Twilight Forums

Oh yes, tangent.

Something neat would be like the Mafia violin case. Something like that seems to fit the mood of the game. Which I really like, btw. I call it the "streetlights" mood. I'm not fully sure myself of what I'm getting with the violin. I'm getting at the darker side of music involving violins, as music of this period (NOIR IS THE WORD) tended to include strings in their music quite a bit. Or from what I've heard. Or that they could fit. Meh.

Hope you get what I mean.

Well, if violin cases are to be taken letaraly (and not in the KoL way of thought) they should contain projectile weapons which are considered "restricted" in TH. Of course, a generic weapon, considered to be enclosed in the case, would be interesting. Go see "Desperados" a cowboy movie that makes fun of violin cases...!

Relative to the noir atmosphere, adding "coppola" s (sicilian type of hat), black sedans and adding alcohol to the Black Market would add a lot to the mood .

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Hey, not a bad idea. Have a generic violin case with a bazooka hidden inside. Or fight someone with one. I can just see it now - walking through the streets of downtown Twilight, you meet someone apparently coming back from a violin lesson. Strange, you thought all the shops were closed at this time of night. Suddenly, he pulls out a bazooka from his violin case. Oh no.

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Have a nice day.

Now THAT is sweet.

Hmmm... then again he should also drop such a wapon, which I have my doubts as to how well it can be translated into balanced statistics... (The U.R.L. is actually a very mysterious weapon, so it cannot be put in the same lines...)

Anyway, even a generic "I do not know what it is" projectile weapon, could be good and interesting enough .

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Ryme, I think I said something to the same effect on the old forum before it was destroyed, but I think one of the best aspects that makes TH stand out is its sense of narrative. When I read the first few pages of text when creating my character, it really made the game stand out to me. Likewise I enjoyed much of the storytelling in the quests.

Building upon that, it would be interesting if you created a branching storyline that runs through the game's quests, like a simplified choose-your-own-adventure. In an ascension context it would be interesting to try different paths in different runs. Maybe you already have something like this planned....

Regardless, I'd enjoy reading more of your narrative prose in future quests.

I think this is where my post belongs, rather than the beta page xD
Suggestion:
Random quests, just like 'real life' where superheroes are required to fight different bad guys....Yeah it does make the game imbal for one "run" or another, but well, so can RNG Screwage right? Yea so the idea is that you don't get the same quests every "run"....Which would be kinda cool...

The ability to combine talismans, to get like a mixture of powers.....Complicated but it should work?

Last of all, a SUPERHERO SIDEKICK! Acquired by rescuing people? By making a boss underling turncoat? So many possibilities!

Well, like so many cool ideas, the poblem is 'productivity'. If Ross(=Ryme) has to code 50 quests and only 10 of them being used each run (or whatever number-wise) then this simply means that the quality and consistency will be lowered.

Take for example Diablo I: on the one hand, random dungeons and quests were so enchanting, but 'Diablo I' failed to have a consistent and deep scenario. (dont look on Diablo II. Practically, they took Diablo I and its randomness, and tried to justify everything..)



This easily leads to the creation of the "perfect combo" thus negating every other combo or single used talisman. Let alone the possibility of combining two rare talsimans...



This has been discussed as a familiar alternative, *if* I remember well, it was concluded that it was too much 'KoLish'.

EDIT: Sorry if it seemed I was deconstructing your post, I did not mean to do that, pomise .

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Just a thought: we don't have any weldable footwear.

Edit: Also, a third level of plating in the pit would be a neat idea. Perhaps called 'infernium'.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Dank and Rusty Maze:

You're fighting a Crook and Nanny. The riminal seems creluctant -- er, the criminal seems reluctant to attack, but his au pair girlfriend shakes him into action.

Nook and Cranny
Some kind of choice noncombat?

Yeah of some random picture, maybe for me a Cardinal logo, maybe if your name is dynamite Jones have a picture of a stick of dynamite, sounds origional right? Ok not really but, it would be cool. Also just to ask if maybe on the log-in page have a "# of logged in" thing and the chat system needs to be wider, i can't read it all because it gets cut off, but not complaning the game is great. Gameplay is amazing, so yeah avatars sounds cool. -A.P. Oh great idea just popped into my head, ok so kol has clans, maybe TH could have Justice Leagues?

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*edit*
Conformed.

Your 2 cents will please stay in PLAIN TEXT (no bold, no funny colours) unless there's a very good reason. -Icy

If you ever put in familiars or something, the training area should be a Mike Vick joke. "Ron Mexico; Your neighborhood pet trainer." and you should have the animals fight other ones.

If you don't get the Ron Mexico joke, read up on it.

*edited in response to the original post (among others)being moderated-located at the bottom*

No need. I'll delete it for you.
I'll just be quiet, didn't realize I was trolling the boards by posting useful and helpful content using standard board features. But no worries.
There won't be any more of this from me, *imagine the next word in italics* regardless of content. Got it?
Yeah. Thought so.

See the note attached to two posts above. Any more of this, and I will delete the post, regardless of content. Got it?

Edit again, after yours: I didn't say you couldn't post useful and helpful content. I said you couldn't post it in stupid colours. Hope that clears it up some, and I'm happy that you took notice at last. =D

I like that name already

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A multi-use would save time and reduce page loads, therefore reducing lag.

sidekicks
((kinda like fimilars in kol))

I've already created a thread for this suggestion, apparently it's not very high on Ryme's priority list, which is quite understandable.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

Actually, it's not that sidekicks aren't a priority, it's that I definitely won't be implementing them in the same sense that KoL familiars work. With the gloves, boots, always present shirts, and the talisman slot, we've already got more equipment than KoL. Throw in computers and some transportation effects, and if you added sidekicks/familiars on top of that, there'd be way too many things going on.

I do recognize that sidekicks are a staple of the superhero genre, and I'd like to work them in somehow. But it'll be more as flavor than as something useful.

What Ryme said (well, obviously) and I think a philosophy is that you won't have sidekicks, but you'll have many other things that will act as sidekicks, eg computers and skills. Having several "mini sidekicks" could allow for very interesting combinations of supporting your main character.

Oh, something that'd be neat but take a ridiculously long time to implement: giving your character a hobby or hobbies, e.g. music, martial arts, cooking, etc. And then giving the characters some kind of intrinsic or item bonus. I can imagine my character playing some kind of requiem on a violin to delevel a monster or like, being able to craft food. Or have slightly faster reflexes (although that's extremely generic for martial arts, and the gadgeteer...well... ). As to not break the game, perhaps you can have the character level up in said hobbies, BUT only get one or two of the hobbies' bonuses for the day or something. Something something.

As of now, the Naturalist skill of 'Tame Animal' seems to be useless. It gives you less exp, and no item drops. What if, however, instead of a lesser animal to call and a greater animal to call as has already been suggested, you were only able to call on animal types you have managed to tame? Reptile, mammal, fish etc? It might give the tame skill a reason for existing. Unless it actually has a use later on in game content, and I just haven't gotten that far which is quite possible.

When I found it useful was when fighting enemies that were too strong to beat, but still get almost as much xp as actually beating them. I know that's not something that one would use at higher levels, but I was able to finish the quest in the ocean a bit easier and use the desert to level in on all the huge bugs at lower levels.

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<==
Well, I've got a hat!

but in the sky Where you have a floating continent that remains hidden using advanced technology (between dimensions for example) i'm kinda tired, I'll finish this tomorrow .......tbc

I foresee possibly a sidekick as a plot device, in some quests - but that's all I think of that they would be used for.

awww

As difficult as it might be to implement a 2 vs. 2 combat system, it'd be a great place to put sidekicks in the game. You and your computer-controlled sidekick battle 2 enemies at once. 1 vs. 1 combat should be the focus of Twilight Heroes, but 2 vs. 2 combat could be a cool feature for a few quests.

Computers are such a cool customize-able feature. But software's a little too difficult to get. You have to adventure in a high level area, and even with +15% item drops, you don't get mangled data plates that often. And you need two of them to make a specific software. Right now, by the time you can use software, you've probably finished every quest.

Thus, it'd be cool to see some software in the lower game areas. And a clue given to you by Rand that tells you where to get the parts for an electronic computer. Gives computers a much bigger presence in the game. (And they should have a big presence)

I'm just thinking that newer players aren't likely to find out about computers before they've done most/all of the quests. Computers are awesome, and I'd like to see them be a bigger part of the game.

Actually, I'm level 5 and have two computers running two different software programs.

The computers are one of my favorite parts of the game. Though I think there should be some kind of program that heals you occasionally. Doctor Doom's Computerized Compendium of Cures. Or something.

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Yes, but you got that software from the Auction House, right?

Maybe it's not as hard to get computers/software as I thought it was.

Actually, I spend two days farming the area for the parts and the plates. The only parts I bought were the ones that don't drop. This was without +item %. While it does take a little while, I don't think it's that hard for a new player.

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Regarding sidekicks, I'd agree this should be a plot device option. I like how the character meets up with Rand and makes contacts with shop owners. That's a fun flavor to the game. Unfortunately all characters are meeting up with the same people. That kinda makes the game more like Diablo than City of Heroes. There's not enough variety of contacts just yet, but it's still early.

I don't like the idea of treating sidekicks like familiars. I don't like the idea of adapting familiars to TH at all. Let that be a KOL thing. Seeing a Familiar Like aspect to TH would be like watching Jon Stewart do David Letterman's Top Ten schtick. TH should develop its own schticks.

Would be interesting if for one zone the player encounters someone who teams up with their Character while in that zone only. Or maybe players could unlock a different "sidekick" for each zone. Depending on choices made in certain noncombat adventures, or maybe after getting a certain item in one's inventory, they'd meet up with an NPC who then appears in combat (like the Wind Warrior for Psions) and helps whittle down the baddies for a half hour at a time, afterwards maybe there'd be some way to call upon these NPCs for brief periods in the future while in that zone or maybe elsewhere. Could be handy to take on Big Bads in the upper levels.

Ideally, I wish this game would allow players to have their characters fight alongside each other, but considering the game mechanics I understand that's totally unfeasible. Having NPCs to team up with would help make the game appear less like your character is a lone wolf. More like he's a hero among a population of heroes.

Now, if you go this direction, you might call the NPCs "Sidekicks" for simplicity's sake, but in the actual plot of the game, I wouldn't recommend having all the NPCs be star-struck by the main PC. Perhaps one of them could be like Bucky in the early days of Captain America, but more often than not you'd be introducing characters who are themselves fully realized and have their own lives to lead, but their lives just happen to cross with the PC hero briefly, before they take off with a smile and a handshake.

Perhaps even consider having one be a romantic ingenue. However, that would be a prickly pear. You'd have to create different NPCs for each gender of Player, and may even have to make different prose for players who want their PC to be of a homogenous sexual proclivity. Or perhaps the Player percieves their Character as a married person who wouldn't have a romantic liason - or a married character who would! ...Perhaps a big no to the romantic liason thing. Perhaps a NPC who is very flirtatious but it's never reciprocated.

Teamups shouldn't be too brief because then you can't enjoy the experience, but they should leave before the hero gets bored with them, with the possible promise of an occasional return.

I'd recommend researching the Marvel Team-Up comics featuring Spider-Man from the latter half of the 20th century to get suggestions on how to make this part of the game particularly spicy and fun. I don't suggest literal theft of ideas of course but to get more of a feel for how team-ups spruce up this genre it couldn't hurt. I don't recall the Marvel Two-In-Ones with Thing being as good. You might wanna look at those to see what NOT to do. DC Comics also had Brave & The Bold with Batman and DC Presents with Superman teaming up with different heroes every month. Those stories were more touch-and-go. Sometimes awesome sometimes meh.

Sidekicking would be a GREAT addition to this game, but we're probably talking something to add much further down the road, after many zones and plots have already been developed, and most of the kinks and server errors are hammered out.

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head in clouds heart on sleeve foot in mouth

Maybe a sidekick could just be an award for a quest, seperate from the level-specific quests. You could name him/her and he/she would just attack and perhaps have learnable special abilities. It would just be a cool extra, and not a hugely important thing to have.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

Not having read past this post, I would like to sieze on the sidekick idea for a parody of Pixar's "the Incredible's".

Perhaps in one of the future quests or in the current higher-level quests a sidekick "Wanda Bee" appears. She wants to be your sidekick and more often than not will make you fumble or gives you a negative effect of some kind. Eventually you're presented with a few non-combat adventures that ends in you totally rejecting her help. She becomes enraged and flies off in a huff.

She then subsequently becomes a villian that you have to fight in a later quest. Possible in a secret locale called "Avillianisonthis Mountain" and probably involving enemy bee-bots, bee-stinger fighters (with a killer Honey-Sucker Punch), Sienfeldrones, and White Angry Super Proto-types (WASPs).

The Boss is Queen Bee - revealing herself to be Wanda. It could be a two stage fight - stage 1 queen bee. You defeat her, off comes the disguise, she monologues for a couple of screens and then the final showdown.

That's pretty funny. It would have to be a seperate sidequest (side-quest?) chain though, like all of the epic weapon quests in KoL.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

We don't know that.

Also, dThought's idea just gave me an idea.

Give the player choices throughout his/her ascension. Choices can determine the player's "karma" I suppose we can call it. e.g. Wanda Bee example. Reject her and she becomes a crucial villain. etc.

Ooh! I like that! If you accept the sidekick she causes you to fumble and miss a lot at first, cuz she's new at it and needs to learn the ropes. If you reject her at any time she leaves in a huff and then a level or two later returns as your nemesis. If you stick it out for a level or two she gets better with time and ends up being very useful, but you have to put up with some turmoil for awhile and suffer through her growing pains before it pays off.

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head in clouds heart on sleeve foot in mouth

And every so often she screws up big time, so much so that you'll want to get rid of her, but the longer you wait the stronger she is when you fight her. So some people might want to just get rid of her right away, fight her early, and play through the game without a sidekick. It could be balanced such that either way would present advantages, either having someone helpful who sometimes screws up or having nothing at all.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

Things I haven't seen in the game yet which should probably be in it somewhere in order to pay homage to the whole superhero genre thing.

1) Deathtraps: A zone which is actually a series of adventures. Each turn, The Diabolicler has engineered a fiendish device which you must escape from or destroy or diffuse in order to move on to the next turn. There'd be like twenty random ones that the player can access, and each one gets stronger than the last according to level. You never actually capture The Diabolicler and he never actually gets away. This is to tip a hat to the perpetual animosity between characters like Batman & Joker, or Superman & Luthor, or Spider-Man & Green Goblin, or Captain America & Red Skull, or Thor & Loki, or Doctor Doom & the Fantastic Four, etc.

2) Story Within A Story: The world of Twilight Heroes should have somewhere examples of comic books, or dime store novels, and the Character should learn about iconic heroes that the people of Twilight have read about. Would the people of Twilight know who Doc Savage is? Or Flash Gordon? Or Sherlock Holmes? Or would there be similar characters who go by other names? Are these fictional fictional characters? Yes, which is what makes it fun. In the libraries and bookstores of this city, would one actually find the works of Shakespeare? Dickens? Gaiman? For legal purposes I would suggest that anything in the public domain in our world should exist within Twilight, but fictional characters like those owned by DC & Marvel should either not exist or be replaced by characters we Players would recognize but lawyers wouldn't take one to court over. For example, The Human Torch could be The Living Flame, and there could be a popular series of comics in Twilight that Characters can collect. However, I do NOT suggest these fictional fictional characters inside the fictional world of Twilight actually manifest as real. That's been done to death and it's really very silly.

3) Time Travel: A 'zone' which is actually the lair of a mad scientist kinda bad guy. You fight him but fail to defeat him, and then you witness a Future You exit this machine in the room and defeat the mad scientist with the use of three artifacts. After the bad guy is down. Your Future Self tells you the machine he just exited is a time machine that the mad scientist was gonna use to change time for his benefit. You're destined to go into that machine and find the three artifacts. Make one a shirt, one a pair of pants, and one a weapon. Each of them are from three different time periods. Then when you come back to the present, be prepared to take the bad guy down. Corny and simplistic I know, but it's the classic superhero time travel story whittled down into a format easily adaptable to this game. The only catch? While in the time machine, you can't access your hideout or anything in the present time. You couldn't leave the zone to the present, if you didn't have the three artifacts necessary to defeat the big bad.

4) Chest Insignias: It should be possible to find or purchase an insignia that is the first letter of your name, and wear it as an accessory. Doing this should give you a positive modifier of some sort (say plus one to primary stat, or something significant but not monumental). There would be 26 of these, and somehow the game would know that a Z insignia would work for my character, but none of the other 25 would do anything for me. These should litter the Twilight trade economy like . Putting on more than one insignia wouldn't give an extra boost. You could collect the entire alphabet and have it in your inventory, but only one of the 26 would be useful to your Character. No, these can't be custom-ordered. If a player didn't like having the first letter of his name as a chest insignia and wanted something else... well that'd be up to Ryme but I'd only say yes to multiple requests for the same thing.

5) Set Them Up To Knock Them Down: Establish the history of Twilight as a city not unfamiliar with heroes, but just prior to the Player Character's arrival on the scene, a specified number of big heroes disappeared. In future updates to the game, have one of them come back and reveal seemingly important clues as to what happened to these significant good guys of Twilight's recent past, but then soon after their arrival they either step down from crimefighting altogether or they are killed by a Big Bad to show how bad and big the big bad is. Have this be a running motif throughout the future of the game.

6) Color Me Foreshadowed: If ever there is a game-changing event that will affect all Characters across the board in dramatic and hopefully fun ways, such an event should be foreshadowed by the sky turning red for no apparent reason. The skies always turn red in the comics before something cosmic is about to happen.

7) Retcon: A Player should be able to rewrite the Origin for his character to whatever he wants at some point late in the game. This should have no major impact on the game itself, but just be something Players do to entertain one another and be silly. Retroactive Continuity is a hallmark of comic books today, and should be reflected in the game somewhere, but not in a way that actually means anything more than just fun.

Those are just a few ideas that come to mind. Perhaps none of them are useful. They're things I'd like to see, but whether or not they'd be as good for the game as I imagine, I wouldn't know. =) Anyway thanks for reading.

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head in clouds heart on sleeve foot in mouth

Chest Insignias could be done they same way they do custom avatars in KOL. Pay some stars for a custom designed logo.

In reply to ZachsMinds plethora of good ideas:

1.) Hey, I know someone you know.... someone we all know. The Mick is all but predestined for this role, methinks.

2.) Backstory would be nice. Nods at 'real' superheroes (note the ' ') by calling them, lessay, Mister Fantabulous, The Living Flame, The Entity and Transparent Woman in the olden days of Twilight Superheroism would spice up things a bit.

3.) A good idea, but, /trust me/, not being able to rest in the hideout or buy restorers would drive heavily PP using classes mad. Not everyone has a donation cape.
Apart from that, the Time Travel can always be modified that the evil mirror-image of the hero (corrupted in the future) travels back to ensure that the corruption takes place. We as heroes have to travel to his future and find the means to take down his advanced energy shield (gadgeteer), flaming aura of doom (elemental), not-jedi-mind-trick-but-close (psion) or really, really thick fur (naturalist) there.

4.) I think dThought is right. Make it into a donation item. While this means I'll never have one, chest insignia are just as special as a heroically flowing cape, thus, they should be reserved for the real heroes (=those who donate :>)

5.) See 2. - The Awesome Foursome has vanished, and this could be made into a quest for players -> We have to find them, we do find them, we get told to bugger off and let them enjoy their well-earned peace and quiet (you would want some too after three decades of superheroism, no?)

6.) I vote for lime-green. Red's been done to death.

7.) Retroactive Continuity is the result of too many writers working with one hero over decades. I doubt that TH is either ready or in need of that.

My suggestion:
8.) Evil Twins. Another staple in superhero fiction, no-one ever gets away without meeting his/her/its/omgtentacles Evil Twin. Whether from alternate dimensions, alternate timelines or a failed transmogrification in the Hideout, an Evil Twin and a quest to hunt him down while the evil one tries his best to ruin the players reputation shouldn't be missing from TH

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

Crazy idea that came up in chat - what about a skill that is given out after you consume a huge amount of caffeine, which increase your tolerance