Zortel

Nice. Glad to hear the fix is well on the way and that several of the issues I listed are now on their way to being fixed. I shall give kudos of the appropriate value and amount.

By the Load I hope not, I like Galaxy City, it's quiet, it doesn't get swamped with people during invasions, and it's kind of a huge part of my playing experience.

Nothing of much substance to the Producer's letter, sadly. Someone summed it up much better, in a more concise manner further up in the thread. It's nice that they're continuing with them, though.

This.

I pay to play a game I enjoy, I enjoy costume parts, I don't really enjoy iTrials. I try them every so often, but it never clicks, it just niggles at me. As I've said before, I'd gladly pay £20 for the ability to have the new auras, costume change emotes and emotes, simply to avoid doing it in game.

I'd pay to have the Roman stuff for all characters. I'd pay to have the Vanguard stuff for all characters (We got given it for free, but my friend, a 6 year vet who missed out on it, can't get it). I'd pay to have the weapon unlocks for all characters. I'd pay to have auras and capes from level 1.

(I'd also love a way to gift people with packs and such.)

Why, when I could just do all that in game?

Because it makes life easier for me. It means I'm not grinding content I don't really want to do for something that I do want. What do the dev team lose? Someone who wouldn't really want to do the trials not doing them? In exchange for cold, hard cash that they can pump in to making other things?

I'd not even mind if the Ascension armour couldn't be purchased. I'd hate it if the Incarnate powers -could- be purchased. For the visual fluff that makes my characters pop though and gives birth to so many new concept ideas?

I'd pay for that.

If it was, that'd be 1 EM every 80 hours. 1 EM converts to 20 threads, and you need about 30 Threads and 75,000,000 Influence to unlock Judgement/Interface Slots.

That'd mean it'd take 160 hours to unlock say, interface, leaving you with 10 threads left over. It'd then take another 240 hours to slot that with a tier 1. (3 EM > 60 Threads, 20 for each common component)

So, solo only, to unlock Interface and slot it with a Reactive, it would take 400 hours and 75m influence. Granted you wouldn't be playing those 400 hours, it'd be 18 days. Considering you could probably get the same done in what... 3-4 trials, which take much less than that? It'd be a bit of a slog.

I'd be tempted to make it 2, but even 1 would be something. (2 in 40 hours compared to 4 (or 6 if someone also did the A > Emp Merit conversion) would seem fair, especially as the soloer/small team option would still mean people having to burn threads and influence to unlock the slots before they even start making powers.)

I've played on Union since February 2005. All my characters are on Union, the people I roleplay with are on Union, it is the universe that my characters and their stories exist in. Playing on another server is not an option for me, because it doesn't feel right and it takes me away from the place that my main form of enjoyment in game is set.

I dislike fights against enemies like Reichsman, who is pretty much resistance, regeneration and HP in large quantities and cheap moves. I rather liked the TF until then, especially the first mission. Statesman TF, well, I've never liked the Villain Respec trial, and the teams I've been with have often come into difficulties with that mission, and the Doctor Aeon mission and his cadre of clones. Every so often I will, like with the trials, try them again, and soon realise why I don't bother with them.

It's not minions I have trouble with. It's the HP/Regen/Res combo that makes fights a long, boring slog. I like the ITF, the LGTF is good aside from the final room graphics issues, I just dislike some of the major encounters in the two TF's mentioned above.

Fair enough, though real life doesn't have a way of keeping you your blocks at times.

See, I agree on the armour. I'd happily accept that being gated and for 50's, I just don't think the auras, which are hardly incarnate specific (unless only Incarnates can be pixel-y) should be.

I'll keep that in mind, but I do so very much dislike having to change the settings, restart the game, then change the settings back then restart. It's hassle on hassle, and that seems to run counter to the point of gaming for fun.

To cover the other post by White Hot Flash:

RP meet ups in game, the global channels of people who use them. I do team with them and get to team with others who I may not know, and subsequently know. I've always had an aversion to the PUG however.

My preferred pace would be to not have to touch the content with a stick, but the devs have placed a carrot that -does- appeal to me behind a wall of things that I loathe.

I read guides to the various encounters. Sometimes though, we just don't have the powersets that help out and make a powerset non-painful, sometimes, that damn eye on the Statesman TF just eyebeams people to death with little rhyme or reason.

Covered this elsewhere, but I tend to rage more and then go and play something cathartic.

Particle, World Detail, Character detail goes down. Shadows are on low anyway due to producing an oft-annoying flicker in some zones, environmental reflections are on low, no advanced occlusion.

I'm currently saving for a new system, but I'm still a good four months off my goal, and even then it won't be a top of the line system, just a lot more current than my current rig. (WinXPSP3 32-biit, 2gig ram, 2.6ghz Core 2 Duo, SATA 2 HDDs, Radeon 5770 to Win7 64 bit, 8 gig ram, 3.30ghz i5-2500k, SSD and SATA 3 HDDS, Radeon 6780)

Even some 8-man content gives my rig trouble. I don't like running the LGTF due to what the final room does to my graphics, and the huge auras and power effects of 8 characters can tax it, let alone more than that. Rikti raids have always been an example for me that CoH's power effects en mass are a painful mess.

And in a time when the competitors have realised that huge raids can be problematic, no matter the size, going upwards in numbers just seems a little counter to logic to me.

I'll handle point 2 first:

Things I find fun:
Making character costumes and concepts (Which is why I'd love more character slots, an increase from 36 to 48 would be great.)

Cool story arcs I can play through and enjoy the story (As in, one not slap-dash like the VEAT story arcs, or the majority of old ones bugged down with filler)

The occasional brawl in PVP with friends characters (often for RP purposes, like a sparring session or something)

A nice AE arc once in a while (found with the cool threads in the MA section, or something that one of my friends has made for an IC story line)

Roleplaying characters and their story lines (without which I'd not have been here for as long as I have, and is another reason why costume is so important to me. I have a character who has glowing eyes, but it irritated me immensely that it wasn't until level 30 back then that I could actually -have- glowing eyes that weren't the old, shoddy Supernatural face.)

The odd TF with friends every so often (I love Hess and Katie Hannon, and cannot stand the Statesman or Khan TF's)

Gathering exploration badges and enjoying the areas of the game that aren't copy paste clones (Love Stirga, and the i18 Praetorian zones are examples of zone design done right)

Tip missions (Though I'd love more, and more morality missions all around) and the fun of rolling A-Merits of 5 random recipes to see what falls out

The occasional RWZ teams to get characters up to the fun level (As in, level 22, where you have another costume slot, access to SO's, and enough powers to get an idea of the characters powers.)

Chatting with people on global chat channels.

-

For the first question, getting a team of people together is like herding cats. The more people you have, the more difficult it becomes. Some of the people I play with, and this is including myself, don't have the kind of builds to 8-man a Lambda. Then, with more people, the action gets more chaotic. My Radeon 5770 starts to struggle on some of the Incarnate Trial maps, and things go to a slideshow even with the particle count turned down.

And friends have their own lives to get on with. I have friends with children, friends with babies, friends with obligations and the works. On an ITF, we can wait if someone's kid needs feeding or they need baths or to be put to bed. It's much harder to do that on a timed trial. Or even if someone needs the phone or gets called away.

The things I would love to have access to (the auras) are behind the thing I hate doing. I don't enjoy myself when doing trials. For me, it's either boring or frustrating. And that's not conductive to fun. It's not like when I'm playing [tough platforming game/fun pure racing/driving/stunt game, so on] where I can pick up later on after taking a de-stress break. There mere fact that the things I care about are behind the things I can't stand cause me to rankle. Then it just builds and builds when doing it, as I have no easy way to vent or remove myself from the stress, and I just end up loathing the game.

I played [big mmo that has raiding and the like] and I liked their dungeon thing back in the last expansion, where just five people could do something, and earn progression towards gear without it being insanely stressy. When the group I was playing with there moved onto 10/20 man raids, that's when I started to burn out from the stress. I didn't like doing them, but I didn't want to let the people I was playing with down.

I quit over a year ago and never looked back.

Seeing that creep into the game I've played for 6 years worries me. Hiding cosmetic rewards behind that worries me even more. I know some people won't understand that. Does that mean I should do nothing, or voice my displeasure and reasons on the appropriate topics?

Can I, with my friends that I normally team with, do the Incarnate Trials?

No.

Does that mean having to team with others that I don't know, and all the pitfalls of that?

Yes.

Do my characters work well in those trials and feel like they're contributing something?

No.

Do I find the chaotic nature of them fun, compared to the teaming I prefer to do with friends?

No.

Do I have to do them as the only way to get access to these new auras for characters?

Yes.

Does that mean I have an issue with them?

Hell yes.

Do I feel that locking costumes and such behind levels and content is not a good thing?

Yes.

Am I content with actual powers and abilities being locked behind that same content?

Yes.

Do I wish that there was a way for solo and small team progression of Incarnate abilities that didn't involve the insanely low drop rates of Incarnate Shards and the insanely high cost of conversion?

Yes.

Do I worry that if I do this content, I have to get it done quickly before people no longer run it as much, making it harder to get a team?

Yes.

Have I noticed that the content isn't being run as much as it was when it came out, resulting in difficulties getting teams at some times when I usually play?

Yes.

Do I suspect the same will happen with the Keyes trial until something new comes along?

Yes.

Do I worry that not having these abilities will lock me out or relegate me in terms of power out of later released content?

Yes.

Do I object to having to claim the new auras on characters at level 1, when I tend to select these things when making the costumes?

Yes.

If they continue with this, should City Hall and Freedom Court have a Costume Tailor in so there is no need to run to the RWZ (or other locations if you don't know about that?)

Yes.

Does having incarnate content reward non-incarnate rewards worry me?

Yes.

Do I feel the handling of the incarnate system, its inception and ways of progression were done poorly?

Yes.

Does this and the above worry me for the direction the game will take?

Sadly?

Yes.

I didn't go "Yay, I have these auras." Then a few weeks later think "Oh. This is boring." when I got the Origin booster pack.

I care very much about making cool costumes for my characters, and sod all about trials. No, I don't care sod all, I'm into negative caring. Which is hate.

This places me in the camp where if I want the cool new auras added free to the game, I have to do trials.

Problem is, I don't want to do trials.

This kind of reward doesn't make me go "Oh yay, I'll do some trials so I can get stuff to look cool." (And I am not talking about the Ascension Armour, I'm talking about the auras.) It makes me go "******* hell I have to do this ***** trial to unlock these things."

So, after paying about, £65 to the game in terms of booster packs and upgrades to make my characters look better, I now have a whole selection of cool new auras done by the FX team that are going to be utterly, utterly painful to unlock.

And I know they're there. I'll see people wearing them. And it will eat into my fun.

Yes, I'm a little bit nuts about this, I know.

So, how about this?

Paragon Studios, I will pay you the princely sum of £10, no, £20 pounds, for the following:

Cape and Aura Unlock from Level 1
The Auras bought from Incarnate Trials
The Emotes and Costume Changes.

And you can spend that money however you wish. Back on your end-game, on the art team, or even just on nerf guns for the office.

That means I'm happy, you're £20 better off, and people are happy that I'm not clogging up their iTrials with my low performance.

I'd disagree in a number of areas, chiefly progression. The way to prevent players from unlocking new slots and abilities as soon as they come out is not to introduce new currency, but simply to use experience. While they wait for new slots and abilities, they could level up other ones to fill up their slots, and when a new one is out, they just earn iXP towards that instead. Normal content would award iXP. TF's and Trials would award more, with an end of TF bonus as well. Weekly Strike Targets would offer a double bonus for each character per week. Incarnate TF's, Story Arcs and Trials would award the most.

No shards, no threads, no random number generator to curse your life, no painful and time consuming 'alternate paths' for those who don't want to enter multi-team content for whatever reason. Just measurable progression.

Getting a team takes longer though on some servers, and especially if the time of the day is not a peak playing time. So then it's a case of wasting playtime advertising and trying to get a team when you could be playing instead.

Extremely. Get aura, e-mail to character, claim it, look at it in the tailors, think "Damn, I should have given it to X instead", go grind again to get the astral or whatever to unlock it.

To expand:

One of the reasons I buy up booster packs, and especially the origin pack, is because I like having access to capes and auras from 1. I can make a costume from the start with that aura in mind. If something comes out later that I think would work well, I can change it.

With these new auras mentioned, I can't use them in the character screen. This means it's hard for me to think of a concept for using them, especially if I want to use something that ties into a specific power set combo/concept (And I tend not to duplicate power sets. The four exceptions I have is 2 SR characters (DB/SR and Kat/SR Scrappers), 2 Dual Pistols (DP/Mental and DP/Fire Blasters), Fire Manipulation (Fire/Fire and DP/Fire Blasters) and Shield Defense (BS/SD Scrapper and SD/Energy Tanker)

Sometimes, I'll log into the game, play about on the character creation screen and go 'Hey, this is a neat idea' when I mix an aura with a power, or an aura with a costume piece, and then comes the process of juggling characters to see if there are any I really don't touch any more and don't RP as.

With Auras locked behind Incarnate Content, Locked Per Character, and Locked out of the Character Creation screen, they might as well not exist for me, because it's just going to be a huge amount of frustration.

Unlock them for all, unlock them for all -and- let them be used from level 1, or just let them be used from level 1 without having to unlock them. It was bad enough in the past, before booster auras, when I'd have a character idea and then have to get them to 30 -just- so they could get the aura to complete them. It still annoys me now that I'm without access to those level 30 auras till then, and a voucher is a bit of a rubbish option. I've got 35 characters at the moment, with the vast majority in their early 20's. So that's a -lot- of vouchers or a lot of grinding to 30.

Keep the Acension armour for 50's and unlocked by merits. I'm okay with that, as long as it doesn't become ubiquitous. Those auras though? Those lovely, amazing new auras? Do the art team a service and let everyone experience them. They're hardly Incarnate-centric.

My lowbie ninja MM has just become a lot less annoying to play.

Seriously, that's a load of resummoning. Stupid Genin.

There are certain patterns, colour schemes, animations and sounds that cause migraines, eye strain, headaches and seizures in people (Eye strain and seizures applicable to visual effects). Sonic Resonance used to have this issue before they changed it. Barrier (and possibly Clarion IIRC) have this issue now.

If there's an option to change these animations, or hide them, then that means more people can play the game, and thus pay the company. Shrugging and saying "That's your own problem, you shouldn't be playing" is a PR disaster in the making, and generally not a good idea.

Regarding Speed Boost, there are some people who have real issues controling their characters at speed. It can be from many things, from neurological impairment to hand to eye co-ordination issues, so on and so forth. There are also players who just want their characters to move in the way they prefer and are used to, and that's fair enough for them. I can understand that.

This change means that rather than selective buff applications, meaning people who don't want speed boost don't get it, buffs are either going to have to be called, or players are going to have to stay 30 feet away from the likely players who may be the anchor for Speed Boost.

And IIRC, 3 of Kinetics top powers (Transfusion, Transference, Fulcrum Shift) require people to be in range of them.

There are people I play with who don't want speed boost. If I bring my stone tank with me, I need it to combat the -Speed/-Recharge. This adds a bunch more hassle to proceedings now in making sure I, or others, are out of the way so they can play in a way they enjoy and I can play in a way I enjoy.

If there was a Single and an AoE option, that'd be peachy. In teams where only say, 2 people want SB, that's easy enough.

Something they should totally allow to happen!

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To my knowledge, CoH has never advertised on TV. On Facebook, they're always posting about articles done by other MMO gaming sites like Massively and RockPaperShotgun, or talking about promotions. Same goes for Twitter.

So, hype up one of the best aspects of the game by forcing people to move server and lose their character name, part of their character identity, as well as losing their SG's, some of which they've put a lot of work and prestige into?

That's a recipe for making vets leave the game. You know, people who've been playing for years, in the hopes of attracting some new players. Also, in MMO's, server merges tend to make people think 'that game is going down the pan, I won't invest my time into it.'

So, your plan consists of alienating vets to try and attract people who might not even play because they think the game is going down the drain. That's lose/lose.

Except your first character if they're getting the Going Rogue Complete Collection (Which they -should- if you're introducing them to the game. The most recent box, with goodies.) and thus be running around Paragon City.


Okay.

They still do.

They still do, or use global channels or forums for it.

Use the amazing character creation system to look like your fellow heroes!

As has been mentioned, it's much easier to get around the game and the zones now, with various options for doing so. And I've never in my entire time of playing on Union (that's 75 months) seen anything like that.

And now people use their global channels for that, meaning that your friends in different SG's can join in straight away to help.

Global channels, talk frequently.

Issue 20 has just launched, with content for level 50's that some players have long been asking for. This is why people are currently not playing their low levels. You want to do a sewer team? Join a server's global chat teaming channels and ask if anyone wants to do a sewer team with you. It sounds like you want the game to play like it did before, but the game has moved on and changed, and so should you. Rose tinted glasses and all that.

If someone shut down Union and destroyed my SG bases, and made me move to a server where I might not get my character names, I'd not have good times rolling.

Oh no.

I'd be here on the forums pouring out righteous rage, while in another tabbed window I'd be unsubscribing and wondering what to do with my £8.99 a month that's now not going to a game that treats me like dross.

Get CoH to shoot up some junk, have a few whiskeys and go driving fast down a country road. It'd be less self-destructive than your suggestion.