Most people that have played many MMO's such as myself need content and continuous amounts of it. This allows player to not get bored and always have a feeling of worth in a game like this. One big idea that has been in other MMO's and that I along with a lot of Clan members of mine have really enjoyed is random world bosses, and events that pop randomly throughout the map, depending on where the event or events take place decides the difficulty of said event. Although I would suggest making these events a little if not a lot harder than the area they are in because being grouped with good players always seems to downplay the event.
I would like to see something like a rift or portal that opens in the sky or coming from below and some type of AI comes crashing down and unleashes hell throughout the city. If not contained those AI can take over an area and are even harder to root out once fully established. That is always fun for the community.
Also, having smart AI, that can assess the situation around them, Example: A handful of AI have robbed a bank, they come out to find you and 2 other Heros standing there waiting to bust them, they call in maybe a car that rolls up and more AI come out to help them, or if other thug type AI are around they here the fight and coming running to assist. Something of that nature would be great for the player to have to assess the situation and think "they may call for backup, can I take these guys?"
Sounds fun for sure.
What do you mean by AI and why do we need a Rift/Portal mechanism?
Be Well!
Fireheart
AI as in, Artificial intelligence, Baddies, Mobs, NPC's. The things you try to kill or do whatever to complete a quest, Thugs, Villains.
We don't "Need" a portal or Rift mechanism, it's just a way to present random encounters or events that can happen anywhere at any time to give the players an instant mission for instant content.
There seems to be essentially two parts here.
Major event, like GM's in CoH, that can possibly dig in and "take over" an area. Not so keen about the "take over" part of the major events but that depends more on how much they take over and how hard it is to uproot them again.
Minor event, robberies and similar that can randomly gain reinforcements. There has to be some fairly strict limits on the amount of reinforcements potentially coming since otherwise it'll be fairly hard to assess the situation. Though one thing that would remedy this would be to take faction affiliation into account.
Randomness for the sake of randomness can be interesting once or maybe twice, but a year in and 50 random "assaults" or "invasions" later it will get really tired.
If something like this happens it needs to be tied to something that is happening in the world. I vaguely remember the lead in to the Rikti Invasion where we saw a couple Rikti running around (probably under GM control) Steel Canyon when we were maybe level 15. It was fun because it happened once and it was tied to something in the game world.
With a game world that will be hundreds of square miles, I would want small intelligent events to organically crop up in areas if you are looking for it. I do not necessarily want some giant beam shooting down from the skies, piercing the clouds and declaring "HERE! THE INVASION IS HERE! EVERYONE COME STOMP ON IT". It could be a giant portal if that is what the intelligence behind it wants (they could be brazen or just not care), but just not every single time.
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See also [i]No Man's Sky.[/i]
I remember witnessing a huge brawl between Council and Fifth Column on Talos Island right before Issue 3 (Striga) launched. There were in excess of 50 combatants in a small clearing. Every now and then a hero would wade in and get utterly curbstomped by the mob. The rest of us just watched outside aggro range.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Sounds like you are describing RIFT. There is another thread where we talk about the pros and cons of events taking over the world map to X degree. I think COT can do it but it'll be fairly well scripted IE based on the statistics from last month a lot of Skuls got beat up in this area so we're going to spawn hellions in those areas now. We'll also have some Skuls spawn here and run towards the new Hellion spawns until they engage in a street brawl.
Perhaps it can be more unscripted and organic but there are some things that are rooted in place and as such reduce the flexibility of such things. Things like mission doors. You don't want to lock players out of completing their story because the Skuls contact has been overrun by Hellions and is no longer available to issue the last missions in the story arc.
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Every so often in GW2, you'll get a message across your screen that reads "A Bloodstone-Crazed Beast Has Appeared!" which then causes people to go looking for it, spot it, link a waypoint near it on the chat channels, and then a mob tries to take it down. The whole process can be over so fast that you might miss it if you don't get there quickly, given the number of people on the map at the time, other events running, etc. This isn't really a "take over the map and despawn everything else" type of thing, not like the Rikti Invasions and Zombie Apocalypses in CoX, it's just one big boss and it either gets taken down relatively fast or ignored because people are doing other stuff, basically.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I agree with Planet10's suggestion to tie a Special Event to in game story. I like Grimfox's idea that player activity might trigger an event. I'll add to this -It would be interesting to have dynamic ways to gauge how you might be affecting the locale through Leads drops and other indicators. Take Grimfox's example and when a player walks by a pack of Hellion's they might say, "Man Supe's be pounding those Skuls. Time to make our move." Instead of their regular dialogue. Changes in tags or other territorial markers may happen etc. eg replacing Skuls graffiti with Hellion tags.
Also ways to counter this through Leads were the Helions provide missions to get help from players, too...
I think this would offer players a sense of interaction in the world, making choices matter.