You don't miss it until it's gone. (part 2)
By
Alimistar,
Posted on: 2007-04-16 16:14 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Things that make you go <swoon>...
--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!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
amen, again.
for me, reason 4 is the biggest reason. i made my character. i am uniquely me in this game world. people shall recognize me as me. i do not look like every other member of my "race" except with different colored hair. i can RP and it feels RIGHT---not like a stilted shakespearean monologue.
i did beta for the game you mentioned, and i was underwhelmed. in the end, it was the same ol' same ol'. it wasn't bad, it was just "meh".
-lapsed citizen of paragon, back to punish crime.
When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.
Cool posts, BTW.
Still as well-written as before 
I really enjoy stories of "conventional" MMOs and still thank all my lucky starts I never started playing one. I've given them a try, but that was after playing CoH. My reaction?
Me: So, you want me to kind of just go out there and kill stuff for no reason other than that I can, Newbie Trainer?
Newbie Trainer: Well, yeah, kind of. You could go take quests, I suppose, but hell if I know where you can find those. I'd suggest you just go kill stuff.
Me: I think I prefer quests, thanks. I don't like hist going out to hunt stuff.
Newbie Trainer: Are you sure? OK, so here's how quests work. Still, though, I wouldn't bother
Me: OK, I'll go look for quests.
Friend: You know, you should go to that building over there to join the Warriors guild.
Me: OK, where is it?
Friend: Here, let me show you on the map.
Me: Ok, that's in which direction from where I'm standing.
Friend: There, I think. No, that's not it. Hey, I think you ended up in a blacksmith.
Me: OK, let's see if that guy has a quest then.
Friend: But... The Warriors guild...
Me: I'm getting a bit tired of blundering around. Let's see if he has a quest.
Blacksmith: Hello, Some Guy. Why, yes, I do have a quest for you. I lost a shipment of special ore. See, it's special for some obscure reason that I don't think you care about.
Me: OK, gotcha. You lost a shipment of ore. I suppose thieves stole it and you want me to go kill them and get your ore back?
Blacksmith: Thieves? Oh, no! The caravan tipped over into the river and frogs ate my ore. You should go out by the river and start killing giant frogs. Some of them should have my ore.
Me: Say what now?!?
Blacksmith: I'm missing about 20 pieces of ore. Well, come on. Chop, chop! Those frogs won't kill themselves.
Me: OK... So what about the Warriors guild?
Friend: I think you can go there later. They'll just give you a quest for now.
Me: OK. Let's go kill giant frogs, I suppose. OK, I killed about 5 of them and none of them gave me anything. Are you sure that's where we're supposed to kill them?
Friend: I don't know, really. I don't do quests until I'm level 15 or so. Hunting is faster. But I think each frog has only a chance to drop a piece of ore.
Me: So I'm supposed to kill how many, then? If 5 frogs didn't drop a single piece and I need 20 pieces... Then I really don't think that quest is anything more than thinly-veiled hunting anyway.
Friend: Told you. You're just better off going hunting.
I proceeded to nearly drown, swim under a bridge, get nearly killed by a frikkin' frog and then kicked off the server. The game must have read my mind.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Samuel_Tow wrote:
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I proceeded to nearly drown, swim under a bridge, get nearly killed by a frikkin' frog and then kicked off the server.
[/ QUOTE ]
"Your skill at drowning has increased to level 2!"
--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!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
[ QUOTE ]
When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.
Cool posts, BTW.
[/ QUOTE ]
A good idea. You guys just be sure to keep "Fun" as a priority.
Angry_Citizen then looks upon I9, and sighs
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
[ QUOTE ]
Blacksmith: Hello, Some Guy. Why, yes, I do have a quest for you. I lost a shipment of special ore. See, it's special for some obscure reason that I don't think you care about.
Me: OK, gotcha. You lost a shipment of ore. I suppose thieves stole it and you want me to go kill them and get your ore back?
Blacksmith: Thieves? Oh, no! The caravan tipped over into the river and frogs ate my ore. You should go out by the river and start killing giant frogs. Some of them should have my ore.
Me: Say what now?!?
Blacksmith: I'm missing about 20 pieces of ore. Well, come on. Chop, chop! Those frogs won't kill themselves.
[/ QUOTE ]
Please make Sam an NPC and make some portion of this his quest. Trolls can be frogs and thieves! It'll be great!
[ QUOTE ]
When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.
Cool posts, BTW.
[/ QUOTE ]
Fun! CoH is just plain happy go fun time! And, in my opinion at least, i9 is adding even more fun and incentive. Now, if we could talk about the whole Set Bonuses being axed when exemping... That's gotta change, m'kay?
=. .=
I tried other MMOs out there and despite what new features and shiny things that are in them. I always comeback here and the rest end up falling on the wayside and end up cancelling the subscriptions due to bordom.
One thing that draws me to the CoH/V game vs. others out there is the fact that I was raised on comic books and sci-fi. Personally the fantasy genre was never my cup of tea and never could see anyone's interest in them, plus it seems to be the genre that just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry's MMOs is based around on. So until something come along to grab my interest I'm happy and content here in good ol' Paragon City.
Paragon Unleashed Forums
Twitter: @Alpha_Ryvius
Hey, I know which unnamed, unfinished MMO you are talking about. Tried it out for 15 minutes and knew at once I was not going to like it, despite my love for the books (movies are unrelated except for name and general plot similarities ). It seemed, apart from the books and graphics differences, too similar to a rather popular Fantasy MMO.
CoH is the only MMO I have played straight (excepting two odd billing lapses) since release. I've tried some others but aside from one being neurotically addicting and another being neigh impossible to enjoy if you were not in a team or a guild (it's LFG function just is lacking) the others were 'eh, ok'. My main disappointment is that people in the gaming club I play in don't play CoH. Ah well... their loss.
By the way, your Ganny is why I avoid Colorado Blvd. 
CatMan - some form on every server
Always here, there, and there again.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.
Cool posts, BTW.
[/ QUOTE ]
A good idea. You guys just be sure to keep "Fun" as a priority.
Angry_Citizen then looks upon I9, and sighs
[/ QUOTE ]
Repeat after me:
"No crafting skills to level up! Everything made instantly (no progress bars)! WOOT!"
[ QUOTE ]
*snip*
By the way, your Ganny is why I avoid Colorado Blvd.
[/ QUOTE ]
She's a terror, isn't she?
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[ QUOTE ]
*snip*
By the way, your Ganny is why I avoid Colorado Blvd.
[/ QUOTE ]
She's a terror, isn't she?
[/ QUOTE ]
I walk my bike across Colorado now; I tremble to much to otherwise ride it.
CatMan - some form on every server
Always here, there, and there again.
Your first post touched on some of the reasons why I still play this game, despite the occasional fit of pique.
This post hits one out of the ballpark. I, also, have tried other games and the things that always serve to annoy me are absence of a sidekicking/exemplaring system and the ludicrous, tedious, frivolous travelling times.
For these reasons primarily, and for all the other reasons you've mentioned, CoX is still, even three years after release, the only MMO that holds my interest.
*trudge trudge trudge*
Oh, look, there's my objective on the other side of that small hill! I'll just cruise right over. Right over. Hmm. Can't get over the hill. Oh, come on, the hill isn't even waist high, I could hop over. If I can't go over the hill, I'd have to take the loooong way around on the path.
Sigh.
*trudge trudge trudge* *fight fight fight* *trudge trudge trudge*
20 minutes later...
Time to go back to CoH!
While I don't necessarily agree with everything you mentioned, I certainly agree with the character ownership. This keeps me coming back to this game and creating new characters, coming up with new backstories and costumes. I love it!
[ QUOTE ]
"Your skill at drowning has increased to level 2!"
--NT
[/ QUOTE ]
rofl, awesome
Heh, I played said game for a while as well. At first I was having a pretty decent amount of fun, and the game was, well, shiny. What stirred me back to reality was the first "Go kill this habitual troublemaker" mission. I journey for a few minutes, find what looks like the spot, to see 6 people standing in a line to nowhere. It's then that I realize, these people are waiting for said monster to spawn so they can have their turn to kill it. "Oh crap," I thought to myself, "this is just like another (IMO) overrated, massively populated MMO I once played. RUN AWAY!"
Victory: @Brimstone Bruce
Brimstone Bruce (lvl50 Stone/Fire Tanker) Broadside Bruce (lvl50 Shield/WM Tanker)
Ultionis (lvl50 Dark/Dark Defender) Cortex Crusher (lvl50 Mind/Kin Controller)
Patronox (lvl50 Kat/Dark Scrapper) Harbinger Mk.7 (lvl50 Bots/FF MM)
NightShift for Life.
To be honest the reason I stay with COH is that the other games are too hard. Dont laugh. I tried one fantasy game and I couldnt figure out how to slot skills and powers and what ever else they had. I mean how hard is it to decide Fly will go faster with three slots then one slot. Then what do I put in that Fly slot, either a Fly SO or an End SO. Nice and simple.
The other thing that throws me for a loop is what do I do with all the daggers, swords, axes, bows, maces, etc I pick up. Some do extra damage, some do extra magic, so do things like add hit points,etc. Also I am afraid to throw out anything since I might need it down the road. I must look like a human pack mule coming down the road. Two 2-handed swords, 3 bows, a mace, a club, 4 daggers, a big shield, 2 small shields, and a sack of some yellow dust. But you cant tell what my alt is carring because he looks the same as the other 20 priests you see on the street.
Combat is so much more fun in COH then any other MMO that I have done or watched. My son used to do FF and combat there just made me scratch my head. You have a team of 6 or so people that stand around some really stupid looking monster,(the Japanese are really strange about monsters), they press attack at the beganing of the battle and then just stand around. Sort of reminds me of text games in the distant past. The other games that I have tried are not much better. Sure you can hit different buttons to do some combos, but you dont move, you just stand there. Unlike COH where you are hoping all over the place, you are always moving and switching what you target. I love the combat in COH. You have so many options.
I will stick with COH until COH 2 (MUO) comes out. Then with the lessons they learned in COH on how to make a fun game, COH2 will be even better. I really hope so. I might try Tabula Rosa or Conan. But I just dont see them replacing the super hero in me.
"A pigs gotta fly"
"Heroes occur because someone makes a mistake. We dont want any heroes today."
You know what Statesman, overall you did a fantastic job on this game. Sure there are some things that could have been done better but it was your first MMO. And yes COX is at its core fun. And that is important.
I also looked at the unnamed new not yet released MMO that the OP did. The travelling around over and over and over through pretty pretty landscape to arrive at a location and stand in a line pretty much killed the fun of that game for me. ::sigh:: and I really wanted to like that game. Ah well.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
[ QUOTE ]
When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.
Cool posts, BTW.
[/ QUOTE ]
Walk over to the MUO design whiteboard, and under "Fun" erase whatever is written and write "balanced" and "mathematically sane."
Then find a copy of my Open Letter to Cryptic and tape it to the board. Thanks.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
[ QUOTE ]
Still as well-written as before
....
I proceeded to nearly drown, swim under a bridge, get nearly killed by a frikkin' frog and then kicked off the server. The game must have read my mind.
[/ QUOTE ]
Good post, made me wonder why I spent so much time on .... Still, I wish I could go underwater in CoH... and getting drunk was fun the first few times, though mostly as a way to kill time during the long stretches when nothing was happening.
Loved the post bro. Really brought up some great points on why CoX has to be the best MMO out there in my opinion. You also forgot to mention our ease of soloing, and not the need of money. But speaking of soloing and travel times, there is another MMO that I'm thinking about. Not gonna be specific about names though. It rhymes with FFXI.
So you seek for a "party" for about 2 hours, because soloing is impossible in that game, with the exception of maybe 1-2 jobs. Some "Jobs" can't find parties cause no one wants them on their team. So after waiting 2 hours, you finally get a tell asking for you to team. You gladly accept. Oh but wait, you ran out of "Food" so your stats will be lower than the rest of the team. Better quit, cause only 1337 team members are allowed. Now you "Farm" for 5 hours, and manage to make some money. Now you wait another 5 hours for it to sell.
Finally after all that time, you now must seek again for another 2 hours. After getting another team invite, you have to travel to that zone, sometimes by airships. Now you can be late and miss your airship, and have to wait 30 minutes for it to come back. It is a 15 mintue trip one way, so yeah, 30 mins. Then you need a buy a chicken, and ride it to the camp, maybe taking 10 minutes. Then you set up camp, set up roles, and start to go. Now for an endless 6-7 hour team if its good, you kill the same monster over and over again. Pull...Kill...Pull...Kill...Mages rest for MP...Pull...Kill. The real nice aspect is that when you die, you lose 30 minutes worth of exp, maybe an hours worth in the higher levels.
*Wipes off tear*
I love City of Heroes/Villains.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.
Cool posts, BTW.
[/ QUOTE ]
Walk over to the MUO design whiteboard, and under "Fun" erase whatever is written and write "balanced" and "mathematically sane."
Then find a copy of my Open Letter to Cryptic and tape it to the board. Thanks.
[/ QUOTE ]
While being balanced, mathematically sane and fun isn't necessarily impossible for a MMOG, if the devs had to choose one to focus on, I'm glad they picked fun.
I'm looking forward to see how (and if) Cryptic can improve on their success with their future projects.
In a previous post, http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...088&page=0 , I extolled the virtues of CoH while slagging on several unnamed competing MMOs. Although I hate to admit it, the goal of the post was to convince myself not to leave CoH for a shiny new MMO that knew had more problems than a 2004 Diabold voting machine. Why would I considering leaving for a half finished MMO? Because it's new.. and shiny... and shiny new... and new shiny.. and because the folks marketing this magnificent monument to mediocrity managed to associate their game with the excellent books and academy award winning trilogy the game is based on and claim, by association, their game is of the same standard. To be fair, the game does get the lore correct, and the game isn't THAT bad, but leaving CoH for that game would be like turning down a free prime rib dinner for a McDonald's Happy Meal.
As it turned out, I actually needed very little convincing to stay with CoH. This unnamed unfinished game in question managed to convince me quite nicely. After carrying 12 pieces of mail, 13 bad pies, 2 baskets of eggs over hill over dale on and off various dusty trails I set myself defeating bears, pigs, and spiders (Oh My!) in order to finish even more quests only to discover a really bad day. Problem 1) I'm happily clearing my way though foraging bears to the bear den when a random elite suddenly spawns and kills me in 2 hits. Ok... no problem, I can handle this... I respawn and go back to the bear den. Problem 2) I make it in, avoiding the elite, and waste 30 minutes looking for a glowie that isn't there. I check the in game directions, I even check the forums, but it's just not there. Ok... no problem, I'll just do another quest. Problem 3) I head to the spider canyon and clear out spiders to go talk to a tree. Yep, a talking tree, this is a fantasy game after all. And before I can do it, and random dwarf player talks to the tree first and begins the escort quest. It takes this dwarf 30 minutes to take this tree out of the canyon, leaving me and a growing crowd of people waiting at the spawn point for our turn at the quest. This is very bad design, things like this should be in an instance. Fortunately, one of the guys hanging around quickly put together a team and we snagged the next spawn and got the quest finished. But I'm now seriously ticked. Problem 4) I have this old quest... it just turned green on me, go to x cave and defeat y whatevers. So I go down the pit and into the cave and there is a whatever.. and it cons green to me. I look around and double check... it's alone. I look above, I look below.. we're alone. So I pull out my sword and attack the whatever, and 5 more pop out of the walls and kill me before I can get my first self heal off. Now, I've had enough. I've reached the sliver frisbee stage, where my game disc is about to be tested for aerodynamics. Now this day is a combination of bad design, random bugs, and just plain old bad luck, but it irreparably tore the shine off the shiny new game. No longer can I be seduced by this game's slick marketing campaigns nor does the game's association with the epic books and movies have any hold on me. The game now stands as what it is. It's ok. The game is ok, and merely ok. One of the seemingly millions of merely ok fantasy games that populate the MMO genre. But most importantly, it's clearly dwarfed by polished goodness that is CoH. This game has no hold on me, and my focus has finally shifted from trying out this new formerly shiny game to getting my first villain to lv 50. (lv 44 corrupter, Jim Bowers, Justice Server, always looking for a team) I don't know if I'll make it to 50 before I9, but I'm game to try. (^_^)
Now that that's over with, my original post mentioned all the ways that CoH is superior to nearly every other MMO out there. Since then, people have mentioned features that I have missed, so here is an addendum to my previous post.
1b) Sidekick / Exemplar / Lackey / Malefactor System: Mien Gott! How should I forget this when I assembled my original list. I first noticed this feature when it wasn't in a ridiculously popular fantasy MMO. When two of your friends have lv 40 whatevers on a server and you want to join them, not having a sk system makes for some very awkward grouping.
2b) Travel Powers: In CoH, after lv 14, I can get to any part to any other part in 5 minutes max. My average travel time from mission to mission is about a minute. I spend more time in game doing my missions than walking between them which is why it the slow plodding pace of the new unnamed MMO came as a horrific shock where suddenly I'm walking for 10 minutes to do a 2 minute quest. Not a real efficient use of my time.
Mounts.... Yea, mounts. Instead of travel powers, which are clearly a superhero thing, fantasy MMOs often give you temporary run buffs or mounts to ride in order to lessen travel time. Let me say now that just because you're now selling your limburger cheese at half price doesn't change the fact that it still smells. A plus +20% run buff doesn't impress me when my character's default speed is slower than my grandmother and her walker. ((Now when she's driving her brand new shiny red Super Stock Dodge, that's a different story. Keep away from Colorado Blvd.)) Mounts aren't much better either. Fixed route mounts are nice, but some games like to invent these byzantine route systems making it difficult and annoying to use. ((Kudos to Blizzard for having a straight forward system that gets me where I need to go)) But even at their best, they're simply the CoH trams, only slower. And personal mounts are the most helpful, but even then not as useful. Unless my mount can travel at super speed or fly, we're not talking about the same thing.
MMOs are getting the idea. Everquest didn't have mounts or teleporters until years after the game was released. As I complain about travel times of 10 minutes, it used to be as high as 30 minutes before you hit your camp site. So progress all around, but this is one item CoH got right and it got it right from the start. Thanks Cryptic.
3b) Camping: Speaking of camp sites, one thing that is nearly forgotten is when CoH was first released, the standard method of leveling in most games was camping. It worked like this: First you assemble your party. Gotta have a tank, 1 or 2 healers, a damage dealer or two, and a mezzer for crowd control. After you assemble your party, usually at some safe point, you walk to your camp site. This journey can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes depending on where it is, how difficult a location it is, and whither or not you know a druid with Spirit of the Wolf. Then you sit there, unmoving, and fight the same monsters over and over and over and over again in a long, boring, tedious, and did I mention boring, battle where you gang up on one, and keep the others mezzed. One at a time, always one at a time. CoH was one of the first games to break this model. I can't think of a single modern game that does this, but when CoH was new, this was still the most common way to play. It was dull, it was lifeless, and we are thankful that we no longer have to suffer mere camping in order to level.
4b) Character Ownership: I should have mentioned this with the costume creator, but it amazing that such a simple thing could have such a profound effect. In CoH, when I create a character, I am that character. I'm not one of 7 basic body types based on my race or class, I am what I create. And I am as unique, or not, as I choose. If in CoH you see two people with the same costume, odds are it's not an accident. Either they're part of a SG with a uniform ( such as http://www.paragonpd.net ) or they're just good friends. For example, on Thursdays, my friends and I log on to the Champion Server play "The Dark Star Kids", teenagers who got super powers from a fallen meteor. We wear a school uniform. No one else looks like us. The look is uniquely ours, and we're proud of it. That's a feeling you don't get in many other games.
Well.... I think I've covered everything this time. But I'd like to reiterate that the number reason I play CoH is because it's fun. It's as simple as that. See you in The Hive....