Um ... you do know that the examples you cite were for stories that did not involve any kind of interactive with the audience element to them ... right? This is one of those cases where Understanding Your Medium can be a tremendous help to you. A comic book is not a stage play is not a radio drama is not a made for TV movie is not a MMORPG.

Ever heard of [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qRDMHbXaM]wife aggro[/url]? Happens (a lot) in MMORPGs, but strangely never seems to happen in comic books. Huh. Funny that ...

In CoX, once you finished a contact's arc, you usually got a screen introducing you to your next contact on that path. Sometimes there were multiple contacts and you had to choose one.

If I remember right (note it was a long time ago) there was talk of some kind of alert system. Thought there can be a bad side to such a thing... Roman from GTA IV for example has been come well known for being anoying calling at odd times.

[youtube]zxMLVlspD1Y[/youtube]

rasharr wrote:

What about, if say in your base, that say your super group could have, would be an optional thing you could construct from resources, that lets you have access to a random pool of missions, that get sent to you as an alert, and have a time limit of how long you can access it. And through these, some of the random missions can be easy with common loot drops or what nots, but some times you can get a rare one that requires a team, but has unique or higher chances of some good loot drops or what ever.
Make it so that you need a base of operations to construct it, and a cap on how many contacts you can have in it that, making it necessary to actually team up with people whom have the other contacts you dont.
Btw new to the forum but a tried and true Coh/Cov champ. My whole house hold played me, my mom, my step dad. I grew up playing this game. Was sad to see it go.

+1 I was just about to suggest something like this.

sev171 wrote:

rasharr wrote:
What about, if say in your base, that say your super group could have, would be an optional thing you could construct from resources, that lets you have access to a random pool of missions, that get sent to you as an alert, and have a time limit of how long you can access it. And through these, some of the random missions can be easy with common loot drops or what nots, but some times you can get a rare one that requires a team, but has unique or higher chances of some good loot drops or what ever.
Make it so that you need a base of operations to construct it, and a cap on how many contacts you can have in it that, making it necessary to actually team up with people whom have the other contacts you dont.
Btw new to the forum but a tried and true Coh/Cov champ. My whole house hold played me, my mom, my step dad. I grew up playing this game. Was sad to see it go.

+1 I was just about to suggest something like this.

Sounds like it would fit well with the base computer providing alerts for timed events and any super team specific contacts earned via a super team faction reputation can send an alert message to...

I never meant that to come off as sarcastic! I'm sorry if that did read that way, I was quite honest.

When I read the OP's message my first thought was for alerts to come into the SG base computer kinda like a new bulletin board, so instead of annoying you with the info it's only there if you seek it out.

I'm not exactly sure how rewards for missions and world savings will work, but the rewards for the SG alerts could be more SG item/furniture related which would be an incentive to do these missions with the SG instead of just all the other missions that exist in the regular game

Kiyori Anoyui wrote:

When I read the OP's message my first thought was for alerts to come into the SG base computer kinda like a new bulletin board, so instead of annoying you with the info it's only there if you seek it out.

I think this was the point of Redlynne's "constructive criticism" of Paladin's suggestion. In a cartoon or TV show we often see the heroes reactively respond to a "Bat-Signal" of some kind because the show needs something like that to get the story going. It gives the characters something to do when they otherwise had nothing to do.

The reason that kind of thing would be semi-pointless in a superhero MMO is because the player has actively logged into the game presumably to "play" the game. The player doesn't really need any extra motivation to go out and find some missions to do because that's what they're there to do already. The only thing the player needs is the means to find things to do - the motivation to do them is presumably already there.

This is why the passive "supergroup computer bulletin board" idea would be far more useful than an intrusively random alert system. If I want to find something to do I'll go and check the computer myself; I don't want the game to randomly toss extra missions in my face if I'm already busy doing something else. Sure it might technically be more "realistic" to have random "fire alarms" go off at any given moment but as a player of a game I want to be in control (for the most part) of what I'm working on at any given moment. I don't really want the game to decide for me what I should be focusing my attention on - real life does that to me enough.

Lothic wrote:

I think this was the point of Redlynne's "constructive criticism" of Paladin's suggestion. In a cartoon or TV show we often see the heroes reactively respond to a "Bat-Signal" of some kind because the show needs something like that to get the story going. It gives the characters something to do when they otherwise had nothing to do.
The reason that kind of thing would be semi-pointless in a superhero MMO is because the player has already actively logged into the game presumably to "play" the game. The player doesn't really need any extra motivation to go out and find some missions to do because that's what they're there to do already. The only thing the player needs is the means to find things to do - the motivation to do them is presumably already there.
This is why the passive "supergroup computer bulletin board" idea would be far more useful than an intrusively random alert system. If I want to find something to do I'll go and check the computer myself; I don't want the game to randomly toss extra missions in my face if I'm already busy doing something else. Sure it might technically be more "realistic" to have random "fire alarms" go off at any given moment but as a player of a game I want to be in control (for the most part) of what I'm working on at any given moment. I don't really want the game to decide for me what I should be focusing my attention on - real life does that to me enough.

That's exactly what I meant by my post, something that you seek out if you want it, instead of bothering your daily travels such as Roman in GTA IV. As far as my history went with SG's, a very few people in a SG actively participated in it, I think this was due to a mix of people not knowing what to do with both resources and not having the information. SG's were usually a few people doing everything and a bunch of other people to get prestige. Not that this doesn't have to be a form factor of super groups. But I think that's why alot of people didn't get super invested in them.

By getting the whole supergroup involved, not just the leaders, it will encourage people to get involved and all work together instead of "just there to earn prestige"

I love that idea, it would be really cool for the SG's to have a different set of stories and missions. You wouldn't expect Justice league to fight the day to day villains Batman himself encounters. I don't mean that this should be implemented in a way that condones solo play, but this would open up a whole other area for a lot more story.