Dominemesis

EvilGecko,

I like the backstory, but I hate the solo path being punished by only being able to gain once per day. I don't see any reason for players to gain rewards at a dramatically reduced pace just for opting into a different play style. Least ways when even if you don't mind or even like running the trials, you can't because you play during the day or at odd hours, and the 20 only other people on your ghost town of a server aren't running an Itrial.

For me that is the biggest reason I would want another path to do this stuff, because the low pop servers in a low pop game make it hard to find teams/leagues with regularity and if all my play time becomes waiting in a queue, then its time to move on (actually that is the reason I came here from WoW, got tired of sitting in queues for the entirety of my free time in order to make any meaningful progress on my characters).

Counterproposal: Because your Vanguard's Hammer idea is good and shouldn't be gated to just once a day, why not let it be "gated" to this: The incarnate trials can drop very rare incarnate mats, make it so these missions can only offer up to rare quality mats, and at a comparable drop rate as very rares from the itrials now. Design the Vanguard's Hammer missions as arcs, which offer a reward at the end of each mission (maybe 5 incarnate threads or maybe a common if you are lucky), and the finale offers a chance at a loot table with either; 10 incarnate threads, a common, an uncommon, or a rare. Have that as the base line with a small chance to improve the odds of getting better loot table based on the mission difficulty and the size of your team. There you go, solo/small team content with a slower but not ridiculously so advancement option, and heaven forbid the chance to actually have alot of fun and play through some interesting story arcs (the Vanguard's hammer thing really has some hot potential, especially if EB's/AV's are used). Oh and have level/incarnate shifts apply during these missions, so incarnate characters can get more bang for their buck out of those as well. This would also preserve the itrials as not only a means to gaining incarnate power faster, but as the best/only means of taking slots to T4, while giving a fun and imo balanced alternative.

My thoughts on the matter.

by pretending to be a discount defender, just using the Pain dom half

Here is my experience without hyperbole or anything, just where I am at. I am bouncing between CoH and WoW atm, and the problem I am having with both, and why I won't likely be subscribed to either soon, is that most of my play time is expended sitting in a LFG queue. In WoW, its LFG queues for heroics dungeons and the new ZA/ZG, and I am looking at 45-1hr since I am neither a healer nor a tank.

Here, in COH, on Guardian server, I am looking at 30mins on average (despite that the queue says the average wait time is 4-5mins, it isn't), to run an incarnate TF, where i feel not so super as me and my team smash our faces on the content, and I won't even go into how much it sucks as a MM. This is just too much, and what's worse on the COH side of things is you can't run anything else mission-wise while you wait either. I get logged out for going afk about half the time because all you can really do while in the LFG queue is sit tight.

This design model doesn't work for me in either of these games, so there you have it. That's the similarity I see between the two, and its a crappy one that makes both unappealing to me. My 2 cents.

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I am sure the devs would love to have increased rewards for harder customs. Sadly, some putz would then create a mission with just one enemy type, one of the ones with increased rewards, that they can game the system with.

It is a shame. *snip*

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See i don't imagine the Devs were naive enough, especially after so many years, to think that the MA wouldn't get used for PL, farming, etc. I am sure there were many player's who wanted to explore those options when it released live specifically. Yet the Devs still went ahead.

Seems to me its like saying to your 16 year old daughter that she can't use the car, but then storing the car keys in her purse....set up to fail. Try taking a fresh, juicy, raw steak and placing it only a foot in front of your dog, tell him not to eat it, and then walk out of the room. Then be really, really pissed off at your dog and your daughter and act surprised when they disobey, take no responsibility for setting them up to do just what they ended up doing, and punish them severely (or at least threaten it). Seriously not handled well at all.

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You know, the constant acerbic, insulting spew about the developers is really tiring and dull.

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This is like the 4th post in the thread, and in the previous 3 I never even saw the acerbic, insult spew you are claiming. I saw someone say,"Hey the custom mobs are tougher but don't reward any higher, isn't that off for the risk/reward ratio?" which is an observation, not a jibe.

The closest thing that anyone said to a jibe at the Devs (and that's if I am hunting it out for you since you CITED nothing specific) was one poster claiming that the devs will likely not acknowledge the risk/reward discrepancy and will probably justify it, and this is after giving a straightforward example of where the Dev's did pretty much exactly that involving the KHTF. Hardly ascerbic or insulting. So yeah, if there was a Dev bashing going on, it was only in your head dude.

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I know that. My point is that you do so much as even something vaguely related to farming and some of the forumites act like you just [censored] their children at gunpoint.

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Understood and agreed. While I generally don't "farm" myself, I have done it in a minor way when nearing a level, just to finish the level off. I don't really consider that farming, but some will.

Some would accuse my youngster of that, because sometimes she just like to explore and streetsweep along the way. I don't consider that farming either; she's not doing it for XP or gear, just for fun.

Ignore the overzealous forumites -- on both sides.

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Farming is farming, whether you are doing it for XP, gear or "fun". Besides getting XP and gear is fun!

Both you and your kid are farmers. Welcome to the club!

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QFT You said it, and I hope more people see it. The funny thing about this RPer vs Farmer argument is that anyone playing the game, for any reason, agenda, or goal, is a "farmer". Rp'er's are just farming missions for a good story, how is that really any different than those farming it for something else?

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Out of over a hundred thousand players, it's pretty much a given that several thousand like the MA, and several thousand don't.

However you slice it, it's more content than any other game has, period. Having trouble finding well written arcs? Check out the various review threads on this here forum.

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More content than any other game? Perhaps, but with no real good quality control, and wading through the rough to find the diamond is tedious, not fun. I would rather have quality over quantity.

I could fill a museum with the crayola drawings of 10,000 first graders and say I had more art than any other museum in the world, but it doesn't make any of it good.

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You can keep repeating it, but it doesn't make it true.

MA has been a fantastic success, and one that's provided a shot in the arm to a game that's going to face some stiff competition.

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I have to kinda agree with this, although only because the argument is so drastically polarized it needs some middle ground. MA is cool, and for the most part a success. What isn't a success is how things are being handled to correct issues not foreseen, like farming. I mean really, its to the point that the cure is worse than the disease it is for.

Farming was honestly favorable to what has been done to stop it, which is ironically mostly crippling the players interested in creating CC's and story driven arcs in MA more than doing anything to farmers. Really, it was a whole better scene when people were forming groups to farm in AE; rewards were good, the game was fun, and groups were abundant. Overall enthusiasm for the game and entertainment were high. The Devs really should consider that imo, instead of the "this is our game to be played only how we intend" philosophy. At the very least, even failing that, they should seriously reconsider the knee jerk, heavy handed, breaking-the-game-worse-than-what-needed-fixed, reactive nerfing, which is making people wish the MA never had happened at all. My 2 cents.

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Maybe the ranged attacks are stronger because if you kite a foe, he will only be able to use the ranged attack over and over (waiting for it to recharge) rather than walloping you with a full attack chain at melee?

So, if you are toe to toe with a martial arts foe, will he do more damage with Thunder Kick>Crane Kick>Daragon's Tail> Eagle Claw (or whatever) than with Shuriken ... shuriken ... shuriken?

I ask because I am not sure.

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However, if you are a blaster, controller, defender, or dominator, then much of your defense is active. You have to move, hide behind a wall, kite, hover out of range, etc etc, to survive. The devs seem to be blurring the lines between what should be called an exploit versus what should be called an acceptable tactic. Did they hire Devs from WoW or EQ recently? Traditionally those Dev's mindsets were if you didn't slug it out with a mob toe to toe, even though you might be a ranged class made out of tissue paper with a paltry handful of hps, then you were exploiting the craptastic AI and therefore cheating. This smells alot like that, and I use the word SMELLS deliberately.

I left those games for CoH precisely because this game innovated, not replicated the MMO. I have to say though, the heavy handed and sloppy way corrections are being handled by the Devs since MA hit has me worried. My 2 cents.

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I've said this so many times that I should just make a cut and paste for it: A rising tide lifts all boats.

Back in the day when Everquest ruled the waves, new games were coming online every year and the same people were always crying "This new game is where it's at. EQ is dead. Anybody who disagrees is just a blind fanboi."

Lo, all these years later, EQ is still around. Ultima Online is even still around.

The EQ devs just smiled and welcomed each new game. The truth of the matter was that every new game brought new people into the market. While some people left EQ for those new games, many more were encouraged to try EQ, either because it looked interesting or because the new game turned out to be a poor fit for them.

People who cry "Dooom!" for City of Heroes are essentially being short-sighted and imagining that the audience for CoH is the only audience there is for ANY superhero game. This just isn't true. There are many, many gamers out there who would consider a superhero game, and many who would be open to trying an MMO for the first time, but they want a licensed IP instead of one that they're unfamiliar with.

If Cryptic and SOE do their jobs right, they're not going to cannibalize the City of Heroes playerbase. In fact, they're not going to draw much at all upon our players. Anybody with some sense will realize that basing a business plan on stealing another game's customers is a foolish plan to start with. That game would never be launched in the first place.

Champions and DC Universe are going to establish NEW markets and bring in new players. City of Heroes will experience a dip, probably temporary, and some of those new players of those other games will be dissatisfied but instead of quitting entirely, they'll look for another game to play and they'll decide to give CoH a shot.

People who imagine that everyone playing CoH is just champing at the bit to move to "the next big thing" are the same as those doom-criers who thought that everyone playing Everquest was a sheep waiting to jump to the next shiny thing.

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This essentially nails it. QFT.

My 2 cents:

Consider how many people who were not previously MMO gamers before entered the market with just World of Warcraft. Blizzard didn't just steal/trade subscribers from other MMO's, they brought millions of new ones to the market by making MMO's mainstream. In that regard the more MMO's that are out there, the better it is for all of them, since each one potentially expands the market, which, honestly, was niche prior to WoW.

PS: Not a WoW fanboi, just giving credit for what it did, which is bring MMO's out of computer nerd basements and into the mainstream, for better or worse, depending on who you ask.