Suggestions for major dev alterations if CoH relaunches

[MomentaryGrace]

Hmmm Here's an idea that just occurred to me. Maybe when/If the game comes back they could somehow introduce some kind of way to run the seasonal taskforces and stuff of that nature. Dr Kahn's house of horror, the winter lord stuff, Nemesis Invasions and stuff. This is, of course all predicated upon the assumption that the game will come back in a static form so non static events and the like would have to be re-introduced in some kind of static form.

This is something I was longing for even before shutdown.

[Felderburg]

Create a new TF based around the Saving of City of Heroes Game-

The Freakshow invade the Computer Network Firm, CNFirm for short, and bankrupt the firm from several attacks of property damage.  Unable to sustain their business from multiple attacks, they shut down the popular game, City of Gyros.  This gains the attention of many Gyro fans and urge the city's heroes into action.

TF may include:

Multiple phone missions.
Holding torches.
Stopping Nemesis.
And speaking with all the surviving members of the Freedom Phalanx.

Just an idea.   Might be in poor taste to NCSoft, but it's important they are not interpreted to be the bad guys but rather are forced into the position.  Why the Freakshow?  Not sure. First villain group to pop into my head.  Crey might make more sense from a buisness theme perspective.

Not too bad, but there is a restaurant in game named City of Gyros. So that would further distance it from such a straightforward potential jab at NCsoft.

[Auroxis]

Big change #1:

Team leaders can activate a temp power called "team beacon", an interruptible power with a 10 second cast time, 2 minute duration and 10 minutes recharge(unaffected by buffs).  When activated, a pop-up appears on all other teammate's screen that allows them to teleport to the team leader's zone. If the pop-up is closed, teammates could still right click the team leader to teleport if the timer isn't up.

This will help team leaders compete with the quick access of AE content.

Big change #2:

From my post here, add a mission difficulty scaling NPC that gives 1, 2 or 3 extra random mob difficulty modifiers, in exchange for 1, 2 or 3 extra random rewards. Kinda like maps in Path of Exile.

This will make mundane missions more interesting and provide challenging content.

Small change #1:

Change all Peacebringer human form KB powers into KD.

Small change #2:

Buff the Scrapper ATO crit bonus.

[Black Pebble]

Suggestions for minor dev alterations if CoH relaunches
.....

Black Pebble should clean the inside of his car.

.....

You've never been inside my car.

[Vee]

You've never been inside my car.

She refuses to get out of your dreams too.

[Arcana]

You've never been inside my car.

Maybe if you cleaned it more.

Although when I first wrote that I was probably thinking about Andy's car, but Andy wasn't technically a dev.**

I hope all's well.  Life treating you Epicly so far?


** Although technically, I'm not sure where in the Venn diagram branding goes either.  More coupled with production than community management though, I assume.  I clearly need to sharpen my joke engineering skills.

[Paragon Avenger]

I'm thinking that removing the AE buildings and making that asset accessible through Pocket D might be cool.

Put a Wentworth's or black market in there as well.

And a portal or tunnel to the Midnighters' Club, huh, huh, I like it.

[Black Pebble]

I'm the tall one with great hair. Andy is the short one whose balding. Easy to tell us apart. Plus my car is nicer. You'd remember it. :-)

I always saw marketing as separate, but peers with development. Ultimately part of the same studio and team. The devs did all the real work and we coast on their laurels.

Community varies based on the studio. I generally see community as part of marketing, but not everyone shares that viewpoint.

[Felderburg]

All devs should have sweet twitter profile background pics like Black Pebble's. Where did you get that?

Edit: I know where, but the question is more "how was it arranged?" or something like that.

[Black Pebble]

All devs should have sweet twitter profile background pics like Black Pebble's. Where did you get that?

Edit: I know where, but the question is more "how was it arranged?" or something like that.

Oh geez, that was 3 years ago. If I recall correctly, it was a fair amount of work. Each character was demorecorded separately until we got the exact pose at the exact moment. Then layered on top of each other. I don't think all of them were ever actually on the screen at the same time. Then a bit of Photoshop magic for color balance/lighting and boom. Screenshot magic.

[Lord Nightmare]

Devs actually interacting with us lowly peons like back in the olden days.

One thing I remember was seeing the forums for the first time and the devposts under the names of signature characters. From what I was told, the devs would actually take control of their character and you'd see things like Statesman going on patrol and Recluse barking his propaganda in Broadcast. I only ever saw this happen a few times but it left a powerful imprint.

[Arcana]

Devs actually interacting with us lowly peons like back in the olden days.

One thing I remember was seeing the forums for the first time and the devposts under the names of signature characters. From what I was told, the devs would actually take control of their character and you'd see things like Statesman going on patrol and Recluse barking his propaganda in Broadcast. I only ever saw this happen a few times but it left a powerful imprint.

Just FYI, the devs couldn't actually "take control of their character" per se, but they could make player characters that looked like their nom de plume and had almost any crazy combination of powers they wanted to simulate being their red name identity, provided they were granted those rights in an account.  As far as I'm aware, there was no way to take control of an actual NPC in the game in that sense.

Also, this sort of thing didn't happen often outside of official events.  Sometimes it was sanctioned, but sometimes it was ... less sanctioned.  The devs were not really supposed to be roaming around with admin rights often, but especially in the free-wheeling early days of the game people looked the other way when it happened.

[Lord Nightmare]

Just FYI, the devs couldn't actually "take control of their character" per se, but they could make player characters that looked like their nom de plume and had almost any crazy combination of powers they wanted to simulate being their red name identity, provided they were granted those rights in an account.  As far as I'm aware, there was no way to take control of an actual NPC in the game in that sense.

Also, this sort of thing didn't happen often outside of official events.  Sometimes it was sanctioned, but sometimes it was ... less sanctioned.  The devs were not really supposed to be roaming around with admin rights often, but especially in the free-wheeling early days of the game people looked the other way when it happened.

You'd think I'd be used to fantasy shattering info by now.

[Arcana]

You'd think I'd be used to fantasy shattering info by now.

Well, I'm replacing one fantasy with another one.  The devs couldn't really take over Lord Recluse and play him as an NPC, say.  On the other hand, they could make a character with all of the controller primary and secondary powers combined.  Think about what that power tray looked like.

[Lord Nightmare]

If someone made such a character, they should name it SimRaceway.

[Black Pebble]

Well, I'm replacing one fantasy with another one.  The devs couldn't really take over Lord Recluse and play him as an NPC, say.  On the other hand, they could make a character with all of the controller primary and secondary powers combined.  Think about what that power tray looked like.

Well technically, it was possible to use dev commands to force characters to engage in emotes, powers, etc. In reality, that didn't work very consistently and would usually end up breaking the character, forcing us to destroy it and respawn it to get it to work properly again. I did that a lot on the beta shard for trailers.

But in theory, it would work. And usually did for the first 4-5 commands.

For most dev takeovers of NPC's, they'd log into a character, go invisible, than benpc to change into the character. Then if the dev was particularly evil, they'd despawn an NPC (such as Back Alley Brawler) and swap into his place while becoming visible, making it look like the NPC suddenly came to life. Chris Bruce used to do that a lot. It freaked out players when their quest giver suddenly started running at them.

[Arcana]

For most dev takeovers of NPC's, they'd log into a character, go invisible, than benpc to change into the character. Then if the dev was particularly evil, they'd despawn an NPC (such as Back Alley Brawler) and swap into his place while becoming visible, making it look like the NPC suddenly came to life. Chris Bruce used to do that a lot. It freaked out players when their quest giver suddenly started running at them.

It slips my mind who it was, but I remember there was a dev that used to occasionally benpc the Kronos Titan and follow players around, moving when they moved and stopping when they stopped and trying (ridiculously) to pretend like nothing strange was happening.

Commanding NPCs to do anything seemed pretty icky.  Ironically Paragon Chat would be a far more productive platform to do that sort of thing than the game itself ever was (particularly if Codewalker gets VFX primitives to work).

[Aggelakis]

It slips my mind who it was, but I remember there was a dev that used to occasionally benpc the Kronos Titan and follow players around, moving when they moved and stopping when they stopped and trying (ridiculously) to pretend like nothing strange was happening.

Commanding NPCs to do anything seemed pretty icky.  Ironically Paragon Chat would be a far more productive platform to do that sort of thing than the game itself ever was (particularly if Codewalker gets VFX primitives to work).

I liked - after she was duplicated in Pocket D - when someone would have War Witch make observations/commentary on her surroundings (cos there's usually a group of RPers standing in the room behind her).

[Sinistar]

Granite armor: there was talk that it was getting a facelift at some point but they also mentioned that it may not be possible to have two granite armors via power customization.

So if that is the case, I would have to consider the following ideas:

1. a second stone armor set, same basic powers and abilities but all the armors get a face lift in terms of appearance, especially granite.

2. Set up a video and that shows the classic granite and then the new and put up a poll and see what the majority would like: the old and busted or the new hotness

3. Or I could go by the philosophy that not everyone can be pleased at all times and that ANY update to ANY MMORPG will upset/offend some players such as all the nerfs of CO, COH issue 13 pvp changes,  the changes that alienated many SWG players and so on and just replace the original granite armor and be done with it.

The idea for the new granite armor is based on the fact that there really isn't much point to working on costumes for a granite armor user since the costume goes away when in granite mode.  So basically, set your character height, build and costume to however you want including aura and when you activate granite armor only YOUR SKIN changes and it will take on the texture/color of the statues that you would see in galaxy/atlas/pergrine zones.  Color customization of the armor if possible except for maybe the color orange.....THINGS could be bad if that color would be available

Also would seriously consider slightly lowering the speed penalties of rooted and grantite.  Rooted was 90% and Grannite was 70% as I recall and they combined.  Perhaps rooted having 80% and Granite 60% penalty would be more appealing?  Still cant jump or fly of course.

[Sinistar]

Anniversary badges: instead of the you must log in all your characters for them all to get the badge during a set time frame, I would see about changing it to how it was when they changed to the token system for vet rewards.  You get a "click to redeem button" and the badge appears in your badge list.

This token would be automatically awarded to subsequent alts that you make so that no alt shall miss an anniversary badge, provided that your account was made prior to said anniversary. If someone makes an account after the anniversary has passed then that is another matter.