background color
reading font
reading size
City Of Heroes: Ask War Witch!
|
Q:Why can't the villains ever get the bag from the old lady? Was she a former hero? Is there a chance that we could see more dynamic content in the overland zones? Something like the Outcasts attacking Positron and Valkrie (and getting owned for the trouble) to as massive as the Council attacking Hamidon en masse?
A: The purse is spot-welded to her hands...mostly. She could have, like, lotto tickets in there or something. I'd hang on, too!
I'm still hoping for some animations where the guy actually gets the purse. But sheez...that's kind of evil, isn't it?
What you ask re: Posi and Valk, etc. would be more of a task force and, thus, a lot more planning and preparation. That's more of a Manticore question.
Q:I think Striga really opened our eyes to a ton of potential in zones. What new and exciting things can you tell us about your work in CoV? I'm also curious how you felt about the handling of your name-sake in the comic and her appearance in Croatoa.
A: Wow. Striga was AWESOME. Striga was the first zone where we had a lot of time to plan and implement and go back and tweak a million times as new ideas came up.
I have to say, Archon_Voss did an amazing job as he came on board. He stepped in and basically came up with the whole concept of Striga, how it looked, etc. and he gave me a clean slate with how I wanted to populate it, peppering me with suggestions and ideas the whole way through.
Oh! And the turrets! Wow! You gotta love the turrets! I'd run through the zone testing it and BAM! BAM! BAM! a turret comes out of the wall and starts shooting at me. So cool.
Since it was the only zone being created at the time, we had a lot of love from the art department in the form of animations. When we first started, we had maybe a handful of animations which with to populate all our COH zones. Then Striga came along and I got almost every animation I asked for.
Plus patrol technology came online and we got the Council and that awesome base and it was like...oh....yeah, I think I can do something here.
I'm sure people noticed, but I'll point it out anyway. Striga was the first zone to have mission doors fit the neighborhoods. So the critters you need to run through to get to your mission door are roughly your level.
So that set the new standard.
As for War Witch's fate? Sure, it's not the direction I would have hoped for her, but I was really happy when she got to be the trainer in Croatoa. And, c'mon, she's see-through AND she floats. How cool is that? Ms. Liberty just stands there.
Q: 1.) Why do hollows missions spawn clear across the map when we don't have a travel power yet? Is it completely random?
2.) Croatoa spawns have battles, complete with defeats - will older zones ever get updated to include this as well? (i.e. Skulls and Hellions in Perez Park duking it out, Outcasts and Tsoo at war in Steel Canyon, Trolls and Clockwork blasting at eachother in Skyway)
3.) What are some of your favorite NPC dialogues in the game?
4.) Any fun little tidbits of info on your work in CoV that you can tell us about?
A: 1. Hollows wasn't my zone so I don't have a lot of info about it, but I think what happened was that there weren't enough appropriate "type" buildings in the zone to fit the mission. I.E. You need a warehouse building to put your "warehouse" missions in.
Yes, mission doors are random throughout a city zone in COH. The mission writer asks for an "office" building and any door marked "office" in that zone can be in the pool.
Striga marked the beginning of the new system so we don't do it that way anymore. Now it's more neighborhood specific.
2. Wouldn't that be awesome? I hope so. I would LOVE to go back and spice up those spawns.
3. Hm...well anything I wrote in COV, OBVIOUSLY. But in COH? A lot of the NPC chatter you hear when you click on them slays me. But if I had to pick a few:
"Where were you when I was being mugged?!"
"...and that's when I hit him."
"Is interrupting people heroic?"
4. Only if I want to get in trouble. I think people are going to love COV. A lot of love has gone into it from every department.
Q: Does any of your zone or mission population work cover the ambush spawns that occur after accepting missions? If so are there any changes planned for them in COV?
Also, why do solo heroes sometimes get a very large ambush spawn and are there any plans to look into this in the future?
Will "Peace Witch" be your alter ego in COV?
A: The mission writers decide whether or not an ambush occurs as you leave your mission door, but a nearby spawn will be over-ridden with ambush that goes off. I haven't seen any changes to it.
The difference between an ambush and a regular spawn is that, you don't know it's coming (if they're hidden underground beforehand) and sometimes they will hunt you DOWN until either you die or they do.
Regarding solo players and large ambush spawns...the size of the spawn should be relative to the player or team that triggered it.
Huh. That's weird. She didn't answer that last one. Peace Witch. Too funny.
Q: Will we be seeing more interactive missions? Right now, the only things we can click on, are glowies and doors. I want to have a control room where a teammate can raise/lower forcefields or doors or stuff for the other teammates, monitor the movement of enemy positions, etc.
I dislike the current missions that require X players to complete. They are all of the variety "click X bombs all at same time, just because". Requiring multiple people in that case does not enhance the play experience any. I'd like to see missions where extra teammembers are needed to coordinate an attack, theft, etc.
On the subject of bombs...I've seen several timed missions where we have to disarm bombs + some other objective (usually rescue hostages). I'd like to see the timer disappear once the bombs have been disarmed. And see all the bad guys make a break for it as the timer starts running out.
All of this kinda falls under the category of just wanting to see more interactive missions. Any chance of this?
A: I'm seeing a thread of mission questions. I lay down the spawn "hardware" in mission layouts, but I do not write nor design the missions. That's a whole other ball of wax. Those questions would go to Manticore and his team.
Q: Are there plans to make the dialogue of "street spawns" more dynamic?
"I smell spandex" only goes so far.
Why not "I smell $heroname."?
Otherwise, great job with Striga and Croatoa
A: I would LOVE to go back and re-work some of the spawns and dialogue, especially since we have new animations, but that is all dependent on scheduling so I leave that to the producers. I'm hoping so, though.
Q: Couple of really mind-numbing questions that I have, but these have been bugging me for a while. Hopefully these are your area.
#1 - Why do we get wierd instances where badguys are trying to steal things like trees and light poles and the like?
#2 - Why can't we have the civilians inside door missions act more sensibly when the heroes arrive? For instance, they go crazy while the bad guys are there, but once we clear a room they should either calm down or make a break for the exit. If they encouter a group of baddies on the way then they can go crazy again, but it would be nice if they didn't get in the way so much.
#3 - Why is it that there are obviously thousands of viable doors for missions(as evidenced by the Halloween event), yet we are almost always going to the same buildings and caves? Sure the insides are different(I won't start on this bit), but it really breaks up the immersion even more to defeat a load of skulls in a pristine office and then turn around and go back in with a new mission directly after it and have the building be run down and destroyed.
Lastly, a statement. I love the dialog that I've seen from civilians, and I can't wait to see what yall've come up with for CoV.
A: I love mind-numbing questions. I ask plenty of them myself.
1. *laughs* Well, they're breaking in to things, but they're also "vandalizing", so...hey...if it's solid...it's a target. I had guys trying to smash in the foot of a two-story statue.
2. This is a mission writer question, but I'll guess at what's going on there. (So don't get mad if I'm wrong!) If you're talking about NPCs who are flavour in the mission, i.e. the office building where they're all running around scared, they are atmosphere, therefore they have one priority (i.e. be scared) regardless of what is going on in the mission. So they're scared and running when there are tons of, say, Freakshow around and they're STILL scared and running even after you wax them all.
3. Yeah, this one has come up a few times. I think I've answered it, but if you still have questions, PM me.
4. I hope you like it! I did a lot of dialogue for COV, but I did not do it all by myself. Josh did the dialogue for his zones and Captain Mako and Galaxy_Girl helped out with making sure that dialogue fit with the villain group backstory. Ravenstorm even helped out with some in crunch time.
Galaxy_Girl (who is a mission writer and wrote the awesome Striga missions!) also fixed any typos or grammatical problems I may have missed on my umpteeth spelling/grammar pass.
Q: Now that you guys have the ability to create awesome zones like Croatoa and Striga, will you be using these tools to further personalize already existing zones? I realize that zone events is a step in this direction, but a lot of the older zones still suffer from a lack of personality.
A: Yes. Totally agreed. To clarify. Striga was my zone. Croatoa was Ravenstorm's. He did all the love on that one, so he should get the props.
As I said earlier, I would LOVE to go back and rework some of those zones. If it's put on my schedule, I'd be thrilled. The resources we have now vs. what we had back then are like night and day. I think we could really make them pop.
Q: So you were responsible for removing some of my favorite dialouge from the game like "TODO: ADD TEXT" and my personal favorite "EncounterVictim". I always got a chuckle out of those, even if it wasn't meant to be funny. Can you leave some of those in CoV or at the very least leave in a little nod like a spawn of freakshow saying something like "TO DO: ADD TECH"?
A: Man... Nothing like your "To Do" list popping up for the world to see, is there? I cringe.
Q: I have been playing the game for a year now and still see flavor text I have not seen before...
On that note, is there any plans to have players like me make suggestions on new flavor text for NPCs?
And If you had to choose between COH and COV for you to play personally, which would you choose and why?
A: Interesting questions. Flavour text for NPCs? I think players influence some of the dialogue already, more than they think. You'll understand that more soon.
If I had to choose...hum... I wouldn't. LOL Granted, I've been playing COH for about....3 years now? So I've been playing it ever since I laid down the first spawn and tested it and even before that when we simply used generators.
It's fun to play COV because it's fresh and new and soooo cool with all the new technology and visuals and music and ATs and such.
But in the end, I think it'll depend on... Hm. Am I feeling like a nice heroic girl today? Or do I feel like a villainess? Coin toss, and off we go.
Share/Email
