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I think people misunderstand why developers interfere and make changes. I could care less how fast someone earns influence. But I am concerned when someone is doing somethingg "unfun" in order to gain levels quickly and thereby bypassing other, more interesting content. Admittedly, "fun" and "unfun" are completely subjective, so people can disagree.
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To be quite honest, with the phenomenal job the devs have been doing with this game, I'm quite shocked that this timer was put in. I don't mind that you do it, it is in essence your world that we pay to populate. However, I do have a couple of concerns.
Are you going to alter the content to suit the mission changes? A timed mission is usually regarding hostages or bombs or some other time sensitive occurance. Rushing to consecrate some bones within a certain amount of time strikes me as more of a religious reality tv show contest than anything else. Stick some kidnapped squishies in there or something to make the timer a little more in par with the mission. Would be cool to save some other heroes again.(Note: I haven't run the wolf missions too much since I cleared mine to progress the arc, so I'm not sure if there have been any story changes.)
The other, and much more serious, concern I have relates to the devs attitude towards issues like this. This one is, in the scheme of things, relatively minor but is definitely a step towards sacrificing the integrity of the game in order to address the loudest complaints. I have seen this primarily with SWG and with EQ 2 a little less. I won't endeavour to go into details but the one thing I love the most about CoH and its dev team is their commitment to providing ongoing content on a relatively regular basis. Its brought me back to the game and kept me here with the same level of interest I had when I was playing in beta. I would really like (and know I will probably never get) some assurance that this wolf mission isn't a sign of things to come. ie "People are whining on the forums and 'such and such' supergroup is up in arms about this particular mission... so lets stick an AV in it.. or a timer... or something". I think the development team has and is doing an astounding job with this game I just really don't want it to suffer the same bureaucratic fate that other games wallow into and can't pull themselves out of.
Please don't sacrifice the integrity of your original vision in order to silence the loudest complaints who, in my belief, don't even represent the majority.
