Lodrezzon

I've been around since Issue 2 and have seen it all. Many times over. I've played every class/power combination a zillion times and explored hundreds of costume options. The only 50 I've ever had is a fire/ice tanker, leveled in the days of fire tank farming. That was in the great days before class butchering, erm, balancing. I had played for well over a year before I finally got my tank to 50, and I was thrilled to death to have finally discovered a class combination that offered me the right balance of fun, skill and level progression to keep me motivated to the end level (notice I didn't say end of the game!). Even with farming/herding 18 hours a day, it still took me several weeks to get to 50. After that, trying to get an MC/Emp controller up there seemed an impossible feat, or at least an exquisite form of masochism I wasn't interested in experiencing. DXP weekends helped push many alternate characters I've made into their 30s and 40s, but that final struggle to 50 always became too boring, too monotonous. The fun just wasn't there to keep me going. And so I began to vacillate between cancelling my subscription and returning a few months later. Base building kept my interest for a short time, but it never rekindled my spark for end-game leveling. Eventually, my interest waned again. The result: I play CoH one or two months a year now, and then switch to another MMO or take a break and refill my desire to play for another month or two. The point I'm making is this...

I have learned something which veteran gamers appear to know, but are seemingly afraid to talk about. Gaming is not about speed or ease of playing. It never was and never will be. Gaming is about goal setting (nothing beats a fancy sword with sparklies on it!), content challenge, and the immersive experience of the MMO genre. It is not about impossible challenges or endless grinding, but a good dose of challenge and grind IS good for the soul. There is no reward without challenge, no feeling of success or catharsis without patience and willpower. Success is the feeling of triumph over difficulty. And in the world of gaming, that also equals fun. That elusive emotional quality all game designers hope to offer their paying clientele. Games that keep getting easier to level in order to keep a player's interest erode that player's opportunity to experience the feeling of triumph and accomplishment. Leveling becomes a mental exercise, not an emotional rollercoaster ride (and I live for the ride!). This is akin to making games that are too difficult to solo or require large teams to experience advanced content. Not that group/guild content is the bane of all good gaming, but if there is no alternate path offered for the solo player to experience the rewards garnered through group play, then all you have really created is a class system in a digital domain. A system where only the priveleged get to experience the most exciting and desired content.
Unfortunately for many, online gaming is, for the most part, a solitary experience. This is simply due to the fact that we all have different schedules, we lead different lives, and all place different values on our time. MMOs offer a 24/7 experience into a different world, but unlike the 'real' world, your favorite neighbor might not be 'home' for a few weeks or months at a time. And so we are left to entertain ourselves in these fabulous, digital landscapes, continuously forced to make a new 'friend-for-an-hour'. In the end, MMOs have evolved into large-scale, shared, solitary console gaming experiences. And that is why they have now attracted the social misfit and scourge of the MMO gaming community: the speed leveler. Honed on beating levels as fast as possible on console systems (often with the help of cheat codes), trained on progression over immersion, these pariahs of the MMO environment invade the community experience of the MMO world and turn it into a Frankensteinian conglomeration of MTV, MySpace and Unreal Tournament. Complete with foul language, poor typing, and cyber-bullying in its finest and most pure form.
But MMOs attract these speed players at the cost of content players, because no content player can stand to play with a loudmouth, braggart. They ruin our experience. They are fun suckers to the 100th magnitude! And in the end, the economic model for that game's business is inevitably harmed. Games survive because content based players stay with them. Speed players lose interest quickly and move on to something else (thankfully), but not before they have driven away some of the games core, content-driven players. I know this personally, having left several cherished characters behind just to avoid further exposure to that game's online community. (Here is a good time to plug those first two magical years in Everquest... ahhh). In every MMO, you have this seemingly endless stream of new players who think MMO gaming is about being the first or the fastest to experience a game's content. As if everyone playing the game is one of their silly friends who lives one street over and is trying to get to the end of the game before Monday, so that they can gloat in homeroom over it! As if gaming was about being the strongest, the coolest, or the rudest digital hombre on the ranch. Comming from the grandfather of all MMO based gaming, pen-and-paper gaming, I can assure you that my imagination is better than your imagination, so my character will ALWAYS be cooler than yours (Being able to "see" a character on the screen does not make it 'awesomer' in my mind). And the hallmark of this style of gamer is to universally brand anyone playing the game for its content as a 'loser' or (my all time favorite insult): a noob. They seem to thrive on insults and beligerance. You know the guys. The ones who don't understand the social aspect of MMOs yet. The ones who somehow believe that the game was created specifically for them, while all the rest of us bystanders simply pay our monthly tithe to admire them. To be the Barnie to their Fred. They are the ones that consume content like a speed-eating hotdog eater consumes Ballpark franks. And never tire of belly-aching. But I am telling you now, they have it backwards. They have traded speed for quality (not unlike the world business/economic model), and are starving themselves to death from lack of content, due to rabid short-cutting and power leveling. They have bypassed all the content to get to the end, not realizing that the point was to EXPERIENCE all that crap they skipped over. They have this idea that somehow, once they get to the max level or get ALL of the best gear, that they will have earned the right to put other players down, to mock them, or to gloat in their speed and girth of aquisition. That somehow THAT behavior is the true reward for playing the game, rather than the actual playing of the game. They believe that they have somehow earned the right to stand at the top of the hill and spit on everyone else below. To revel in the glory of items bought on E-bay, or stand under the Atlas statue and flex menacingly (assumingly to belittle us other players with the "size" of their level). But what have they earned? Undoubtedly, not my respect (I cannot speak for all the jealous 13 year olds who would wrestle a live bear to be in their shoes though). It is like the 16 year old driving his parent's Porche, acting as if having something is worth more than earning something. Their is no value in something that comes easy, and there is no respect afforded to the person who achieves too rapidly or too easily (except from the bear wrestling adolescents mentioned above). And they cannot understand this, because they take the fast track to everything, and never enjoy the effort or ride to the top. Ironically, it is they who are to blame for their suffering, as we who level slowly and patiently enjoy the great teams and the ironic mission twists that persist years after our subscriptions have expired. Meanwhile, instead of bathing in the bliss of the gaming world and its denizens, speed gamers spend hours on message boards screaming for more content to plow through at lightspeed. Can they play the game? Can they play their character? Do you really want a player that is doing AE's on DXP weekend to tag along on a respec mission? The only sane answer is Of Course Not. And by realizing that, you have learned the key to your own salvation. AE's are not the devil people make them out to be. Like morphine in the wrong hands, people have become addicted to them. But it is not the fault of the AE system, nor any other game content that allows quick leveling. It is the speed player's mindset that has failed them. The only thing they have is the ability to type in local or broadcast (while standing under Atlas flexing), and pray to the great lord above for a reaction from you. ANYTHING to give them the attention they crave so badly. And if we offer them no attention, then what have they really earned? Nothing. And in the digital realm where you really don't own your character and there are no physical rewards to hold, the only tangible is attention (be it in the form of admiration, loathing, etc). They can say or do anything they want, but you don't have to let their level or sparklie sword make you feel inadequate. Even if you've played 3 years and don't have a 50 yet. If you've played 3 years, then you've found something they haven't. It's the key to having fun. If you weren't having fun, then you wouldn't have stuck around for 3 years! I've been 50 for years now (um, level 50, not age 50), and there is nothing super special about it. I have A LOT more fun running sewers from 4 to 8 than I ever had running Praetorian missions at 45-50. Just remember this. Levels do not equal fun. Only fun does. And whatever you need to do to get there, don't let the noise from other players distract you from experiencing what they simply don't know how to. Maybe you can teach THEM something. One can always hope.

It's funny. About 2 years ago I left Everquest. I had played since the first month of launch, and averaged about 40 hours a week playtime. The game was intoxicating to me as I leveled characters to 50 (got there 3 times in 4 years along with 150 other lower leveled alts). I played the high-level game day in and day out. The quests, the camping, the raids, the pain. I loved every second of it. I still miss sitting in the Kelethin newbie zone, chatting on the newbie log in Nektulous Forest, waiting for the Goblin Preacher to spawn in Permafrost, and the SMR to drop in Lower Guk. For about 2 years, the game was heaven. I paid my accounts, bought the expansions, and logged on a lot. In the beginning, more of us oldtime Pen-and-paper RPGers played EQ than little kids. Kids/teens didn't get the roleplay aspect of the game. The desire to learn skills and develop a character was alien to them. All they saw was level 50 as a holy grail they needed to reach, so that they could leave the game saying they "beat" it. But, as more kids began to play the game, the more player whining began to become an issue. Kids don't mind an occassional challenge, but they sure as hell don't want to play your game for a month, let alone 2-5 years. So, the whiners whined and Sony responded. And EQ has become a daycare center for teens with arrogance issues. No amount of skills, weapons or graphics changes could make me go back to that hell hole.

So I left EQ, and went to Neverwinter Nights.

Psychological note to game developers taken from real life: If a terrorist sees that he can intimidate you by his actions, he will never stop terrorizing you. It's not in his best interest. Hence, when game-playing whiners realize that whining can get changes made, they whine even louder. It's not in their best interest to stay quiet.

International governments know giving into terrorists doesn't work. So why do so many game developers acquiesce to the most vocal complainers? Since when do THEY have more rights to decide what direction the game should go rather than the happy less vocal crowd?

Anyway...

In Neverwinter Nights, I developed mob AI scripts, tilesets, expansion packs, persistent world maintenance scripts and worlds themselves (all under the Lodrezzon name too, so you can see I'm not just another wanna-be!). For a long while, I had the highest rated material in the entire NWN community of 400,000 people. People loved the material I made and the effort I spent making things MORE amazing than Bioware had released. There were some complaints that my files were too large for weaker comps to handle, or that they took too long to download by way of modem. I knew what I wanted to do: To create the BEST material that COULD be created for that game engine. I can tell you now, by giving people more rather than less, the thankful letters and praise I received far outweighed the complaints I received. I never comprimised giving people what they wanted, no matter what the complainers said. But then the whiners began e-mailing. People from other community development teams sent me e-mail viruses and left horribly disparaging comments on my work at various forums for nothing else than jealousy's sake. After 9 months of development work, I left. The fun was out of the game for me.

I can only assume that people who hate the herding capabilities of fire tanks have been sending you e-mail viruses too. But then again, I wasn't paid to provide content for NWN. I spent 1500 hours a year doing it for free, because I loved making content for people to enjoy. If I was paid to do it, I'd probably still be doing it now...

So I moved to CoH.

The beginning was amazing. I had no clue what to do, but I knew I loved controllers. I played for months on end, 60-80 hours a week sometimes, trying to solo-level these hopeless characters. After 4 months of trying to get above level 22 without success, I switched to blasters. I finally got to 32 with my blasters before the brick wall of unattainable xp/per level stopped me cold in my tracks. In a last ditch effort to try to find something I could solo-level with myself, I tried the fire tank. By the time I hit 34, I was deep in love with the class. I was finally able to solo-play or team-play and still get decent xp either way. As soon as I hit 50, my fire tank was retired and I switched back to controllers with a newfound energy for the game. Switching to the fun of a fire tank motivated me to play 9 more months on CoH, rather than quit and play WoW or Lineage 2.

And now with the "class balancing" of tanks and controllers comming with i5, CoH takes that inevitable turn towards demise that came with Sony's release of the "Planes of Power" for EQ. Like so many other games beforehand, the loud, screaming naysayer is the one the devs listen to, and the average long term customer is left with only his memories of what used to be fun.

You can't let someone gain enjoyment for a year by playing a character and then take that enjoyment away without reprisal.

Unlike many here, I have programmed mob AI for MMOs. I know about the extra cpu tasking that comes from adding AI decision lines. I was always able to code in specific ways to create lifelike responses with my AI that were exteremely cpu efficient. I work from home and never worked for a developer, but the lack of skill in AI scripting I've seen in your dev team is astonishing. You need better people working for you if you can't address the valid issues people have been mentioning for over a year now. Your model and animation team is fantastic. The idea behind the costume design system rivals even my own in NWN with so many options/per body slot. And I understand how much time it takes to make this content. But you have a team; I'm just one person.

Yes, I am only one person, but since you are listening to the whiners, then listen to me....

People do not want to play a game where every few months your character becomes less powerful and less fun than what it used to be. I've run 2 companys in my life. The first one required pay cutbacks twice in 2 years due to downturns in the economy. Each time, 1/2 of my workforce left (about 30 people). Once people are paid a certain amount of money to do a certain job, they don't want to do the same job for less money. The same issue applys here. People don't want to have to try to level using less powerful, less fun characters than what they have already used.

JACK:The issue isn't that each mission needs to be such a major challenge. The missions are forgettable. The GOAL of CoH is getting to 50. Period. Despite your analogy of playing a handheld game that required 12 resets to beat a certain boss, I can swear to god that I have that right now with my fire tank. I have a 50 fire/ice tank with Hami-o's that has been fighting level 53 AVs. Some of those fights last 30-45 minutes with a full team - just for the AV! When I'm done, I'm ready for a cigarette and I don't even smoke! You're comparing a hand held video game to an MMO that requires HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of missions to reach level 50. In your comparison Jack, you should have sequential trials that need to be beaten to continue playing your character to a higher level. Something like: If you don't pass the cavern of transcendence trial, you can't go onto level 16. I'd love that! And with the difficulty of trials combined with the auto-exemping system you have in place, people would be forced to work to grow their characters. No PLING through those bad boys. But you can't compare one mission and one boss over the life of a character, when you may have to do 15-25 missions a day to get enough xp to level. You're looking at the small picture, when you should be looking at the bigger one.

My point. The fun is in WHAT we CAN do, not in what we can't. Worse off, once we've been able to do something, we will always regret not being able to do that thing ever again. There are better ways to create a solid customer base for this game, new or existing, and if upper level management won't come up with a creative solution, then the stockholders in NcSoft/Cryptic should voice their opinion quickly and install new management.

I truly enjoy MMOs, and CoH is the best MMO out there RIGHT NOW. If you REALLY care about the game, don't just make it the same as every other MMO that is already out there. Be super! It's not too late! A superhero knows it's better to save one saint rather than 100 sinners.

Let WoW be the land of the sinners, and save CoH for the saints.