Thorizdin_LotD

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The intrinsic assumption here is that the game is designed as an object-oriented hierarchy. Based on the information we have about how a lot of things function in the game, this appears to be virtually impossible to be true. There have been many instances of the devs admitting that particular critters' AI was malfunctioning to not use particular powers, or use them much less frequently than intended, and that generally centered around specific critters, not all critters in general, which implies changes to the behavior of a specific type of critter is usually isolated from all others of different types (although there are probably generic "behavior libraries" that all the critters can tap into).

Its also very likely that many "special" critters like Hamidon are entities unto themselves, with special coding that determines their basic behavior (separate from certain general things that are likely true by default for all critters, like their tendancy to shoot at you when they detect you).

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I did want to strongly agree here. It's terribly obvious that almost nothing in the game uses any sort of behavioral or value inheritance, even where it would seemingly be very useful and not unduly expensive.

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I won't say that they necessarily did a good job, but a discussion over how and why Hasten was so hard to fix led me to believe that the designers did use OO design. Perhaps I'm just not seeing it, but what makes you think that mob behavior isn't based off a common class? I don't see many variations that I'd consider difficult to code or would require lots of overridden methods (or whatever they call it in C these days).

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If you won't pull out the stops to make Hamidon's AI very tricky, or his powers design more intricate, you're even less likely to ever think its worth it to make Hellion-AI more tricky or make nemesis bosses more intricate. And thats not a good thing.

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I honestly don't think they can, at least not easily. I'd imagine that somewhere high up on the class inheritance tree there is a class that is the parent of all the mobs in the game and changing Hami is going mean a lot of work and/or risk of bugs. That's not say that its not worth while, but that its hard.

PS is still very much a great power, since its the ultimate aww crap button in the game. The only exception to this is the ultimate BBG in the game, Hami. I've always thought it was moronic that the greatest danger to the entire City of universe couldn't hit through PS. To make matters worse he not only couldn't destroy Phantom Army decoys, but was too stupid to realize that he couldn't destroy them.

They certainly are different, though the people who play them are generally the same. If we think about how each big hit MMO drew more and more players in, this becomes pretty apparent when they didn't just steal players from previous MMO's. I am watching Fury with a great deal of interest.

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Like every time when I'm in the arena, cant use my nemesis staff. Whats wrong with using the nemesis staff? I dont know. Its just 1 power I cant seem to use.. maybe its because I'm unlucky?

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No temp powers from outside the arena function there, the vet reward powers are "permenant" temp powers and are not allowed.

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I'll summerize what I said on page 4, of the 13 million plus people that were playing MMORPGs in July 06, less than 400,000 players were playing PVE only games. Of the PVE only games you can track, all but one, disney's toontown for kids (with 110,000 subscribers and meant for pre teens), has been dying.



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Have toyu tried ciomparing the figures for games that ONLY have PvP and games that do contain PvE as well? I don't know how many people play Counterstrike or Battlefield or all those other twicth games with no PvE content, but that would give another way of looking at your premise.

You say:
Games with PvE only = fail
Games with PvE+PvP = win
Therefore PvP = win.

Maybe we need a
Games with PvP only = ?
to fully compare?


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I did just that:

There are more people playing pure PvP games online today, (counting RTS and FPS games only) than are playing all MMO's combined.

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Lets just look at CS since its the grand daddy of em all.

In 2002 there were over 30,000 populated Counter-Strike servers on line.

In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time.

in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike at the same time (though this number includes some of the later releases as well).

According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 6.177 billion minutes of playing time each month.

Thats a game that was released in 2000 (started as a mod back in 1999).

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While CS is one of the most popular games still around today, its not as dominant as WoW is in the MMO market. BF, BF2, UT, and numerous other FPS games achieve similar numbers, this doesn't even take into account the other common pure PvP game type the RTS. Warcraft and Starcraft contribute significantly to the total.

Its interesting that so many people are convinced, mainly I think because its what they enjoy doing, that PvE MMO content is popular among gamers. It is popular among current MMO players, and will continue to be as long as the genre exists, but when we look at gamers as an overall population things are significantly different. This has a direct impact on how gaming companies will be creating MMO's because very very few MMO gamers enter the MMO market without having been a gamer before and playing a variety of other types of games.

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Then polling existing customers is half your battle. Why not do it?

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Would you suggest a method that could create an accurate result? AFAIK, players aren't allowed to create polls via the forums....

Not to mention SB and IR....

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You have some very good points, but I would like to suggest that you don't try to shoot yourself in the foot with false premises and bad logic. The statements you have said here may or may not be true — you haven't defined your terms or cited sources — but what follows from them is just plain bad logic.
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1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.
2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.
3. There are more players playing pure PvP games than all MMO's combined.

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You could use this same logic to say, "Well over half of the people in the world use forks. Therefore, we should abolish chopsticks."

Or, "Most of the United States is white. Therefore, white people should be in charge of every committee, because that would best represent the interests of the majority."

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Since this data that I collated, I'll respond. First, only someone who didn't understand statistics would make ludicrous statements like that. Second, I understand statistics. Third, that data was never used that way AFAIK, but rather to point out that PvP is popular among gamers in general. This is an important point because in today's market new MMO players are almost always already gamers. In other words, the MMO they bought isn't the first game they've played seriously. Its not matter of what makes people happy that are already here, though that is important as well, its a matter of attracting a larger audience or at least staying ahead of attrition. It was also not intended to show that PvP is more important than PvE, but rather than PvP is a critical component of a successful MMO deployment today, which is not at all the same thing as saying that PvE isn't.

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PVP is very popular — in certain circumstances, in certain games, depending on implementation and environment and context. Chess is a highly popular sport but it cannot be used as an example to prove, ipso facto, that everybody who plays chess wants PVP in this game. Ditto Monopoly, Parcheesi, cribbage, Battlefield 1942, online gambling, backgammon, and the stock market. They may be considered PVP activities but it does not allow you to make statistical judgements about this population.


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First, you make several errors in logic here. AFAIK no one made claims that correlated chess players with PvP players except here in an intentionally ridiculous example. Instead what was looked at was the popularity of other 3D online games that include several key similarities to MMO's and other MMO's, trying to say that comparing the features of similar products doesn't make sense is at best uneducated and at worst an intentional misdirection of the discussion. Finally, the last and biggest mistake was not trying to draw conclusions about players already in this game, because of its lack of PvP for several years and the questionable implementation of PvP that would be a nonsensical comparison. What was I doing was looking at things that are a popular in other popular online games and especially other MMO's.

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If you would like to best have a means of determining how popular PVP is here then I would advocate an in-game survey of some kind. That would allow you to draw the correct conclusions.

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If I could, I would do exactly this, but again the key question isn't what attracts current customers...its what can I do attract new customers _and_ keep my current ones. I'm sorry to be brusque here, but this post simmered in my brain for a couple of hours before I could actually reply to it.

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For the PvE folks reading this, no, Vengeance is not meant to stack in PvE, either and the change, when it happens, will apply in those encounters as well.

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Will this be true of NPCs (Nemesis Lieutenants), as well?

If so, I can accept this.

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Please make all relevant nerfs apply to NPC powers too. "NPC Cheating" where NPCs get to play by different rules than us is very annoying to players.

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I would prefer that NPC's operate by the same rules that players do, but generally speaking "cheating" by NPC's is a neccesary part of balancing PvE encounters specifically because the NPC's don't have a human being directing them and will never be as challenging because of that. Now, I'll agree that this particular instance can be annoying, but hardly game breaking.

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Perhaps I'm being obtuse here, but I don't see a point. What have you presented that hasn't been refuted? What evidence, other than timing, have you or anyone else presented?

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Well, let's see... you haven't refuted *anything* I have said, at all. So "everything I've said so far" is the answer to the first question. As for the second, well, "everything I have said so far" is also the answer.

Thor, you're usually better than "your point is refuted because I say it is". What's up? Not feeling very good today?

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Jack, please no word games here, I seriously don't see a point. Please write in little words since I seem to be slower today than normal.

Sounds a bit obsessive

I can't imagine thats common, but I don't think it would be hard to exclude really die hard badgers from the data set. A filter that looked at the total number of badges and/or one that looked for key hard to earn badges that aren't needed for Accolades would screen that pretty easily.

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Castle, one thing that would be very helpful for this kind of discussion would be some numbers that we don't have access to. For example, the question of replay value of the PvP zones in CoX could be well demonstrated by looking at the number of a couple of badges.

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I cannot release those numbers. That would have to come from someone above me!


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To be 100% honest, I'm not convinced badge counts will be a fair metric.

Fact. I have three badge-"ladies of the evening" ( ).

Fact. I do not like PvP.

Fact. Two of the three (that are high enough level) have a good may of the "PvP only" badges, because I'm willing to put aside my distaste of PvP long enough to get into the needed PvP zones and get the badges.

So what you may get is a measure of the combined numbers of PvP folks, and those that will tolerate something they dislike long enough to get something they desire.

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Do you have the reputation badges? If so which ones? I've been under the belief (perhaps mistaken) that most people interested in badges avoid those, but do pursue the you've been in X zone for Y time which doesn't of course mean you have to PvP.

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So you've gone from ignoring a common cause to red herring. Care to actually address my point?

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Perhaps I'm being obtuse here, but I don't see a point. What have you presented that hasn't been refuted? What evidence, other than timing, have you or anyone else presented?

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1) You have the default To Hit value (ie no buffs), your target has no Defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

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50% (note, this is problematic because there are two types of buffs that affect the current equation).

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2) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has no defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?


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95%
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3) You have the default To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

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5%

From the defenders role I'd want the same 1 in 20 chance to be hit.

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4) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

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50% and 50%

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However, I remember the "good old days" pre-travel suppression, and at that point no great cloud of players were demanding that travel powers needed gimping, and there was no indication whatsoever pre-PvP that it would occur.

In short, it was a problem that no one noticed because it was causing no one any difficulties. Had it not been for PvP, no one would have cared.

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Jack you can use Latin all you won't, it still doesn't make your argument hold water. The devs have smacked dozens if not hundreds of things that they thought allowed leveling too quickly, most of which didn't generate a single complaint before the correction and many afterwards. Aggro cap changes, AoE limits, and to a certain extent ED are examples of this kind of change. Making the Banished Pantheon in DA harder is another.


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Just FYI: Ignoring a common cause is just as much a logical fallacy as post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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I'm sorry, but I see lots of people making unsubstantiated connections and basing their arguments on assumptions, nothing more.

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I did read in a thread that has been removed about Jousting in PvP that Statesman replied to.

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I'm sorry, but I don't believe that thread ever existed, at least not in a form that said the reason was PvP. IIRC, the devs have never admitted to a strong link between PvP and the introduction of suppression. If they had, this debate wouldn't have been going on for years the way that it has.

(the rest of your post was nothing but propaganda so I didn't bother to respond to it.)

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Many folks (like me) disagreed with this facade and called it what it truly was, a significant correction of a PvP problem that significantly affected PvE playstyle. My sarcasm above clearly reflects my chagrin with the devs' answer to jousting. There were no problems with PvE for 4 isssues. As soon as PvP reared it's ugly head, all of a sudden it was all about how unfair we had been exploiting the AI of all those poor NPCs. Thank you, very much, Dread Lords.

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You know, its funny I keep seeing people post this and it always make me laugh. I certainly exploited travel powers in PvE with my Blaster (first character) and suppression is more likely to be negated in (team) PvP via buffs than it is in PvE. I can't say what the devs "true" motivations are/were, but to claim that there was no PvE justification for making changes to how travel powers operate in combat is false. Would if have been changed if PvP were never introduced? I don't know, but at a minimum the situation is more complex than you've presented it.

*anti-smirk*

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Sorry, but if a problem doesn't actually present any difficulty, then its not a problem; it wasn't presenting any difficulty before PvP, ergo it was not a problem prior to PvP.

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Whose definition? The devs said it was a problem in PvE and numerous players have stated how it was used in an exploitive fashion. Correlation is _not_ causation. The fact that travel suppression was added in after does not indicate that it was added because of PvP. AFAIK the only evidence that PvP influenced the decision to add suppression is the fact that it came shortly after the initial introduction of the arena.

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I don't want long and boring (no one's health bar is even moving), I want long and interesting, as in at the five minute mark, its still not certain who's going to win at the ten minute mark, but you know one of you will by then (and ten minutes is probably excessive except in an arena match where both players actually explicitly want such a fight: I was thinking on a timescale of 90-180 seconds, enough to defuse the alpha strike to a moderate advantage, not an overwhelming one).

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That's exactly what happens when skill level is similar _and_ you're not talking about 1v1's between a support character and a high damage character.

The current mechanics work quite well, given that the first kill in most high skill level arena seldom occurs within the first 2 minutes.

To Neuronia, don't want to see matches that take 10 minutes to get one kill, and I'll have to say that if you're getting spiked in the first few seconds I'd say you're falling victim to be being in a mismatch. Yes, its possible for a Blaster or a Stalker to load up on Reds and go for a two shot, but you should be ready for that, after all you're inspiration tray is the same size.

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If they slowed down combat or PvP, I'd quit as well.

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I don't threaten to quit, and I don't claim to represent anyone's opinion but mine in this regard, but if MUO has combat that lasts more than three seconds, that will be very attractive to me. I would rather combat be designed like a poker game than a hand of blackjack, which is what CoH combat currently is.

My longest running issue with CoH is that I would rather kill 100 tough villains that take minutes to kill and then level, than mow down eight thousand blades of grass.

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I agree with the sentiment (at least in PvP) but again, I think this happens now. Its only in mismatches that it doesn't. A FF/Rad Defender trying to solo in SC is going to be chewed up pretty quickly when he goes against most of the non-support villains, at least from a statistical point of view. He or she certainly won't have a good kill to death ratio. A good player will generally not try and solo with a support character, but instead look for a team and provide a tremendous amount of support. On the other hand, a good player with a BS or Spines / Regen Scrapper can rack up a good kill to death ratio because he can pick off the people trying to solo with squishies in relative safety. The same is largely true of Stalkers and carefully played Blasters. (Brutes and Tanks can play safely solo, but tend to lack the burst damage to kill much.)

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Our devs' vision is just fine for you & you may gladly follow them wherever they take the game. However, some folks aren't as happy with some of the decisions they've made, and it's a privilege to add my voice where appropriate. It doesn't make us wrong. It makes us different and no less credible than you.

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Its a completely different animal to say you aren't happy with travel power suppression from saying I don't like this change and its all the fault of X. I don't know many people who are happy with suppression, but it allowed something they have consistently (and well before PvP existed here) squashed, which is leveling faster than the designers intended. The developers have modified everything from Epic power's to mob's resistance and behavior (DA) to reduce leveling speeds when they thought it was excessive.

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No need to apologize, especially since there isn't much you've said to discount my opinion. Strangely enough, none of the strategies you've mentioned that supposedly "exploit" the mechanics of the game are considered game-breaking enough to warrant a "fix" from our dev team for some reason. I wonder why ...

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Based on what? You're opinion? You're welcome to that, but simply saying I don't believe the earth is round doesn't make it so. The devs have consistently said this was an exploit in PvE, based on what evidence do you counter that?

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I strongly believe that just because they were called travel powers shouldn't imply they should only have been restricted for travel use. Travel Suppression was a mistake made long ago that some folks either just don't remember or care about anymore, apparently. I do.

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Lots of people made assumptions about Suppression, and despite being told they were wrong by the developers and players they still refuse to believe that there couldn't have been something worth changing purely for PvE...could there? I can say this, there is no method in the game today that allows a solo player to advance as fast I could before suppression was added.

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IME, the only time I have short battles is either in the Arena where the time contstraint forces the action and you have two people who want to fight a priori, or against go-for-broke blasters or people who just aren't very good at PvP.

I recall a fight against a BS/Regen in Warburg that took me 35 minutes to finally beat him and it was a monument to patience and tactical planning and execution.


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I have to agree (for the most part) with Mieux here. PvP combat is not a series of insta kills when the player's skill level is close to being even. When high skill team PvP groups have a match, the total kill count is often below 30 and its not uncommon to see matches where neither team gets into double digit kills in 10 or 20 minute matches. These are groups that would get over a hundred kills against an inexperienced team. I don't agree that the arena causes short battles.

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Many folks (like me) disagreed with this facade and called it what it truly was, a significant correction of a PvP problem that significantly affected PvE playstyle. My sarcasm above clearly reflects my chagrin with the devs' answer to jousting. There were no problems with PvE for 4 isssues. As soon as PvP reared it's ugly head, all of a sudden it was all about how unfair we had been exploiting the AI of all those poor NPCs. Thank you, very much, Dread Lords.

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You know, its funny I keep seeing people post this and it always make me laugh. I certainly exploited travel powers in PvE with my Blaster (first character) and suppression is more likely to be negated in (team) PvP via buffs than it is in PvE. I can't say what the devs "true" motivations are/were, but to claim that there was no PvE justification for making changes to how travel powers operate in combat is false. Would if have been changed if PvP were never introduced? I don't know, but at a minimum the situation is more complex than you've presented it.

*anti-smirk*

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I cannot release those numbers. That would have to come from someone above me!


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That I expected, but if you could mention that this data would be nice for public consumption even if it had to be turned into percentages or otherwise obfuscated.

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I think most people think of XBox Live in the same way they think of their ISP -- it's a requirement to get to the content they want. A necessary evil.


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But a significant amount of that content is in the form of FPS games. Halo, Rainbow Six, etc. make up a huge portion of that market so the concept that FPS players won't pay monthly fees seems to not be true, at least not in all cases.

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True enough. Most end users, however, don't pay for those.


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I don't have any real method for determining how many people pay, but I can say that there are many more private servers than there are public ones and any gaming clan will have their own server. Does it equal the same fees that a ~15 dollar a month MMO subscription fee equal? I don't think so, but between Ventrilo, game server, and web hosting I think its pretty close. I know exactly how much it costs us to keep 150 Ventrilo slots each month (thankfully we don't have to pay for web hosting since a member donates some server space) and we have rented our own FPS game servers (and will again I'm sure) despite most of our members not being hardcore FPS players.

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And that's really what my point is -- so long as a "free" alternative with roulghly equivalent feature sets exist in gaming, players will tend to go with those, rather than pay for a monthly subscription. Going back to your XBox live question -- there isn't an easily accessible "free" alternative to XBox Live. The customers are a captive audience -- if they want to play their games multiplayer, they pretty much have to have XBox Live. (One of my complaints about the 360 is how few games I can play multiplayer with my family.)

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If that is true, then why would anyone play any online fantasy RPG besides Guild Wars? While money is a motivator, I don't think FPS games are quite a free as they are represented and I don't think money is as powerful as we sometimes think. Money gets attention in many cases because for the people who it affects it has a big impact. However we know that the gaming population is getting older (NPR said the other day that the average age of "gamers" today is 34, though I can't find the reference this has some of the same data NPR and gaming ages

As the average age of gamers increases, money becomes less of an issue.