A Hideout for the Horrordays

nextnametaken

Three gold players that I met today didn't know they had hideouts or how to access them.
This has happened a bit too often to be good. Send out a nice survey:

Did you know Champions Online had hideouts?
Did you know players get a free hideout for subscribing?

Which hideout if any did you choose?
If you didn't choose a hideout which one would you choose if you could?

Thank you for taking this survey a code for a new free hideout has
been sent to you to use with the Champions Online account associated with this email address.

Happy Holidays.

Doesn't really solve telling future generations of gold players about their hideouts though.

Need maybe an NPC called The Haunt that takes you to hideouts like a real estate
agent after explaining how subscribers get them free and they are affordable options for players in the z store.
She should point out where the interface options are for them.
This could all be done with a cut scene.

Maybe don't even need this in game, could make it a video link to send
out in the survey/spam whatever works to spread the word.

You told some people about hideouts in 2011. Who have you told since?

chalupaoffury

Good point. It doesn't even mention this in the features matrix.

crypticbuxom

If they had more info for and highlighted these kinds of features, if it gets too popular and starts making money again they may have to go back and update these kinds of features and even add more to it.

Cryptic loathes going back and updating systems they abandoned halfway through.

rabenschwinge

I didn't realize that this was a problem. While the hideouts aren't exactly ripe with useful features, the account bank is helpful for maintaining a common stock of items for all characters - I store all the mods I find in the account bank. Consequently I need only one character with a crafting skill and the common pool makes it a lot easier to find enough stuff to fuse mods. And while I rarely invite people it my hideouts it does happen when I want to show a new costume to a guild mate before I want to let it loose on public.

I don't like to stand idly around in the open world, so I only use the tailors in my hideouts (or the character creator of course).

In some cases they make a good scenery for screenshots. Like the lava cave of my succubus character.

The hideouts could be better, but they are not entirely useless as is.

It should be easy for Perfect World and Cryptic to figure out the percentage of subscribers who do actually use their hideouts, and if it is as the OP suggest, do make a campaign for hideouts. Possibly along with some new options (i.e. both new themes for existing hideouts and entirely new ones would be interesting). But even if there is no developer capacity to spare for hideouts, a campaign might be helpful, if the OP's impression of the state of the things is correct.

A new feature that would help advertise another relatively new game feature that is not that widely used would be a vehicle garage. That would help killing two birds with one stone, advertising both vehicles and hideouts.

nextnametaken

Babba Yaga's Walking Hut could be a hideout and a vehicle.
Snap to it Cryptic!