Starsman

Within a fantasy setting, I can see where the vendor trash loot comes from. It is not uncommon for D&D players (let’s face it, most fantasy MMO designers are crazy about D&D) to collect as much loot as they can carry, and after the play session is over go to town to attempt to sell the loot to make as much money as they can. It's just part of those games and the sense of victory to play the whole "and in the morning, they sold their loot" thing.

Despite how action oriented these games go, at their core they are just trying to streamline the feel and satisfaction they are used in D&D, and this is something they feel must be part of any such game.

I don't like it, but I can see why it's there on almost all fantasy MMO.

Still no clue why it even exists in TOR, though. Even with companions taking care of it... it still is a chore that has no room in the Star Wars universe.

There is more to it than it being a good or bad game. A lot of people play City of Heroes not because of it being casual, but because it's just not another frigging fantasy MMO.

Outside of the fantasy realm, CoH was just the best there is and was, not just among super hero mmos.

That's not to mention the super sidekick system. Even one to one sidekicking like at CoH launch is not acceptable for me anymore. I need a game where the whole team can be set to act at the same level of effectiveness. Few games out there do that (Champions online and perhaps Star Trek?)

I admit there is bitterness in me not wanting to give NCSoft any more money.
I admit there is bitterness in me being convinced Paragon got shut down so the ArenaNet studio was able to hire more manpower.

But those are just spice on why I am not touching the game.

Wildstar may tempt me a bit more, but I have zero information on the game, as far as I know it may be a space skinned classic MMO. If I find that game more appealing once its closer to launch, then I will be re-visiting my grudge with NCSoft.

It's called hyperbole. As all hyperbole, there is a real origin behind it. The "exploit a bug and be banned overnight" is a thing that I only seem to find in fantasy MMOs (and KOTOR but they treated that almost as a fantasy game.)

Maybe it's because they expect scifi & super hero mmos to be way more chaotic and active, but I don't recall hearing such complaints about exploits leading to plenty of banning in games like CoH, Champions or DCUO. Outside of hacking incidents nor have I heard anything about Eve Online but then again, the game is designed in a way where you can progress even logged off.

Thanks for the explanation, Johnny. I still got to say: I don't think banning here is the right approach. This sounds exploitative indeed, but it sounds like something that simply should be fixed ASAP.

Controlling exploits via terrorizing the user base, in my experience, just leads to players being more discrete about the exploits.

The hyperbole case I mentioned at first about "pathing issues" is an actual case from my early EQ days. Not something that happened to me, but something that did happen. There were some [not-so]rare places in the world where critters would not walk to, and players would use them to safely kill for essentially free xp. Anyone seen using these tactics would be banned. This resulted in players finding them in desolate areas and exploiting them without anyone ever finding out about them.

Got to say, the 99% NPC damage still rewarding a player that inflicted 1 point of damage thing... that does not sound like leaving the door unlocked and letting a thief go in. It sounds like the home owner moving his entire property, computers, and furniture into the middle of the street for anyone to grab then being upset because some one dare pick something. I'm shocked that made it out of beta.

Auto attacking is an exploit?

Far jump from leaving an AFK character auto-attacking to entering a house stealing.

A punishment should only be as severe as the harm caused by it. If the player went around hacking into accounts and stripping characters of everything, ban the hell out of him. But if all he is doing is standing AFK to get some reward from a badly designed "reward everyone" system, then you patch the frigging undesired behavior, not go banning everyone involved.

And the AE farms may be a great example. Despite the public warning, I don't recall there ever being any mass banning due to it.

Nonesense? You just said youreslf that ArenaNet punishes people for bumping into their bugs!

AND added that you are happy about it.

The rigt approach is to hotfix it, ASAP, not to ban people for developer's mistakes.

Inherent Stamina only fixed the stamina issues. Truth is, you always were able to get both (Stamina and Quick Recovery) and quite a few players did.

You also can still do so.

In addition, due to the nature of regeneration, Willpower has next to no damage typing holes.

In addition, Willpower has zero holes in it's mez protectction (usually you have a fear, confuse or kb hole... or all.)

On top, regeneration becomes extremely powerfull once combined with external buffs or IO set bonuses, something that was about to become insane with Issue 24 (it was going to be rather easy to get 85ish resist to smash/lethal.)

At the end, the set's only "penalty" is it's poor taunt aura's effectiveness (as taunt aura, it still is extremely good scaling power and a decent -tohit debuff.) The set had to keep at least one penalty at the end. It's a beast of a set and time has only made it even more so.

Some are being so defensive, they consider "I don't like it" or "the game is not for me because of these aspects" to be an insult.

I don't think you can objectively say that since you doing the exact opposite.

Interesting anecdote that applies here: this weekend I have a conversation with my best friend, again touching ground in this. After a while defending GW2 on every point I said that *I personally* didn’t care for it, he (who is a very objective individual) paused and admitted that he was being overly defensive of a game he did not make. He knows that me not caring for the game won’t kill the game, but he does feel a fanboism (his word not mine) urge to defend it tooth and nail. Amazing the kind of thing that can be resolved easily while you have a face to face conversation.

It would be great if more people in this thread accepted that not everyone will like GW2, that there are mechanics that will be loathed by many gamers, and that City of Heroes may be the most likely MMO community to find that type of player.

And yes, this is a City of Heroes forum, if some one tries to sell a game to us, we are likely to turn around and explain why we just wont buy it.

He makes these videos for a living. He also is considered press for many publishers and may regularly have reviews ready on say one due to advance embargo copies.

If you want to support the guy, better go to his website and watch reviews there. YouTube pays crap for ad impressions, he lists videos there only to help new viewers find his stuff.

I got to say: no clue where I read that. I just read they expected it to do better. Not sure if that means they expected more units to move, or that management expected the game to be able to handle the ability to sell more units.

Edit: actually the later may be more reason to find the need to relocate budget to that project, taking it away from what they consider a title they would have to let go off anyways.

I'm not "boycotting" nor even promoting that solution simply because I know that just in the same way they consider the CoH profits were insignificant, that "small" number of players also cant bring enough profits to matter. From NCSoft's point of view, if no CoH player gets GW2, they are likely to not care.

This is not the first game they shut down, they are very likely already aware of what the true percentage of lost players is, and what the percentage of players that just cry a week and then move on to another NCSoft title is.

Also: from what I have read so far, GW2 didnt sell as well as expected without any boycott or anything. GW2 didnt pay for their lower than expected sales. We did.

Really?

Last I check, the 250+ employee studio is still hiring even more people at the same time 80 employees at Paragon Studio got kicked in their buttocks and out the doors.

I don't see ArenaNet being punished financially in any of this.

And there is no reason why we should not expect the game to be canceled the same way as soon as it starts performing only marginally well. That's the main reason I will not give NCSoft any more money.

So... at max level, if everyone does some big raid, everyone gets a purple drop? There is no rare purple drops in the game, unless everyone gets one? There is no rule saying "only one purple per defeat that will be randomly given to one of the participants"?

Well, Johnny... I am forced to thank you. I had some interest to try the game out of pure curiosity (because it DOES look gorgeous, despite my dislike of outdoor content) but this here kills it for me 100%.

If there is no point to build for survivability, there is no point for me to try it since thats the gameplay I like.

It's the main reason I gave up Aion quickly (second being PvP grieffing) where my tank had to rest after every single fight but the "squishy" safely kited everything in the game, and the DPS killed fast enough to not be forced to nearly full HP bar downtime after every single solo fight.

Would be nice if you used a less aggressive tone. But to answer the question that puzzles you:

I am not a lot of people, I am me. I don't do TFs more than once, ever, on any character. Only exceptions is if there is a revamp to the specific TF.

Trials? I only ran one iTrial and only once. Had the trials been structured in a more apt way, a way that made sense for it to be a common occurrence, I may had been more into incarnate progression. As it is, the most annoying thing I done in this game was run Dark Astoria a few times to grind up IXP. Never unlocked Hybrid nor did i got beyond T1 on any tree (besides Alpha.)

Radio missions? Nop. Did them once, again in a bit of a grind, just for badges. I rarely took the rescue missions, though. Mostly would speed run them, and again, not one of the game's finest moments. But again: those are exceptions that I went through because I decided to go for badges instead of experience.

The fact that you defeat Praetor White 100 a month does not get tossed in my face, though. If I fly by the open world version of those zones, I wont see people killing him over and over. Chronos Titan may be the closest thing to that. Even then only seen him twice, and the second one was because my then SG called in for help.

Anyways, point is, your indoor activities are not tossed in the face of those that are walking about doing other activities, therefore can be experienced in isolation without having to see others repeating them in a critter version of The Groundhog Day.

Store boxes tend to boost sales for a limited time. In addition, the idea of a game that lets you make your own content can be an extremely cool marketing pitch. Due to this Architect didn't just release as an issue, it also shipped a boxed version.

Architect Edition was the first box set available in stores since GvE's 2006 release. That should boost some interest in the game.

Because no one would even consider that NCSoft would allocate Paragon Studios budget towards those titles.


Secret project was never announced. As far as we know, it was intended to be F2P from day one. What is more likely is that it was not yet another fantasy mmo, therefore too big of a gamble. May do better by moving that budget towards the latest fantasy mmo maintenance.

Every character has his own timeline, I would actually be rather pissed if the game locked my alts from being able to do the content I did with my main.

I don't think you can see the point, though, thats why you see no difference. In a normal MMO, after I stop the Marrowsnap (for example) I just have to stand in the same spot and wait for him to respawn, then see a line of people killing him. For me that kills immersion drastically. Even walking by that area again a few days later, if I see Marrowsnap again standing in the corner, I will feel I never achieved anything.

With instances, that is hidden. Others get to kill Marrowsnap, and unless I'm venturing on some one else's mission, or I time travel, I wont be seeing Marrowsnap again unless he escapes and is in a new mission with a new goal and story behind him.

You don't see a difference, thats cool. It means it does not bother you. But it bothers me and it's one of the reasons I personally dislike world-missions. CoH has a few bits along those lines but they tend to be the exception, not the rule.

Also, with newer phasing tech, I was also able to permanently (from my character's perspective) change Atlas Park! Mission after mission I was able to put a stop to outdoor activities.

Think WoW does something like that since the last expansion but have not tried it to see how far they take it.

Again: Its cool if for you it makes no difference. I am only explaining so you see why for me (and a few others) it IS significant.

There is a difference between running the same content over and over again with the same character, to having every single alt run the same content due to lack of options. The later was what people complained about in this game.

Well... there is also grinding Trials and TFs, but I never bothered with that stuff.