Slashman

Hmmm...I didn't factor in the advertising costs. The Rooster Teeth video campaign couldn't have been free either. Although when you consider how little marketing has been done for this game over the years, maybe they had a huge wad of cash stored up for advertising 'emergencies'.

I can say that AE gave us some bad press. For a while, on almost every game forum you'd go to with news about COX, someone would jump in and post that it's the game where you can level from 1 - 50 without ever leaving the noob area and call it lame. Even after the exploits got fixed it was bad for a while. It's hard to take back bad press. And with COX being out of the limelight for so long, I don't think its something we could really afford.

Fair enough.

Most people will say that AE was necessary because players will blow through content faster than the devs can put it out. I contend that the problem isn't simply content volume, its the nature of the content. The more worthwhile content is to replay, the greater its longevity. Of course there are limits to that, but after 5 years we are only now, through GR, getting a new player experience for the early levels.

If we had content with branching storylines and multiple endings and more fun things to do in missions besides just beating up bad guys, I think people might have less to complain about. Faultline is great stuff, but Faultline plays out the exact same way each time you run it.

Now what might happen if you didn't successfully rescue Yin's dad? Or maybe you find the psychochronometron(is that how it's spelled?) before Sands and he tries to take it from YOU? Maybe Doc Delilah actually starts digging Captain Costello's advances?

A little imagination and suddenly we have different avenues to explore using the same starting story arcs and missions. Content with some dynamic elements to the storyline would be a heck of a lot more interesting to me to play than MA arcs, which all manage to feel firmly detached from the COX world for some reason I can't put my finger on. Maybe it's the tickets and large green column of light for a mission door...I dunno.

Instead of brand new dev content, we got the 'unlimited content' of MA which still all manages to feel...not that compelling. Well that's my opinion at least.

I think you'd have to be slightly out of phase with reality to not feel that the initial state of MA was exploitative...

Meow missions anyone?

I think that the real problem is that AE just isn't that interesting to the average player. I think that it will continue to hold interest to those who really want to play other people's stories in the hopes of finding those few rare gems and probably to ticket and xp farmers to a lesser extent. Between the nerfs, super SKing and the fact that AE is still the same old COX when you get right down to it, I don't expect very much from it until the core game is expanded on and those additions make it into AE.

And even then, it will mean there is a whole lot more dev-created content to keep people interested. Which ironically is what we needed in the first place. Putting that in the hands of players in the limited environment of an MMO is just a bad idea.


I'm inclined to agree with you here. But only from the standpoint of player satisfaction. I don't know the economic impact that AE had on the game. I don't know if it was beneficial or detrimental.

From what I observed, it looks like it attracted new players and caught the eye of older players who had departed, bringing both in for a while. I don't know how many of those have subsequently departed and are therefore no longer playing the game. I suspect that the overall player increase due to AE is not that significant.

Here is where I begin to doubt your clear thinking. PVP can be written off as a failure, I agree. However, SG Base Editing isn't something that I think was ever intended to be a major financial earner by itself. It came as part of COV as a natural extension of giving bases to both heroes and villains so they could do base raids and have a place for SGs and VGs to call 'home'. If you're in a SG with dozens of other people, how feasible is it for everyone to have clearance to edit the base? From that alone, it obviously wasn't some feature that every player was supposed to jump into and do.

The badge system is the same thing. I don't think it was ever meant to be a major selling point for the game that would attract and retain thousands of players. It was just something extra for players to pursue if they were interested. Heck...you just have to play the game normally and you get badges. Accolades you have to work at.

I'd have to question why the heck you'd ever debate anything then. Everyone's opinion has value, it's just that you'd tend to take opinions backed up by some evidence more seriously.

Actually, I sometimes feel like my 33 fire/fire dom is unfair to play...

I hardly even need to use Fiery Embrace now...

Teamwork isn't made vital by having blatant deficiencies. That basically makes each person have to perform a role regardless of if they might want to do something else at any given time. That's not encouraging socialization so much as one dimensional thinking.

That sort of thinking is something that makes me nauseous because it puts images in my head of needy people who crave 'belonging' and have to seek it by being a vital link in a carefully laid out chain.

Teaming can be fun no matter what ATs are thrown together. In COV, people often say how the ATs don't encourage teaming. That's false. What happens often is people who are so accustomed to fitting into one slot only, suddenly find they have some freedom in a team and literally don't know what to do with it. So they end up not doing much to help to the team. Limited not by their AT capabilities, but by their own imagination and lack of creative thinking.

If you're a mastermind, don't just buff and heal your pets, do the same for your teammates. If you're a dominator, use your holds strategically and deal damage where it's needed most. Use domination to lock down tough boss fights. If you're a stalker, make sure you pick the most vital targets for your AS strikes and make things easier for the team to mop up the softer mobs. The list goes on.

I may not outright agree with Sam in his assessment, but I really hate this 'I'm needy and want to be needed' way of thinking that some MMO players have. Socializing in an MMO does not have to depend on handicaps. I solo a lot of the time. But I often team with my SG mates and other friends when we're on together. We don't have more fun because we're filling roles. We have fun because we like each other and enjoy spending time playing together even as we talk and laugh about life, friends and family. Our team composition is often 'sub-optimal' because some of us just like to play certain ATs and we don't feel pressured to make sure we get it 'just right'. We play and have fun anyway.

I agree that stuff like that would help to make the AE a better tool. I'm still not sure how close we are to that or the other stuff I'd like to see go in. Which is part of my issue. We just don't know what they're going to do.

Yes. In fact, if you look at my sig...you will see I made an arc. Making your own enemies is fine. But if you read what I posted, that's barely scratching the surface of what most standard mod tools allow users to create.


Except that for me, everytime I see a map that I've seen hundreds of times before in an arc that's supposed to be unique I cringe. Because I know what the layout is. I know where the spawns will occur and apart from some surprise ambushes and patrols, I pretty much know how the mission will play out. Simply because you can't exceed anything that the devs have done before.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't impress me. And it's not all that unique. There are/were a couple other MMOs who've done custom content. Saga of Ryzom's 'Ryzom Ring' being the one most fresh in my mind...but some other forum users have cited a couple others in the past.

Also, I'm a gamer period. Not simply an MMO player. And I've seen lots of games where custom tools were used to do incredible things far and above what the dev teams have even dreamed of. Great mods get released all the time.

I'm not crying doom on the game. And I'm not biased against the devs releasing a custom tool for the community. My main point is that, right now, we need new things for the game. We need new enemies, new environments and maps. New mission options with greater scope. Some interactive mission elements, more ability to make meaningful choices during the scope of missions and arcs etc. With those things not being in the game, they will not be in AE. With AE, we got(apart from custom enemies) the exact same stuff we've always had access to in the game for the past 5 years. In some cases we got less since they pulled some maps and enemies.

There are some very nice story arcs in AE. And yet somehow, people don't seem to be flocking to play them. People are/were interested in the easiest way to gain levels with the least effort.

AE, to me, is cart before horse right now. Make the core game better and expand it before you attempt to give tools to the community to showcase your game. In the end, they can only showcase what's there. And what is there right now is a game that's badly in need of expansion. That's where GR comes in. It just seems to make sense to wait til after GR to try to push something like that out to the community when there will be a lot of new stuff for AE users to work with and explore.

Possibly you're attacking too randomly. I currently am running a stone/stone brute who should be the very antithesis of Fury building.

I'm using the two mallet attacks, the stone brawl(can't remember its correct name) and seismic smash along with my ranged origin attack. That's right, I stopped using brawl *gasp*.

I still get decent Fury building. I was on a BNY team last night and when we got to the snow beasts in the cave with the redcaps all around, I was in Fury heaven. My bar went to almost full and I was laying down the smack. I also finished Snaptooth with about 65 Fury. Which isn't bad considering that we had a tank along.

I have a certain rhythm for building Fury. I usually do 2 passes of my lower damage attacks and then start in on my higher damage ones. I find the rhythm is different for each brute primary, but I don't really get problems building it except for enemies with very few attacks combined with slows.

Maybe impatience is the issue. Sometimes you have to forgo using using your big attacks in favor of waiting for a couple of your minor ones to recharge. I find this to certainly be the case with stone melee.

Thanks for that post Arcanaville. I was actually going to request that you help out with some numbers. (You aren't reading my mind, right?)

I've never felt like second best when playing my brute...and now I'm glad to see some proof that my gut feeling is actually correct.

By the same token, I finally feel like Dominators are close to where they should be with the recent buff. So yeah...I'm pretty much satisfied with the COV ATs.

I'm curious about that myself. The word 'severe' seems a bit...severe.

Enemy 'intelligence' is a bit of a problem. As I understand it, in MMOs, good AI is apparently very resource intensive. I recall that Tabula Rasa had servers dedicated simply to enemy AI...probably one of the reasons for its huge costs to run.

In any case, I have posted in the past that we could probably use some more variance in terms of enemy abilities. One of the things I'd be interested in seeing is enemies that use abilities targeted at specific ATs. Specifically those ATs who shrug off everything like tanks, scrappers and brutes.

Does Champions content even scale for teams like CoX? I thought most of it was non-instanced. If that's the case, then teaming would tend to be more trivial.

In any case, while I don't fully support the OP in his viewpoint, I do take offense at the weird mentality of MMO gamers that fun can only be had on teams when everyone is crippled in one way or another.

Teaming in COV is just as much fun for me as teaming in COH. The difference is that your team tactics can be a bit less rigid. My bots/ff mastermind can just as easily apply his bubbles to teammates as to his minions and my thugs/poison mastermind doesn't just debuff the enemy for the sake of his pets...the whole team benefits from his efforts. Corruptors still perform a similar function to defenders and dominators can still effectively control groups.

Age of Conan is a troubled game period and suffered from the ever-popular 'WoW killer syndrome'. I wouldn't use it as a good example of team dynamics...since that's where a lot of people feel it doesn't do well in any case apparently.

No...I'm not talking about something like that.

I'm thinking of something like the Global Domination setup from a game like Universe at War or Dawn of War. Where you can tangibly measure your dominance as a villain by taking over areas in the Rogue Isles.

I'm thinking that zones would be divided up into sub sections just like how we have different districts already. You would bring up a map and see how much influence you have over a certain area. Maybe you could spend points you gain from villainous pursuits to increase your hold over a desired district.

Like maybe you could put points into gaining influence in the police force, thereby increasing your combat effectiveness versus the various law enforcement groups in the Rogue Isles because you have inside info on their weaknesses. That kind of thing.

I'd even like to see villains all get personal strongholds. These wouldn't be like SG bases, but would something you'd have to defend against hero incursions(PVE not PVP) and would grow and expand as you gain power and dominance as a villain.

Nail on the head. A hero can say: 'Ha! Ha! I saved the world!'

A villain can at best say: 'Ha! Ha! I was a lackey to someone who thought they could take over the world but ultimately made them fail to do so while not grabbing the power for myself in the process!!!'

What villains could use is a tactical element to the game that divides zones up into sections that they can take over. Maybe gaining power and dominance as they complete missions/story arcs.

So that even if we play the lackey in an arc...it's all contributing to our overall power accumulation. Maybe even throw personal story arcs in there based on your take over of zones as you spread your influence.

In the end, there is lot's of stuff that could be done to make redside great but I'm losing hope that anything will ever get done.

I actually prefer playing redside myself, Dispari. I like having content be more streamlined and spend less time waiting for a contact to finally give me their main story arc. I also appreciate contacts that are invested in their story arcs, rather than have 4 or 5 contacts all possibly giving the same arc and saying the same things as if they were all the same person.

I do notice though, that most of my friends gravitate to blue. Even when we get together on red and have a blast playing, they head back to blue.

I think some of it is the mentality that it is more of the same on red...just different looking zones. So then why bother to move over?

In the end I think that the fundamental flaw with villains is that there is no payoff for being one that heroes can't get. For some folks like you and me, that's ok and we enjoy the streamlined content and different ATs, but it may be a bigger hurdle than the devs anticipated when designing COV. The purposeful decision to make the contact system and missions all mirror what we have on blue is likely the reason that people don't feel inclined to play on red.

That's my take anyway.

I think this is very true.

When you get right down to it, I love playing the COV ATs more than any other blueside with the possible exception of blasters.

I think the biggest problem with CoV is that they halted the differences in the two games squarely at the AT level. What was needed was a way to make villains stand out and apart from heroes besides just the way they fight.

I think they placed too much hope squarely on the PVP aspect of the game filling that void. Now as we have all seen, this game's strengths aren't in its PVP content.

I think my biggest fear with GR is that there will mostly be a mass exodus over to blue, and red(with nothing being done to make the underlying villain game more compelling), will kind of get pushed aside even more.

I don't think the question is: 'Can they all solo?' Sure, every powerset combination can play the game solo. I certainly don't agree that the rate at which every combination solos is acceptable. For me anyway. And I think most people would find soloing an earth/ff controller to be tedious at best. Containment or not.

But if they are all mostly dead after I unleash my salvo with my Crab Spider, what the hell does it matter if their attacks have been nullified? Also, as I pointed out earlier, I can sleep a whole mob with my sonic/elec blaster and then proceed to smack them down one by one. I'm still gonna kill em faster than a controller for the most part, with a few exceptions.

I don't recall ever seeing any single toon drain an AV of its end. I didn't think it was possible for a solo toon to do that. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Not many ATs can take on any giant monster and win. Defender or not, that's a narrow band of powerset combos that can do that. I'm not saying it can't be done, it's just not something you see people wanting to do everyday.

The fact that defenders have done some or all of the above in no way means anything with regard to the average leveling speed of that toon. People don't level from 1 - 50 by only soloing Giant Monsters, nor do they do that on the merit of being able to drain an AV of its end(and I can't think that this is something that happens quickly in any case). People level by slogging through mission after mission filled with the regular mobs we fight each and every day.

That's a personal opinion, but I've played games with both the 'Holy Trinity' and the 'generalist' design. If a game is interesting and fun, then it's interesting and fun. At this point I can't really say that one is better than the other because they both result in different types of gameplay.

However, most of the games I've played in those veins are single player or just standard multiplayer games. Strict class roles work great for Team Fortress 2 because you never play that game solo anyway. Someone's gonna be the engineer, another guy is gonna be the medic and someone else may play the demo man or heavy etc. Valve purposely removed grenades from the game like they were in TF 1 specifically to achieve a better sense of distinction between classes.

In Unreal Tournament, anyone can use any weapon so 'classes' are non-existent. That doesn't make the game any less fun either IMO.

Those roles still exist on blue side though. And, really the options didn't change that much. Empathy is still a poor secondary choice for a controller who wants to do well solo. Especially in the early levels. So is Force Fields. Blasters still have no defense powers for the majority of the game and only some blaster sets offer good controls etc.

What the devs have done is try to create less of a gaping chasm between the extremely effective solo combos and the uninformed player's random powerset choices. Whether they have achieved that is still a touchy thing, but it's not quite as bad as it was earlier.

I was with you right up until this point.

My sonic/elec blaster in several cases has out-controlled controllers. I have a massive cone AoE sleep that can render an entire spawn null except for bosses. Plus a single target stun that's good for up to Lt class mobs.

If I rolled a sonic/devices, I'd be even more effective since I'd have 2 single target stuns, plus the use of caltrops and smoke grenade to further hamper my foes.

Heck, even an ice/ice is darned controllerish all on it's own.

The fact is that most people do not effectively use blasters for anything else apart from doing damage. It doesn't mean that's all they are capable of doing or even all they are capable of doing in a moderately efficient way.

It's more accurate to say that people don't invite blasters to teams for any other reason besides damage. It's also more accurate to say that most blaster players don't fully use all their given abilities. You'd be surprised at how many people still don't even know how the new Defiance works, for example.

I'd say that might be true for SOME scrappers and also depends on what you're fighting.

Notice what you said about blasters here?

I think it might also depend on how good you expect an AT to be at a job they were not specifically designed for.

Wait...why would it be bad for super jump to leave huge craters in the ground? That's one of the most fun aspects of playing Prototype that I wish we could do here. Dang...dropping from the top of a skyscraper in Steel and causing a massive shockwave of destruction would make me a very happy camper!

In terms of ice powers. They are very varied in implementation in comics etc.

In terms of pushing 'cold' at something, though, I would be more inclined to envision projecting a super-cooled mass of air. Or like Frozone did in The Incredibles, chilling the water in the surrounding atmosphere to create ice.

But there are several ways that cold based powers could be explained.

There was even a woman in the Firestorm comic from DC that absorbed heat from living beings and used it to fuel her ice powers. Link.

Well I've gone through some on suggestions and some in different threads.

Here are a few things I'd like to see get added over time.

1) Story arcs that branch. I think the devs have the means to make that happen and with what GR is looking like...it may actually be coming. I'd like to play a story arc and just decide to do things differently sometimes. Making a hard decision about what to do as a hero or villain and having that translate to a change in the story somehow.

Like the Kelly Uqua arc. At no time in that arc are you ever presented with the option to betray her. Even after you know what she is...you can only continue to follow the arc and do her will. It begs to have a branching storyline. When you meet the Longbow EB and he drills it into your head about what she is...why can't I have the option to turn the tables and betray her by forming a temporary alliance with him? Even if I end up betraying him after(which would be very cool). In the game he is literally begging for me to do it. Some villains might keep working with her, but not all of them.

That kind of simple change would effectively double that value of a story arc. You can play through it and take a different path each time with different toons.

2) I'd like to be able to obtain missions in different ways. From people on the streets that I rescue and perhaps just from street sweeping I'd uncover clues to some bigger goings-on that I could get involved in. I think you suggested something like that earlier. Even having NPC civilians approach you for help. I think it would be nice to actually have the option of not pursuing the regular ingame contacts allthe time.

For villains I can see the same thing coming from beating up other groups on the streets like Longbow or the Legacy Chain and maybe getting tips on something they are doing that you can cash in on.

3) How about some actual real rescue missions? Instead of using our powers to beat up a horde of bad guys, we're using them to clear burning debris from our path so that we can lead civilians to safety after they are trapped in a burning building. Something like that could even be an add-on to the Hellions arson in Steel Canyon. Some heroes go inside the building while the others combat the fire outside for instance.

It would be nice to face the environment as an 'enemy' with some civilian lives at stake.

4) I have no idea what's possible now with our engine, but I would love to see more interactive elements in mission environments. This is a broad category so I'll just list a few things:

Smashing down doors and walls. The idea that I can always walk calmly through the front door into any villain/hero hideout is bordering on absurd. We can smash through 3 foot thick steel vault doors, but have to look for keys to access other areas in a warehouse and doors are never locked to prevent us from getting into a base.

It would also be nice to have a few dangerous objects that we can interact with in missions. Like canisters of flammable liquid or super-cooled gas that we can use on enemies.

I'd just love to see more destructible objects scattered around missions that aren't mission objectives. Stacks of crates we could topple over onto enemies, maybe using one of the mini-cranes in a warehouse to swat an enemy spawn or drive a forklift into em. Just things to break up the monotony of regular missions.

5) EB and AV fights that aren't always about huge bags of hitpoints. Can I defeat this boss by smashing the magical gems that give him his power instead of trying to take him on directly? Stuff like that.

I'd have to dig through some of my suggestions from threads before(I'm feeling kinda not in the mood for thinking right now), but there have been lots of this kind of thing from others on the forums before. I'm not sure the Devs are short on ideas about this...I think it may just be that haven't been able to prioritize them before.

I'm hoping with the staff ramp up and GR coming that we get to see some of these kinds of things come into being. I do remember Positron saying that there were people working on new game systems a while back...but he didn't elaborate.

This is exactly my point. After all this time, our mission types haven't really expanded beyond click glowy, lead out hostage/kidnap victim or beat everything up. And then a mayhem or safeguard after you do 3 - 5 of the above.

What we have now is nothing to sneeze at, but at the same time we're expanding costume options, power options, graphic options and epic ATs. Not to mention badges and temp powers.

But we've seemingly left behind mission types and environmental interactivity and alternate mission outcomes. None of those things are threats to the gameplay we have now...they would merely be a means to enhancing it. And as time goes on I would expect that the devs might be working on ways to add some of those things to make missions less predictable and give story arcs and missions more replay value. That's just my own thinking though...

I picked up CoX because it looked interesting and because I like superhero stuff. I liked the game enough to stick with it for 5 years(with year or so break in there). That doesn't mean I want it to stagnate or not do more to become more than it was at launch or even more than it was two issues ago.

I can't really see it doing that without adding more things to do in the game

Depth doesn't need to equate to things that interfere with gameplay at all. It SHOULD enhance it when done right.

Look, I enjoy taking Serious Sam: Second Encounter and blasting my way through weird alien hordes as much as the next guy. But that's not the ONLY thing I enjoy in games. And while it may not for you, that level of gameplay can get old after an extended period. It also won't appeal to as wide a range of people. And we ARE talking about a genre of game that's trying to make as many people play it as possible, for an extended period.

All those things contribute to a more complete game experience. Because as much as we'd like to tell ourselves that Slashman or Samuel_Tow are the only people playing this game, we aren't. And we probably aren't even the typical MMO gamer(whatever that means).

Those things should go hand in hand with a great combat system, making the core gameplay(combat) stand out even more and be more satisfying.

I'm not advocating forcing players to stop engaging in combat or to do less of it. But having missions be more than just beat-em-ups is something that is long overdue in this game

Maybe I'm missing something, but you say on one hand that you're tired of MMOs doing the same things, but when we get suggestions on things that they could add to make them different, you say that 'depth' will ruin the game. You either want the genre to innovate and grow, or you want to keep playing Torchlight.

I get that you're not into superheroes. My point could have been made from the first two Thief games just as easily I suppose, but I figured that you'd realize I'm talking about making a game and creating a framework that really enhances the subject matter of the game in a way that makes sense and is fun.