The Need for Depth

I guess a lot of the ideas I come up with while playing CoH are born of a desire to ease the feeling of ridiculousness on the streets of Paragon City, balanced with an understanding of the game's needs. I understand the need to provide sufficient numbers of villains on the streets for heroes to beat up... I really do. We can't have players fighting over reduced numbers of "prey," even if that reduction brings the game closer to realism. But having a mugging on every streetcorner just feels forced and shallow. Worse, it prevents heroes from "caring" about the victims on the streets.... I know I just run past them now on my way to a mission. At first I felt kind of bad, like I was abandoning them. Eventually they just became part of the scenery, and an occasional target for hunting. And that just doesn't seem right.

So, what to do?

I think the solution is to provide more creativity in getting the prey out there, while making it less obvious that they really aren't any harder to find even though they're not just hanging out on every corner waiting to be pounded. (Yes, ugly grammar, but I think you get my point. Moving on...) Again, we have to work within the "what's worth it and what's not" confines of the existing game.... What can we make using existing programming/mechanics and graphics or make with as little new tweaking as possible. The "drive by shooting" scenario below was spawned of this desire to provide variety without depriving players of prey. (As an aside, I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of making players work a little harder for their kills... not so much in making villains tougher, but making the situations a little trickier. I also think that doing so will give players more of a feeling of accomplishment. Give the "thinking" players an opportunity to think a little more. But this is a whole bigger subject that I'll hopefully address in more depth another time.)

So, with that preamble all blurted out, here's my newest idea: Store Robberies.
We've got all these doors we can't enter... why not let us use some of them? Picture this (as I'm too tired to Photoshop a mockup tonight): A typical storefront... only there's a thug or two standing nervously outside the door keeping watch. Unlike most thugs, these won't just attack if you get close... they're "playing it cool." However, if you attack these thugs, they'll either fight back or attempt to run inside the store. The store can be entered just like enhancement-selling stores. Inside the store, several more thugs are robbing (daytime) or looting (night time) the place. If the watch-thug outside the door gets in, the mob inside is aggro'ed the moment a hero comes through the door. If the thug outside is beaten first, there's a normal mob delay before the hero is attacked. Hillarity ensues.

This idea, like drive by's, gets some of the hundreds of muggers off the street while not reducing the actual number of potential prey available to heroes. Ideas for things like this come to me pretty easily and often. I'll share them with you as they do.