Not only are new powersets a-coming, but they’re polling as to what folks want. They’re focusing on Tanker Primaries and Scrapper Secondaries. These won’t be for I10, but for something beyond.
For the melee primaries (asterisks indicate tricky ones that might cause delays):
Which melee power set would you most like to see implemented in game? (May consider 2 choices to get the top two favorites over all.)
O Street Fighting
O Electric Hammer
O Energy Blade
O Psionic Weaponry
O Dual Blades
O Ball and Chain *
O Shield Fighting *
I’d have to go with Street Fighting. Any of the others are okay, but either of limited comic archetypical nature (Ball & Chain?) or variants on existing stuff (Energy Blade). I’d have to go with Psionic Weaponry.
For the defensive secondaries (Tankers and Scrappers):
Which melee defense power set would you most like to see implemented in game? (May consider 2 choices to get the top two favorites over all.)
O Density Control
O Force Field
O Willpower
O Vibration
O Growth *
O Shield Defense *
Wow, a toughie. A lot would depend on how it was implemented — how is “Density Control” going to look and behave differently from “Invulnerability”? Is “Force Field” bubbles, or Energy Aura? How will Willpower differ from Regen?
I’d love to see Growth, though that sounds like a real game-breaker, technically. Prolly, just for the visuals I’d expect, Force Field, too.
Note that the poll results are not going to be released — the devs won’t commit to anythying, they just want opinions.
Heh…they didn’t even leave it up to get any kind of real opinion. They screwed it up, deleted it and the results and restarted it. It wasn’t even up for 24 hours. They reset it around 1800 hours and it was closed after the maintenance today. I think it was little more than a way from them to say “We ran a Poll…..we listened to the People”.
These guys are really becoming little more than a bad joke…at least IMO.
I know they had an initial problem that required a reset. But that was … really quick.
Quoth Ex Libris:
If you’re going to require a 24h turnaround — it’s probably a good idea to advertise that — “ONE DAY ONLY!”
It’s fine the forums are open, but I’m not sure how representative a day’s worth of sampling is going to be.
Quoth Posi:
Right…..so, what exactly is a “Ton” or votes in relationship to the number of players?
What is to keep me from taking each of the 7 trial codes I have, starting an account and voting 9 times (I have 2 paid accounts until they expire in July)?
Posi can spin it however he wants but there is no way he got close to an accurate sampling.
And I don’t buy the “Forums Software Sucks” line. If I can get a free Forum that allows me to run a variety of Polls how can the PhP style forums they run be gimped like that. They aren’t using freeware.
My finely tuned crap detector *points to his eyes and ears* tells me cow cookies are under foot.
I wouldn’t expect that most folks, except the most fanatical, would play those sorts of shenanigans for something like this.
I agree that the “my, our forum software is awful” excuse is wearing a bit thin (not that I envy anyone who actually has any authority over those boards, even with the best of software).
That said, the combo of a truncated poll (and is this the first poll they’ve run, that they didn’t know the problems they’d have?) with the “we’re going to keep the results secret” indicates some sort of weird bumbling going on.
Weird.
In my experience, openness and transparency is the best approach. You’ll always have folks kvetching, unjustly, but in an open situation folks know whether and how to stand up for the organization. If a power set is voted most popular, but there are technical reasons for not doing it, then say so. Some folks will bitch, but they’ll bitch regardless; the rest of the people will express disappointment but go along with it.
Exactly.
While openess isn’t the only policy its the best one to prevent customer alienation. Say “Growth” wins by a wide margin but there is something preventing it from an easy integration. Just come and say “We have seen that most of you want “Growth” and we are working on it but there are technical issues that may take us til I11 to solve.
When I see that I think “ok…cool…..it bites that it will be a while but its being worked on”. Sure there will be those who complain but I think they’d be a minority. To me it seems that because of a few complainers they have opted to tell us nothing. It would be like asking you to buy a car with no information other than its a sedan and since you are looking for a sedan, that should be good enough.
In any event, it appears that they got the message that a lot of people weren’t happy with the Poll situation since its back up for a week.
Yet with nary a word as to why.
Bizzro methodology.
Dont care. Here’s the solution.
I10 – the two most popular powersets are introduced
I 11 – the next two.
and so on.
So I have written, so It shall be!
Yea Verily….Make it so Doc
Honestly? I’d be happy with a single powerset (or even none) in favor of more “content.” Faultline has revitalized a *lot* of play (and I understand that sort of content is a focus in I9).
The revisit on Faultline was probably one of the best features added to the game IMO. It took what was essentially a wasted area and turned it into a place with some great story lines and really added to the 15-25 game.
If they had given us a Boomtown rebuild (or…for the 45+ crowd a rebuild of the Rikti Crash Site) instead of Inventions I think the game would have been greatly improved again. In my mind, new content and new powers / ATs will bring people back and bring more folks to the game.
All that is a longwinded way of saying “you’re right on the money, Dave”. A new set and a Zone Update or Villain update would be steps in the right direction IMO.
Yah, Id love a Rikti Crash Site Trial or TF. that zone just reeks of potential.
Can you imagine a TF where you have to prevent the Rikti from completeing repairs to their ship so that they can’t take off and nuke the city from orbit? Street to street fighting ….. penetrating the defenses …… an all out assault near the end to prevent the ship from coming on-line ….. finally facing some AV level Rikti Commander or Mutate that is all that stands between you and victory.
Or something like that….
That Zone has huge amounts of untapped potential
Now imagine what you just said as a Co-Op Zone. Heroes and Villians uniting to fight the common enemy and whatnot.
Now THAT would be a hoot and a half.
It would be awesome……and there could always be a chance of ‘betrayal’ by your erstwhile ‘allies’ if it were a free-fire co-op zone.
That might be too abusive though ;p
See….ideas like this is what happens when ‘fans’ start making things 🙂
There’s definitely been (vague) talk from the Devs about the Rikti Crash Site, and separate talk about co-op zones — and while everyone’s been assuming (without, so far as I know, anything to back it up) that the “return of an old enemy” next issue is the Fifth Column … it *could* be the Rikti. Indeed, that makes a lot more sense than the Fifth Column.
Well, as long as *we* don’t have to program it. 🙂
I suspect, to play the devil’s advocate, that pretty much any idea the devs could think of — including, say, inventions/crafting — could find some “fans” out there who think it would be the greatest thing to improve the game since travel powers.
Ah, travel powers… *spends several minutes in reverie*
In LotRo, I have to run everywhere. Slowly. In some cases, I could rent a horse, but I’m trying to save money to buy a horse when I’m level 35. See, after I complete the necessary quests, all I have to do is plunk down a bit over four gold. Doesn’t sound so bad, right?
Except that a gold is 1000 silver, and my characters of levels 18-21 have 300-500 silver. My level 26 Champion has finally managed to acquire a whole gold piece! Yay.
There are sooooo many times I really wish I could fly. Kind of hard to justify a flying dwarf or hobbit, though. (I hope to pre-empt any jokes about tossing dwarves with this statement.)
Hey, maybe CoH will add cars as a travel power! “Quickly, to the Avomobile!”
It would certainly add some color — but given the crazy-ass city layouts of Paragon, you’d be better off running places.
I never liked the idea of vehicles, feasible or not. How many heroes actually had a personal vehicle? Off the top of my head, I can only think of a few: Batman, Wonder Woman, Blue Beetle, Punisher. I know, I know, everybody wants their own personal Batmobile, but you can’t. The Batmobile is for the Batman.
Well, there was the Spidermobile, but the less said about that the better. There was also the Fantasticar, the Quinjets, the JLA Javelins, Cyborg’s T-Car, Robin’s Motorcycle, the Xmen’s Blackbird, etc, so its not out of the realm of comics. I too however, would never want one. I can fly, dammit. Why would I want to be encased in a metal deathtrap that invariably gets blown out of the sky once an issue?!
Too true. And most of those vehicles were for travel outside of the city (possible exception of the Fantasticar, etc.). By the time you can get through the launch sequence of the Pogo Plane, Galactus has already munched down central park.
Plus — War Walls. Do not lend themselves to transportation of pretty much any kind except the trams. (Which does, of course, lead to some odd mental images of heroes holding the straps, and impatiently glancing down at their wristwatches.
I assume you were thinking of this PvP strip:
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c345/AmAvocet/pvp20040608.gif
See, I think vehicles could work, at least in theory.
Sure, not all comic superheroes had vehicles, but not all of them could fly either. I think vehicles could work if you made them alternatives to travel powers.
Like, instead of Flight, you could have a jetpack or a glider. And instead of Super Speed, you could have a motorcycle.
Not high on the list of priorities, I’ll grant you, but it could work.
What I’d like to see is secret identities. Say, each character gets a free costume slot and base.
The costume slot would be fully changeable – so if you wanted a little girl to be able to change into the Incredible Hulk or an old man who turns into young speedster, you could – and there would be some sort of animation when you go from your secret identity to one of the superhero costumes, like flash of light or spinning like Wonder Woman.
The base would be your personal headquarters. Maybe a simple apartment, maybe a lab. It wouldn’t be in exchange for your SG base, so instead of spending Prestige, you would simply build it up with Influence. I suppose it could be as big as a regular base, so you could earn yourself a big ol’ Stark Tower penthouse if you wanted.
Like SG bases, you should be able to set who could visit your place, like people in your current group, your Super Group/Coalition, and maybe even a guest list that you set up yourself. Also, I think these bases would be unable to participate in raids and whatnot. It doesn’t make all that much sense and it would probably be the hardest of all this to program.
Sorry, to go on and on like that, but these are things I’ve wanted since CoH first came out. I think they’d be really cool.
I wasn’t thinking of that PvP specifically, Avo — but it works great.
I was thinking about this the other day, Derek. My guess is that 90% of heroes in the MU and DCU either fly or have access to some sort of flying vehicle. You’re right, though, that jetpacks/gliders/etc. are often a part of that (and are now conveniently available as temp powers pretty early on). I do like the alternative of having a motorcycle instead of an actual vehicle — that could be done relatively easily, I’d think (and certainly has some precedent).
Personal bases are … well, not high on my list. I do like the “secret identity” bit. That would mostly be for RP purposes, but could still be fun.
You can pretty much do a “personal base ” right now. My Main Villian, Inquisitor Char has a functional hidey hole complete with med bay, 1 teleporter, a salvage storage rack, a crafting table, and a inspiration storage rack. Its only 5 rooms, but it works.
Admittedly I started with 4 other people, but now they have all fallen by the wayside. Since I have no rent to pay, I can breeze about in the Char Cave in my underoos and not worry about anybody else coming in whilst im in my evil skivies.
Yeah, I was thinking you can basically build a small SG base that works in lieu of a “personal base” — Rita and Runt have one for their two-man team.
It would be nice to have something that wasn’t “underground” or completely enclosed, though. And something that actually looked like, say, and apartment or condo.