Slashman

Even if every person in EVE had 2 accounts(which I don't think is the case), they would still dwarf our numbers.

Map design??? It's set in SPACE? Map design?? Eve recently had a major graphics upgrade. It looks great. In fact, its look was one of the most complimented things about it. The fact that it wasn't overly complex...but it had very distinctive look and feel to it.

What type of interactions do you expect to have with objects in space exactly??? I'm a little confused here.

Eve has a lot of background and info on its universe. And they have recently been expanding PVE missions in a big way. Our PVE is instanced as well...so I have no idea what the complaint is. My point is that they are actively trying to do something about the holes in their game.

Trash. I played EVE seriously for close to 2 years. And a swarm of newb frigates can still take down a battleship if the battleship pilot doesn't know what he's doing. I've seen a newb in a frigate take down a more experienced player in an interceptor. Also...being a newb doesn't stop you from flying ships in support roles in combat to larger and more experienced players' ships.

Also, one of the richest people I knew in EVE never PVP'ed at all. She was total carebear.

HAHAHAHAHA!!! A single shard, player run gameworld with more players than COX has is smaller in scope and not as well executed. Yeah that's really reflected in their bank accounts at the end of the month.

I don't think that's a requirement at all. It might be nice for some prospective players...but I think our problems are broader than just a few things to put a 'carrot' in our game.

Being that powerful would in no means guarantee that they have no weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

History isn't full of examples of people who used power exclusively for the greater good. Governments being fine examples of the exact opposite. Taken a look a China recently? I have absolutely no faith that any government in the world wouldn't try its utmost to control and use any individual with a significant amount of power, regardless of the altruistic intentions of this individual.

Watchmen is a much more believable scenario than Justice League. Even with all his power, Dr. Manhattan ended up becoming a tool of the government...used to do some rather despicable things to end a war which had no right being fought in the first place. Oh hey...that sounds a bit familiar...

So then my last girlfriend...?

I'm not trying to say that we can become WoW or EVE. But I honestly think that this game has suffered from underdevelopment. It's not about duplicating EVE's open world PVP(which really isn't all there is to EVE) or even about being a sandbox game.

I honestly don't think that the fact that superheroes aren't as popular as fantasy is the major reason behind our numbers. The major criticisms that I've heard leveled at this game from both reviewers, and past players as well as people on game forums all over the internet do not include the fact that superheroes aren't fun or popular. I'm not saying that's not a factor for some people. But if superheroes really were that unpopular, why did Arkham Asylum do well? Could it be that was just a great game with a lot of good marketing behind it?

Last count was around 350K+ I think. It's doing quite well.

1) Why would you assume that someone with superpowers would want anything to do with the government?

2) Why would you assume that the government would want to do anything other than exploit someone with enough power to level a city?

3) We're all assuming a lot about the background of the superpowered person to begin with. He/she might have no family or secret identity to protect(Hancock). They might also be from a totally different universe/planet etc.

I'm actually rather tired of people using the 'superhero niche' argument to defend COX. If you make a good game and market it well, the niche hardly matters.

EVE Online is about as niche as you can get. It's a small niche, within a niche. It has more than 3 times our numbers and it started with about 19k players. That wasn't an accident. Nor did it happen because CCP had a huge fanbase before the game was even launched. They took a game that was bug filled and messy at launch, and with no publisher, brought it far past what COX has ever achieved. That should be a smack in the face to us.

COX has spent far too much time hiding behind customization and instanced missions and not enough expanding its core gameplay. I love our costume creator, but you can't build a game off a front loaded feature.

Instanced missions should be the perfect way to deliver many unique forms of gameplay to your players...instead so many of our missions blur into the same static and uninteresting environments, that you eventually stop even caring what map you're on past the fact that you hope this last cave mission doesn't have the 'doughnut room of death'.

I'm hoping to heck that GR really does turn this game around, because its almost painful to me to see such great potential dribbled down the drain. I hope that this lack of more info on GR is hiding a truckload of great stuff, because this game is long past overdue for something awesome. And no, Captain Dynamic(and AE) wasn't it.

The problem is that no one is making interesting MMOs. No one is innovating in the genre, and each new one that comes out is just another cookie cutter rehash. I don't know how much of the same publishers think the market can absorb.

WoW has the fantasy MMO genre completely covered. EVE has demonstrated that a single shard, player-driven, sandbox MMO can work. Why are developers continuing to repeat the same old same old?

Perhaps I'm a bit too much of an old and grizzled gamer to say that anything has me 'sold' with just a few details. Too many instances of blind faith in gaming leading to disappointment. And while I do think that the dev team here is a great one, I'm still not going to commit to something just because something is coming.

You need a video card upgrade in a bad way. A Radeon 4350 is just barely above integrated graphics level. Ultra mode may not be kind to you. You do have a good processor though, so it should just be a matter of slapping in a new graphics card.

Anti Aliasing is(to put it in layman's terms) a means by which jagged edges are removed from rendered objects in games. It's usually referred to as FSAA(Full Scene Anti Aliasing). It basically makes objects look smoother and more realistic. For your type of graphics card, though, I can see where it might put a strain on things.

I love improved graphics as much as anyone else. Well enough to force Anti Aliasing in Mass Effect 2 via nhancer(thanks for messing that up nvidia...fix your reference drivers dammit!!).

Updated graphics don't equal new content, just prettier scenery. My issue with all this pre-order talk is that at the end of the day I still have no detailed idea what I'm getting in GR. If they are giving us stuff that was supposed to be in GR in a regular update, what exactly am I slapping down money for?

Until I know that, I'm not thinking about pre-orders. At this point it's still like buying a pig in a blanket. Well not really...since I have no idea what actually buying a pig is like. I mean I buy pork, but that's probably not the same thing as buying a whole, live pig...

In any case. When they decide to actually give some information on GR that isn't hazy PR speak, then they might be entitled talk about confusing pre-order bonuses.

Wait...there's really something wrong with that?

Someoneshouldatoldme...

Which doesn't really clear up my query, but ok.

It's called building buzz and hype. Very acceptable tools to use in the videogame industry. Game companies hype and market their games strongly even when they are in shaky alpha stage. They don't do full demos, but they certainly keep releasing screenshots and designer diaries with bits and pieces of info until the game hits. That's standard practice for MMOs and mainstream video games alike.

I don't think anyone is advocating that. But I think it's strange to have a community that complains about a game's marketing technique. It should tell you something that so many people are saying that they heard about this game by accident and not by the usual ad channels. It's simply kept out of the spotlight too much.

Again, more than doubling the staff, putting so much time and money into a new boxed expansion and you can't give any of the features that are coming apart from the graphics upgrade? You can't release enough info to make a small designer diary on a semi regular basis? It's almost made me afraid that there isn't much more coming in GR to get excited about. Is everything that's being done in GR so huge and game changing that there are no features you can talk about without ruining everything? Not even QoL features that may be going in?

I want to believe that this is all part of a master plan, but I keep feeling like it's just shoddy marketing. If I'm wrong I'll gladly admit to it, but this is an age where hype sells your game. Old or new, building buzz and keeping in the public eye on a regular basis continues to net folks who might otherwise miss your game. There are too many examples out there for me to think otherwise at this point.

I really dislike WoW. So I'm not using them as an example that COX should follow to the letter. Also, WoW did not, in fact, get it's majority of players from other MMOs. When it launched, there simply weren't that many MMO players to pull from. A significant number of WoW players were already Blizzard fans. I'm talking about where they pulled the rest of their players from. It wasn't by 'killing' other MMOs. They got people playing that had never played MMOs before, or indeed even a PC game.

No one is advocating celebrity endorsements. At least I haven't seen that in this thread(correct me if I'm wrong). As someone pointed out though, if even Mom & PoP businesses can get some kind of tv ads out, then I can't think that we couldn't do it also. And even if we can't, I still don't see what we're doing now that counts as the alternative. If you truly think that COX is as well-represented in the public domain as it could be, then I can't argue with your opinion. I'll also point out that EVe online has no tv spots either and I was seeing more of that title even when COX had superior numbers to it. If that doesn't tell you something then I honestly don't know what will.

This begs me to ask again, why more than double your staff and spend even more money on top of that to produce and expansion, when you don't intend to grow the playerbase of the game? They could have added less people to the team and then simply gave us meatier issues as continued free updates.

It could simply be a case of me not getting it. I'll admit that I'm wrong if someone ever speaks out and explains the methodology of it all. Until then, I suppose I can only look from the outside and speculate at what I perceive to be a very good game not getting its' fair share of the spotlight.

These are my thoughts almost exactly. I'm not obsessing over info on GR. But I am continually amazed at how few people really know about City of Heroes and how that seems to be an acceptable thing for the marketing dept or whoever calls the shots.

With all due respect to Castle and his post, I am so tired of hearing about how we are six years old now and we should just be happy that the servers are still live(at least that's what I keep hearing from people on the forums and now devs as well). EVE is older than we are and started with less than 20k subscribers.

Olantern's point about focusing on veteran subscribers seems to be right on the money. It almost feels like we're on a leaky boat and we've just come to the point where we're patching holes to stay afloat.

The ironic part is that with GR we're overhauling the boat and expanding it, but we're still only willing to carry the same number of passengers we had when the boat was a leaky little skiff.

Again this is the point that I think most people who are protesting the marketing strategy of the game are trying to make. The marketing department may well be doing something, but if they aren't doing that something in the right place, then it's almost the same thing as doing nothing.

One lesson that WoW taught that MMO devs don't seem to ever learn is the value of creating your own target audience. Don't try to be the MMO that 'kills' one MMO so that you can succeed by getting their subscribers. By the same token, COX needs to appeal to people who are not MMO players. I suspect that most MMO players already know about COX. A lot of them have bad preconceived notions about it as well from what you read on MMO forums(some of these are well founded...but still). COX is superior to a lot of the stuff that's out there and, in general, most folks still don't know about it.

This, a thousand times!

You should probably be forewarned that Samuel Tow doesn't think quite like most folks when it comes to games. I'd explain it to you...but I don't actually think I'm capable...just used to it.

In any case, in terms of the too repetitive criticism: I do tend to agree that this game is guilty of that. Of course, as people have pointed out here, all MMOs are like that.

I actually don't think that they all have to be like that. In fact, I believe that needless repetition is a fault of game design. Sometimes a lack of imagination, sometimes a perceived limitation. A lot of times, it's a reluctance to let go of something that's been done before by a game's peers and predecessors.

What I find interesting, is that in a genre like the MMO, repetition is something that should actually lessen over the course of a game's life, not increase. And yet we often see exactly the opposite happening.

How long have people been asking for new and different things to do in the game that don't directly involve combat? Things that superheroes do that people find compelling and yet break up the constant fighting as the only way to get anything done? I'll give you a hint...it's been since around Issue 1.

We have, hands down, the best combat system in any MMO I have played to date. I don't say that lightly. Fighting in COX is great stuff. We have the best costume/character creator in any game I can think of. And yet, with those 2 strong elements, we haven't really seen our numbers growing over time. Stable with very slow degradation is probably where we're at.

Now if I voice the question as to why this is, I'll probably incite a mob of angry forum defenders pointing out that I don't know anything about MMOs and that they are supposed to decline in numbers as time goes by and that WoW is an aberration(which it is...and somewhat an abomination...) etc. etc.

In my mind(and I'll willingly admit it's probably a scary place), an MMO is supposed to do exactly the opposite of what most MMOs end up doing. I'd say that an example of a perfectly executed MMO is EVE Online. Not because it's a space MMO, or because it's a sandbox MMO. But because it started out with less than 20k subscribers at launch and is now making COX look pretty small in comparison.

I don't think a fantasy setting is the key, or a sci-fi setting, or a modern superhero setting. I think the key is in having a good core game with strong elements and then building and expanding on that game. Not only building up those strong elements that you got right at launch, but expanding and adding meaningful breadth to the game as you go along.

I think COX failed at some of this in a real way. And I don't think that even if the OP was to hand-hold more folks and point them at 'better' content, that he'd get the player retention people think he might. That shouldn't be a requirement of any game.

There is never a move that is made by the dev team that is universally cheered or universally hated. So to act like there was no one who thought that the 2 or 3 consecutive xp increases plus smoothing and Patrol XP was a bit much is as misguided a notion as stating that no one liked it. I know among my friends and SG mates who are mostly silent on these boards, there was a lot of queries as to why Patrol XP got added. It wasn't like debt was even common anymore and we needed something to stamp it out completely.

I will still stand by the fact that leveling faster so you see less content, is not an appropriate substitute for adding more content. If leveling was indeed too slow then I'm fine with correcting it.

If leveling is too slow in some places and some level ranges, then correct that and that alone where appropriate.

I'm fully aware of the options to increase levels for missions and to turn off XP. How aware is the average new player? And why should anyone need to keep fiddling with level settings to maintain their desired level range on arcs and missions? Now if setting the mission difficulty at '+ whatever level' meant that your missions always stayed at '+ whatever level' no matter what level you were, relative to the contact, that would be something else.

Ok...noted. And I agree that it's not incompatible with faster XP gain. It is, however, currently not setup to work with our faster XP gain.


I never made that claim. If you read my post and infer that, then you might want to reread it.

I wonder if people would ***** as much if mission doors didn't take you needlessly to the opposite end of the zone that you were in, but instead gradually got farther away as you got into a new zone and started working for a contact. I think a lot of that is also messy design. Sending me as a level 2 hero to the opposite end of Galaxy or Atlas where I have to dodge level 5 and 6 goons is really dumb! It doesn't make me feel heroic to have to sneak past purple spawns. And I can only imagine how much fun it is for newbs who don't really have a handle on the con system yet.


Keep that in mind, because when you say the following...

One solution solves a problem in a specific place and situation. While the other has an impact globally. That's been my point from the beginning. I'm wary of applying global solutions(like travel powers for all at level 5) before looking at why people are finding travel to be a problem. Maybe the issue is that zone design and story arc doors are messed up and need fixing.

I'm not saying that temp travel powers are the devil and should be cast down, but maybe having them is also causing some negative side effects. Like people not wanting to spend time in zones and simply fly/hop to doors, maybe missing things that the devs would like you to experience while traveling about your business in the city.

I like scenery as much as the next guy, but I don't only like scenery. I'd also like to have stuff to do along with a nice picture to look at.

I can agree with that. It also depends on what the devs want to accomplish with a zone 'revamp'. Maybe they want to give the 'new zone experience' wherever possible. Although I can see that taking more time and resources, it usually turns out to be for the better.

This is kind of my point though. If MA was never released to the players, I wouldn't get all broken up about it if I knew the developers were using it, along with their ability to really add new assets to arcs and missions, to give us all better quality content overall.

Maybe I'm spoiled, but when SDKs and dev tools get released to the public, I'm not looking to see more of the same stuff that I've been seeing before.

I'm looking for wow factor stuff. Like Adam Miller's work on NWN and NWN2. Or like the guys who made Mechwarrior out of the Crysis engine. So yeah, there are some nice stories in MA. Like the Do it yourself Moonbase project. I love that. But in the end...it doesn't offer me anything much that I can't get from playing regular dev content.

I think then we'd all laugh at you...

And the devs applied an XP increase once. Then again, plus more level smoothing. And THEN they dumped Patrol XP on top of all that.

It's not about missing contacts. It's about progressing to the next contact and finding that you can't get missions from him/her. Or that he/she only gives a one off mission. Or that you get a string of those before you hit a contact that can finally give you some arcs you can settle in and play.

It's about Port Oakes only lasting for about 2 levels. Why make a zone and fill it with contacts and have people handily outlevel them almost before they leave the previous zone? That's essentially taking options away. I honestly don't expect a toon to hit every contact in every level range on their way through to 50...but why should my contact list be filled with inactives who have only referred me to another contact...which might also be invalid for my level range?

The Hollows didn't always exist. Temp travel powers didn't exist when the Hollows first appeared. And having a badly designed zone, in terms of navigating through areas with no decent gaps between enemy groups was a purposeful and misguided design decision. It was made with the assumption that you'd always get a group together and fight your way through to whatever door objective you had. It was a stupid zone design that they have only recently made an effort to fix...and now that's a moot point because of travel powers at level 5.

That's what I'm talking about where you apply one solution but you would have been better served by fixing the core of the problem in the first place.

That's nonsense. Apart from random enemy spawns, what fun things to see and do do you come across in Perez. Most people hate the forest maze of death. There is no advantage to exploring that death trap apart from maybe getting an exploration badge.

I'm talking about adding things to zones like missions from NPCs in passing. Where taking down mobs leads to clues that can give you mini arcs to pursue. I'm talking about where going through a zone gives you something to do besides fight random mobs for LESS XP than you would get if you were in an instanced mission.

That's interesting, considering you've argued with me vehemently that you don't find architect arcs and missions to be anything great and that you weren't very impressed with what it was turning out. You've changed your mind now, I take it? You've found those special arcs that have changed your perspective?

I have my doubts on this as well. I don't anticipate a mass exodus for my toons on any side. The only times I really want to side switch are when my SG mates are playing blueside(as they play there more) and I want to play a villain. I don't have the desire to take a blaster redside and fight Longbow or the Legacy Chain.

I'm going to give the devs the benefit of the doubt and assume that some really good stuff is coming that they have not announced.


Count me in on that as well. When we, the players, were pointing out content gaps in the leveling process, we really only wanted more content to fill those gaps. There was no public outcry of slow leveling. Power levelers will always find ways to do it faster.

Wrong prescription for the problem there. Then they added Patrol XP on top of that. We didn't need that as well.

That's exactly what happened. Travel powers used to be something you looked forward to at 14. And while I am just as guilty as the next guy of using the temp powers, I can't help but feel that something got lost along the way. Making zones a bit easier to navigate and putting fun things to see and do along the way would just have made for a better solution.

I keep saying that the Mission Architect came at the wrong time. We didn't need player created content, because that content is limited by the scope of all the dev created content in the game. It can't exceed it in any way aside from story content. It can only tell a different story. The core game needed upgrading first and foremost before you attempt to let people show off what they made. Because unless you look very closely, you're going to see the exact same thing you've been seeing for the past 5 years, story aside.

That is, someone who was a past player of this game coming back and looking at someone playing MA stuff will not truly see anything different apart from custom enemies. And even those enemies won't have different powers than what we have in the game...just powers mixed from what we all know.