SteelRat

Legend
  • Posts

    950
  • Joined

  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by GadgetDon View Post
    Except one must ask oneself - why did Paragon go to the trouble of introducing a Premium group of F2P, and add F2P at all? Presumably, one of the goals was having players who were players and quit for one reason or another to come back, give the game a try, and continue playing either as a resubscribed VIP or a Premium player buying points to buy some things here or there.
    Or because it was a business model that was being utilised by the industry as a whole and they knew that if they didn't change to adapt they'd get left behind and further alienating potential new players as well old ones

    Quote:
    What Twilight is saying is that the user experience for that returning player, who wants to say "OK, what's it like to play CoH now", stinks on ice. You choose a character to unlock, using one of your few slots, and surprise it's unplayable. You do manage to get a character unlocked and playable, jump in the game, and the character is weak and easily killed because it effectively has no enhancements - and the answer is "well, pay money to try this game that you decided not to pay money to play and decided to try again because Paragon said you could do so for free, or spend a half hour or so making that character workable"
    I know exactly what Twilight is saying, and I still don't understand that viewpoint. Frankly, I'm in the same boat. I played from about I6 to about I13 ish. I've tried the game again at various points along the way again and it's only relatively recently that I've resubbed for longer than a month. A months subscription to CoH realistically isn't a lot of money. You know pretty much what you're going to be getting (if you're an ex player) and it's a darn site cheaper than buying an off line game which you could well get bored of in a week, so what's to stop you subscribing for a month to try it out, and then cancelling your sub if you still don't like it before the month is out?

    I was a subscriber, and F2P system or not, I expect to subscribe for the stuff I had. If I wanted to "try" the game, the F2P system at the moment doesn't stop me from rolling a new character and doing exactly that without paying a penny. If I want access to my old characters, which I previously had to pay for by a subscription, then why wouldn't I expect to do so again?

    I think the only "fault" is the way that CoH's F2P system is marketed. "Come back and play for free.. weeeelll kinda." And in that regard, their model isn't that much different to any of the others out there (at least from what I've seen)

    Quote:
    And a lot of the potential long-term contributing and paying players just say "screw this, this is no fun at all, let me find a game where I can have some fun."
    Fun is subjective. My view is those kinds of people probably wouldn't have stayed around anyway. If you want to play (like I do), you will. If you don't, you won't. What's also worth mentioning is that this is the first time since I13 that there is enough in the game to make me WANT to stay, and would all of that stuff have been possible had there not been a method of bringing more money into the game to finance it? A number of very old SG friends have also come back for the same reasons, and I've even got my gf playing as well (she's a newbie, not only to CoH, but MMO's in general, and she is having a whale of a time!). So while there may be some people who think "screw this", there are some just like me and my friends that think "SHINEY! WOOOOT!"

    Quote:
    But if the devs made just a few changes, either "If you use one of your limited character slots to unlock a character, you can play it" or at a really base minimum "You get warned if you're unlocking a character you can't play" and "The character you unlock has its enhancements somewhat functional so you can just jump in and play", a number of them will say "Yeah, this is fun, I'm here to stay".

    It's not about "but I want it all", it's about "I want to have fun"
    I can see where you're coming from here, and I do agree that might be a better incentive for people to reactivate their subscriptions, which lets face it, is a position the Devs really want to be in.

    However, I do think the biggest problem is simply about the way F2P is marketed. It used to be that if you unsubscribed the dev team would send you periodic emails saying "Come back and play for free for 2 weeks and at the end of the two weeks we'll automatically resub you" which meant that players genuinely had "F2P" for a period to try the game again to see if they wanted to resub. As the F2P model is actually part of the whole system, rather than just a "one off email sent to past players", I wonder if people are still expecting that old way of doing things and get a big shock when they don't get it.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by GadgetDon View Post
    SteelRat, you assume TwilightPhoenix would have resubscribed, but she hadn't.

    The F2P elements of CoH have two main advantages, convincing old players to come back and give it another try, and convincing new players to give it a try.

    When an old player comes back, they start on a journey to two destinations. "Oh, yeah, I remember why I played this game, I'm back, cool (and I'll dump some money into the game as a subscription or buy points)" or "Oh, yeah, I remember why I quit this game, I'm outta here (and if anyone asks my opinion of the game, I'll explain why they should give it a pass)". It serves the dev's purposes and the other player's purposes for the returning player to end up at the "remember why they played".

    In this journey, the making a decision, it's pretty simple. Fun stuff pushes you to staying, unfun/frustrating/boring stuff pushes you to leaving. If you have existing characters of a high level, the issue with IOs adds a bunch of unfun/frustating/boring parts to getting back to playing those characters. Even if we know "well, they could just create a second build and then go through all the levels of training and then find a store and buy SOs to slot it out and then have fun"... (a) the second builds aren't a highly promoted part of the game, externally or internally, and (b) it's a somewhat long process of not-fun even if they perfectly remember their old build of what they like and how to slot them.

    Is the game DOOOOMMMEEED if this lousy out-of-box experience continues? No. But assuming we'd actually like to have a lot of people playing the game, things that turn people off are not good.
    You're still over complicating the basic facts here. What is available to you now as a subscriber compared to what was available to you as a subscriber before F2P was introduced is exactly NIL. You are not getting anything LESS by subscribing under the F2P system than when the F2P system didnt exist. In fact you're getting a whole lot more because of all the things that have been introduced for subscribers since then.

    So I really have no sympathy at all with people that say "when I subscribed I had all this stuff, and now I have to resubscribe to get it back". That kind of attitude really does beggar belief, quite frankly.
  3. So.. you were a subscriber and got a load of stuff included in the game. You then stopped subscribing and stopped playing. If you subscribe again you'll get the same stuff you had and a load more stuff that's been added since. If you don't subscribe you have to pay for some of the other stuff in a different way.

    Seems to me that if the game didn't have an F2P model, you'd probably have resubbed to try it out for a month without a second thought, but because it's advertised as "Come back for free!" it's a big load of bumm'ation when you realise that actually you can't really - at least not in the same way that you could.

    I'm amazed this thread has got as far as 3 pages in all honesty. If you're complaining that much you can't be that fussed about coming back, so my advice would be: Don't.
  4. Good info and exactly what I was after. Thanks muchly
  5. Looking at trying my hand at putting together a CoH themed video using captured in game footage and just wondering what people tend to use for the video capture.

    FRAPS is the obvious choice, but I wondered if people had experience with other offerings? Have looked at "WeGame" (which no longer works / is supported) and "SocialCam" which was terrible.
  6. SteelRat

    Battle Royale

    Two sides. Only one winner.

    Pie. vs Cake.

    Who will win?

    What are their power sets? Hero or Villain?
  7. I like the sound of Tidal Vortex over Floodgates, but that name sounds more tech or science origin rather than a (presumably) natural one of a native Atlantean, so I'm not sure it'd entirely fit the concept you're after.

    Did a bit of Googlage for Atlantean names and there seems to be a fair bit of info about that might help you come up with something more fitting?
  8. I have 3:

    Hurricane. Used properly you can use it to keep mobs in a corner or as a giant leaf blower to help the tank herd - particularly with mobs that use ranged attacks in open maps.

    TK Thrust from Mental Manip. or Hurl Boulder from Stone Melee. Slot for KB and see how far you can fling level 2 hellions across the lake in AP. Never gets old, especially if you six slot the power with a set of Kinetic Crash IO's. Mad fun.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by UnderArmor View Post
    Giant mouse sounds better than a dog.
    It was inevitable that someone was going to say this. You were that person. Well done. Have a hat.
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Siolfir View Post
    Haven't seen many - or any, really - depictions of Cerebus that have him looking like a german shepherd, complete with only one head. You could almost go there with Hell Hounds, but hiding the model works and not showing the body still works better even for that. Plus, it would be an amorphous quadriped cloud of smoke that would fit other themes as well.
    Point is from a thematic point of view a netherworld themed powerset that features a dog isn't beyond the realms of existing mythology, so to say it doesn't work for those reasons is simply wrong.

    Alright, perhaps people don't really like the implementation of it, but as I've already said, there are plenty of other powers that people have explained away quite happily. Take Illusion Control, for example. That entire SET works on the premise that all the damage a mob takes is all in its own mind and isn't physical. Even in a fantastical Super-Hero universe that idea is on shaky ground imo, and yet people are quite happy to work around that to make the character fit the concept they have in mind that uses that set.

    So why, then in those circumstances are people not so flexible when they're presented with a big ethereal pooch when our culture already provides examples where such an idea has already been successfully implemented?
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Xzero45 View Post
    If this were a set based around summoning mythical creatures, that'd be great. But it's not. Its about manipulating the shadows and creating darkness.

    And honestly, I'm pretty sure the devs weren't trying to reference anything with this. It was just a case of "Hey, we invented a dog skeleton. Let's smush this into as many things as possible for the time being." If they invented Fire Control around this time I'm sure instead of Fire Imps we'd be getting Fire Beast, and he'd just be a typical dog that's on fire.
    Darkness powers are actually based around a theme of "Tapping into the Netherworld", at least from reading the description text. My point is that the umbral beast has thematic tie-ins to that concept. Given that Hades is the Netherworld of Greek Mythology, it doesn't take too much imagination to see the link with Cerberus (although I do realise that Cerberus has three times as many heads as the UB!)

    If you don't like it, fair enough, that's up to you, but saying you think it has no thematic link just because you don't like it is rather foolish. I also reiterate the point that this game has a whole swathe of powers that people have invented lots of different reasons to "explain", so why is this one so difficult?

    As for your point about the devs using as many reasons as they can to implement their shiney new 4 legged model, I'm sure you're probably right, but so what? The theme fits, or can be made to fit with a bit of creativity - it's not like it's a giant mouse, or giraffe or something.
  12. Im obviously in the minority again. I rolled a dark / dark dom and im looking forward to ub and im not even a dog lover. I think it looks fantastic.

    To those complaining about thematic problems youve obviously never heard of Cerberus the guardian of the greek underworld Hades. Nor have you heard of Hell Hounds? With all the powers in the game that do require a bit of lateral thinking to explain id have thought this one was one if the easier ones.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5 View Post

    Clave's Wall o' Fun:
    Yes, make your character concept interesting to yourself, make it count. A lot. Or you might get way bored before 50. Don't be afraid to reroll or start a different character if the power sets don't 'work' for you (aren't fun)
    This

    Quote:
    Team (from duos to leagues and everything in between). Solo. Do tips and make some inf with merits so you won't have to worry about buying simple things like SOs (worrying about cash flow is never fun).
    Quote:
    grab each costume slot ASAP and spend some time making the new costume (or steal someone else's).
    These

    And especially...

    Quote:
    . Pick powers because you want them not because they're "the smart choices" - .
    This.

    If purely "fun" is your goal, don't focus too much on the advice of others as to "What's good". Think about a fun concept that suits the way you like to play and build your characters around that.

    I'd add the following:

    Do the Hollows arcs as soon as you get to level 6 or so. They're awesome, even now (personally I think there should be a badge for defeating Frostfire)
    Only do Radio Missions to open up new contacts if you've outlevelled existing ones, or if you particuarly like doing SafeGuards.
    "Be" your character without necessarily going fully RP.
  14. Great positive thread, rude not to contribute really:

    Fun things:

    * The whole creative process with new characters from the powers and costume to the back story and name. Has always been a big pull for me
    * Accessibility. Easy to play and pick up meaning there are few, if any, basic gameplay frustrations
    * Appeals to all levels of players. Whether you're a newbie or a harcore MMO veteran, there's something for you.
    * Player jackwads are generally in the minority. Still amazes me just how many other MMOs where if you're a gobby idiot who likes trash talking over public channels or just generally being an idiot, you're the norm rather than the exception. In CoH, while this behaviour appears to be on the increase (at least from my experience), those kinds of people are in the minority, and generally fairly easy to avoid.
    * Content old and new is always fun. Still amazes me that even though missions can be a little repetitive, there is something about some of them that means they'll always be heaps of fun. Doing the Flux arc in the Hollows and the ensuing Frosty mish, for example never gets and will never get old (imo).
    * Having / Being your very own custom superhero is cool and awesome almost by definition. City of Heroes is STILL the best implementation of that.

    Not so Fun Things:

    * Population on EU servers. I'm probably going to get stick for this, but it seems to me it IS lower than in the heyday and with more zones, and incarnate content, the population is more dispersed meaning that teaming isn't quite as abundant as it once was. Also most of my friends seem to either not play anymore or play on US servers.
    * Insufficient hours in the day. I'd like this to be increased so I can play more. Thanks.

    Just to close, I started playing in March 2006 right through until about May 2009, more or less solidly. Got bored / burnt out and unsubscribed trying a few other games along the way. Came back once or twice since then but before now there was always some of that old magic missing.

    Now though, it seems an awful lot has changed and drastically for the better, my other half is playing too so I've always got at least one guarenteed team member and she's as hooked on the game now as I was when I first started playing. I foresee another few years stint before my next hiatus
  15. I'm going to get flamed to high heaven for this opinion, but the only Star Wars film I ever really enjoyed was the original one (Episode IV). It had a fairly basic "Cowboys and Indians In Space" premise, and a fairly solid (if largely predictable) zero to hero theme. It's always seemed to me that the rest of the Star Wars story was concocted simply by going in to more detail in explaining that original one, when not only was such explanation not terribly necessary, but the basis on which that extrapolation was made being fairly flimsy in the first place. Classic "We have a cash cow, let's milk it" scenario.

    There have been a number of trilogy films that have suffered the same problem. Great first movie spoilt by the film industry coming up with a really shaky plot to either explain, or continue that story to capitalise on the success of the first one. Back to the Future or The Matrix are the ones that fit into this category, but at least they didn't do three MORE unnecessary, terrible movies as Lucas did.

    The prequel movies were equally dire, and my unending memory of them will be turning probably one of the greatest on screen villains of all time (Darth Vader) into a bratty, whining teenager.
  16. More to the point, since when did Iron Man have CLAWS?

    Fair enough, it's a build that shows melee sets can be built with some range utility in mind, but as a build to mimic Iron Man, sadly it fails.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by monkeyslap View Post
    Well there were 4 pages of comments before I posted.
    Heh.. so you power leveled the thread to get to the end quick, and once you got there had no idea what it was about
  18. Wouldn't touch any "bundled with" products as far as I could spit a rat. That includes Windows Defender, MSE and Windows Firewall.

    Free version of AVG is what I have used for years and continues to be top of the pops in internet reviews by Joe Public and Joe Pro alike. Ironically the free version which JUST acts as Anti Virus is vastly superior to the full "Security Suite" paid for product, and the free versions only real minor annoyance is that it will do its best to get you to upgrade to the pro version when you're first downloading it / installing it. Once that's complete though it'll just sit there in the system tray minding its own business.

    I would also agree that any of the big name boxed products like Norton and McAfee should be steered well clear of. On a wider note, in my experience any good, successful product that is procured by Symantec generally ends up being completely ruined by them within a few years.
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by mauk2 View Post
    "Mimic Iron Man."


    If I had to do such a thing, here's what I'd try:


    Code:
    | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
    |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
    |MxDz;863;392;784;HEX;|
    |78DA65D26D4BC2501400E08D4DC4976123D4444510044918467D8F4A8D4041A8EF6|
    |BCDAB5BAC6D6C93F263BFA5F782FE592FFFC0CECE8E12DECB2E9CFBDC73EEDDDDEE|
    |E8AE97FF3CBD3F14C4DC896384A17E1CCC2396BD60A6E57A8E375B4802B43474156|
    |7F4117318D320F736AC25D26353E6864CEB3BCC8C02DBD48F821B2F50CF5C8B05CC|
    |8DB455901F7B9EA30D99E1DBEE4CC1C1C09E59118CB2383AF7199B1456591316849|
    |6ED17FBBE6D6AB4F75C1F1961C482C50EBC500BFA9522505BC2034D788807E27F79|
    |8C8144447982582291504A70C214AD9342992AF1B1459434CA33C419AACAA094A12|
    |A4755391411442151505E202E505501C582049572541409AAB629671BE515E22249|
    |1145869C324939D9AB2408155AA782F2067195A48AD284AA3A491DE51A766F90345|
    |074F8C54D92268A9A4EBE6E2C2D140372DA246D944B900E4907E51D628DBE9886F2|
    |01719772BA283579F37FED72D2E5648F937D4E0E3819C8EB9BB01C72B3639926D7B|
    |722B305B72291E55776F386FC70F2CDC92F277F58DE0A2D|
    |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
    Interested by this post. Popped that data into mids and it gave me a Claws / Elec brute?

    Either I'm doing something wrong, or that data isn't right?

    Bit confused how a claws / elec brute mimics Iron Man?
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Madadh View Post
    Wow. Now I sorta wanna try stone melee.. But sadly, I see it's still not to be had for scrappers... That may explain why I haven't tried it yet.
    Any reason you don't like brutes? Oddly I prefer them to scrappers. I think for me scrapper means "finesse". Brute is just raw SMASH. I'm not saying one is "right" and the other is "wrong", just the concept of a brute is the one I prefer
  21. Honestly, Im surprised this idea hasn't been suggested before. In fact before costume change emotes, it was commonplace for players to use their powers in a macro to switch costumes.

    So, definitely /signed

    Edit*.. Any of the weapon based melee sets could have a He-Man style "hold aloft my magic sword" emote and a flash followed by the costume switch.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by monkeyslap View Post
    How is that any different than the lazy bums who hang out in AE all day paying millions and millions of inf to enter and let a farmer do all the work from 1-50? At least with bank missions they wouldn't have to pay another player to do all the work and they would actually have to do the work themselves.

    Then again, considering how really lazy some people are, I don't think bank missions would be farmed that much. Some idiots want to stand around doing nothing for maximum gain.

    "Looking for free farm"
    "Can somebody please farm me?"
    "Please! I need a free farm I have to gain a few levels"
    "Paying 300 mill per run from level 1-50"

    Catch my drift?
    Yup, which is why adding another method of doing this probably isn't the best of ideas.
  23. My two penn'orth:

    +1 for Electric Blast. Really disappointing and despite having an E3 blaster at level 50 who was my 2nd or 3rd ever 50 that at the moment I can't bring myself to delete Ive lost count the number of times I've considered deleting him.

    +1 for Force Fields. Another set that I want to like but just fall asleep everytime I roll one. Anyone with a bots / FF MM toon should have it deleted and forced to roll a toon that makes them have something to do. Everytime I see someone with one (and there was a time when it seemed like EVERYONE had one Redside), a part of me cries inside.

    Kinetic Melee. Probably the highest level toon I've ever deleted. Had a KM / WP brute at level 37 and it looked and sounded quite cool but it was a little slow; ultimately a bit dull to play.

    As for PBs, yes with the changes that have been made to Light Form and the form animation changes, they are better, but imo the damage is still sub par. In actual fact a PB has 3 self heals. Two in human form and one in Dwarf. I'm enjoying mine at the moment but that's only after putting money into it to more or less perma Light Form. The recharge bonus associated with that makes all the other attacks cycle faster making it a "little often" type toon. KB is easily manageable if you play intelligently, so not really a major problem imo.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino View Post

    Stone melee, on the other hand, is on this list basically *because* of the sound effects. It is, in my opinion, the most viscerally satisfying set in the game, because of how every single hit results in this echoing, crackling BOOM sound that makes you feel like you just hit them with an entire freakin planet. Once you've got stone fists, both hammers, and seismic smash, there is nothing more satisfying than walking up to a boss and unloading a giant can of BOOM WHAM SLAM BAM WHRAKOOM whoopass on him, complete with screen shake, knockdown, knockup, massive damage, and a boss-grade hold. And fault and tremor (even if tremor is only an average AoE, mechanically) both have the same satisfying smashiness paired with gobs of AoE knockdown (IMO an extremely powerful-feeling effect). It's not as strong overall as titan weapons, but it's no slouch either, and it's personally my favorite melee set.
    100% this. Sums up precisely my feelings on Stone Melee too and its my favourite melee set as well. There may be sets that are more effective on a calculator, but Stone Melee will make you grin like an idiot, every. Time. You. Play.

    I have a number of 50s, but if I had a "Main" it'd be my Stone / Fire brute, Volkanik for all the reasons listed here.