A few suggestions regarding the new CoH game design

[silvers1]

While we're throwing out ideas, one thing I'd like to see implemented is an epic story arc that spans from level 1 to max level, like GW1 had.

Every online game out there, all the quests seem to be disjointed, totally unrelated stories.

What would be even more awesome than what GW1 had would be multiple epic story arcs based on archtype + origin.  ( and have brand new story arcs introdoced with each issue, so your new toons can do something different )

The thing that aggravates me the most about all online games is replaying the same content over and over.  It gets old - and you end up with people doing nothing but radio missions or the DFB mission over and over again.

[downix]

We've been looking into voice options, and from what we've seen, it'd take a lot of time and effort to create a voice chat program that could match existing ones like Teamspeak or Ventrillo, which kind of puts this particular area of development in the "reinventing the wheel" category.

Look into Steam integration. Steam offers voice chat options as well.

[cybermitheral]

I get weird delays when using Steam chat.
Playing BL2 with my 3 mates I would hear myself 3 seconds after I actually spoke which was VERY annoying.
Switch to Skype and no delay at all.  (Not that Im recommending Skype mind you )

[Karasu]

Actually, quick note here and only mentioning it because it's an MMO that has voice chat built in, but EVE online as a system for built in VOIP. Not really sure how it stacks up vs mumble/vent/ts/skype.

Also though it was stated earlier in a broader sense, I beg you to return scrappers to us. I've been getting that itch to just go a'murdering and can't find any MMO anywhere that has anything comparable.

[silvers1]

Looking at your list, I think the only thing "Heroes and Villains" might do that you mightn't like is the "companion system" - but even then, the way it's currently planned isn't going to lead to "companion spam" - apart from that, everything else you mentioned will be appearing in some form in HaV.

The only thing I'd ask is that the game isn't balanced around the assumption that you have a companion.  For example, in Neverwinter,
if you go solo without a healer companion for your melee toon, you will find yourself chugging healing potions left and right.  The dependency is there, and I don't much care for it.
In GW1,I believe you could have up to 3 companions, and you simply couldnt survive without them unless you had very specific builds tailored for certain mobs.
True soloabiity is important to me.

[PSI-on]

Gosh, I've been tired ALL day, I FINALLY remembered one more thing I meant to suggest.

B. DON'T penalize for defeat. Good god, why? Death and defeat are already negative and sometimes shameful situations, so why compound them further by breaking gear, taking XP or money, weakening the player to the point they can't possibly go on, or force them into a negative debuff they must either sit out for OR buy from the cash store to get rid of it. I have never understood the point of further pushing players for bad design, foolish mistakes, rookie mistakes, being unprepared, bad team match up, and so on some of which being out of their hands. Defeat already takes you out of the fight and fun, it can be embarrassing, sometimes it requires long travel times to get back to where you were (sometimes making the whole team wait for you), and in some cases cost you achievements, prizes, or whole missions, so why have yet another punishment lined up. Frankly I think it not only adds insult to injury and just...why...but but quashes creativity to come up with new ideas, strategies, theory and curiosity testing, or coming up with extra little fun ideas. One of the few things I love about STO is there's no penalty for defeat (except on STF's or higher difficulties). If they can do it, it should work easily anywhere else.

[PSI-on]

Yes, only 3 (can't recall if you could combine heroes and Henchmen to make a full team of but yes also most true solo builds were very specific and hard to do from what I've seen and pretty much brand you to Assassin. You are right.

The only thing I'd ask is that the game isn't balanced around the assumption that you have a companion.  For example, in Neverwinter,
if you go solo without a healer companion for your melee toon, you will find yourself chugging healing potions left and right.  The dependency is there, and I don't much care for it.
In GW1,I believe you could have up to 3 companions, and you simply couldnt survive without them unless you had very specific builds tailored for certain mobs.
True soloabiity is important to me.

[silvers1]

Gosh, I've been tired ALL day, I FINALLY remembered one more thing I meant to suggest.

B. DON'T penalize for defeat. Good god, why? Death and defeat are already negative and sometimes shameful situations, so why compound them further by breaking gear, taking XP or money, weakening the player to the point they can't possibly go on, or force them into a negative debuff they must either sit out for OR buy from the cash store to get rid of it. I have never understood the point of further pushing players for bad design, foolish mistakes, rookie mistakes, being unprepared, bad team match up, and so on some of which being out of their hands. Defeat already takes you out of the fight and fun, it can be embarrassing, sometimes it requires long travel times to get back to where you were (sometimes making the whole team wait for you), and in some cases cost you achievements, prizes, or whole missions, so why have yet another punishment lined up. Frankly I think it not only adds insult to injury and just...why...but but quashes creativity to come up with new ideas, strategies, theory and curiosity testing, or coming up with extra little fun ideas. One of the few things I love about STO is there's no penalty for defeat (except on STF's or higher difficulties). If they can do it, it should work easily anywhere else.

Agreed.  In CoH, the embarrassment of dieing combined with the travel time was sufficient penalty IMO.  Didnt much care for the xp debt, but it usually didnt take long to work it off.

The two strikes and you have to sit out for the duration penalty in Neverwinter is one of the harshest I've seen since EQ1.

In GW1, you had a death penalty which reduced your effectiveness until you "worked it off" by killing mobs.  Die several times and you pretty much
had to start the mission over.  Again, overly harsh.

[Golden Girl]

Gosh, I've been tired ALL day, I FINALLY remembered one more thing I meant to suggest.

DON'T penalize for defeat.

In HaV, when you're defeated, you can choose to respawn where you are, or respawn at the mission entrance - when you respawn, you need to recover your health and stamina, which is where the time penalty comes in - there are no hospitals or loading screens involved in defeat. The option to respawn at the mission door is for situations where respawning where you fell would be a problem, such as enemies still being active in the area.

[Golden Girl]

The only thing I'd ask is that the game isn't balanced around the assumption that you have a companion.

It isn't - it's being designed to give a very similar feel to playing CoH, with things like companions being added extras.

[Floride]

1. Gear is bad - Gear Scores are bad:     I never like the whole "you are your gear" mentaility.

I always saw this as a throwback to single player game design. Devs would make guns and armor better as you progressed, but didn't know any other way to make a game when they started making games where players interacted with other players. Once devs matured to this flaw and made games where skill progression trumped gear progression, interactive games became much more fun. Then they got greedy and brought back the gear just to pillage their players with endless micro-transactions.

And as always, the standard disclaimer: IMO.

[therain93]

Regarding voice -- I'm not really a fan, for a few reasons --
 
1.  It can be really immersion-breaking, depending on the voice.
2.  If the voice is irritating (or just a babbler), it can be muted, but possibly at the expense of critical information.
3.  In my experience, voice works for small groups, but if you ever assembled a league or raid, it would be insane to coordinate, especially with no "scrollback" access.  Of course, you could use chat for that, and voice for everything else, but then it's a matter of making sure everyone is paying attention to the right channels.
 
For the value a voice chat system offers, I'd rather see the development teams invest in other features.
 
 

[Phaetan]

I do not really like voice chat, especially integrated into a game as something required and expected.
If you must have it, please ensure that there's some method included to not penalize those who have hearing issues or simply choose not to use voice chat.

[Golden Girl]

For the value a voice chat system offers, I'd rather see the development teams invest in other features.

This is pretty much our position right now - we're trying to match a game that had over 8 years of professionally developed content, so our focus is on creating similar content first, then adding new stuff later.

[PSI-on]

GW 1: Or an area. Imagine trying so hard to get through a huge, tough zone to get to the next hub only to be to weak, having to go back to your last hub to wipe it and do the whole thing over and over again. In missions it sucks but I can see that as a feature about missions, but it hampered EVERYTHING.

Agreed.  In CoH, the embarrassment of dieing combined with the travel time was sufficient penalty IMO.  Didnt much care for the xp debt, but it usually didnt take long to work it off.

The two strikes and you have to sit out for the duration penalty in Neverwinter is one of the harshest I've seen since EQ1.

In GW1, you had a death penalty which reduced your effectiveness until you "worked it off" by killing mobs.  Die several times and you pretty much
had to start the mission over.  Again, overly harsh.

[PSI-on]

How long is the time penalty, how do you gain it back? And honest question here: WHY does there need to be a second punishment for failure? What's the justification? Not upset mind you, just honestly interesting in why you guys decided to do anything like that when it's not a requirement to have an extra punishment and ultimately up to you. What's the game makers thought process behind this sort of situation?

In HaV, when you're defeated, you can choose to respawn where you are, or respawn at the mission entrance - when you respawn, you need to recover your health and stamina, which is where the time penalty comes in - there are no hospitals or loading screens involved in defeat. The option to respawn at the mission door is for situations where respawning where you fell would be a problem, such as enemies still being active in the area.

[Golden Girl]

How long is the time penalty, how do you gain it back? And honest question here: WHY does there need to be a second punishment for failure? What's the justification? Not upset mind you, just honestly interesting in why you guys decided to do anything like that when it's not a requirement to have an extra punishment and ultimately up to you. What's the game makers thought process behind this sort of situation?

The time penalty hasn't been set yet, but it's likely to be somewhere around 20-30 seconds, which is significantly quicker than than the 2 loading screens and hospital run penalty in CoH.
The idea behind some form of "speed bump" when you're defeated is to encourage a bit of tactical thinking, as well as add a small element of risk.

[PSI-on]

Frankly I think defeat itself is the risk, especially when it takes you out of the fight, or team work and so on, but I can see what you mean. I wouldn't mind this one if you're pretty much describing the same type of penalty that came with using an awaken, where you couldn't get back health or end through regen for a few seconds. (if I recall correctly), but if I had my way, I wouldn't wanna have any extra penalty at all. Loading screens and hospitals are "inconveniences" while boxes, debuffs, debts, breakage, lost of money/xp, and timers are actual punishments and at least in my opinion feel like they slow the game play down. Always good to stop and think tactically, but seems like positive reinforcement would be preferable to negative and if there's one thing I've noticed about MMO players these days is all they wanna do is rush rush rush, I'm not sure a penalty will actually fix that, but will add extra strife to those of us who were trying legitimately from the get go. At least that's how I've always felt about defeat punishments. I will say though if I had to be spanked twice what you've suggested is much more kind then what I normally see in other games (except those who already don't have one at all).

The time penalty hasn't been set yet, but it's likely to be somewhere around 20-30 seconds, which is significantly quicker than than the 2 loading screens and hospital run penalty in CoH.
The idea behind some form of "speed bump" when you're defeated is to encourage a bit of tactical thinking, as well as add a small element of risk.

[Golden Girl]

Frankly I think defeat itself is the risk, especially when it takes you out of the fight, or team work and so on

The thing is, without a time penalty, then defeat wouldn't really take you out of the fight at all - you'd go down, then pop back up again the next second and continue from where you left off, with the only inconvenience being having to reactivate your toggles.

[PSI-on]

I'm still not sure I see the reason for it at all still, but I think this also points out my point well. I've said STO doesn't have a punishment for defeat, but it does have a count down timer before you can respawn. I never thought of that as a punishment or penalty, but an inconvenience, perhaps that could be acceptable enough? Could a merciful inconvenience such as a 5 second to 1 minute scaling (only in teams or TF's I'd hope) respawn timer be enough to accentuate the defeat and give it meaning without a further delay, punishment, or hindrance to the player (and in some cases his team) after finally getting up?  Again, it's just my preference, but I'd much rather be embarrassed on the floor, then a weakened burden to the team when I am up. Also I find most players are much kinder about players being stuck on the floor (especially if it's cause of a timer) then players just standing around (regardless the reason why).  That being said, is this respawn with full health, but with a penalty to HP and Stamina regen for the time limit Or a penalty to HP and Stamina amount on respawn *needing to get it back over time, healing, item, resting, ect.).

The thing is, without a time penalty, then defeat wouldn't really take you out of the fight at all - you'd go down, then pop back up again the next second and continue from where you left off, with the only inconvenience being having to reactivate your toggles.