Darkfall_EU

Good idea for a thread.

Server: Union.
City of Heroes RP Characters:
The Pest
Melancholy
TITAN-01
Sayiir
City of Villains RP Characters:
Darkfall
Duggan
Neverender
Type of RP: mostly Supergroup and in missions at the moment, but potentiall interested in more.
Can be contacted: In game mail, Forum PM's
Times on: Generally evening time, occasionally other times.
Timezone: British Standard Time.

The Pest is still around, fighting evil and doing good. If a little bitter these days... He'd be, what, 19 now?

Good points. As an additional thought...

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If someone can come up with a reason why two dozen people who all want to take over the world for themselves would get together to discuss the latest gossip on who Lord Recluse is sleeping with... then I'm in.

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... none of my villains want to take over the world. OK, yes, admittedly, one of them is a revenge-driven freak who would quite happily destroy the world... does that count?

It's a very narrow view of super-criminals though, to say that they all have great world affecting plans. Do they all have to have twirly moustaches and black capes, too?

Quite a few of my characters want to become personally wealthy and/or powerful, but couldn't give a pair of fetid dingoes kidneys about the world. It's perfectly possible for villains to meet up to discuss deals, form alliances (possibly leading to missions and/or PvP teaming) or even friendships provided they are three-dimensional characters.

Then again, I guess the same is true of any sort of character when you think about it.

I think the problem is that what people were expecting from bases was not what we got. The base system, like most of the things brought into the game recently, is entirely geared towards catering to the PvP crowd who put in a lot of hours and probably already have high level characters. Now in theory there's nothing wrong with that, and I am genuinely glad for those people who are enjoying the base content.


But what I don't think a lot of those people are considering is the other side of the coin. It's pretty disappointing for those with no interest in PvP who were looking forward to building bases. Nowhere in the promotional material for CoV did it say “coming soon : bases for PvP content”, so people developed a certain level of expectation and, as people tend to, made assumptions about what we’d be getting and started to look forward to it. Now that we've had a chance to look at it, our SG has calculated that it will take an estimated 140 days of play (roughly five months) to achieve a base capable of processing the salvage we are picking up. That said, this also looks like a non-starter when you figure in the prestige costs of placing the items, which makes the whole exercise a little pointless. So we’re going back to what we do best; playing the game and having a laugh. Bases are like the arena, a feature of the game I don’t get any use out of. The only difference is that I was really looking forward to base building.

As the base system is clearly geared only towards PvP, I suspect that any further discussion about prices is pointless. If the group of people at whom the content is aimed are enjoying it, it will be seen as “working as intended” and won’t be changed. Whether that disappoints and alienates a sizable chunk of the player base or not.


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Bottom line, if you're suggesting that a base with all the bells and whistles should be fairly easy to obtain for an individual then I disagree.

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Looking through this thread, I can't find anybody who has ever suggested this, just several people violently insisting it’s a bad idea. So I think pretty much everyone agrees on this point.

Depends on your definition of "working" I guess.

I agree though. Anyone who thinks they should have access to teleporters, medical facilities, gun turrets and the like so quickly without the backing of a large SG is really expecting too much.

(Sweet avatar, by the way! Who doesn't love badgers?)

We have 3 players, with 3 alts in the group that never get played.

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To place a crafted Aux control unit costs 97K.


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Anybody got any other nasty figures with regards to the costs of placing items? Is this a usual figure just to place something? 97,000 prestige?

We're looking at getting a workbench in the next few months. If these are the costs for placing items, then we needn't bother. If these figures are correct, then the base system as it stands is officially useless for smaller SGs.

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holy cow! Sister Psyche and Ghost Widow

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Put "in jello" on the end of that sentence, and it really would be...

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wasnt a dig at u the pest, i dont think

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Good to know!

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i agree that most games have things to channel currency into, but here u dont need inf other than for alts or newbies in ur sg, so by choosing sgmode u are filtering to something useful, tbh as a lvl 40 odd character u shouldnt feel the pain of losing inf income, at 50, this shouldnt even be an issue other than for above reasons.

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Again (and I know I'm saying this a lot recently!) I see your point, but all our SG are in the mid 30s. We still need influence for SOs and for the extra costume slot we'll be getting at 40 (OK, OK, so the costume is optional, but dammit, I like it! )


I think the pattern that's evolving here is that if you

1) have a SG of at least 40 players.
2) have a level 50 character
3) are interested in PvP
4) play for a good few hours per day, every day

then the base system is really great and works for you. And fair enough, I wouldn't try to take this away from those people because it will enable them to have fun. But if the above isn't true for you, then you can forget about it. I suspect this will be a case of "working as intended" in the developers eyes though, because all the recent changes seem to only really make the game better for people in the above categories.

Ho hum. To quote the mighty Bridger though, your mileage may vary.

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Very easily if you think about it and work the numbers...

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Ah! It's a raid thing! Looking at it from a PvP perspective, I can see your point.

That explains why I didn't think of it, as we have no interest in raids. Our SG wants a place to roleplay, and do something with all this salvage we've got piling up in the back yard!

Unfortunatly, it looks like the base system is designed solely to cater to very large SGs who want to do raids. That's a big shame, in my opinion.

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as usual, i will say that it really isnt worth moaning about it, and to lump it if u dont like it, u dont have to pay, or play this game, and if u dont want to help a like minded sg then its probably ur own loss, even those that 'dont like to socialise' im sure can find a few ppl who are like them.

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Hmmm... I'm curious. Is this aimed at me? If so, did you actually read what I wrote at all? Because… um… there's no "moaning" in that? Also, isn’t advising someone to leave the game because they raised a point about one minor aspect of it a little on the harsh side? Or is that just me?


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i dont see why a soloist should be able to get the same as kind of scale base as a whole SG... if you want to solo, play a solo AT, adn dont expect a large base.

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Agreed, totally. I don't think anyone here really thinks that small supergroups or solo players should have access to large bases.

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as for cheap decorative rooms, these can be used tactically so shouldnt be too cheap of course.

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Used tactically? In what way?

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A month of 'powergaming' or gold herding got me a decent sized plot, 2 weeks later I could afford to buy the first floor. One month after that I finished it (4 floors in all).

Then it took me a day or two to get most of the furniture in (handy whn you're the crafter).
It took me a lot longer to get the material for the high end furniture, an other month I think.


So all in all, the building itself took me 2 and a half months of playing 6-12 hours a day...

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Ouch.

Thanks for the feedback, Shadow Ghost. At least that puts things into a sort of perspective. Some people (not referring to yourself here) need to realize that not everyone who plays CoH has played other online games! I suppose the main difference in this game is that, if I understand correctly, you needed to save up gold which you could divert to other things if you needed it. Whereas to earn prestige to build bases we need to almost stop earning “gold” (or influence/infamy).

Hey, I’m not implying to was any easier though!

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I know I've worked hard for the house I bought in Ultima Online. I was very proud of my home.

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Out of interest, how long did it take you to get that house? I'm interested to see the comparison.

Is it usual in other online games to need to put in months of slog to get a minimum spec base/house/mothership/*insert dwelling place here*?

I'm really interested in this topic, as bases were one of the main reasons the people in my SG bought CoV.

(Not that there aren't other reasons to buy CoV - In fact, there are loads! )

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Bases, like Level 50 characters, are intended to be something that you earn through play, and have significant 'prestige' (in the sense of being impressive to other players and SGs, rather than the stuff you earn from defeating foes in SG mode) associated with them.

It is entirely possible that the Prestige costs for various base components will be fine-tuned over the coming months. However, I suspect that it will always require a significant amount of time and effort to earn a fully functional, raidable base - and a top of the line model with all the trimmings will take a very long time indeed.

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Bridger,

Have you seen Doctor Temporis' figures on the Union board regarding the costs of bases? According to his calculations, it will cost 910,000 prestige for a base with the bare minimum of functionality (ie. 1 worktable and the resources to power it).

Now I can appreciate that a "fully-functional, raidable base" should take a long time to set up, and that seems totally reasonable to me. But looking at these numbers and assuming they are correct (which they seem to be) I've estimated that it will take the supergroup I am part of over 2 months to achieve enough prestige just to build a base with the minimum bits and pieces, and that's if we don't want to earn any influence until further notice.

Vast Fortresses of Solitude with huge amounts of stuff in them should cost massive amounts and take ages to construct, that's logical. But a smaller SG who just want a smaller base with no interest in raids can't have one until into the new year? Seems a bit off to me.

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*Silence,maybe a slight grunt*
"What's that Nevermore? The Devouring Earth have a group of lawyers held hostage?"
*More silence, maybe the barest suggestion of another grunt.*
"They turned one of them into a devoured? And they're going to go on a rampage?*
*Stoney silence, brroding, yet another half-there grunt*
"Yes, you're right, it's lawyers. It's your round at the bar."

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I think Roleplaying in CoV is going to be team and misison-based rather than the "meeting-place" system we have for CoH. Also, not *every* villain wants to conquer the world etc. hence working in a group is a viable concept.

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Totally agree.

So far I've managed to work out 3 (well, in my opinion at any rate ) fleshed out, villainous characters. Only one would really be someone that couldn't operate in a social situation with others, and that's mostly because he's psychotic.

Just because GG wouldn't work in it's current format in CoV, doesn't mean there can be no role-play.

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Also, how are small supergroups supposed to become larger now?

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From the looks of things, by inviting every single player on the server in order to get enough members to fund a base, and spamming the broadcast channel once every couple of minutes with a 5 line SG advertisment.

When you start to get SG invites from the same people over and over, it becomes pretty obvious that this is the percieved way "forward".


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Shame there cant be some SG instanced missions where an SG team (good or bad will change the senario slightly) goes and robs a high tech electrical/computer firm and the loot is a computer or a generator ect.

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This is an excellent idea. It's so good, I'd flag it up to the devs if I thought there was a point in doing so.


My apologies, but you've caught me in a cynical mood today.
To my mind, the whole feeling of the game has now shifted from one of co-operation (us against the game) to competition (us against each other). It's not just in the PvP zones and arenas, now people are competing over SG membership, bases and soon items of power.

Meh. To each their own as the saying goes. Lots of people seem to love this new style. But I bought this game to play WITH people, not against them.

Again, apologies. Normal service, and the topic, will now be resumed.

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The rate is:

1,000,000 inf = 2,000 pstg

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Words fail me. They really do.

((Very cinematic, very graphic novel... although yes, I'm aware that I'm mixing my genres there! This should be a movie. Now! ))