LeighB_EU

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@Scarlet Shocker,

Death is a better feedback mechanism that debt. Death lets you know poerfectly if you need to change what you're doing because it isn't working.

You don't need to be punished further. Although I think the current debt system is fine.

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Well clearly it's not enough: It is inconsequential. If there's not a rezzer on the team you've probably got a wakey or a self-rez in your temp powers and if not you can make a wakey easy as anything.

There is nothing in Defeat to teach a new player anything now - Debt was a good way of teaching people how to play the game.

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No it wasn't, and not having any wakies was the reason the 3 inspi feature was implemented. So people can use 3 of their inspis to make a wakey or anything else they might need.

Like previous posters have said, death is a failure enough. It's a good feedback mechanism to show you you need to do something different.

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It could, in fact, be argued that debt is the same feedback mechanism as a trip to the hospital; all both achieve a reduction in the rate at which a player earns xp. Why not just replace debt entirely with a re-spawn timer? Not that I would advocate this, but is there any difference?

The true bit of feedback is failure to complete the mission. If a player keeps dying rather than killing the end of mission EB they will be forced to come up with different tactics. The only alternatives are getting a more powerful character on the team, or just calling the contact and dropping the mission.

If you think of it this way, the real death knell for defeat, so to speak, is the ability to drop a mission. A player finds something they are struggling to do and rather than having to think of a new approach or alter their tactics they simply auto-complete the mission and move on to something else.

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The lack of debt in my opinion detracts from the game. Defeat means nothing, there's no penalty to playing poorly and no incentive to improve.


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The problem being that x amount of debt for one player means nothing, while to another it slows down the game that much that it becomes disheartening to play. Debt is linked to length of time playing the game rather than actually effecting game play.

I know some MMOGs use debuffs for a period following deaths and this always struck me as a slightly better system, because although it can still be overcome (by using inspirations) it is altering how one plays the game for a short period.

@MrRush
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For me, dying is already enough for me to be "punished".


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Yeah. This is the same for me. I feel I’ve failed when I die. I don’t need debt to nail the point home.

@Mr_Questionmark
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The current debt system has made the game FAR too easy.


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This I don’t understand: debt doesn’t change the difficulty of the game, it just means that it takes you longer to get through the levels (which you do elude to).

The reduction in debt, as you say, makes life for casual gamers like myself less painful, and for the hardcore gamer it just means they take less time to ‘complete’ the game.

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The reason, Leigh, you probably thought Debt was non-existant was possibly because Patrol XP gets removed before debt gets shown. If you have Patrol XP on a character, it has to be zero before you start getting debt again.

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Sorry, I should have been clear. I do know debt is still around, but I usually run with around a level of ‘blue’ so this easily covers any debt I incur.

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(btw haven't seen you posting much lately).

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<grin> Yeah, still around and still playing for a couple of hours each week, but my life has grown far too busy in the last six months.

(I picked up a couple of editors to help me with my writing and I’m currently spending what spare I did have getting beaten by the virtual red pen. I’m actually using The Wandering Year as the novel to play around with styles and do learning stuff on, while I work on another two. If all goes well I’ll be back to publishing chapter of this CoH story in the next month.)

What I miss most is not having the time to contribute to feedback in the creative section, but I’m working on finding time to fit that in as well. Honest.

The other evening a friend and I were trying to complete the Ghost Widow patron arc. The final mission was proving particularly difficult and we'd died a number of times.

When my friend remarked that things weren't the same now that debt had gone, I felt obliged to remind him of the past as I remembered it.

There were, for instance nights when, having died three or four times, we would give up: logging out of the game for the evening because one more death would make us feel that the pile of debt was insurmountable.

I also remember leaving teams to find another one, because they were trying to play at too high a level and the wipes were occurring too frequently.

By contrast we can now mess around with difficultly levels (and ramping up mob sizes will be even better) with little care for how many times we die. The removing of debt (certainly from our point of view) has given us freedom to have fun without too much consequence.

When debt first started to be reduced I didn't see it as a good thing (kids these days don't appreciate what 'difficult' really is), but in hindsight I'm glad it's gone.

Wow! All these people wanting different things. I predict that some will happy and some will be dissapointed. It’s like issue … er … actually it’s like every week.

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... catch up for a few hours on a saturday afternoon (much to GF's annoyance). Now we level too quickly, the tempatation is to go to MA (as we are supposed to do) and grind the mishes.

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All these years I’ve been playing this game and I’m still doing it wrong: I play for a few hours each week and it still takes me six or so weeks to get a level.

i15 0/100: Haven’t looked at it on test, but I’ve only played one MA mission a friend did and while it was great fun we are all still playing through villains for the first time so no urge to mess with our own stuff yet. TFs etc. I don’t get chance to play because most of them seem to be longer than the couple of two hour time slots I play for each week. Not sure what else there is in there to mess with.


GR 50/100: The new zone(s) and content might be good fun, but I’ve still got about six months worth of play in Villains and then there’s Cimerora to do and the high level stuff in Heroes I’ve so far missed out.


i16 0/100: Power colouring sounds good and I know friends who are interested in it, but I made the majority of my characters five years ago, they all have one costume which I’m happy with and so far I’ve only got two of them to level fifty. Visits to the tailors have only ever happened to give each of them a Santa look and I’m happy with everything else on them (on only two have I actually started to add IOs). What time I do make available to get online is still being spent playing rather than tweaking, but I’d like to think one day I’ll make use of it.

As the above comments make clear I’m unlike most people on the forums because rather than being a hardcore player I’m very casual. The anticipation levels for me on any issue are always minimal because it takes me months or years to get around to using the content (it was four issues later before I even looked at the invention system). None of this is to say I don’t think the issues will be great as when I’ve finally played most of them I’ve found them really good fun.

Oh, shiny. Made the pancakes this morning all the sweeter.

My name’s, err, Leigh. I’ve been rather busy for the last few months, but I’m still getting a couple of hours each week in the game and enjoying it as much as I did the first time I saw The Hollows. It’s forty six months and counting for me and I’m just enjoying The Midnighters and what lies beyond their building.

Some friends have just come back from LoTRO so I’m not going anywhere unless a very good sci-fi MMOG with a history of at least one year of live play comes out. (So, that’ll be at least eighteen months by my reckoning. )

I have no allegiance to this game and I’m not really bothered about super heroes, but this is the best, non-fantasy, casual game I know of. i.e. It suits my friends and my needs down to the ground.

Excellent! I particularly liked the spelling problems, especially while taking damage.

My opinion has always been that any game only has so much play time in it. Some people use that up in bursts of continual pay while others just play for a few hours here and there. Either way one is going to hit the wall at some point.

The only exception to this is when friends keep you tied to a game. In this instance it's much the same as going to a specific bar or social club - you're going for the people not the place.

The only risk of taking a break is that you forget how much fun it was or you find something that seems more exciting.

Hey Guys,

Before the day vanishes in a haze of celebration I just thought I’d say a big thanks to everyone who posts in this section for making the last year browsing the forums so much more interesting.

There is massive talent here in so many disciplines and my only regret is that I’ve not had time in the last two months to comment more.

I hope y’all have a brilliant 2009 and I’ll see you over there in a few days (when I’ve woken up).

Keep creating and keep commenting.

Chapter Fifteen is now available.

Individual chapters and the story so far can be found here: The Wandering Year

Happy Christmas readers and enjoy the murders.

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Don't encourage his fury

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I was curious if you edited this because you'd had a Freudian slip and typed furry instead of fury?

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Comes pre-locked, for your reading pleasure.

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ROFL

Thank you for that. If I wasn't already lying down I'd have fallen over laughing.

Chapter Fourteen is now available.

Individual chapters and the story so far can be found here: The Wandering Year

Looks really good. Sad I couldn’t make it.

Well done Omega for organising.

I’m certainly not going down the thread locking route as per the general section. I know Union has more people, but as I’ve always said, for me it’s about who you play with not the number of people available (and I know not everyone agrees with that). I play on Defiant Heroes because I have fun.

Heck, I play all my villains on Union because I wanted to keep slots free on Defiant in case I make up more heroes. I find both servers equally enjoyable and the people I’ve spoken to from the other two seem rather nice as well.

I just love you all.

(Me, the 5th Earl of Leighville, drunk on a Christmas afternoon, with my reputation? How much more loved up can it get? )

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Anyway, the offer is now 150 million influence or infamy for the same thing.

Anyone?

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I’ll take you up on the offer if you can extend the time frame to 24 months. Actually, thinking about it, I am at level 26 with my first villain. It’ll be about nine months to a year before I get that to level 50, so if we can start the pact in December 2009 and have it sorted by 2011, you’ve got a deal.

I’m giddy with excitement about the 100 million inf’ as the most I’ve ever had on one character is 24 million.

<very big wink>

Thanks to everyone (Mod’s old and new, Dev’s old and new, players and forum people) for giving me yet another year of fun and silly things to look at on the internet (and I’m not just talking about the ranty threads that get locked ).

I hope those of you celebrating this festive season have a great time but don’t eat that much you can’t reach your keyboards.

Remember it’s about the giving not the receiving. (My global is below so if you want to give I’ll graciously accept.)

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Our pick for Most Improvements in an MMO for 2008 goes to NCsoft's City of Heroes & City of Villains. While only Issue 12 and Issue 13 came out this year, both were fairly hefty in terms of giving players new options on their beloved game.


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Sauce

Beating LoTRO as well. Sweet!

(I did search to see if anyone else has posted this, but either we’re back to using silly thread titles again (did I say, back? ) or I’m looking in the wrong section. Apologies if it’s a dupe’.)

I commented on Defiant Events the other day how there seemed to be a lot of new players kicking around Atlas. It could have been just a fluke, but a few people on the channel also agreed.

Said channel is always busy as well and I’ve seen new people on there.

I never trust anecdotal evidence though. It’s been scientifically proven to be wrong on so many occasions.

After a bit of a hiatus chapters nine through to thirteen are now available.

Share and enjoy.

Individual chapters and the story so far can be found here: The Wandering Year