Statesman speaks at serious games summit
By
2Negative,
Posted on: 2006-10-31 18:17 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Wow. Just wow. What a complete and utter lack of understanding of the player base...
Not that I'm surprised that much though.
*sigh*
*waves to the Devs*
Yoo Hoo! States! We don't talk about how to improve bases and make them more accessible to more players for nothing! Try actually reading what we post, then you might understand why people don't use bases...
"A good Defender is the battle hardened Corpsman who will kill a Nazi with a tongue depressor while putting a splint on your leg, then hand you a fresh clip of ammo." ~Jock_Thompson
Repeat Offenders, TNT Profile, My little hero
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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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Ye gad, man! You make it sound like your cat just died! I certainly didn't intend for this to lead to anyone's departure!
Thing is: so bases aren't that great. So what? Wasted development effort? Sure. Wasted potential? Sure. But I don't think anyone would say that it's a make-or-break feature. It didn't work out like they wanted. But it's like 1% of the game. I say we keep suggesting how to make it better, and then get over it while we play the rest of the frickin' brilliant game.
OK, so I'm doped up on NyQuil right now. Sorry about that.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
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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.
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QFT.
If you have 100 SGs with 75 players per, that's 7500 players in SGs. However, more than likely only one person in each SG is the base builder/decorator. That's 100 out of 7500 players. That means 7400 people are just the financial backers. It's kind of frightening when you look at it that way. And he wonders why they aren't popular?
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Emmerts hypothesis is that people dont like contributing money to a group to express individuality.
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What individuality is a financial backer expressing?
It seems Statesman doesn't get why bases are so unpopular.
They just need to do something in the game (make raids operational, please) and they need to be affordable (nix upkeep entirely, reexamine prices).
Do these two things, and base popularity will probably increase.
Also, find other uses for bases for PVE.
I hope a dev reads this thread.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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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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Ye gad, man! You make it sound like your cat just died! I certainly didn't intend for this to lead to anyone's departure!
Thing is: so bases aren't that great. So what? Wasted development effort? Sure. Wasted potential? Sure. But I don't think anyone would say that it's a make-or-break feature. It didn't work out like they wanted. But it's like 1% of the game. I say we keep suggesting how to make it better, and then get over it while we play the rest of the frickin' brilliant game.
OK, so I'm doped up on NyQuil right now. Sorry about that.
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Nah, you didn't do anything. All you did was randomly start a thread about some things I have been in /tells with, with my Sg commanders (being the G.L. myself), on who I would turn the SG over to when I left.
From bases, to the lack of real bug fixes in the past year, to features that Jack lip-serviced at these forums time and again that never came to light, to several other things, I just feel it's about time to hang-up the tights. It's been fun. At one point the game was fun. But, at one point I also thought a lot of its potential would not go so wasted, either. And like I said, this is about a lot more than bases; that article was just typical "Jack". Nothing different than the glaring lack of understanding about the game and the playerbase that he's always shown. I'm just surprised he didn't lip-service features again, that would never come to light.
The Q2 2006 report from NCSoft showed the drop in CoH/V. I tend to agree with several that Marvel will be, in a way, the CoH 2. I don't think CoH will die or anything. I think it will chug along and what it is, it is.
I welcome to be proven wrong one day. On that day, I'll happily return as a subscriber.
My only question to myself right now is, do I resub on Nov 4th and ride it out till December, and use that time to play a few more times with friends and make the round of in-game good-byes; or do I just let it end on Nov 4th?
I have a couple more days to decide.
If they needed inspiration for base creation I don't know why they didn't look at the widely-recognized best feature of CoH - the character creation. They should have allowed all heroes the ability to create an entirely non-functional base outside of SGs at level 1 using any and all base sizes and every non-functional item available. Then as the player progresses he gets to unlock actual new features of the bases. Whether this gets tied to badges or levels or whatevre doesn't really matter. The point is that people want to "own" stuff, as Statesman recognizes, and right now people don't feel like they "own" their bases, because 99% of the player base doesn't have any input into how their SG base looks or acts.
It's amazing to me that CoH can be so good at one player-content feature (costumes) and so poor at another (bases). For some reason they just didn't see them as parralel - which is bizarre because even on Comicbook culture the base is often just as "signature" as the costume. Superman's Fortress of Solitude, Batman's Batcave, etc.
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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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No. I think they're conveniant. VERY conveniant. I certainly am glad to ahve them. But I played this game for almsot six months before I ever even saw a teleport pad and I got along just fine. They make my life slightly easier, but they don't make my character any better or allow me to do anything I wouldn't otherwise (move from point A to point B). If the conveniance is worth it by itself for you then fair enough. I supose it is to me too to the extent that if my SG has the prestige lying aorudn to buy them, then why NOT make my life easier. But the prospect of taking 2 minutes less to get from one side of Paragon to teh other is simply not enough to motivate me, personally, to devote vast quantities of my time and energy to affording them.
That's the problem. its not that nothign in bases is useful. Its that its all sort of blah. Its nice to ahve, but if you don't have it, do you really care? Are you reall violently motivated to earn it so you can be cool like the other SG down the street? Probably not in the same way that an actual mateiral advantage to your charater and thoe of your group-mates would motivate you.
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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
and see if that makes them more popular.
*waves magic wand*
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I'm going to just cut and paste my response from the topic on this in the Base forum.
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Hah, yet another example of Jack's lack of a clue in regards to what players think. This is almost as silly as his ill informed ideas on how to make use of defiance, commonly refered to on the Blaster board as "stupid Blaster tricks."
People don't *hate* bases. They're *indifferent* to them. They are little more than a glorified storage and transportation system. A year after CoV went live, they still haven't gotten the Cathedral of Pain working properly, there is only one task force through the Mission Computer for villains, and none for Heroes. Oh, and lets not forget the overly high prestige costs for everything, and the high rent, which limit access to much of the bases to bigger SGs. Which is great if you're like me and in one. Not so much if you aren't.
Jack, if you're reading this, if you want people to make use of the base feature, make it more accessible. Lower the rents, lower prestige costs, and give us something to do with bases! Put in some Super Group only missions and task forces! Give us a reason to use bases as something besides a shortcut through Paragon.
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Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
I love my base. It's awesome, and would be a very cool place to hang out. Unfortunately...No one hangs out there. Why? Because there's no reason to.
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I love my base. It's awesome, and would be a very cool place to hang out. Unfortunately...No one hangs out there. Why? Because there's no reason to.
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The random crashes and booting people out are sort of a buzz killer for that sort of thing too.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
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I love my base. It's awesome, and would be a very cool place to hang out. Unfortunately...No one hangs out there. Why? Because there's no reason to.
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The random crashes and booting people out are sort of a buzz killer for that sort of thing too.
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Not to mention you can't even let your friends in the bases anymore since they just get booted automatically.
1) It's unfortunate that the OP, and the rest of the thread largely focuses on Jack's discussion of bases. There's a thread on the Base boards that preceeds this one by a matter of hours on the subject. My comments to that effect are there.
2) The bulk of the speech (at least as reported by Gamasutra) is more about how MMO developers can, and sometimes can't engineer social behaviors among their respective playerbases. Bases are one aspect of that point from CoX.
3) Are bases a failure? They were designed for the long-haul. Even a year after their implementation, the SGs that I'm familiar with that have been the most dedicated towards Prestige acquisition are just now approaching the 50M mark. The most expensive plot off the top of my head costs 136M. Rent mechanics (and their impending changes) notwithstanding -- these SGs are looking to max out their
4) Despite the fact that I do agree that base costs, Rent and Prestige acquisition could probably stand Dev attention, there are two major points I've been making in the last year as important qualifiers to that opinion:
a) Too many of the arguments I've seen regarding base costs overly rely on top-end costs as evidence. I would argue that these items were scaled to account for the possibility (even though it seems the vast majority of the playerbase doesn't engage in these behaviors) that a single SG could potentially fill its roster with 75 very active, different player-members.
b) As a corollary, the playerbase has largely not taken advantage of this possibility. It seems even the most popular SGs I'm familiar with at most field two-to-three dozen different active player members, with perhaps a few more less-active player members. Instead, it seems many (if not most) SGs prefer to leave room to swap alts in and out. It further seems that two-to-three dozen different player members is about as large as many, if not most SGs can reasonably sustain.
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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
and see if that makes them more popular.
*waves magic wand*
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I firmly agree with your assessment and am surprised that Jack was so far off the mark on that. The cost of bases and rent in general have created a frustration to players more then anything. In fact costs aside getting rid of rent would go a long way at increasing base usage as well as the other ideas you suggested.
In addition sg mission computers that actually provide missions and tfs, afterall the hero side mish comp is a pretty decoration without much use except for the cathedral of pain, at least the villians get a sg tf.
Having the ability to place sg members that are logged out in the base would be a massively cool addition to the game and bases in general.
FOR JACK if he reads this bases are under-utilized because they go from fun addition to being work effort to being frustration to keep the door open.
I gotta take the unpopular side and go with states on this one.
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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.
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 he says is true.. each supergroup base is different from each other. They are very indivdual. Its like creating costumes for our characters. Each supergroup will have its own look and feel inside its base. He's not talking indivdual as in one person but rather the uniqueness of the base itself from one base to another. A lot of fluff items are available to make your bases unique.. chairs, desks, tables, lab stuff, lighting elements. These fluff items largely go unused.
The other part "people dont like contributing money to a group to express individuality" is also very true. Players do not like putting in prestige to help the group express its own individuality. He's talking about the fluff items. A bookshelf, a computer table, a chair, vats, test tubes and other flavor items. All costing prestige. Bases are for the most part built bare. The walls are empty, the floor layout is designed for effeciency. The only rooms used are those that matter.. med bay, teleport room, storage rooms ect. Hardly ever is the prestige used to make a bedroom or a lab for example. Or even just a simple sitting room.
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Emmert realized, in developing City of Heroes that there is a deeply rooted fear in most people of, essentially, grouping with strangers. He asks by example do you know your neighbors well enough to have them over to dinner? Do you know and trust your neighbors well enough to let them take care of your children. These rhetorical questions beg yet another question about irrational fears, namely, if the odds are absurdly low that we should be wary of our neighbors, why do many people still not know or trust them?
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He talked about neighbors not knowing each other. We don't trust people we don't know. This ties into supergroups very well. The larger the group the more likely everyone is not going to know everyone else. By and large the group won't trust one another. They will be like renters all living in the same building paying rent to the building owner.
The SG base was meant to be about your group working together. Its about that sense of community and friendship within your supergroup. Its about pooling resources rather then hording them. This was the ideal bases were designed under. Billions in influence are floating around.. rather then horde it the devs thought (wrongly) it would trickle down to the newer memebers of a group. Only this didn't happen. People hated having to choose between running in SG mode or earning influence. SGs were meant to be a group effort and a shared group experience but not trusting your group mucks it up.
"At its heart, these MMPs are individual game experiences in front of a computer terminal"
An individual game experience in front of a computer terminal sums up this final thought well. Players don't want a group shared experience but rather an individual gaming experience. If they have to give up something for the group then that design element is gonna flop and be hated by your playerbase.
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An individual game experience in front of a computer terminal sums up this final thought well. Players don't want a group shared experience but rather an individual gaming experience. If they have to give up something for the group then that design element is gonna flop and be hated by your playerbase.
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None of this relates to why people aren't all that happy with bases, though. To buy into that requires accepting the obvious and accurate as wrong.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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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.
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The sad, sad truth.
And personally, I don't like having to sacrifice my influence gain so some guy can have a ball customizing his base. And promotion is impossible, since this particular SG has promotion based on "RP" cybersex with the leaders. For serious.
Dawnslayer on Virtue.
<QR>
Add the giant monster alerts to the base computer feature. Have some NPC raiding, instance stuff.
Find a way to post screenines on the wall as plaques.
Have base rewards also reflect task forces completed- like you get a letter from Posi saying thanx for doing the task force and defeating....whatever.
Get. Base. Raids. Working.
The problem with the prestige system is that it feels like work. Actual work. The influence/prestige exchange is wacked- players are used to getting a butt load of influence, but now they get a little bit of prestige- that DOES make a differnce. Like the task they just performed wasn't THAT important. Like it was just work- not super heroics or something.
Let individual players place stuff but pay for it using influence.
Have the bases be individulaized- not just one portal for all bases. Like your sg base "front" is a strip club for girls/guys/both/robots/alien and "other"- Let the players some how establish secret identities through the base missions.
Have a message board system in place- a lot of big sg's have their own websites- this is something you should implement- the leader wants to get a group together for ToT'ing? Post it on the message board/sg computer.....
Have the players find their base ransacked a few times and they have to find out who did it-
Just a few ideas.
"I'm not scared of anyone or anything Angie. Isn't that the way life should be?"
Jack Hawksmoor, The Authority.
I don't think it's "fun" designing a Base... I've done level design Modding for over a decade and I dread having to screw around with any of the bases I have leadership over. ...There's like 5 or 6 of them now that I should be trying to do something with but I'm not inspired by the process so the Prestige is just piling up; ...over 2-3 million in each one that's giong to waste and being taxed away by this retarded "Rent" system.
And it's not fun because it lacks real customization. It's not like putting together a piece of art or a sculpture, it's more like a Slide-Puzzle as all the pieces only have 1 or 2 places that they can go and once you've done that, it just looks like every other PoS cookie-cutter design out there. And all that leaves you with as a redeeeming factor is basic functionality which I think everyone else in this Thread just covered pretty well as "Not bloody much" in terms of actual usefulness.
They would have been much better having never made Bases in the first place and just gone ahead with "Vehicles" as a rapid transit solution.... then they'd a also had a lot more resources to dedicate to fixing the actual PvP that people WANT to do instead of Base Raid concept that's Broken and will remain broken for years to come... and by then, The Fury and WarHammer games will be released and anyone with half a brain who's serious about PvP will have already left.
As for the Buying in and the Individual and all that crapola... all that hinges on having basically a Draconian / Machiavelian style system for SG progression and SG recruitment ... which actually does happen in isolated pockets even though Bases aren't used for anything that benefits those leaders anyway outside of Ego. But the key MMO word there is "Achievement" and the Devs stupidly seem to believe that THIS community would respond best to that sort of thing when it's clear that many many ppl who DO come together are Explorers(Chronic Altitus) or Co-Op driven(built around teaming b/c they WANT TO, not b/c they feel they have to). Bases do nothing to address either one of those motivations.
And one thing I've noticed in the RO Sg's particularly is everyone's already on equal ground and there to be social ... "rank" means next to nothing and there's never been a need for anything besides a completely democratic system (complete with Voter Apathy 
) It would seem to me that Statesman Underestimated the Intelligence and Social Capacity for a great number of folks in this community and that's why so many people either don't care about Bases, or would rather be Lone Wolfs anyway.
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You don't think teleporters are important? O.o
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I was going to say. We have 4 teleports (with 2 destinations each) in our base. With a medibay with a well stocked influence storage unit right next to it so we can restock inspires right there when we rezz in the base. Enhancement storage, salvage storage... And get this, there are only 2 active members in our SG and we earn all the influence to aford that stuff--okay, we are sick fools who play too much, I do agree things should be cheaper so that casual folks can aford these things.
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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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And theres nothing like it in any other MMP
Hmm,
Maybe he should try playing SWG? Just for this specific option SWG has. Granted in SWG it holds no function except for crafting purposes... but... yeah... at least I only have to pay rent for a HUGE lot and I can craft any furniture I like, and any LOOT or special items I receive DOESNT cost me to place them in my own base that I pay rent for. *cough* supergroup items*cough*
Heck, hasn't player created housing and the like been around since the days of UO? I'm not sure where Jack gets off thinking bases are some sort of novel creation.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
Perhaps he's referring to the huge amount of customisation you have within your instanced base. I don't think that both the levels of customisation AND having an instanced base is something that appears within any other MMOG - feel free to prove me wrong.
<QR>
I believe all the issues with bases have been discussed to death in the Base Construction forum. If the Developers would read that section, I believe they'd get the point.
What bases really need is a way to get everyone involved, not just the architect.
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Perhaps he's referring to the huge amount of customisation you have within your instanced base. I don't think that both the levels of customisation AND having an instanced base is something that appears within any other MMOG - feel free to prove me wrong.
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Yeah. That's what I'm thinking.
The Player Housing is DAoC, if you could afford it, was fairly "confined."
There were 4 or 5 building layouts, each more costly than the next. Rent, for the biggest, was expensive. And while you could put a fair amount of non-funtionall objects pretty much anywhere, functional objects had to be put in "fixed" locations.
Each house looked like every other one.
In CoX, there is a far larger selection of objects to place, the size and layout is only limited by the amount of Prestige available, and funtional items can be placed anywhere within thier assigned rooms.
NCIS: Best gorram show in the 'verse.
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This is a great thread.
Everyone has great suggestions.
I remember when Pockt D was the Paragon Dance Party. Useless, boring, empty.
Then, the Developers posted the "Suggestions Thread for the Dance Party," and we have Pocket D! Hundereds of times more usefull and fun.
The Dev's should listen to us on this. Let us post our ideas in Suggestions thread, and then, come out with the Pocket D equivilant of Bases.
I for one would suggest.
1. Personal Rooms for Each member to decorate as they wish.
2. Mission Computer with Unlockable Missions Like News Paper/Police Band Missions only for Supergroup / Coalition members only.
3.PVP Forget the CoP missions. Give us a small "Neverwinter Nights" type editor to make missions within our bases. I mean... if the Skulz can give us problems in a warehouse... imagine fighting spawns in a villain base. (no Influence and exp of course. Just for fun)
4. "Danger Room" The Supergroup should earn badges that will unlock Danger Room enemies to fight in an Arena Atmosphere.
5. Arena Access. They're doing it in Pocekt D. Lets have these in our Bases. (Again no Inf/Exp, just for fun)
There are so many more Ideas. I'm sure the devlopers have a whole white board filled with them. Let's start to implement them, and let CoP die for now.
PS sorry for grammer and misspellings. Just excited over post.