Memphis_Bill

PVP zones -

It's not the "lack of hero vs villain conflict" that has PVP zones so empty. It's:

• The massive changes from Issue 13 completely changing how characters work (and really gutting the PVP community size,)
• The fact the game launched without PVP, and there are a fair number of people who don't want to deal with PVP in any way, shape or form,
• The lack of a "reason" to PVP. Which somewhat goes in with your "hero vs villain conflict," but when you PVP, you... PVP. You're not attacking or defending a goal, for instance.

As far as numbers, pre-I13, there wasn't an *overall* imbalance (PVP wise) of heroes or villains. At some times, or some days? Sure. But we'd also have people go and switch (voluntarily) when that got to be the case.

Part of the feel, villain-wise, is also that you're less your own person and more either being "tricked" into doing things, or someone's lacky, or not really in your own control (see the whole 'destined one' schtik.) You don't do much that's actually *villainous.* Even the "evil" arcs you end up being more of a thug than a villain. We've only recently had the "moral choice" tech enter into the game which could, possibly, let you shape that to how villainous (or thuglike) you want to be.

As for doing damage... no. You're sharing the world with many other people, and being prevented from beign able to *finish* a misison because of something you can't control isn't fun, it's irritating. Frustrating, even. I can say that from experience - Aion did something very similar in the Abyss (their main PVP area, PVPVE.) You had missions to (for instance) defeat X people of rank Y. OK, those aren't bad, you can do that as you do other things. But then there were missions such as "Save the prisoners," who wouldn't EXIST if your side owned certain areas of the zone - which happened for a few *months* when I was playing (pre-server merge.) When I finally got to do that mission, it would be what we'd call "deeply grey." Or "Go talk to person X," who - if your side DIDN'T own that area - wouldn't exist.

As far as "PVP anywhere" or "Have one side invade the other's zones," no. Just no. PVP has never been popular here, and about the only reason it's (somewhat) tolerated is that it's restricted to the arena and a few zones. Set it so that a Stalker (for instance) can infiltrate Independence Port and kill someone when they're trying to deal with a bunch of Ink Men - and you know full well they wouldn't be going after the Scrappers and Tanks, but the Defenders, Controllers and the like - and you'll see Paragon Studios surrounded by a mob with torches and pitchforks. (Or just a noticable drop in subs.) That, of course, ignores the issues that powers in PVP behave differently than in PVE and all the mess THAT would create.

There's "clamoring" about everything.

I don't think you can just say flat out "X side is harder than Y" overall. Part of it's going to depend on AT - or even powerset - and part of it's going to deal with level. Plus, of course, heroside deals with Arachnos a fair bit and Longbow from time to time (yes, even pre-RWZ.)

Scrapyarders are rough... depending on what you're fighting them with. Mastermind? Royal PITA. Brute? Dom? Not so much.

Now, if you want to talk individual encounters, well, I'd say yes the Villain respec trial is harder than the Hero one, for instance. But a low level arc full of Vahz is a bigger pain (to me) than an arc full of Snakes.

So, IMHO, neither side is "harder" than the other as a general rule.

Weren't ED and/or GDN based on player suggestions - as well as some of the PVP changes?

Actually, no, I have several characters who throw power slots into "throwaway" locations because they *don't* need them. About the only ones who could are Kheldians, specifically multiform Khelds, and IOs have helped that out a lot.

Look into the IO system and frankenslotting. You don't even have to chase sets - just take advantage of what multi-aspect IOs can do for you. Wiki article on Frankenslotting - essentially you can, via frankenslotting, get more out of a fewer number of slots than just the straight enhancements/IOs would give you.

This is also part of the reason more slots would be bad- you have to decide what's more important while setting up your build and aim for that.

And definitely no to anything like this as a vet reward.

Is your SG just a solo SG for right now? How much prestige do you have? What do you have in it for right now? (Remember, you get a 20,000 Prestige bonus for each of the first 15 members, and IIRC a 100,000 Prestige bonus when a Praetorian joins (to make up for the fact they can't be in an SG from 1-20.)

First page to look at: Wiki section on base items. How to get, salvage, etc. for each, broken into sections.

As far as "Best to wait" or not... that's up to you. If you wait, you can have a rather... empty looking base for a while, but there's less moving and readjusting of things. You *can* start with the Oversight center, but don't expect to be able to power too much (and if you do start this way, I suggest starting control or workshops so you have somewhere to move storage items when you outgrow this.)

What you may want to do is grab (or make) some graph paper or a spreadsheet (just to use the gridlines) and start plotting out the base ahead of time.

Hmmm.

1. Start the PVP overhaul. Instead of a giant I13 "drop the bomb," start rolling back or adjusting a bit at a time. Given 3-5 months between issues, changes would be made either each or every other issue, datamine it and tweak as needed. (Probably with a mid-issue adjustment.)

2. Yes, costume creator overhaul. Some of those lists get long. While overhauling, try to set it up so that nobody has to go and have the tailor say they have to pay for things that aren't changed... Also, non-shiny-metallic options.

3. Base/SG overhaul. This starts from the Registrar's desk on down. Make finding/contacting a SG easier (as well as letting them describe themselves better,) redo the base editor, make the bases more fine-grained, long hallways, raise only part of a floor instead of the large blocks, have a PVP vs non-PVP base "checkmark" that will check for pathing and mark your base as raidable, sort items by scale, put in more items - the list goes on.

4. Expanding the world - and adding more EATs. Spread out to Europe? More Incarnate lore, perhaps. Egypt? Bit of time travel and more reason to focus on lore with the Blood of the Black Stream. And yes, the Coralax as we go underwater... somehow.

5. Polish and add content. Dark Astoria, the Shard, Crey's Folly all need content. Bring all of COH up to the same graphical standard. (This is, of course, a long term project.) Start the rebuilding of Boomtown as a 2-3 year, multi-issue project.

As for the OP:

Grind:

Yes, it does seem the incarnate bit is leaning more toward "grind" - but on the other hand, with shards planned for "Any content" (or something close to that for a 50,) it's less of an issue.

See, when I think of "grind," I think of two things -

"Bring bat 10 bat nose hairs," where you're having to stay in a limited area (often with other groups competing for the same thing) and these items drop out of maybe 1/10 of what you kill. We just don't have this. You *can,* I suppose, argue we do for IOs and whatnot - but that's a personal choice to go after, it's not required by the game.

"Do X useless task just to be allowed to move forward." Aion comes to mind for this, for me. I had skills that just didn't get upgraded because, after a certain level, the books you needed got expensive. And don't get me into the wings - I'm glad I had vet rewards and (IIRC) a collector's bonus for them. There just aren't any non-self-created brick walls like that.

Now, yes, we have hunts, and some people will say "Hunt 50 Carnies" is a grind... but for me, it's orders of magnitude smaller. Plus, of course, we can drop missions.

End game content:

Eh. I'm down to "wait and see." I've never been big on "raids" - the ones we've had (Mothership, primarily) have been fairly friendly, casual-wise, and not required for anything. Plus we haven't had the "Raid to get gear to raid to get gear to raid" treadmill. I feel like we're seeing this trying to creep in with the Incarnate stuff that's been revealed, and don't particularly like it... but I've said my piece on that, and am sitting back and waiting to see what happens when all this is released.

(Again, Aion - I actually liked trying to take forts. There was more to it than just "swarm," though, as there were outlying islands in the Abyss that could be taken - divert a force to take them and get some help, or keep people there to guard them so you don't get nuked. However, for the most part - if you weren't at or near top level, it could be somewhat frustrating.)

PVP:

You're going to hit a nerve here.

The game launched without PVP to begin with. Even when it was just heroes in the arena, though (issue 4,) there were balance issues. Tweaks were made all the way through issue 12 - and then they dropped issue 13, which really did a number on the PVP population. We went from a learning curve to a learning cliff, thanks to suppresison, powers working differently and the like. Revisiting PVP is going to be a *huge* project for them - if they do more than talk about it and send in the occasional Community Redname to post "What did you like" posts. Much like the bases, there's a sense of being left to dangle in PVP.

Also, the fact this launched without PVP is part of why some people LIKE it.

WoW, Aion, Lineage and others were designed with PVP in mind from the start. COH, not so much. There was talk about it, but - well, go to my "Early COH trailer" guide and go through the dev diaries. Early designer comments, specifically - like Dakan saying "One city full of heroes, another full of villains is silly, really" (or something to that effect)... yet what do we have?

Mid-game:

For one, you're getting into the lore of the game, finding out what's going on with groups and whatnot. And there are some great arcs in that range. And if you're rewards focused, well... low and mid level salvage and recipes are sought after. *shrug*

Age:

So what? The game has been successful - if it weren't, it wouldn't still be here. WoW is an outlier, and one some companies got the wrong message from ("If we don't have millions of subs, we're a failure!") We've been profitable enough for NCSoft to buy the game directly and hire on most of the developers, give them their own office building and expand the team (from 15 to 60+.) Future of the game? We'll keep going as long as we're profitable.

As far as most games "dying out at this point," I'd argue most die early (1-2 years.) Either they crash and burn (Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Earth and Beyond, Hellgate) or they go F2P (CO) or, if they're with sony, go on as part of the Station Pass for a while (think this kept the Matrix going for a bit.) For COH to keep going on its original subscription model for this long? Hey, that's great. And they keep adding new stuff... like, oh, GR. Stuff that's rather labor (and time and money) intensive, as opposed to little bugfix and QOL patches. We're not in "maintenance mode," in other words - we're still growing.

Future of COX? Still has a few years, I think.

Money's money. *shrug* I'll let someone who has dug through business (or more specifically gaming type) finance go through which is "better."

Only real discussion I've seen on that is in the "Offer a lifetime sub!" threads, where it's generally not seen as a good idea past launch (and it's a bit of a bet *at* launch, too.)

If I'm remembering correctly, no. You can CHANGE the payment info (six months, etc.) early, but it gets charged on the same date. You end up cancelling the sub and renewing it (and no, if you have time going, it doesn't count as "non subbed" time, since your sub is still going strong.)

You MIGHT be able to do it via paypal - I actually don't recall if that's taken out right away or not. But not via the credit card option. And of course game time cards get applied right away (well, appended to the subscription.)

*points to "Dual Builds" guide in sig*

You're not wrong. Other than special events, there are no missions to be done there. It's more of a social zone. Missions show up during the spring and winter events.

There are also the Arena Terminals.

All in all, though, it's a social, RP area.