Ravenswing

I remember the joys of the Bioware boards back in the hight of Neverwinter Nights. Now, those were developers who knew how to treat their clients, i.e. like the scum we are. Seriously, they gave as good as they got. Seemed to be company policy.

Sometimes, being told you are an idiot by someone who actually knows why you're an idiot can be very refreshing. It's something more companies should allow their developers to do, though I will also point out that developers tend not to be marketing people and so don't always say things the right way. We've had a couple of examples of that out of NCNC recently, such as the "I14 will contain only the MA" thing which came out of a badly phrased reply from a dev.

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Note - that last line is a general comment and not a dig - I don't know if you fully appreciate IOs or not.

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No offense taken. Hadn't actually considered it as a 'dig' until you brought it up. Now you're on my assassination list.

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Of course, new players may not appreciate the power of inventions.. but then, not all long time players fully appreiate them either!

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No, I doubt new players do understand what could be done. But that's part of my overally point. This thread is written by old hands who think their greater experience with the game means nothing. The game is clearly easier because it has been made so.

I know my first reaction to IOs was "so what." Then again, they did come out just before I quit playing. When I came back, I looked at them again and began 'Frankenslotting' my old main. It took me about three months to find out I was doing that. I had to ask what 'Frankenslotting' meant on the forums.

I wouldn't say I appreciate the possibilities of IO Sets fully. I still haven't worked out whether any of those extra damage type IOs would be worth putting into my current main's build, for example. But I do do fairly enthusiastic statistical analysis in Mids when trying to work out what to put where.

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Level 30 Common IOs (34.8% sched A) are only fractionally inferior to +1 SOs (35%), and cost you less to buy recipes for from the vendor and pay the crafting fee than keeping your SOs at +1 from levels 29-31 would. blah yadda

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Yes, it's more convenient to do it, it's cheaper to do it, but you could have set yourself up to have better enhencements using SOs than IOs. It just cost Inf, and the person I was talking to was stating that players could transfer Inf to their newbie characters.

Thank you for supplying the statistical values required to prove my point.

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I'd fully agree it was the player's own fault if it was due to hacks. I'd agree if it was purely because of using 3rd party add-ons or support utilities. Maybe even if it was just because people plan builds in decent character designers.

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We were talking about people's ability to slot out a build at early levels by transfering Inf from their high level characters. That requires the player to choose to do that. If they then find the game easy because they have chosen to circumvent the normal progression mechanism, that's their fault.

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But even then, it's usually early to mid 30s when I have a build with pretty decent IO slotting - i.e it's not something you need to wait til 50 for.

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You're getting 2-3% benefit from that over SOs? In some cases, you'd get more benefit out of the SOs, in fact. Even at level 50, a straight 53 SO is just as good as a 50 IO.

It's only additional bonuses above and beyond that from Sets which will make much difference.

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So: newbies can equip well with luck. Old timers with a transfer. And the rest may have to wait until early/mid 30s... not exactly making it hard to get kitted out with decent IO, are they?

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Except that that hasn't actually really changed any. If you want to spend the cash, you could have slotting at least as good as anything you'll get from IOs, and that was using the boring stuff we had.

Oh... DOs and SOs are available earlier than they were. That has made life a little easier. I'll grant that one.

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I can't really see the damage/problem caused by allowing players to ramp up the difficulty if it's to their choosing. Of course, enforcing increased difficulty on players is a different kettle of fish.

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Agreed, but unlike you, I see an OP which says "this game has got easier. Put the challenges back in." Now, that's not being differential. None of the challenges have ever been removed. They are still there, and they can still bite your head off. What it appears is wanted is that the levelling curve be made steeper, debt be made more viscious. Those are not optional things, those are global things.

(Even I can't get why they put in a rest xp system, btw. I thought it was quick enough anyway. However, Patrol XP does not make the game easier, unless you choose to define difficulty purely in terms of a Race to 50.)

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Here's an idea... Come i14, MAKE THESE!

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The one problem with that is that I have my sneaking suspicions that I won't be able to, and I just know that I won't be able to get a custom designed Red Riding Hood model built and inserted into the game.

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Well, if they allow us to make important NPCs with some version of the costume creator, then people might be able to get pretty close

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No... we're talking non-standard costume parts here. I mean, a corset in blood red is a must.

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It sort of already exists. Its something with buckles on, I can remember that much in my half dead state >< accursed illness...

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You mean Tops With Skin > Leather?

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Doesn't quite cut it, but that would probably be acceptable for Red. I was thinking more like a Carnie corset.

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11 million WoW subscribers says you're wrong.

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That many?? They must have a good marketing team!

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A very good marketing team, huge budget, and a great deal of luck.

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Well then... that's nice. So what about the poor shmuck just staring out? You want the game to get harder because you've learned to play it, well.. um... boo hoo.

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As on optional setting or new area of the game, yes. While I don't want the game to become unfriendly to beginners, but I do want something more challenging for me. Those are not mutually incompatible.

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No, they aren't.

So, when you create your level one character, hop around the corner and set his difficulty level up a couple of notches.

There you go, instant challenge.

Partial sarcasm aside. I'd love to see better mob AI and all that jazz. I'll also greatly enjoy hearing the complaints if/when they implement it and everyone suddenly discovers they can't play any more.

However, my main complaint about this thread is that 'hardness' and 'challenge' is being equated to levelling speed. Which is really not the attitude I expect from people in this game.

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In a similar manner the set bonuses may be small, but SIO bonuses can make a fair old difference.

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At level 50, yeah. You can afford to fully set up all your toons from level 5 up can you?


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Many longtime players could equip their lowbies quite well if they decided to transfer INF from their higher characters.

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Which the game does not encourage. So, you're saying that long time players (note, not newbies) can do something the game doesn't really support to make life easier for themselves. The choose to do this, but that means the game is too easy.

I realise that modern society says the individual is never at fault, but... please!

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Or at the very least, for some players it can quickly start to feel too easy

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Thank you for agreeing with me.

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At least in part.

It's the old 80/20 rule. 80% perception and player experience earnt through time which I think we agree on; but there's still 20% the game actually being easier - which we may diagree on or you're keeping quieter on that score...

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I'd say it's possibly 5-10% easier. Maybe.

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I do find it a slight problem even if it's only peoples perceptions though. Many people will start to lose interest in a game if they perceive it to be too easy.

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11 million WoW subscribers says you're wrong.

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When I say Experience I mean that which I have gained as a player

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Well then... that's nice. So what about the poor shmuck just staring out? You want the game to get harder because you've learned to play it, well.. um... boo hoo.

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Defiant 2.0, Temp Powers, Zone revamps all fall under the category of "general game enhancements" to name but 3.

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Okay... can't say much about Defiance (I assume you mean the Blaster power, not the server), but that's one AT, not the whole game.

Temp Powers... I'm going to assume you mean the travel powers available from Safeguard/Mayhem missions. They do indeed make the game 'easier.' By this I mean that lowbie characters can get from A to B easier without discovering what's down the bottom of the Hollows, etc.

However, that reduces debt, it does not make it easier to kill anything.

Now, there's the Vet Powers. Those make it easier to kill things. But, of course, you have to have been playing for several months, if not years, to get those. So we're back to a Veteran winging about times long past if you're talking about those.

And there's always the point that you don't actually have to use any of these Temp Powers if you don't want to.

Zone revamps... have made the game easier? No. Zone revamps made the game more interesting.

Faultline was a waste of space you went to because the mission system forced you to do one hunt and kill there. Now it's a nice place to go spend time in with a series of interesting mission arcs.

The Hollows... don't make me laugh. People have avoided the Hollows for years because you get forced to go there, you had to have a team to do anything much, and it was just a lousy place to go near. Yes, people who love Zerging things enjoyed getting an 8-man team and hitting the place, but that's not for everyone. A lot of people visit Wincott and then never return. I went back there recently for the first time in 3-4 years, and actually spent some time doing missions there.

If you want to go Zerging mobs, there's still Perez, Boomtown, Eden....


So. You say the game is easier due to temp powers, I say don't use them then. You say it's easier due to zone revamps, I say it's more interesting.

You say I'm trying too hard. I say you have no argument, but you're desperate to prove you have.

No. 6 months in the EU. Just checked.

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I'd love to know how they could apply that to Zonal PvP.

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By removing the mistake they called i13 pvp. What else?

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It's an option on the Arenas Mr Smarty Pants.

Now come up with a way of implementing it optionally in a PvP Zone. You may not like these things, but others do. I could add some comment about growing up, but that's starting to get too petty.

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Union.

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Any idea where that was, Raven? I'd appreciate a linky I could do with something to read atm

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Digging around a bit, I suspect it was this: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Daedalus

There a Note, right at the bottom of the page. Not exactly exciting.

I'd imagine, the signature heroes/villains are represented n both time frames. They aren't the same people, just the same 'archetypes'. If you wander around the Origin of Powers arc, you can probably get a good idea of the kinds of people to expect back there, though Sister Psyche is an interesting choice, since mutants didn't exist then and Sis shows no prophetic powers I'm aware of.

I've seen it written down somewhere that Daedlus is the Cimeroran version of Positron. It's a known fact.

So, yes, there's a deeper, underlying plot thingy at work.

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In a similar manner the set bonuses may be small, but SIO bonuses can make a fair old difference.

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At level 50, yeah. You can afford to fully set up all your toons from level 5 up can you?

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And anecdotally, teams (even PuGs) seem to plough through enemies quite easily and virtually without pausing.

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My emphasis. Though, in reality, yes, PuGs can do that. They always could. I hate PuGs, they are anathema to me, but that's because they are so variable (both the people and the survivability). Get a reasonable PuG with reasonable players and they can plow through anything you like. They could do it when the game started, they can do it now.

Reverse Rose Tinted Specs Syndrome.

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Or at the very least, for some players it can quickly start to feel too easy

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Thank you for agreeing with me.

Second page headline, Paragon Post, 23rd December 2008
Explosion and Fire Destroy Warehouse

A warehouse near the martialling yard was destroyed last night when fuel tanks exploded, setting fire to the building. Police and Fire services were unable to explain at time of press why the tanks had exploded, but arson is currently not suspected.

An investigation is underway regarding reports of abnormally high radiation levels in the warehouse after the fire, but Fire service spokesperson Martin Brand reassured local residents. "There is no evidence of illegally stored radioactive materials at the site. An investigation is underway, but we believe the radioactivity was a by product of the combustion of some material stored there, now totally destroyed. There is no need for alarm."

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As to your statement re difficulty, it is now far easier to kill mobs. Less debt, IOs and general game enhancements, allied to increased experience (which I had already allowed for in my post) mean that killing mobs is far easier than previously.

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Scarlet, my dear, I don't g-. Sorry, wrong movie.

The statement above implies you don't know what you're on about.

Explain how less debt and increased experience makes killing a mob easier? Please.

IOs... arguable. They do give some comparative benefits, but frankly, not half as much as you make out there. What they mostly do is provide a slottable item which doesn't stop working every five minutes.

Which 'general game enhancements' have made it easier to kill mobs? I honestly can't think of one. You can get around eaier. You can do content you might have missed. There are more tailors around. Most of the powers I used to rely on as a /regen Scrapper have been nerfed, so that's surely not what you're thinking of.

Overall, I continue to state that you are equating levelling rate with 'ease,' like you can 'win' City of Heroes by being fastest to 50. You have got better at this game. You have got used to it. You are showing all the signs of many a gamer who discovers the youth of today 'have it easy.' And they do, but it's not easier to actually play the game.

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Then its about time they made it work. Sorry, but if you bump out on a bigger development team and more kit and suchnot, and *then* say you cant even adapt an NPC feature to work for PCs? Quite lame, really.

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And I thought you understood why I get irrate when people make statements like that?

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Besides, does that apply for all the emotes the NPCs use but we cant? The lying down ones and such?

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No, actually.

PRAF did an excellent post on the problem. It's to do with the difference between walking and running. Walking involves a pendulum movement of the legs, which means that the pace changes with the overall height of the model, and the length of the legs.

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And, on the issue of Scaling, nearly all NPCs use it, and thats in every shape and size.

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Really, because I've never seen any. Males are male height, females are female height. There are some tall thin Council, and shorter Council, but only the two basic frames. You do not get Council in all heights from 4-foot to 8-foot, all with independently variable leg lengths.

So, no, it's nothing like variable scaling.

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I dont pretend to know how hard or easy it is, but thats the whole *point* of a development team.

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But you do think it's 'quite lame' that they can't change the baseline animation code just so you can have a walk that looks right on your character? (No, I don't know that's what's required either, but I suspect if something like that wasn't required, we would have had walking by now.)

I want walking just as much as you, maybe more, I dunno. However, I'm not going to put my name to a thread that demands that NCNC stop what they're doing and go all out to get a walk animation functioning on PCs.

One word: Cold. High of -3C, low tonight of -5C. Thank heaven the winds have dropped. Some cloud this afternoon.

Tomorrow, wind and rain, but warmer. That white Christmas is looking unlikely.

If I had to guess, that's the power used by NPCs to walk. It likely depends on spcific animations in the particular models, and would not work with scalings models, i.e. PCs.

Well, I more or less totally disagree with the OP.

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Let me start by saying where I'm coming from. When I started in 2006, the game was significantly harder than it is now.

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No, actually it wasn't. I'll attempt to explain...

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The XP curve was "smoothed" out around Issue 11... which actually translates as "make it a lot lot easier."

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No, actually it doesn't. It translates to "progression through the game happens at a faster rate." Now, if you choose to define the difficulty of the game in terms of how rapidly you gain levels, then it's easier.

I prefer to define the 'difficulty' of the game in terms of how easy it is to kill mobs.

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I'm convinced that the fear of debt improved my game play.

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That may be the case, but it was actually the 'fear' of debt that did it, not the debt. What has actually happened, and it happened to me long before they changed the way debt was handed out, was that you learned that debt was meaningless. So what if you earn XP at half the rate? You're still earning XP.

I am not an exponent of harsh punishments for death in MMOs. I usually find that those who are are the ones who have been around a while (in one game or another) and have a rather leet attitude. They forget what it was like starting out, when you died a lot more. Or they've never played a game where the punishment really was harsh, like loss of XP, and even of levels.

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Time was, any enemy conning red would make even a good team pause and take stock.

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Time was, I was the same. Know what? I learned the capabilities of my playing and my characters. I got better at the game.

Someone, sorry, forgot who, mentioned early in the thread that they couldn't solo EBs and the like. I have solo'd the entire Praetorian arc (with EBs, not AVs), and I'm doing it again. I solo Snaptooth for candy canes. I am a sucky gamer, but my toons are well built. I would not try it with a Blaster, because I don't know how to.

Meanwhile, one of my characters has the Envoy of Darkness arc sitting there because I'm going to need a team for the sucker. He can't solo that EB. Little b- creep is still pretty darn tough, even as an EB.

Now, one thing that is 'easier' is that AVs downgrade to EBs under the right circumstances. I consider this a total god send. Soloing an EB is not actually less difficult than teaming against an AV. Soloing an AV is an order of magnitude harder than soloing an EB. I can now go and solo missions which formerly had AVs in, it is a challenge to do so.

Over in WoW, pre-Wrath, Blizzard issued a patch which massively reduced the hit points on end-game instance bosses. Suddenly, teams which were making slow progress through tough instances were ripping through them like tissue paper. Now that is making the game easier. I can only ever remember Cryptic making AVs harder, and I don't think NCNC have had the time to make them suddenly squishy.

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Squishies can now solo on invincible (and believe me, I have)

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They always could, given the right squishy and the right player.

In short, I think the challenges are still there and you are crying over some fictional past where everything was harder. What that time actually was was slower, and in particular sections of the way up to 50, a great deal more boring.

However, hand in hand with the faster levelling, there is now Ouroboros, and the ability to go back to, or repeat, significant content. There's no need to miss anything.

I don't see the current state as a problem, really.

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Here's an idea... Come i14, MAKE THESE!

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The one problem with that is that I have my sneaking suspicions that I won't be able to, and I just know that I won't be able to get a custom designed Red Riding Hood model built and inserted into the game.

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Well, if they allow us to make important NPCs with some version of the costume creator, then people might be able to get pretty close

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No... we're talking non-standard costume parts here. I mean, a corset in blood red is a must.

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I seem to be the only person who creates eight foot tall women

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No, you're not. Have 2 of those.

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I know at least one person who seems to be unable to make anything under 7 foot tall, and Fanservice_girl has Soaring Horizon, who's neck straining.