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Make an alternate 6-15 levelling quest line
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
Remember how CoH has you pick your origin type, and in doing so, affects what villain groups you go up against first? Also, how you can pick between Atlas Park or Galaxy City on where to start?
Remember in Dark Age of Camelot where (aside from being able to pick from a ridiculous number of factions) you could select what town you could start in dependent on your race and class?
Remember in DCUO where you can choose which hero/villain you fight under at the start, thereby affecting where in the city you mainly patrol and what your enemies were?
Remember when-ppffffff forget it, I don't know any other examples, really. Basically, alternate early-level options are a staple when it comes to MMOs. Because, you know, they encourage replayability for more gameplay time (and thereby more potential money drain.)
Now let's take it to Champions. Present champions, every hero start out by talking to defender, dicking around in Westside, beating up a chinese man, and then moving on to somewhere else. The alternate to that is doing alerts, which quickly is about to become a non-option, thanks to level gating.
No, really, I'm all for it. Adding XP to grabs is going to make for a good option for early level, non-fallable XP gains. It's just that people level a lot of new characters and sometimes, just sometimes, doing the exact same punch-mafia-run-through-sewers-talk-to-police-chief-beat-up-crazy-people-beat-up-clockwork-orange-ripoffs-kill-a-bug-stop-a-prison-riot-whack-hi-pan-and-his-dragon dog-and-pony-show just gets a little old.
And I mean, even compare that to early champions. The starting zone wasn't Millennium City. No, right after saving the city, you had to contend with problems in Canada or The Desert. Two choices is better than one, and while the alert thing does supply some choice for early-level characters, it's soon going to be the case that we'll be forced to either go through the on-rails and repetitive westside arc, or just grind stuff by beating up villains. In westside.
So, maybe do something like this...??
Starting Locations:
Remember in Dark Age of Camelot where (aside from being able to pick from a ridiculous number of factions) you could select what town you could start in dependent on your race and class?
Remember in DCUO where you can choose which hero/villain you fight under at the start, thereby affecting where in the city you mainly patrol and what your enemies were?
Remember when-ppffffff forget it, I don't know any other examples, really. Basically, alternate early-level options are a staple when it comes to MMOs. Because, you know, they encourage replayability for more gameplay time (and thereby more potential money drain.)
Now let's take it to Champions. Present champions, every hero start out by talking to defender, dicking around in Westside, beating up a chinese man, and then moving on to somewhere else. The alternate to that is doing alerts, which quickly is about to become a non-option, thanks to level gating.
No, really, I'm all for it. Adding XP to grabs is going to make for a good option for early level, non-fallable XP gains. It's just that people level a lot of new characters and sometimes, just sometimes, doing the exact same punch-mafia-run-through-sewers-talk-to-police-chief-beat-up-crazy-people-beat-up-clockwork-orange-ripoffs-kill-a-bug-stop-a-prison-riot-whack-hi-pan-and-his-dragon dog-and-pony-show just gets a little old.
And I mean, even compare that to early champions. The starting zone wasn't Millennium City. No, right after saving the city, you had to contend with problems in Canada or The Desert. Two choices is better than one, and while the alert thing does supply some choice for early-level characters, it's soon going to be the case that we'll be forced to either go through the on-rails and repetitive westside arc, or just grind stuff by beating up villains. In westside.
So, maybe do something like this...??
Starting Locations:
- Millennium City - Shortly following the qularr invasion, various gangs in the old Detroit neighborhood of Westside have sought to take advantage of the chaos. Gangs such as the Black Aces and Maniacs have capitalized on exploiting some of the leftover Qularr technology from the fight, while others, such as the Purple Gang, have been up to their own shots at a power grab and potential retribution. Take to the streets to uncover a potential uprising from the gangs of West Side, and stop a city-wide insurgency. (Same as current West Side arc.)
- Vibora Bay - The gangs of vibora, while not supernatural (yet), prove to be ferocious fighters and opportunitsts. Local law enforcement has been able to keep a lid on the issue, but now that an up-and-coming gang in town, the Trey Kings, has shown up and told troubling prophecies of the end of days, gang activity has burst out of control. Rumors have it that the Trey Kings have also been uncovering volatile demon magics, potentially spreading deadly supernatural powers among the gangs of the city. Head to Vibora Bay to curb the supernatural threat, and nip this illicit cabal in the bud. (Essentially a precursor to the final apocalypse; this sizes up in successfully stopping the supernatural influence in the city for a while, until the final levels where Therakiel rises up.)
- Hudson City - The dark and downtrodden streets of Hudson City could use all the help they can get - notable gangs across the city, including the Card Sharks, UMBRA, and The Victory Party, have taken deep seed in its streets, and even discounting the threat and influence of more deadly rogues, the law enforcement has much more than they can handle. Every movement begins with a single step, however, and Nighthawk is determined to correct the city's ruin. Join him in a mission to start cleaning up the city, routing the gangs from their city bases, and potentially uncovering the deep-seeded corruption within the city's law enforcement itself. (Probably the most ambitious of these, requiring some all-new map design and enemies and crap. Now that I read more about it, it'd actually be a bit of a shame if it was limited to 6-15.)
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We already have a small bit of leveling in Vibora, and I'd love to see more.
I love the ideas, bluhman. The low level Vibora Bay content was a real disappointment. Less than an hour of actual content, and then you don't see the place again for another 20 levels. What a waste of a new zone. It's a great idea to reappoint it as an alternate starter zone (but see the next paragraph).
Hudson City, however, means asking them to create another zone from scratch. I think we all know that's never going to happen. I wish it were otherwise, but if it doesn't involve unwanted vehicles or lockbox lotteries, we'll never see it.
See, people complain about testing cosmetics on animals, but if you don't you have to contend with deadly rouges. And that only leads to killer lipstick and venomous eyeliner. What's a girl to do?
I'm hopeful that it could happen, but considering how the gameplan is sizing up, we'll likely end up getting a Moon zone before we see Hudson City come to light. And this implies that it will likely take a veeeeeeerrrrryyyy long time.
Also, you should've seen the typo before that where I accidentally called Vibora Bay Millennium City.
Congratulations! You've finished the tutorial! Where would you like to start your adventures as a full-fledged hero?
>> Go TO the hub
>> Go AWAY FROM the hub
RenCen is our Atlas Park, so the alternate path is going to end up being Galaxy City.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Next is that the original CO layout did avoid favoring one low-level locale over another: Both Canada and Desert were pretty discretely settled as low-level areas, and didn't continue beyond the starter missions (beyond level 10ish, there was a complete void of missions, which then would pipeline you into millennium city.) Now while this approach did have more variety, it also made the pointless hassle of limiting the social hub of the game to people who bothered to level up their characters - which, while it's good for deterring trolls and people who want to just create trash to shout on Zone, is also good for deterring new players.
Ultimately, though, you're right, but there really isn't anything inherently wrong with that. Heck, even the other examples I cited in that first post suffer from the same issue (Camelot - The villages right next to camelot were a lot more crowded, versus the highland boonies that had like nobody. And in DCUO - Metropolis' zone chat is a lot more active than Gotham's, though that might just be the fact that Metropolis has 4 mentor combinations, while Gotham only has 2.) Players likely will appreciate the given variety.
I think CoH was trying for that same funnelling effect. Everybody went to Kings Row whether they started in Atlas or Galaxy. It was after Kings that they split you up into the familiar clean/gritty pairs (Steel/Talos/Founders vs Skyway/Indy/Bricks) before bringing everybody back together with Peregrine Island and Portal Corp.
Maybe Westside would be better as a funnel if we had different tutorial maps instead of two 6-15 paths? Somewhat like "origins" from CoH, but just as a tutorial selector: Natural, Mutant, Magic, or Sci/Tech. At least it would give us a few alternatives to Yet Another Alien Invasion. (I hope City of Titans doesn't make that a tutorial. Alien Invasion is becoming the superhero Kill 10 Rats.)
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Race/Origin variety does open up an excuse to make alternate levelling paths/storylines, true. However, given how diverse are characters are, and the general setup of the game, even from the get-go, I think the idea it's trying to get across is that you're not necessarily a up-and-coming, weakling hero that just got their powers - you already got some mojo. Right off the bat, you're fighting off robots and bugs that put defender and the champions on the defense, and if the pre-on-alert phase of the game was anything to believe, you were defeating enemies that could overpower them, and were already being sent abroad to take care of deep crap in the two wilderness areas. The idea of origins are pretty far flung from that.
Aside from that, alternate tutorial maps (ones with any meaningful differentiation) are pretty much unheard of in most MMOs, and for a pretty good reason - because the player's probably only going to be playing them once, after all! (Except DCUO and NWO, they're dumb like that... Actually, NWO does have character origins and stuff, but doesn't do anything with it! What's up with that?) In the cases that they are differentiated, they usually are tutorials that have you running around your local town/village to do stuff - which usually is a very bare-bones, simplistic teaching method that can easily be applied to different maps.
So basically, the benefits of making it post-tutorial are all there; new content at the get go, for both old and new players. And while it may not make for good social hubs, they still will be chosen by players, since, hey, the variety in scenery might very well be welcoming, and it's something new to do!
And actually, a funny anecdote about the portal corp/peregrine island funneling thing - those were later tacked on alongside a level cap raise. Pretty early, but still after release. This explains why all of the levelling paths end up fusing onto the single location (mostly) as well as why the final set of powers on the way there, the masteries, are so disjointed from your standard powers. If anything, it was more evidence of the team having to concentrate its efforts in a bit more focus, but I digress. This ain't about endgame content, after all!
Yeah, I was actually thinking to myself "how would I smoothly transition from the tutorial/powerhouse to a new zone...?" And then I realized as soon as you walk out of the powerhouse, you can get missions from Defender. Not as integrated as an option on the character select screen, but still works. Also, might cause some ado with quest choices/UI complexity when speaking to Defender, but eh, the alternative is probably too hard for the team to handle.
Also, I didn't realize until like my 48th character that those blue pads next to defender instantly teleported you to Westside. So much for reading.
More missions even in existing zones would be great. If i could go to Canada or the Desert early on again that'd also be great.
Re-purposing the Crises so they are optional at any level and also replayable the way the monster island one might also be an option too.
Just make sure there's a followable thread of plot in each path, and have them cross over a bit to help players following different paths to meet on the way and it'd all be good.
I miss some of the missions they took away from MC too, like the one in the park near the fountain.
And maybe we could have some questionite dailies to encourage us to do missions instead of alerts? If i'm after some Q i end up speed-leveling in alerts and then finding it hard to find the missions and mission providers and plot-threads i missed. Having the exclamation on the map and over the heads of mission givers stay but change colour once your well over the missions levels instead of dissapearing would be nice.
While she has been rescued
what diabolical mastermind
was behind the devious brain-napping of
the Volterrific Dr Cerebellum?
For each theme, pick an appropriate locale, villain group, and guide heroes. Make sure the player feels like a partner, not an intern or Defender's Assistant Z-Key Presser, and the bad guys are more interesting than mobsters, bikers, and movie-themed street gangs. (That comes later.)
So a magic tutorial might be Ravenspeaker vs Necrull in Canada. The existing pre-Therakiel Queen City arc with Black Mask could be a good natural theme. There's an unexplored Mechanon angle to Snake Gulch that would work for Sci/Tech.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Now that the game's free though, I wonder if it isn't time to revisit that idea. If only because the resources required to make new zones might be more easily acquired from our sometimes benevolent PWE overlords if they're informed they can charge money for them.
That said, you know what I want as a new zone? The other parts of Milennium City itself. South of the river in particular, it's been sitting there for years taunting me.
if it's a one-off payment per add-on zone then /SIGNED
And i don't mind small zones in installments, like different bits of the rest of MC or various small islands, bits of the moon etc.
While she has been rescued
what diabolical mastermind
was behind the devious brain-napping of
the Volterrific Dr Cerebellum?
Paid expansion doesn't work in F2P game. That ship has sailed.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I've been in Vibora Bay since level 28 on six toons.
Its empty and its boring being alone while all my friends run yet another new toon from the tutorial through all the same content again, but I run smashes just the same as loitering Ren Cen and I'm getting 260xp a kill for street mobs and maybe, just maybe if I kill a million of them I'll see one skull bra to put in the auction house for less than 3,700G and maybe the game will be one chest more interesting when that happens.
Teleport team mates is impractical the way its made and sold.
^ This 1000 times. I already critisized that when they planned that on the PTS and still think it was a totally bad move to change canada from 6 to 15. Desert at 15 was ok .. i mostly did Canada first and then Desert and mostly skipped all MC Stuff at that time.
Not a full paid expansion, smaller than that. Single zones of similar size to Vibora Bay and a one-off payment for access to them. Which last I heard is what other F2P games like DDO and I think LOTRO have been doing for years with a lot of success.
Personally, I'd be willing to pay ten or even fifteen bucks a zone if that's what it took to get more actual content in this game rather than the odd mission here and there like we get now.
The devs could make new content for a 6-15 path; Fatal Error isn't the most accommodating thing to a level 6 character, but should be doable for most non-power builds as early as level 11.
Easiest way I think is to make both Canada and Desert Crisis 6-15 again. The devs don't need to advertise them like the whole "teleport to Kodiak" thing if they're afraid of splitting the newbs. The people who are tired of Westside are people who have been here long enough and already know about the Crisis helicopter one way or another.
I've accepted that I'll be making characters faster than the devs can push out new zones. They could push out something new that scales with level like Fatal Error so it'll last for a broad level range, but I'm not expecting much new content with them busy squashing bugs and fixing game balance issues.
But we all know that the problem is that we would chew through those new zones in under a week (some of us in a day or two) and then we'd be right back here asking when there's gonna be new content (especially since the missions in the new zones would be the exact same thing as in the other zones... go here, kill X, come back).
I don't want new zones, I want more interesting missions in the zones we have now. Once they upgrade the current content, then they can start making new stuff with the new standards.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I also want new Zones, but still i want at least Canada Crisis reverted back to 6.
and redo it as a new lvl 6-15 area
It would include a normal day and night cycle
close up some of the buildings that have instances in VB lvl 37 area....and open up some of the bars around town instead
also, replace the Dogz, New shadows, Sovereign sons and Trey kings with more mundane/ tonned down gangs
My suggestion would be respective wannabe gangs
for example:
*instead of The Dogz, a group of fake werewolves using some DNA modifying drug/serum, but claim to be real werewolves
*instead of the New Shadows, a gang of goth looking teens using stolen magical artifacts and serving some Illusionist who pretends to be a vampire
*instead of the sovereign sons, a voodoo priestess and her followers using some hi-tech device/ serum to control people and make em act as zombies
At the end of the arc, you expose the 3 gangs as fakes and send em to jail, depending on which one you fight last, its boss escape, just to be killed off screen in a cutscene by its respective real VB gang leader.
also, some quests were you team up with Valerian scarlet (before the reveal) to investigate some incidents involving a stolen magical artifact of hers turning civilians into horrible monsters.
but that's just an idea...
I support "Sell Z-store items individually" & Japan Zone
Eventually it would have added up to a good amount of content.
VARIANT
"Nearly all men can withstand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-Abraham Lincoln-
You start in VB, you do the Queen City story. You start in Canada, the HPs are holding the Canadian goverment hostage during a visit from the England Royal Family. You start in the desert, you fight Grond while he's rampaging a Las Vegas-like city.
...Ditto...
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
There is some sense to it. If you add some permanent content, players will run it once, then move on.
Temporary content is there just long enough for players to get sick of it, then it goes away. Then when it comes back again, it's pseudo-new. It's fresher than it would be if it had been there all along, but there are also lots of players who are familiar enough with it to avoid some of the growing pains that new content can bring.
I'm actually pro temporary content, so long as we're getting a steady flow of it. It's the long gaps inbetween that I can't stand, because that's when we're back to "no new content" status. Also, these "first phases" often don't even count as content... would be nice if we could skip those, or just breeze past them faster.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
To be fair, something could be plugged in to weaken Grond. But him being defeated will only scare him off and push him to the Project Greenskin map.
Thats why i just want Canada to be reset to 6-15 and leave Desert where it is
At this point I'd happily start in Lemuria. Anything that isn't fighting Kevin Poe again.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
Problem is: you'll need a building to start SGs, AHs, and banks in every area.
Easy peasy, ham and cheasy. Use the circus freaks down by the Powerhouse that lost their purpose when crafting was ditched.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
Ideally, if they can't / won't create a new zone, I would love if they would add some missions and separate the quest chains.
Defender (Purple Gang / VIPER or ARGENT)
Quest chain that sets player heroes against some low-level tech thieves that turn out to be Kevin Poe and his ilk; Missions should include Defender sending the heroes to investigate the tech theft (using the Warlord Map) from Harmon Industries, confronting haywire security robots and then running afoul of a Purple Gang boss (not Kevin Poe) who will then reappear in several more missions in the chain. While the primary focus of this set of missions will be Purple Gang, heroes will also encounter VIPER who is sharing tech with the Purple Gang, to help them take out PSI.
Kodiak (Black Aces / Maniacs)
Quest chain sends heroes right into investigating the jailbreak, and finding out Zoe Loft's involvement in it. After breaking up the initial jailbreak meeting, the Black Aces will start trying to poach the new recruits; Heroes will have to stop the assorted chaos caused by the two gangs, including attempts to blame crimes on the opposing gang. The culmination of this quest chain will see Heroes having to bust up a summit reminiscent of Hi Pan's meeting, but only using Aces and Maniacs, with no other hero to assist.
Sapphire (Cobra Lords / Foxbat)
Quest chain sends heroes right to the Cobra Lords to investigate random fights; There is something more behind the missions, evident early, but nothing is said. Eventually, the heroes find out that the Cobra Lords are pressing kids from the High School by selling them performance-enhancing drugs (leading to the supercharged Cobra Lords.) We find out that a student or group, being supported by Sapphire is endagered by this. Foxbat, given his crush on Sapphire, sticks his nose in to prove he's better suited to handle things than the hero she'd sent to do the work.
This should ideally lead the heroes from 6-15.
I think the whole Hi-Pan arc should be saved for after this, and given as an alternative to pursuing PSI (the natural outgrowth of the Defender series of missions.)
Honestly, ideally, I'd want to see them rotate the starter heroes every 3-4 months, have someone different handing out missions maybe.
Actually that's not that bad an idea
While she has been rescued
what diabolical mastermind
was behind the devious brain-napping of
the Volterrific Dr Cerebellum?
That would actually be a good selection of early-level mission-arcs.
I second this idea, however, the whole quest line needs some love XP-wise. I remember running through it once or twice, enjoying it, but never doing it again due to the horrible rewards.
Additionally, Adventure Packs should have buffed XP as well, so that they can be attractive alternate leveling paths. They are very good content (ok the three bunkers in Serpent Lantern are just horrible)!
My Characters
Besides, what's the point of Serpent Lantern other than re-doing the bunkers over and over again for the Questionite?
Back in the days it was just for farming Freon for the best gear you could get there :biggrin:
And yes, i always said it was bad that the APs gave so horrible exp that they couldn't be really used as an alternate level path.
My Idea was always that SL should have been broken down in many subquests for each Camp / Bunker that always gives exp after completion.
Not even. Kevin Poe has taken over that role now.
The devs even seem to acknowledge that with the "every superhero's whipping boy" line that Poe says in some of the Alerts.
Please. Tulzorgat fits the role better than Poe. With the added perk of not having cutscenes.
A challenge.
Solo, it's the most repetitive and miserable experience of an Adventure Pack you could get. On a 5-man team running elite, you get one of the most balanced, difficult experiences of gameplay. And the bosses bug out and drop like 3-4 boxes of Questionite each somehow. So It's kind of like Nemcon, except you're actually working for it.
This idea is the best one so far.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
Why, there wasn't a gap there before. If the old system were put back into place then Canada Crisis would transition into Canada Proper, Desert Crisis would transition into Desert Proper, and Westside would Transition up to City Center. The beauty of this is that you get transported to the 1st two of those spots and the 3rd one is just up the street so it's easy for newbies not to get lost but if you've done it before you can just go to the other spot. Finished Canada Crisis and tired of snow? Warm up in the desert.
BTW, this in no way means I do not want new content. It's just pointing out how I feel this is the simplest solution with the least effort and frees up the option of putting content in other places. 30-34 springs to mind off the top of my head but even that doesn't have a "gap. It's just a spot where I think another branch off could be nice. Maybe a mini-arc that ties the end of Queen City into Vibora Bay Apocalypse and shows the actual transformations of the gangs. A nice little transition arc which, even if skipped, wouldn't damage the existing storyline..it would just enhance it more.
There's also the idea of the LvL 15 Lair for Westisde with The Death Dragon which was mentioned once upon a time ago. A LvL X Lair which could introduce newbies to lairs, maybe have some new mechanics similiar to how Therakiel's Temple added new ones, and also(with working difficulty sliders, of course) be somewhat of a challenge to a team of Elite 40s. Just tossing that out there. :biggrin:
Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer