Residentx10

Originally Posted by Ironblade

No, it is *YOUR* big picture. If you're focused on the goal, and not the process, the game has a different feel to it. My goal is not to 'get to the end' or 'finish' a character. The whole point is the experience along the way.

And before you accuse me of "twisting" your words, like you did with someone else; "I just see everything as a stepping stone." Those *ARE* your words.

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn

No, it isn't. And that's the bigger picture you're missing.

I can have fun playing lowbies. I'm sorry that you can't.

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn

So then what does it matter if you play them as lowbies or at level 50?

Originally Posted by White Hot Flash

Funny thing is, that person would probably start a thread about how much of a control freak YOU were being.

Life is too short to worry about such things. All you had to do was finish the mission, leave the team, and be on your merry way. Anything you do beyond that doesn't really help your cause.

Originally Posted by Sylvanus

This may have already been said:

- Ideally, one could simply use the new client if they wanted to and still have access to the "old" servers (which would be updated). Servers would be able to handle requests from either the "classic" client or the new (CoX2) client (I understand that this would significantly add to development time because of having to support and test two separate clients).
- If the above is not possible, allow character transitions from CoX to CoX2 if players want them. Some may wish to stay on the "old" servers for a variety of reasons (Their hardware, personal/group relationships, etc.).
- Update the graphics (more similar to DCUO than CO)
- Update the game while allowing the core of the game to be relatively unchanged. Don't go the route of CO or DCUO when it comes to how to play.
- More destructable objects
- Allow for more seamless/familiar mission architect modules/storylines
- - - Allow for paid storyline content by author (revenue sharing)
- - - Dress it up a bit so that it seems more like you're walking into a comic book store and picking a book off the shelves.
- - - Allow players to play as key characters in theses isolated story arcs. Let them "live" CoH's history.
- Allow for more accessible and publicized weekly and monthly events. Use incentives via badge or otherwise for these events.
- Integrate youtube and screenshot saves with the forum/social media so that players can share their adventures more easily. A set space amount would be given with more space available at a cost.
- Solidify achievements/badges/etc. so they are part of the forums/character profile. Make sure the achievements can be hidden/shown based on player and alt.
- Allow for SG/Forum integration based on server then group. Again, allow for integration so that SG events can be generated on the forum and posted both in game and on forum.
- Allow for SG/VG clashes - Publicize these and if possible make them so that they can simply be watched by people (spectator mode)
- Allow for Hero/Villain challenges (PvP) to be point and achievement based, also allowing for spectator mode. Make sure these achievements are linked to the forum for recognition/promotion.
- Allow spectator mode to be streamed to mobile devices
- Allow some mission editor features to be worked on with mobile devices
- Market and merchandise as much as possible - more so than in the past.
- A F2P element could be in the works. I'm not going to go into that. Implementations and suggestions would be largely based on their approach.
- Allow for storylines to have an overview - allowing the player to decide if they want to go that route or not. Again, similar to going to a comic book store and leafing through an issue or two. This would allow for the player to "buy in" to the storyline more.

Some of this is already somewhat available. I'm looking to have these things more connected. Allow for people who have CoH on their mind when their away from their home computer to connect and interact in some way, shape or form. Allow them to be more involved so that they are thinking about it more. Help drive the desire.

That's all for now. These are just random improvement thoughts off the top of my head. I've played this, CO and DCUO. I'm still here and purchased all the stuff that's come out for CoX. I wish Paragon nothing but the best.

It's late and I'm fading.

Best Wishes to All

Originally Posted by HelinCarnate

As others have mentioned, whoever is the leader is not important. Everyone will adjust to whoever's mission is up. If it is sill yours then the XP should be the same. I am curious if someone else DC as well. XP is worse per kill with 7 people vs 8 on a team.

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

If you've played for that short of an amount of time and all you care about is xp and leveling, well, you probably aren't going to be here that much longer. The game is about more than just getting to the level cap.

Not everyone care about leveling as fast as possible. They're not wrong just because it's all YOU care about. This may come as a shock, but some people just enjoy playing their characters, and it doesn't really matter to them how fast they level.

Originally Posted by Fulmens

Please take this question as analytical and not rhetorical:

Why are you playing a game you do not seem to enjoy?

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn

Maybe, just maybe, some people enjoy playing the game itself? Why do you choose only to see your own "big picture," and refuse to believe that other players could have an entirely different big picture in mind?

Originally Posted by Residentx10

I played online today. This is a question for the masses.

I had a team with 8. My character was level 30. The others were 25 or less.
I get a disconnect. I come back online and tell the new leader. He's 21. He adds me back to the team since it's my mish but won't give me the star back. We go from decent Xp to wretched xp, 43-150 per kill.

In this situation what would you do? When I play online, I make the highest character the leader no matter what to maximize xp even if I'm the leader. I'm about leveling. Leading is insignificant to me in the big picture.

Why do lowbies feel the need to hold the reins so tight? They prolong their existence as a lowbie by not being aware of the big picture.

Originally Posted by Nihilii

7 years of content... Yet most of the playerbase hovers around the new shinies, be it AE, level 50 TFs, or now just the two same trials over and over. Heh.

I haven't tried many new MMOs, mostly because all of them have some kind of deal breaker for me before I even get to try it, but rather than praise the way CoH is managed I'm much more inclined to believe the game itself is the reason for its success. The gameplay is fun, accessible and yet at the same time has some depth into it if you want to dig further. There's none of the annoying trends of other MMOs (holy trinity, forced vocal chat, overreliance on third party software, competitiveness even in PvE with rolls for rewards, automation and bots, etc.), or to put it another way, other MMOs often end up feeling like work whereas this game stays a game.

Originally Posted by TonyV

At the risk of being modded for off-topic conversation, this is the company that deliberately distributed malware on music CDs several years ago. Yes, I know, different arm of the company, but still the same company. I've had several very unpleasant experiences with Sony, and as a result, I haven't purchased any of their products in years and I've encouraged all of my friends and family to do the same. As a direct result, I do not have any account information on PSN or SoE and was not one of the millions of people affected.

In short, while I certainly don't wish what happened to Sony one anyone--a lot of innocent people have been hurt by this--it was something I felt was foreseeable given what I knew about the company.

I'm not saying all of this just to twist the knife in Sony's back, there's a relevant point to be made here. While I would never be so arrogant as to say that something similar could never happen to Paragon Studios or NCsoft, if anything, it seems to me that they sometimes go too far in being paranoid about security. Sometimes it has been frustrating, especially once when my roommate was locked out of her account for several days, but I have to grudgingly admit that I'd rather that they err in that direction than the other. I've never felt uncomfortable with them having my billing information or snippets of my personal data.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while some people would chalk up the likelihood that DCUO will fizzle out miserably compared to City of Heroes as an unfortunate consequence of some external factors beyond the game's control, I don't view this series of events as being determined by random chance. Even though it's not the ideal way to beat your competition with the side effect of a lot of people's personal information being lost, it is a legitimate way in which City of Heroes is run more competently than its competitors and I see it as a legitimate reason for why it is doing better in the marketplace.

Originally Posted by Robot

I'm saying that I hope that Paragon keeps CoH1 running forever, even after CoH2 comes out, but I don't feel like CoH by itself is positioned to sustain it's subscribers with all of the new next gen games coming down the road. CoH dodged 2 bullets with Champions and DCUO, and we are very, very lucky for that, but do I think CoH can maintain an acceptable market share after GQ2, Marvel Online, The Old Republic, DCUO and a free-to-play Champions? I certainly hope it can, but I would rather see CoH1's existence secured with a modern, next-gen big brother blocking the big stuff.

The free-to-play model would then allow the die-hard fans a chance to support their game where it really counts (at the cash shop), while gracefully acknowledging it's age and engine limitation in the marketplace, and introducing tons of new players to Paragon City.

Historically, yes, sequels fail, but I think that's more due to execution than anything else. In all truth, they could probably simply remake CoH1 on a new engine and have a success on their hands.

Originally Posted by EmperorSteele

..you had to quote me twice, you couldn't edit the one post?

But okay, Custom deal, cool beans. Sorry my search didn't include the 20th page of a PDF >=( Still, even the most l337 hardware in the world is gonna take a minute to load a super-complex base. CoH HAS been getting quite bloated lately. Dunno what they can do to reduce loading times on these things...

Originally Posted by EmperorSteele

Uh, are you sure you're not talking about the 320 gb of storage space? 32Gs of ram is.... excessive. I've checked around and i don't see any variants of your laptop with more than 16Gs of ram. The default is 2. And if you're only running with 2Gs of ram, that actually WOULD be a bottleneck. (i should note that every review and version for sale had different numbers for memory, both min, max, and what it actually has, so it's hard to tell. I apologize if you're someone who actually knows what they're talking about and have upgraded your machine, but it's hard to tell sometimes. Especially since specs like that should be able to load anything in a few seconds...)

But that's beside the point.

I didn't say the textures were THE problem, but they might be a contributing factor, especially on slower machines. If the CoH server has to tell a computer that it has to paint 20 rooms with different textures, as opposed to 20 rooms with the same texture, the base is going to take longer to load, unless of course the entire texture pallet is loaded when you enter a base. Y'know, theoretically.

Hmmm, I'm half-considering messing up my base to test this out....

Originally Posted by EmperorSteele

Uh, are you sure you're not talking about the 320 gb of storage space? 32Gs of ram is.... excessive. I've checked around and i don't see any variants of your laptop with more than 16Gs of ram. The default is 2. And if you're only running with 2Gs of ram, that actually WOULD be a bottleneck. (i should note that every review and version for sale had different numbers for memory, both min, max, and what it actually has, so it's hard to tell. I apologize if you're someone who actually knows what they're talking about and have upgraded your machine, but it's hard to tell sometimes. Especially since specs like that should be able to load anything in a few seconds...)

But that's beside the point.

I didn't say the textures were THE problem, but they might be a contributing factor, especially on slower machines. If the CoH server has to tell a computer that it has to paint 20 rooms with different textures, as opposed to 20 rooms with the same texture, the base is going to take longer to load, unless of course the entire texture pallet is loaded when you enter a base. Y'know, theoretically.

Hmmm, I'm half-considering messing up my base to test this out....

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Except that, as far as I know, no one has ever done that.

Originally Posted by difoj

I was in Atlas
Started out ok, but then it got very bad
zero

It started out fun, but got boring fighting 3 GM class Neurons at once, that along with getting hit by dozens of [mighty roars] (30 point disorient) from the Olympian Guards and the -regen and -recovery that the Heavy guys have made it get less fun with each mob.

Originally Posted by EmperorSteele

Yeah, the fastest loading base will also be the one that's the least fun to be in. A blank base. Nothing in it.

But I'm sure you'd want a base that's functional. I believe this can be done with the starter room and a few small utility rooms for telepads and storage. Though depending on the size of your SG, this may not be an option.

Mind you, your own system can be a bottleneck. When i upgraded my computer a few years back, i noticed that my base loaded MUCH faster (along with everything else)

I'm curious though if the different lighting levels or certain textures make the base longer to load. Will a base using all one wall texture load faster than if each room had a different texture? Hmm...

Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master

ive not noticed any unusual lag lately

i still get horrid FPS drops on most praetorian lab maps or the warehouse/lab map in the lambda trial, prolly due to them rednering improperly at low graphics settings