Gemini_2099

Originally Posted by Eiko-chan

From the revenue figures we have access to, it seems clear that GR did not generate a huge spike in sales. Therefore, I can conclude that we will not be seeing another paid expansion any time soon.

Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades

Most amusing.

So not only do I have to farm a dev approved farm to get further incarnate powers - I have to do it in their way to get the reward!

Wonderful.

Originally Posted by Hercules

Well, up until now, I've concentrated on being a controller on these teams - holding mobs, confuse, summoning creepers and other pets, etc. I've been getting mostly common drops.

Tonight, I just spammed roots, and AE attacks. The result: 3 rares and 1 uncommon.

I'm really shaking my head ... I get a higher reward for just tagging mobs than for doing what I consider my job as a troller.

Originally Posted by Furio

Except that is not what has happened (non incarnate task forces this issue, entire new 1-20 area and new powersets in the expansion that included the start of the endgame system, separate dev team to work on the endgame) and it is *not* their stated intention.

If you don't want to believe what they've told us, that's one thing (one incredibly cynical and not based on past history thing) but at least try to base your claims in some kind of objective facts.

Originally Posted by Tokyo

Considering whether I should renew my sub. Have they repaired what they did to the game with i13 yet?

Originally Posted by Furio

Seeing as it's their stated intention to continue supporting and adding to the 1-50 game as well as the incarnate stuff, I don't see what the problem is.

Originally Posted by Lucenter

Going back to the original post in this thread....


I have to agree. I've cancelled my account after seeing Issue 20, clearly seeing where the Devs were taking this game. I had my reservations after 19, but 20 sealed the deal that actually made my cancel my sub after 4+ years.

When I first joined CoH, it was my first MMO and I was recruited by two friends who also play casually. We eventually brought in another friend, who also plays casually. We have jobs and lives, so play time is limited. The two friends who recruited me barely play anymore (and do not participate in this incarnate stuff) and one plans to just keep on playing the lower characters and ignoring these incarnate systems.

What I enjoyed about CoH from the beginning was that the game itself was soloable. Sure you had difficult challenges at the end levels with the elite bosses but for the most part you could handle those dependent on your AT. You could actually reach level 50 on your own - a team was not absolutely needed to play the game.

Obviously teams had a benefit with leveling faster and interesting content (the task forces) but you were not forced to play them to advance and the the developers constantly added new content that could keep you interested in all of your characters at any level. And even where the content that teams were needed, they were fun and presented a challenge that made you think about the best strategy to complete the task. The task forces were interesting and the two end game raids were fun and anyone could participate.


With Issue 19 and 20 however, it's clear that the mindset has moved completely towards building these extremely frustrating and difficult incarnate missions and pretty much ignoring the rest of the game - sure two task forces were added but that is pretty much it in terms of content for this issue - and not everyone likes to team but the lack of solo content since issue 18 is for another thread.

With the incarnate trials, not only do you exclude people who haven't purchased GR, you exclude the people who haven't run the unlock yet. And even those who have must have it slotted, which excludes even more.

Then when you jump all those hurdles, you get into these trials and they aren't fun. They are just massive computer kills everything in site trials that require the right set up of a team - and that right there eliminates any casual player who has decided to even travel this far into this extremely complicated system as it is.

Then you get into the issues of how poorly these were thought out....when I ran the Lambada sector, the league decided to all attack the turrets up top. Which is great and all except for the fact that the developers had the brilliant idea to restrict temp. powers so my super-speeder basically had to twirl his thumbs and do nothing for that part of the strike. I won't even go into how frustrating the rest of the trial was with the constant death and face planting because of how this was set up - a lot of it had to do with the fact that it was new and no one knew what they were doing but even allowing for that type of massacre is part of the gaming style I don't enjoy.


I've enjoyed the game for its casual play and fun content (solo and team). These last two issues have moved from the casual and fun to the elite hardcore play tests that include grinding at ridiculous levlels to get your character up to par to even compete in these.

I had my reservations after seeing Issue 19 and seeing even worse of this type of content being added in 20 with absolutely nothing else made me see that this game is headed towards trying to retain the hardcore players rather than building the casual fan base.

So after a lengthy tl;dr, I've cancelled my sub after four years due to this new grind and elite play style they are pushing in favor of the casual player.

Not sure how well that will work out for them as this game is already on the older end, it seems like they want to keep the hardcore players interested at the expense of the casual player - but I'm not sure how many of those exist to cover the costs of the casual players leaving.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Only to the extent that the entire game is a farming system for XP and rewards, just with different skins.

Originally Posted by Vanden

Which issue 6? The one that brought in hundreds of new players with the brand new expansion? That one? That's the one you think caused a dip in subscriptions?

Originally Posted by Zyphoid

I tend to refrain from direct opinions, but here we have the same argument again. As I have already stated, we have heard it before. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. Some people will build for the numbers, the majority will continue to build for concept. Just like in table top games.

An example is in order. I have known for years that Fire/Kin controllers were awesome at generating income. I have still not made one, because they don't fit my concepts, and they just are not fun to me.

You still seem to miss the point that this (what is in your post) doesn't happen till the late game. There are still 50 levels where there is a distinct division in AT design.

Originally Posted by passerby

The problem with having a thread on "how" is that it assumes that the question of "why" is already settled.

Wanna play pure solo? Try Champions Online. It is languishing in solo-land now. I stopped playing that to come back here.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

My point was that when the next set of slots comes along they will likely have a new salvage type. As such the current trials will almost certainly become ghost towns anyway.

At that point implementing a "side-step" system to aid new players/characters in gearing up makes a lot of sense.

In other games with a progression system it's standard practice to increase the rewards obtainable from non-raid content whenever a new raid is released. This serves to allow new characters to get the gear they need to participate in the new content without relying on sympathy runs through the old content.

Originally Posted by Supermax

Your OP said that he hates playing with strangers, which is why he won't do trials. But now it sounds like he simply refuses to do the trials, even if playing only with friends. Honestly man, it sounds like he has other reasons for not doing it, and the whole "hate strangers" thing is just an excuse.

Maybe he has some fear of failure, so he's too afraid to do something new, knowing that he will probably get owned the first time. Or maybe he's just mad like you said, due to his own personal reasons, which really have nothing to do with the game.

Originally Posted by Dispari

My only concern is that they'll ignore the player feedback about wanting another method of advancement, and just add more trials that require you to do the previous trials to do. So it will be a multi-tiered gated advancement system where you have to do multiple levels of things you don't want to do to get things you want.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

This one I don't think is particularly problematic. The only content that is likely to require more level shifts is the future trials. If you don't want to do trials than getting the level shift isn't going to hurt you and if you are doing the trials then the level shift is simple enough to get.

My only concern is that when the next tier of trials come out it will be harder for a new player to "gear up". I can see several options for the devs to do that in the future (the easiest one being to add additional recipes for the current slots that use the Alpha slot shard costs and/or reduce the component costs).

Originally Posted by Jibikao

First of all, I DO like i20 issue. I think it brings something very different to the table. I know other big games like WoW have "raids" like this. I've never done a raid in WoW ('cause I quit that game at lvl 41) but I know it requires many people like 16 or 24.

However, some of my friends are quite annoyed with this issue because they feel that they are now "forced" to join a PUG team. Our normal team-size is about 4-6 every night and sometimes we get a full team.

He REALLY hates teaming with he doesn't know. I can't explain what happened because I met him through a PUG team two years ago. These friends have played this game for years and most of them have played this game since beta.


Now before you get angry and start trashing my friend, let me give you his side of view:

1. He has more than 20-30 level 50s. Some he doesn't like that much and some he REALLY likes them. He has two active accounts. He even hired artists to draw cartoon characters based on his toon and costume design. He is THAT into this game for 6-7 years.

2. He likes to team but only with people he knows. We all belong to the same chat that we use every night.


3. He likes challenges. He doesn't like the setting too low.

4. Since i20, he used 40 shards, 5 Wells conversion (this means he used 5 weeks), 3 ITF runs, 1 new Hero SF 20-40 and two Villain SF 20-40 runs to try to get his first Judgment and he is STILL 6 shards away from getting just the FIRST tier power. I haven't converted much from Shard to Thread because I've been teaming in Pocket D (since I don't mind PUGing most of the time) but this conversion looks very sucky. Let's just say he wants to avoid all trials, it will take him 2.5 years to unlock something that those that do trials can unlock in days/weeks. I understand you can let soloers gain threads too easily or else nobody wants to join trials but I think the conversion needs to be better than what we have now. Disagree?


5. We did a Lamba run with 4 other friends from the chat and we almost beat it with 8 people in Lamba. Only two people (including myself) have done Lamba before and know what is going on. I think we did REALLY well and I believe with some practice, we can beat Lamba with just 8 people. This is acceptable. But I am afraid BAF will be much harder with just 8 people especially during prison escapes. Now, are there any news that the future trials are going to have smaller-size trials? I actually prefer smaller-size and with added "Randomness" so each run doesn't feel exactly the same way. Random-ness can be some random events or random AVs that you need to beat.



6. He wants to advance with some of his favorite characters but he just doesn't want to join big trial teams.

Well, I just want to voice his opinions here because he may quit soon and I am going to be sad as he plays a lot and he is one of my long-term game friend in this game. I've been trying very hard to talk him out of it but he can be so stubborn!!! I understand i20 doesn't take away anything he has enjoyed so far but he does want new Incarnate abilities. He just doesn't want to feel like he is forced to PUG with less than 8-12 people.


What's your thoughts on this?

Originally Posted by White Hot Flash

If we're going to agree that not everyone likes the new content, can we also agree that not everyone hates it as well? Not everyone likes running the same content over and over, but not everyone hates it either.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Geko here. In terms of accessibility, the CoH endgame is so radically different from the traditional endgame MMO raiding system that if you scored accessibility of all other end game raiding systems of all other MMOs on a one to ten scale before I20 released, I20 wouldn't have been able to muster a zero on that scale. You'd have had to invent negative numbers on the scale to represent I20.

Originally Posted by Nyx

I don't think it's the worst argument. Mimicing the tricks of every other AT, leaves many AT's feeling...lack lustre now. At least with the Epic pools they differ amonsgt the AT's as to keep them still in a unique flow.

This particular apsect of the game is accross the board. And while yes, you will be powerfull and feel powerfull, I never really did feel all that second string with my characters in the first place.

We now just have the issue of "One toon can do it all" which loses the unique aspects of the games design when coming up with AT's.