Slashman
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Posts
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Joined
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Chase, I'm not going to requote your whole post(too lazy right now), but you do raise some valid points.
A lot of the 'improvements' we have been given over the course of the issues since COV released may have been given with good intentions, but sometimes do not achieve the ideal situation.
Specifically the leveling speed versus available content is one area that glaringly stands out. Right now, if you do all your arcs in Mercy and then head to Port Oakes, you are almost ready to head to Cap Au Diable. By the time you push through the 3 paper missions and then do a mayhem(which may end up being the King's Row mayhem due to your level), your single contact in PO may not even have time to let you complete his arc before you outlevel him. That recently happened to me with Mr. Boccor. I never got to do his arc with the Hellions.
The reason for this kind of thing is that with the '15 dev drought', zones and new content just couldn't be pushed out fast enough to address shortages and gaps in level ranges. So we got increased XP instead. And then we got patrol xp on top of that and then more level smoothing. Instead of addressing the gaps in content with *gasp* more/better content, they instead tried to make it look like those gaps didn't exist by making us level faster. And sure it works where the gaps are, but when you face the places where the gaps aren't, suddenly we find that story arcs that should lead to other arcs or contacts suddenly push you to a level/contact you may not want to have tackled just yet.
A lot of folks might argue that they like the faster leveling because the arcs in such and such a level range are crap. However, I have always been behind the idea of adding content first, and then if that doesn't solve the issue, we can look at level speed and smoothing etc.
That's just my 0.2 cents worth though. -
Quote:While I might not have been quite so dramatic about it, I can definitely agree with the general gist of this post. The old content has a LOT of bad in it. Grammar, storytelling and just plain tedious design that stems from the old MMO concept of 'if it takes long and is annoying then its got to be worth it'.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
See, the thing is... Some of the old content is WRETCHED. And not just low-level content. Things like Unai Keme's "Search dimensions 1, 2 and 3" plethora of missions and Maria Jenkins' atrocious spelling and crappy narrative are direct eyesores. Plenty of old missions are defeat-alls for no real reason, and, in fact, Tina McIntyre's mission against Bobcat is a defeat-all in an outdoor map with patrols. What sadistic meanie designed THAT particular mission?
A lot of the ways the old content needs to be redesigned don't involve new graphics, tilesets or enemy design. It involves cleaning up embarrassingly bad writing and purging utterly pointless missions that add nothing to the plot. I am sick of story arcs consisting of a few important mission and a good dozen "Your princess is in another castle!" Some need shortening, some need spell-checking, some need an actual WRITER to look through them and set all the terrible exposition straight, and some just need their needlessly sinister objectives reviewed.
And this needs to happen, because these missions and arcs honestly ARE a blight upon the game.
I know the devs are reluctant to touch old content because of ancient code that may affect things they are unaware of etc. But really, leaving it in there can give a seriously bad impression of the game. Most new players might not know enough to avoid the old bad and concentrate on the good new like Faultline. It's certainly something to consider for the future of the game. First impressions mean a lot. -
Good grief!
Shouldn't Marketing be doing this stuff? Shouldn't they be the ones hurting their heads over how to get word of this game out to the masses?
I'm really curious to see how much effort is put into showcasing GR when more info finally comes out about it.
I mean really...do we forum posters need to rack our brains to come up with a way to sell this game? Do we really need new and convoluted ways to advertise?
Every webcomic site and gaming site/forum on the web has EVE Online ads on them. I left that game 2 years ago and I still couldn't forget about it if I wanted to. I go to Bluesnews, it's there. I go to Looking for Group, it's there. I go to Penny Arcade, it's there. I go to Firingsquad, it's there. I can't remember the last time or place I saw a COX banner ad on any website. And if I have to strain my brain to recall something like that, then it's a pretty fair indication of how much effort marketing makes on this game's behalf.
I'm tired of seeing these little posts pop up all the time from people trying to do the job that a multi-million dollar MMO software company doesn't seem to be interested in. If they truly don't want to increase the subscriber base for this game, then I'm in no way going to attempt to do it for them beyond the usual telling my friends and people I know who might like the game.
This is bordering on pathetic. -
Quote:Yeah, I'm not sure what Pain is thinking of. This game can theoretically grow to be as large as the devs feel like making it. The only real limit is the amount of space on our hard drives. And even with all they've added to this game over the years...it takes up less space than a quarter of the space of Dragon Age.Originally Posted by TrueMetal
Those zones aren't real, you know? They don't actually take up any 'space'. All bits and bytes.
Just thought I'd mention it. -
Quote:I think it all comes down to the value of the zone in question. How many other people actually thought that flooding Faultline was a massive mistake because the view of the dam was obscured? Basically...if it was just you, then that's not a big enough reason for them not to do it.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The best way to "revamp" zones is to add better tasks to them and MAYBE add to certain key locations. The Rikti Crash Site to Rikti War Zone transformation was ideal, for instance. The Vanguard base sprung up out of the aether, the old gate shut down and the hospital was boarded up and the Rikti shuttle got levelled up from an almost vertical orientation before, but the zone was not completely changed over. In fact, I recall War Witch explaining that they COULDN'T alter it much as the art team had to choose between massive zone alterations and... I don't remember what else. The Rikti tileset, I believe. Here's what scares me, though - they didn't do it because they couldn't, and if they were able to, they would have. And they SHOULDN'T! The zones themselves are pretty cool, they just need something to DO in them. OK, I can see plopping down a guarded reconstruction project in Boomtown here and there. I can even see turning a few areas into a reconstruction, it has plenty of rubble to go around. But trying to alter the zone in its absolute entirety would be a major mistake.
What I mean is, how much use was Faultline seeing from the game community? We all know that hazard zones were very underutilized. Pretty much all of them became ghost towns a long time ago.
I personally think it's fine to change around a zone that sees practically no use and make it into something useful. That's not something I would do to zones that are always populated...like Atlas, Galaxy, Steel, Cap and St. Martial. That's what Perfect Pain is proposing and I am most definitely not in agreement about it. -
Quote:So you think the Faultline revamp resulted in a tired old zone again?Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain
I didnt say remove it all, My thing is to remove half from both CoH and CoV and then bring in MANY new smaller zones with equal amount of content to what is being lost.
Take IP out and bring 4 little mini zones in... With as much content as what was in IP... Terra Volta can just be tacked on to Creys Folly or somethin'.
Take out Eden, say the forest overcame it and it was lost... and bring in 2 mini zones to replace it with as much content/ or more than was in Eden to begin with.
I am all NOT for revamping old tired zones...
Isn't that what revamping accomplishes though? In the end...revamps akin to the War Zone and Faultline have introduced a ton of new content and mission arcs that were not there before.Quote:Take out half of Nerva and say a tsunami hit that back area... and it is now lost... and replace it with 3 new mini villain zones, and put in enough content for each...
I do not see why people are so hell bent on keeping things we have all pretty much done to death, cept for newbies... Let the game snip off the dying parts (meaning dead crappy zones... Skyway anyone?) and have it grow new blossoms in other areas.
The Hollows revamp wasn't really a revamp in that context.
Also, there is a reason they can't/won't just remove a zone in it's entirety. Mainly because zones also represent a large chunk of game lore and history. Added to that, the storyline for the game going forward may not quite work out with half of the known zones wiped out and things changed so drastically that they are almost unrecognizable.
In addition to all that, you're making that suggestion as a veteran player who has been here for a long time and has seen everything. For new players, as long as the old zones are actually brought up to scratch with the newer stuff, they haven't experienced all that old stuff hundreds of times before so its not 'old' to them.
What you may want is a new game(or at least that's how it comes across), but preserving the basic look and feel of the original game may also be a priority to the dev team.
In my mind, new contacts, missions, arcs and graphics upgrades to old zones pretty much equate to a new zone. Faultline and the Rikti WZ proved this as far as I'm concerned. New content is the aim. New zones only as far as they become necessary to deliver new content is a bit more realistic. -
Quote:Where and when did I make that statement?Originally Posted by Westley
No, Slash did.
I even reread what I wrote to make sure I didn't accidentally write that somewhere.
People have a habit of turning any negative criticism of this game(even criticism that's carefully explained) into doomsaying.
For the record I don't agree with Perfect Pain on removing all old zones. I can much more get behind zone revamps and making old content better and more in line with the newer stuff we have been getting.
In fact, if the Faultline/Rikti Warzone treatment were to be given to more zones over the past few years, I doubt most of us would have as much to complain about in terms of new content.
Well actually, there would probably still be complaining because there still wouldn't be a moon zone... -
Issue 7
Grandville HAD to come out. Villains needed to get to level 50 and they needed high level contacts with which to do so. So counting Grandville is silly unless you expected that villains wouldn't get a PI equivalent.
Recluse's Victory, is a nice looking Atlas Park. Except, oh wait, practically no one really does PVP in this game. So that was a wasted effort.
Mayhem missions are great. I will give you that. But you can't just do a mayhem without doing 3 - 5 regular paper missions and you usually end up doing less of them as increase in level unless you specifically go an do newspapers to get them(which I find annoying to have to grind through...especially in Sharkhead Isle).
Issue 8
Safeguards. Pretty much the same reeasoning behind mayhems. Except I find safeguards to be pretty boring versus mayhems. But that's a taste thing.
Faultline. A great zone revamp and one I actually find myself using often with new heroes I create. Honestly though. Even Faultline get's old after a while. Static, linear content does not engage one forever.
Issue 9
The Abyss. Well villains need Hami-Os too. So why not. How many regular players do Hami raids Redside?
Issue 10
The Rikti Warzone is right up there with Faultline in terms of value. A viable alternative for 35+ heroes and villains. I think I enjoy the missions here more than Faultline.
Issue 11
The primary purpose of Ouroboros is to let you replay arcs that are already in the game. There are some new arcs and stuff in it but really...it's about repeating what you've done before or might have missed doing with your current toon. It's really not that much about new stuff.
Issue 12
The Hollows revamp was mostly mob rearranging and one repeatable mission contact. I'm not even sure I'd call it a revamp...since the missions that are present now are the same ones that have always been present since the zone went live.
Cimerora And the Midnight Club. Indeed, new stuff...but the amount of content there isn't that vast.
Quote:That all looks wonderful if you ignore the timeline of it all. How many months passed between each of those additions? How many years did it take for all of that to arrive? Even VEATs have a fraction of the story arcs that Kheldians got when they arrived.Originally Posted by Westley
...and that's NOT including all of the new "map environments" that came with EACH and EVERY new Task Force introduced... nor is it counting the gazillion maps added to the Mission Architect and Ouroboros that players rarely had access to before without specifically looking for them.
That's at least 8 new or revamped zones and DOZENS of new maps.
So... "comparatively little COX has grown since COV in terms of new areas, zones and map environments"? What is your definition of "comparatively ALOT"? The equivalent of a new game added every year like CoV???
Now who has their head in the sand?
You can keep kidding yourself that the rate at which we got content wasn't hampered at all by the size of the dev team, and I suppose that's your right. I absolutely salute the dev team for giving us what they did with the resources they had, but in no way am I convinced that this game is as far along as it should be in terms of content and content variety.
If, in fact, that same 15 man dev team was found to be sufficient to continue to deliver content to us as they had been, then staffing up and hiring more than twice their number would be a completely useless expense for NCSoft to incur.
And how many times have these same devs posted and told us over and over about things they would like to do but can't because they simply didn't have the manpower? You think we would have gotten power customization with that same team? What kind of time would it have taken for them to deliver it to us? Even Architect...you think the same 15 guys could have gotten that done and delivered in the same time frame? -
Quote:It actually IS a failing. Not of the development team...but of the resource allocation 'expert' who decided that 15 people was more than adequate to support this game after COV launched.Originally Posted by Silver Gale
You say "I'm bored with the entirety of the game, someone should change all the zones to something completely new", and when people tell you "that's not going to happen, why don't you play another game with completely new zones and characters to level?" you hold it up as some sort of failing with the game's development team?
GR has new zones, in case you missed it. And people constantly ask for new zones and revamping of the old ones. It isn't a matter of simply switching to another game. However, you'd have to have your head buried in the sand to not realize how comparatively little COX has grown since COV in terms of new areas, zones and map environments.
It's a resource problem stemming from the fact that there just weren't enough people to get more of that sort of stuff done. Now they have corrected that problem and I'm looking forward to some NEW stuff. Not simply QoL features...but actual gobs of new content that doesn't rehash game resources we have seen a million times before(sorry MA...you just don't cut it right now).
So yeah, I can understand Perfect Pain's perspective quite well, because I share his frustration. -
Quote:Well to be fair, Sam is not someone you'd go to for advice on games. He likes a lot of what most people don't(even people I'd consider as having reasonable taste) and he gets things from games that I certainly don't. Or at the very least I don't hold to be important.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
You have failed - totally, utterly, and completely.
And should reincarnation exist, you'll also have failed all your future lives as well.
I really could never figure out his thought process on games. Some stuff I totally agree with him on. Other stuff, I just shake my head and move on.
I really can't see how anyone could hate Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age(not with that kind of passion anyway)...but the fact that it's Samuel Tow is not surprising to me.
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I'm just playing it a lot less.
Got a lot of great games on my plate(TF2, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Fallout 3 GOTY, Dragon Age) so I guess that counts as a break. Also ME 2 coming at the end of the month. The Steam sales are really spoiling me...
The only downside I see is that if GR really doesn't deliver the goods then I'm not going to be very interested in returning full time.
This game is long overdue for a huge kick in the awesome regions and no amount of QoL features masquerading as full issues(nice as power customization was), are going to cut it for me.
My enthusiasm over GR is actually starting to wane because we still don't know jack squat about what the meat of it is really going to bring. Way to go marketing guys...
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Quote:This is something I'd like to see addressed as well. Ironically, if you look at old reviews of COH, they all state this point as the game's biggest downfall.Originally Posted by Drugfree Boy
Almost off-topic now, but the only thing I think CoX really needs to make it a more perfect superhero simulator is more non-combat content, something like putting out the fires in Steel, the ski chalet or curing the Lost in the midnighter arc, only more of it (perhaps include it in the AE somehow). I would love to save a kitten from a tree someday :-)
I have tried to introduce a lot of people to the game and the one big complaint I get from the people that don't stay is "its only the same thing over and over again, fight, fight, fight".
More non-combat stuff would be nice for a change, though I know its hard
Fighting bad guys is one of the great and cool things that superheroes do, but it's not ALL they do. The same goes for villains. The combat system of this game has never been expanded to include more than pounding on a bad guy til he drops. And likewise, outside of combat apart from badges and inventions...we do nothing that heroes or villains get to do.
Heroes don't get to engage in heroic activities which don't involve slugging it out with bad guys and villains don't get to do anything close to scheming or otherwise expanding their underworld influence.
I love what the game has...but it's true that there really needs to be some more depth to several aspects of it.
P.S. And no...Day Jobs did not fill this void. -
Quote:What? And here I thought he had learned so much from his work on Hellgate: London.Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain
While I have a Lt membership to CO... I check back in with that game. But sadly wow they still only have 5 zones... and the gameplay is still a total borefest. I dont think CO will improve until Bill gets FIRED.. That guy has done nothing but run that game into the ground.
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Quote:I'm not sure that could be applied here either. WOW didn't hurt Everquest as much as Everquest 2 did. EQ 2 probably paired off a more sizable chunk of EQ's players than WOW did. When WOW launched, EQ was already a 'minority' MMO. It's still up and running, but it doesn't have the population that EQ2 has, nor will it ever again.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I think "replace" would be a better word than "kill" - for example, WoW replced Everquest - but it didn't kill it.
IMO, its a very dangerous gamble to try to target another game as one that you're going to kill or 'replace' and make it publicly known. This has been proven over and over with games like AoC and WAR who made it known that they were going to be WOW killers. Did they even come close?Quote:So you could say some people thought CO would replace CoH as the main superhero MMO, rather than kill it - until the full horror of CO began to be relaized 
A last minute clampdown on poor design, I guess?Quote:Not sure what launch day nerf-bombs count as - suicide, perhaps?
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Quote:Look. CO was never going to mean doom for COX. Even if CO became another WOW...it wouldn't have killed this game.Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
Thanks for this analysis. I've been through this conversation (with less analysis) a few months ago, but often people will believe what they want to believe (in this case that CO meant doom for CoH).
MMOs do not kill other MMOs. MMOs kill themselves with poor design choices, poor support and a lack of understanding of their target audience.
Anyone arguing that to the contrary is either delusional, bitter or childish.
I believe that the biggest downer for this game was the 15 developer drought we were forced to go through where 'they'(whoever the hell they were...) chopped the dev team and scaled back support for the game shortly after the launch of COV. That was a singularly asinine move that I truly believe hurt this game's progress more than anything else.
I sincerely hope that's never repeated again and that GR doesn't see a similar thing happen. -
Quote:That's what I like to call 'Developer-lock'. It's a lot like scrapper lock, except that scrappers are actually, you know, tough enough to survive having it.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That would explain his boastful City of Heroes dis in that article from way back when. It also explains why all the boasting fizzled in light of yet another WoW clone, that even has silly things like "copper, silver and gold" tiers for "resources" and several inventory bags. It might have ended up being a decent game, and I honestly expected it to be one, but things turned out exactly as I expected them to. The things they boasted about were all there, but the things they never mentioned that everyone assumed would naturally be there... Just aren't.
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Quote:Stuff like this is why I am much more for them improving this game and adding stuff to it rather than hear that they are making a COX 2. MMOs are way too iffy as is for me to trust that any dev team(even the great one we have here) would get things exactly right, even if they had a 'do over' opportunity.Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain
When Jack stepped out of the picture I think internally that things really began to shatter at Cryptic for the goals of CO. When Atari stepped in and someone told them Star Trek is going to be the Next WoW. It's like the companies entire focus got disrupted and everything started to be rushed. instead of putting the time and effort into that game that was needed... They just started inviting more and more people to each wave of beta testing without fixing any of the stuff we were reporting as failures of the game. More and more people flooded the forums, not even testing the game... Just shoveling large heeping spoonfuls of praise down the Devs throats. Not helping the process at all. Going through extreme fanboi rage at anyone who was trying to say "HEY TEAMING DOESNT EXIST IN THIS GAME?!" Fanboi's nerdrage shot that stuff out of the sky.
It was as if all the important people who were working on CO left. And in stepped their replacements just trying to finish stuff up and send it out the door not listening to the feedback. Not trying to make the game better... Just get it out the door.
There are too many examples of external factors interfering and pressure from publishers and investors causing bad things to happen. That's in addition to all the other quirks that can mess with development. This isn't just MMOs...but game development as a whole these days.
We're not 'perfect' but we at least have a decent base game to build off of. It took us a while to get there, but I don't see a reason to stop growing and improving. The '15 dev' drought we went through should never have happened and if it didn't I suspect we'd have an even more awesome game than we have now. I have high hopes for GR...and it better deliver!
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Quote:Jack's 'Vision'?Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Here, this is a TEAM game that gives you the option to still go solo if you really want to. There... I've no idea what that is.
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This has been pretty interesting so far. And thanks to Arcana for giving her take on how she'd do things differently.
This has also raised a point for me though. In making things 'easier to balance' so to speak, how does this affect the feel of the game? I mean, this is still a game about superheroes and fantastic powers after all.
So if we were to have a more defined definition of a blaster's role, how would that affect the feel of the game to the average player when changes were made?
I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I'd mind it as much as I thought at the outset. I think that in lieu of some of the flat AoE powers, I wouldn't mind seeing more powers with effects like Chain Induction be introduced for blasters.
In the end though, perceived performance vs. actual performance is still something the devs will need to take into consideration. -
Quote:In a lot of ways it's a human nature problem. People don't like to feel like they aren't doing something and let someone else be the 'hero'. So giving the time for a blaster, of all things, to setup the total destruction of a spawn isn't something they want to do.Originally Posted by Zamuel
In a lot of ways, this feels more like a team problem than a powerset problem. It's one of the biggest headaches with playing a Stalker where that mob that you could have taken out or at least softened will run rampant because the team won't pause for 3 or so seconds.
This is isn't just in random PUGs, but even in teams consisting of folks I've known for year in the game. Someone will always step forward and throw that attack before I'm done dropping a couple mines or a Time Bomb. A scrapper or tank will run in etc.
Maybe I'm just unlucky, but unless the team is very small and we know the game plan, I just play like a normal blaster most of the time these days. -
Quote:It's nothing official. It's just something Arcanaville mentioned. I think I have heard her speak about it before. Basically, she is saying that much of the balance problems in the game are made more of a headache because of AoEs. Also she mentioned that she thinks that Castle would remove them if he could because of this. Obviously that will probably not happen. It was more along the lines of a 'if we could do this over this is what we would do'.Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
Wait, what AOE proposal is this? I guess I haven't heard of it... but I know I don't want any AOE taken from my Archery, AR, Fire, or Energy Blasters... it's what makes them special.
I was just curious to hear how a change like that would make blasters better. Aracanaville seems to be saying that if the AoE problem wasn't present, then blasters would have better tools to do their jobs. I'm slightly skeptical...but I'm willing to hear how that would work. -
Quote:This is why I am wondering how Arcanaville's removal of the current AoE system would help. She hinted that blasters could get higher self-damage buffs and damage caps. Still, a higher damage cap does not equate to higher base damage. And higher self-damage buffs cannot be so high that we 2 shot EBs(although that would be amusing).Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
While I realise you are going for sarcasm, that kind of skips over a point I made in the post you quoted. Things Blasters can't kill tend to be things Blasters can't control, either. Bosses, elite bosses and large groups of enemies in the absence of four AoE attacks are good examples. You can reduce incoming damage by killing things, but you can't kill faster than you are being killed. This is GUARANTEED to happen simply by how encounters are designed. Things you can't kill faster than they kill you, you can't actually control, either, not for the most part.
My most survivable blaster is currently my Archery/Devices. I have literally soloed an 8-man Nemesis spawn with him. Devices, though, is not a 'typical' blaster secondary. And it's nature makes it a bit annoying to use on teams where people will literally ignore the fact that you're dropping a time bomb/mine to help soften up a spawn. Even when the team is having a tough time and could use the help, no one likes to wait.
So anyway, I'd like to hear what the alternate options to AoEs are that we could use, and also how blasters could be further improved because of a new AoE system. -
Quote:There's always rabbit stew...Originally Posted by The_Larker
Sorry if this came off like a rant but,the vet bills for my bunny are starting to get alittle out of hand.
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I rather like Siren's Song!
Makes my sonic/elec feel all controllery...in a non-whimpy fashion.
I am curious though, Arcana, as to how a new AoE system would be implemented if you removed the one we have now.
What would replace AoE attacks? And also...from a purely conceptual POV some powersets just make sense to be more AoE focused. -
Quote:*Channels Topper from Dilbert*Originally Posted by Soul Train
And, I'd like to refer you to many many many mission arcs where my Stalker snuck past most (sometimes all!) of the mobs on the map, and took care of the objective and nothing else, completing the missions in a fraction of the expected timeframe. Was that fun? Oh hell yes.
That's nothing! I did that with my mastermind, while having no pets out and nothing more than a stealth proc in my teleport! While blindfolded!
*Leans back smugly in chair*