TonyV

You have a pretty damn weird way of showing it.

I'm going to go ahead and apologize to Belle on your behalf whether you want me to or not, because 1) it was totally uncalled for and I'm embarrassed for you, 2) if you knew Belle like I do, you'd know that this really did hurt her feelings when she saw your post (which I guess was your goal--congratulations for proving how little a person you are!), 3) this is the reason why, in spite of her spending more time helping people in the game than you've probably ever played, she hardly ever posts on these boards and anyone who knows her knows that's a real shame, and 4) from other posts I've read of yours, I'm guessing you probably won't have the decency to do it yourself. But hey, feel free to prove me wrong.

To the OP, most people are friendly, and having experienced both extremes, I can tell you that that is much more important than who can pull an AV or otherwise play "correctly." The most fun task force I think I've ever done was one that spanned literally over 24 hours when it got really late, we disbanded, and reconvened the next day to finish it. My teammates were awesome cool, and some of them and I formed a supergroup that lasted several years.

Like all servers, though, we also have a few people, whether intentional or not, who can sometimes be real [censored]s to others and I guess they think it's funny.

I'm not being facetious when I say that I believe that refusing to team up long enough to get a Notice of the Well is absurd. That was precisely my point. It would take a couple of hours, frequently much less time. This is a MMORPG, whose genre is based on the concept of a lot of people playing a role-playing game together. It boggles my mind that some people expect to be able to get these rewards without ever teaming up, literally never.

So yeah, maybe redictio ad absurdum is a good description of this conversation. I'd put the argument, "Well, what if I literally never want to team up" squarely in that category.

Because, as I've said before, the developers don't want you sitting there three days after Issue 20 comes out saying, "Okay, what now?"

The simple fact is that there must be both short-term and long-term content in order for most players to be happy. The problem is that if the developers simply open all of the content up with a trivial amount of time or effort spent on it, the game gets really boring, really fast. That poses a much bigger threat to their long-term subscription numbers than anti-teamers ever could dream of.

This is also part of the problem. Most players are focused on one thing: They want the rewards, they want them now, and anything that stands in the way of them getting said rewards must be bad. Game developers know that this is not in the best long-term interest of the game. There are basically two solutions: 1) develop new content as fast as players can consume it, or 2) take measures to slow down players so that you have time for development cycles before everyone gets bored and goes away. Only one of those options is practical.

Also, here is an obligatory link to some of Positron's thoughts on timesinks, and also read his thoughts on cooldowns, which is arguably more informative in this context. He's not stupid, he knows that they can be frustrating. Still, I think it's naive and impractical to think that it's really easy to simply do away with them.

Amen! *ahem...* Yes, I agree.

You missed my point. It's not being perceived as a stick except by a small number of people who are framing it as such to push an agenda. Under your logic, all of the previously released Issues would have to have been revamped to the point where they couldn't have been released, because every time--EVERY frickin' time--there has been the same outcry by a few people who just didn't like the new system. Every time, people have tried to use the twisted logic that adding a bunch of neat new stuff is punishing someone.

If they refused to change the game every time someone cried out, "That's a stick!", we wouldn't even have Issue 1 yet.

First of all, as has been pointed out numerous times, we're not talking merely about solo players here. Everyone plays solo a lot. We're talking specifically about anti-teamers, people who refuse to team up to the point where they are deviating significantly from what is considered normal play. This is a self-selected group of people, people who are choosing this self-inflicted path by their actions.

Second of all, the requirements are well within the realm of obtainable. Expensive? Yes. Time-consuming? Well, only if you define "obtainable" as "obtainable in a weekend." Over the course of a few weeks, it's well within reach. Within a few months at the most, even casual players can snag the reward.

At what point is enough enough? People cried out because there wasn't a solo option. They added a solo option. Then people cried out because the solo option was too expensive. I guarantee you that if they added, I dunno, a hard mission for soloers to gate the reward, people would cry out that the mission is too hard. If they lowered the shard count, people would cry out that the count is still an insult to solo players.

You have to understand that there will always be someone who is unsatisfied. Always. you cannot judge success based on no one complaining. You cannot hold up a new and exciting system until no one is crying out. You cannot appease everyone to the lowest common denominator, or that's all you'll have left playing. What you can do is design the game around the most people having the most fun, and I think it's working really well so far.

I also wish that folks here would get that if they make getting these rewards easy for soloers, it effectively undermines the whole principle of the weekly strike target. It has been shown over and over that given a choice of how to obtain stuff, people will generally flock to the easiest method, regardless of what the game designers intended or how it affects the long-term health of the game. The devs want to encourage teaming, and I think the requirements as they are are perfect towards that goal. They are obtainable, even by casual players in time, but they're not so easy that people will forgo doing the WST to go that path instead.

This is a major attitude problem: Some people keep thinking that this is a "stick" and it's not. They're so bothered because the devs aren't specifically catering to them enough that they've lost all perspective on the difference between reward and punishment.

Do you want to know what a "stick" would be? This would be a "stick":

See the difference? I'm so tired of a tiny vocal group of people presenting this new issue as some kind of punishment for them. Under their logic, every single issue would be considered punishment by someone.

Issue 1: To get the Hydra-O enhancements, I have to team up. This is obviously punishing the anti-teamers out there.
Issue 2: Respecs required teaming and completing a trial. Obviously more anti-teamer punishment.
Issue 3: Introduction of Kheldians. Some people had theirs within a day or two, but I'm not a grinder/farmer, so it took me a couple of months to get to level 50. Obviously, this is punishing people who don't grind or farm.
Issue 4: Aka "Colosseum," almost completely centered around PvP. Obviously, this punished everyone who hates PvP and wants no part of it.
Issue 5: Katie Hannon's task force required a team to complete, and the reward was a nifty new witch hat costume piece. Obviously, this is punishing anti-teamers because it was gating collectible items from anyone who refused to run that task force.
Issue 6: Coincided with the release of City of Villains. Take your pick of woes: People who didn't want to pay for the expansion were being punished. People who only wanted to play heroes were being punished. Three new PvP zones, so again, anti-PvPers were being punished. People who had old computers were being punished with the higher requirements to render the Rogue Isles eye candy. Oh, and don't forget--and this was a very heated topic at the time--but villains were being punished because their level cap was 40, compared to the heroes' cap of 50. You can imagine the frustration and angst that arose from hero/villain PvP conflicts. Oh, and the queen mother b**** of all punishments: Enhancement Diversification. *shudders...*
Issue 7: Villain level cap raised to 50. Grandville added. Mayhem missions added. Damn near zero hero content added. Obviously more punishment doled out blue-side.
Issue 8: Veteran rewards added, so now the devs are obviously punishing newbies and people who cancel their accounts for a while when they're not playing. Also, I don't think there were any new missions, task forces, contacts, or arcs added, only stuff like emotes and costume items, and a few QoL features. People who just like running missions were obviously being punished in deference to all of the carebears out there.
Issue 9: Dear people who hate loot systems: Suck it.
Issue 10: Rikti invasions all over the city. Obviously, this was a deliberate effort to make people upgrade their computers to handle the graphics overload and punishment for people who were playing the game on older systems.
Issue 11: Ouroboros flashbacks added. All of you badgers out there who so carefully made sure that you collected everything when you were supposed to and whose massive collection of badges were a source of great pride? Yeah, now any yahoo can get them all by just clicking on a list and running a mission. Especially isolator.
Issue 12: Crap on a stick, a whole set of costume items, the Roman armor set, gated yet again by a required-teaming task force. Why, o why, do you hate us anti-teamers so, devs?
Issue 13: So let me get this straight. We get day job rewards by not playing? Are the devs on drugs? This is obviously punishment for everyone who logs on!
Issue 14: Architect Entertainment is proof final that the devs want us to exploit the game. All of those AE babies and easy AE rewards are obviously a sign that the devs are punishing people for playing regular mission arcs and task forces.
Issue 15: Almost all just content tweaks, more of an "Issue Lite." The devs are so focused on catering to the RPers that they are punishing everyone else with the nothingness that was the rest of this Issue.
Issue 16: Power customization? Obviously punishment for anyone who is susceptible to migraines or epileptic seizures.
Issue 17: So we upgraded our computers to handle City of Villains, then we upgraded them again to handle Rikti invasions and now I can't even run Ultra Mode!?
Issue 18: Going Rogue released. Punishment for people who want to maintain their alignment.
Issue 19: Read all of the posts above.

So much punishment, so little time. I assure you that each and every one of these Issue releases had their detractors. Some of them, I actually agreed with. I'm still sore over one particular aspect of Issue 18; I really do feel that characters who are archeypical heroes or villains--the ones who would die before changing alignment--got screwed, that there should be some reward for maintaining your alignment in a paladin-like manner to compensate for the fact that characters that switched alignment were being exposed to a ton of new content, badges, and other rewards. I argued vehemently for that, just as people are arguing here, and I still feel strongly about it.

However, I never threatened to quit. I never was under the illusion that it was going to be a game-ender, that people were going to be fleeing in droves. I wanted the devs to cater to my play style--having some characters that I know I will refuse have switch sides--and believe me, I got shouted down just like people here on both sides are trying to shout down everyone else. In the end, though, I came to terms that it's something that most people don't care about, something that's likely not going to hit the dev's radar. I don't like it, but I live with it, and I enjoy the other 97% of the game I like.

Needless to say, I never imagined that the devs were trying to punish me, that Issue 18 was a "stick," any more than I believe any of the items listed above were really punishments. That's just silly.

For those of you thinking the devs are punishing you, that this is a "stick" or a "middle finger," please lose the persecution complex. This is a concession, something to give you a viable option (and it is a viable option, contrary to many baseless arguments saying it's not). You really should be grateful, not bitter. I know that if I were a dev reading some of the replies in this thread, I'd be mighty tempted to say, "Okay, fine, since you think we're doing this to spite you, we'll just remove the option."

For everyone else, please realize that all of the sound and fury being expressed in this thread is just par for the course. Every issue has a molehill or two that a few people latch onto and make mountains out of. Believe me, this is beans compared to the brouhaha I've seen over some issues. Life will go on, and the game will be fine. There is and will be no mass exodus, and in six months, it's highly likely that everyone will have completely forgotten about all this little kerfuffle.

When I was growing up, I was always told that knowing is only half the battle.

Totally non-facetious answer: Keep doing the stuff you do like. No one will ever be 100% happy with everything that gets rolled out. To my knowledge, none of the existing content or mechanics have been changed for the worse. Something has kept you in the game this long, so keep doing that.

Without trying to sound too dense, is there anything particularly wrong with that? I mean, realistically, every single issue is made up of new stuff. I honestly cannot think of any time when, before it was even released, I had irrevocably made up my mind that I didn't like it and wanted no part of it. I always at least gave it a whirl, and even the stuff I don't care for much (PvP and the Invention System in particular), I still at least dabble in now and then just because it's not all bad.

Or put another way, just because you don't like the concept of end-game raid-type systems, I think it's extremely prejudicial to make up your mind without even trying it that you're going to hate our developer's implementation of an end-game raid-type system and that it is so irredeemably bad that there's literally nothing in it that could change your mind.

But hey, it's your mind, so you can make it up whenever and however you want. I just hope that you realize that the devs aren't catering specifically to you, a mistaken assumption I've seen propagated lately. They are designing the game with the goal of being the most fun for the most people, and from what I've seen in terms of server load and activity lately, they're doing a really good job of it. You have to understand that if they worked under the notion that they can't do anything that someone might not care for, they'd be paralyzed and never able to release anything else.

Personally, I'm always excited to get new content, even knowing that eventually, I might grow bored or disillusioned with some of it. I'm not a huge fan of end-game raid-type systems myself, but I don't hate it, and I trust our devs to come up with something fun and compelling to play. My only regret is that I had back surgery three weeks ago and haven't really been physically able to play as much as I want to, so my main focus for "preparing for future content" right now is to get better.

Um... Can you please quote where specifically I termed anything that?

I didn't say one damn word about exploiters. You don't stop exploiters by putting in time sinks, you stop exploiters by banning their accounts.

Two problems with what you've said. First, don't give me this "can never achieve it" crap. You most certainly can achieve it. I'm an anti-farmer and I could swing it, so I know you can unless you're actively trying not to. It may take you a few months, but you can do it.

Second, you're wrong about farmers being able to blow through it so quickly. A while back, I made a reference to being able to get through the content to the point where it is considered "done." What I meant with that wording isn't that a farmer could blow through one character in a weekend. I meant that they've kitted out most or all of their characters, at least all they play with often. That would take considerably longer than a weekend. Unless they lower the requirements, in which case it may very well be possible for the farmers to churn it out that quickly. Which is why I kinda hope they don't lower the requirements. That way, the farmers will take a few weeks or even months lifting out all of their characters, and you can take a few weeks or months to kit out the one or two that are most important to you.

Believe me, I'm in the same boat as you. You'd probably laugh at the paltry number of level 50s I have. The big difference is that I have long-term vision. The way I figure, I have years to get this stuff done, so I don't care if I haven't earned a very rare whoop-de-doo this month. Hell, it might be 2012 before I get one, and that's cool. I'm in no hurry.

I think--emphasis on think--that what may be going through their head is that they don't want the farmers to trivialize earning this stuff as they have so many other things. In other words, they don't want to unintentionally make it stupid easy to get this stuff, so they are shooting for making the fastest of farmers to take longer to earn the Notice of the Well than an average WST team.

I really do believe that they are acting in good faith to try to prevent people from sitting around a day after Issue 20 hits moaning, "Okay, I'm done. Now what?" Bearing in mind that Shards will start dropping for more types of enemies, I imagine that they set the numbers as they did knowing that if they were lower, farmers would just zip through a few Shard-dropping enemies missions in 30 to 60 minutes, fork over the chump change that is the influence barrier, and within a day have all of their übers kitted out with everything.

This will at least slow them down some.

I didn't mean to imply that the population went up directly due to Enhancement Diversification. I only meant that there are a lot of people under the mistaken impression that when Enhancement Diversification hit, people left the game in droves, and that simply didn't happen. Did some people leave because of it? Probably, but the net population spiked and stayed considerably higher for almost a year afterward.

If Enhancement Diversification were really the fun-killing change some make it out to be, the release of CoV wouldn't have made that much of a long-term difference. But it did. Were some people very upset? Sure, but not as many and/or not enough to keep the game from being very successful.

My bad.

Carry on as you were...

<tangent>

Okay, I just have to mention this. As much of a bad rap as Enhancement Diversification got, I honestly believe that had it not been implemented, this game would be long since dead. I really think everyone remembers the controversy on the forums and whatnot, but what you don't see very often is that back before Enhancement Diversification, the game had gotten extremely boring. Boring to the point where I actually stopped playing for around three months.

Just as a reminder and a bit of insight to the new kids who weren't here at the time, typical missions went something like this:

A fire/fire so-called "burn" tanker (which was around half of the game's population) would kick up his auras and go herd every enemy on the map into a tight, enclosed space, like a dumpster. Then he would sit there for a few minutes while all of the enemies' health bars ticked away from the damage induced from his auras. They were so ridiculously overpowered that nothing could make a dent in them, and there was no limit to how many enemies could be herded or held in one place at a time.

Meanwhile, everyone else on the team just sat at the door and waited. Some of them (even the tanker, who just sat there with auras a-blazin') might take a break and go to the bathroom or eat, I don't know. It didn't matter. If you were so audacious as to go try to help out in this process by blasting some of the lingerers around the edges, oftentimes you'd find yourself kicked from the team because it wasn't the "right" way to play.

Some of you have mentioned how "grindy" trying to earn the rewards for the Notice of the Well is. Well, kiddo, let me tell you, you don't know a damn thing about grindy unless you played the game pre-Enhancement Diversification.

So for all of the sounds and fury it generated, it really was one of the best things to ever be done to the game. I'll agree, it would have been much better had it been done before the initial release of the game, under the "it is better to never have had at all rather than to take away" philosophy, but still, I'm really damn glad and proud of the developers for making what had to be a hard decision and sticking to it.

At the time, a lot of people were convinced it was the end of the game, because it made their godmode characters suddenly vulnerable again. In reality, the subscriber base went up following Enhancement Diversification for almost a year. Did it make the game a little bit more challenging? Yes, it did, but it didn't make it hard by any stretch of the imagination. What it did do, though, was to break the stranglehold of monotonous tedium that the game had become.

So yeah, I personally think that Enhancement Diversification did turn out really swell in fact, and I'm not being facetious when I say it. I wish people would stop romanticizing the "good ol' pre-ED days," because the truth of the matter is that they sucked. Bad.

</tangent>

I PMed Eiko-chan to express this in a little more detail.

I've given him (her?) a hard time in some of my posts, and he (she?) has been very patient and respectful, not degenerating into flaming people who disagree and sometimes get heated over this issue. They are somewhat unpopular opinions, and I still don't agree wholeheartedly with them, but I really admire the tone of Eiko-chan's posts even when people (me included) are doling out a hard time.

So you know what? Screw it. I'm going to do a bit of a, I dunno, not a one-eighty, but maybe at least a one-thirty-five or so. You go ahead and kill your dudes, get your boosts, and once in a while beat up a hero. While I still want more of an overall emphasis on teaming in the game, I really do hope that they come through and satisfy your play style as well for the parts of the game you like. The game needs more level-headed people like you, and I genuinely hope you change your mind before your subscription runs out and decide to stay for a long time. If that means that I have to suck it up and support better soloable options, then count me in.

I've gotta say, though, seeing the way you carry yourself here, it's a shame that you don't like teaming up more than you do. Any team would be lucky to have someone with your demeanor as a member. I'd prefer someone like you on my team any day over some of the people who have been experts at mowing down enemies and plowing through missions but hard to coordinate with.

Oh for the love of... Jeez...

All of this is already precipitated upon the notion of, "I refuse to team up with anyone." And now, you're expanding that to, "I also refuse to do AE and earn tickets and whatnot to get the influence. Oh, and I also refuse to do a bit of market high/lowing to get it. And although I don't flat-out refuse to play to earn influence, its still so much, I really don't want to spend it all on that."

That's just plain greedy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely anti-farming, and I actually respect some of the refusal stuff you noted. But seriously, that's just way too picky. What exactly is it that you do like doing, anyway?

You need to understand a couple of critical things that I think you're totally missing:

1) Those task forces are content that the developers really want a lot of people doing. Now, before you go having a cow over developers trying to dictate how we play, keep in mind that the vast majority of people agree--these weekly strike target task/strike forces have been extremely popular. I'll say this again, too: Anti-teamers are deviating significantly from what is considered normal play. If you choose to be this way, you have to expect that you're going to run into some things that are extremely difficult that other people can do with just a moderate amount of time and effort.

2) This content is not intended to be really easy. You're not supposed to be able to run all of your characters through it in a couple of days. It's supposed to take you weeks, even months, to get through to a point where you consider it more-or-less "done." If they lower the conversion rate, what you'll have is a bunch of long-time veterans and farmers who have billions divided among their various characters hand-wave through all of the Incarnate rewards, the come here after a day or two whining about how easy and lame it all was and how they're going to quit until Issue Whatever comes out, and hopefully that will be better. ($5 says we'll get some of those thread anyway, even with the conversion rate as high as it is.)

And while I'm on a tear, someone above pointed out something extremely insightful. What exactly do you plan to do once you do get these fancy Incarnate rewards? In the other thread, I kept seeing people talk about "character advancement." Okay, congratulations, your character is "advanced." Now what? These rewards were explicitly designed to take on task forces and events that require a lot of players. If you're an anti-teamer, it seems to me that those rewards won't be doing you much good. What are you going to do, go one-shot some Hellions with your newfound überness? Doesn't seem very "advanced" to me.

Or put another way, if they suddenly upped the level cap to 70 tomorrow but they didn't add any new content above 50, what good is having a level 70 character? Oh, they're adding new Incarnate content, but it's almost all geared around teaming up with other Incarnates to do Really Big Stuff™, stuff that it sounds like you'll also be refusing to do.

This is the one I think back on as funny, especially the COULD NOT CHANGE part. There was no Icon. If you were wearing gloves and you decided that you wanted bare hands on your level 40 (there was no level 50), you literally had to reroll your character and start over.

Also, there was no Exit button on your compass after finishing a mission. The "I want to leave" button was that little "i" icon, which changed functions from showing you the mission description to exiting the mission with no visual indication of doing so. I was around level 15 or so, having played for probably three weeks, before noticing that after a mission, people on my team were disappearing off the map instead of running back to the entrance door. "Hey, how are you guys doing that!?"

It is not, by itself, intended as justification. It is simply pointing out that 1) the number isn't 100%, which means that there is precedent for the devs adding content and rewards that are not achievable by soloing, and that 2) the number is way on up there enough that it cannot be reasonably argued that adding one more thing that requires teaming destroys the game or makes it not "solo-friendly."

What I'm trying to convey to people in this thread is that if you refuse to team up--as in, you literally will never do it--then you are significantly deviating from what is considered normal game play. I'm not saying that you must team up often, just that it is normal to do so at least once in a while, especially in an MMORPG, a genre founded on the principle of playing with other people. (And no, I don't mean merely playing at the same time as other people. I mean actually interacting with others and affecting their gameplay experience during coordinated efforts to attain mutually beneficial goals--i.e. "teaming up.")

By virtue of the fact that most people spend a lot of time soloing, the developers have been very accommodating to solo play. However, they cannot and should not be held accountable for catering to such significant deviations from normal game play. Requiring such accommodations would greatly hinder their ability to make the game as fun and exciting to the greatest number of players as they can by placing artificial limitations on what they can and cannot do.

That is what the justification boils down to, and why I have said that having rewards that are not available to players who flat-out refuse to team is not a problem with the game or the developers, but with those players themselves. It is purely a self-imposed limitation, one that can be easily gotten past in just a few short hours.

Also, you state yet again the incorrect notion that we (or at least I) believe that there should be no avenue for obtaining the reward by soloing. This is not true. As I said above, if they decide to accommodate solo-only players, I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is the expectation that the developers must accommodate solo-only players.

Think of it this way. If I go into a Krispy Kreme and buy a dozen doughnuts, and they throw in a couple of extra because it's close to closing time, that's awesome and I'd really appreciate it. But if I go back next week in the middle of the day and they only give me the twelve I paid for, I have no moral right whatsoever to get angry, storm out, and swear never to visit the store again. Sure, I can, but I'd be completely unreasonable doing so.

That's how I feel about these demands for soloable rewards. Because the devs have made an honest effort to give players soloable options for most (but not all) rewards in the past, there is this sense of entitlement that has built up, a misguided notion that the devs must always provide soloable alternatives to obtain rewards, that the design and implementation is "broken" if they don't. Now, some of those people are getting angry and storming out. That's their right, but I think they're being unreasonable. The saving grace is that from what I've seen, the vast majority of people think the new content is awesome and they really appreciate it. It has provided a lot of excitement in the game, excitement that I believe will translate into deeper loyalty among the larger player base and, ultimately, more net subscription dollars coming in.

Edit: Note that I'm not saying that no one should express that they want the developers to provide a means of obtaining the rewards through solo play. I'm fine with that, it's a reasonable request. I'm only saying that the people who are demanding it, threatening to leave, and expressing that the system is "broken" without it, are wrong. Also, "I'm leaving!" is never a viable means of trying to get something, no matter what it is. As soon as someone pulls out that card, anything they say holds no weight with me. If I were a developer, that would be doubly true since you likely are disgruntled and do not have the best interest of my game at heart.

You rock.

Honestly, I was considering other stuff to be "content" too, such as playing with the Mission Architect, hunting down exploration badges and history plaques, messing with the market, street-sweeping for defeat badges, trick-or-treating, crafting stuff, fiddling around with bases, etc.

Obviously, the exact number will vary depending on what one likes doing. Some people farm task forces over and over, jumping on teams as soon as they log in, and spend a lot more time on teams than other people who avoid it like the plague except when necessary. But I like to consider myself a pretty well-rounded player, and I guesstimate that I spend around 97% of my time solo. Not particularly because I hate teaming, I actually like it, but because there's just so much to do by yourself.

Still, I'm glad you looked that up. It does stick a pretty objective pin on an actual number that marks my guesstimate as pretty close.

It should work the same in Massachusetts as it does everywhere else.

Heh, good one. At least we can agree on that.