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About those Alerts
magnumstar
Posts: 226 Arc User
When I first bought City of Heroes way back when, before I loaded it on my computer, I imagined what the game was going to be like. I imagined it to be like the Alert system CO has now where a villain (Either PC or NPC villain) would be committing a crime and a warning would go out that I could respond to. That wasn't the case unfortunately but I still enjoyed playing COX even though I thought the whole contact thing was out of touch with how superheroes fought crime in the comic books. Very few face off with a villain by way of contact, they usually respond spontaneously to an emergency.
The Alert system was a stroke of genius; this is how superheroes in the comics fight crime. The Alerts are so popular that few actually run the contact missions or they only run them to level faster. This has emptied out some of the zones, I could literally count the number of people in Canada, Desert, and the other areas on one hand the majority of the time. The Alerts are definitely a step in the right direction for this game but I believe it can be improved and expanded upon. Here are some of my ideas.
More Alerts
We need more Alerts with different villains. I noticed several in game villains missing from the Alerts we do have, those need to be added to create a variety of situations and adversaries we can face.
More Villains
My favorite Alert is Grab where you face off against more than one Villain. I love taking on Black Diamond, Humming Bird, BlueJay, and Cheshire Cat and wouldn't mind if a 5th was added to make it more interesting. It really annoys me when it takes a team to beat someone I defeated by myself running the contacts. Not only does this make me feel unheroic but its not near as fun as facing off against a team of villains. I'd would like to see the Alerts designed for solo and team play, some Alerts could be a solo hero facing off against a single villain while others would need a team of 5 to defeat an equal number of villains. No team should face off against a single super villain unless they are of the Cosmic Villain variety, Gravitar, Grond, Kigatilik, Bronze King, etc.
Alerts by Zone
Alerts need to be Map specific i.e. you need to be on that map the Alert is happening in. Open all maps up to all levels of characters.
Different Lvl Alerts
All Alerts are auto SK?d to lvl 30 but I noticed some of the lower level characters who queue up for them are severally outmatched. The Alerts need to broken down into several auto SK lvls. We need these to be 10 for those lvls 1-10, 20 for lvls 11-20, 30 for those between 21-30, and 40 for those who are lvl 31-40. I believe this will help some of the lower lvls complete the Alerts. It would be appropriate if the villains the heroes face would be those they would encounter at that lvl running the contact stuff. Also the Rampage Alerts should only be for those who are auto SK?d to 40 (31-40).
More Rampage Villains
We need more options for Rampage Villains. There are several they could use such as Grond, Therakiel, Kigatilik, MegaDestroid, Qyjibo, etc.
Better Rewards/Drops
One of the things I noticed is there isn?t a choice of useful rewards like you would receive from the contacts, other than questionite there?s not much a character can use. There needs to be some rewards we can use equal to what are received from the contacts.
I have some other ideas that I believe will enhance gameplay, these are-
Bring on the Villains
It?s time the villains were added. No alternate areas need be created for the bad guys or alternate powers designed. All that needs to be done is give the option for the player to designate their character a villain or hero. The villains can be in the same zones the heroes are and if they want to fight the duel option is already present in the game. PvP would have more meaning if heroes and villains could battle each other. The only development the Dev?s would need to do is create Plots for the villains to use, instead of a crime computer the villains would have a plot computer with options such as, rob a bank, kidnap for ransom, etc. The plots would get more grandiose as the villain gets higher in level. The plot computer could be accessed anytime from the villain?s character screen. No contacts need be created or missions just plots for the villains to use, this is also how the villains operate in the comics. The Alert system could be modified for heroes to respond to these plots to try and stop the villains, the appropriate level hero would try and stop a villain at around the same level (2-3 lvl difference). This would give the RP crowd more options and enhance their gameplay experience.
5 man Missions
The Alert system has made many of the 5 man missions in the game obsolete or at least very difficult to do since many of the zones they are in are nearly empty. I recommend these 5-man missions be turned into Special Task Force missions just like they are done in Star Trek online. Both heroes and villains could queue up for them. The Crisis Missions all need to done as a contact through Drifter.
Zones
As I?ve stated above many of the zone are nearly empty because of the Alerts. I recommend the game move past all the problems that were occurring in each zone, i.e. The Desert is cleaned up of irradiates, viper is defeated there and the ghosts are finally put to rest, etc. The zones will need to be redesigned to show the problems there have been reconciled. MC could be made bigger with each area there becoming its own zone. Some areas could be done away with since once the problems there have been resolved there would be no point in going back, these would be the Desert and Canada. I?d keep Lemuria, Monster Island, and Vibora Bay since they offer a different atmosphere. I wouldn?t worry about making new contacts and missions but instead expand on the Alert system to compensate for their loss. The expanded Alert system with villain plots should give players plenty to do.
The Alert system was a stroke of genius; this is how superheroes in the comics fight crime. The Alerts are so popular that few actually run the contact missions or they only run them to level faster. This has emptied out some of the zones, I could literally count the number of people in Canada, Desert, and the other areas on one hand the majority of the time. The Alerts are definitely a step in the right direction for this game but I believe it can be improved and expanded upon. Here are some of my ideas.
More Alerts
We need more Alerts with different villains. I noticed several in game villains missing from the Alerts we do have, those need to be added to create a variety of situations and adversaries we can face.
More Villains
My favorite Alert is Grab where you face off against more than one Villain. I love taking on Black Diamond, Humming Bird, BlueJay, and Cheshire Cat and wouldn't mind if a 5th was added to make it more interesting. It really annoys me when it takes a team to beat someone I defeated by myself running the contacts. Not only does this make me feel unheroic but its not near as fun as facing off against a team of villains. I'd would like to see the Alerts designed for solo and team play, some Alerts could be a solo hero facing off against a single villain while others would need a team of 5 to defeat an equal number of villains. No team should face off against a single super villain unless they are of the Cosmic Villain variety, Gravitar, Grond, Kigatilik, Bronze King, etc.
Alerts by Zone
Alerts need to be Map specific i.e. you need to be on that map the Alert is happening in. Open all maps up to all levels of characters.
Different Lvl Alerts
All Alerts are auto SK?d to lvl 30 but I noticed some of the lower level characters who queue up for them are severally outmatched. The Alerts need to broken down into several auto SK lvls. We need these to be 10 for those lvls 1-10, 20 for lvls 11-20, 30 for those between 21-30, and 40 for those who are lvl 31-40. I believe this will help some of the lower lvls complete the Alerts. It would be appropriate if the villains the heroes face would be those they would encounter at that lvl running the contact stuff. Also the Rampage Alerts should only be for those who are auto SK?d to 40 (31-40).
More Rampage Villains
We need more options for Rampage Villains. There are several they could use such as Grond, Therakiel, Kigatilik, MegaDestroid, Qyjibo, etc.
Better Rewards/Drops
One of the things I noticed is there isn?t a choice of useful rewards like you would receive from the contacts, other than questionite there?s not much a character can use. There needs to be some rewards we can use equal to what are received from the contacts.
I have some other ideas that I believe will enhance gameplay, these are-
Bring on the Villains
It?s time the villains were added. No alternate areas need be created for the bad guys or alternate powers designed. All that needs to be done is give the option for the player to designate their character a villain or hero. The villains can be in the same zones the heroes are and if they want to fight the duel option is already present in the game. PvP would have more meaning if heroes and villains could battle each other. The only development the Dev?s would need to do is create Plots for the villains to use, instead of a crime computer the villains would have a plot computer with options such as, rob a bank, kidnap for ransom, etc. The plots would get more grandiose as the villain gets higher in level. The plot computer could be accessed anytime from the villain?s character screen. No contacts need be created or missions just plots for the villains to use, this is also how the villains operate in the comics. The Alert system could be modified for heroes to respond to these plots to try and stop the villains, the appropriate level hero would try and stop a villain at around the same level (2-3 lvl difference). This would give the RP crowd more options and enhance their gameplay experience.
5 man Missions
The Alert system has made many of the 5 man missions in the game obsolete or at least very difficult to do since many of the zones they are in are nearly empty. I recommend these 5-man missions be turned into Special Task Force missions just like they are done in Star Trek online. Both heroes and villains could queue up for them. The Crisis Missions all need to done as a contact through Drifter.
Zones
As I?ve stated above many of the zone are nearly empty because of the Alerts. I recommend the game move past all the problems that were occurring in each zone, i.e. The Desert is cleaned up of irradiates, viper is defeated there and the ghosts are finally put to rest, etc. The zones will need to be redesigned to show the problems there have been reconciled. MC could be made bigger with each area there becoming its own zone. Some areas could be done away with since once the problems there have been resolved there would be no point in going back, these would be the Desert and Canada. I?d keep Lemuria, Monster Island, and Vibora Bay since they offer a different atmosphere. I wouldn?t worry about making new contacts and missions but instead expand on the Alert system to compensate for their loss. The expanded Alert system with villain plots should give players plenty to do.
Post edited by magnumstar on
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And more lockboxes of course
No serious .. do you really think this : is a good thing, and these zones should get even emptier so that they finally can be removed
from the game ?
I agree with pretty much the whole thing. They may have made some bad decisions, but Alerts were not one of them. Alerts are fantastic, and I also like the Grabs the best.
Honestly, I think the mission zones being emptier is actually a good thing... *ducks the various amounts of thrown rocks, vegetables and nes controllers* One thing that always bothered me in Champions... nay, bothered me in MMOs at large is that I would go to an area and this npc would be all like "zomg you gotta go stop these guys it's so important!", and then I would get there... and there's like 10 other people doing the same thing. I don't really feel like I'm doing a mission... I feel like I'm joining the front lines of a war (which is fine if that's the implied scenario) or hopping into a mosh pit.
Now, running missions has sort of a novel feel to it... it feels more genuine. Just seeing another person flying by in the distance almost drops me right into a comic frame with my hero looking up at the sky thinking "Bird Girl? What's she doing here?". Overall, the feeling of running missions seems improved.
The downside of course is that new players seeing this might not feel the same, they might instead feel like the game is dead... but that's why it's good that they jump into alerts right away, so that they see the game is actually active if you go to the right places.
Alerts = ACTION! POW!
Missions = Smell the roses.
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In the last year i more and more got the feeling that they actually removed more content
than they put new into the game. For example they removed completly our crafting system,
and no .. i don't call putting mods in items actually crafting. With the crafting and revamp
of the itemization we also lost tons of costume and weapon unlocks. There were also some
really nice crafting instances that were also simply closed.
Crafting instances were technically their own zones. Closing them up completely removed them from play. I don't remember if any rationale was given when Cryptic made mention of the closures but more than a few people were boggled by the decision, asking the very same questions.
Just keep the city zones and have all the rural adventure stuff be in the form of alerts or Q-able lairs.
That sounds horrible. Some of us enjoy zooming about and exploring.
I don't agree with the idea of turning MC into a giant lobby area where "outside the city limits" doesn't actually exist as a persistent world. DDO does that to a degree and it's pretty crappy.
Agreed.
That said, I think that developing the alert system into something that is an integral part of the various zones, adding to the zone that the individual alerts are part of, would have been a nice approach.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
it would be a good way to highlight Resistance as well.
This is essentially what happened on CoH when they introduced AE. We had players that stayed in the starter zones and did nothing but run AE farms over and over until they were at level cap. Some of them were surprised to learn there was actually more to the game than that. A lot of people that let themselves get sucked into those AE farms ended up quitting the game not too long after AE came out.
Making more alert maps is fine.
Making alerts the entire focus of the game will just drive away players.
For that matter, it'd make a fine followup Adventure Pack or Comic Series, and fit into the comic-book tradition of sequels to popular storylines.
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These are what I'd like to see more of. Forget alerts. Give me APs and Comics, ideally ones that are just tough enough to make me want to join others to run them with a lead up arc that has to be completed before I can run them.
thing for me that matters, and that is that the Alert has a low failure chance. So i really have
no need for any more alerts with Villains with bugged Darkness Aura or PFF.
This seems like an idea I can support. Keep others out of my hair when I'm trying to get that Dispatches mission done.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
Try doing some aps, comic series, lairs, or even some of the good normal missions (ill admit some are dull but theres some really good ones as well)
Alerts are purely 2 minute zerg the boss for xp/questionite dull grindiness!
There are 2 reasons alerts are popular
1) they offer better rewards (more xp and questionite)
2) people are practically thrown into alerts with their pop up and constantly being on screen so many dont even know about other content (ive even seen a 40 ask how to leave the city!)
If they stopped shoving them down our throats and directed people to real content, and give the real content actual rewards you would see the exact opposite with regards to numbers of people doing them.
And of course villains you fight out in zones are just boring. Where's the cool intros like the villain had enough of your actions in his lair and he bursts out of a wall to settle with you and cue in some dramatic fight music. You know all the epic stuff or fighting on the street dodging cars that can smack you around against a supervillain. And all the while picking up/destroying debris to save citizens which the supervillain uses to distract you during the fight.
And of course more interesting fight mechanisms instead of just spank and tank. Like the villain taking a citizen hostage and using him as a meatshield if you accidently kill the citizen the fight is over and you lose. You know the typical comic book stuff.
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I find the Alerts to be a good feature for this game, and one that helps drive retention and player-enjoyment.
I have. Repeatedly. On and off since they launched the game.
There are more kinds of Alerts than Smash Alerts.
Smash Alerts give bonus experience, correct. Grab Alerts do not. Burst Alerts do not. Rampage Alerts do not. Custom Alerts do not.
Roll a new character. Betcha one of the first things that pops up on your screen after leaving the power house is a teleport prompt that drops you in front of Kodiak.
They don't. The players are the ones "shoving it down our throats". Asking "How do I level?" in MC /zone gets a half-dozen people telling you "Alerts" or "Smash Alerts".
They do.
Non-Alert content has "actual rewards".
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
FF14 tried something similar to that. Guess what happened? :biggrin:
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
FF14 Also had a flawed combat system and was plagued by tons of lag, along with a cluttered user interface. FF14 just wasn't a fun game.
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CO has a flawed combat system and has tons of lag (for some people anywise). I'll give you the fact that CO's UI is better than FF14's UI without hesitation. :biggrin:
:mournfully looks at his six pre-order collectors-edition boxes for FF14:
(It could've been a good game too ... :sniffles: )
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
This would be awesome
I've made a few new toons in the last day or two. The very first pop up you get is to tell you all about the wonderful vehincles this game has. It then offers you a mission to learn more about them.
After that is a pop up that tells you all about alerts. It ends by asking if you'd like to run some alerts or if you'd like to make a purchase from the Z Store.
Yes, I read through all of both pop ups.
Oh and that pop up that teleports you to Kodiak? It so he can tell you about alerts.
As of Reloaded, yep.
As of On Alert, yep.
Brave person. I click through as rapidly as the interface lets me.
And this is where my habit of not reading the lowbie mission text catches me off-guard. I'll have to roll a new character and actually read the stuff this time. I normally just click through. (Admittedly, I suspect most people just click through assuming its' not their first MMO, in which case they probably read everything.) :redface:
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
My bad on that last one. It's not about alerts. It's about On Alert which.. kinda werd seeing as we're now at Reloaded but, better late then never?
There is just no reason to play them. Bursts to get R3 / R4 mods while i can find some R4
and R5 while doing anything else in shorter time ? And with selling these mods i can also make
more money then with pulling a pack of lowbies through a grab alert.
Correct.
There is no reason to play smash alerts either, once you're of a sufficient level as to make the other alert-types less than useful. You can get the questionite ore faster by speeding your way through Serpent Lantern than you can queuing for the alert dailies.
And its' not like you need experience for anything at level 40.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
If they ever did this I know that would be one of the few things that could drive me away from the game permanently.
Umm, no. There is nearly never a reason to limit what other people can play and enjoy. If people want to run alerts all day on their time, or run adventure packs all day or type their character's name into chat in all caps because that's what they find fun, let them. If you have to force people to play certain parts of your game then your game has issues that won't be solved by forcing people to do it differently than they have been.
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With the amount of characters i have, i just collected the smash daily with everyone of them,
and then waited for Nemesis Smashes or Black Fang before they removed the Q Drops there.
Else when leveling i do maybe a Smash every hour to refresh the Exp Bonus. Else i prefer
still leveling in Canada and on Monster Island. I just want to have the option back to start
with 6 in Canada .. since that really already drove me with some level 6 chars into alerts.
But what if I prefer to do alerts? Tough cookies video games is srs bzns? Doesn't seem like an appropriate answer.
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I'd love that. Even more so, that's just Resistance world MC. I've always wondered how the other zones would look like in that universe. I honestly think they could make an Adventure Pack that sends you to these different places but given how they are re-using some aspects of the maps, could leave them open like a zone, kind of how the Qliphotic Realm was in AfterShock (one could do the quest at hand or fly about and kill other things). A multi-world storyline would be pretty epic. Or each place could be used as some sort of zone. Giant destroids walking about would make for a good challenge, encouraging teaming and such and it would probably be a nice challenge for a high level person. Given the connection to the Qliphotic Realm, you could further mix the two worlds and throw some Qliphotic creatures into these zones as well.
Truer words were never spoken. If I had the money to, I'd pay you togo to the offices of various game companies and explain to them what they are doing wrong.
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I think that a better response to this situation would be more clear information in game and better rewards for non alert content.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I'd agree to this. But can they really offer rewards that would be enough of an incentive over the convenience of alerts? It would be a hard balance to find. Instant gratification has always been an American favorite.
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There have always been silly people playing these games. There always will be. Placing restrictions on the not-ignorant players because of the ignorant players only inspires resentment, it doesn't drive retention and it doesn't drive revenue (unless you charge for them to bypass the restrictions; which inspires even more resentment).
For various reasons (of which the Alerts are but one), they end up staying here longer than they stay in other games. This is generally considered a good thing from a business-perspective and can potentially be a good thing from a player-perspective if they respond well to having their ignorance corrected.
(The difference between a "noob" and a "newbie" is that a newbie is willing to learn.)
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
A bad idea for whom?
For us, players of CO?
Maybe. I like them, and I likely wouldn't still be here if they didn't exist. Think of them as paper/radio missions. They fill a content void when the dev-created content isn't sufficiently entertaining.
Such is why I'd really love for them to port the NWN Foundry into CO.
For Cryptic, operators of CO?
Heh. CO launched in 2009. It is now 2012, soon to be 2013. It has a 3~5 year intended lifespan. Its' three years old as of Sept 2012. Why would it be a bad idea for a game to close that lasted as long as they designed it to last? They have other games. STO and soon to be NWN and then whatever the next game is. (A new game every couple of years is the intention.)
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
Short answer is both. Long answer would be long enough that I'd probably have to start a new thread.
A bad idea that's really popular and has become the most active part of the game (other than costume contests).
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Yup! Quick and easy rewards + instant gratification will always be very popular.
I'll simply bring CoX's Issue 14 as an example, and what people were doing with it (at least before the "nerf").. Alerts aren't a bad thing, they just need to be kept under control instead of this.. And seriously.. We can do Alerts all day long without a stop.. Why it's not the same with UNITY missions for example, for those who like some "variation" in their game?
UNITY missions all day, err' day? I'm not saying "no" but the thought of that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I think the room temperature just took a dive too.
Sounds fine to me.
Simply make additional Unity 1 and Unity 2 missions taken after the first not grant silver champion recognition.
(Not that I'd object if they did, mind, but I am given to understand Cryptic loves time-limited currency accumulation models.)
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
This is really the only thing I agreed with the OP (and maybe the part about breaking them down in level brackets). When I originally heard about Alerts (back when they were still in development and we knew nothing about them other than they were on the works), I thought I'd be running around the map in any part of the game, then any time I passed near a key location (such as a warehouse, Viper base or a bank--even just a random stranger in the road that was trapped under rubble or being harrazed by someone)...
BAM! ALERT! *queue emergency sirens*
...and I would get to participate in some sort of dynamic event or enter an instance that was relevant to that area (or at least that map). Or alternately, there would be random things happening around the world (in the open world map)--perhaps a high tier villain could be spotted somewhere around MC, and an Alert would go off specifying the area so we could run to face off against a major threat.
Instead what we got was a series of mismatched mini zones that can be thematically located anywhere in the world and can be access from any location, even if you're not anywhere near that area of the planet. I could be running around West Side in MC and queue to an Alert on a map that's supposed to take place in VB and has nothing to do with the place I'm currently at. I feel that Alerts give the game a disjointed feeling right now because they're just a series of random, disconnected pugs that generally have nothing to do with the place you're at.
I don't think that the idea of Alerts is inherent bad, but I really hate the implementation of them. The main reason I tend to pic MMOs over other games (including non-MMO RPGs) is the feeling that I'm moving about a persistent world, and Alerts detract from that. They're about random mini maps anyone in the game can port to from any zone.
I also like elaborate missions (not necessarily long, but with multiple objectives leading up to a big, final goal), which Alerts are not. They're really light, with no overarching objectives or interesting gameplay mechanics--no bad guys knocking you into a lava pit you have to avoid, special locations you need to secure (perhaps by locking a gate) to avoid an extra swarm of enemies, traps you can set off as you move around or fight enemies, or hidden levers you need to pull to prevent an AoE damage zone (perhaps electrified floor) from activating. They're just a single map with some random enemies you have to fight, tank-n-spank style, with no elaboration whatsoever.
What's the point of queueing for a different map than the one I'm at just to kill a few random enemies when I can already do that anywhere in any zone? Fighting random legendary villains? I would rather have those spawn all over the map (and some of them already do, but I would like more, random ones with decent rewards) so I can run into them and confront them as I move around the world.
The only Alerts I generally use are the Smash ones, because they help me level faster, so I can skip areas of the regular parts of the game I'm tired of replaying, and help me reach level cap faster in case I start to loose interest in an alt and don't want it to get stuck in a lower level (plus want to get the lv 40 extra character slot for the next alt).
EH? Most players I know think they are a great addition . The only problem some people have is the fact that lowbies use them to level. Never had problems teaming myself. I just wait for a LTF in zone or get some of mah buddies and away we go \o/
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They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!