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Oh no, Maverick is thinking! And he's going to make a suggestion!
belleraux
Posts: 94 Arc User
Introduction to this sheet (not meant as the original word, I'm just using a cleaner version of the curseword)
Once upon a time, there was something awesome: ME!
And then there was CO. And then there was Trailturtle. And then I suggested him what I'm going to suggest here, but before I could develop my suggestion, he shot me down with the answer of doom:
No, I'm not kidding, he used those exact words.
After spending 3 days whining to Conquer about this, Caliga made me the following proposition:
While I can regenerate from nearly any wound, I don't think I would want to recover from his fists (Saxton Hale, anyone?), so here we go.
This sheet
I never played CoX and, for very obvious reasons, will never be able to play it. Heck, I only started playing CO because a hot dannish girls showed me some of "her stuff" on webcam and said "I'd loooove if you played this with me". But still, I'm fond of this game for the last 5 years and you're stuck with me harder than Al Gore has the stick inside his rear.
Still, I see a lot of people thinking it would be amazing to be able to play villains. While I auto-exclude from actual arguments the people who only whine how "CoH is better, CoT is going to release and I'm abandoning CO to go there", some non-CoX refugees have manifested the same kind of wish. I think it was Silvyana who even suggested to design a new questline for villains, I remember not. Some players argue that it would be too much work to make an entire questline only consisting of villain material, and I agree.
So, let's think of a simpler, more straightforward idea:
Alignment Change
Yes, you got it right. You did approximately 1032 missions helping people and saving the virtual world of poor, innocent pixels from their virtual never-coming doom. You got bored of it, so why not becoming a villain? You would simply turn against those you protected. Because it was fun, because you want, whatever reason you want, except to get on Gravitar's pants because we all know that she only takes her clothes off for those who beat her. Sassy gurl!
I'm not feeling less unaligned
Don't make me punch you. Worse, don't make me make Caliga punch you. The idea would be in that hud it pops when you click on the arrow on your toon's picture. There is difficulty, mood, change costume and stuff. In there we would have an option called "Change Alignment". You would have "good", "neutral" and "evil".
Evil would turn everyone's HP bars to red and you would have no allies, meaning that you could attack anyone you wanted at any moment you wanted, including other evil mobs. Neutral would work differently: nobody would be able to interact with you, be them good or evil, BUT you would be stuck in RenCen or whatever other main zone. Basically, Neutral mode would be a "DnD", mode, should you want to go AFK or simply want to be alone or even want to RP with others without being disrupted.
Good would be the same stuff things are.
I'm evil on the outside, but inside I'm a cute cuddly bear
In this case, you could add an extra function: Specific alignment.
You know how you click on someone's face and there's an option "duel"? Well, add an option called "specific alignment". That would allow you to be evil and have evil friends. Think of how fun it would be if you turned evil, gathered some other evil players and ganged up, not in THAT WAY, on poor people passing on the streets?
The second possibility would be if you were adopted by Clarence.
Hugs are fun, but smashing is better!
PVP already proves us it's possible to whomp someone without being disrupted. This option could then give us PLAYER nemesis.
Mostly this: I don't like you, so I'll change my personal alignment so we can be enemies and I start beating you whenever I see you flying around in the streets. Just like real world!
So, how about a nice cup of floor?
Someone said in game a valid thing: How would players fare if the entire world became a huge PK zone?
I have the answer: RenCen would be a safe zone. Inside RenCen, none of this would be allowed. If you were allowed inside RenCen you would necessarily be turned into either friendly or neutral, meaning that if you don't want to partake that fest you'd just need to be in RenCen.
Mommy, big guy is bullying us!
Oh, so you want to play story mode before you go into the fighting fest? Ooor, you are afraid of being bullied by big, bad evil people who use Backup to smash newbies? Don't worry, the solution is simple: Alignment function would be locked until level 40. You wouldn't be able to become a villain before you reached endgame, and no villains would be able to bully you before you reached level 40.
I'm level 39 and I can totally beat level 40's, I demand to be a villain now
Silence, infidel. Go level to 40 then we talk.
I'll go to the other side of the town, beat some civilians, change alignment back to good then be praised as a hero for punching women and children
No, you won't. You see, I conceived this idea during shower, and at sundays I take really long showers. I thought of EVERYTHING. And with this I thought of a nice good counter for this part: Reputation system. That would control the flow of good and bad stuff you could do with your toon.
They know me. They really know me!
Reputation would work like this: You gain 1 reputation per exp when you kill a mob, i.e., a mob that gives 200 exp would give 200 reputation. When completing a mission, you would gain 1 reputation per TEN exp points from when you complete a mission, meaning that a mission that gives you 12,000 exp would give you 1,200 reputation. This would mean that toons with more reputation would be more prone into being intercepted by civilians witnessing crimes than less reputable toons.
As a villain, it would be the other way around. You would lose 1 reputation per exp - you would have - gained when killing an innocent npc. Obviously, you wouldn't be able to become infamous faster than you could become famous, but this game is about being a hero, not a villain.
Noo, I can no longer walk around freely!
Of course you can't. Players with negative reputation would be automatically turned enemies from friendly NPCs, and be engaged by police officers everywhere. You are a wanted criminal now, dammit.
The NPC has more friends in game than I have in real life
Of course he does. And when he sees you beating his friends, guess what he'd do? Call the police. And what would the police do? Call heroes. Imagine if you cause enough mayhem the other players would be notified of you and be called to deal with you. Maybe even better: The Champions would be summoned to deal with bigger threats, like the most infamous players would have to withstand Defender penetrating the other side of THEIR building!
Some how I predict this would trigger a huge rush of people becoming villains just to beat Defender...
Wait, wait! You said you take long showers on Sundays, but today is tuesday!
I don't want to be evil today
Then don't be evil today. Change your alignment or, even yet, remain enemies with the heros, but keep helping them. AoE's would still hurt them, but that's your responsability. That would vary from player to player, but think of the freedom.
I must go deeper!
Wanted the alerts to be villain-oriented even if you are not level 40 yet? Well, what about this? Villain-side alerts. They would be exact the same alerts, but instead of joining the hero side, you would spawn on the other side of the map, and their mission would be to delay and/or stop the heroes from completing their mission. Of course, this would increase alert population from 5 to 10 players.
Obviously, since good always beats evil, villains winning Grab alerts would be impossible, BUT they would get the same amount of exp still.
Again, this villanous functionality would be locked until level 40, so newbies could level happily and have less delay, while people in the land of endgame would have an extra motivation to keep doing alerts.
Imagine how awesome it'd be to have 3 minutes to stop the train in Vibora Bay. Suddenly, when you are almost beating Viper X, a cluster of villains appear and whomps you!
Wouldn't it be amazing to be almost beating Gravitar then suddenly you are betrayed by the other team and whomped?
I want to be a gang member too!
That wouldn't be your choice, BUT, as the mobs target you, they could auto-change their alignment with you, wondering if they would or not befriend you. Why would the Purple Gang waste time fighting you if you just beat the guy who was beating them?
And it would be awesome to have them suddenly betraying you.
Nah, too much programming. Or not
The best part of this idea is that all of those functions use what's already inside the game.
Yes, you heard it right. You have seen all of this:
1. It's possible to change alignments to Neutral with everyone when you enter a duel.
2. There is a mission in Monster Island where all the mobs are friendly until Professor Ratso reveals to be a traitor, where the mobs instantly change their alignment and become enemies.
3. There is a cave in Monster Island with a secret entrance to a Manimals Sanctuary. The first time you go there they are all your friends, but if you leave and re-enter they will be your enemies from that moment on.
4. There is a nemesis mission where your nem takes control of a Viper's Nest. One of Viper's Lieutenants (or captain) has a red HP bar, meaning they are your enemy, but you can decide to talk to them and they'd change to be friendlies.
5. It's already possible to kill friendlies, save rare exceptions, by combining Illumination + Celestial Conduit on an object. The Celestial Conduit will extend and damage nearby friendlies. I have killed the Legacy Aura Vendor many times already.
6. Endgame would become a sandbox game. It would add loads and loads of other options, rather than just standing in RenCen.
7. Villain alerts, in case you noticed, wouldn't be any different than Stronghold Apocalypse and other Hero Games. Basically they would just be Hero Games with different themes.
8. People who wanted to pvp without ruining their player reputation could still use classic Hero Games.
9. Risk of Hero Games being abandoned wasn't considered because, let's be honest, Hero Games is already abandoned, so this idea would either recover or not change anything.
10. Regular levelling would be unaltered, meaning newbies wouldn't be at the least risk at all.
11. This wouldn't add any forms of possible griefing that aren't already there, so this idea wouldn't be to blame for anything.
12. Players who would only level by alerts would gain way less reputation than players who level by mission, if you do the maths, meaning an extra reason for players to do the levelling as it was originally supposed to.
13. Exp boosts would not affect reputation gained, so speedlevellers would have even less reputation. This would work great for possible villains, as it would make turning to evil even easier.
14. Alert EXP rewards would also be divided by 10 in reputation proportion, or perhaps by 20, so the NPCs would have different amount of respects by players who speedlevel. That would add an extra weight to saving the world and making it matter way more than saving just the local museum/bank/city hall.
15. There isn't really a 15th argument. I just wanted to add this here.
Comment me.
Once upon a time, there was something awesome: ME!
And then there was CO. And then there was Trailturtle. And then I suggested him what I'm going to suggest here, but before I could develop my suggestion, he shot me down with the answer of doom:
Nah, too much programming
No, I'm not kidding, he used those exact words.
After spending 3 days whining to Conquer about this, Caliga made me the following proposition:
Go post this suggestion or I'll punch you
While I can regenerate from nearly any wound, I don't think I would want to recover from his fists (Saxton Hale, anyone?), so here we go.
This sheet
I never played CoX and, for very obvious reasons, will never be able to play it. Heck, I only started playing CO because a hot dannish girls showed me some of "her stuff" on webcam and said "I'd loooove if you played this with me". But still, I'm fond of this game for the last 5 years and you're stuck with me harder than Al Gore has the stick inside his rear.
Still, I see a lot of people thinking it would be amazing to be able to play villains. While I auto-exclude from actual arguments the people who only whine how "CoH is better, CoT is going to release and I'm abandoning CO to go there", some non-CoX refugees have manifested the same kind of wish. I think it was Silvyana who even suggested to design a new questline for villains, I remember not. Some players argue that it would be too much work to make an entire questline only consisting of villain material, and I agree.
So, let's think of a simpler, more straightforward idea:
Alignment Change
Yes, you got it right. You did approximately 1032 missions helping people and saving the virtual world of poor, innocent pixels from their virtual never-coming doom. You got bored of it, so why not becoming a villain? You would simply turn against those you protected. Because it was fun, because you want, whatever reason you want, except to get on Gravitar's pants because we all know that she only takes her clothes off for those who beat her. Sassy gurl!
I'm not feeling less unaligned
Don't make me punch you. Worse, don't make me make Caliga punch you. The idea would be in that hud it pops when you click on the arrow on your toon's picture. There is difficulty, mood, change costume and stuff. In there we would have an option called "Change Alignment". You would have "good", "neutral" and "evil".
Evil would turn everyone's HP bars to red and you would have no allies, meaning that you could attack anyone you wanted at any moment you wanted, including other evil mobs. Neutral would work differently: nobody would be able to interact with you, be them good or evil, BUT you would be stuck in RenCen or whatever other main zone. Basically, Neutral mode would be a "DnD", mode, should you want to go AFK or simply want to be alone or even want to RP with others without being disrupted.
Good would be the same stuff things are.
I'm evil on the outside, but inside I'm a cute cuddly bear
In this case, you could add an extra function: Specific alignment.
You know how you click on someone's face and there's an option "duel"? Well, add an option called "specific alignment". That would allow you to be evil and have evil friends. Think of how fun it would be if you turned evil, gathered some other evil players and ganged up, not in THAT WAY, on poor people passing on the streets?
The second possibility would be if you were adopted by Clarence.
Hugs are fun, but smashing is better!
PVP already proves us it's possible to whomp someone without being disrupted. This option could then give us PLAYER nemesis.
Mostly this: I don't like you, so I'll change my personal alignment so we can be enemies and I start beating you whenever I see you flying around in the streets. Just like real world!
So, how about a nice cup of floor?
Someone said in game a valid thing: How would players fare if the entire world became a huge PK zone?
I have the answer: RenCen would be a safe zone. Inside RenCen, none of this would be allowed. If you were allowed inside RenCen you would necessarily be turned into either friendly or neutral, meaning that if you don't want to partake that fest you'd just need to be in RenCen.
Mommy, big guy is bullying us!
Oh, so you want to play story mode before you go into the fighting fest? Ooor, you are afraid of being bullied by big, bad evil people who use Backup to smash newbies? Don't worry, the solution is simple: Alignment function would be locked until level 40. You wouldn't be able to become a villain before you reached endgame, and no villains would be able to bully you before you reached level 40.
I'm level 39 and I can totally beat level 40's, I demand to be a villain now
Silence, infidel. Go level to 40 then we talk.
I'll go to the other side of the town, beat some civilians, change alignment back to good then be praised as a hero for punching women and children
No, you won't. You see, I conceived this idea during shower, and at sundays I take really long showers. I thought of EVERYTHING. And with this I thought of a nice good counter for this part: Reputation system. That would control the flow of good and bad stuff you could do with your toon.
They know me. They really know me!
Reputation would work like this: You gain 1 reputation per exp when you kill a mob, i.e., a mob that gives 200 exp would give 200 reputation. When completing a mission, you would gain 1 reputation per TEN exp points from when you complete a mission, meaning that a mission that gives you 12,000 exp would give you 1,200 reputation. This would mean that toons with more reputation would be more prone into being intercepted by civilians witnessing crimes than less reputable toons.
As a villain, it would be the other way around. You would lose 1 reputation per exp - you would have - gained when killing an innocent npc. Obviously, you wouldn't be able to become infamous faster than you could become famous, but this game is about being a hero, not a villain.
Noo, I can no longer walk around freely!
Of course you can't. Players with negative reputation would be automatically turned enemies from friendly NPCs, and be engaged by police officers everywhere. You are a wanted criminal now, dammit.
The NPC has more friends in game than I have in real life
Of course he does. And when he sees you beating his friends, guess what he'd do? Call the police. And what would the police do? Call heroes. Imagine if you cause enough mayhem the other players would be notified of you and be called to deal with you. Maybe even better: The Champions would be summoned to deal with bigger threats, like the most infamous players would have to withstand Defender penetrating the other side of THEIR building!
Some how I predict this would trigger a huge rush of people becoming villains just to beat Defender...
Wait, wait! You said you take long showers on Sundays, but today is tuesday!
Silence, infidel.
I don't want to be evil today
Then don't be evil today. Change your alignment or, even yet, remain enemies with the heros, but keep helping them. AoE's would still hurt them, but that's your responsability. That would vary from player to player, but think of the freedom.
I must go deeper!
Wanted the alerts to be villain-oriented even if you are not level 40 yet? Well, what about this? Villain-side alerts. They would be exact the same alerts, but instead of joining the hero side, you would spawn on the other side of the map, and their mission would be to delay and/or stop the heroes from completing their mission. Of course, this would increase alert population from 5 to 10 players.
Obviously, since good always beats evil, villains winning Grab alerts would be impossible, BUT they would get the same amount of exp still.
Again, this villanous functionality would be locked until level 40, so newbies could level happily and have less delay, while people in the land of endgame would have an extra motivation to keep doing alerts.
Imagine how awesome it'd be to have 3 minutes to stop the train in Vibora Bay. Suddenly, when you are almost beating Viper X, a cluster of villains appear and whomps you!
Wouldn't it be amazing to be almost beating Gravitar then suddenly you are betrayed by the other team and whomped?
I want to be a gang member too!
That wouldn't be your choice, BUT, as the mobs target you, they could auto-change their alignment with you, wondering if they would or not befriend you. Why would the Purple Gang waste time fighting you if you just beat the guy who was beating them?
And it would be awesome to have them suddenly betraying you.
Nah, too much programming. Or not
The best part of this idea is that all of those functions use what's already inside the game.
Yes, you heard it right. You have seen all of this:
1. It's possible to change alignments to Neutral with everyone when you enter a duel.
2. There is a mission in Monster Island where all the mobs are friendly until Professor Ratso reveals to be a traitor, where the mobs instantly change their alignment and become enemies.
3. There is a cave in Monster Island with a secret entrance to a Manimals Sanctuary. The first time you go there they are all your friends, but if you leave and re-enter they will be your enemies from that moment on.
4. There is a nemesis mission where your nem takes control of a Viper's Nest. One of Viper's Lieutenants (or captain) has a red HP bar, meaning they are your enemy, but you can decide to talk to them and they'd change to be friendlies.
5. It's already possible to kill friendlies, save rare exceptions, by combining Illumination + Celestial Conduit on an object. The Celestial Conduit will extend and damage nearby friendlies. I have killed the Legacy Aura Vendor many times already.
6. Endgame would become a sandbox game. It would add loads and loads of other options, rather than just standing in RenCen.
7. Villain alerts, in case you noticed, wouldn't be any different than Stronghold Apocalypse and other Hero Games. Basically they would just be Hero Games with different themes.
8. People who wanted to pvp without ruining their player reputation could still use classic Hero Games.
9. Risk of Hero Games being abandoned wasn't considered because, let's be honest, Hero Games is already abandoned, so this idea would either recover or not change anything.
10. Regular levelling would be unaltered, meaning newbies wouldn't be at the least risk at all.
11. This wouldn't add any forms of possible griefing that aren't already there, so this idea wouldn't be to blame for anything.
12. Players who would only level by alerts would gain way less reputation than players who level by mission, if you do the maths, meaning an extra reason for players to do the levelling as it was originally supposed to.
13. Exp boosts would not affect reputation gained, so speedlevellers would have even less reputation. This would work great for possible villains, as it would make turning to evil even easier.
14. Alert EXP rewards would also be divided by 10 in reputation proportion, or perhaps by 20, so the NPCs would have different amount of respects by players who speedlevel. That would add an extra weight to saving the world and making it matter way more than saving just the local museum/bank/city hall.
15. There isn't really a 15th argument. I just wanted to add this here.
Comment me.
Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.
I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
Post edited by belleraux on
0
Comments
It's a tech issue.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
I have spent 30 minutes typing this thread, so go back there and re-type your post for the next 29 minutes.
Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.
I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."
~me
That made me laugh.... Now... respond to every Dev post that tells us "it's a tech issue" the same way.... if we're lucky they might actually give us some more info as to what exactly these "tech issues" really are.
By level 40, a player has the full range of abilities, most likely. Their build will be slowly getting perfected, and they will increasingly become difficult to kill.
What you suggest is that such players, exemplars of their kind potentially, can opt to have a target put on their heads.
Or to quote Optimus Prime from a sub-par version of a Transformers universe... "I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!"
I would very much be motivated to level more heroes to 40 if it meant protecting people from the growing number of supervillains...
But there is a problem though: you're talking an entirely player run ecosystem here. And evil is dark and edgy and kewl.
Your NPC reputation system would have to be exponentional in the level of threat you're considered. Like a GTA game, first citizens throw rocks at you, then the police get involved, then the coast guard, then a nunnery busts out the rocket launchers then some generic superheroes attack and then you've got the army busting out the tanks, and then Reggie the cat unleashes its true form...
I like it. It probably could go a bit nuts though if two villains are on a rampage at once in an area.
I'd love it as a player but programmers and devs and people who fix problems would probably despise you due to the amount of NPC scripting needed to prevent it becoming too insane.
Insanity is good, but to make it possible... I dunno, Perhaps HP and resistances of the spawned in resistance increases proportionally to a hidden 'Threat Level' to the point where you are facing invulnerable hovertanks and global-level power armour.
If this never gets done in this game, Cryptic and Perfect World should do it in a future urban setting MMO if that ever happens.
Yes! That's one thing I aimed for with my idea. The game would become a community-created content. We'd have as much villains as the players wanted, and that would probably attract more players, then bringing more villains and heroes according to their wishes, and so forth.
Not to mention that being a hero would mean more, specially to people who like playing as a team.
i knew I was forgetting something! This means my sunday showers are not long enough. That would be a great way to implement it.
This reminds me. There is a browser game called Blade Hunter that has an arena for players to compete. Whoever reaches 1st place can fight a shadow of themselves. The shadow works on the following way: Player's attributes * 1 for first match, then *1.5 if player wins, then *2 and so forth.
NPCs opposing the villains could go the same way, perhaps a bit slower.
I'd totally take them on PVP! I can be the first villain in the game!
I'd break their hands....with my face.
Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.
I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.