Slashman

This goes back to the point of what is appropriate for the setting and type of game the MMO is. None of that stuff that you listed is actually inappropriate for a fantasy MMO. And yet none of that stuff gets put into fantasy MMOs. Reagrdless of if it can be made to work or not...no one has really tried to my knowledge.

Well it bothers me. And I'm not alone in that. The problem is again the setting of the game. We here on the forums can sit back and tell ourselves that this is a MMORPG first and foremost so the fact that we don't have x or y is fine because they are not going for comic book feel, they are going for RPG.

In my experience though, I've seen a number of people pass up the game for just that reason. They want more. Or at least they want more of the things that you would expect to find in a typical superhero setting.

The fact is that in CoX, we don't get to do a lot of things that people have expected heroes to be able to do. It comes back to how people perceive superheroes and what they actually see when they look at this game.

One of my favorite games, Freedom Force, is a great example of this. At it's heart, its a simple tactical RPG where you take up to 4 heroes and try to defeat the bad guys.

The difference is in the execution. The entire game environment screams 'superhero'. From the cheesy silver age dialogue to the fact that both you AND the enemy can use their surroundings to gain an advantage. Pick up a car and throw it at those guys over there.

Bad guy shooting at you from the top of a building, smash the side of the building and make the roof collapse to he drops to your level.

And it had all the superhero travel powers we have, plus levels and consequences of causing too much destruction of property. But underneath it was still an RPG with numbers and levels and unlocking new characters etc.

What I'm saying is that we're more progressive in terms of combat than any other MMO I know of right now. The problem is that people aren't looking at the game and going: 'Wow...this combat beats EQ 2's combat. I'm switching.'

What I see happening more often is people going: 'Is that all there is to the game?' Now this might very well be an unfair question in light of what some other MMOs offer. But they aren't looking at other MMOs because up until recently, there were no other superhero MMOs. They do know the sorts of things that superheroes tend to do and we don't do a lot of them.

Or that almost all developers seem determined to approach them in the exact same way.

See, my problem with that is: What if no one wants to be the healer? Or no one wants to be a tank? The actual requirement for no other reason than requirement's sake is something that annoys me to the core.

My major issue with fantasy MMOs using the holy trinity is that it all stops at combat. The supporting mechanics of the surrounding game halt role effectiveness at defeating an enemy. I'd be more happy with that kind of setup if there was more to gameplay than just this. Even CoX is guilty of it. Except that CoX no longer really does heavy role dependency(something which I'm continually grateful for).

It doesn't fit superherodom at all. The Flash doesn't dash out of a fight and come back with healing powers. Batman doesn't exit a mission and come back with impenetrable skin (well he might come back with some additional Bat-Armor). In any case...heroes don't run off and change their roles. It's useful for PVP though, I guess.

My point is that plugging the trinity into every game just because it seems easy is a cop out. You create an artificial need that relegates someone to a single task which turns out to be pretty darn one dimensional most of the time. It just grinds my gears...

Sorry, I might have been mixing up the idea of need with simply being an asset to a team.

They are not the same, of course. I think that it's entirely possible in most situations to be of assistance to a team without being needed by the team for it's very survival. If there are people who think that they need to be the cornerstone of a team every single time, then they may have some other issues which a game isn't really supposed to address.

Barring a colossal level difference, I think that just about everyone can contribute something to a team in CoX. They may not be part of the glue that holds the team together...but additional damage, defense, controls etc. are pretty much always an asset to even the most capable group. Actually, just being there increases spawn size.

Tabula Rasa was wrong on a lot of fronts. And the funding thing may indeed have been a huge goad in their sides to push a release. They completely changed what the game was in mid development(as far as I understand) from a medieval fantasy to sci-fi space game.

The thing is, how many times do developers/publishers have to learn the hard way that you can't release a half-***** MMO and 'fix' it later with a reasonable guarantee of success? Your game has to be compelling from the start. And that is even more the case now than it was in the past when people were less familiar with MMOs.

But other types of games DO tend to do that if they are well made and fun! Like Starcraft, TF2, Neverwinter Nights, Quake 3, Diablo 2, Half-Life, Total Annihilation etc. Non-MMO games that are just plain fun to play are around and making money long after their release because of the quality of the game made.

This is a separate point, but I truly believe that the problem isn't how much base content you release, its the replayablity and quality of that content that extends the life of the game. If you keep pushing out static and non-dynamic content that doesn't ever change either the game world or offer players alternate paths to it's end...you are going to keep falling into the trap of never enough.

Except I don't believe that either forcing people to beat each other over the head to generate 'content' is really all that viable for most MMOs and the whole 'trinity' idea is simply a case of faulty game design.

Number one, if decently implemented PVP isn't the focus of your game from the start, you are likely to do more harm than good when you introduce it. Take a look at us for a good example.

Number two, the trinity idea simply does not always prove to be practical. 'Looking 4 h3lr'

There is nothing wrong with giving higher rewards to a group than to an individual if the group can accomplish something that the individual can't. Making grouping the ONLY viable choice to get anywhere is the real mistake.

An assumption based off of wrong thinking. Its the type of assumption that leads to the development of MMO games where the 'Game' is truly an afterthought and all the developers think makes any difference is the Massively and Multiplayer aspects.

What I'd like is a decent game period. And I personally think this game has suffered from not distancing itself even more from other MMOs by adding gameplay elements that enhance the superhero and comic book side of things and played down the traditional MMO elements a bit more.

I think that the issue is when and how often is a team 'needed'. If your entire game is spent making it clear that there is no good things to be had outside of a large group, then you've failed. If there are areas in your game that truly require multiple people to complete objectives, and those things are implemented in a fun way, then people will have a desire to team anyway. But it should be on the players' terms.

That time and cost is due to incorrect thinking in the first place. Jack actually thought that people would start missions, realize that they had an AV to fight and then leave those missions to go look for help. That's how all MMO makers thought at one point. When I first started playing EQ and realized that I was getting quests that I could in no way complete on my own, I was scratching my head. Why would you even design a game along those lines unless its a single player RPG where the player controls a party of characters of his own selection?

The reality of things is that people don't always have a ready group of in-game friends that they can call on whenever they log in to help them with a specific task. The reality is that a number of people think its a pain in the *** to even need to ask for help with something that they started as a solo effort. Some people don't want to be particularly social even though they are playing an MMO. Some folks just want to play a good game period.

That kind of group interdependency is something that squarely belongs in tabletop PnP games. I don't have any sympathy for designers who fail to take that kind of thing into account and then find they have to retrofit their game because they thought that an actual inconvenience like that lends some kind of challenge to make gameplay more interesting.

Yes, that means I have no sympathy for NCSoft, Sony or any other game developer with that kind of shortsightedness.

Case in point again. I read in an interview that most of the people who were on the Tabula Rasa team didn't feel that the game was fun. It played well enough and had all these elements but it didn't feel like fun to the people who were making it. They launched it anyway(because obviously it would feel like fun to other people...). If that was Blizzard, you can bet your butt they would have redone what needed to be redone in order to MAKE the game fun. Which is their number one priority.

Sorry for the sideways rant there...but I just felt compelled to say it.

Your last point would seem to indicate that CoX should have a dead community of people who don't team. Pretty much most characters can solo fairly well. And no one NEEDs to team to accomplish anything except those things which are group-only like TFs and Trials.

Blasters, scrappers, tankers, kheldians, defenders and controllers can all play this game solo. And of course pretty much every villain AT is self-sufficient. We even have difficulty levels.

I remember a Blizzard interveiw where they tell the interviewer that they have no problem revealing how they work...because no one will ever really be able to copy what they do.

Part of it is that there is no 'ego' in their methods. They will, and have, scrapped huge, finished parts of a game and started over from scratch when it doesn't feel 'just right'. They have no problems going over it time after time. Its why they take so long, but at the end they deliver something that no one else does. That's not entirely the case with WoW...but it's what got them their fanbase in the first place.

Other companies that are at least similar in their approach I'd have to say would be Valve and Bioware. Those companies consistently deliver great products mostly because they are free to do it right.

In terms of 'coolness' in games, one game that sprang to mind in recent times was Neverwinter Nights 2. I was extremely disappointed that they made combat in that game look so dull compared to the first by removing blocking, parrying and circling animations. All the 'cool' in combat was spell effects. If you were playing a monk or something similar...you looked like a half-crippled monkey when you were fighting. It made the game MUCH less fun IMHO.

The reason they took those out was apparently that some people were complaining that you could possibly miss an extra attack at high levels if your character moved or parried too much during a round. So they just cut the animations out and made fighting look bland as hell.

Quoted for truth.

Back in the days when my gaming group used to host regular LAN parties and tournaments, we'd get all kinds of gamers coming. From the uber clans of guys who literally lived to game, to the casual guys who were just wanting to see what it was all about. And even with the uber guys dominating and my guys mostly just barely holding their own, I can't remember a time when anyone just up and quit because they were losing a lot. We all had a blast because we were having fun playing games that we all found to be fun.

If a game company has to hide behind 'can't lose' mechanics to mask the fact that their game is only ever fun when you're winning, then they generally have a bad game.

TF2 is just generally fun. Even with a sniper getting 7 kills off me in a row and me only getting revenge once, its fun. Valve didn't 'use a trick' to get people to play, they poured their heart and soul into making a game that is easy to pick up and play, easy to see what your objectives are but requires real skill to master. And the skill part plays a big role. Yeah they totally cheated the system and should do something else next time.

Paying or not paying a monthly fee doesn't change how much you suck. I'm asking why these games which should really showcase suckitude still have so many dedicated players. And a huge percentage of them aren't uber either. In fact a lot of them suck.

Whether I payed a one time or monthly fee, if sucking at a game caused me enough frustration to quit, I'd still quit. I think that applies to most people for most games. So the servers for those games I mentioned should be way depopulated. I shouldn't be getting messages for clan events every time I fire up Steam for TF2.


So basically, stupidity and lack of skill(not necessarily in that order) plus a monthly fee keeps MMOs as nothing more than what they are now. I guess its a societal problem...

So that's why Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, The Battlefield Series and other games like that are so unpopular? Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Also, why is it about PVP? Why can't battles with NPC enemies be more about player skill? Or at the very least more so than what we have now?

I'm curious to know how many times companies have to watch other companies 'get what's coming to them' before someone wises up and does something different.

Must it always come back to catgirls? Why? Why? WHY?

It's already failing to do that. Two of the biggest launches recently, Age of Conan and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning didn't perform as they were expected. And the teams behind those games are now scrambling to try to keep them profitable. Both have been through server merges.

On the flipside to what someone earlier said about innovation being risky and that no one want's to invest in it. I think a lot of this is based off the fact that lots of the innovative ideas we do see get mired by either shoddy execution or they are implemented alongside the incorrect game mechanics.

Here's a case in point. Tabula Rasa actually had a few nice nice ideas. The control points that could be taken over by either players or the enemy and fought over. NPCs fighting each other and sending in reinforcements etc. The Logos stuff.

But, and this is just my opinion, they sank those ideas into the framework of a very traditional RPG type of combat system. It still came back to how you built and what gear you had rather than your actions in the midst of a fight. And THAT is what felt so wrong about it. Instead of lightning quick battles like you'd expect from a high tech war on a distant planet in a sci-fi universe, you still had to burn a whole clip of ammo to take down one or 2 enemies. Player combat vehicles were absent and this lead to more a one sided feel because your enemies had huge freaking mechs and fliers.

The Logos powers were ok...but still felt badly balanced and not right for the job in a lot of cases. In the end, the feel of the game was wrong. Not the fault of innovation, but the fault of incorrect execution. But of course innovation will become the scapegoat.

In Freedom Force, you could pretty much level every building and cars and even injure civilians. However, everytime you did, it would deduct from your total prestige gained for the mission and you'd have less points to spend on getting new heroes. A small thing...but something that actually FITS for a superhero MMO.

I do agree on the rest of your points in terms of persistent worlds. They are currently a fallacy in MMOs. We have static worlds...nothing more.

Seems pretty relevant to me. Although you do have to read the whole thing.

Ok...I'm willing to admit I may be fuzzy on this, but what examples do we have before the Well of a large number of people who have gotten their powers by freak accidents of science or by being mutants? Who are the large numbers of super powered heroes who have been around before the Well?

Nemesis is what he is due to careful and deliberate experimentation to prolong his life and create mechanical clones etc.

Lady Grey and Dark Watcher seem to be of the 'old powers' type of entities. Their origins are never fully explained and it seems to be hinted at that they aren't human at all.

Actually yes you did say the same thing...and I somehow missed or misread it. So I was wrong to imply that you didn't have that view.

Oddly enough, when someone like Nethergoat uses this exact same 'tone' in his arguments, no one seems to call him insolent. It must be a forum quirk. Regardless, it is difficult to convey true emotion through a forum post.

My intent was to say: 'So their origin explanations don't sit well with you, what implications do you think this will truly have on the game?' I personally don't think it makes that much of a difference and I don't foresee them ever really doing anything about it.

Their 'terrible writing mistake' in terms of the Well of Furies explanation was seemingly used as a backbone for powerset proliferation. That means it was used to open up more powers for more characters so that more character concepts could be accommodated. No one lost...everyone gained something.

I'm curious to know what you think they could do with it if they actually DID take it seriously?

I'm guessing that Planetside doesn't count? I'm just asking...I never actually played it...but I thought it was an MMOFPS.

But did they do that with the example Sam gave here? Did the guy actually then go on to explain what was so great and innovative about this new MMO? Or did he just let it go at crafting, banks, PVP, leveling up?

Watching the rest of the walkthrough left me pretty unimpressed. There was nothing remotely like what you're saying about contrasting the standard fare with the new and innovative. It was just another meh 3rd person shooting MMO. Maybe the guy was just a bad marketer...but I have my doubts.

In the end so many MMOs these days fall into the WoW clone abyss and fail to produce...its crazy. But they keep trying. AoC and WAR cost how much to produce? Did they deliver what they promised to their investors?

You have a narrow view of magic. Not everyone who uses magic is necessarily superpowered. If these people used magic solely by study and rituals and mixing of potions but themselves were not magical beings, then I think they stand outside of what the Well of Furies incident is referring to.

They didn't gain their powers by some accident, they are simply applying knowledge that they have learned.

Is there some game canon where it is stated that they were innately magical beings? Or was theirs' simply a magical society where everyone was taught the use of magic?

And this right here is the problem I'm having with your argument. Your issue is that you want to be able to tell the people who hold the rights to the lore of the game what they can and cannot mean because it doesn't fit in with your ideas of how their universe should be.

Oddly enough, I don't see them policing people's bios for exact canon compliance. You are still free to write your characters' origins as you see fit. If they aren't coming down on the girl whose toon claims to be Lord Recluse's second cousin, once removed and who had Statesman's love-child, then I have no idea why you'd even care this much.

About all I've seen them do in this regard is choose which MA arcs are considered canon and which aren't. They don't delete the ones that don't fit in with their lore.

Even so...how does it truly affect your characters? If you're an alien, then you're not from earth and don't even need to be concerned about origins. If you are from earth and got your powers from a freak accident or whatever, then all they are saying is that you were able to gain powers from that accident because the bands that tie reality together where that sort of thing is concerned are much looser. It doesn't really have that much of a bearing on character concepts at all.

So maybe it doesn't mesh with Samuel Tow's idea of a perfect superhero universe. My reply is: So what??

The stuff you describe is pretty much all magic based. I'm not arguing that beings with power didn't exist before the Well of Furies incident, I'm arguing how common place they were. How often did Joe Normal accidentally eat a quarter pound of radioactive isotopes and instead of perishing in a gruesome way, suddenly find he has the ability to shoot energy beams from his toes.

That magic and ancient gods existed in the COX universe has never been in question. And of course they would have been around well before the Well of Furies thing. Because the well itself is magical...so DUH!

What the origin stories are suggesting is that the proliferation of 'extraordinary individuals' that we have now are not a random occurrence.

Actually some of our established superhero universes are more of a crock. I remember a story in The New Warriors comic a long time ago where Night Thrasher was running an experiment with Speedball. Afterwards, Speedball attempted to reactivate his powers by jumping off the top of their building headquarters and was saved multiple times by hero after hero...including the Hulk. At the end, he asked Night Thrasher how many heroes there were in New York. And the number was pretty damned high. High enough that you begin to realize how silly it is that heroes are that prolific even in a single city.

My point is that at least the origins stuff explains how Paragon City could even begin to exist in its present form. Full of heroes at every turn.

This I 100% agree with. And the rest of your post too.

Let me also say that even with COX I find I have some of these frustrations. Much less so than I have with some of the cookie cutter MMOs out there, but still, I find that there is a lot that this game is missing that should be present in a superhero game. A secret identity system, some kind of detective skillset, alternate ways to defeat your enemies using the environment. A lot of things weren't conceptualized for this game when it was being created simply because it was an MMO...and everyone knows what they should contain right?

My main problem with this statement is that most gaming companies take this to mean that players are inherently dumb and that innovation means removing the need to think about your actions and any consequences they may have. As a result we get games that don't step outside the 'established' boundaries of MMO law.

It's not simply about not starting from scratch. Even if your game deviates from the accepted MMO norm, if that deviation is something new and fun, then presenting it in the right way will encourage people to try it.

While I can agree with that, the problem is that the 'somewhere' is usually either so small that it makes no true difference to gameplay or so large that it is focused on to the exclusion of quality of other areas of the game.

For me it means they're saying:

'The stuff that makes this game unique is pretty low key...so here's your checklist of usual MMO features. Mediocrity is our watchword.'

This. Although in my case I really dislike the game. I think WoW moved MMOs squarely into the mainstream and simultaneously doomed the majority of them to mediocrity. They all want to try to be what it is...they all can NEVER be what it is. Simply because what WoW became was not truly planned by its creators.

Back to the topic of what MMOs are. Most people have stated the facts. Lots of people. Some form of persistent character progression and usually a persistent world.

If you're looking for a commentary on MMOs though, I will say that while most of us can probably recognize one when we see it, MMOs are generally much less than they can be. A lot of this is due to developers and publishers playing it 'safe' and not stepping outside the carefully marked lines left by their predecessors. And yet more of it is due to the changing face of the people who play these games.

For instance, not all of the things from the EQ era are necessarily bad in an MMO(in moderation), but most modern MMOs have worked incredibly hard to remove or minimize them to such an extent that the idea of actual challenge in MMOs is laughable and met with general scorn.

I'm hoping that the future brings more MMOs not afraid to take risks and try new things. Or at least add more of the things that make single player games compelling. But then I'm one of those weird people that like all my games to actually contain some varied gameplay.

Comfortable or not...it actually makes some sense though. Most of the stuff that happens in comics in terms of hero abilities is literally impossible. Getting powers from accidents that would normally kill or maim is so far out of the realm of possibility that it isn't even funny.

Like being hit by lightning and having that give you the power to control and project electricity. How would you even be able to do that, even if your body could be unaffected by carrying that kind of electrical charge? Your entire nervous system would have to be reconstructed to be able to let you shoot lightning bolts and create barriers of electricity. Or use it to fly etc.

The canon basically proposes that none of that stuff WAS possible before Statesman and Recluse got their hands on the Well.

So for me it's kind of nice that they explain why stuff that shouldn't happen is now so common place that we can have a literal city of heroes.

Bad Sam! You get a time out!

Did you really really REALLY need them?

Heh...it seems that listening to 'us' isn't always a great idea.