlikely to stray far.

How do we balance the competition of one faction that is inherently stronger than another? A group of trained and well equipped assassins should have little difficulty taking territory from a group of burglars.

Are there rewards for being aligned with a faction that increases its control? What if a player has allegiances with multiple factions?

What about factions that are designed for low levels and are no longer encountered as players advance?

These are just a few questions that spring to mind in a system like this.

My biggest concerns with this type of a dynamic world mechanic mostly lay in three areas. Division of the players, the focus on open world and the affect it has on the developers efforts to create content.

I worry about how this world mechanic might cause players to divide into smaller opposing groups. I do not like the idea that players be pitted against one another for faction control, even if it is separated by a layer of PvE. It has been done in other games and it has always divided the players. It can work and be fun when a game is split among opposing faction lines and choosing a faction is part of the character creation process. This game is not designed around the concept of opposing factions and I do not want that as a major theme.

I also worry about the effect this would have on the games design in relation to instance vs open world focus. It has already been said that the game is going to use instanced maps for much of its content which I like. With the dynamic world you propose the open communal areas would require a lot more attention and content. Other games have tried to put more focus on the open world and have had limited success. ESO, Secret World, DCUO, Champions, ect. The intended result was that players would interact more and the world would feel more alive. What actually happens is players end up getting in each others way and the world has a kind of stasis feeling.
It has been a long while since I have gone into any of those games but I do know that for at least the first few years of DCUO Gorilla Grodd was turning people into apes on the beach of Metropolis and Bane's goons were rampaging around the docks of Gotham. I have also seen people competing or sitting idle due to the nature of open world spawning in both ESO and Secret World. In the short time I played Secret World I saw many open world goals completed as I arrived in a location robbing me of the chance to participate, people intruding on a challenge or task because they did not want to have it completed for them and times when I had to stand by while I waited for the next open world manifestation of a challenge to spawn. I would hate to see some version of this to occur in CoT because of an increased focus on open world content.

Another concern is one that Tannim touched upon, content creation by the developers. In a fluctuating world where faction control is fluid there is no way to present many stories in a logical or plausible manner without linking them to the open world. Quests where the goal is to limit a factions power make no sense unless tied to the open world. Quests where a group has ventured beyond its normal territory break logic if that faction is already there in the open world. As a more specific example, in CoV there were quests about how Longbow was trying to get a foothold in the Rogue Isles. These quests would not fit if through the ebb and flow of faction changes Longbow had a sizable control of territory. I am concerned that this level of dynamic world might affect what stories and lore can be created or at the very least in how it is presented.

I have more questions and smaller concerns as well but those are mostly related to the unknown aspect of how reputation and alignment will actually work in the game and how it would relate to this type of a world mechanic. Until we know more about reputation and alignment those can wait.

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Awesome response! You had

Awesome response! You had several questions, so I'll get to them in order.

Brainbot wrote:

Taking just what you say here and nothing else, this is an interesting way to create a dynamic world.
I do have questions and concerns with it that I would like to hear your thoughts on.
First is how easy do you envision it would be to enact a noticeable change in the city? For example, would a small group of dedicated players be able to change large portions of the game in a short period of time?

I think it is always a good idea to take what people say and nothing else when what people say is the only thing you have to go on.

I would not use the word easy, since that is dependent upon how difficult the developers make the content and what challenge level players want to engage. But I think I understand what you are asking. To wit, if one player was all alone in the world with no other players, how much effort would it take to change the balance of power to noticeable effect?

I would have it set up that one player, acting unopposed would be able to shift the balance of power over the span of several hours. Our lonely player would accomplish this power shift by running missions to support only one faction and street sweeping all the other factions. I don't envision this being a binary thing, or even linear. I would make it so that the smallest benefits would be quick to achieve and the largest benefits at the most dominant power position would take a long concerted effort. With that in mind, I would expect maybe an hour for the first tier of benefits to be reached and then a few hours more for an upgraded tier of benefits and so on until the faction is as powerful and as dominant as it could get.
I would make it be no more than 3 tiers of power.
Interestingly, I also don't think that it would be a zero sum game either. In other words, I could see more than one faction at tier 1 or above simultaneously. But maybe the sum of tiers in the zone could be no more than 3. This way you could only have one tier 3 power in the zone or you could have up to three tier 1 power factions. I would never make any faction’s power go lower than the base tier, tier 0. This is because you always want at least a minimum amount of content and access for every player regardless of what faction they support.

In a dynamic world with oodles of players, I expect it would be much harder to enact a change by oneself. It would take either a natural population shift in the players of a zone or a group of dedicated players to accomplish. We will never have a perfect equilibrium between all the players and all the factions in any zone, so I would expect power shifts to happen all the time, just through the natural gameplay of the players in the zone. In order to shift the balance of power intentionally, a dedicated team would need to ensure they do more content than anyone else in the zone, dedicated to promote their one faction and eliminate others. Also I would make it so that some content has a larger impact than other content, and if we make that more impactful content group-based content with big bosses, then I can see a dedicated group also being able to shift the power by completing these big impactful missions.

Brainbot wrote:

Would High level characters have greater capacity to enact change than low level characters?

I have already stated that they would not. At least, not the way I envision it. MWM may have different thoughts on how zone content is designed. But I would make it that so long as you are doing level-appropriate content, your impact upon the power shift is the same. This would lead to a scenario in which a lvl 50 Avatar of Justice player character wipes out the entire zone of low-level television-heads but does not affect the power shift at all because it was not level-appropriate content. Sure that's not very realistic, but this is a game and we have to make some concessions to playability at the expense of authenticity. Besides, that would disincentivize more powerful players from impacting low-level content. So only level-appropriate content would apply to the balance of power.

Brainbot wrote:

Would faction control be something that players were able to work directly for or would it just happen as a result of normal gameplay?

Both. I believe the game is being designed such that nearly all the content will be supporting one faction or another, or against one faction or another. My vision is such that players would be unable to distinguish between working directly for a faction from normal gameplay. So a mission against the Red Death Brotherhood by a hero who does not care about the balance of power, will still reduce the power rating of the RDB. It would be illogical for it not to have an effect.

What is 'normal gameplay' anyway? I think you will get a different answer from everyone you ask.

Brainbot wrote:

Is there a hard limit to how far reaching a faction can spread? Can any group spread across and control the entire city?

I envision that the zones of the city would retain their character throughout. So if you were looking to fight Scorpion, you would know to find them in the Little Egypt section of town regardless of their power in that zone or others.
I would not have the efforts in one zone affect the status of any other zone. That would be really cool but far more complicated than what I had in mind. I envision that the devs would set up the neighborhood zones with established stories and lore for each zone. In a lot of zones, it may just be the police against one faction, but in some other zones I expect it could be a mish-mash of all sorts of factions intermingling, some of whom may not even be enemies of each other. So as far as that is concerned it would be like any other MMO so far.

Whether or not a faction can spread across the city is an interesting question. I would really like a more fractal view of things such that if Scorpion was able to get a certain level of power in at least three zones then it kicks off a series of citywide missions related to resurrecting their Scorpion King, culminating in raid-level content to stop it, or aid it.
And if the government (police) faction were to get a certain level of power in at least five zones, then that also kicks off a series of citywide missions related to taking down Anthem or some other big VIP like the police chief, district attorney or mayor.

Brainbot wrote:

How do you propose to deal with factions that do not seek greater territory? What I mean is it is easy to picture street gangs and mobsters going for a power grab, but sewer mutants who require the sludge runoff of a power plant are unlikely to stray far.

That sounds more like a lore question. What are the motivations for anyone or any faction in this game? If the sewer mutants only want to be left alone, then if they become the most powerful faction in that zone, I would expect that you would see them open a sludge grotto in their sewers where all the sludge people can flirt with each other and enjoy their time, making special sludge gifts for the supers who helped them accomplish it. Or maybe the sludge mutants have an upstart in their midst who now wants to create a toxic sludge generator in the center of the zone because they now have the power to do it. What player missions would be spawned with all the zone’s factions as a result of this plan?
Or maybe design some factions to just never get above level 1 (at least not until future content is generated).

Brainbot wrote:

How do we balance the competition of one faction that is inherently stronger than another? A group of trained and well equipped assassins should have little difficulty taking territory from a group of burglars.

Again with the lore. Usually something like this comes down to a numbers game. The assassins can be powerful and even unstoppable locally and temporarily, but they just can't match the presence of hundreds of thugs on the streets every day and night. The game’s lore depends on the leaders of each faction not giving up on their goals, so we as players have to press the ‘I believe ‘ button sometimes.
I think your observation of this power disparity could be excellent seed idea for the design of missions for and against the assassins. I’m thinking of traitors, backdoor security, intimidation, and heart-and-minds missions.

Brainbot wrote:

Are there rewards for being aligned with a faction that increases its control? What if a player has allegiances with multiple factions?

Of course there are rewards. I mentioned three tiers earlier in addition to tier zero; so let’s continue with that assumption.

  • At tier 0, the default base tier of power, there should be enough content for players to feel satisfied with the game experience. That includes faction reputation vendors and missions for and against all the factions in the zone.
  • When a faction gets tier 1 power, players with a minimum reputation with that faction get access to expanded vendor options, with maybe a costume item made available, and all players, for and against that faction will start getting different missions.
  • When a faction gets to tier 2 power, players with a minimum reputation with that faction get access to even more vendor options and an new vendor that did not exist opens a shop with faction-specific items. New missions for and against this faction are also made available.
  • When a faction gets to tier 3 power, all the costume items for that faction in this zone are available to players with a minimum faction reputation. New missions against this faction are generated, including a faction zone boss dungeon that is only available while this faction is at power level 3.
I don’t think it should matter what a character’s reputations are with other factions, each faction’s reputation should be handled independently as far as this is concerned. However, if you are asking whether a player can have positive reputations with opposing factions, I’ll direct you to separate forum threads that discuss this question specifically:
http://cityoftitans.com/search/node/faction%20reputation
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/reputation-system
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/cascading-reputation-and-bayesian-belief

Brainbot wrote:

What about factions that are designed for low levels and are no longer encountered as players advance?

If the developers have a zone that is limited to low levels only, then without an ability to sidekick, the higher level players would not be able to consume level-appropriate content and therefore would not be able to impact the balance of power. Over-levelled characters (and underlevelled characters in high level zones) would still be able to reap the rewards, however, since the rewards are dependent solely upon reputation.

Brainbot wrote:

My biggest concerns with this type of a dynamic world mechanic mostly lay in three areas. Division of the players, the focus on open world and the affect it has on the developers efforts to create content.
I worry about how this world mechanic might cause players to divide into smaller opposing groups. I do not like the idea that players be pitted against one another for faction control, even if it is separated by a layer of PvE. It has been done in other games and it has always divided the players. It can work and be fun when a game is split among opposing faction lines and choosing a faction is part of the character creation process.

I understand your concern. I am not as worried as you are, because I see the benefits of player motivation trumping the fractioning of the playerbase. This is because the players will have divided themselves already into more heroic types, more villainous types and more vigilante types who won’t all be doing the same content and missions anyway. Furthermore, nothing is stopping any player from farming reputation with any and all factions whenever they want. Granted they will probably suffer an alignment change if they do work for different factions, but if the player is okay with that, then the character can do anything the player wants.

As far as developer’s efforts to create content, I agree that it is a concern. Because in my vision, a lot of developer-created content would not even be visible until the power levels reach a certain threshold. But the plus side of that is in the replayability and the discovery of new content you hadn’t seen before or have to reach for to get access to.

Brainbot wrote:

This game is not designed around the concept of opposing factions and I do not want that as a major theme.

I am going to have to disagree with you there. This game is 99% about opposing factions. So was City of Heroes and City of Villains. Don’t forget that if you were being heroic, there is a good chance you were supporting the civic government faction against all the others. And if you were being villainous, you were acting against a number of factions and supporting Arachnos in the process (or one of the factions within Arachnos)

With the morally grey design of CoT, we get to play anywhere in between as well. For instance, if you want to wear a black and white checkered scarf, help out The Rooks enough and they’ll sell you one.

Brainbot wrote:

I also worry about the effect this would have on the games design in relation to instance vs open world focus. It has already been said that the game is going to use instanced maps for much of its content which I like. With the dynamic world you propose the open communal areas would require a lot more attention and content. Other games have tried to put more focus on the open world and have had limited success. ESO, Secret World, DCUO, Champions, ect. The intended result was that players would interact more and the world would feel more alive. What actually happens is players end up getting in each others way and the world has a kind of stasis feeling.

I don’t see much a difference, actually. Because instance content (missions) in a zone would still effect the balance of power in that zone. I think that seeing the impacts of your missions upon the world outside your missions would make it far more enjoyable.

Brainbot wrote:

Another concern is one that Tannim touched upon, content creation by the developers. In a fluctuating world where faction control is fluid there is no way to present many stories in a logical or plausible manner without linking them to the open world. Quests where the goal is to limit a factions power make no sense unless tied to the open world. Quests where a group has ventured beyond its normal territory break logic if that faction is already there in the open world. As a more specific example, in CoV there were quests about how Longbow was trying to get a foothold in the Rogue Isles. These quests would not fit if through the ebb and flow of faction changes Longbow had a sizable control of territory. I am concerned that this level of dynamic world might affect what stories and lore can be created or at the very least in how it is presented.

Again, I’m going to have to disagree with you. Every mission to take out some boss, save hostages, or otherwise defeat enemies is by definition a mission to reduce that organization’s power.
And I also think that fluctuating power levels would open up mission arcs that would stay open as long as the players were on them, so I don’t see this as being detrimental to the developer’s ability to tell a story. In fact I think it would help the developers tell a story because it would create triggers for events that allow the players to tell the story instead. (refer to my citywide mission arcs mention far far above in this post)
I think you see now that your longbow in the Rogue Isles example above is based upon an assumption of faction expansion that I never had. But let’s say for argument sake that in one zone longbow was able to get maximum power in that zone, a good strong beachhead in the Isles, for sure. This would open up all the missions for Arachnos to kick them back into the water, including a boss battle mission for a group of players. Remember, in my vision, the opportunities to reduce a faction’s power increase with the power of the faction.

Edit: I also forgot to mention than none of this would preclude the adoption of small frequesnt events as was originally proposed by Radiac.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

In a dynamic world with oodles of players, I expect it would be much harder to enact a change by oneself. It would take either a natural population shift in the players of a zone or a group of dedicated players to accomplish.

I was with you until you got to this part. It's the biggest problem I have in MMO's with a system in which players have mechanics to oppose one another. It always comes down to groups who are the most dedicated. You either join one of these groups or you don't have the capacity to succeed. It divides the players into opposing groups of dedicated players and acts as a deterrent to casual players. You don't have to agree with me but it is something I see as an inevitability and something I simply do not want. If the system was one where power shifts happened as a result of individual choice and occurred much less frequent I would be much more responsive.

For example, have missions that are specifically about a power shift in an area, just like you said, except in these missions you are presented with a choice on which side you support. At the end of a week, during the weekly update, the votes are tallied and for the next week the power shift occurs. You can run the mission, arc or trial as many times as you want but only the first choice you make counts. It can still have the same tiers as you describe it and it could take weeks to get to max tier, but tier could also be a direct result of vote percentage.

This type of system still gives you a fluctuating power shift in various parts of the city but now Hero Asshat and his team are not the deciding voice in the decision. Because every vote counts equally, the majority rules. It doesn't even have to be a weekly thing. I chose weekly because it allows for pretty much anyone who wants to be involved to get involved, including the weekend warriors, and it gives you enough time to enjoy the fruits of the change.

Huckleberry wrote:

I have already stated that they would not. At least, not the way I envision it. MWM may have different thoughts on how zone content is designed. But I would make it that so long as you are doing level-appropriate content, your impact upon the power shift is the same. This would lead to a scenario in which a lvl 50 Avatar of Justice player character wipes out the entire zone of low-level television-heads but does not affect the power shift at all because it was not level-appropriate content. Sure that's not very realistic, but this is a game and we have to make some concessions to playability at the expense of authenticity. Besides, that would disincentivize more powerful players from impacting low-level content. So only level-appropriate content would apply to the balance of power.

Fair enough. But keep in mind that 'level appropriate' can span multiple levels. At the upper spectrum the difference between levels in regards to street sweeping (something you say is an aspect of the power shift in your system) is fairly small but at the lower spectrum the difference can be quite large. What I mean is, the difference between level 45-50 is not that big when street sweeping or speeding through missions, but the difference between 5 and 10 is huge. Again a 'one player one vote' system removes this aspect from the equation.

Huckleberry wrote:

Both. I believe the game is being designed such that nearly all the content will be supporting one faction or another, or against one faction or another. My vision is such that players would be unable to distinguish between working directly for a faction from normal gameplay. So a mission against the Red Death Brotherhood by a hero who does not care about the balance of power, will still reduce the power rating of the RDB. It would be illogical for it not to have an effect.

This again goes to one of my concerns. The game becomes focused on territory battles and with this thinking it becomes more weighted towards those who are the most dedicated. If the average player does not know which missions work towards a factions power struggle but the dedicated have mapped out plans for how to get the most bang for their buck then the dedicated player has the advantage. Which brings me back to the idea of dividing the players into groups.

Huckleberry wrote:

I envision that the zones of the city would retain their character throughout. So if you were looking to fight Scorpion, you would know to find them in the Little Egypt section of town regardless of their power in that zone or others.
I would not have the efforts in one zone affect the status of any other zone. That would be really cool but far more complicated than what I had in mind. I envision that the devs would set up the neighborhood zones with established stories and lore for each zone. In a lot of zones, it may just be the police against one faction, but in some other zones I expect it could be a mish-mash of all sorts of factions intermingling, some of whom may not even be enemies of each other. So as far as that is concerned it would be like any other MMO so far.

It's good that you want to retain the character of each region in the game. I am not really a fan of having a bunch of zones character be one of contested territory. That's a pretty limited view of a zones character in my opinion.

Huckleberry wrote:

That sounds more like a lore question. What are the motivations for anyone or any faction in this game? If the sewer mutants only want to be left alone, then if they become the most powerful faction in that zone, I would expect that you would see them open a sludge grotto in their sewers where all the sludge people can flirt with each other and enjoy their time, making special sludge gifts for the supers who helped them accomplish it. Or maybe the sludge mutants have an upstart in their midst who now wants to create a toxic sludge generator in the center of the zone because they now have the power to do it. What player missions would be spawned with all the zone’s factions as a result of this plan?
Or maybe design some factions to just never get above level 1 (at least not until future content is generated).

It is very much a lore question. Your system of power shifts assumes that most groups seek to expand their control. That's not very inventive or interesting and it affects what stories can be told.
Lets take a look at those sewer mutants again. Say they are completely peaceful and incapable of communication. But because of the way they look people are prone to think the worst. Now say a story wants to leverage that as a concept. The area where the mutants live is an abandoned broken sewer area between the surface and some great spawning monstrosity below. The mutants know about his thing and will do their best to discourage people from going down there. Part of the challenge of this encounter is to decide to try and force your way through them guns blazing or to find another way to convince the mutants to let you by peacefully. What makes it an interesting challenge is you don't learn until after that these creatures which you may have victimized for a long while are peaceful.
Now you have a situation where a faction has a territory that is worthless to others and the faction itself has no desire to increase its control. The only thing that makes logical sense is that players can lower this factions control of their territory. Which doesn't benefit anyone.

Another example could be two factions that reside in the same area and want different things but don't oppose each other. Take CoV's Cap au Diable. You could find Arachnos and Goldbrickers on the same street. Arachnos had control of the area and didn't care what the Goldbrickers did.The Goldbrickers didn't want control of the area because they were simply high tech burglars.
What my point is, thinking of the game in terms of power struggles is limiting to the games lore and challenge options.

Huckleberry wrote:

Again with the lore. Usually something like this comes down to a numbers game. The assassins can be powerful and even unstoppable locally and temporarily, but they just can't match the presence of hundreds of thugs on the streets every day and night. The game’s lore depends on the leaders of each faction not giving up on their goals, so we as players have to press the ‘I believe ‘ button sometimes.
I think your observation of this power disparity could be excellent seed idea for the design of missions for and against the assassins. I’m thinking of traitors, backdoor security, intimidation, and heart-and-minds missions.

Yes again with the lore. Even if you don't realize it, by making groups oppose one another you are in fact determining part of their lore.
But getting back to the question, you propose that the way to deal with any power disparity is by deciding that the less powerful group have numbers to balance things out? Is there any other way you can think of to handle power disparity?

Huckleberry wrote:

Of course there are rewards. I mentioned three tiers earlier in addition to tier zero; so let’s continue with that assumption.

I was talking more about specific character based rewards. As in when a faction you are allied with first gets power you get a something special like a boost to xp or a rare augment or something. What you are talking about is more in line with changing the zones content than specific rewards. I have no real issue with the way you describe the rewards and think they are fine. I would want some kind of an assurance that the dedicated groups we spoke about earlier couldn't always keep a zone one faction indefinitely there by making all the other content options unavailable.

Huckleberry wrote:

If the developers have a zone that is limited to low levels only, then without an ability to sidekick, the higher level players would not be able to consume level-appropriate content and therefore would not be able to impact the balance of power. Over-levelled characters (and underlevelled characters in high level zones) would still be able to reap the rewards, however, since the rewards are dependent solely upon reputation.

Ok.

Huckleberry wrote:

I understand your concern. I am not as worried as you are, because I see the benefits of player motivation trumping the fractioning of the playerbase. This is because the players will have divided themselves already into more heroic types, more villainous types and more vigilante types who won’t all be doing the same content and missions anyway.

I don't see people naturally making that division without an outside stimulus to drive them that way.
Just look at the co-operative zones of Cimerora or the Rikti War Zone and how it was very unlikely you would find players who refused teams based on if your character was red or blue. They grouped to do the content available. Once you make the content focus on faction influence you are making content that players have to choose between. Doing one furthers your factions influence and the other lowers it which does not lead to open teaming.

Also, I don't expect the game is going to be as divided in terms of alignment, content and missions as you are making it out to be. I expect that the majority of content and missions will not be alignment required. I don't think that players will be required to be of the same alignment to team up for the majority of the content.

Another thing I am noticing is that we may have very different assumptions of what reputation really is. It was said in this thread that reputation and alignment are not linked. You can be a hero who is on friendly terms with a street gang or a villain who works with the police. In my view both alignment and reputation is a way to further customize your game experience.
Take this quote from the Kickstarter:

Austin “Cube” Lang wrote:

Alignment systems are nothing new in MMOs, but they’ve been rather limited in the past. Often, they amounted to a glorified faction system, or were based on some sort of strange objective morality.

The alignment system is not about dividing the players into groups. Its about helping players define what type of characters they are playing.
Then there is this quote from the kickstarter as well:

Kickstarter wrote:

Faction Favor is one of the many things the game should track. Did you do a dozen stories where you saved the Titan City Police Department’s, er, bacon? Did you do one mission where you betrayed them and stole a set of their neat new Computer Operated Protective suits? Officer Cogburn may remember both of these facts and act accordingly. Not only that, but the pyromaniacal mercenaries of IFRIT (International Fire Response/Ignition Team) may remember how your little joyride ended up burning a large patch of forest and call you up to suggest that you might want to walk on their side of the fence for awhile.

As you can see the faction favor concept, or reputation, is about having groups react to you based on previous actions. Its not a system where you are fighting on their behest or becoming a member of the faction. And its really not one designed to split the players into sides.

Huckleberry wrote:

I am going to have to disagree with you there. This game is 99% about opposing factions. So was City of Heroes and City of Villains. Don’t forget that if you were being heroic, there is a good chance you were supporting the civic government faction against all the others. And if you were being villainous, you were acting against a number of factions and supporting Arachnos in the process (or one of the factions within Arachnos) With the morally grey design of CoT, we get to play anywhere in between as well. For instance, if you want to wear a television on your head, help out The Lost over in the Hollows enough and they’ll sell you one.

The game is 99% your character opposing various factions but it is not designed to be a opposing faction game. This is what I meant earlier about taking part of something out of context and arguing it instead of what it was in reference to. In this case I was speaking about the idea of players working in opposition to one another as a design choice, not players working in opposition to the npcs.

Huckleberry wrote:

I don’t see much a difference, actually. Because instance content (missions) in a zone would still effect the balance of power in that zone. I think that seeing the impacts of your missions upon the world outside your missions would make it far more enjoyable.

So you don't see an increase in non-instanced content that relates to this power shifting system you are suggesting? I find that unlikely but I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

Huckleberry wrote:

Again, I’m going to have to disagree with you. Every mission to take out some boss, save hostages, or otherwise defeat enemies is by definition a mission to reduce that organization’s power.

And again I am going to disagree with you. Defeating a scheme by a faction does not automatically decrease their power. It just stops that scheme. For it to have an impact on the factions power the quest has to be written in a way that your actions actually shift power. Just knocking out a few guys and escaping with their hostage doesn't take any power away from them. This again goes to my issues with the game focusing on this concept of faction wars.

Huckleberry wrote:

And I also think that fluctuating power levels would open up mission arcs that would stay open as long as the players were on them, so I don’t see this as being detrimental to the developer’s ability to tell a story. In fact I think it would help the developers tell a story because it would create triggers for events that allow the players to tell the story instead. (refer to my citywide mission arcs mention far far above in this post)

But those stories are all related to the faction war. This is what I am trying to get across. By making the game world one were every group is fighting some kind of war with another group you limit the stories that can be told.

Huckleberry wrote:

I think you see now that your longbow in the Rogue Isles example above is based upon an assumption of faction expansion that I never had. But let’s say for argument sake that in one zone longbow was able to get maximum power in that zone, a good strong beachhead in the Isles, for sure. This would open up all the missions for Arachnos to kick them back into the water, including in a boss battle mission for a group of players. Remember, in my vision, the opportunities to reduce a faction’s power increase with the power of the faction.

No, I don't see how my example was based on an assumption. It was an example to show that lore relating to faction power shifts must be tied to this faction war system you suggest. It doesn't matter that longbow 'could' be kicked out of power in an area because the opposite is still true. They 'could' stay in power for a long while. As you have said earlier, you think a dedicated group of players could shift power in an area. Without there being another dedicated group of players working against them, the first group could keep an area as they want for extended periods of time. So the lore can't contradict itself, it must be written in such a way that faction shifting is taken in account.

I have to wonder why this system is so appealing to you considering you will already have dynamic interaction with the game world based on which factions you have favor with and your alignment. Is it just wanting some level of influence over other players game experience? Or is it about having a monument to your actions that everyone can see? Why a system that impacts everyone instead of one where the impact is on an individual scale? Would you still want this system if you could shift the faction power in an area but it only affected you and no one else? I am not trying to be insulting and I am sorry if I am but the truth is I really don't understand why everyone in the game be subject to a dynamic world is something you think is better than have the dynamic elements of the world be on an individual or group basis.

In the end this new suggestion of yours still has the same things in it I didn't like before. From my view point it limits content and lore and puts too much focus on open world content. I could accept both of those even though I wouldn't like it. But I just can't get behind a system that, at its core, is about players opposing one another. It only becomes worse in my eyes when that system can be manipulated by a small group of dedicated players.

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Brainbot, your response

Brainbot, your response reminds me of when Crocodile Dundee turns on the television in New York and a rerun of I love Lucy comes on. He says that's he's seen it before and turns it off, not realizing all that television has to offer, and not really caring. It is both admirable and comical. By the way, I have also not watched television in years either, so I am not necessarily pointing any accusatory fingers.

Your ability to find and pick at nits in my suggestion makes me think we are on the right track. (no offense meant, despite the loaded vocabulary) If it was completely incompatible with CoT, I'm sure you would not have done so. So lets work on a couple of the points where we don't see eye to eye.

One of your assumptions appears to be that the factions involved are in a zero-sum game and that all of the factions oppose each other and/ or want territory. I see I didn't do a good enough job of deferring to the lore team on this point.

I fully expect that the results of power shift will have a different effect on different factions. When I say power, I mean the power to attain their goals in that zone. So if the peaceful sewer dwelling sludge people have the most power in their zone (because of the actions of the player characters, remember, not necessarily because the sludge people are killing the other factions), then I would expect a lot of content geared towards supporting the factions who want to fight against them; and all the conflicting drama that would entail, knowing what we know about their peaceful nature.

So, you see, power does not have to be an expression of violent opposition. It could mean in their case that they feel safe enough to be seen more publicly; which of course, sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of people who see them as a threat. So this power shift can actually aid in telling the story. Sudge monster Sam returns a lost girl from the sewer who was looking for her Anthem action figure that had fallen through a sewer grating. If the sludge people had less power, maybe that mission would have never happened because Sam wouldn't have dared to expose himself in such a way. Of course, witnesses thought Sam kidnapped her. Maybe Little Debbie's friends or parents know the truth and are actually grateful. So two missions would spawn: One mission offered on behalf of the Police or maybe a neighborhood vigilante faction to beat back the childnapping sludge monters, and one mission offered by the parents or her friends to find and protect sludge monster Sam. All this because the sludge monsters reached tier 2 power level and felt safe enough to interact with normals.

Edit: Also note that shifting power does not change the overall narrative for any zone. It just adds color and content to make the existing narrative seem more alive.

We can address the other points separately, but let's keep the encyclopedic walls of text to a single point at a time for simplicity.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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I'm going to break in here

I'm going to break in here with another statement of the main caveat I have, which is that this sort of content is fine for a PVP server or instance, but I would personally not want to mark any instance that has this sort of content on it as "PVE", because I don't think it really belongs in the same category as what I would call PVE content, personally.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I'm going to break in here with another statement of the main caveat I have, which is that this sort of content is fine for a PVP server or instance, but I would personally not want to mark any instance that has this sort of content on it as "PVE", because I don't think it really belongs in the same category as what I would call PVE content, personally.

Radiac, you use the term "instance" in a way that I don't understand your meaning. Could you explain, please?


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Radiac wrote:
I'm going to break in here with another statement of the main caveat I have, which is that this sort of content is fine for a PVP server or instance, but I would personally not want to mark any instance that has this sort of content on it as "PVE", because I don't think it really belongs in the same category as what I would call PVE content, personally.
Radiac, you use the term "instance" in a way that I don't understand your meaning. Could you explain, please?

Pretty sure he is referring to the "world instance" as is part of megaserver design, essentially it can be seen as "virtual servers" for the open world areas (instead of physical servers) but with the benefit of being able to communicate and travel seamlessly between those "servers". Only other term/name that I have heard used for this is "channel".

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In CoX, the world map was

In CoX, the world map was sectioned off into zones using War Walls, and the different zones had different rules of engagement.. Warburg was a PVP zone, and Atlas Park was not.

In CoT, there will be no War Walls, it will be all one big map. As such, any type of "PVP area" cannot be handled in that manner, but it might be handled more like "Atlas Park-01" and "Atlas Park-02" in CoX. So there might be several copies (called instances, from what I know of CoX and GW2) of the game world map running at the same time, with the players being able to jump form one to another, based on wanting to team up with a friend, etc. GW2 has zones still, but it also has instances of those zones too, like CoX had. In GW2 (and in CoX, I believe) these different copies of the outdoor zone maps are usually called instances. Atlas Park-01 and so forth were different instances of Atlas Park. In GW2, they expand and make more instances of a zone when the population gets too large, then they contract and collapse instances, essentially recombining two low-pop instances into a single instance to make it feel more well-populated. You sometimes get a message asking you to allow them to relocate you on a different instance so they can accomplish this, and it will happen automatically if you go from the zone you're in to another zone anyway. Sometimes you want to jump to a different instance of Sparkfly Fen to join your SG on the Tequatl raid they're doing, but the game won't let you, because that instance is already full, etc.

I believe CoT is planning on doing that too, but with the entire world map, since there will be no War Walls.

So if you want to make "Titan City-02" a zone that has these sort of "environment-altering" events happening all the time, fine by me. I personally would then label that as a "PVP instance" if I had to choose one label or the other. I would prefer they avoid having those sort of events on any "PVE instance" if the instances are going to have tags like that.

Of course, whether or not they have the resources to actually have a whole different set of events for the different types of instances in another problem. You probably don't get two separate instances (PVE and PVP) done before the game rolls out, I imagine. So one type of events, most likely, is all they'll be able to get done by launch. I would strongly suspect that the "totally non-competitive PVE" type is the type they'll choose to do first, if they do the competitive stuff at all.

The hard part of that, to me, is having outdoor, public events that happen, and having them be things that both heroes and villains can participate in without trying to operate against each other such that it turns into PVP. What you might have to do is have different areas be "seedy" and have all the outdoor events be villainous, and have other areas be "clean" and have only heroic events there. Then, the heroes in the clean areas can and will do outdoor events, and the villains will stick to indoor missions, TFs, etc in those areas. Likewise, the villains in the "seedy" areas will have outdoor events to do, and the heroes in those areas will have to stick to door missions and TFs. Generic outdoor street sweeping could still happen in both I guess. It probably doesn't matter why my villain is beating up Hellions in Perez Park after-all, and heroes will beat up mobs in any neighborhood, regardless, as long as they're seen as "the bad guys". Ooh! Then you could also have "co-op" that require hero/villain cooperation like the Crash Site, and those would have cooperative "heroes and villains fighting for a common cause" stuff happening, if enough of that can be written.

I suppose I could imagine there might be a cordoned-off island or something where the competitive "fight for a side" type stuff could be conducted such that it's limited to just that area, but that's tantamount to making War Walls again, isn't it? For that matter, so is the "seedy/clean/co-op" idea I just typed above. Hmmmm....

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Your ability to find and pick at nits in my suggestion makes me think we are on the right track. (no offense meant, despite the loaded vocabulary) If it was completely incompatible with CoT, I'm sure you would not have done so. So lets work on a couple of the points where we don't see eye to eye.

What you call 'pick at nits' are major concerns I have with your suggestion. Minimizing my opinion this way is not how we can see eye to eye.

In my opinion where our breakdown is lies not in us understanding each other, but in understanding the nature of the discussion. You see, I am not telling you that I think your suggestion is incompatible with CoT. I am not saying you have a bad idea or it is wrong at all. I am telling you why I don't like it and my reason behind feeling that way.

Huckleberry wrote:

I fully expect that the results of power shift will have a different effect on different factions.

and

Huckleberry wrote:

So, you see, power does not have to be an expression of violent opposition.

I had never assumed the power shift would be the same in all instances and I did not expect these power struggles to be all violent. It was why I had asked the questions I asked previously and no response gave me the impression of that or I would have said every zone's character is the same or how you have turned the streets into open conflict warzones. My thoughts are that power struggles in zones limit the zones character options.

So with a response like this:

Huckleberry wrote:

When I say power, I mean the power to attain their goals in that zone. So if the peaceful sewer dwelling sludge people have the most power in their zone (because of the actions of the player characters, remember, not necessarily because the sludge people are killing the other factions), then I would expect a lot of content geared towards supporting the factions who want to fight against them; and all the conflicting drama that would entail, knowing what we know about their peaceful nature.

You are presupposing a goal for a faction that requires some measure of fluctuating conflict. My example of the sewer mutants was to show that a group can be designed in a way that is counter to faction power struggles. Not that it can't be twisted to fit that type of concept.
To be clear, I am not saying, nor have ever said that content can't be designed to fit your suggestion. I am saying your suggestion can limit content beyond what I would like to see.
Look at a possible result of your proposed way to handle the sewer mutants in relation to their purpose.
The original purpose of the sewer mutant was to create a faction that at first glance seem terrible and horrific but only through exploring a series of missions do you find that is not true. At which point the character is faced with the results of their actions up until this point. If they had fought them at every turn or not will be a point that becomes a keystone in your characters development.
Now look at the possibility of what can happen when you allow players to shift this groups power. In your example the surprise and impact of how the sewer mutants actually are peaceful could be lessened by just taking a mission to shift their power.

From my perspective, it is not a matter of finding a way to make stories fit this faction power struggle mechanic. It's about the stories themselves.
Just to be clear, I understand that each zone can have a different and separate character. I get that in many cases the lore and content can co-exist without issue.
But For me, in this game and genre, I place a greater weight on the freedom of the devs to write and design content over the effects of area manipulation that you are suggesting. Especially when there are other ways to create dynamic and fluctuating content over the course of a single or multiple character progressions that are less limiting.

You are free to feel different than me, which it seems you do. I respect that and I am not trying to convince you otherwise. For us to see eye to eye, as you say, we need to respect that what we value in the game might not be the same.

Huckleberry wrote:

We can address the other points separately, but let's keep the encyclopedic walls of text to a single point at a time for simplicity.

I had debated deleting my previous post after it was finished due to its length but decided that this was a conversation between you and i and if anyone else wished to join they would have to accept the length. But I agree that the posts are too long to discuss properly. Unless you have anything to add in regards to how your suggestion affects content and lore development (for good or ill) we can move on.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

In CoT, there will be no War Walls, it will be all one big map. As such, any type of "PVP area" cannot be handled in that manner, but it might be handled more like "Atlas Park-01" and "Atlas Park-02" in CoX. So there might be several copies (called instances, from what I know of CoX and GW2) of the game world map running at the same time, with the players being able to jump form one to another, based on wanting to team up with a friend, etc. GW2 has zones still, but it also has instances of those zones too, like CoX had. In GW2 (and in CoX, I believe) these different copies of the outdoor zone maps are usually called instances. Atlas Park-01 and so forth were different instances of Atlas Park. In GW2, they expand and make more instances of a zone when the population gets too large, then they contract and collapse instances, essentially recombining two low-pop instances into a single instance to make it feel more well-populated. You sometimes get a message asking you to allow them to relocate you on a different instance so they can accomplish this, and it will happen automatically if you go from the zone you're in to another zone anyway. Sometimes you want to jump to a different instance of Sparkfly Fen to join your SG on the Tequatl raid they're doing, but the game won't let you, because that instance is already full, etc.

Thank you for the quick explanation. that really helps, because I was thinking of an "instance" as a mission, and I wasn't sure that's what you meant; and lo, it wasn't.
I think your idea of having different parallel worlds where in one will be more heroic and another would be more villianous, etc., has some serious merit.

Cheers.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

The hard part of that, to me, is having outdoor, public events that happen, and having them be things that both heroes and villains can participate in without trying to operate against each other such that it turns into PVP. What you might have to do is have different areas be "seedy" and have all the outdoor events be villainous, and have other areas be "clean" and have only heroic events there.

I don't think it will be that difficult to have public events that are suitable for multiple alignments at once. So far, as it has been explained, alignment is not going to bar you from content. The key for many of things in the game will be choices you make in how to encounter them. Remember the alignment system is not Hero, Villain, Vigilante, Rogue. Its Lawful, Violence and Honor. If you are lawful you will choose one way to encounter it, if you are unlawful another way. Same with violence and honor. To put it in comic book terms, Spiderman will handle an encounter differently than Punisher who will handle it differently than Doctor Oc.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

You are presupposing a goal for a faction that requires some measure of fluctuating conflict. My example of the sewer mutants was to show that a group can be designed in a way that is counter to faction power struggles. Not that it can't be twisted to fit that type of concept.
To be clear, I am not saying, nor have ever said that content can't be designed to fit your suggestion. I am saying your suggestion can limit content beyond what I would like to see.

Well, of course! We are playing an MMO in which our character creation is all about assigning powersets geared towards one purpose, and one purpose only: violent conflict. You don't see any powers designed to filter undrinkable water or enable perfect language translation do you? If a faction is not involved in some sort of conflict then it would not be a candidate for the faction power struggle then, would it? It would be a neutral party in that balance of power. The lore should be the driver, not the power balance mechanic.

Brainbot wrote:

Look at a possible result of your proposed way to handle the sewer mutants in relation to their purpose.
The original purpose of the sewer mutant was to create a faction that at first glance seem terrible and horrific but only through exploring a series of missions do you find that is not true. At which point the character is faced with the results of their actions up until this point. If they had fought them at every turn or not will be a point that becomes a keystone in your characters development.
Now look at the possibility of what can happen when you allow players to shift this groups power. In your example the surprise and impact of how the sewer mutants actually are peaceful could be lessened by just taking a mission to shift their power.

I added the emphasis there. Because the point is, again, that the story that the devs want to tell should be the stories the dev want to tell. Nothing should get in the way of that, but the devs could certainly use the power-shift mechanic to their advantage to tell their stories.

Brainbot wrote:

From my perspective, it is not a matter of finding a way to make stories fit this faction power struggle mechanic. It's about the stories themselves.

I agree completely. I share exactly the same perspective. Powershift is a tool to use to tell the story and to make the players feel like they had a part in the telling, not just on the receiving end.

So imagine you were a player who went into the zone thinking you were fighting for the police against the sludge people. Your mission arc to support the police culminates in the revelation that you described and the player has to take actions according to his or her conscience to support the police in their myopic vision, support the sludge people in their defense against the deep threat, or maybe even promote the deep threat. I don't know, this story was your idea, so you tell me what the options should be.
Likewise, a player could go into the zone thinking to fight against the police and bolster the sludge people, with the idea that they are a violent anarchist threat to support the player's violent anarchist agenda. Only the player finds out that they are peaceful and the plans go awry. You see, those are a couple of the possible story arcs in your proposed scenario.
Enabling the zone to offer different options to different characters depending on th ebalance of power does not have to change the overall plot and story, it just gives players different entry points and other story options to tell the same tale. The power shift idea enables two different characters to exerience the same story completely different ways without ever actually changing the greater story. Win-Win.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Well, of course! We are playing an MMO in which our character creation is all about assigning powersets geared towards one purpose, and one purpose only: violent conflict.

I went over this before. Our character are created to be able to be engage in conflict by the nature of it being a game. Not all stories or content have to be violent conflict.

Huckleberry wrote:

I added the emphasis there. Because the point is, again, that the story that the devs want to tell should be the stories the dev want to tell. Nothing should get in the way of that, but the devs could certainly use the power-shift mechanic to their advantage to tell their stories.

I have already said that stories could be created for your suggestion. But the fact remains that it is possible for your suggestion to limit it.

Huckleberry wrote:

I agree completely. I share exactly the same perspective. Powershift is a tool to use to tell the story and to make the players feel like they had a part in the telling, not just on the receiving end.

If you shared the same perspective then you would not be trying to find way to make a story I told to fit your suggestion. I think we have explored this part of the conversation as far as we can.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

If you shared the same perspective then you would not be trying to find way to make a story I told to fit your suggestion. I think we have explored this part of the conversation as far as we can.

Actually, if you look again, I was trying to make my suggestion fit your story, not the other way around. Since you controlled the narrative of the story in your head, if I didn't get your narrative the way you wanted it, don't blame the medium I used to tell the tale, blame me for not telling your story the way you envisioned it.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Actually, if you look again, I was trying to make my suggestion fit your story, not the other way around. Since you controlled the narrative of the story in your head, if I didn't get your narrative the way you wanted it, don't blame the medium I used to tell the tale, blame me for not telling your story the way you envisioned it.

The story was specifically written to not work with your suggestion in order to show how that eventuality exists. More specifically, this is a faction that should be exempt from your suggestion in every way but due to the nature of your suggestion it isn't.

You originally said that player influence upon the world 'wouldn't be limited in scope to dedicated content' and that 'it would be whole-world and it would be persistent, with a constant ebb and flow across days, weeks and years'. This means that all factions need to have some way to shift power, territory, growth, freedom or whatever both up and down. Not only that but these ways to shift must involve the players in some way.
This all encompassing mechanic has much less room for factions that are completely alien and whose motives and methods are inscrutable, the concept of perfect balance due to mutually assured destruction between opposing factions in an area, friends mistaken as foes due to misunderstandings, areas that are completely controlled and only occupied by one faction, factions at deaths door, isolationist factions and so on. Yes anyone of these ideas can be written in such a way to work in your suggestion but not every way it can be written will work in your suggestion. That's why I say I value the stories higher than your suggestion and why we don't share the same perspective.

Now, unless I am mistaken and based on your current posts, you actually do see your suggestion to be limited to dedicated content. By which I mean not all content is intended to be about shifting a faction up or down. If I am correct then that goes a good way to removing this concern about content and lore limits. To get me past it completely the suggestion would allow for some factions to not be a part of it and it to be only in some areas instead of every area of the game. This would allow the devs to be able to create stories or lore without it having to fit a universal rule of faction fluctuation and I would have no concerns about story or lore. It would even remove pretty much all of my concern about having too much open world focus leaving just my concerns about competitive nature in the suggestion.

In case there is any doubt, I am not suggesting that you compromise your vision of this suggestion. If you feel that the suggestion is exactly how you want it I respect that.

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Brainbot, it looks like you

Brainbot, it looks like you are now unwilling to discuss the other points where I think you may have mistaken. That's cool. Even I understand when we've reached a point of diminishing returns. This was never just between us or it would have been communicated via private messenges.

Perhaps there are others besides Brainbot who would like to comment on the suggestion of using all of the players' activities in the world to change some of the content that is offered to them and to reward those who strive to make a difference. Radiac, for one, seems to think that this doesn't count as the type of PvP he is against.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Brainbot, it looks like you are now unwilling to discuss the other points where I think you may have mistaken.

I never said I am unwilling.
Much of this discussion has been about individual statements instead of the overall issues and as a result the relevant points get muddy.
If I am mistaken about points it could be due to some of the contradictory statements you have made, suggestive terms that frequent your posts or because of the expanding explanation of your suggestion.
This is precisely why I had tried to get you to explain your suggestion in full before we discuss it in earnest, to avoid the inevitable alterations in the explanation of a partially formed idea.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
Brainbot, it looks like you are now unwilling to discuss the other points where I think you may have mistaken.
I never said I am unwilling.
Much of this discussion has been about individual statements instead of the overall issues and as a result the relevant points get muddy.
If I am mistaken about points it could be due to some of the contradictory statements you have made, suggestive terms that frequent your posts or because of the expanding explanation of your suggestion.
This is precisely why I had tried to get you to explain your suggestion in full before we discuss it in earnest, to avoid the inevitable alterations in the explanation of a partially formed idea.

Fair enough. I have had a consistent idea in my mind, but I will be the first to agree with you that the incremental release of the idea certainly hasn't helped anyone understand what I had in my mind. I never thought of actually making it a full-on peer-reviewed proposal, lol. But I really like the idea, so I'm a bit more attached to it than most.

The part of my idea you've said you don't like is the whole idea that a dedicated group of people would be necessary to reach to the most skewed balance of power in each zone. While I think I understand your opinion and why you hold it; in my mind, it gives a sort of meta-activity besides just instanced content, or rather I should say at a different layer than instanced content, that I and my playstyle would find attractive in this game. And in this case when I say instanced content I am talking about the kind of repetitive dungeon style content that groups of players do together.

The side benefit is that when I log in and get my daily threat assesment brief, I will see that scorpion has gained power in the docks area, the Rooks have taken over a warehouse in the industrial district and the neighborhood watch lost some progress trying to halt the spread of ooze in suburbville, for now. I can use that information to decide where I want to go run some missions if that stuff matters to me, or I can just pick up my storyline where I left off, knowing that it wouldn't be affected at all by the powerplays. Of course, if a store opened up in some zone for a faction that I have a good reputation with, then I would want to know that and run over there while that faction still has that much power in that zone. I think there would be a sizeable portion of our playerbase that would be thrilled by that concept, even if there could be a good number like yourself who would not.

By the way, I look forward to playing with you when the game comes out. This conversation had so much potential to go all ways of badly and I appreciate your restraint with me keeping it civil and mostly about the actual issue.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

The original idea of this thread was to have, in CoT, the sort of smaller outdoor events that GW2 has, or something like them. That is, NOT just the full-on invasion events that take over a whole map or section of it, but things contained to one sandlot, back alleyway, or street corner. That then morphed into "let's make a PvEvP thing that can turn the whole map into a giant land-acquisition war among factions"

To be fair, Radiac, that's actually what I was talking about ... territory battles in various pockets around the city map. Each COULD be an isolated thing with no larger meaning (or relevance) whatsoever. In other words, there wouldn't have to be any kind of "knock on" effects from who wins or who loses. BUT ... I was thinking it would be more interesting if out of having enough of these "little battles" scattered around, it would be possible to build on those foundational blocks and start building towards something bigger.

For context ... think about Croatoa.

Remember how the Redcaps and Tuatha de Dannan and The Cabal were all hostile to each other, even though they were all NPCs? And how they didn't just "stand around" waiting for a Player to come pound them into the pavement ground? No, they'd actually actively PATROL territories, and as soon as they encountered an opposing Faction group, they'd attack and go at each other. All over the map, once you got "outside of town" there were all these skirmishes and "turf wars" happening between the NPCs practically all the time. It would just happen spontaneously, because the patrol routes would overlap "enemy" spawn points.

But really, it was all ... game mechanically speaking ... meaningless.

The Cabal couldn't *meaningfully* capture ground from the Redcaps or the Tuatha de Dannan. It wasn't possible to "push" the other groups out of their respective territories (because they'd just respawn, regardless of what happened). So they'd fight, but it was pointless. All three sides had "infinite respawns" and the battles that the NPCs fought might be tactically successful but were ultimately strategically useless. There was no "lasting victory" to be had. Win or lose, the "war" would just drag on as if nothing had changed.

And here I am coming along and suggesting ... but what if those "little victories" COULD make a difference? What if it took a string of "little victories" here/there/everywhere to trigger an Event where there was a "showdown" of sorts for Control of a PIECE of the map by the NPCs, as opposed to the entire map? And then what if the Players got to choose to take sides in that battle?

In other words, what if the PCs allied themselves with the Redcaps ... or the Tuatha de Dannan ... or The Cabal? And what if the inclusion of the PCs among the ranks of the NPCs were what it took to tip the scales in favor of "your" allied NPC Faction so that they can "win" the day against their opponents (either on offense or on defense)? Granted, the victory wouldn't be forever ... but it would be for "right now" and give the Players something to feel an accomplishment over ... kind of like finishing a Task Force ... or an Event.

Then once you've got THAT system in place, you build on it to the next level, and make it possible for one NPC Faction ... with ever increasing needs for PC intervention ... start to expand their reach in a way that can be continued only for as long as the PCs continue to support the NPC Faction. The key "problem" being that the more territory an NPC Faction holds under its sway, the "weaker" it becomes at each individual location, making them increasingly vulnerable to attack the further they expand. This is where the "dynamic equilibrium" part of the equation comes into play, in which control of a few areas is sustainable, but control of the entire city is NOT sustainable, but could potentially happen (followed by the "empire crumbling" the moment the PCs declared victory and logged off). Essentially a system that favors the underdog(s), where groups with little to lose and a lot to gain are strong, while groups with a lot to lose are essentially "brittle" and stretched thin, to the point of being overextended absent support from PCs.

But the whole idea is to Start Small and then build up (and out) towards bigger and better things. Even if the victories aren't "permanent" they'd still offer a sense of achievement because an aspect of the shared world would change because of the events unfolding, and which the PCs could take part in (or not) as they chose.

So I certainly agree with your idea of Start Small ... but I was then taking that "to the next level" and saying, "yeah it's okay to start small, but there's no reason things have to STAY small, even if they start out that way" ... and then parlaying that into what amounts to the MMORPG equivalent of participating in a RTS in which PCs can participate in (and cause?) the Rise And Fall Of Empires within the City of Titans.

Or we could just have the Redcaps, Tuatha de Dannan and The Cabal hating on each other For No Reason and where their "street" battles are just meaningless with no higher point or purpose or goal to be achieved.

That's all.


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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Fair enough. I have had a consistent idea in my mind, but I will be the first to agree with you that the incremental release of the idea certainly hasn't helped anyone understand what I had in my mind.

For what it's worth, I do think you have managed to get across the fundamentals of your idea if not the finer points and I do think I understand the overall concept you are going for.
If I may, let me describe your suggestion as I see it based on the conversation thus far and if I am way off base we can go back a bit and clear things up.

This is a mechanic that intends to provide a dynamic element to the game world by giving most NPC factions a tiered level of significance in a given area which can be manipulated by player characters.
Player characters will manipulate a factions significance through direct intervention such as missions or street sweeping or through indirect actions such as arcs that include a hidden (but logical) element of manipulation.
Individual players can contribute to the manipulation of a factions significance but are unlikely to be able to change it alone.
A dedicated group of players focusing on manipulating a factions significance has a much greater capacity to change a factions significance.
How much significance a faction has in an area determines what content is available in relation to that faction. Some of that content will be about the direct manipulation of that factions significance and some will be unrelated to manipulation of a factions significance.
This tiered level of significance can take most any form from (but not limited to) outright faction territory control conflicts to more subtle aspects such as a factions general influence.
A faction that has an elevated significance in an area offers rewards to players who have gained that factions favor (the reputation system) in the form of special stores, discounts, costume items and special content.
As a counter to the effects a dedicated group of players can exert on a factions significance or just as a way to increase the likelihood of fluctuating faction significance the avenues for decreasing a factions significance become more common or the effects of a decreasing action by players becomes stronger.

Is my understanding of your suggestion correct? Is there something I left out? Now is the time to make sure we are clear.

I am using the term 'significance' to represent both the increase and decrease of a factions tier. So far we both have been using terms like 'balance of power', 'power shifts', 'power level' and so forth. These are all loaded terms that imply an increase or decrease in strength that we do not intend and could be contributing to misunderstandings. Significance is about being noteworthy and important so it has a more encompassing meaning that is not directly related to strength. If you have a better term then please share it, but I think we need a term that doesn't suggest something we don't mean.

Huckleberry wrote:

The part of my idea you've said you don't like is the whole idea that a dedicated group of people would be necessary to reach to the most skewed balance of power in each zone.

Actually my issue isn't about reaching the most skewed levels of faction significance. Its about how much greater a capacity those dedicated groups have to manipulate a factions significance of any level than the average player. In addition, the aspect of dedicated groups is part of a larger whole and cannot be separated without considering the entire issue. It may seem like a nitpick but to me it is a pretty big distinction. I am not ignoring the rest of your post, but I do think that before we get too deep into this part of the discussion we should make sure that my understanding of your suggestion is correct.

Huckleberry wrote:

This conversation had so much potential to go all ways of badly and I appreciate your restraint with me keeping it civil and mostly about the actual issue.

I will admit that there have been times where I had to change the wording of a post before hitting the save button because I had an improper knee jerk reaction. Any restraint I have shown is due to your honest desire to have an actual discussion instead of making this an argument. If we can continue to discuss this with the goal of understanding each others opinion as we have then we can both continue to appreciate each others contribution.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Is my understanding of your suggestion correct? Is there something I left out? Now is the time to make sure we are clear.

I think that's a pretty good summary. I think your use of the word significance is a better word than the word power I had been using. For all the reasons you detail.

Brainbot wrote:

Actually my issue isn't about reaching the most skewed levels of faction significance. Its about how much greater a capacity those dedicated groups have to manipulate a factions significance of any level than the average player. In addition, the aspect of dedicated groups is part of a larger whole and cannot be separated without considering the entire issue. It may seem like a nitpick but to me it is a pretty big distinction. I am not ignoring the rest of your post, but I do think that before we get too deep into this part of the discussion we should make sure that my understanding of your suggestion is correct.

And the way I see it, it should be only natural that a group of players dedicated to accomplishing something would by definition be more effective than a single player trying to accomplish the same thing. And therefore, because of sheer amount of effort needed to overcome the increased effectiveness of the opposition forces as one's faction gains significance, it seems to be only natural that the highest tiers would 'require' a dedicated group.

If an area were naturally populated by heroic player characters and it was a zone of the police against the rooks (such as a starting area) then it could be a zone that is perpetually in the highest significance for the police, not because of any intentional dedicated playergroup, but just by the aggregate actions of the playerbase in that area. I actually suspect that this situation would end up existing in a lot of places naturally. But then I get excited about how a dedicated group of contrary 'villains' could come in and make the neighbohood a Rook stronghold for little while. As a new starting player who intended to be villainous, I would love the power to be able to do that, and I would also love to start a heroic character in a neighborhood that needs my heroic help to make it safe again. (sorry about this last couple of sentences... I know they just repeat what I have said already several times, but I got excited about it again and couldn't stop writing)


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

But the whole idea is to Start Small and then build up (and out) towards bigger and better things. Even if the victories aren't "permanent" they'd still offer a sense of achievement because an aspect of the shared world would change because of the events unfolding, and which the PCs could take part in (or not) as they chose.
So I certainly agree with your idea of Start Small ... but I was then taking that "to the next level" and saying, "yeah it's okay to start small, but there's no reason things have to STAY small, even if they start out that way" ... and then parlaying that into what amounts to the MMORPG equivalent of participating in a RTS in which PCs can participate in (and cause?) the Rise And Fall Of Empires within the City of Titans.
Or we could just have the Redcaps, Tuatha de Dannan and The Cabal hating on each other For No Reason and where their "street" battles are just meaningless with no higher point or purpose or goal to be achieved.

Redlynne, it was this suggestion in your posts early on which gave me my idea for how some of the mechanics would work on how we would implement this shift in the balance of power. I had to tailor it to account for Tannim's comment that we would not have any small PvEvP events. But I think it could still be applicable to something like what you suggest here.
If we do have a PvP area, this kind of growth from small things to larger events seems wonderfully impactful. I am reminded of Warhammer Online and the way that taking key nodes on the PvP maps would enable an assault on the opponent's castle. And once you conquered the castles in all the zones it opened up the ability to assault the opposing capital city. Those were some fun times... *staring off into fond recollections*

Redlynne wrote:

Or we could just have the Redcaps, Tuatha de Dannan and The Cabal hating on each other For No Reason and where their "street" battles are just meaningless with no higher point or purpose or goal to be achieved.

I think this is an unfair exaggeration. A good storyteller using good dialogue and mission design could tell a convincing account of why the factions are fighting.
Typically in MMOs we send our characters through a zone, we are there for a few missions, we think we made a difference and we move on, letting the NPCs clean up the last vestiges of resistance in our wake, never to return to see the place again. So it really didn't matter if the same spawns were always fighting in the same location forever, for ever other player to resolve the same situation ad infinitum. The motivations and the fight are caught in a moment in time and all the players enter that moment in time and then move on.

I understand what you meant, because you are talking about real change over time in the game world being the 'goal'. I just don't want your whole argument to be invalidated because that unfair exaggeration.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Actually my issue isn't about reaching the most skewed levels of faction significance. Its about how much greater a capacity those dedicated groups have to manipulate a factions significance of any level than the average player. In addition, the aspect of dedicated groups is part of a larger whole and cannot be separated without considering the entire issue. It may seem like a nitpick but to me it is a pretty big distinction. I am not ignoring the rest of your post, but I do think that before we get too deep into this part of the discussion we should make sure that my understanding of your suggestion is correct.

This point is a Nature Of The Beast type of problem. It flows from the "fact" that Team-8 can bring more "power" to bear on a single point than Team-1 can. In other words, a "raid" of 50 PCs can bring down a Rikti Pylon in less than a minute, while a soloist might be lucky to achieve the same performance in about 10 minutes or more. There's just no getting around the notion that Players cooperating together are going to be able to chew through content faster than a soloist can doing the same content, thanks to the synergies of Powers being used by those PCs in a group context.

So there are two ways of looking at this.

One would be scaling things such that "every Defeated NPC counts" towards the goal to be achieved. Sort of like a Defeat 1000 Skulls or a Defeat 1000 Rikti Monkeys sort of metric for being able to unlock the Event (high numbers picked for purpose of illustration only). Do it up on a counterbalancing scale such that every Skull or Monkey that gets Defeated within a certain area (neighborhood?) counts as +1 towards the goal, but then also have a counterbalancing factor that can likewise apply a -1 towards that goal.

In Perez Park, the Skulls and the Hellions "fought" each other. So let's say that every Defeat of a Skull adds +1 on the Hellion side and -1 on the Skull side ... and vice versa. In other words, a "tug of war" situation between the two groups. The basic notion is to "drag" the Defeat counter for one group higher than the opposing group's by a specific amount, in this case Defeat 1000 more Skulls than Hellions, in a "street battle" of attrition. The name of the game is to attrition one side more than the other.

Well, in the open (shared) world, it's going to be easier for a Team-8 of PCs to "dedicate" themselves to fighting WITH the Hellions to eradicate the Skulls and produce the necessary number of Defeats in a shorter amount of time. That's simply the disparity between Team-8 and Team-1 when it comes to street sweeping.

And to be fair, I'd agree with you that such a ... simplistic ... metric for unlocking an Event would be biased towards groups dedicated towards unlocking that specific content, to the point of being "unfair" to the soloist.

Now, contrast the above "winner takes all" sort of setup built on straight up attrition, and contrast it with a different trigger condition ... successfully complete 50 Missions in {insert neighborhood} for {insert NPC Faction} to trigger the Event.

So long as the Mission Scaling System appropriately accounts for Team Size, setting things up on a Mission Completion standard wouldn't unfairly give a Team-8 an advantage over Team-1. It would "level the playing field" somewhat in terms of how fast the Mission Completes for {insert NPC Faction} could be racked up. It would still be working on a similar "tug of war" system as above, where each Mission Completed FOR the Faction you're allied with yields a +1 to that Faction, and a -1 to the opposing Faction(s) ... with the Event being triggered by getting one NPC Faction's total up to +50 (or +100, or whatever).

Now, you would still be looking at a situation where "dedicated Player(s)" can move those counters because they've dedicated themselves to The Cause™ of wanting to move those counters, but by shifting things over to a Mission Complete standard, instead of a straight up Defeat standard, you've gone a long way towards leveling the playing field between Team-8 and Team-1. Multiple Teams will be able to rack up the Mission Completes faster (in parallel) than a Soloist would, but again ... that's The Nature Of The Beast. Complaining that a collected group of Players all working together in pursuit of a common goal puts the soloist at a disadvantage if working towards (or against) that goal isn't a legitimate complaint ... it's just common sense. The success rate of the many working together will tend to outweigh the success rate of the few ... or the one. Or to put it another way, there is Strength In Numbers.

The key thing is, at that point, it isn't Just About You™ ... but rather it's about something larger than just one PC or one Player. It's about recruiting allies to Join The Fight and believing in something Larger Than Oneself. Yes, it would be perfectly possible for a single "lone hero" to do these kinds of things Batman style, but it will take work. Complaining that "many hands make the work easier" is not, in my estimation, a credible complaint.

For reasons of "leveling the playing field" between Soloists and Teams, I will certainly agree that a straight up "attrition styled" Defeat counter for street sweeping will give an unfair advantage to Teams over Soloists ... but a Mission Complete counter would, in my estimation, not create the same degree of disparity in unfair advantage(s). After that, it's just a matter of how "dedicated" You and Other Players are at doing content within a particular area/neighborhood of the city. If you want to help "clean up" a specific neighborhood/area of the map, you're going to have to "do stuff" there IN that specific neighborhood/area of the map, instead of going here, there and everywhere doing whatever you get sent off to do by your Contacts. Delivering the beatdown to Freakshow in Crey's Folly for Indigo isn't going to help Keep Galaxy City Clean. Set things up such that Instanced Missions can contribute to the Mission counters I've been talking about, and all you need to know (game mechanically) is which Faction(s) benefit and which Faction(s) lose by a Mission Complete (or Mission Failure?), and where the Door to the Instance is found, to make sure the Door is within a specified geographic area/zone. That way, even Newspaper/Scanner Mission Completes will "count" towards the ongoing Mission Complete totals for competing NPC Factions.

After that, you just need a UI element which shows you "who's up and who's down" in a specific area, and only have that UI element appear when your PC is *IN* that area (so you can make informed choices) ... and then turn the Players loose on the content of that area. The PCs will still be delivering "beatdowns" on the NPCs just like they always did in City of Heroes, but now there would be another layer of "purpose" behind doing so that can result in collective action to trigger an Event.

I'd also point out, at this juncture, that one of the triggers for the Rikti Invasion was having a Team complete the Lady Grey Task Force.

Whenever a Team completed the Lady Grey Task Force, a Rikti Invasion Event would be triggered in a random Zone ... both in Paragon City and in the Rogue Isles.

What I and Huckleberry have been talking about is somewhat akin to that sort of thing ... where "dedicating" oneself (and friends?) to the completion of a chain of Missions triggers an Event that takes place in the open (shared) world. The difference is, we're saying "let it happen as a result of what Players are doing in that area" as opposed to gating it behind completion of a specific Task Force and then having it trigger in a random location. That way, what's done locally matters locally in that area. That way, what happens in the Copper District of Steel Canyon "matters" to what walking (or running or swinging or flying) through the streets of Copper District is like. Is it a "safe" place for civilians with lots of Police presence on the streets? Is it a place overrun by The Rooks and gang bangers tearing up the joint? Set things up right and it could be both ... just not at the same time. And who gets to "decide" which NPC Faction is in control? Why ... the Players do ... depending on who they ally themselves with, and how much they want to "work" towards that goal.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Well, in the open (shared) world, it's going to be easier for a Team-8 of PCs to "dedicate" themselves to fighting WITH the Hellions to eradicate the Skulls and produce the necessary number of Defeats in a shorter amount of time. That's simply the disparity between Team-8 and Team-1 when it comes to street sweeping.
Now, ... contrast it with a different trigger condition ... successfully complete 50 Missions in {insert neighborhood} for {insert NPC Faction} to trigger the Event.
So long as the Mission Scaling System appropriately accounts for Team Size, setting things up on a Mission Completion standard wouldn't unfairly give a Team-8 an advantage over Team-1. It would "level the playing field" somewhat in terms of how fast the Mission Completes for {insert NPC Faction} could be racked up.
...by shifting things over to a Mission Complete standard, instead of a straight up Defeat standard, you've gone a long way towards leveling the playing field between Team-8 and Team-1....For reasons of "leveling the playing field" between Soloists and Teams, I will certainly agree that a straight up "attrition styled" Defeat counter for street sweeping will give an unfair advantage to Teams over Soloists ... but a Mission Complete counter would, in my estimation, not create the same degree of disparity in unfair advantage(s).

While it would seem to make things more level, it really wouldn't. In fact in my opinion it would have an undesirable unintended consequence. Let's not forget the maxim that players will change their gameplay and choose the content that gets them to their goals in the most efficient way possible. In this case, the group of players would split themselves up to run 8 solo missions. So not only would we still have the 8 vs. 1 but we will have disincentivized players from grouping up in the process. I really hadn't thought about this emergent behavior until you mentioned it. I had always assumed in my mind that missions would have the same net worth to the faction whether they were being conducted solo or in a group. I'm going to have to rethink this and would probably have to award the faction a per-participant-per mission score rather than just a per-mission score to prevent it. So there goes that idea.

Redlynne wrote:

The key thing is, at that point, it isn't Just About You™ ... but rather it's about something larger than just one PC or one Player. It's about recruiting allies to Join The Fight and believing in something Larger Than Oneself.
If you want to help "clean up" a specific neighborhood/area of the map, you're going to have to "do stuff" there IN that specific neighborhood/area of the map, instead of going here, there and everywhere doing whatever you get sent off to do by your Contacts. Delivering the beatdown to Freakshow in Crey's Folly for Indigo isn't going to help Keep Galaxy City Clean. Set things up such that Instanced Missions can contribute to the Mission counters I've been talking about, and all you need to know (game mechanically) is which Faction(s) benefit and which Faction(s) lose by a Mission Complete (or Mission Failure?), and where the Door to the Instance is found, to make sure the Door is within a specified geographic area/zone. That way, even Newspaper/Scanner Mission Completes will "count" towards the ongoing Mission Complete totals for competing NPC Factions.

Bingo.

Redlynne wrote:

After that, you just need a UI element which shows you "who's up and who's down" in a specific area, and only have that UI element appear when your PC is *IN* that area (so you can make informed choices)

My preference would be to have some sort of citywide scanner so you would know to run over to another section of town to help or hinder the situation there.

Or maybe... if you've reached a certain reputation with a faction, they will alert you to their status in the zones they have an interest. Maybe you buy a communicator device or enable a beacon like the bat signal from them to grant this ...

Redlynne wrote:

The PCs will still be delivering "beatdowns" on the NPCs just like they always did in City of Heroes, but now there would be another layer of "purpose" behind doing so that can result in collective action to trigger an Event.
That way, what happens in the Copper District of Steel Canyon "matters" to what walking (or running or swinging or flying) through the streets of Copper District is like. Is it a "safe" place for civilians with lots of Police presence on the streets? Is it a place overrun by The Rooks and gang bangers tearing up the joint? Set things up right and it could be both ... just not at the same time. And who gets to "decide" which NPC Faction is in control? Why ... the Players do ... depending on who they ally themselves with, and how much they want to "work" towards that goal.

I hope this gets you as excited as it does me.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

I think that's a pretty good summary. I think your use of the word significance is a better word than the word power I had been using. For all the reasons you detail.

I was beginning to worry that I was missing something but I'm glad to see that we are on the same page in regards to what your suggestion is. We were both using the term 'power' which was causing problems in communication. Still I am happy to have a term than is less likely to cause confusion.
For the record, with a few minor differences, that summary is basically how I had understood your suggestion from post #94 and your response in #96 solidified my estimation of it.

Huckleberry wrote:

And the way I see it, it should be only natural that a group of players dedicated to accomplishing something would by definition be more effective than a single player trying to accomplish the same thing. And therefore, because of sheer amount of effort needed to overcome the increased effectiveness of the opposition forces as one's faction gains significance, it seems to be only natural that the highest tiers would 'require' a dedicated group.

You are right, a group is going to be able to accomplish more than an individual by the nature of game mechanics. But as I said this is only a component of a larger issue. Discussing the components without considering the entirety of my opinion will only lead to things getting muddy and misunderstood.

So now let me tell you my opinion on this aspect in full and explain why it is an issue for me. I am going to try to keep this short but I suspect I won't succeed. Before I start I want you to know that I don't expect you to respond to each of my points but instead focus on the overall issue I have.

I am of the opinion that game mechanics that are designed to have players work in opposition have a separating effect which causes players to divide into smaller groups. What I desire from this game is as few reasons for the players to divide as possible. Therefore my overall issue is that this suggestion will work counter to my desire for as co-operative a game as possible.

I have a few reasons for having my opinion that your suggestion will act towards dividing players into groups.
When I say groups I don't just mean those that support various factions, I also mean those who play a lot (devoted), those who play much less (casual), those who work towards a specific goal (dedicated) and those who just let the game take them where it will (indifferent). It's true that many of these divisions, faction support excluded, will occur naturally but a mechanic design that allows players to oppose each other will intensify this division. This division become more extensive when you have multiple factions to support.

As we have already determined, content relating to manipulating a factions significance will be designed as a way to increase or decrease this significance. Its obvious that when someone is faced with a choice of supporting or opposing one faction that they will choose to stand on the side they want to. This gives players another thing to consider when they team which can cause players to pick sides. When you look at each group I described above with this thought in mind you start to see all these venn diagrams where there are more reasons to avoid a team than to join one.

Which brings us to a point that blacke4dawn touched upon HERE and Tannim expanded upon HERE.

This is what I was talking about when I spoke of a dedicated group's greater capacity to manipulate a factions significance.
Let me explain my reasoning on this point so my thought are not confused with theirs.
With players choosing which faction to support and which faction to oppose it is only natural that they seek like minded players to give themselves a greater capacity to manipulate their factions significance. I call these groups 'dedicated' because they are working towards a common goal. There is nothing inherently wrong with dedicated groups, players in a team or guild can be classified as a dedicated group. Where these dedicated groups become a factor in my issue is when you introduce mechanics which allow players to oppose each other.

Because players will be prone to joining like minded players and because the mechanics of the suggestion put players in opposition, it is inevitable that groups begin to form that are more dedicated to manipulating faction significance. Groups whose dedication extends beyond the immediate, which in turn bring rise to groups that oppose them.
What happens as a result of these groups forming is that anyone not a part of these groups has an almost nonexistent capacity to manipulate faction significance in comparison to those dedicated to this goal. This disparity of capacity is not an equal comparison, so much so that a dedicate group can overcome opposition by a much much larger group of players who are not dedicated. This puts players who are not part of one of these dedicated groups in a position to chose to join a dedicated group or have an inconsequential influence on faction significance and accept the results of the dedicated groups conflict.
In short it is a factor in dividing the players.

At this point we should discuss the counter measure you included in your suggestion to deal with a dedicated groups influence.
As a reminder, the counter measure is one designed to make it more difficult to maintain a factions significance but it does not affect the capacity to earn faction significance.
Because the mechanic of the counter measure is one designed to affect maintaining and not raising a factions significance its only purpose is to lower a factions significance.
This net result is a sort of dynamic equilibrium. There are forces that work against one other, in this case one side raising faction significance and the other lowering it, the inclusion of your counter measure mechanic ensures a balance between the two forces.
This dynamic equilibrium definitely could (depending on the math involved) keep one side from dominating the other and that is a good thing. But it is also likely to have a much smaller variation in outcome. The dominant force will keep faction significance at the maximum they can attain then drop for a minimum period before returning it back to the maximum they can attain.
Without additional counter measures beyond just adding weight to the underdog efforts, the result is nothing more than a delaying action which is factored in as cost of doing business.

Therefore, in regards to my overall issue of dividing players into groups, the counter measure does very little.

The rewards you suggest for a factions significance can also be a way that divides players. More specifically the 'special content' rewards. Having content that can only be engaged in by the winning side of a competition means that the losing side is further divided from the winning. Conversely, having content that can only be engaged in by the losing side equally divides players.
Now this type of dividing is not nearly as important to me than the other types. As a reward in your suggestion it is fine because by the point this faction required content becomes available it is after the players have already divided into all the groups I described earlier.

This brings me to the mechanics of alignment and faction favor (reputation). I am bringing it up again because you have not explained what you believe these to entail.
To remind you of my interpretation of what alignment and reputation are and the mechanics involved I am going to restate it.

Alignment is the sum of the decision you have made playing your character and is made up of 'lawful', 'violence' and 'honor' components. There is a separate aspect related to but unaffected by alignment and that is how you define your character, a kind of title you bestow on yourself such as hero, villain, rogue or vigilante. This is a system in which you define your character through both action and choice. There could possibly be content only available based on your title or alignment, but that content does not require everyone on a team to have the same alignment or title. I get this opinion from a page on the kickstarter HERE and more recently from Tannims post in this very thread HERE as well as various other sources such as the Q&A the devs did in Paragon Chat.

Reputation is the sum of your interaction with a specific faction. This system will have the various factions react to you based on your reputation with them. It is a system designed to provide a dynamic individual interaction with the world based on your actions. This too could possibly have content related to your reputation with a faction but again not everyone will need the same reputation to join in on this content. Additionally there is the possibility for rewards of special costume parts and badges. This interpretation comes from this page in the kickstarter HERE as well as different hints the devs have dropped over the years and the Q&A.

Well, I was right, I couldn't keep it short.
Anyway, to sum up, these are the reasons and thought processes that led me to form the opinion that mechanics in which players act in opposition will split a player base. My desire is for as co-operative a game as possible. So my overall issue is that your suggestion will have more of a negative effect on my desire than it offers me in return.

Huckleberry wrote:

If an area were naturally populated by heroic player characters and it was a zone of the police against the rooks (such as a starting area) then it could be a zone that is perpetually in the highest significance for the police, not because of any intentional dedicated playergroup, but just by the aggregate actions of the playerbase in that area. I actually suspect that this situation would end up existing in a lot of places naturally. But then I get excited about how a dedicated group of contrary 'villains' could come in and make the neighbohood a Rook stronghold for little while. As a new starting player who intended to be villainous, I would love the power to be able to do that, and I would also love to start a heroic character in a neighborhood that needs my heroic help to make it safe again.

It's possible that in some of the lower level areas it will be easier for a player to have a visible effect but I think once you reach a certain point in progression the stuff I describe above is inevitable and individual effort becomes unnoticeable.
As I have said a few times now, I think there are other ways to have a dynamic reactive world without resorting to having players oppose each other.

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I always envisioned 3

I always envisioned 3 instanced worlds. (same map, just the sky is tinted to reflect the instance, and few textures might be altered, bus stops and the like)

one Blue, one Red, one Purple.

in the Blue tinted sky world, Heroes can stop a bank robbery.
in that same bank, in the Red tinted sky world, Villains can perpetrate the bank robbery, because... reasons, mother was sick, need money for operation.
in the same bank, in the Purple tinted sky world, Heroes and Villains would battle each other in the same bank, making it a PvP event.

same goes for thugs on the street corner..
in Blue, tried to stop tugs.
in Red, tried to snatch a purse with cops near by.
in Purple, Heroes wait in hiding for someone to try and snatch a purse from a civilian, and jump in.

I don't know if this is what will be, but if it turns out to be something akin to this scenario, it should appeal to allot of n00b's just discovering this game.

If not like what i described, it could perpetually turn off new players, making excuses that immersion, believability, doesn't exist, and their experience in this game wasn't fulfilling.

I know CoT isn't solely aimed at those players per-se, but for us, CoH/V fans. Still, i feel the world should try to stay consistent, and not change from hood to hood, one being bad, while the one next to it is good, and a player can't interact in it unless their Alignments/Stats are within a certain range. That might be very very off putting for a number of players, including me.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

The rewards you suggest for a factions significance can also be a way that divides players. More specifically the 'special content' rewards. Having content that can only be engaged in by the winning side of a competition means that the losing side is further divided from the winning. Conversely, having content that can only be engaged in by the losing side equally divides players.
Now this type of dividing is not nearly as important to me than the other types. As a reward in your suggestion it is fine because by the point this faction required content becomes available it is after the players have already divided into all the groups I described earlier.

Nowhere was it ever said that content would be restricted to people on one side or another. I imagine that, as in all other areas of the game, there could be certain missions that are restricted based upon faction reputation or even alignment, and it would be up to the loremasters to determine which missions fit that requirement. The mechanic I had envisioned, however, never assumed that was a prerequisite. If a character was fighting to help Scorpion faction get to the big resurrection of the Scoprpion King event, that same character could run the task force to stop the resurrection. Its a decision by the player character, not the mechanic. Of course, the same could be true of the hero that was opposing Scorpion the whole time, who then decides to see if she can run the task force to complete the resurrection. Both characters would suffer the faction reputation awards and penalties associated with these decisions, and probably the alignment ramifications as well, but it would be their decision as it is with the rest of the content in the game.

Brainbot wrote:

This brings me to the mechanics of alignment and faction favor (reputation).
...
...
...

Yep. Not sure why you felt you needed to say all that, but it looks like you got it.

Brainbot wrote:

My desire is for as co-operative a game as possible. So my overall issue is that your suggestion will have more of a negative effect on my desire than it offers me in return.

I understand, and I also want to play cooperatively without having to screen potential teammates for twenty key characteristics like a date on e-harmony. But you can't have a real-world effect without some inherent disagreement in what people want the effect to be. I suppose that's the trade-off.

But it also won't be as simple as you make it out to be, either.

I think this will present itself at every level of the game, even without player-influenced faction significance. As soon as the alignment system was introduced, we got this. Two people running a mission together will behave differently depending on their chosen alignments. How do we reconcile one player who wants to turn the power armor over to the police and one player who wants to sell it on the black market? Conflict. How about when we have five people on the same mission? Conflict. How do these decisions affect follow-on missions in a story arc? Conflict. How do these decisions affect what future missions are even available? Conflict and division abounds in the game design already.

Maybe the devs have an idea how to deal with this. If they do, they haven't told us yet.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Nowhere was it ever said that content would be restricted to people on one side or another.

You're right, it was never specifically said that content would be restricted. It turns out that this was one of those 'finer points' I was wrong about when I spoke about your suggestion. In my defense when you list content as a reward for raising a factions significance it does lead you down that train of thought. Like when you said this:

Huckleberry wrote:

if you help out the AWoD, you get reduced prices in their faction's local reputation shop; and you get access to the head shop with the interesting mojo section, or you get access to baby snatching missions at the local schoolhouse

But, that was me confusing what was previously said and what is now being discussed. I said I was going to take only our current discussion into account and I didn't so I apologize for the mistake.

Huckleberry wrote:

I understand, and I also want to play cooperatively without having to screen potential teammates for twenty key characteristics like a date on e-harmony. But you can't have a real-world effect without some inherent disagreement in what people want the effect to be. I suppose that's the trade-off.

I Agree. It comes down to what each person values more.

Huckleberry wrote:

How do we reconcile one player who wants to turn the power armor over to the police and one player who wants to sell it on the black market? Conflict. How about when we have five people on the same mission? Conflict. How do these decisions affect follow-on missions in a story arc? Conflict. How do these decisions affect what future missions are even available? Conflict and division abounds in the game design already.

Maybe the devs have an idea how to deal with this. If they do, they haven't told us yet.

I am pretty sure they have at one point or another. The thinking is that every choice in the game is handled on an individual basis in regards to alignment. To use your example, when the time comes to choose what to do with the power armor a dialogue box pops up for everyone they all make separate choices and the corresponding result happens for everyone individually. The guy who gives the armor to the police gets the corresponding reward, any alignment modification and the branching story line path opens. The guy who decided to sell it gets his corresponding reward, alignment modification and branching story line.

In most cases, excluding the alignment modification, the rewards and story line will remain unchanged as a result of the choice but I can see times when they don't. Taking your example again, the guy who gives the armor to the police could get a reputation boost with them and a IGC reward while the other guy decides to keep the armor and gets a negative reputation with the police, less or no IGC and a temporary power to represent the stolen armor.

Huckleberry wrote:

I think this will present itself at every level of the game, even without player-influenced faction significance. As soon as the alignment system was introduced, we got this.

You asked me why I brought up alignment and reputation and it is because of statements like this that confuse me.
You intermingle alignment and reputation in ways that don't seem to make sense to me so I can't get a handle on your interpretation.

The way I am seeing it is that they are both affected by the choices you make as you play but the mechanics involved for both are different. They are linked but still independent from one another.
As I said before (which I think is a Dev quote from the Q&A on paragon chat but can't remember for sure), alignment is how you react to the game world and reputation is how the game world reacts to you.

That interpretation alone can make the game interactively dynamic and unique. Not just for every player but for every play through.

When I first saw this it was interesting and I liked it, but later, while I was watching a movie called In Too Deep, I really saw the potential of this mechanic.
It's an OK movie with a bunch of heavy handed situation about an undercover rookie cop and the guy who he is trying to bring down. Because the movie was predictable my mind started to wander.
I started think about this game mechanic and how it could be used to tell this same kind of undercover story. How I picture it is this:

To portray the rookie cop type character I create a character and choose the alignment title 'Hero' because that is how I picture myself. For the individual alignment stats I decide to raise 'Lawful' and 'Honor' up because a rookie hero is likely to be idealistic. I leave 'Violence' at base line because I am just starting out and the character has not been faced with anything that would affect this stat in his background. Then I start playing with an undercover method to choosing what missions I play and the choices I make. I start doing missions that help out the 'Rooks' because I am trying to get in good with them (raise my reputation with them) so I can eventually take down one of their leaders. As my game progresses and I increase my reputation with them I am faced with choices that begin to affect my alignment. I end up having to lie so my honor goes down, beat people up so my violence goes up and steal so my lawfulness goes down. I maintain that I am a Hero in my heart of hearts but still the experience has changed me. When I finally have a chance to arrest the 'Rook' Leader the character alignment is different than when I began. This change will be a part of my character as I progress through the rest of the content.

Now I am ready to create my next character and decide to play the other main role from the movie. Now I'm creating a character who has a criminal history so I choose the 'Villain' title. The individual stats are lower on the 'Lawful' scale because I am a criminal, higher on the 'Violence' stat because I have a history of using muscle and I leave 'Honor' baseline because I don't see the character as having really been tested in this area yet. I start playing pretty much the exact same way as my Hero by trying to gain reputation with the 'Rooks' but now I make choices to reflect that I am a criminal. Quickly the path diverges from what I was playing as a hero and I am faced with new content and new choices all of which affect my character differently.

For the most part each characters reputation with the 'Rooks' is the same and independent of alignment. Both character have different alignment titles and stats but both have a positive reputation with the 'Rooks.

The possibilities are quite vast with this mechanic. My hero could at one point become seduced by the dark side (a common theme in undercover stories) and turn his back on the law then later realize his mistake and begin the road to redemption. All of which is based on my choices while playing the game.

In my estimation you can get pretty much everything you have said you wanted with this system that you can with your suggestion except its on a personal scale. Each play through will be different, branching story opportunities based on faction reputation, rewards based on faction reputation and even the open world will react differently to you.
The cool concept of what you do in a mission has an effect on the world as a whole is represented by the way factions respond to you. If you do a mission that increases your reputation with a faction it could open stores, the faction is more friendly to you, contacts open up for you and special rewards like the ability to call on them for help or costume option.A faction could even have a trial that opens up when you reach a certain point in reputation with them (though I don't really like making content have a prerequisite like this, I do understand that most trials do have some sort of gating component like level, team size or mission completion).

This is why I keep saying I see a different option to get what you are after other than having a mechanic that allows for players to oppose each other.

Of course I could be wrong in my interpretation of the alignment and reputation systems and what I see as a possibility is really just false reality.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

You intermingle alignment and reputation in ways that don't seem to make sense to me so I can't get a handle on your interpretation.
The way I am seeing it is that they are both affected by the choices you make as you play but the mechanics involved for both are different. They are linked but still independent from one another.
...
...
For the most part each characters reputation with the 'Rooks' is the same and independent of alignment. Both character have different alignment titles and stats but both have a positive reputation with the 'Rooks.
The possibilities are quite vast with this mechanic. ...
Each play through will be different, branching story opportunities based on faction reputation, rewards based on faction reputation and even the open world will react differently to you.

For someone who understands the difference between alignment and reputation and how both, neither or each could affect your missions, how do you not understand when I claim the same thing?

You say the world may react to you as an individual, affecting your story and the mission arc possiblilities based upon your choices, and yet you have no problem with how that could tear apart teams. You claim to be about maximizing cooperation and yet you endorse this divisive mechanic. Now I am the one who doesn't 'get it.' This is an MMO, not a single player game.

If we optimise the game mechanics for the solo player we are completely missing the opportunity and potential that an MMO offers. I think that potential is far more important to this game and this medium than you do, I suppose.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

For someone who understands the difference between alignment and reputation and how both, neither or each could affect your missions, how do you not understand when I claim the same thing?

I said why I was confused about the way you understand reputation and alignment. Twice. And instead of trying to clear up that confusion so we can continue discussing things you just say 'Yep'.
Seriously, I have to drag some information out of you. I don't ask because I think you are being dishonest when you say you understand it, I ask because this is not something that has been defined and is left to us to interpret its meaning. It's entirely possible and highly likely that we don't have the same interpretation. It's happened at least once in this conversation already because of unexplained things.

Huckleberry wrote:

You say the world may react to you as an individual, affecting your story and the mission arc possiblilities based upon your choices, and yet you have no problem with how that could tear apart teams. You claim to be about maximizing cooperation and yet you endorse this divisive mechanic.

Yeah, you are going to have to explain how this is a divisive mechanic. (I should say 'how is this a more divisive mechanic than what a game like this usually offers?' If you are responding to the original statement while I edited this I understand but this is what I actually meant.)

Huckleberry wrote:

If we optimise the game mechanics for the solo player we are completely missing the opportunity and potential that an MMO offers. I think that potential is far more important to this game and this medium than you do, I suppose.

And explain how the game is optimized for solo play.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

I said why I was confused about the way you understand reputation and alignment. Twice. And instead of trying to clear up that confusion so we can continue discussing things you just say 'Yep'.
Seriously, I have to drag some information out of you. I don't ask because I think you are being dishonest when you say you understand it, I ask because this is not something that has been defined and is left to us to interpret its meaning. It's entirely possible and highly likely that we don't have the same interpretation. It's happened at least once in this conversation already because of unexplained things.

And here I was agreeing because I had the same understanding of alignment and reputation as do you. I don't see the value in repeating everything you say when I agree with it.

Brainbot wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

You say the world may react to you as an individual, affecting your story and the mission arc possiblilities based upon your choices, and yet you have no problem with how that could tear apart teams. You claim to be about maximizing cooperation and yet you endorse this divisive mechanic.

Yeah, you are going to have to explain how this is a divisive mechanic.

You said it. Not me. See the following:

Brainbot wrote:

The guy who gives the armor to the police gets the corresponding reward, any alignment modification and the branching story line path opens. The guy who decided to sell it gets his corresponding reward, alignment modification and branching story line.

How else is one to assume what different branching storylines means? How can a group reconcile different branching storylines among its members?

Brainbot wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

If we optimise the game mechanics for the solo player we are completely missing the opportunity and potential that an MMO offers. I think that potential is far more important to this game and this medium than you do, I suppose.

And explain how the game is optimized for solo play.

Another MMO that was optimized for solo play is SWTOR. In designing a game, as in the design of everything, it is all about compromise. The game designers are going to want to optimize something. In that game, they optimize the story of the player character and the interactions of the player character with NPCs and the ramifications of those interactions upon their own alignment (dark-to-light).

Likewise, with CoT. If we make it such that every player character's behavior and decisions have an effect upon the content they are offered, then we have to sacrifice something to make it happen. We have to either subsume an individual's decisions to the group's or we subsume the group in favor of the individuals. We can't do both. So in stating that the individual's decisions determine the individual's content, we are admitting that the game will be more optimized for solo play than for cooperative play. QED.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

How else is one to assume what different branching storylines means? How can a group reconcile different branching storylines?

This is an example of why I want you to explain things. So I know what you mean when you say things like this.
You make it sound like when presented with a branch in a story the team must break up. Just because a story branches does not mean the players are required to split up. It is left to them to decide to continue on and which branch to follow. And whatever branch they follow does not close the other branch. There is no disincentive to continue to team regardless of the branch followed.
This is no different than people teaming in COH when they are on different story arcs, except now they are more interactive and less repetitive.

Huckleberry wrote:

Another MMO that was optimized for solo play is SWTOR. In designing a game, as in the design of everything, it is all about compromise. The game designers are going to want to optimize something. In that game, they optimize the story of the player character and the interactions of the player character with NPCs and the ramificationf of those interactions upon their own alignment (dark-to-light).

I don't know anything really about SWTOR so I can't discuss that example. Either you need to go into more depth as to what you mean or find another example.

Huckleberry wrote:

Likewise, with CoT. If we make it such that every player character's behavior and decisions have an effect upon the content they are offered, then we have to sacrifice something to make it happen. We have to either subsume an individual's decisions to the group's or we subsume the group in favor of the individuals. We can't do both. So in stating that the individual's decisions determine the individual's content, we are admitting that the game will be more optimized for solo play than for cooperative play. QED.

We have such a different view on this I am not sure how to discuss it.
You are saying, if I understand you, that because a story is branching that it makes the game more optimized for solo play. If I am correct in that interpretation than I have to say that I don't think I can disagree more with that.
From my view, the solo, co-operative, competitive or whatever optimization of a game is determined by the challenge mechanics of that game and the story exists to give context to those challenges.
Reputation and alignment mechanics as I have described do not remove any of the established or expected team challenge mechanics from the game and in fact they only offer variety in that dynamic. Individual reputation can have an unique reaction when paired with other reputations.
This doesn't go into ways that reputation and alignment choices can be different based on solo vs team situations or that missions can have separate side goals for each member of a team.

So I don't see how this is optimizing the game for solo play.

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My understanding of how SWTOR

My understanding of how SWTOR handles things is that when a CHOICE comes up, everyone gets to pick THEIR choice that affects THEM. That way, no one else's choices affect what modifiers get applied to MY characters. No one else is deciding for ME whether I'm moving light/dark, only *I* do that.

But then you run into the problem (as Huckleberry has already pointed out) that when you get a collection of people together on a team, they might not all "vote" the same way on their Choices when they come up ... so how to reconcile the differences among a Team without splitting up the Team?

The way that SWTOR handles this is basically to RNG which way the Story goes. Basically everyone on the Team casts their "vote" for what's going to happen and then the RNG "randomly picks" one of those "votes" to direct which way the Story goes.

This means that it's perfectly possible to choose to "turn in the McGuffin to the police" for your PC, get "credit" on your PC for making that choice, but then because you're teamed up with someone who chose to "go sell the McGuffin on the black market" you wind up playing that branch of the storyline even though you chose something else and got credit for the choice you wanted.

SWTOR then "sweetens" the pot by putting different Badges on the different branches of the stories, such that there is a motivation (for a completionist) to join a Team, chose the Light Side option and play the Dark Side story to get the Dark Side Badge without losing Light Side Points because they chose the Light Side Option when they had the Light/Dark choice. This build replayability into the game. It means that your PC's stats won't be pushed in a direction you don't want by your Team, but your stats and choices won't restrict you from seeing "all sides" of the story that is available to play and be seen ... you just have to join a Team (and "lose" the lottery pick for which way the story should go after a choice).

It's a clever compromise that allows for both Solo primacy without sacrificing Team solidarity, regardless of the Team's membership.


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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

I always envisioned 3 instanced worlds. (same map, just the sky is tinted to reflect the instance, and few textures might be altered, bus stops and the like)
one Blue, one Red, one Purple.
in the Blue tinted sky world, Heroes can stop a bank robbery.
in that same bank, in the Red tinted sky world, Villains can perpetrate the bank robbery, because... reasons, mother was sick, need money for operation.
in the same bank, in the Purple tinted sky world, Heroes and Villains would battle each other in the same bank, making it a PvP event.
same goes for thugs on the street corner..
in Blue, tried to stop tugs.
in Red, tried to snatch a purse with cops near by.
in Purple, Heroes wait in hiding for someone to try and snatch a purse from a civilian, and jump in.
I don't know if this is what will be, but if it turns out to be something akin to this scenario, it should appeal to allot of n00b's just discovering this game.
If not like what i described, it could perpetually turn off new players, making excuses that immersion, believability, doesn't exist, and their experience in this game wasn't fulfilling.
I know CoT isn't solely aimed at those players per-se, but for us, CoH/V fans. Still, i feel the world should try to stay consistent, and not change from hood to hood, one being bad, while the one next to it is good, and a player can't interact in it unless their Alignments/Stats are within a certain range. That might be very very off putting for a number of players, including me.

The big problem here is setting proper criteria for what makes one red-side and blue-side respectively due to the three-axis alignment system. Personally I don't want to go back to the "fixed points" that CoH had since it seems too limiting when representing ones character.

Your biggest "fear" here seems to be based upon a notion that the alignments will "divide" the city into a checkerboard pattern of sort, while I think (and hope) it will be more likely that it'll be closer to a gradient transition. Just because "a hood" is primarily controlled by a group of a certain alignment does not necessary mean that there is nothing to do for others in it, I mean traitors, undercover-agent, infiltrators and double-agents are pretty much given in this kinda setting.

Also, unless effectively their only experience is with CoH or "single-faction" MMO's then they should already have enough experience with restrictions in where they can go due to "faction alignment" and similar. On a personal note, having an entire city where everything is equally accessible is actually less believable to me since it tells me that all "opposing factions/groups" aren't and can't be big enough to take control of even one city block so why should I bother with them.

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blacke4dawn wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:

The big problem here is setting proper criteria for what makes one red-side and blue-side respectively due to the three-axis alignment system. Personally I don't want to go back to the "fixed points" that CoH had since it seems too limiting when representing ones character.
Also, unless effectively their only experience is with CoH or "single-faction" MMO's then they should already have enough experience with restrictions in where they can go due to "faction alignment" and similar. On a personal note, having an entire city where everything is equally accessible is actually less believable to me since it tells me that all "opposing factions/groups" aren't and can't be big enough to take control of even one city block so why should I bother with them.

I feel where you're coming from Blacke. But I think I also understand where Izzy is coming from.

In this thread, the subject is small open-world events that the players can choose to participate in. Since it has been made clear that players will not be opposing each other, how would we have small open world events where some players want to help the bankrobbers and some people want to help the police? I believe Izzy mentioned having different tints in different parallel worlds such that the same event can be run in the same location but allows the more heroic players to help the police in one world, while the more villainous players help the robbers in another world.

Will this end up in a segregation of players on different worlds? Possibly. If we do the same thing on one single world but discriminate the participation by what neighborhood it is occurring in, rather than on different worlds, would that be better or worse? And what would be the criteria to grade on the better-to-worse scale?


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Neighborhoods or areas can

Neighborhoods or areas can offer events and challenges that are divided like Izzy idea of red, blue and purple without it having to be divided into instances. Some neighborhoods can be geared more to heroic type activities while others have more villainous endeavors. Izzy's point about having an easy to understand White hat, Black hat and PVP separation is good. Not everyone will pick up the free flowing alignment system that CoT is going to have quickly. Having these points of reference can act a way to ease players into the alignment system.
The devs have already said that there are going to be sections of the city that are for PVP so its fair to assume that some areas will have more heroic activities and some will have a more villainous tint, especially in the earlier levels.

The trick is to not make any of those activities require a white hat/ black hat mentality. Let the player choose if he wants his hero to break the law or a villain to uphold it. It can even be more interesting if the activity has choices at the end that reflect alignment and reputation the players can use to help define their characters.

Take the bank robbery example that a lot of people use. In a PVP area it can be designed to allow for competition between players, but outside of PVP areas the bank robbery would be designed to have npcs as the opponents and would have a specific goal of either stopping a robbery or robbing the bank yourself. After completing the event you choose an outcome from a list that would reflect the alignment or reputation systems with corresponding rewards. Stopping the robbery and returning the money would give you one reward while stopping the robbery and keeping the money another. The choices could be as in depth as the devs make them and include options that reflect individual alignment stats like arresting the robbers or just beating on them for the Violence stat and so on.

The gradient transition that blacke4dawn was talking about sounds like he meant through progress in the game. We start in areas that reflect our chosen alignment and as we level up we start to see the world isn't all black and white.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

blacke4dawn wrote:
The big problem here is setting proper criteria for what makes one red-side and blue-side respectively due to the three-axis alignment system. Personally I don't want to go back to the "fixed points" that CoH had since it seems too limiting when representing ones character.
Also, unless effectively their only experience is with CoH or "single-faction" MMO's then they should already have enough experience with restrictions in where they can go due to "faction alignment" and similar. On a personal note, having an entire city where everything is equally accessible is actually less believable to me since it tells me that all "opposing factions/groups" aren't and can't be big enough to take control of even one city block so why should I bother with them.
I feel where you're coming from Blacke. But I think I also understand where Izzy is coming from.
In this thread, the subject is small open-world events that the players can choose to participate in. Since it has been made clear that players will not be opposing each other, how would we have small open world events where some players want to help the bankrobbers and some people want to help the police? I believe Izzy mentioned having different tints in different parallel worlds such that the same event can be run in the same location but allows the more heroic players to help the police in one world, while the more villainous players help the robbers in another world.
Will this end up in a segregation of players on different worlds? Possibly. If we do the same thing on one single world but discriminate the participation by what neighborhood it is occurring in, rather than on different worlds, would that be better or worse? And what would be the criteria to grade on the better-to-worse scale?

How is "discriminating" based on alignment different from "discriminating" based on faction reputation in this regard? If there isn't then should we go so far as to have one instance for each faction, and possibly even each faction-alignment combo (especially if that faction straddles the red-blue line)? And then create a huge amount of "extra" content to fill every area with enough content to it doesn't look too sparse or even deserted? All of that just so that no area would be "off limits" to any player.

I may sound harsh here but the only thing I see being "saved" in these kinds of segregations is ego since they can't handle not being able to "freely" access any and every area of the map based on their choices for alignment and reputation.

In regards to events only then I see that most treat it as an all-or-nothing deal, and still seem to have a red vs. blue mentality. That is if we go with the PvEvP suggestion then any and every event has to accommodate both "sides" instead of looking at it on a case by case basis. I don't really see heroes jumping in and helping any side if it's a turf war between two or more "villain" factions f.ex.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

The gradient transition that blacke4dawn was talking about sounds like he meant through progress in the game. We start in areas that reflect our chosen alignment and as we level up we start to see the world isn't all black and white.

More like that one (or more) alignment axis won't flip from one end to the other on neighboring hoods but rather that there will be one or more hoods in between that are at various point on said axis so that you can sort of see a gradual progression by just travel through the different hoods.

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blacke4dawn wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:

More like that one (or more) alignment axis won't flip from one end to the other on neighboring hoods but rather that there will be one or more hoods in between that are at various point on said axis so that you can sort of see a gradual progression by just travel through the different hoods.

Thats pretty much what I was saying with the caveat that low level areas would tend to have a clear alignment,

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Neighnorhoods and factions

Neighborhoods and factions are not dictated by alignment. NPCs within the same factions may even have variation in the alignment axis.

We will have a phased instance of disctricts for pvp as pvp is optional. If we have any pvevp (big if) it would most likely exist within the pvp instance of the district maps.


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blacke4dawn wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

If we do the same thing on one single world but discriminate the participation by what neighborhood it is occurring in, rather than on different worlds, would that be better or worse? And what would be the criteria to grade on the better-to-worse scale?

How is "discriminating" based on alignment different from "discriminating" based on faction reputation in this regard? If there isn't then should we go so far as to have one instance for each faction, and possibly even each faction-alignment combo (especially if that faction straddles the red-blue line)? And then create a huge amount of "extra" content to fill every area with enough content to it doesn't look too sparse or even deserted? All of that just so that no area would be "off limits" to any player.

That's a damned good question Blacke4dawn. If we want to have content for every player regardless of their alignment scores or their faction reputations, how do we keep them playing together cooperatively? ...or will we want to? (that last was rhetorical, but maybe the devs really do have a plan to optimize CoT for more of a solo experience. Given the demographics, that may be the smart choice)


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

If we have any pvevp (big if) it would most likely exist within the pvp instance of the district maps.

I think some PvEvP in the PvP instance would be cool, and I'm not even much of a PvPer.

Maybe PvEvP could even entice some few non-PvPers to give PvP a try? It would me...

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

If we want to have content for every player regardless of their alignment scores or their faction reputations, how do we keep them playing together cooperatively? ...or will we want to?

Simple.

The reactions of the NPCs to the Team are controlled by whoever is the Team Leader.

So if the Team Leader is someone who is "in good with the TCPD" then everyone on the Team can go to areas of the city with a strong police presence and not worry about it. It basically means that "enemies of the TCPD" get what amounts to a "free pass" by being on a Team where the Leader is "in good with the TCPD."

What this means is that there isn't an artificial dividing line between PCs where you can't form ad hoc groups from every alignment axis. It's not like "villains have cooties so heroes won't Team with them" or any other such nonsense. It means that ANY PC can join any Team, because there isn't an alignment restriction.

However, that structure would then also mean that you'll want to pick your Team Lead "wisely" so as to get your "free pass" through certain areas of the city. If you want to go to the "hero side of town" then put one of the "heroes" in the Team Lead position ... and now everyone on the Team (including the Villains) are now viewed as "heroes" the same way the Team Lead is. Need to now go to the "villain side of town" (across the railroad tracks?) instead? Put a "villain" into the Team Lead position and change how the NPCs of the city view your Team so that you don't get hassled in "villain town" areas.

If it helps, think of it a Super Sidekicking for Alignments so as to make being on a Team a much more social and inclusive activity that doesn't PREVENT you from joining with other Players and having FUN™. It means that every zone is inherently "co-op" as far as the PCs are concerned, but not as far as the NPCs are concerned. But since the NPCs don't form (and join) Teams the way that PCs do, that's their loss, not ours.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
If we want to have content for every player regardless of their alignment scores or their faction reputations, how do we keep them playing together cooperatively? ...or will we want to?
Simple.
The reactions of the NPCs to the Team are controlled by whoever is the Team Leader.

Yeah. I thought of this when Brainbot was saying that alignments and branching story lines wouldn't be divisive.

(yes, I know we've flipped back from small frequent events to teaming and alignments and reputation again)

So let's say you run a mission with four people and the other three people return the power armor to the company it was stolen from. But you return it to that company's competitor for a hefty fee. Your next mission is granted by the competitor but the other three people in your group have a mission for the original manufacturer of the armor. You now have an incentive to split from the group, if you want to run your mission. However, if you decide to stay in the team, you can run the other mission with them and then they can run your mission with you. That's kind of a comprimise. I can see a number of groups doing it this way, but I see the vast majority of groups splitting up at that point, because you are counting on the motivations of the players to stay in their group to be higher than the motivations of each of the four players to complete their own story arcs. Strong leadership will hold them together, but that is because strong leadership can make people act according to something other than their own selfish motives. It only takes one player to act in self-interest to break up the group. It is far more likely for one player to act in his or her self-interest than it is to have strong group leadership, especially with PUGs.

So, I think the cases where players will group across alignments will be fewer and farther between than others think. There will need to be another incentive to cooperate across alignment and/or faction than just staying in a group. Like you mentioned in your description of SWTOR, perhaps award a badge to players who are able to play every combination of story branches for each mission or mission arc.

However, the problem with that incentive is that it makes running stories a grind and reduces the replayability of alts when you make it so every alt has to run every combination of every mission to get the badges. What good is it to play a villain character if I had to run all the villain permutations with my heroic character also? No thanks.


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Wheres Radiac? He might make

Wheres Radiac? He might make a big deal out of this. ;)

What if the 3 Axis Alignment system, locked in.. for Hero, or Villain.. as a Free default.
Once you subscribe, you can get more immersion by traversing the spectrum? :)

Very very New players might have expectations of what a Hero, or Villain, might play as. For them, this might be great.
Then, once they get to know the game more, they will discover that it's not so black and white, and can go Gray! :o
But you have to be subscribed to a Going Rogue Pack! ;)

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

I can see a number of groups doing it this way, but I see the vast majority of groups splitting up at that point, because you are counting on the motivations of the players to stay in their group to be higher than the motivations of each of the four players to complete their own story arcs.

How is this different than in CoH when every member on the team had different Arcs in their mission lineup?

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A couple of thoughts, here.

A couple of thoughts, here.

One thing that some games do, which might be good, when players have different arcs of missions, is the ability to Share a mission with teammates. One might earn credit for a particular mission and a connection with the contact, which can be developed later.

The best/only way I can see PvEvP working, is if the mission takes place in two, parallel instances, or one instance, but with a glass wall down the middle. Instances can allow players to make big changes, without breaking the world at large.

I like the idea of open-world incidents, which lead to instanced content. This instanced content could be affected by faction/alignment standing. I'm not thrilled by street-sweeping, although I know there are people that love it. I find it easier to follow a story, when I have it all to myself (and/or my team).

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Brainbot]Huckleberry wrote:
Brainbot]
Huckleberry wrote:

I can see a number of groups doing it this way, but I see the vast majority of groups splitting up at that point, because you are counting on the motivations of the players to stay in their group to be higher than the motivations of each of the four players to complete their own story arcs. [/quote>
wrote:

How is this different than in CoH when every member on the team had different Arcs in their mission lineup?

It's very different.

People with different arcs in their queue can get together and agree to run a particular arc. If it is a non-branching arc, as long as the players are on that arc they are motivated to complete it together.

On the other hand, if a group of players get together to run a mission arc with a branch in the middle, it pits the motivations of the individual players against each other if they select different branches. Some players will want to complete branch A, some will want to complete branch B and some will want to complete branch C. As far as explanations go, it doesn't get any simpler than that and I am surprised I need to point out something so obvious.

And in either case, if the group has to split up because they didn't complete it in one sitting or because one of them has to back out to change a child's daiper, or whatever, then that is an unfinished arc in that person's queue they will then have to finish. But that was a break-up not due to player motivation, but due to outside interference which we will always have to deal with in any game system. In any case where such a situation exists, you are right, there is no difference between an unfinished arc with a brach and an unfinished arc without a branch. Players needing to complete either will have to make a decision whether to do so in a group or solo, but in either case the nature of the arc having been branching or not shouldn't make a difference.

(Edit, I have no idea why that whole quote is in bold text. Sorry if it looks like I was trying to emphasize it or something weird. But I'm not.)


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Our way of handling branching

Our way of handling branching missions and choice-options for alignment (which may drive the branch) on the team is by simple vote, majority rules, team leader preference breaks ties.

If you have the same mission you can select to have it auto-complete or not. If not, you may be able to go back and complete it by making other choices. The alignment axis are not binary so it will take multiple specific choices to end up effectively changing your alignment.

We bave to see about adding an abstain option from voting to remain unaffected by choices made in someone else's mission simple because hopping outnof the group before a choice is made can acoid the choice affecting at all which some mah use if the option is not there.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Our way of handling branching missions and choice-options for alignment (which may drive the branch) on the team is by simple vote, majority rules, team leader preference breaks ties.

I've never really liked a voting mechanic for teams.

I'd like to offer a suggestion on the method in which to handle branching story arcs in a team situation?
I don't want to do it here so I will start a new thread.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
Our way of handling branching missions and choice-options for alignment (which may drive the branch) on the team is by simple vote, majority rules, team leader preference breaks ties.
I've never really liked a voting mechanic for teams.
I'd like to offer a suggestion on the method in which to handle branching story arcs in a team situation?
I don't want to do it here so I will start a new thread.

Teams "voting" for branching story arcs in MMOs might work if the people on the teams are all long-time friends and willing to accept those compromises but it seems like that could cause trouble for PUGs. I could see where people might "rage-quit" half-way through missions if the votes don't go their way.

I'm not necessarily offering a better alternative - I'm just suggesting that "team voting" probably isn't the best solution for this.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Actually that's my thinking

Actually that's my thinking too Lothic.

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Chances are that given the

Chances are that given the way faction rep will work as people are foing through missions they will be teamed with people working similar missions involving the same typemof faction rep which will lean toward alignment decisions being similar.

And again, it will take many, many choices to affect an alignment change over time. A thpicsl daymof play going along one specific line of choices isn't likely to negatively impact a player character in anway the player doesn't want. With the ability to see how the team leader chooses their slection, other players will know what direction they want to go even without communication. Everyone else can than make their choice or adstain. Rage quitting should be minimized given nature of the nonbinary alignments changes, faction rep chsnges being involved already through play during the mission.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Chances are that given the way faction rep will work as people are foing through missions they will be teamed with people working similar missions involving the same typemof faction rep which will lean toward alignment decisions being similar.
And again, it will take many, many choices to affect an alignment change over time. A thpicsl daymof play going along one specific line of choices isn't likely to negatively impact a player character in anway the player doesn't want. With the ability to see how the team leader chooses their slection, other players will know what direction they want to go even without communication. Everyone else can than make their choice or adstain. Rage quitting should be minimized given nature of the nonbinary alignments changes, faction rep chsnges being involved already through play during the mission.

Just saying that you might want to avoid anything that might even "infinitesimally encourage" anyone to want to rage-quit on a team. Sure there will still always be the random rage-quitter who'll fly off-the-handle for whatever whimsical reason legitimate or otherwise. But giving those type of people a quasi-justifiable reason like this won't really help anyone.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Chances are that given the way faction rep will work as people are foing through missions they will be teamed with people working similar missions involving the same typemof faction rep which will lean toward alignment decisions being similar.
And again, it will take many, many choices to affect an alignment change over time. A thpicsl daymof play going along one specific line of choices isn't likely to negatively impact a player character in anway the player doesn't want. With the ability to see how the team leader chooses their slection, other players will know what direction they want to go even without communication. Everyone else can than make their choice or adstain. Rage quitting should be minimized given nature of the nonbinary alignments changes, faction rep chsnges being involved already through play during the mission.

I understand that players will have self-sorted themselves prior to being presented with mission content. Faction support being just one means of discrimination, alignment another. So that the disparity of possible choices won't be as prevelant as maybe it would be if a mission had people at opposite ends of alignment and/or reputation.

But if we are designing the game around Choices MatterTM and your argument is that it takes so long for choices to matter that choices don't really matter... that doesn't sound ideal. And if Choices MatterTM, won't players just give up on grouping if they are uncertain if their choice is going to be the one chosen? Also, how will griefers fit in with the voting model?


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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

But if we are designing the game around the Choices MatterTM and your argument is that choices don't really matter because players can repeat the content as many times as they have to to get the choice they want... that doesn't sound ideal. And if Choices MatterTM, won't players just give up on grouping if they are uncertain if their choice is going to be the one chosen? Also, how will griefers fit in with the voting model?

Well grouping in general might not be completely killed by this, but I could definitely see this as being one more "justifiable" reason why people would specifically want to avoid PUGs.

Like I implied earlier being on teams where you know and can reasonably trust everyone would still be possible. But without that extra trust you're more likely to run into "strangers" who may be prone to alignment griefing and/or rage-quiting over alignment choices.

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If other players' choices do

If other players' choices do not affect ones own choices, then I'm not sure where 'trust' comes into the matter. It seems to me that, the Worst that might happen is that a player would have to run the content again, from the point where their choices diverged. They'd have the Advantage, then of having seen how the mission played out with the differing choice.

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Quote:
Quote:

But if we are designing the game around the Choices MatterTM and your argument is that choices don't really matter because players can repeat the content as many times as they have to to get the choice they want... that doesn't sound ideal. And if Choices MatterTM, won't players just give up on grouping if they are uncertain if their choice is going to be the one chosen.

Ultimately, no matter when a player either goes along with a voted choice or one of their own, choices will matter. Again, a choice selection doesn't result in an automatic chance in alignment. It iwllmtake many, many times of making choices to cause a change.

Playing with a team making certain choices along the way and having the same missions will likely be the result of a similar line of missions being followed (over a given time frame). Even if a player doesn't "get their chioce" they still get to play with others and experience that player's version of the story and then if they didn't auto-complete, they can go and do their mission and experience their version of the story.

If players on the team have already experienced the content and previously made a choice don't have to force a change and remain unaffected.

Choices can be confirmed by the team leader to deal with greifers trying to force a specific story line by choice selections. Again the default is the group leader's preference as well as confirmation, allowing for players to discuss which way their voting and come to a consensus, abstain, or agree to part ways.


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Tannim, is there any way,

Tannim, is there any way, either here or in the next few updates, we could get an new and more complete description of the alignment and reputation systems?

The way you are making it sound here is that they both are going to drive game play in some pretty specific ways.

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Alignment axis it self doesn

Alignment axis it self doesn't drive game play. It is reflection of choices that have been made, it is descriptive not prescriptive. Choices themselves may affect story lines yes, but not the alignment axis itself.

Faction Rep may drive game play in certain directions. It is, quite simply, your standing with amparticlar faction and will dictate how they react to you. You alignment has nothing to do with this. Npcs aren't hooked into "checking your character's alignment". They are hooked into "your rep with their faction."

The things you do, like defeating certain spawns and choices made may also affect your faction rep.

As far as I'm aware, the updates as they are stand.

With regards to choices and voting and concerns about pugs "going the wrong somehow", would it make things easier if there were team up options to select such as "looking for teams leaning violent, nonviolent, etc...or even only team up with specific alignment selections?

This isn't something that is specified in our team finding docs and I'm asking to see if it would be desirable.

And for the record, myself and others have brought up all the same concerns and more over the voting system and after many days of iterating and considering the affected systems associated, this was the concluded direction. Thus far, nothing mentioned isn't something that hasn't been discussed before.


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This is why I was at such

This is why I was at such pains to make a distinction between the Branch Chosen being an individual choice having an effect on that individual ONLY ... and the Branch Played by the group being a randomized selection from among the individual choices. It means that YOUR Choice has an influence on which Branch the Team Plays through, but it isn't absolutely determinative (unless everyone is unanimous in their choice of Branch). But which Branch you wind up PLAYING does not determine any kind of "movement" on your own personal Alignment (etc.), even if (or actually, especially if) the Branch you wind up Playing isn't the one you Chose.

This is why I keep thinking that SWTOR "got it right" on this aspect of cooperative play through branching storylines ... and the inherent replayability that generates.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

With regards to choices and voting and concerns about pugs "going the wrong somehow", would it make things easier if there were team up options to select such as "looking for teams leaning violent, nonviolent, etc...or even only team up with specific alignment selections?
This isn't something that is specified in our team finding docs and I'm asking to see if it would be desirable.

In my opinion, a LFG tool with options like this would help very much. In fact we discussed this in another thread here:
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/team-players-avoiding-dreaded-msorpg?page=2
starting at about post #99. The easier you make it to find other players to team with, the better.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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As I see it, if we're all

As I see it, if we're all teamed up, and there's a single door mission we're doing, it must be one person's mission, like in CoX. I think that in the case where that mission could lead to different branches in an arc, the person whose mission it is should be only person who's opinion matters, as far as their mission docket is affected. Like if we're all doing Huck's "recover the stolen power armor" mission, then Huck alone should get to decide the course of action that Huck's mission docket has on it after the mission is over. It is, after all, his mission arc. The rest of us, Radiac included, can go get that same mission to start that same arc from the same NPC contact, in theory, and when it's MY mission that's the "selected active mission that the team is doing" then I would get to make those sort of decisions, for my docket. As far as what the team is going to actually do in the here and now, I would leave that to the team leader alone to decide.

Think about it this way, if the team breaks up, the only person who still has a mission to do on their docket is the person who had the last mission we just did on their list. It's not fair to saddle that person with a choice of second mission in the arc that they might not want, in any case.

In the case where Huck and I both have the same mission, and we reach a decision point, I should be allowed to make the decision for my arc and he for his, then the one we actually do as a team ought to be decided upon by the leader, who might be a different person entirely. So if Huck and I both have the "recover the power armor" mission, and Lothic is leading the team, Lothic would decide which path we take as a team in the here and now, but Huck and I could both decide we actually want to do the other option, in which case we's get that as the next mission in the arc on our personal dockets, but the team would be doing the option Lothic chose. I think it would be good to have a decision window that pops up and shows you what everyone is currently voting on, and then you can put a timer on it and let people change their minds, etc. If we all have the same mission from the NPC, some of us might not care what choice is made, and we'd just go with whatever the leader wants to do, while the leader might want to see what the popular consensus is before finalizing their vote, etc.

If there are TFs and trials that have this, I could see making the leader's choice the one that counts, and then teams can vote to kick leaders or vote to move the leadership to someone else. etc. Or maybe you could have the game ask everyone for a vote of a course of action then assign the leadership star to one of the people who voted for the winning choice. Personally, I think having decision points in a TF story is a place where the leader should have the one and only deciding vote, and people can drop out of the TF if they disagree. Giving everyone a vote only makes that decision process take more time and still results in people dropping out or getting kicked, ultimately, I think. The fact is people need to actually talk to each other before they start do the TF and get on the same page in terms of what version they're going to do. I know that there is at least one dungeon in GW2 that has a decision point (Twilight Arbor), and in that case the party leader (which is the person who got the dungeon mission from the NPC, or the person whop formed the party, not sure) makes the decision alone, I believe.

All of that said, none of that matters in outdoor events, does it? I see those as the sort of thing like "Defeat the boss that spawns in a given place" and "defend the defined area for the prescribed time interval" and so forth, which might lead to a chain of events, like "defend the area, then follow the attackers to their base, then attack their base" etc, all as separate events that might fire off one after the other, etc. But even that would be a sort of broken record type thing where it either succeeds and triggers the next event, or fails and the event chain is broken (until it restarts again in 2 hours) based on PC participation or the lack thereof.

I don't even think there would be decision points in that sort of content, actually, apart for "Do I want to participate or no?". It's certainly possible that mobs you defeat in that event might drop tips that lead you to door missions you can do later though, and those would have decision points, most likely. You might even have specific events in the outdoors that always give you a specific mission (which is the first in an arc) at the end, when you successfully complete them.

So like, you do the "defend the school yard tennis court from the advancing gang mob" event, which, when you succeed it, leads to "defend the NPC as he or she travels from the school yard to the old tenement building where the Tennis Ballerz gang is holed up" which, when you get there, is another fight, which leads to "Defeat the Tennis Ballerz Elite Boss Champions, The Williamson Sisters". Then, after you defeat Serafina and Aphrodite Williamson (within 10 sec of each other, or they call you for foot faulting get a free respawn) you get a tip leading you to a warehouse where they've been getting their nuclear powered tennis balls from, which is the first mission in the "To Protect, Serve, and Volley" arc, which has a few different choices where you can either rush the net or run back and forth across the baseline, etc.

That's how I'd envision it working.

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

If other players' choices do not affect ones own choices, then I'm not sure where 'trust' comes into the matter. It seems to me that, the Worst that might happen is that a player would have to run the content again, from the point where their choices diverged. They'd have the Advantage, then of having seen how the mission played out with the differing choice.

Let's assume that the "worst" that could happen is something like what you describe. I would think it might still be annoying to some people depending on if we're talking about a significant amount of time having to "run the content again". Think of it this way: If a given player only has a few hours a week to play it'd be a little sucky for that player to have re-do something that might take another few hours to re-run. If that happens several times I could see that given player being motivated to stop playing altogether.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Quote:
Quote:

Let's assume that the "worst" that could happen is something like what you describe. I would think it might still be annoying to some people depending on if we're talking about a significant amount of time having to "run the content again". Think of it this way: If a given player only has a few hours a week to play it'd be a little sucky for that player to have re-do something that might take another few hours to re-run. If that happens several times I could see that given player being motivated to stop playing altogether.

Let's get something straight here. A player with only a few hours a week to play happens to consistently join a random pug with no team look up options used, gos through the another player's content. Completes it, earns rewards for their time played. But then should feel ire enough to rage quit the game because they have the option of repeating the content to get the decision he wants.

I could see wanting to quit for not getting any rewards, getting constantly griefed with zero methods st their disposal for avoiding or reporting said greifing. I could see quitting the game over getting stuck by someone elses's choices and never getting your own. But that is not the case with the multiple systems we plan to use.

In this very specific scenario very little can be done to alter this player's perception of the game and how it is negatively impacting their play time.


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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

As I see it, ... the leader might want to see what the popular consensus is before finalizing their vote, etc.

As I see it, that's the best compromise I think. Others have asked if a leader's decisions affect the every character in the group's alignment and reputation. And I think that's a very fair question to ask.

So how about we add this little wrinkle to your idea:

When a mission is accepted by the leader, the other members of the party get a pop-up window that gives players who have the same mission the option of

  1. accepting the leader's decisions as their own, and thereby getting credit for their own mission, or
  2. accepting the leader's decisions but not crediting your own mission, so you would need to run it again on your own
It would be similar to or a part of the "share mission" function.

and at any time if you disagree with the leader's decision while option (1) is in effect, you get a chance to switch over to option (2), but not vice versa.

This little addition does a couple of things for us:
First, it sets the expectations up front so it minimizes the possible fallout of unwanted consequences of the leader's decision.
Second, the swap from (1) to (2) in mid-mission allows someone who is not happy with the leader's decision to complete the content with the group without having to quit the mission or the team for fear of getting credit for a decision they did not want to make.

Radiac wrote:

So like, you do the "defend the school yard tennis court from the advancing gang mob" event, which, when you succeed it, leads to "defend the NPC as he or she travels from the school yard to the old tenement building where the Tennis Ballerz gang is holed up" which, when you get there, is another fight, which leads to "Defeat the Tennis Ballerz Elite Boss Champions, The Williamson Sisters". Then, after you defeat Serafina and Aphrodite Williamson (within 10 sec of each other, or they call you for foot faulting get a free respawn) you get a tip leading you to a warehouse where they've been getting their nuclear powered tennis balls from, which is the first mission in the "To Protect, Serve, and Volley" arc, which has a few different choices where you can either rush the net or run back and forth across the baseline, etc.
That's how I'd envision it working.

This made me chuckle.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Alignment axis it self doesn't drive game play. It is reflection of choices that have been made, it is descriptive not prescriptive. Choices themselves may affect story lines yes, but not the alignment axis itself.

Just so I am clear, alignment will not affect what choices are offered to players but may affect story branches? What I mean is regardless of alignment my choices will always be 1 or 2 but there is not going to be a 3 that opens when I have alignment stats in a specific range. For example I do a mission where I stop a bank robbery and I can either choose to return the money or keep it but if my honor is high and lawful is low I won't get a third option where I could donate the money to an orphanage.
Does alignment mean anything other than what activities you are offered?

Tannim222 wrote:

Faction Rep may drive game play in certain directions. It is, quite simply, your standing with amparticlar faction and will dictate how they react to you. You alignment has nothing to do with this. Npcs aren't hooked into "checking your character's alignment". They are hooked into "your rep with their faction."

Thats what I thought would be the case. But when you said this:

Tannim222 wrote:

Chances are that given the way faction rep will work as people are foing through missions they will be teamed with people working similar missions involving the same typemof faction rep which will lean toward alignment decisions being similar.

It makes me wonder what you mean. This sounds like there is something to the reputation system that will make teaming with different alignments either difficult or undesirable. Its almost as if you expect players to have the same mission arcs in their queue when they team and if they don't then those people will likely not team. Thats what I meant when i said these systems are going to be driving game play.
I had always assumed that the reputation system and the alignment system was going to offer new dynamics to team mechanics and that they would mimic COH's team mechanics as much as possible. I expected things like how a faction reacts to you based not only on your reputation with them but the reputation of others on your team and how there would be no obstacles for the traditional hero, vigilante, rogue and villain concepts to team with each other. But I did not expect that basic team mechanics would change from CoH.

Tannim222 wrote:

With regards to choices and voting and concerns about pugs "going the wrong somehow", would it make things easier if there were team up options to select such as "looking for teams leaning violent, nonviolent, etc...or even only team up with specific alignment selections?

More flags in a LFG tool are always welcome. But I just really hate the vote mechanic and think it should be done differently. Players are going to view any branch in a story or any alignment modification, however small it may be, as a reward for their choice.

I would prefer it to be done in a similar fashion to what Redlynne suggested except instead of making it random in nature leave it up to the team leader.

I would prefer to leave the choice of most activities up to a team leader. When a choice occurs that will result in a alignment modification or branch in the activity then each team member makes their choice individually. At which point each team member gets their specific reward of alignment modification and the branching path is placed into their 'mission queue'. Then the team leader again chooses which activity to proceed with. This can be the branch the leader got as his reward, a branch another team member got as a reward or an entirely new activity.
By using this method of individualizing choices any conflict after a choice will be minimized because no one feels as if they lost out on anything. On the downside, repeated playthroughs of the content and possibly the game itself could be affected because many branches can be explored in one playthrough. Despite this I am of the opinion that the possible aggravation cause by vote mechanics is of greater importance than the possible effect this could have on replayability.

Alternatively, when an activity is chosen by the team leader then the member of the team who has ownership of the activity (in the sense it is in their mission queue) is the only one given the branching or modifying choice. The resulting branch is only placed in that players mission queue and only that player is affected by any modifications.You could allow for players to have the option to accept any modification based on the activity owners choice with a simple pop up that says yes or no but regardless of other players choice it does not change the owners results. If more than one player has the same activity then it is up to the team leader to decide which players activity is played and upon its completion others who have the same activity can choose to 'auto complete' and accept the result of the activity owners choice or not and save the activity for a later time. After the choice is made by the owning playing then the team leader again picks the next activity which could be the newly opened branch or something new.

For activities specifically designed to be team endeavors, if the game has any (like trials or open world content), then all choices that result in branching stories and alignment modifiers would be subject to the team leaders choice alone. This would obviously be made clear to all players before the activity was started with some kind of a warning. Doing it this way shouldn't result in as many conflicts if the the activity was designed as repeatable content. I would make sure that any rewards the content offers be the same, not just equal, regardless of which branch players followed.

Honestly, this is how I thought the game was going to handle situations like this in teams all along.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Let's get something straight here. A player with only a few hours a week to play happens to consistently join a random pug with no team look up options used, gos through the another player's content. Completes it, earns rewards for their time played. But then should feel ire enough to rage quit the game because they have the option of repeating the content to get the decision he wants.
I could see wanting to quit for not getting any rewards, getting constantly griefed with zero methods st their disposal for avoiding or reporting said greifing. I could see quitting the game over getting stuck by someone elses's choices and never getting your own. But that is not the case with the multiple systems we plan to use.
In this very specific scenario very little can be done to alter this player's perception of the game and how it is negatively impacting their play time.

The devil as they say is in the details. As a Dev you need to worry as much about the improbable outliers as you do about what you're expecting to be the "norm" because as we all know players manage to find all sorts of ways to do things that aren't normal/expected. I'm sorry I may be exposing a possible oversight in your plans but it'd be better for you to deal with something like that now before you get too far into things you can't easily "undevelop" or account for.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I have been following this

I have been following this thread closely, and, while I am having a hard time deciding exactly where I fall on the issues, what I can unequivocally say is that really I HOPE the devs are following this thread closely also--because there is as much danger as there is opportunity in the systems I've seen proposed on all sides.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Well said Empyrean.

Well said Empyrean.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

What I mean is regardless of alignment my choices will always be 1 or 2 but there is not going to be a 3 that opens when I have alignment stats in a specific range. Does alignment mean anything other than what activities you are offered?

Alignment will not dictate what choices are offered. If the mission offers a series of choices, you will always have the entire listing of choices to choose from. Alignment does not itself dictate anything, it describes what you've done.

Brainbot wrote:

Thats what I thought would be the case. But when you said this:

Tannim222 wrote:

Chances are that given the way faction rep will work as people are going through missions they will be teamed with people working similar missions involving the same type of faction rep which will lean toward alignment decisions being similar.

It makes me wonder what you mean. This sounds like there is something to the reputation system that will make teaming with different alignments either difficult or undesirable. Its almost as if you expect players to have the same mission arcs in their queue when they team and if they don't then those people will likely not team. Thats what I meant when i said these systems are going to be driving game play.

Notice I said people going through missions involving the same type of faction rep will lean toward...the alignment itself isn't driving anything, faction rep may play a part in this. Look at it this way, say there are missions were you are taking out Rooks for the TCPD. Another player has been doing the same missions. Both of you will have been raising your rep with TCPD and lowering your Rep with the Rooks. If at certain points you get to betray the TCPD (honor / dishonor), and both of you don't and end up teaming in the next mission. Chances are you will have similar Faction Rep with TCDP and happen to have similar alignments. Of course this is a very simplistic example not including chances to make violent / nonviolent, lawful and unlawful choices.

Brainbot wrote:

Alternatively, when an activity is chosen by the team leader then the member of the team who has ownership of the activity (in the sense it is in their mission queue) is the only one given the branching or modifying choice. The resulting branch is only placed in that players mission queue and only that player is affected by any modifications.You could allow for players to have the option to accept any modification based on the activity owners choice with a simple pop up that says yes or no but regardless of other players choice it does not change the owners results. If more than one player has the same activity then it is up to the team leader to decide which players activity is played and upon its completion others who have the same activity can choose to 'auto complete' and accept the result of the activity owners choice or not and save the activity for a later time. After the choice is made by the owning playing then the team leader again picks the next activity which could be the newly opened branch or something new/

Personally, I prefer something like this decision, allowing everyone to make their own choices, auto-complete if they are similar to the mission owner / group leader, and then the group leader can choose which branch to follow, selecting their own or another group member's mission. On paper this made sense when we discussed something along these lines in our game play meetings. The issue arose of how the system is keyed off the group leader and how the mission completion works. The when everyone "chooses" an option in another player's mission, they are not effectively choosing their own path, they are in another persions path. Everything is keyed to the owner. Hence, either the owner gets a say in everything that happens and no one else does as far as the actual branching is concerned (it is possible to have selections chosen to key to the individual player's alignment). The vote gives everyone in the group a voice in what is happening allowing for the group to come to a consensus with the group leader / mission owner confirming the decision or working with others to come to a new decision.

Lothic wrote:

I'm sorry I may be exposing a possible oversight in your plans but it'd be better for you to deal with something like that now before you get too far into things you can't easily "undevelop" or account for.

On the contrary, nothing has been brought up in this thread regarding this specific topic which wasn't brought up when we discussed things in our game play meetings.

In the case of the player with few hours to play and not wanting to have things their way, they can:

1. Play solo. The game will scale with the number of players, including our "tf-like content". The exception being multi-team raid type stuff (if and when that is made), and large scale events.
2. Put together their own team and be the team leader.
3. Look for a team with similar goals in mind for play in the team finder.
4. Even on a team that has the same mission as they do, and not want to be affected by others' choices, they can abstain, still get rewards for playing through the game, still get mission completion bonuses, and still have their own personal choice available when they want. Very rarely has a game with replay value such as this been lauded as a negative.

Given all the possible ways the player could have avoided the specific scenario you cited, it isn't the "game's fault" - the game design - which resulted in the player quitting the game because things didn't go their way. There should be ample opportunity for the player to know what their getting into. It cannot be helped if someone decides to play a game with self-enforced blinders on. In other words, you can't please everyone even when you are offering ways to give them what they want.

For example, I had a friend who hated CoH because the auction house made him lose money every time he used it. He said he made more money selling everything to a vendor and it was easier. It didn't matter how it was explained to him how he could make more money in the auction house. All he saw was that there was a fee to list and that inf was being taken from him on every deal. Certainly there were certain drops which sold under the vendor value, but he wouldn't bother with knowing which ones were advantageous to use. He tried it once, saw that he got less than the vendor and determined the entire auction house was rigged against players. This person ended up quitting CoH over how the devs designed a "bad" system and wanted to "screw over players". Short of the game telling him right off how to always guarantee a profit in the market for what he wanted to sell, he would never have been pleased.

Oh, and never apologize for voicing your concerns, pointing out possible flaws, or trying to be helpful. That is something to be proud of. I for one and glad you do those things.


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ohh.. i was thinking others

ohh.. i was thinking other players could treat it like Fantasy Football, where their choices are just simulated, even if the Mission Holder on team goes a different way.

Weather they get to play out a different scenario in the NPC Dialogues AFTER the team disbands might be interesting, but that might lead to other issues of players getting confused where it would start.

I guess, if a timeline is shown of the last dozen missions, with a green checkmark next to a thumbnail representation of a mission, you already simulated your Personal Preferred Path (P3) options on, it could alleviate many players concerns as far as 3 Axes / Alignments are concerned. ;)

ex:

Don't say it... i already know, i need to stop playing FIFA, because these simulated games are whack!? :/

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Alignment will not dictate what choices are offered. If the mission offers a series of choices, you will always have the entire listing of choices to choose from. Alignment does not itself dictate anything, it describes what you've done.

With no in game effect the alignment system is not so much a 'system' and more of a stat tracker. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it but I was hoping for a bit more from it.
Wait, does the alignment system affect which quests (not branches but the start of the quest) you are offered and which contacts you gain or is that a function of the reputation system?

Tannim222 wrote:

Notice I said people going through missions involving the same type of faction rep will lean toward...the alignment itself isn't driving anything, faction rep may play a part in this. Look at it this way, say there are missions were you are taking out Rooks for the TCPD. Another player has been doing the same missions. Both of you will have been raising your rep with TCPD and lowering your Rep with the Rooks. If at certain points you get to betray the TCPD (honor / dishonor), and both of you don't and end up teaming in the next mission. Chances are you will have similar Faction Rep with TCDP and happen to have similar alignments. Of course this is a very simplistic example not including chances to make violent / nonviolent, lawful and unlawful choices.

That all makes sense but you are still only talking about characters on a similar road in regards to missions followed and reputation ratings which is not what I am trying to discuss. That next part of my post was all about characters who are not similar teaming up.
I only have what you developers have said about these systems to go on. So when you discuss the interaction of these systems and player teams only in ways that have players doing similar missions or having similar reputations it implies that those similarities are expected in team members.

Tannim222 wrote:

Personally, I prefer something like this decision, allowing everyone to make their own choices, auto-complete if they are similar to the mission owner / group leader, and then the group leader can choose which branch to follow, selecting their own or another group member's mission. On paper this made sense when we discussed something along these lines in our game play meetings. The issue arose of how the system is keyed off the group leader and how the mission completion works. The when everyone "chooses" an option in another player's mission, they are not effectively choosing their own path, they are in another persions path. Everything is keyed to the owner. Hence, either the owner gets a say in everything that happens and no one else does as far as the actual branching is concerned (it is possible to have selections chosen to key to the individual player's alignment). The vote gives everyone in the group a voice in what is happening allowing for the group to come to a consensus with the group leader / mission owner confirming the decision or working with others to come to a new decision.

The way you worded this is confusing me.
Before you said the vote mechanic was going to be a majority rules way to determine mission choices. Are you saying that the vote mechanic is not an actual decision maker but just a one click way for the team leader to get feedback from the team. What I mean is when a choice comes up in a mission players click their preference and then the team leader gets a pop-up tally of the way the group voted which he could either completely disregard or follow?
If that's the case then I have no problem with that type of vote. I doubt I will ever use it personally, either as a team leader or as a team member but I can see it being useful for players who don't communicate much.

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Brainbot wrote:
Brainbot wrote:

Before you said the vote mechanic was going to be a majority rules way to determine mission choices. Are you saying that the vote mechanic is not an actual decision maker but just a one click way for the team leader to get feedback from the team. What I mean is when a choice comes up in a mission players click their preference and then the team leader gets a pop-up tally of the way the group voted which he could either completely disregard or follow?
If that's the case then I have no problem with that type of vote. I doubt I will ever use it personally, either as a team leader or as a team member but I can see it being useful for players who don't communicate much.

@Brainbot, that was how I had understood it as well. Like you, I would much prefer the leader always has 51% of the vote, with the "vote" mechanism being merely a way for the party members to inform the party leader what they would prefer, and perhaps start a dialogue about it if they have differences.

I would also like to add the options I put forth in post #160 that allow players to get credit for their own mission using this leader's choices, or not.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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After reading Tannim's

After reading Tannim's comments, I am once again impressed and heartened by how circumspect and thoughtful the Devs are being in their planning.

I think one very important factor will be that the players themselves will come up with conventions for managing whatever system is implemented, as they did in LFT broadcasts and conversations in CoH.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Empyrean wrote:
Empyrean wrote:

After reading Tannim's comments, I am once again impressed and heartened by how circumspect and thoughtful the Devs are being in their planning.
I think one very important factor will be that the players themselves will come up with conventions for managing whatever system is implemented, as they did in LFT broadcasts and conversations in CoH.

Today is Thanksgiving in the USA, a day we all give thanks for the things in our lives we hold dear. I don't want to be all melodramatic, but I do want to express my thanks to you all and to this development team for coming together to get us all to where we are today.

And I am encouraged to think about where we will be so long as we continue in this wonderful spirit. We won't all agree with each other, but we all want this project to succeed. So when we think we are driving each other crazy, remember it is because we each care enough to be driven crazy over it all.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

In the case of the player with few hours to play and not wanting to have things their way, they can:
1. Play solo. The game will scale with the number of players, including our "tf-like content". The exception being multi-team raid type stuff (if and when that is made), and large scale events.
2. Put together their own team and be the team leader.
3. Look for a team with similar goals in mind for play in the team finder.
4. Even on a team that has the same mission as they do, and not want to be affected by others' choices, they can abstain, still get rewards for playing through the game, still get mission completion bonuses, and still have their own personal choice available when they want. Very rarely has a game with replay value such as this been lauded as a negative.

This all seems reasonable to me, and it's good to see such thought put into this system.

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I also want to give thanks

I also want to give thanks for City of Titans.

Also, having read Tannim222's story about his friend who quit CoX over auction house transaction fees, I am now 100% convinced that you can't please everyone, and that sometimes it's the player's fault that they're not pleased, not the game's.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I also want to give thanks for City of Titans.
Also, having read Tannim222's story about his friend who quit CoX over auction house transaction fees, I am now 100% convinced that you can't please everyone, and that sometimes it's the player's fault that they're not pleased, not the game's.

Yeah, AND, there are lots of players and lots of games--and that's a good thing. We don't need everyone, just those for whom City of Titans is the right game.

Many, many, many people thought City of Heroes sucked out loud, but it was profitable till the day they turned it off.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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