Statesman speaks at serious games summit
By
2Negative,
Posted on: 2006-10-31 18:17 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
i really like those ideas. Maybe they could work but idk.
I am inclined to agreew ith your assesment James. Bases just dn't give me capacbilities I didn;t already have. If they get this whole CoP thing going and it's now important to ahve a functional base in order to ahve Items of Power (which are actually uesful, unlike tekleporter and resurection circles and such) then that will be a big step. If they get raids working then (for groups taht care about PvP) that will be quite helpful also.
James I agree with everything you just said, but unfortunatly the devs just wanna do everything thier way too keep us in the game longer which is complete bs imo, why do you think they put in Ed or other crappypatches too nerf our toons, too keep us playing the game longer, in the w00t radio interview with positron he said that he diddnt want people getting bases easily, [censored] is that?! whats wrong with everyone getting a base easily, it encourages farming which issomething the devs dont want either, I say its our game and we should decide what nerfs happen.
My Lego Models http://www.flickr.com/photos/30369639@N07/ lemur lad: God you can't be that stupid... I'm on at the same time as you for once, and not 20 minutes into it you give me something worth petitioning?Lady-Dee: Hey my fat keeps me warm in the winter and shady in the summer.
he thinks there is nothing else like bases in the MMO world?
he shoudl go play EQ1. the guild halls are a good bit like bases but with actual useful stuff there...
the problem with bases are there is nothing to do there... sit and look at the walls? sit and chat with SG mates? but mingling is what pocket d is for... so bases are obsolete already.
i agree with your take on the issue. statesman has no clue what the players want. he is so out of touch i have to wonder if he has ever played any RPG.
Teleporters not useful? Until the tram fix in I8 hits live, those damn things are worth their weight in gold.
MA arcs: #1669, "A New Breed Rising"
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he is so out of touch i have to wonder if he has ever played any RPG.
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Now that's funny
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I am inclined to agreew ith your assesment James. Bases just dn't give me capacbilities I didn;t already have. If they get this whole CoP thing going and it's now important to ahve a functional base in order to ahve Items of Power (which are actually uesful, unlike tekleporter and resurection circles and such) then that will be a big step. If they get raids working then (for groups taht care about PvP) that will be quite helpful also.
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You don't think teleporters are important? O.o
"I see your words..." ~The most menacing thing a forumite could say
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he is so out of touch i have to wonder if he has ever played any RPG.
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Now that's funny
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*chuckles* Yeah
"I see your words..." ~The most menacing thing a forumite could say
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I am inclined to agreew ith your assesment James. Bases just dn't give me capacbilities I didn;t already have. If they get this whole CoP thing going and it's now important to ahve a functional base in order to ahve Items of Power (which are actually uesful, unlike tekleporter and resurection circles and such) then that will be a big step. If they get raids working then (for groups taht care about PvP) that will be quite helpful also.
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You don't think teleporters are important? O.o
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Nope, not at all.
I didn't want a giant base anyway, just a personal lair I could allow my friends into. I just wanted the Bat Cave, not the Justice League HQ.
I don't give a damn about raiding and items of power anyway, could we at least have a discount for a non-raidable plot?
As for teleporters, in CoH they can be useful but in CoV the ferries and helicopters are so close together that the teleporters are irrelevent. Having Pocket D as another shortcut makes them worth even less.
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Here's the writeup of his speech.
The only thing that jumps out at me - he claims bases are unpopular because people don't like paying money to contribute to group identity. I don't think that's correct. I think they're unpopular because
1) they're too expensive for casual players, and
2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V.
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While those are certainly issues, I'm not sure I would dismiss Statesman's comment that quickly.
I can only speak for myself, but I would be all over bases if they were something I could build on my own, per character, not with a supergroup. Part of that is because I just don't like getting tied to a group (for various reasons), but some of it is that I want to make my base, my way. Think about what percentage of people get to really use the base building tool, for example: not just "decorate a bit with the starting prestige," but really plan it out, put together the non-decorative facilities, show off a theme, etc.....I may be contributing prestige, but only the person doing the actual building is really expressing themselves.
Now, personally, I don't think that this is nearly as large an impediment to my enjoyment of bases as the fact that I really don't want to have anything to do with a supergroup, but I could see an argument that one position is just an aspect of the other.
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Here's the writeup of his speech.
The only thing that jumps out at me - he claims bases are unpopular because people don't like paying money to contribute to group identity. I don't think that's correct. I think they're unpopular because
1) they're too expensive for casual players, and
2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V.
Now,
- make them cheaper
- let us place NPCs, scriptable bosses, and a scripted win condition in them
- let us open them up to other players to run as missions
- get raids working
- make them available to coh players
and see if that makes them more popular.
*waves magic wand*
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I am inclined to agreew ith your assesment James. Bases just dn't give me capacbilities I didn;t already have. If they get this whole CoP thing going and it's now important to ahve a functional base in order to ahve Items of Power (which are actually uesful, unlike tekleporter and resurection circles and such) then that will be a big step. If they get raids working then (for groups taht care about PvP) that will be quite helpful also.
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You don't think teleporters are important? O.o
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Nope, not at all.
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Moving from Atlas to the RCS in one step is certainly a boon to me.
*shrugs*
I suppose that makes it important to me.
"I see your words..." ~The most menacing thing a forumite could say
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What happened was players hated it. Its the most underused facet of the game. It received almost no coverage in the press. And theres nothing like it in any other MMP. Emmerts hypothesis is that people dont like contributing money to a group to express individuality. ... At its heart, these MMPs are individual game experiences in front of a computer terminal.
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What about individual apartments? That'd be personal. Or even individual player rooms in your SG base, that only YOU can decorate.
Also, if you want people to contribute to the group, don't make that contribution suck away something your character needs, like Influence.
again the heroes need bases
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again the heroes need bases
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pony up and go buy CoV. it should be real cheap now.
Problems with bases (as i see it)
1) Cost. EVERYTHING is expensive. For example, I want to add another inspiration bin to my base, since the one we have is full of big inspirations. However, because of the setup i ahve I have no room for a bin in any room. What I can do is upgrade my workshop, thus allowing me more storage, but to do that it will cost me approximately 125k. I have to get the prestige for the room and the bin. Now I only need 1 more bin. But since the cheap roms only allow 1 storage unit, i have to do a big upgrade. And thats just a little thing, the expense for multiple telleporters is astronomical.
2) Efficiency. Now that i have my base, with 6 whole places to teleport to, and rez capability. However, because the devs designed their world so well, its almost never to my advantage to go to my base to get around. Most of the time you can get where you want in two loading zones, plus a little cross zone travel. Well, if the zone i happen to want to get to is in my teleporters, i still have to go through 2 loadings and a bit of travel. THe trains or pocket d are ususally much more convenient. Luckily the teleport to base vetran power will relive some of this, it will cut donw on a good bit of cross zone travel. This should be a craftable power, not a vet reward. It shoudl be availiable to all players with a base that can teleport.
3) Utility. Insp bins are nice. enhance bins are great(dump all your enhancers in there between missions and sell when your finished teaming). I like teleporters and the rez option of my base. But theres nothin else that bases can really do for you. Why cant we have minigames, an mp3 player and info and arena kiosks in our bases? Or Have being in a sg with x piece of equiptment get my contacts numbers faster. Or let us make danger rooms.
4) Style. Bases are VERY limited in what you can make. And for seemingly no reason. there are tons of items in game that arent availiable to make in bases. Not to mention the lack of the vertical, or multifloors. Why cant we have physx effects? or placeable destructable items? Like the stuff in mayhem missions?
5) Lack of experimentation : How often have you spent more than a half hour designing a character? Going through the various settings, creating something that is nice? Now imagine that instead of having all the options unlockable at the start, that you ahve to grind for months to unlock a fraction of them. I understand why the devs dont let us design how we want, then only implement it if we have the cash to pay for it, but imo that was a dumb decision to make. They probably could have made it that the base didnt upgrade itself until you finished, instead of how we have it now. Imagine how many more people would be excited, if they could spend more time playing with the base designer. Bases are suffering from a simple lack of exposure.
So yes, Statesman is partially correct. Players dont want to invest lots of time into a group effort. But that is only one of many things that is making bases less than popular.
Jay Doherty: Yes, there was this one night that I was ready to go home but had to drop the browns off at the super bowl before I left for home. While on the throne it hit me. I stayed for a few more hours and that why we have the pain pads in the game.
And I quote . . .
We spent more time developing [bases] than any other feature in City of Heroes or City of Villains, he says. Although bases are built by a team, Emmert and his team viewed them as being incredibly, incredibly individual because each piece of the base is designed and added by individuals."
I have said for over a year that Jack is out of touch with his own game and his own players. What happens more times than not is all ranks of a SG are expected to contribute to Prestige (and in some SGs, even long after it starts biting into Influence) but only a select few (i.e. the highest or two highest ranks) are allowed to add anything to a base or have a say.
In very few cases does a base become an extension of a SG. It becomes a resource (Prestige and then Influence at the higher levels where the split-off occurs) hog for a few features that barely contribute to in-game quality of life.
It becomes a personal extension of those in control of the SG.
Travel powers are great. I have yet to need to harness the base teleporters, which makes the cost of them even more expensive than normal, because the return on the investment is even greater diminished.
The enitre Base feature seems poorly thoughout, poorly designed, poorly tested. Lip-Service on bases has been fast and furious. Unfortunately, adjustments have not, and the issue was complained about in CoV Beta a year and more ago.
I'm scared [censored] to play around with my base.
Further, I'm not sure why I would want to.
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So yes, Statesman is partially correct. Players dont want to invest lots of time into a group effort. But that is only one of many things that is making bases less than popular.
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I especially don't want to be sacrificing my own influence to pay for something that I'll lose if I decide to quit the SG for whatever reason.
Ok, I'm milking an answer out of this,
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1) they're too expensive for casual players
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How? Do you have a single person SG and expect a large base? Cause that's not going to happen. At the moment my SG consists of 2 people, and given that the combination of time change and work are kicking my [censored] I'm running fairly low on play time, we still meet the 50k rent with left overs. Large amounts of left overs. When I'm in full swing we tend to pull in about 100k a month, but we keep our alts in the SG for the most part too.
How hard exactly is it to get a base if you actually have a decent chunk of people? A core group of 10 people with their alts even at the rate I've been playing this last week should be able to manage a good chunk each month, if you really want it you can work for it and crank out 250k in a month like my SG did when there were 4 of us going and we wanted the teleporters NOW.
Define casual for me, because I've been getting in about 6 hours or less a week for the last two, and I still make good chunks. How exactly is it so very hard to get a base?
Now from the question, to the loosely irritated rant,
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2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V
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Yea, cause those porters, medical bays, salvage containers, empowerment stations, inspiration holders, and enhancement containers, don't do anything at all. I should point out my SG has all of the above, despite not reaching active membership of over 4 since CoV came out, and dropping to 1 at a few points.
I see a pile of work for things not many people would use, not things that would make bases more popular.
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2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V.
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Completely agree with you on this one. The problem is that they're too separate from the rest of the game. What am I going to do in my base? Put stuff in storage? Use the teleporters? Use the medibay? Use the workshops to make more of the above? All of this is stuff that takes me a few minutes, at most, to use. Yeah, having a place I can store my useless Hami-Os is nice, but nothing earth shattering. I pop in, pop out, and that's it.
There's no reason for me to be in my base beyond that. If they ever got the base raids up and running, they'd definitely be more popular. As it is, you have a ton of stuff for bases (weapons, special plots, etc) that are entirely useless or pointless to spend prestige on, because they currently do nothing. It also removes the need to build a bigger base. My base has the teleporter, medibay, storage items, etc. and is only 6 or 7 2x2 rooms. Why do I need anything bigger aside from aesthetics? I have everything I need on my tiny plot.
Of course, the thing that has always stuck out to me the most is that the most fun aspect of bases is limited to a very small portion of the playerbase: building the base. It's a lot of fun to design and put together a base, but unless I'm a leader of a SG or appointed architect, I'm never going to get to experience this. Between the way it's currently set up and Cryptic's refusal to add individual bases, they've essentially spent a ton of time putting together an excellent feature that few get to play with. Why should magazines cover this? Just to show people what they're missing out on?
Bases have a ton of potential, but Jack saying stuff like this doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in them getting it right anytime soon. In fact, those quotes almost make it sound like he's given up. In my opinion, if they want to make the base system more usable, they need to:
- Add individual bases/apartments: Allow the building and designing of a base to be something EVERYONE can play with.
- Add trophies/souvenirs as rewards that can be displayed in bases. For individual apts. this could be things like completing a story arc or earning specific badges. For SG bases, it could be having a certain amount of trials completed or a specific monster defeated a few times.
- Add more SG raids. Tie them in with accomplishing various things with the bases so there are reasons to grow your base.
- Add missions that take place within the SG base. For example, you steal a powerful weapon from the Rikti, and then you have to defend the base so they can't get it back. This not only would allow those pointless protection items to become useful, but give an additional need for bigger bases.
etc.
As it stands now, with PvP raids no time in the foreseeable future, they've designed bases with few uses aside from a few conveniences over what someone without a base has. Nice to be able to rez in the base and run back, but it only saves me a few minutes time. Same thing with teleporters. Nice short cut, but nothing I miss too much when I play alts.
Just another one of those things in the game that has so much potential, but something they've also seemed to miss the ball on. If they're serious about making bases useful, maybe they should start listening to suggestions on how to do so.
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Just another one of those things in the game that has so much potential, but something they've also seemed to miss the ball on.
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That part there has been such a part of CoH for so long, that after being here off-and-on since Beta, I am seriously considering it is time to finally hang-up the tights for good on my, my wife's, and my son's accounts. They basically agree with me.
Like with Blizzard and WoW . . . CoH/V is what it is, and that is that. For a year now bases have been a majority useless, because the mechanics and engine that was advertised for them they still can't figure out how to do. That has been the mantra for so many promised things from Jack and company with the game.
I enjoyed my time in here for what the game was, but I just don't believe anything truly extraordinary is going to actually be delivered, anymore.
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Ok, I'm milking an answer out of this,
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1) they're too expensive for casual players
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How? Do you have a single person SG and expect a large base? Cause that's not going to happen. At the moment my SG consists of 2 people, and given that the combination of time change and work are kicking my [censored] I'm running fairly low on play time, we still meet the 50k rent with left overs. Large amounts of left overs. When I'm in full swing we tend to pull in about 100k a month, but we keep our alts in the SG for the most part too.
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Not a large base. But how about a functional base, that's worth the effort to build and maintain, for a (say) 5- or 10-person SG? An SG of peoplt who, like me, maybe play 5 to 6 hours per week, apiece?
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2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V
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Yea, cause those porters, medical bays, salvage containers, empowerment stations, inspiration holders, and enhancement containers, don't do anything at all. I should point out my SG has all of the above, despite not reaching active membership of over 4 since CoV came out, and dropping to 1 at a few points.
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Teleporters: the transit system in CoX is already so well designed, that itis rarely needful to have teleporters in your base. I think I've used the YP's teleporters ... twice. To try 'em out. Otherwise? even my sub-14's cn get everywhere they need to be as fast, if not faster, just by running there.
Nonetheless, the YP's leader has placed no less than FIVE teleporters, each with two beacons, in the base. That's a huge, huge outlay in prestige and salvage ... for what? What's the pooint, really?
Medical Bays: Let's see, I can go to teh Hospital, and *poof* I'm at 100% HP/E. Or I can go to the SG base, and - unles yet more prestige and salvage have been spent on multiple auxiliary parts - be at maybe 25% HP/E. Uh ... yeah ... not useful.
Salvage Bins: eh. I dump all my salvage into the SG's bin for only one reason: I won't ever, EVER, use it myself (until Inventions come into the picture, anyway). Otherwise? Useless.
Empowerment Stations: ... what a friggin' waste of salvage THOSE are. Count me the heck OUT, thanks.
Inspiration Bins: ... if it were an Inspiration vendor, it'd be useful. Maybe. Assuming it sold ofr a discount, compared to NPCs. Otherwise? Good gods, why bother??
Enhancement Storage: riiiiight; so we're supposed to BANK those ENHs now, instead of selling them to make up for lost INF income? Uh, no.
Here's the writeup of his speech.
The only thing that jumps out at me - he claims bases are unpopular because people don't like paying money to contribute to group identity. I don't think that's correct. I think they're unpopular because
1) they're too expensive for casual players, and
2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V.
Now,
- make them cheaper
- let us place NPCs, scriptable bosses, and a scripted win condition in them
- let us open them up to other players to run as missions
- get raids working
and see if that makes them more popular.
*waves magic wand*
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ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!