Sorciere

They could do that (assuming the software can actually still be used as is, which I doubt), but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Rather than "seeding" new servers with additional players as they did when they granted US->EU transfers, they'd be depopulating existing ones.

There's also the additional issue that it may not even be a good idea for EU players: US primetime starts at around midnight Central European Time, and before that, even Virtue and Freedom aren't all that full.

It's something that they've probably already considered, but there are some obvious issues:

(1) The biggest problem is server maintenance, especially when coupled with a new client release. If the EU and US servers were to both be accessible through the same client, the client has to be updated for everybody at once. Unfortunately, that means that maintenance would have to occur at a time that is guaranteed to be inconvenient for at least some countries.

(2) I'm not an expert in this area, but I expect that adapting payment schemes would be a major headache, especially with how the exchange rate of the US dollar vs. the Euro and the British Pound can fluctuate at times. There would almost certainly be people who'd be shopping for whatever is the best payment option at any given moment, cancelling and resubscribing as needed (and thus creating more customer service overhead in the process when something gets messed up in the process), not to mention sorting out how VAT and sales tax need to be assessed in each case (right now, a person from the EU playing on the US servers does not pay VAT, as far as I know -- this would almost certainly have to change).

(3) Population migration may actually create new problems. If a lot of EU players migrate to the high population US servers, won't this depopulate some of the other servers, making their situation worse?

That said, if these issues could be addressed, this would be a very nice thing to have. For the time being, though, I think that the SSK system in I16 should be a more effective improvement to the teaming situation on low population servers that doesn't require major server and network surgery; an overhaul of the LFT system would be the logical next step.

Apparently, yes. There's a post somewhere where it was stated that Mod08 (I believe) said at SDCC that subscriptions were up. There's also this post by GhostRaptor on the old EU forums from earlier this year.

However, the original "Kill Skuls" post wasn't written until January, 2005.

Nobody knows how to interact with MMORPG customers, I'm afraid, because you simply can't make them happy, by and large. MMORPG players are too fractious a crowd for that.

I fully agree with the Guild Wars female animations leaving much to be desired (not just the running, which is just the worst!), but since when is Pippi Longstocking little-girlish?

I think you'll find Joss Whedon's Equality Now speech very relevant in this context.

That's a noble goal that makes good ad copy, but isn't reflected in the reality of the game.

I'm not saying that costs and challenges should not exist; I am saying that the endurance implementation, as it currently exists, is a poor game mechanic. Not an indefensible one, but one that is definitely subpar.

About managing endurance:

That would be nice. Unfortunately, powers ARE balanced around endurance so that specifically DPE is constant, by and large. You can do X points of damage twice for 10.4 endurance or 2X points of damage for 10.4 endurance. It's a wash. That's actually a major part of my critique, namely that the game does not offer you much in terms of adjusting your endurance efficiency. It comes down to: Don't use toggles that you don't need and (according to common wisdom) attack more slowly. Except that you don't really want to attack more slowly, because that is less effective than burning through your attacks as fast as you can and resting up afterwards, so it's down to "don't run toggles that you don't need".

And yes, you can pick different enemies, but that does not alter DPE. That's simply a matter of picking easier enemies over harder ones.

If you are endurance-capped, activation time and recharge time are largely irrelevant for sustained DPS, nor do they factor in your endurance management. And most attacks ARE equally efficient: 1 point of damage scale per 5.2 points of endurance (adjusted for cones and area effects).

As to some attacks being more or less efficient than others, that's generally not true. There are exceptions, such as Energy Transfer, but it's not as though that even matters for, say, the first 34 levels, and after that, it's not like that's going to let you decide much: You simply fire off Energy Transfer whenever you can. Similarly, while Freezing Touch has poor DPE, that doesn't give you many options: Ice Melee doesn't have a lot of single target attacks, so you'll use it anyway when you can.

That, by the way, is all that different DPE for different attacks would do in general: Establish a static priority for attacks that can be determined beforehand. In practice, this currently only occurs for area attacks, which can get higher or lower priority depending on whether you have enough or too few targets, resulting in having one optimal attack chain for 1-2 targets, and another for 3+ targets.

If you want to introduce complexity in the attacking process, endurance management is generally not the way to go (unless you introduce a lot of additional endurance management mechanics). There are much better solutions for that (such as combo systems or procs that can alter your attack priority on the fly).

To summarize: It's not that endurance does not require ANY decisions (it obviously does). Those decisions, however, are not particularly meaningful or significantly affected by proficiency.

It's not like you can swap out your Katana for Claws attacks. Claws attacks simply get a flat endurance discount. Having better DPE across the board and thus being able to bypass the need to deal with endurance constraints is a big reason for the popularity of the powerset, and really reinforces my point.

That is correct, but we're talking about endurance here, not the other parts of the game (which, thankfully, are mostly in a much better shape).

You're misreading me. There's nothing wrong inherently with teams being more effective than solo players (by the way, that generally applies to all ATs, including good soloers such as scrappers). The problem is not when the solo play is less effective, but when it is frustrating and boring. When players switch to a different character if they can't find a team because soloing is unappealing (even though it would still be the most XP/hour for the character, compared to not playing at all), then you are looking at a customer that you may be losing down the road.

My point is that I want a better game that more players want to play and keep playing. The endurance mechanic does not make for a better game, it makes for a worse game. It causes frustration and forced periods of inactivity without creating sufficient countervailing benefits.

Obviously, I do realize that endurance is not going to go away. You simply can't upset the apple cart in such a big way in an established MMORPG. However, it would at least be possible to minimize the negative effects.

Says who? That is exactly what it does -- it provides an upper bound on how fast you can solo. DPE for almost all attacks is equal, so your sustained damage output is limited by DPE times EPS.

I wouldn't cite protection paladins or protection warriors in WoW as a good example, since Blizzard has acknowledged that their mana/rage recovery mechanics are problematic (the classical example is tanking content that these specs outgear) and keeps tweaking them endlessly. Conversely, one thing that they explicitly have stated that they like are the retribution paladin mechanics, since they can perform their standard ability rotation indefinitely without running out of mana and only run into mana problems if they deviate from that or run into other problems (off-healing, spamming Consecration, mana-burning mobs, etc.).

And no, you do not "have to do that". "Everybody else does is it" is a reason for lemmings, not for humans. In order for it to be good game design, you have to provide a reason why it makes the game better.

Endurance doesn't encourage you to watch your bar or to strategize between attacks and defense. If that is its purpose, it fails. Hard. There is no point in pacing your attacks: Almost always, the most effective approach is to burn through your endurance bar as fast as possible, then recover afterwards. DPE for almost all attacks is equal, so there is little point in picking one over the other, even. CoH has way too little relevant resource-related decision making for endurance constraints to be seriously called a resource management system.

Note that I am not saying that you cannot have a resource management system. I am merely saying that CoH's is poorly designed, since it does not actually create interesting decisions about how to manage your resources. "Attack more slowly" is not an interesting decision (not to mention generally not the best choice). An interesting decision would be something like "use a slow-casting, mana-efficient heal, and risk that the target dies before it lands" or "use a fast-casting, mana-inefficient heal that is all but guaranteed to land in time but risk running out of mana" (a common trade-off for healers in fantasy MMORPGs). It's not "use a high damage attack that uses mana" vs. "use a low damage attack that recovers mana" vs. "trade health for mana, then recover health afterwards" (WoW warlocks). It's just "don't use more endurance than you have". That's a decision-making model that's perhaps interesting for a (patient) six-year old, not for a mature adult.

And creating a dependency on teams is a principle of MMORPG design that went out of fashion with EQ. There's no reason why people should be punished for soloing.

You can and will do that not uncommonly if you are, say, a lawyer, a doctor, or a dentist. Or a sought-after specialist in a number of other professions.

You may also find that outside the US, the customer isn't necessarily given as much deference when he or she is behaving stupidly. And even in the US, you may find that some companies do sometimes find that making abusive customers happy is not the greatest idea.

I fully agree -- I was just limiting my discussion to the game-mechanical effects that constrain you, not the equally important effects on player psychology.

No. CoH is moving more and more to a model where the content you can experience does not depend on your level. The original sidekick/exemplar system, Ouroboros, auto-sidekicking/exemplaring in the MA, the new SSK system and unlocked hazard zones all make level less and less important, aside from determining which powers you have access to.

Eve Online doesn't, to name just an example. Second Life, while not technically an MMOG, is an online virtual environment that beats all western MMOGs that are not called "World of Warcraft" in terms of active population. Both have been consistently growing since their inception. You really need to look at more MMORPGs instead of just WoW.

And if the most popular MMOs follow that example, it's mostly because, well, most MMOs just blindly follow WoWs example rather than trying to carve out their own niche. That can fall flat, of course, such as with Age of Conan, where the developers simply didn't have the manpower to produce a compelling endgame after making the first 20 levels or so very attractive, but designed a WoW-style MMORPG. Result? Lots of initial good press from players and reviewers impressed by the low-level game, then left. Age of Conan is now down to 7 servers from 49 at release.

I not only realize that, I've never said otherwise. The one who is focused on just one single playstyle (get to max level and then do endgame content) is you. I am the person who sees more than one way to play a game.

Hint: Google for "blizzard 200 million". You really need to learn to use the web.

Their biggest expense (relative to others) is actually customer service.

Try again. The number of Blizzard developers was around 140 at the time of BlizzCast Episode 7, not counting the huge QA team (they have around 2000 employees total). The WotLK credits list 10 character artists alone, for example.

If it's so easy, why isn't there a single other western MMORPG that even remotely apporaches Blizzard's numbers and having 10% of Blizzard's numbers is considered an enormous success? (Fantasy Westward Journey, of course, can make WoW look small, but I'm not sure if you can compare WoW fairly to a game designed specifically for the huge Chinese market, where Blizzard as a western company has been actively handicapped.)

Huh? I didn't erase anything.

That may be part of the reason. City of Heroes has aspects of a "make your own fun" sandbox MMORPG, and gives players considerably more leeway in using the elements of the game system than the WoW style games. If you expect to be spoonfed endgame content in a defined fashion, you're probably going to be disappointed.

The Mission Architect exemplifies that. You use it for powerleveling. I use it for stories. You run out of content. I have more content than I know what to do with.

Going back to this one point, consider this particular subscription-based online gaming service. Oddly enough, the service doesn't offer a traditional endgame. In fact, you experience a complete reset for all characters on your team after every "mission". Yet, people pay for it, despite a generous trial version and plenty of free alternatives.

In order to understand that, consider that there are players with a playstyle totally different from your own. I'm not saying anything against yours, but you cannot extrapolate from your playstyle towards that of others. You cannot even begin to imagine, it appears, that other players may not even have a desire to hit level 50 as fast as possible, especially since CoH is inching closer and closer to an effectively level-less system.

Ballpark extrapolation from knowing approximately how many developers and artists work for Blizzard, how much of their content is focused on raid instances, adding in benefits, hardware, and so forth. Corroborated by knowing that their total expenses from release to September 2008 were around $200 million.

If you have the secret of how to make an MMORPG as successful as WoW, I am sure the MMORPG industry is waiting with bated breath for your insights. WoW and Fantasy Westward Journey are unique cases, not easily copied recipes.

It's most likely a critical mass thing, starting out with Blizzard's originally high popularity in gaming circles. Success begets success.

The WoW style of MMORPGs is not the only one. Consider sandbox MMORPGs. Consider PvP-focused MMORPGs. Consider, say, Eve Online.

The problem with the WoW approach is that it is very, very expensive to manufacture. You're creating new content constantly, planned for obsolescence, rather than being able to reuse your existing work. Blizzard is creating highly polished raid content, but at the cost of millions of dollars per raid instance. The content is focused around people with lots of spare time (which often correlates with low income). These players may quickly drop their hobby if they get a better-paying (and more time-consuming) job, if they find a new girlfriend/boyfriend, and so forth. Even if they are still interested in MMORPGs, they may not have the time to keep pace with the speed of endgame progression. It's very difficult to compete with WoW on their own chosen ground, with a volatile target audience while constantly building expensive content. That WoW is successful does not mean that it is a good business model to imitate for smaller publishers.

You may want to take into consideration now that not everybody is on a $14.99/month monthly subscription.

They are better than your non-existent ones. Also, Learn2WWW. Wikipedia references NCSoft's IR site. Click the "IR Archive" link (left side menu), grab the report for the third quarter of 2008. Read it. For ease of use, here's the direct link to the ZIP file with the actual data. Page 16 of the PDF is what you want.

I don't think we disagree quite that much, actually. I'm talking about situations such as a level 30 Dark/Ice tank without IOs; you'll have a tight endurance budget and no global recharge, so that is a situation when DPE becomes more important than DPA. Of course, a level 50 Willpower/Ice or Ice/Ice IO build with high global recharge will have the exact opposite priorities.

I think that's just miscommunication. When I said "control-heavy team build", I didn't mean a build for control-heavy teams, but a team build that is control-heavy (e.g., high recharge on Ice Patch, Frozen Touch slotted for hold and recharge rather than damage, combined with suitable epics). It's basically a melee control build. Not a particularly great choice for soloing, but the high level of control combined with the still high AE damage of Frost and Frozen Aura can be very attractive on teams; you'll take a bit of a hit in terms of single target damage, but that's rarely an important attribute for team tanking.

No, it wouldn't be. For example, from "let n be a number less than 10", it doesn't follow that "n must be equal to 1 or 2". That's elementary logic.

I hadn't been playing devil's advocate, though, but expressing an actually held preference. The poster had just been wildly exaggerating what I said.

I was suggesting smaller spawns with individually more dangerous mobs. From that he went on to claiming that I wanted to fight mobs one or two at a time.

I haven't the foggiest clue where you get the idea that I'm in favor of fighting only one or two mobs at a time.

Similarly, nowhere did I say that a superhero fighting army-sized crowds doesn't happen, just that (in general) it isn't a good fit for the genre. Just because there are occasional examples of it doesn't mean that it's typical. More generally, it happens for a specific narrative purpose and isn't done too often (simply because comic books, unlike MMORPGs, would have to stretch the already suffering limits of their credibility even further to explain where all the thousands of villains come from).