That is how I understood it too. You can be a hero everywhere in Titan City as well as you can be a villain.

I think they have also said that there will be no open-world PvP where you can be attacked by another player simply because you con red to them.

They have mentioned, maybe, having a PvP instance of the world which both players will have to enter for that to happen but I don't think anything is anywhere close to finalized.

Bleddyn wrote:

I think it's been mentioned before that they might do a system were the morality of a player avatar would not be very obvious on the surface. Some of the other forumnites discussed separate hospitals for villains, heroes, and vigilantes that of course wouldn't all be in the same place.

This has been more or less my understanding of how things are going to work. Like warcabbit said there will NOT be open world PvP, but everyone will be more or less mixed together in the same zones regardless of your current alignment.

To take this one step further I imagine there are going to be areas within each zone/district that lean more "blue" or "red" as well as areas that are going to be considered "neutral zones" or "no-mans lands". This would mean that there might be zones that are effectively 90% blue or 90% red at least as far as the overall "vibe" of the zone goes and what kind of NPCs you can find there. But those percentages I mentioned wouldn't stop anybody from going to any zone they wanted to. For instance there might be a "strongly red" zone that a heroic leaning character can go to to bust heads or there might be a "strongly blue" zone that a villain would risk going to cause big-time trouble or anything in-between.

Right. My expectation is that while any PC can [b][i]GO[/i][/b] to any part of town ... depending on your Alignments (Honor, Law, Peace), different parts of town will be hostile/safe for you to move around in (ie. aggro on sight).

My default assumption is that the Alignments of your PC will be "checked" against the Alignments of the NPCs in the area on a 1-5 scale.

1 = Low
2 = Mid-low
3 = Middle
4 = Mid-high
5 = High

So take your PC's Alignments, "rate" them on the 1-5 scale, and then cross check against the environment NPCs. If the differential is 0 then the NPCs are Allies (and therefore, Friendly). If the differential is 1, then the NPCs are Neutral (can be attacked, but won't attack you first and will become hostile if attacked by you). If the differential is 2-4, then the NPCs are hostile and will attack you on sight.

Run this Alignment cross-check against all three Alignment axes (Honor, Law, Peace) to get 3 "social" responses by NPCs to PCs ... Allied, Neutral or Hostile. If 2 of the responses are the same, use that response. So if 2 of the Alignment Axes result in a Neutral reaction, then that gets a "majority vote" in how the NPCs respond to the PC's presence (note that matching 3 Alignment Axes is merely a subset of this condition). If there's a 3-way split (ie. Friendly, Neutral and Hostile) then the NPCs are Hostile. Such a design layout makes it possible to create "safe" areas for Heroes and Villains with "neutral ground" in between, but then leaves "most" of the city's NPCs as being hostile to the presence of your PC (thus making Street Sweeping possible).

Now, obviously, I'm probably being too simplistic with the 1-5 scale (could easily be a 1-10 scale for a more nuanced mix), but the important thing is to illustrate the principles involved and the "shape" of the idea so it can be played with.

At least, this is how *I* would want to handle making a city in which there are no barriers to entry, yet you want to have "welcoming" as well as "hostile" parts of town be different for different PCs. It starts putting things onto the path of being a continuum in shades of grey instead of being purely black vs white.

Heh. I figured at least someone (other than me) would. ^_~

The real question is ... do the MWM Developers like the idea?

Lothic wrote:

Kiyori Anoyui wrote:
I like this 5 shades of grey idea Red!

Redlynne wrote:
Heh. I figured at least someone (other than me) would. ^_~
The real question is ... do the MWM Developers like the idea?

Who knows... 5 or 10 shades might not be enough. Maybe they'll expand the idea out to 50 shades of grey ;)

You couldn't help yourself could you?! :D

Tannim222 wrote:

That's inaccurate. Outside of pvp player heroes won't have to deal with player villains and player villains won't with deal with player heroes. It is part of the design of phased instances on a mega server.

Uh, actually, that's not good news (to me anyway). Why artificially split the community?

[img]http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Peekaboo_3ef209_640992.jpg[/img]

Tannim222 wrote:

Interdictor wrote:
Yes - I believe the devs have said that while there will be no red/blue exclusive zones, there will definitely be "bad parts of town" or somesuch

That's inaccurate. Outside of pvp player heroes won't have to deal with player villains and player villains won't with deal with player heroes. It is part of the design of phased instances on a mega server.

As the others have responded I really hope this is NOT how it's going to work.

With what you're saying we might as well have a completely unique (and segregated) "red side" and "blue side" like we did in CoH. In fact this would even be worse than that because you're talking about "reusing" a single set of zones to act as a phased "red side" and phased "blue side" so we wouldn't even get uniquely red or blue areas.

We either have a very major case of...

[youtube]V2f-MZ2HRHQ[/youtube]

or you're going to have to completely rethink what you're doing here vis-a-vis player interaction. This frankly doesn't sound very promising at all.

Kiyori Anoyui wrote:

I prefer this Lothic :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAhwIu56aHE

Major Payne was a decent movie, but clearly it "borrowed" that line from Cool Hand Luke.

Based on how the alignment system is supposed to work I don't even know how they could divide up the playerbase along strict "hero" or "villain" lines to begin with. With all due respect to Tannim222 I can only hope he's smoking some very bad weed or having a mild psychotic break and hopefuly will come to his senses soon.

Nina Guardian wrote:

And how is it even going to work? If there are 3 'types' of 'morality' or whatever? Is someone with high Law, low Honor and high Violence a hero or a villain? What about the reverse, low Law, high Honor, low violence?
And there will be mission which can change those qualities. If I switch from however 'hero' is defined because of a mission choice, will I suddenly be cut off from everyone I knew and forced to a world of strangers?
This makes no sense.
No, I don't like this at all.

The multi-axis alignment is the base of the configuration for determining the hero, villain, vigilante, and so on types of alignment labels. There are many layers as to what has to be considered for going through the process of changing alignments between the opposing dichotomies of hero and villain.

We are not designing a single world with mass pvevp or creating a villain are on street A and heros street B.

And truthfully here, if a layer is playing a hero character and decides to keep start down a dark path there should be consequences to going too those actions. Further more as villains do things that heros aren't quite fond of, in a pve setting we would only set up a lot of causes to problems because the city isn't split by heroes staying on one side of the street and villains on another, go pvp in the alley sort of design.

If so villains could do whatever they want and heros would be forced to watch with no way of being the hero to save the day without resorting to some form of pvp. To which is in effect practically forcing pvp (in one form or another) to be the main focus of the game.

The differences here are not that area of the city is red and therefore has "red stories to tell" and this area over here is blue and has "blue stoties to tell". There is one city and player' actions determine what kind of city they live in. While ther is the dichotomy of hero and villain there is a lot of grey in between.

Tannim222 wrote:

Nina Guardian wrote:
And how is it even going to work? If there are 3 'types' of 'morality' or whatever? Is someone with high Law, low Honor and high Violence a hero or a villain? What about the reverse, low Law, high Honor, low violence?
And there will be mission which can change those qualities. If I switch from however 'hero' is defined because of a mission choice, will I suddenly be cut off from everyone I knew and forced to a world of strangers?
This makes no sense.
No, I don't like this at all.

The multi-axis alignment is the base of the configuration for determining the hero, villain, vigilante, and so on types of alignment labels. There are many layers as to what has to be considered for going through the process of changing alignments between the opposing dichotomies of hero and villain.
We are not designing a single world with mass pvevp or creating a villain are on street A and heros street B.
And truthfully here, if a layer is playing a hero character and decides to keep start down a dark path there should be consequences to going too those actions. Further more as villains do things that heros aren't quite fond of, in a pve setting we would only set up a lot of causes to problems because the city isn't split by heroes staying on one side of the street and villains on another, go pvp in the alley sort of design.
If so villains could do whatever they want and heros would be forced to watch with no way of being the hero to save the day without resorting to some form of pvp. To which is in effect practically forcing pvp (in one form or another) to be the main focus of the game.
The differences here are not that area of the city is red and therefore has "red stories to tell" and this area over here is blue and has "blue stoties to tell". There is one city and player' actions determine what kind of city they live in. While ther is the dichotomy of hero and villain there is a lot of grey in between.

Hmmm.... Interesting. So if this is the case how exactly does the switching mechanism work? How will the consequence be ruled out and how will it get you to the other instances?

Tannim222 wrote:

Nina Guardian wrote:
And how is it even going to work? If there are 3 'types' of 'morality' or whatever? Is someone with high Law, low Honor and high Violence a hero or a villain? What about the reverse, low Law, high Honor, low violence?
And there will be mission which can change those qualities. If I switch from however 'hero' is defined because of a mission choice, will I suddenly be cut off from everyone I knew and forced to a world of strangers?
This makes no sense.
No, I don't like this at all.

The multi-axis alignment is the base of the configuration for determining the hero, villain, vigilante, and so on types of alignment labels. There are many layers as to what has to be considered for going through the process of changing alignments between the opposing dichotomies of hero and villain.
We are not designing a single world with mass pvevp or creating a villain are on street A and heros street B.
And truthfully here, if a layer is playing a hero character and decides to keep start down a dark path there should be consequences to going too those actions. Further more as villains do things that heros aren't quite fond of, in a pve setting we would only set up a lot of causes to problems because the city isn't split by heroes staying on one side of the street and villains on another, go pvp in the alley sort of design.
If so villains could do whatever they want and heros would be forced to watch with no way of being the hero to save the day without resorting to some form of pvp. To which is in effect practically forcing pvp (in one form or another) to be the main focus of the game.
The differences here are not that area of the city is red and therefore has "red stories to tell" and this area over here is blue and has "blue stoties to tell". There is one city and player' actions determine what kind of city they live in. While ther is the dichotomy of hero and villain there is a lot of grey in between.

OK let's start by pointing out you are probably going through all sorts of convoluted gyrations to "shoehorn" the multi-axis alignment system to a point that will identify who needs to be in one of your "hero phases" versus "villain phases". What's the point of even having a multi-axis alignment system when you're just dividing us into binary hero and villain groupings?

Towards the end of CoH we had plenty of examples of characters of various alignments being able to co-exist in the same zones. For instance the RWZ allowed everyone to play together regardless of alignment. That was the clear FUTURE of the game - by going back to some twisted version of hero/villain segregation you're throwing away all the progress CoH was making towards having a more realistic "everyone in the same world" experience.

The only real concern here is PvP and in this case it's fairly simple - you just don't allow it in PvE areas, period. It really looks like you've gotten so wrapped around the axle on PvP and how "heroes and villains" might interact that you're proposing a very retrograde, blindered view of a game that will frankly be horrible for all sorts of reasons.

Please try to restate your case for why characters based on a multi-axis alignment system must be quarantined into a binary phased existence because everything you've said so far makes for all intents and purposes NO SENSE whatsoever.

I thought the alignment system has not that much to do with whether the character is a villain or not. You could be a hero with zero lawfulness, honor and peacefulness and you could be a villain with all three of them maxed out.

It is just about the methods you use to archieve your goal, regardless of if that goal is for a good or bad cause. But it will affect how NPCs react to you and how your story progresses.

Or did I get that wrong?

It does sound like a very dry solution to a problem with PvP that can be handled other ways at the moment.

Lothic wrote:

Lutan wrote:
I thought the alignment system has not that much to do with whether the character is a villain or not. You could be a hero with zero lawfulness, honor and peacefulness and you could be a villain with all three of them maxed out.
It is just about the methods you use to archieve your goal, regardless of if that goal is for a good or bad cause. But it will affect how NPCs react to you and how your story progresses.
Or did I get that wrong?

Yeah apparently you did. Basically it sounds like we're all just going to still be "heroes" or "villains" regardless of our supposed alignments. *sigh*

That is actually what I wanted to say. I try my best but english is not the language I grew up with, so sometimes I have difficulty to bring my point across.

I see it this way. First you decide what you want to be: hero or villain.

And then your actions define what [i]kind[/i] of hero or villain you are by using the three axis alignment system. The story changes and NPCs will react differently to you, depending on your position on those axes.

It almost seems to me that Tannim222 (and perhaps the rest of the Devs) have not truly embraced the multi-axis alignment system they came up with. They seem to be clinging to the outdated mindset that there are going to be strictly defined "heroes" and "villains" in this game.

The whole notion of heroness or villainess is in the mind of the players themselves - there should be nothing in CoT that actually relies on ANYTHING to be strictly defined in those binary terms. This obviously includes both PvE and PvP. In this game teams should be formable by ANY group of players regardless of alignment. It's up to the players to decide if they want to do missions that would be deemed "heroic" or "villainous" in nature. If a bunch of villains decide to team up to run heroic missions that should be their choice - it might be a weird choice - but the game shouldn't be keep those players from doing that.

Likewise any PvP should be organized along the lines the PLAYERS want, not whether the game pigeonholes them into being a hardwired hero or villain. The groups that the players form will naturally define who the heroes and villains are. Supergroups will form that require "all members to have such-n-such ranges of alignment" so the players themselves will decide if they want "hero" SGs or "villain" SGs or anything in-between.

See how easy all that would be Tannim222? Please feel free to tell me why any of what I just said couldn't work.

Kiyori Anoyui wrote:

JayBezz wrote:
I think it's a mistake not letting hero players and villain players interact on the same map/instance. The PvP option could easily be a flag system
Blue flag for Order
Red Flag for Chaos
White flag for Independence
Each Player chooses an Ideal. If players check the PvP flag you can fight players in openworld with different ideals. You can also change your ideal anytime you are Not flagged for PvP.
That's my ideal openworld PvP.

I think this is a very good way to go about it. It is alot like how GTA 5 handles it. You can go online and do PVP or you can put it in passive mode so people can't just kill you whenever they up and feel like it.

The point of course is that the PLAYER is in control of how they want their alignment concept to play out in terms of who they want to PvP with or against.

Tannim222 wrote:

The multi-axis alignments allows for a lot of the grey areas between the two dichotomies of heroes and villains. It allows for differences in what may make up a hero or villain, but at some point, actions should and do dictate what is heroic and what is villainous. Hence it’s a multi-layered alignment system.

This is NOT a multi-axis alignment system of any sort. You’re still despreately trying to force a binary hero/villain duality on top of some abomination of a supposedly "open spectrum alignment" scheme. A true multi-axis alignment system would completely abandon the idea of strict binary "good" and "evil" endpoints and allow for a fully open spectrum of morality. You've basically ruined any usefulness of playing around with "multi-axis alignments" and fallen back to effectively just having binary heroes and villains as far as the mechanics of the game is concerned. There is no true "grey" under your system.

Tannim222 wrote:

The issue is that hiding the pvp in other places or requiring a duel to resolve a difference is that it doesn’t actually resolve the course of the conflict.
Here is a basic example: A villain player goes to attack some cops in PvE setting. The hero player sees this and doesn’t like it is absolutely powerless to stop the villain player unless the villain player accepts a duel or that we in some other way force a confrontation on both players to resolve the course of action. PvP in all forms must and always be optional and never make the player feel forced they must resort to it to resolve a difference. Otherwise players aren’t able to properly play a villain because they can’t actually thwart or affect hero players and players can’t properly play a hero because they can never thwart or affect villains. The only way to provide that sort of action is in PvP.
Event the "let me flag myself" system doesn't prevent this as there only those flagged can engage and others can't and therefore on the same instance a player who isn't flagged can do things that another player disagrees with and is still powerless to stop it. Or others for forced to contend with it as players do tricky things like use the environment (npcs) to cause trouble for opposing alignments which is yet a form of pvp or even griefing if the other player doesn't want to be bothered in that way.

The simple answer to all this handwaving is "So what?"

Yes we can agree on the basic premise that PvP should be 100% optional in all cases. But let's go back to your hypothetical of a villain doing something bad and a hero who can only respond if PvP is agreed to by both parties. If both parties agree to PvP then fine. But if one or the other doesn't then too bad, period. Sure this might mean the villain could get away with doing evil things by refusing to accept the hero's challenge to duel, but again who cares? The way actions are "regulated" in PvE is via NPC controls. Sure the PC villain might not be able to be stopped by the PC hero because he refuses to enter into PvP, but if there are plenty of NPC cops walking around the PC villains will still have to think twice about running amock. Problem solved.

Stop worrying about "players being powerless to affect what other players are doing". I think that is the key problem that's led you so far astray from what you should be focusing on here.

As I said before I think you have unfortunately travelled down a very ugly path in terms of how you think players of differing alignments should interact with each other. Your worldview will lead to having the playerbase once again isolated/segregated into arbitrary instances which hurts the overall environment of the game world. Please reconsider what you're doing with this - I sadly have very little interest in playing in the kind of game you're talking about here.

So what is not a simple answer at all. Its a poor excuse. A player with the desire to play the hero and feeling powerless to be the hero won't be encouraged to keep playing the hero if the game world constantly reminds them of the reality they can't make a difference. The same can be said of those that want to be the villain.

And nothing stops players from living in a world of pvp (once we get all the kinks worked out) if they want to have the kind of game play your apparently desire.

Players should be allowed to play heroes and know they are making a difference in the world.
Players should be allowed to play a villain and know they are making a difference in the world.
Players should be allowed to stop and fight one another and know they are making a differnce in the world.

All of those desires are valid and we hope to provide a way to experience all of them.

I can't stress how very much I agree with Lothic here. As she says, if I see a player fighting the police and can't do anything about it, so what? Do you know how many times I flew right past some poor civilian getting sacrificed to demons not 20 feet away from a sidewalk that people were walking down? I didn't let that bother me, why should the other?

So, say I'm flying by and I see Captain Tightpants fighting cops? I click on him and see that he has his PVP flag turned off. I also see he has a reputation for Low Law, High Honor and High Violence. So, I can just go about my business, OR I could land nearby and ask him why he's fighting those cops. He responds that these are the corrupt cops who killed his brother and framed him. Instant RP possibilities!

No disrespect Tannim, but your way of doing this just ruins TONS of interesting possibilities and forces us backward rather than forward.

I hope, hope, HOPE you all can rethink this.

Seriously, I am not a happy Nina.

It's possible that we're stuck in an "even the Devs don't quite know how this is going to work out" situation.

Be Well!
Fireheart

You and me and a bunch of others it seems Lothic :(

This seems to be a concern that needs more refining before getting too deep into any path as the clock is ticking....

You can look at PvP like regular monsters all over the map.

Like Nina said, how many groups of baddies beating the snot out of civilians did we all fly over? Ya they may have been low level baddies but there were still civilians in harm that we just said, "eh"

Why should players attacking citizens be any different than monsters attacking citizens?

Tannim222 wrote:

Nina Guardian wrote:
I can't stress how very much I agree with Lothic here. As she says, if I see a player fighting the police and can't do anything about it, so what? Do you know how many times I flew right past some poor civilian getting sacrificed to demons not 20 feet away from a sidewalk that people were walking down? I didn't let that bother me, why should the other?
So, say I'm flying by and I see Captain Tightpants fighting cops? I click on him and see that he has his PVP flag turned off. I also see he has a reputation for Low Law, High Honor and High Violence. So, I can just go about my business, OR I could land nearby and ask him why he's fighting those cops. He responds that these are the corrupt cops who killed his brother and framed him. Instant RP possibilities!
No disrespect Tannim, but your way of doing this just ruins TONS of interesting possibilities and forces us backward rather than forward.
I hope, hope, HOPE you all can rethink this.
Seriously, I am not a happy Nina.

Point being if you choose to not turn a blind eye toward something happening, you can do something about it.
More to the point, if you're actions has an effect in the world you are involved with, and someone else's actions can negatively impact the world you are a part of, that is a form of PvP even if it is PvEvP.
And that is not saying the desire to be in a world where you can stop and fight the bad guy or the good guy is a bad thing to want.
We want to provide that choice.
We also want to provie the choice where you don't have to deal with those changes and can be the hero or be the bad guy.

Any world where I'm forced to be a "hero" or a "villain" has absolutely no true sense of "grey" where alignment is concerned. You're not providing CHOICE at all. Can't you see that?

And on the question of CHOICE it should be a CHOICE if I want to engage in mutual PvP with anyone in this game. If I'm a hero and the naughty villain doesn't want to PvP with me that's his/her CHOICE. The PvP minded hero is just going to have to be SHIT OUT OF LUCK. Too bad, so sad. Your "solution" to frustrated PvPers is to arbitrarily SEPARATE players along lines that DON'T EVEN MAKE LOGICAL SENSE for a true multi-axis alignment system.

Your foundation is faulty and naturally the entire house of cards you've built on top of it is faulty as well. Please reconsider what you're doing here for the love of anything holy you believe in.

Tannim222 wrote:

Also, for the record, this isn't "my idea" or "my plan". These plans were laid out before I even joined the team. I had my own ideas about how we should handle all of this even when I first joined on board. Ideas which were quickly shot down because of the road map already being laid out.

Good god you mean this scheme has been in the works for that long and we're only now hearing about this?

I still find it absolutely amazing that we weren't aware of all this until today.

I sit here absolutely boggling in disbelief...

Brighellac wrote:

/em popcorn
Keep spinning, Lothic ...this is funny

No, it's sad in ways I can't even get into here.

For what it's worth I'll apologize to Tannim222 now for directing my hatred of this towards him in any personal way. If it's true all of this was established before he started working for MWM then it's not technically his fault for "towing the company line".

But I will not back down from my firm stance that this has fundamentally damaged my enthusiasm for the game. Oh I'm sure I'll still play it and I may even enjoy it, but now I'll be forced to wonder how cool the game could have actually been if more sensible decisions had been made.

I'm pretty lax so I'm usually fine with whatever happens but I will also be always wondering how cool it would have been to be among heroes when I'm actually a villain or vica versa, knowing that I have the power and options to be whoever I wanted. Getting out of a mission with other heroes to take down one of my enemies(the whole a enemy of my enemy is my friend) then going to join up with a bunch of villains to take down some of the coppers

Lutan wrote:

On one side, there is a divide, heros and villains can not interact with each other, but are also not bothered by each others actions. And there is a way out, the PvP layer of the game. Where you can interact and fight.
On the other, there is still some divide, since you can see the villain, but you probably are still unable to team up with him and can not really interact with him much, but for that little less of a divide, you have to live with everything the other side does, including possibly turning the city into ruins or into a corrupt shadow of itself. Or a pseudo-utopia full of mind control- zombies.
Even though I do not like PvP much, I think I prefer the first option. A solution that works for everyone, without a divide somewhere will probably be next to impossible.
And furthermore, I have read about that switching sides will be possible. Maybe not from start, but it will be there eventually.

We had the chance to have an open "alignment spectrum" based game full of options for teaming and PvP as we players saw fit. Now we have the segregated binary game of CoH/CoV circa 2005 with no alignment variations and a strict "red and blue side" that are going to be using the same exact maps. From those elements alone we have a game on our hands that has taken so many steps backward it's almost pathetic.

JayBezz wrote:

I add my name to the list of unhappy persons. I have friends who are not going to play with the same ideal as me that I'd still like to interact with. In PvE I want the chance to talk with them, see their strength and perhaps make a new frenemy (social friend). In PvP (when turned on) I want players to have the option to actually engage in combat with each other should they choose to.
I cannot stress how important it is (especially to the population of people playing dedicated villains which tends to be low) that they get to be seen and not separated from the general population. Also I think it important on those same lines of reasoning to add a third class of alignment to try to split the numbers of "Heroes" into another population to help even out numbers.
PvP should ALWAYS be optional. On this we agree.. But I do not think opposing players should be invisible and marginalized.

There should be places for those of opposing views to interact in...safety. And nothing should prevent being able to chat with friends regardless of alignment.

And having a separate PvP instance of the game has always been part of the plan. Even as far back as the kickstarter when the server design was brought up.

What I feel has happened, and again I was subject to this myself, was that the topic of a mega-server that provides for the entire population is what caught people's attention and the part about being able to set up multiple instances (phases) of every map in the game flew under people's radar except for when thinking purely along the lines of population numbers.

The issue comes with interaction. Player choices interacting with the environment causing changes to occur.

Player choices that can affect who and what other players can interact with.

If a player is attacking a faction that the other player needs to interact with and they are powerless to do anything about it is not helpful to any game design.

Placing layers of what might trigger PvP, setting flags of PvP, and also dealing with the possibility that players could use the environment to affect another players adds multiple layers of complexity to the game design.

The alignment system is about choices and how they affect the stories your character is involved with. Those stories could have an impact on your character's world view.

While there is a lot of grey area between the "boy scout do-gooder" and "ruthless criminal" that players may traverse, at some point enough choices could lead down a road where you are playing the kind of character you want to play in a world that character is a part of based on their choices.

I thought a PC's standing was going to be Hidden so players didn't know what you DID, or where you Stand.
NPC's see it though.

I'm gonna' wait for someone else from MWM to set me straight. ;D

Tannim, I understand the MWM position. I just feel strongly that the position should change.

It's more important to me (and in my opinion to the game) that I be able to be social and interact with players than it is for me to see the game change because of my character defeated an enemy faction. So i defeated the Rooks.. doesn't mean other players aren't going to come through and do the exact same thing.

I don't want to be on a PvP only server/instance.
I dont want to be separated from my friends AT ALL.

This is a major design flaw. I would like to exaggerate it for effect but I shouldn't need to.. separating the players like this is bad, Bad, BAD.

I hope MWM listens to those most affected (those who PvP) and doesn't treat their gameplay as second-class. If you don't want to PvP in the PvE world, simply stay un-flagged. No one will be able to bother you. If for some reason their very presence bothers you, then simply /ignore the player.

- -

The issues you bring up are handled simply in other games. Certain NPCs are given immunity and guards that are too strong (warning then defeating those who are unfriendly). Why the City of Titans design has not reached this level of sophistication I do not know.

I wanted an Alignment system that created an emergent "my part of town" dynamic that would be different for different PCs. Depending on what one's Alignment settings were on the three axes (Honor, Law, Peace), your PC would consider different parts of the city to be "home turf" for you. The expectation I had was that there would be "buffer zones" around these places and that the majority of the city would be hostile territory (ripe for Street Sweeping, essentially).

I even came up with a very simple 2 out of 3 matches way of making that happen in ways that made sense, letting different parts of the city have a different "feel" to them, giving them a different "cast" and character so that the different neighborhoods aren't all the same for everyone.

I even came up with the notion of making some parts of the city "Control Points" [i]which can have varying Alignments associated with them[/i] such that the actions of Players can directly (if temporarily) influence the game world such that the city isn't STATIC in terms of its flavor and fortunes, but rather an "always in motion" set of shifting alliances, loyalties, turf wars and crack ups [i]which Players could participate in influencing the outcome of[/i].

I thought we could all ... heroes and villains ... live in the SAME CITY ... instead of living in our own copied "versions" of the city.

I hate to say it, but I'm going to have to play [b]TheMightyPaladin[/b] card here on you Tannim222.

[b]What you are saying has dealt a severe blow to my confidence in the game as a fun place to play.[/b]

Oh and I guess that means you "hate" (or at least, reject) my idea of using the 1-5 scale for Alignment matching. :(

Redlynne wrote:

I wanted an Alignment system that created an emergent "my part of town" dynamic that would be different for different PCs. Depending on what one's Alignment settings were on the three axes (Honor, Law, Peace), your PC would consider different parts of the city to be "home turf" for you. The expectation I had was that there would be "buffer zones" around these places and that the majority of the city would be hostile territory (ripe for Street Sweeping, essentially).
I even came up with a very simple 2 out of 3 matches way of making that happen in ways that made sense, letting different parts of the city have a different "feel" to them, giving them a different "cast" and character so that the different neighborhoods aren't all the same for everyone.
I even came up with the notion of making some parts of the city "Control Points" which can have varying Alignments associated with them such that the actions of Players can directly (if temporarily) influence the game world such that the city isn't STATIC in terms of its flavor and fortunes, but rather an "always in motion" set of shifting alliances, loyalties, turf wars and crack ups which Players could participate in influencing the outcome of.
I thought we could all ... heroes and villains ... live in the SAME CITY ... instead of living in our own copied "versions" of the city.
I hate to say it, but I'm going to have to play TheMightyPaladin card here on you Tannim222.
What you are saying has dealt a severe blow to my confidence in the game as a fun place to play.
Oh and I guess that means you "hate" (or at least, reject) my idea of using the 1-5 scale for Alignment matching. :(

+1111111

Hmm... so if im playing a Villain, and i want to increase my Villain Alignment, and go attack some Citizens...
...does it mean Hero PC can start to grief me and slow my progress down? I'd Be PISSSED! :P

Other Heroes should not be able to stop me from doing bad in the GOOD'er part of town (NPC Cops will come)... but PC Heroes can stop NPC villains in the other BAD'er part of town. ;)

Tannim222 wrote:

If a player is attacking a faction that the other player needs to interact with and they are powerless to do anything about it is not helpful to any game design.

(broadcast chat)

Player 1: Hey! There's a bunch of villains invading City Hall in Atlas Park 1 and the place is a war zone! I can't get in!
Player 2: Did you try switching to Atlas Park 2?
Player 1: Uh, no. I didn't know I could do that. What do I do?

(snip instance switching instructions)

Player 1: Oh hey! There aren't any villains in Atlas Park 2 and I can get to all the NPCs I needed to but couldn't before! Thanks!
Player 2: No problem.

Look, Tannim, if there's some sort of villain vs hero "raid" going on into "enemy" territory, the easiest way to deal with it on a mega-server is to just switch to a different instance of the city. Don't like that PC punk punching the lights out of your Contact? Switch to a different instance of the city and your Contact will probably be there, unharmed, with no naughty villain around punching his lights out.

And not to put too fine a point on things, but if you're really serious about having PvP "be a thing" all you'd need to do is make "instance zero" the PvP instance of the city and let the carnage commence. Make the right/permission to enter "instance zero" of the city in order to PvP be something purchased using Stars (I'm thinking something "cheap" like 100-200 Stars per month) and then let people figure out for themselves if they REALLY want to punch the lights out of another Player. Set things up such that any sort of "PvP Engaged" with another Player will automatically transfer both PCs to "instance zero" and call it a day.

So I suppose my message is to whoever decided the system you've been talking about Tannim would be this:

[i]"He's intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates ... two dimensional thinking."[/i]
- Spock, The Wrath of Khan
[youtube]RbTUTNenvCY[/youtube]

I think you (Missing Worlds Media) have [b][i]*SERIOUSLY*[/i][/b] misjudged where your Players want the "fault lines" of segregation to be.

PvE / PvP segregation: okay.
Hero / Villain segregation: report for medical examination.

Foradain wrote:

I think we have some people talking past each other here.
Tannim, please correct me if I have this wrong: The separate shards you refer to are for Open PvP or Non-Open PVP, yes? Not for Hero or Villain?
If that's right, then those who don't ever want to engage in random PvP can stay in the non-PvP shards, and those who sometimes want to can shift between shards at will (although, presumably not while in combat ^_^) and those who never want to be immune to PvP can stay in the PvP shard. People can ignore what other PCs are doing, or interact with them non-violently, or if they both agree to go PvP then they can duke it out...

Ya, when this issue came up we were only talking of hero/villain segragation so if it was the case of only talking of PVP then there has definitely been a fallout in communication

Kiyori Anoyui wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
{snippity}
Oh and I guess that means you "hate" (or at least, reject) my idea of using the 1-5 scale for Alignment matching. :(

+1111111

Don't worry, Kiyori ... Tannim doesn't like my idea for [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/87415#comment-87415]depth control when using Teleport[/url] or airbursting grenades without needing to resort to using line of sight collision with surfaces or target locks either.

Ah well ... it does seem to be my lot in life to toil in futility ...

That doesn't really help answer any of the huge amount of issues being brought up about moralities worth and staleness from copy and pasted hero/villain map versions on top of emptiness from lack of people though. Things not directly associated with the act of PvP.

I'll leave it at this:
As a true blue hero (the opposite end of the total spectrum here), a player should not have to experience a PC villain attacking NPCs and be helpless to do anything about it.
If I'm not a true blue hero but let's say a "little dirty" I may decide to deal with the seedy, grimy world.
If I'm not a true red criminal but let's say "a little clean" I may decide to deal with the brighter world.

As a true red ciminatl (the opposite end of the toal spectrum here), a player should not have to experience a PC hero attacking NPCs and be helpless to do anything about it.
If both types of players want to do something about it, there should be a place for that as well.

Requiring that pve players leave the zone because players decide to activate pvp is not a solution. The solution is there should be a PvE place where players get to play the way that they want and a PvP place where players can play that way.

Your choices for your character dicate the kind of world you decide to play in. It is in itself pretty simple.

Tannim, I'm not trying to argue with you, mainly because it serves no purpose. The decision was made long ago and it seems it's not going to change. But, when you say "Requiring that pve players leave the zone because players decide to activate pvp is not a solution." I just shake my head. I don't see anyone asking for that. If two or more people want to PVP, let them. I will just continue on my business.

It just seems that there are so many other ways this could have been done, but a decision was made maybe a year ago and we just weren't told about it. That's the frustrating part. Look at all the replies to Cyclop's initial question. We believed we were all going to be together. Now we hear (for the first time) that isn't true. We will be old fashioned Blue/Red segregation. Two City Halls, Two Mischief's Ascendants, Two Naughty Corners. But I will only be able to see one of them.

You say "Your choices for your character dicate the kind of world you decide to play in. It is in itself pretty simple".

I choose a world we all can be in. Together.

Separate is NOT equal.

Lutan wrote:

I try to put this into CoH terms, to get a better grasp at it.
If I play a Hero, I can see Vigilantes and Scoundrels, but no Villains.
If I play a Vigilante or Scoundrel, I can see everyone.
And if I play a Villain, I can see Vigilantes and Scoundrels, but no Heros.
Except of course in social hubs like our equivalent of the Pocket D.
Correct?

This is the main gist of things as it has been explained to me for pve.
Except for the addition of if you want to deal with the entire spectrum, that is what pvp is for.

Redlynne wrote:

Don't worry, Kiyori ... Tannim doesn't like my idea for depth control when using Teleport or airbursting grenades without needing to resort to using line of sight collision with surfaces or target locks either.
Ah well ... it does seem to be my lot in life to toil in futility ...

My personal opinion on those matters is irrelevant when there are design decisions that are made by those I essentially answer to have been made already.

So it is not that “I don’t like the ideas” but rather they are in conflict with decisions that have been already made that I abide by.

Nina Guardian wrote:

Tannim, I'm not trying to argue with you, mainly because it serves no purpose. The decision was made long ago and it seems it's not going to change. But, when you say "Requiring that pve players leave the zone because players decide to activate pvp is not a solution." I just shake my head. I don't see anyone asking for that. If two or more people want to PVP, let them. I will just continue on my business.
It just seems that there are so many other ways this could have been done, but a decision was made maybe a year ago and we just weren't told about it. That's the frustrating part. Look at all the replies to Cyclop's initial question. We believed we were all going to be together. Now we hear (for the first time) that isn't true. We will be old fashioned Blue/Red segregation. Two City Halls, Two Mischief's Ascendants, Two Naughty Corners. But I will only be able to see one of them.
You say "Your choices for your character dicate the kind of world you decide to play in. It is in itself pretty simple".
I choose a world we all can be in. Together.
Separate is NOT equal.

I understand the desire. I really do. Many of my very early discussions on the matter where in line with this sentiment.
However there are extraneous gameplay issues that are not easily resolved between faction reputation, alignment guiding initial perceptions of factions, player actions dictating changes in the world, and providing a space where players can play without being forced to put on blinders and pretend someone is opposing their favored factions and not having to resort to some form of pvp.

It might actually be easier for everyone (Devs and potential players alike) to approach this game not from the point of view of players playing "heroes" or "villains" but instead players playing "neutrals". No one is good, no one is bad, we're all just a bunch of players playing generic characters in a game.

Now with that setting established let's add the baby-step idea of an "alignment spectrum". Let's say you want your "neutral" character to generally be positive and do morally acceptable things. Sure why not? Let's say another person wants their character to do socially naughty things. That's fine too. Now remember this game doesn't have strictly defined heroes and villains, all it has is an alignment system that'll reflect that your character generally likes to do nice or nasty things.

See where I'm going with this?

Once you have a game that no longer relies on strict moral absolutes to divide players into two abitrary factions you're free to have a game that not only let's everyone play together in the same phase/instance but lets their alignment slide up and down the scales based on their actions, not on which hardwired "side" they started on. All these "neutral" players are free to interact with each other as they like.

Now here's where it gets really interesting: Let's say you want to play your neutral character in such a way that he's so positive and morally upstanding that he actually wants to go out of his way to "confront" other players who like to play their characters with a naughty mindset. If both of those player choose to engage in PvP then look what you have: heroes fighting villains. Eureka!

But let's say that the villain-like neutral character doesn't want to engage in PvP: Oh well, the hero-like character is simply going to be out of luck unless he decideds to go fight some NPC villains or go to a PvP-dedicated zone where other players ACTUALY WANT TO engage in in PvP. Problem solved. There's really no such thing as the "frustrated hero PvPer" (the cornerstone of the worldview that Tannim222 has proposed) because that PvPer can simply go somewhere where his PvP desires would be fulfilled. There is no required expectation that the villain-like character must face being attacked by the hero-like character because they are not strict hero or villain respectively to begin with.

Let me make sure you understand what I laid out here: THERE ARE NO HEROES AND NO VILLAINS IN THIS GAME. There's no pre-programmed, hardwired reason why any player must attack and/or interfere with another player unless they BOTH mutuallly agree to it. Again you're completely free to play your neutral character AS IF they were a strict hero or villain from the comic books. But just because you play that way doesn't mean another player must abide by your desire to reciprocate the traditional "heroes fight villains" memes. So once again in answer to Tannim222's concern that "heroes would be frustrated if they can't PvP with villains" I say "So what?" Who's to say the so-called villain the hero wants to fight isn't played by a player who actually considers his own neutral character to be a "hero" as well? Everything's relative.

Once you set yourself free from the reflexive comic book "hero vs. villian" paradigm you realize that people are just playing characters who can exist at any point along the alignment spectrum. The motivation for PvP then becomes completely optional because you no longer have "good guys fighting bad guys" but instead have "a random group guys fighting another random group of guys". If the players behind those guys want to "pretend" they are heroes fighting villains then so be it - that's a choice the players have made for themselves instead of the game making the choice for them.

I can only hope this post makes some sense to any passing Dev who reads it and gods willing will choose to consider it as an alternative to the current plans for CoT.