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Customizable Sidekicks
thejudge573
Posts: 25 Arc User
Seeing as we can buy sidekicks from the Z store that last about an hour why no introduce permanent sidekick pets. You can use the Nemesis system as a base point allowing us to customize there appearance and power set. I think this would be a neat idea for those characters who want one and just add another comic book aspect to the game.
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Though things could change.
Why? Because the Until Field Report is a lot more relevant than what any dev says in private. Because Robobo wanted them in the game the last we heard of him.
So that said dev's kicking and screaming wouldn't stop it from happening if CO's dev team gets the right leader. One that will ignore that irrelevant dev's personal goals for the game. A dev team leader that knows what is best for the game's player base.
And the guy upstairs understanding that we'll throw money at custom sidekicks that can be used everywhere, a dozen times over bad vehicles that is useful for only 20 minutes of the game in total.
All we'll need is for Sidekicks to arrive and for them to be priced and available in a way that everyone can participate in.
In other words, nothing like auras and vehicle pricing.
Not sure where that came from, but damn. mk1 vehicles are like 6 keys right now. less than 10 bucks. Compare that to mounts in neverwinter or ships in STO.
That said, I've been all about this and a g cap increase for silvers for a few years now. Hell yeah, you have my vote. I don't even care if it's cosmetic.
RIP Caine
Most comics have a rather big supporting cast and it would be great if in CO we could customize some of these.
What I think we need:
- Sidekick: Not necessarily a real sidekick, but maybe a hero you cross paths with occasionally
- Nemesis's dragon/second in command: The nemesis's organization needs one or more extra villains to fill up their ranks. They could serve as mini bosses in nemesis missions
- Love interest: Every hero needs a damsel in distress to save
- Solo villains: Villains that work without underlings or minions, basically a nemesis on his own
Maybe we should also be able to name the nemesis's organization. Instead of "Nemesis' minions", his minions could finally be part of "The Hand of Death" organization.
(Let's further cement this: basically none of the characters we're supposed to really relate with - I.E. Defender, the other champions, Juryrig, Griz, Redsnake, Rockethawks, etc - are really seen by the playerbase in a really positive light, so who knows how badly a love interest can get screwed up.)
Solo Villains sound like some variant of Nemesis you could get if the Nem system was ever redone. Like, a really badass villain who usually fights you as a single boss in an arena mission and might spawn open world assaults/nemesis rampage alerts. That's all stuff for a nemesis redux thread, though.
To be honest I'm a bit leery about making sidekicks completely free, or at least not without some sort of drawback to their usage. Having alerts be 10-person chuclkefunks, or Rampages be 20-person clusters of messiness would not be my idea of a good time, though I guess that could be worked around by disabling their usage in those cases, but half the fun of stuff like this is getting to show it off to all your friends and enemies and other people who can be impressed and confused as to why your sidekick is an anthropomorphic ice cream cone.
But I got a plan for it. Getting a sidekick at a lategame stage (30-40 I'd say) would make the most sense, since that's supposedly after you've become a real high-roller in the superhero community. Getting the sidekick could even be incorporated into an origin-story mission, where you have to save/help/defend your to-be sidekick in order to get permanent access to them.
More importantly is the mechanics. Considering the big changes in the game since nemesis' were made (i.e. class != powerset) The proposal for how Sidekick generation goes like this:
1. Decide their role (Ranged, Melee, Tank, or Support)
2. Pick their powerset (limited based on role. Ranged, for example, is limited to Fire/Ice/Elec/Guns/etc)
3. Choose origin. This determines the storyline you get when attempting to get your Sidekick. Varies between things such as "Rescued Fanclub leader", "Adopted Protege", "Summoned Entity" , "Fresh from the lab" (for a sidekick you built from scrap parts), and "Best Partner Hero".
4. Persona and Dialogue. You can choose a personality they assume in the missions they're featured in. However, that doesn't get carried over to their usable/device selves outside of the mission. Instead (much like CoX), you can define custom battlecries for your sidekick for various situations:
- Upon appearance - when the Sidekick is summoned in
- Attacking - When engaging a battle, there's a chance they'll say this line.
- Won - Sidekick sometimes says this when a mission has been completed.
- Low Health - Sidekick says this when near death, to hopefully warn you about it.
- Defeated - Says this as they die and flee back to base or whatever.
5. Make a costume.6. Name and Bio nobody ever sees.
As for ingame events that lead up to this, upon reaching the needed level, you get a message saying "Hey, this dude is contacting you about how he wants to help you out, but it's encoded and only you can read it". It's from UNTIL, so you go over to their base, and Helgen Schmorfendorf, the quartermaster who contacted you says "Hey, thanks for coming over, but we can't read this message and we totally don't know who this is. They seem to know you, though. Can you decode it? It's on our mainframe." You then use the mainframe, and get taken to the generation UI. Depending on what you put down for the origin, Helgen says something different. Like, if you chose "Rescued Fanclub Leader", she'll say "Ah, it seems to be a message to you from one of your biggest fans! How they managed to message us about it, I have no clue.", or if you chose "Fresh from the lab", it becomes "Looks like Juryrig has done some experiments on some of the technology you've found during your work. Says he has some big developments, and you might want to see this!". And from there the storylines start and this basically never happens because development is impossible.
Mechanically speaking, It could probably just work like most pets do, and have you incur a major energy penalty from having Sidekicky out. In character it could probably be explained by you being tired constantly from having to order your stupid idiot aide to not die and teach them how to breathe.
The problem is - how they'd be handled? Devices can't carry any saved costume settings, least we'd have visual customisation for vehicles.
Thing about nemesis' and sidekicks is that, at heart, they're bound to the character. The character slot can store data on the powerset and personality and progress and cosutme of their nemesis, and theoretically the same goes for a sidekick. The exact same also applies to stuff like perks, missions completed, access to UNITY, and so on and so forth.
To differentiate, vehicles are just items. There's no character specificity to them, and as such, doesn't have the benefit of character data to pull from. Granted, if they had accounted for vehicle customization by making some sort of system to fully customize items, then I suppose that customizable vehicle looks could've been a reality, but the much easier path to such a reality would likely have been achieved if vehicles were specific to what character was using them - and I don't mean that just in the 'bound item' sense.
What I'm basically saying is that all the advanced customziable stuff in the game is possible due to character data space being large enough to store hundreds of variables. Items don't get that benefit. As for how a Sidekick device could be handled, it could be a bound (or even just account-bound, but that doesn't make sense considering the context...) item that will spawn a sidekick based on data within the character itself. It's just a pointer.
So if we would like to have customisable sidekicks, they must be made like STO boffs - tied to characters.
Make your Sidekick a kind of 'Summon Pet' power, but expanded apon. First off, make it an 'Ultimate Power', perhaps along in it's own 'Powerset'. You could create a new 'Framework' called "Misc. Powers" or something, and fit the TPs in with it.
So, basically, once a FF character hits level 35 they can opt to get a Sidekick Summon Power. Now, one way this could be done is having multiple Sidekick Summon powers, each with a corresponding power-concept/build (ie. a Fire Sidekick, a Munitions Sidekick, a Darkness Sidekick, etc.). Then, within the Character/Costume Create menu, you could change your Sidekick's look through either a new Tab, or even through the 'Weapons' customization tab. In this case, your Sidekicks' look might be less... intricate as your own might be, but that's kinda the point. Don't want your sidekick to have a better costume than your own!
So, choosing one of the Sidekick Archetype powers, and changing their look like how'd you customize your weapons, is one possible way to make a Sidekick system work. And, if you don't want a Sidekick, then just don't get one!
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Most often Slice N Dice@zap-the-eradicator in-game.
You know what - this is a great idea. But I'd even be satisfied with permanent sidekicks that you could buy from the Zen store pre-made. Because the temp sidekicks really are not worth the cost in Zen.
Hardly anyone buys them - because they are temp. Most people just by the Harijuku twins for the costume unlock.
~SkyStar~
Quoted for Truth! Emphasis mine.
That Dork In The Suspenders, signing out.
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Point taken. The only other MMO I ever played is SWTOR (by Bioware), which is rather linear in comparison to CO. So introducing meaningful secondary characters (like a love interest) could indeed be more difficult in CO.
As for the sidekick, they could just be a customizable hero you help out through a quest chain and who then, after the quest chain is finished can be called upon to help you in certain zones/missions.
After a while you'd be able to create a new sidekick with whom you do the entire quest chain again to unlock him/her for the sidekick zones/missions. This is sort of like the nemesis system, except that, after you've unlocked a sidekick, he/she stays unlocked, though you can only call upon one sidekick to help you every time.