Statesman speaks at serious games summit
By
2Negative,
Posted on: 2006-10-31 18:17 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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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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An empowerment station is a fairly cheap addition to a base that lets you turn basic salvage into hour-long buffs -- healing, attack rate, resistance to individual mez effects, and the like -- that you can't readily obtain any other way.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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- let us place NPCs, scriptable bosses, and a scripted win condition in them
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I liked Suikoden for this reason. Filling your base with bustling people made it feel cool.
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An empowerment station is a fairly cheap addition to a base that lets you turn basic salvage into hour-long buffs -- healing, attack rate, resistance to individual mez effects, and the like -- that you can't readily obtain any other way.
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Yes, and the buffs themselves are puny. Maybe you can't get a 2.5% buff to your run speed elsewhere, but why in hell would you WANT to?
The buffs are weak because they were supposed to stack. It was discovered that they don't stack. So they made them last an hour instead. We now have long, weak buffs.
The buffs suck so much that I (the main architect for our SGs) refuse to even put the buff stations in our bases. As much of a salvage stockpile as we may have, I don't see the buffs as anything but a complete waste.
I can just imagine the horror of checking up one day and finding out our salvage has been eaten up by someone who really liked that 2.5% run buff.
Good summary, but in summary, it misses that Jack DOES recognize some of the other complaints here. I got to hear it firsthand, and it's intesting that some of the things that struck me didn't even make the article, whereas things I ignored were focal points.
He notes that people would prefer to decorate their own stuff, not contribute to allow someone else to decorate. As someone else mentioned, in a SG of 80, maybe 1-2 are base decorators.
He seemed to miss the point on taxation- or just didn't make it part of the discussion (this wasn't a comprehensive analysis, after all) but he really did allude to many of the issues that the "proof that Jack knows jack" commenters are [censored] about.
Still, some things he DIDN'T touch on:
When bases came out, they were envisioned as a "PvP thing" (go back and look- Posi even referenced that they were primarily for IOP's and base raids (the strategic element of PvP).
That was a BIG part of every friggin part of bases, but that's the part that's only NOW (after many interested in such a feature is likely long gone) entering the game... still with issues
With that in mind:
If they gave bases (A PvP element) significant gameplay advantages then the PvE crowd would be rightfully torqued off. Can't say I blame em.
The devs need to decide whether bases are PvP-centric, PvE-centric, or useful for both. They need to bring the investment on par with the reward, and acknowledge that an 80 CHARACTER SG may be less than a dozen PLAYERS, and scale bases accordingly.
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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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It's funny because it's true...
Dasher
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
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- let us place NPCs, scriptable bosses, and a scripted win condition in them
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I liked Suikoden for this reason. Filling your base with bustling people made it feel cool.
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I loved that series. It was really amazing to come home and see that your min..err followers had built up the base in your absence.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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Teleporters not useful? Until the tram fix in I8 hits live, those damn things are worth their weight in gold.
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Amen, we love em.
Problems with Telepads:
1. Too big. WAY too big.
2. Can't attach Beacons directly to the Telepad. This means leaving walls up so you can put beacons near Telepads to allow players to quickly see where they want to go.
3. Max of two beacons per telepad, and Telepads are huge, and only two will fit in a room, etcetera...
Still, I wouldn't have to do without them.
Except I will have to when CoP goes live again, since we can't afford a base pad that will hold enough Transport chambers for all the Telepads, a Raid Teleporter, and a Vault.
Prestige and the rent that steals it are rip-offs designed to force people to keep playiing.
Dasher
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
I'd echo Kias's comments. My SG on Virtue has for most of the past year had no more than three accounts in it, and usually only two playing. We recently balloned to five. 
We have a control room with a supercomputer and decorations, two teleport chambers (four pads, eight beacons), a med center with inspiration storage, and a workshop with two empowerment stations, salvage and enhancement storage (only the basic worktable, we don't need worktables for much). We have a few decorations in the entrance room too. The supercomputer was a recent purchase and required almost all the prestige we'd accumulated in the last several months, but it's the last major purchase we'll need in the foreseeable future. The only thing I could even think of adding is another workshop, and we really don't need it. I can't even see what we'd want to expand the plot size for under the current circumstances.
We use the base for occasional socializing, transportation and storage. We'd socialize in it more often if we were all RPers but we're not. People keep bringing up SWG's houses, but the only thing my house was good for in SWG was storage. It's true that there are people out there that really enjoy decorating virtual living spaces. Almost all of them are playing The Sims. I don't think it would be a productive use of the devs' time to try to cater to a market that mostly isn't playing their game.
People keep saying that bases are too expensive, but just a few of us have managed to build pretty much all the functionality a PvE SG could ever need. At most we could use more telepads, but even the number we have is a luxury. Since we're small everyone has base edit privs; if you need to go somewhere distant the pads aren't set for, sell back a beacon and buy the one you need. (For this reason I think the current telepad/beacon system is a joke; either don't let us sell the beacons back, or make them require salvage, or just change the telepad menu to let the user chose from all the zones the SG has badged and get rid of the beacons altogether.) I could not possibly care less about the difficulties involved in making a PvP base, and I strongly suspect upwards of 90% of the user base doesn't care either.
As far as I'm concerned, it's not that bases don't work (aside from bugs; the one kicking member of non-coalition SGs out instantly being a chief offender), it's that people aren't making them work. Whether that's something the devs can fix is by no means clear.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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DasScoot wrote:
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The base editor isn't really that complicated, once you understand power and control and what sort of things you need.
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It's really not that complicated to fly a 747 or install linux either, if you already have that knowledge. My point is, for the casual player, =obtaining= that knowledge is a barrier.
On the topic of using bases, yes, I use mine (although I don't edit anything, I'm just a user). I dump all salvage I get so the base dude can craft whatever he needs to. And I use the teleporters because they're convenient.
But if it were to disappear, I wouldn't really miss it.
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I'd add to that, I never felt particular intimidated by the Base Editor. Getting acquainted with the basic interface never felt particularly difficult.
Add to that the fact that the Editor inherently refunds all "mistakes".
I will readily defer that the stability and reliability of the Editor, and other anomalies of Prestige seem to make a great many players very cautious when it comes to base construction.
I will grant that the Base Boards see many players confused or frustrated by the Base Editor -- but I'll offer that it's not the inherent fault of the fundamental design of the Base Editor.
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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.
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Welcome to the band, brother. You take the next set, my voice is tired...
Dasher
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
I cant agree more with this thread.
It is a common economic principle that you incentives the things you want to happen and penalize (i.e. tax) the things you want to minimize. By forcing players to earn less influence in order to earn prestige, you are essentially taxing players to support their base. Then add rent (i.e. tax) and penalize the players again.
The biggest problem I have with this system (i.e. base design)is it feels artificial, and like a grind. It feels like yet another artificial hook designed to keep you paying subscription fees.
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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...
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That'd be a first...
Dasher
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
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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.
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They also need to be one-tenth the price they are now. Or leave them at the price they are but let us pay in Influence instead of this cheesy "Prestige" nonsense.
Dasher
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
After re-reading Emmert's speech, I seriously wonder how much (or how little) influence he has over development of CoH. Very little I would guess.
CapAp
... whatever
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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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I sent Jack a PM saying that exact thing: the reason bases are lead balloons is because they're too expensive and almost no one gets to design them.
Plus, the floorplans need to be added to. All you can make now is a single-level Ranch. We need to be able to emulate the ultra-cool bases we see in comics. We need to be able to make one-person apartments or the Batcave or the Avengers Mansion or the Baxter Building or an orbiting space station....
What we need is the building equivalent of the character creator. One that everyone can access. Look at the astonishing range of things people can create in Star Wars Galaxies. It's literally mind-blowing. They've created everything from gentleman's clubs to spaceship hangars, tree forts to strongholds, all using the same basic building blocks.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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What we need is the building equivalent of the character creator. One that everyone can access. Look at the astonishing range of things people can create in Star Wars Galaxies. It's literally mind-blowing. They've created everything from gentleman's clubs to spaceship hangars, tree forts to strongholds, all using the same basic building blocks.
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Personally I would settle for a single unit You-Store-It shed with a recliner and a tv. ; )
CapAp
... whatever
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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.
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It's $15 Canadian at the FutureShop near my house. If you include the free month (worth ~$15 American), they're actually paying you to buy CoV. 
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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.
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It's $15 Canadian at the FutureShop near my house. If you include the free month (worth ~$15 American), they're actually paying you to buy CoV.
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Now *that* is funny <,<!
"Take it. Here, have 5 bucks."
(Currency not even attempted to be converted in any realistic manner >.>
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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.
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Welcome to the band, brother. You take the next set, my voice is tired...
Dasher
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I would man, I would. Except I've been in this band since around Issue 4 when it became clear "Papa Jack's" promised features would never see light of day, and quality started showing a strain in-game.
Jack's advice to me back then was that if I did not like the direction the "City of" line was going, there are other MMOs out there.
I shrugged and gave him and company the benefit of the doubt. About 10 months later after that PM from him, I've finally bit the bullet and reinstalled EQ2. Why? *shrug* Because I don't really want to play WoW again, and at least I get Access Pass.
All I am deciding now is if November 3rd is my last day, or December 3rd.
Yay, let's continue to crap on Statesman! We're at 10 pages now, keep it going!
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@Razoras
I don't see a lot of personal criticisms of Emmert. I see critiques of gameplay and functionality in CoX, along with commentary on the company's ability and expertise in managing subscriber expectations.
Most of the people here have spent a lot of time, historically, recognizing Cryptic's achievements and complimenting the devs on the many things they've 'gotten right'. This thread is primarily about Bases, and Bases are not one of the things that Cryptic 'got right'. They 'got close' in several respects, but have yet to 'get it right' yet.
Trust me, the devs have thicker skin than you likely have in the face of criticism. This thread is 10 times more useful to them as-is, than it would be if people just formed a daisy ring of praises and excuses.
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Yay, let's continue to crap on Statesman! We're at 10 pages now, keep it going!
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Oh noes, honest critcisim of developer misunderstanding of the playerbase's attitude?
As for number of pages, its only two for me. In your My Home you can increase the posts per page from the standard 10. I have it at 50 and it makes reading the forums much easier.
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Yay, let's continue to crap on Statesman! We're at 10 pages now, keep it going!
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Oh noes, honest critcisim of developer misunderstanding of the playerbase's attitude?
As for number of pages, its only two for me. In your My Home you can increase the posts per page from the standard 10. I have it at 50 and it makes reading the forums much easier.
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Well, the thing is, going by the forums, it wasn't exactly a misunderstanding. Or did I just hallucinate all those people saying they shouldn't have to give up influence for prestige, or complaining about being prestige batteries for insensitive SGs?
And it never went any deeper than that.
Never mind that you can spend 80% of your time in SG mode and still get your enhancers.
It's true that supergroups need large amounts of prestige to do anything meaningful, and that bases for are their flexibility are rigid in rather bizarre ways (tell me again why I have to clear a raid path to something with no hit points that can't be targeted?). But the most vocal complaint was "I don't want to give up my influence!"
--GF
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DasScoot wrote:
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The base editor isn't really that complicated, once you understand power and control and what sort of things you need.
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It's really not that complicated to fly a 747 or install linux either, if you already have that knowledge. My point is, for the casual player, =obtaining= that knowledge is a barrier.
On the topic of using bases, yes, I use mine (although I don't edit anything, I'm just a user). I dump all salvage I get so the base dude can craft whatever he needs to. And I use the teleporters because they're convenient.
But if it were to disappear, I wouldn't really miss it.
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
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