Statesman speaks at serious games summit
By
2Negative,
Posted on: 2006-10-31 18:17 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Apologies if I am repeating someone, but i don't have time to go through all the pages following this comment, but wanted to address this point...
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Yet a Super Group costume isnt your creation, either. And yet people wear them. The counterpoint is, of course, that a Super Group costume is in addition to ones normal costume, not instead of. Theres no such personal property in the base. We thought (on paper) that the personal items would do the trick, but it isnt really the same thing, is it?
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I think there would be a much bigger issue with SG costumes if we didn't have multiple costumes to choose from. I have 5 costume slots (after Halloween salvage). Four of those are 100% my own creation that I can design however I wish, so it's not a huge sacrifice to give up 1 slot (unless I am below level 20, but most SG's tell you to make your second slot a SG costume, not your default one, and will wait for you to hit 20) out of a potential 5 to a SG costume which I will only wear when teamed with my SG. If, on the other hand, I only had one costume slot, ever, I would never join a SG that required a SG costume, it's that simple.
So yeah, a SG costume isn't my creation, but I do have a choice to wear something that IS my creation when not teamed with my SG, which is why a SG costume isn't a big deal.
And a 'personal' item isn't really... well, personal. They are pre created items that we simply have to save up enough salvage for, the only choice is arcane or tech, and we are often forbidden by SG leaders from placing them. They usually request that you put salvage into storage so THEY can create and place what's needed, otherwise it could be a 'waste' of salvage and prestiege desperately needed for other things. Like say someone created a turret when what the base really needed was another teleporter, or they were saving up for a larger plot. The official base designer then comes in and just up and deletes the newly placed 'personal' item because the prestiege is needed elsewhere or doesn't fit with their design. There is no incentive to make a personal item if it isn't actually all that personal to begin with and can just be deleted by someone else, anyway.
States:
Honestly...the issues with bases aren't a big deal for me.
See, I'm primarily a solo player. Pretty much all of my alts have remained SG free since day one, over two years ago. Yeah, I team often, but I've only occassionally joined an official group. It's just not something I'm into.
So, since there are no solo base designs, I pretty much ignore the code.
Oh, and yes, I do like the costume creator, and have multiple costumes for my heroes. Obviously, though, costumes are solo player friendly.
I wonder how many other players feel similarly?
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Yet a Super Group costume isnt your creation, either. And yet people wear them. The counterpoint is, of course, that a Super Group costume is in addition to ones normal costume, not instead of. Theres no such personal property in the base. We thought (on paper) that the personal items would do the trick, but it isnt really the same thing, is it?
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Jack, personal items are basically weapon systems or other utilized hardware at this point. What we need is the ability to have a place to display our badges and maybe screenshots (famous moments) on a wall in a personal 'decorative' room that doesn't count towards the base's overall plot size. At the very least a single room for the sg members to do that in.
SG Costumes: Can we get a slot automatically when we join an sg? Maybe with a costume token that can only be used on that slot. We have a sg costume in our group, though I'm not always fond of wearing it. I made sure I got the extra halloween slot for every character I had on my main server so that I could use it for an sg costume slot.
Also can we get rid of the sg character limit? It's outlived it's usefulness.
First, I'll admit, I'm taking the following quote slightly out of context:
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But costumes dont provide ANY gameplay function and people care a WHOLE lot about them? My point: bases cost too much for what players think they deliver. What they currently deliver is the ability to create a social space for Super Groups thats potentially customizable to the groups theme/background/etc.
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I would argue that the space that bases deliver is not actually a 'social' space. It's just a restricted space. Sure a group can decorate the space, but there's nothing that inspires interacting with the space socially. A person makes a trophy item and puts it on the wall, and then all that happens is that a player might recognize there's a weird object on the wall, but has no reason to, or any idea how to, interact with it for social value. (Should they /em dance with the trophy?)
Compare with Pocket D. Now that's a social space. An excellent and tight theme, with interactive elements (bartenders, djs, interesting guests, occasional special events) and automated variety that go far beyond anything in the base-building toolset. Yet even Pocket D, least restrictive and most interesting social space of all, is usually very underpopular.
The last part of that quote makes reference to a group's theme. I'd suggest that it is a flaw to make any assumption that any group actually has a theme. Yes, many groups have made plans to settle on themes, but executing on them and maintaining them is a daily battle against individuality and divisive circumstances. I'd suggest group themes are illusory. The best you can hope for is that the ideal of a theme sometimes helps inspire a group's individuals to be willing to bring together differences of opinion into cooperating.
If group themes are illusory, then setting up a process (base building toolset) where significant effort is expected to be spent to expand on and complicate what is essentially a fragile illusion (group themes that aren't necessarily more than tolerated among all grouped individuals) tends to overwhelm, or at least put a lot of pressure on, the group structure.
I'm guessing that what CoX players need from a base building toolset, isn't a dollhouse system, but more of a laboratory system. Statesman seems to recognize the differences between a dollhouse system and a laboratory system, and he recognizes several flaws in a dollhouse system. However, he seems to be still trying to maintain a grip on the idea that players want dollhouses for bases, on the theory that players like having dressup-able dolls for toons.
I'd suggest players only want to play with dolls if a) they don't have to negotiate with or get approval from anyone else (even friends) about how they dress up their doll, and b) they can just spend a half hour with the dressing up once and then have the option to just leave it forever, (as opposed to having to keep up with monthly rents for example). If a player has to deal with any threat of disapproval or maintenance during this process, then the doll system doesn't work.
Now, costumes-as-dollclothes works with both tenets, but bases-as-dollhouses breaks both. Any change one person makes has a potential impact to everyone in the group, so a lot of negotiation is often obligated, (and people don't usually deal with that obligation well). And most changes that can be made often require significant monthly work to maintain each of them, so they just can't be left alone.
Hopefully Statesman can let go of the dollhouse concept, because I think the base system has now cornered itself into a structure that cannot be made to support how a dollhouse can work. I'd argue he'd have more success with designing a couple (not too many) of tight zones like Pocket D to emphasize social spacing, and leaving bases to be primarily laboratories of creating gaming functionality as a group decides it needs them.
I have a number of varied -- some contradictory -- ideas that I'd like to throw out.
If you're a member of a large and powerful supergroup, odds are you will have no way of making any personal changes to the base. Bases are particularly fragile, and if some inexperienced person accidentally deletes a salvage or enhancement storage item hundreds of hours of playing time can be thrown away in a flash.
Furthermore, unless you're the SG leader, you can be kicked out at any time. You can spend thousands of hours contributing Prestige to your supergroup, but you can be cast out for arbitrary and capricious reasons.
Even if everyone is playing nice, because of the 75-member limit, many supergroups constantly scour their membership rolls. If members aren't contributing "enough" prestige or playing too infrequently they get kicked out.
For people to be truly invested in bases, they a) need to know that the rug will not be pulled out from under them, and b) have to be able to put their own imprint on them.
After members meet some threshold (prestige contribution, perhaps), it should not be possible to deny them access to the base. This could mean removal of the limit on supergroup size and prevent them from being kicked, or it could mean that individuals can access bases directly, without being a member of the supergroup (similar to coalitions).
Members should also be able to add and edit their own rooms in the base. They should be able to use their own influence to pay for this, rather than using communal prestige. You should be able to have your own storage items, and grant permssion to access them directly to other characters (not use base permissions).
If you change supergroups you should also be able to take all your stuff with you. And you should have to rent a truck and haul it all over to the new base. Yeah.
Locating personal spaces within base plots would likely be problematic. For technical reasons they may need to be separate instances, making them essentially personal bases with a direct connection to the main base.
Each base would probably need to have another required item like the base exit portal: a door to personal spaces. Players would decide whether their apartment doors are "locked" or "open" to certain or all members of the supergroup.
Another thing to consider would be to make Prestige portable in some way. For example, once characters hit level 50 they tend to be played less, generating less Prestige. They are prime candidates for being relegated to a coalition supergroup (which means they can't access storage, edit the base, etc.).
In the "real" world, however, such venerable characters would be highly desired members. If they moved to another supergroup they would bring much prestige (with a lower-case p) to the new supergroup. But the Prestige rules don't work that way.
In fact, because of the trade-off between Prestige and Influence that begins at level 25, a level 1 character is more useful to the supergroup than a level 26 character, who is usually struggling to find enough influence to buy enhancements. (And please don't give me the "his friends should be buying him enhancements" line.) I really wish you didn't have to sacrifice Influence for Prestige -- it only seems to be an artificial attempt to reduce the amount of influence characters have at high levels.
If all the Prestige a character contributed to a supergroup went with him when he left (which is how it works in the real world when a senior partner in a law firm goes elsewhere), supergroups would be a lot less cavalier about booting members.
Another possibility would be to enhance the interoperability of coalition supergroups. If you could give the same levels of access to a base to specific coalition SGs, many of these problems would go away.
For example, you could have a level 50 coalition SG whose leaders could edit the "active" SG base. All members of the 50 SG could access the storage items and workbenches in the active SG.
Finally, you could be able to designate the SG in the coalition that you're contributing prestige to. That way my 50s could continue to make the active base bigger and better when I play them.
My two influence on the topic.
My problem with bases was that I basicly play with one other player. The two of us are altaholics, spanning 5 servers. Before the over sight rooms were introduced, it would take us months just to get the million or so prestige it took to get a functioning base. It's gotten better now, and we can make some progress if we focus on one server. However, if we play casually, jumping from server to server, our bases become quickly non-functional as we fall behind in rent.
The 4 prestige that some mobs give means that we are going to have to take down 6250 of them just to pay 25k in rent. For the sake of arguement, lets say it takes 30 seconds a mob (including the travel involved). That takes about 52 hours, and assuming that we play 3 hours a day, thats 18 days rounded up. Since there are two of us, we can divide that by half and it will take 9 out of the 14 days of the rent cycle to pay off the rent. Granted thats not a 100% accurate, but it is close enough to get the point across. So the remaining 5 days left, we would earn 14,400 prestige to spare. At that rate it takes us about 5 month to afford a single tp room, not including a single telepad, beacon, or the power and control needed to run it.
Now that example is a little exagerated, as some mobs give more prestige than that, and there are mission bonuses and such. But it is not so out of whack that it doesn't give a clear picture. One person, won't be able to cover the bases rent, and 2 people can make some very slow progress.
For us the functionality of the base falls to 3 things. Rez rings, Telepads, and enhancement bins. Since there is just two of us, we cannot raid the shard, or do the Silver Mantis SF. None of our sg's/VG's have yet to get the healing badge, but two are close. Then maybe we will finally be able to get inspirations there.
There should be SG missions, just like police band missions, but have them on a related arc, and instead of them culminating in a safe guard mission, perhaps you have to protect something, or some one in your base. Make sure there is a very small minumum, like perhaps 2 players. Have the rewards be an extra prestige bonus. Then I gaurantee that bases will be used more.
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I read this thread thoroughly on Friday and tried to digest all of the good stuff here. I wanted to give some responses to your points & questions. I know Posi and I are constantly thinking of ways that we can improve bases; our eyes are glued to the Base feedback on these forums!
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Obviously because the cost of bases is not 'minimal'
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Bingo! That was the point of my presentation; that the cost exceeds perceived value. The current ability to customize a social space for ones Super Group isnt thought to be high enough to justify the Prestige amounts.
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Ya know what another thing I just thought of would help too?
PVE base raids that you could bring non-SG members on.
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Heck, Id just like the PvE base raid part first!
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And they're hidden away, effectively in their own dimension. Other people can see my costume and go 'wow' simply by my flying past. To see my base, they have to be in a coalition with me, or on my team while we go there (and for that to happen, we need to have a reason for them to go, other than me saying 'come check out the base'). They can't simply happen across it and go 'wow!'
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Interesting point! Some people can see your base, but its so much easier for people to see your costume.
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Few people care about the aesthetics of bases. It's just not obviously an expression of one's self, especially if it's been designed by 20+ people, or by someone else. That's the crucial difference between costumes and bases.
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If no one cares about the aesthetics of bases, it all comes down to function ... and there's not a whole lot of function in there.
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But costumes dont provide ANY gameplay function and people care a WHOLE lot about them? My point: bases cost too much for what players think they deliver. What they currently deliver is the ability to create a social space for Super Groups thats potentially customizable to the groups theme/background/etc.
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Cryptic has failed to deliver an advertised feature of CoV in a working format a full callendar year after the game went live. Had the Cathedral of Pain and Base Raids showed up in anything vaguely resembling a timely manner, there would probably be a much higher level of interest in Bases, despite the flaws in the system that many posters have listed here. For whatever reason, whether it be lack of staff resources, focus shifting to other priorities or indeed other projects at Cryptic, this is a pretty big failure on Cryptic's part.
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You are absolutely right. We are working as hard as we can, but that doesnt excuse it.
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The reoccurring theme in this thread isn't you folks at Cryptic perpetrated some horrible sin, but that in making a post-mortem of the Bases feature implementation you seem to emphasize it's lack of popularity is more due to the fickleness of players, than the bugginess or kludgeyness of the product. There's several prominent functional design flaws and bugs with Bases that have yet to be fixed, in addition to some conceptual flaws. To the company's credit, you have begun to address them, but the finish line is not just around the corner.
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We(Cryptic) assumed a certain value to bases which clearly doesnt match up with players perceptions. We assumed that customizability, some gameplay features, layout control, etc. would be considered worth X, but players think its X-Y. That means WE were wrong. No fickleness involved, just something we didnt identify well.
But it shows human behavior (and this was the point of my talk): people LOVE individuality. Theyre willing to express it. But they wont consider (in game) it worth a lot of time/effort to create a space thats customized for group identity. Clearly, people dont mind group identity (hence, super group costumes) and they love their own personal costume creation.
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A point well made. Jack's comparison of bases to costumes is wildly off because I control my costume. I help pay for my base, yet none of it is my creation.
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Yet a Super Group costume isnt your creation, either. And yet people wear them. The counterpoint is, of course, that a Super Group costume is in addition to ones normal costume, not instead of. Theres no such personal property in the base. We thought (on paper) that the personal items would do the trick, but it isnt really the same thing, is it?
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I don't know if its been mentioned, i'm a CoH soloist, it would cost me $50 to have a base since i would have to buy a game that i don't want (CoV). at least i believe that to be the case
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I don't know if its been mentioned, i'm a CoH soloist, it would cost me $50 to have a base since i would have to buy a game that i don't want (CoV). at least i believe that to be the case
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No, it really wouldn't cost you $50.00. I can find CoV locally for between $15 and $30 Canadian. At $15.00 its actually less than the value of the included month of play.
Just buy the game. Its cheap now, you get a month of playtime credited to your account, more costume options, bases, and four more character slots per server.
Heck, somewhere online was selling CoV for $5.00, there was a big thread about it in the CoV forum.
A quick trip to Amazon reveals the following. Click
You can get CoV for $10 US according to that page. Thats less than the value of the month of play that will get credited to your account.
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Just wanted to say I really like your ideas, Rodion. Portable prestige could be really what is needed. It'd be a severe blow to a sg if a member with 800k leaves the group, as it should be. All that hard work shouldn't vaporize and players shouldn't be made to feel that they can be booted at any time atfer the sg gets what it needs.
What to do about suddenly losing a 800k player, though? Would you have to recruit somebody with 800k prestige really quickly? Would sgs get into bidding wars(albeit they could really only offer influence)? Would the people with the most banked prestige simply seek each other out, drop sg, form a new sg together and build a ubar superbase? And is there anything wrong with that?
Personal rooms in bases could be very easy if they do away with plot sizes. If you have a huge amount of space to expand into, say everybody gets 100x100 block for their base and the only limiting factor to sprawl is what rooms you can afford, personal rooms could work a lot better. I'm sure they have a maximum plot size for a reason and don't want to have huge instances for every single base, so this may not be technically feasible.
But also, they could design a room that is many rooms in one. Similar to (or directly stolen from) missions that have jails in them, they could allow us to create "Housing" type rooms that are one room with 8 doors in them. I imagine they would need some kind of open/close type doors and not 'once opened, stay opened' doors like jails. Coding permissions for these 'subrooms' so that only the player who bought it can decorate or set permissions might be a technical hurdle too.
I think they can find more functional things for bases to do too. And especially rooms. So that players have a reason to spend more time there. Maybe:
1. Beds that offer healing and end auras (for quick rest after a base hosp visit).
2. Lockers or drawers or machines that offer buffs through invented devices, vet rewards, souvenirs from missions. All of these could be on long recharge timers.
3. Computer access. This could be a tie in to newspaper or police band missions(longer list, more choices?), in-game forums or expanded global chat windows, current special event news, supergroup email/forums/bulletin board, or researching current foes (known strength and weaknesses of various foes and factions- maybe only available after fighting x number of them in sgmode...).
4. Costume station. Maybe allow some costume changes free of charge, minor things like putting the hat from costume slot 1 onto costume slot2 for no charge(you already own it and it fits). Maybe display your costumes on dummies.
5. Souvenirs. Maybe allowing you to display all your badges on the wall. Actual individual purchasable icons that you can display however you like for each badge. Or display the ingame story arc souvenirs. Or allow purchase of other souvenirs similar to the vet rewards ones based on your badges/gladiators, or missions accomplished.
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I LOVE the idea of a portrait of my character as a decorative base item.
Statues of the high-ranked or high-level members is another great idea.
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Okay. Let's look at what makes a 'personal item' truly personal, and how it integrates with the rest of the base design/editing process.
- Personal items have to be items that only one person CAN place. Currently, crafted items can be placed by anyone who happens to have enough Salvage. They aren't personal at all; quite the reverse, in fact. So, we need the kind of item that Captain Blammo or Goldfinch Girl can look at and say 'That's there because of me. Nobody else could have put that in the base.'
- A personal item has to tie into the character somehow. There are multiple ways of doing this; it's just a question of which are more technically feasible.
- - Character portraits could be done by grabbing the graphic off the character's Hero ID, putting it in a frame (Tech or Arcane style, naturally) and bingo, you have a new wall mounted item.
- - Text plaques could be placed and written on by individual players, thus contributing to the overall base flavour. See my other posts, ad nauseam...
- - Statues of your character, as mentioned before, are very personal.
- - If statues are too old-fashioned, then what about a high-tech hologram of your character?
- - Name plates, which grab your character's name and put it on a decal, could potentially work. These could be used to designate rooms, or chairs (this big chair is for General Nastydeath!) or lockers, or office cubicles...
- - Certain badges could unlock base items. These wouldn't necessarily be totally unique to the player, but they would be personalised. For example, how about certificates, presented when you get your 10-level badge, getting more elaborate each time? What if hitting 50 got you a big wall-mounted fancy certificate, which you could click on and bring up a graphic: 'PRESENTED TO CAPTAIN TUNAFISH ON HIS RECEIPT OF "HERO OF THE CITY" MEDAL, WITH THE THANKS OF A GRATEFUL CITY' and a big wiggly Statesman signature underneath? That's the kind of thing that a SG full of heroes might want to display in the entry room.
- - In fact, certificates could be the new badges! What if completing a Task Force granted the leader a certificate, signed and sealed by the appropriate signature hero, for you to frame and put on your base wall? What if you could unlock special certificates by taking down giant monsters or earning accolades?
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Just a thought on some of your ideas, but what if some of these personal items could be placed at no real cost. As in you upgrade the plot size of your base which allows you to get a new type of room, one that is free say called a Hall of Heroes or something dorky like that.
This room serves one purpose that being to create tributes to your SG members. It cant be destroyed in raids, has no real value in the fights, it cant have weapons etc in it. But it allows for the item placement you talk about.
It could allow for say that Hologram idea, which should be simple enough to just recreate your character in a non-sentient NPC standing on a block or something. maybe have a item or items that allow for use as a "display case". Not that each badge, souvineur, etc is visable from standing in front of it, but you could click on the case or plaque and get the personal info kinda window that allows for that information to be viewed. Maybe also view your bio so you can create a cool story for why that character is in your hall of fame.
Just a thought but it seems that it would be easily do-able with the only real cost to your SG being that you have to afford a plot size that can accomadate the size of the room. Which wouldnt be overly terrible if they made a few different room sizes making it easier on smaller groups to then make a more personal size base.
I also like your certificate idea. It would be intresting to work it into existing mechanics so that when you run a TF or SF with your SG or VG members only that it would award a certificate to your group. But better then certificates i think would be some type of physical item from the TF. Maybe a display case with a piece of Babbage in it from Synapse TF. Or a witch hat for completing Croatao, a nice block of stone from Jurassic, or framed picture of the heroes you resuced in eden etc. It makes it more of a Batcave kinda thing, like in the animated series he has Freezes gun on a pedestool etc.
Well we all look a little silly now, the Devs were a step ahead of us.
Personal Items are finally starting to live up to thier name on Test. The Veteran Reward base items are placed using the Person Items button.
A good step in the right direction. We just need a more ways to get more Personal Items.
Well, we'll see about who looks "silly" going forward in the months to come. I don't think the Vet Rewards feature shakes up the status quo that much. Progress is being made - good. I think the commentary here still stands up quite nicely, remaining constructive and relevant.
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....so will Cryptic be looking into lowering prices for all things bases then??
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...anyone? Can anyone of the mega-posters post a quick reply as to if they've heard Cryptic actually announce they're looking into lowering the prices? (searching for hope!)
Yeah, Posi said after I8 some time ago (the post was 2 or 3 months back >.>
Also looking at rent.
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Don't forget:
Remove deterrent to teaming (remove the code that decreases prestige gain on teams.)
Add prestige bonuses for teaming with SG-mates.
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It should have always been a bonus to teaming with your SuperGroup.
Still here, even after all this time!