Slashman

And why do you think it would be desirable to the developers to have a brand new game populated with insanely rich players who have complete economical freedom?

Also...you think your IOs would be usuable in a brand new COX? That's laughable.

I wouldn't say it needs to be gone entirely. I don't want the game to become too static or predictable. However, it needs to be tailored so it makes snese for the type of enemy you face.

Zombies...should not run for instance. And mobs who do run should not leave the area of the fight entirely and forget who they were fighting. Give them debuffs to indicate their demoralized state that makes them easier to dispatch. There are lots of ways to make a fleeing enemy feel more like part of the game instead of an awkward and annoying piece of bad AI programming.

I'm not sure that's what happened with EQ2 exactly. It was more a case where a lot of the stalwart EQ players just didn't want a new game that was different from the original. So they stuck with EQ. It's still running to this day after all.

In any case, why would porting your characters over to a new COH be a priority? It's unlikely to have the same power structure, character attributes and mechanics as the original. You would definitely not be starting at the same character levels(as that would be ludicrous from a dev perspective).

So what exactly is it that you think players would keep besides a costume look?

I have to agree with Arcanaville on this. Porting to a new COX game would be worthless.

I would not have expected this from you...but it was funny as heck!

I'm pretty sure it's been stated that the devs don't actually use AE to make their content. And you're right in that I have no idea what percentage of effort went toward player only and what went toward developer tool improvement. Of course, unless you're part of the dev team, neither do you.

In addition to that, I do believe that Castle himself made a note of all the extra effort in support that AE called for(hello mass bans and character deletions etc.) and that he wasn't exactly pushing for it. Obviously that decision wasn't in his hands.

While this might well all be true, I still have to think that as well as who is using AE, one still has to consider how many are using it when you talk about its value versus other niches.

All the more reason for official content to be made smarter and with more options for repeated playthroughs. This is why I think that GR brings something that has more value than a lot of the things that have been in the game previously. A new way of making content and making it more interesting.

On paper I can agree that it looks that way. However, it didn't quite work out that way in practice. I have always thought that the niche in AE were the players who would actually create quality content, not so much the people who would utilize that content(after it was stripped of all the horrible exploits).

That doesn't suggest to me that these valuable people would not fulfill those roles minus AE. Please note that I'm in no way saying that those kinds of folks aren't valuable to the community.

Wait...you actually have a Praetorian called Goatee SwellGuy? *snicker*

I'm of the opinion that the effort and time put into AE vs. what has been gotten out of AE is probably somewhat less than other niches in the game.

Especially in terms of how it was talked about and marketed by the devs. If something gets added that satisfies some folks and not others...that's fine. Day Jobs I can certainly live without. I think I have more of an issue with pouring resources into something that not only doesn't end up doing what the original purpose of it was, but then also costs time and effort to police and fix due to abuse. Not to mention generated some very negative press for the game.

Compared to some of the other niches you mentioned...I don't think it's quite the same.

From my viewpoint, Tip missions come much closer to filling a content void than AE missions ever will. More regular content is probably what most people were desiring rather than feature/reward limited player content.

Apparently we never really knew what an altaholic was until Candlestick showed us how it is done.

To be fair, all that stuff applies to every single other MMO in existence. So are we saying that every single other MMO is showing the same population/earning trends?

Those games were made from the ground up to be moddable by anyone with enough time and know-how on purpose.

I get the impression that COX did not have this thought in mind when it was made. That is to say, it was not made in such a way as to allow easy changes to its core systems. An example being, that adding Power Customization took a lot of work. Conversely, there are plenty of Oblivion mods that not only customize spells and abilities, but created new ones from scratch and added things like dragon riding etc.

It seems that most MMOs back in the day were not made with easy upgrading in mind. That in itself, takes a lot of work. Someone has to make the tools and test them and it all adds to development costs. More modern MMOs should have sidestepped these mistakes(hopefully) and left ample room for easier alteration by game developers.

That said, the games you gave examples of are all single player RPGs. They don't have to deal with a gameworld populated by thousands of players at a time and balance internet latency with rendering performance across a variety of systems and hardware.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 are masterful examples of a flexible game design. You can pretty much find a mod that does anything you want for these games.

The engine used for the Neverwinter Nights and Witcher games is great, but limited as well. The Witcher 2 is being made with a new engine that allows for more dynamic combat that was impossible in the first game. I'm eagerly looking forward to it. Geralt is the closest thing to a fantasy version of James Bond that I have ever seen. So many women...so little time.

I don't think that anyone here really can answer your questions. That's the whole point.

The fact is that most people here(Nethergoat being a good example) don't really care how close the game is to 'failing'. As long as they can play it right now and for the foreseeable future.

Another hefty dose of reality that we all have to learn to swallow is that even if the game were at death's door, the devs would not tell you. They literally could not tell you, even if they knew, because they are beholden to a corporation that has rules.

No one knew that Tabula Rasa was close to shutting down until the very end. I was a player and looking forward to some of the updates they were working on.

Last thing. The devs are probably the last people to know when a MMO game is going to die(unless they self-publish and self-fund). That's a decision made at a corporate level that developers don't get to be in on directly in most cases.

In the end, I'd reserve this kind of thing until a few months after GR. It's too close to the launch of a new expansion to make any kind of prediction. I may have some concerns over how they market this game but I don't have any control over that.

Besides, even if the game did die, do you know how many other games there are out there to play? My Steam list is full of stuff that I haven't finished yet(and some I have yet to install) and more games are getting announced every month. Heck, I just saw the previews for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine and I'm stoked.

A word of warning: Even if you are 100% correct in whatever you are trying to prove(and I'm not saying you are), this kind of thing is going to get you good and flayed around here.

Were I you, I'd just quietly let it drop and die. I am not you, however, and I think you are probably going to keep pressing until something explodes. Or is deleted, banned etc.

It occurs to me that I'd really like to see a single player game set in the COX universe. Something with action along the lines of Prototype.

As a matter of fact I already did buy the parts and upgrade my system in anticipation of the games I want to play.

It just seemed to make sense...

Soooooo....upgrade maybe????

This is my experience with Doms too. But the once every 6 mission EB has not ever caused me to quit. And as I said...I took down BABs with no pets.

As someone who tries to not use inspirations often, the times I DO use them are for EBs, all of who I face as +1s with my dominators. I can't say that I've faired significantly worse with them than while playing my blasters or corruptors. Three purples and some reds really help.

If you got EB problems I feel bad for you son.
I got 99 problems but a BABs ain't one.

I was about to ask the same question. Add in the pretty hefty dominator damage buff that was given recently and I can't see what the point of his argument really is.

Maybe mind/energy is an especially difficult combo to level. But then again, there are many available combos for doms. So what is actually the issue then?

In a sense they are, among controllers, because illusion works differently in certain ways than other control sets.

There are people who don't want to do something different and will play whatever set is most popular or viewed as the default set for a given AT. Some folks are into concept only and will make whatever fits their idea of what the toon should be. Other folks just want whatever is the most efficient combination of powersets because they power game/farm etc.

I don't have anything against powerset proliferation myself, but I also wouldn't get choked up about each AT having a unique set that others don't, provided that all ATs have enough powersets to meet most any concept and build requirement within reason.

If going forward, the devs decided that the next several powersets added would each be exclusive to a single AT, I don't think I'd freak out provided each AT got something great.

Just as one might argue that there is no reason for x AT to not have a powerset, there is no rule stating that they have to get it at some point down the road.

Personally I think we be should be rolling in so many new powersets, that we don't have time to complain about missing sets from other ATs...but of course that's just fanciful thinking since we can't even get a single additional travel power set.

I don't think the devs or whoever directs them should do something simply to 'shut people up'.

Cross server teaming would only address the population problem(and yes I know there is no problem in a lot of folks' eyes) in a short term kind of way. If the game is bleeding players, that's only going to help the problem for so long.

As I said before, it is fine to sit in our comfy security blanket and say declining numbers have no effect. You can still get teams, you can still do TFs and SFs.

The longer term effect is going to be telling when expansions of the caliber and scope of GR simply don't get done anymore and/or updates start having less substance.

In the end, my current game experience is unaffected, but I'm not at all confident that this will remain the case in the long term if GR doesn't bring some decent numbers back to the game.

Forbin is right in his suggestion as to how to approach the problem. And the sad thing is that the longer they wait to truly do some effective marketing for the game, the more ineffectual it will be when they decide to actually try to do something about it.