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
Well, I had an eloquently written out rebuttal to your OP. Apparently it offended the forum software and it ate it.
Suffice to say, that you do not appear to have given the unnamed MMO a fair shake. You also denigrate portions of it while praising those very same attributes within CoH/V (travel, team makeup, character differentiation, etc).
I do have to say that many things being done in the unnamed MMO are great. They are even fixing some recent economy adjustments because they went too far towards nerf and missed the desired mark. That's right, they aren't letting it languish like it would here in CoH/V.
Then again, storyline and lore are paramount in the unnamed MMO. Where's the beef here? Where's the storyline & content here? I've already made the trek from 1 to 50. So where is the rest of the story that should be regularly added?
Then again, the pricing of the unnamed MMO is pretty nice too. Much better than the pricing deal I get here with Cryptic/NCSoft. Heck, the pricing I get with ArenaNet/NCSoft is better than what I get here.
All I have to say is that I'm glad you enjoy it here. I'm not the fan of Paragon and Rogue Isles that I used to be. I find myself wanting to move in some direction that's not here, let the Age of Heroes take hold, and have some new hero take my place should one choose to.
Virtue: multiple characters.
CoH/V: Woot! Maybe Fun is to be had once again.
Ack! RUN! Regen is glowing mean & green!
If it reduces you, it's a nerf.
If it buffs the mobs, it's challenge.
They are not the same.
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4b) Character Ownership....
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I had never really thought about it, but this paragraph is one of the big things for me in CoX. I tried many (but by no means all) MMO's and was never able to sink my teeth into one. CoH came along and I was finally able to really make a character that I felt some part of. For me I guess it felt more like my days of D&D way back when (way, way, way back when 
), where the charaters I ran definitley had a very big piece of "me" in them. I recently relented and tried (for the fourth time mind you) the other stupidly popular MMO that shall not be named, at the request of a friend who plays it a lot. I actually got farther into it than I had on any of the other trials, mainly because teaming with a friend who knew what they were doing helped. But eventually it just felt as though I was playing some Random Undead Guy #456. I didn't feel as though any part of him had any of "me" in it.
I've been playing CoX for a little over 30 months, and I don't consider myself to have alt-itis. I currently have around 20-25 toons on 3 servers, and in the almost 3 years I've probably not made more than 60 total. But for every single one I've made, I have never seen a duplicate of it. Sure some are similar in look, or similiar in theme, but there is always something about the other toons that really distiguishes them and makes them more of a reflection of their owner.
So yeah, the gist of all that meandering was I like the costume creater. 
I like superheroes.
I like having super powers.
Our avatars are sexy. 
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@Portland Underground
<Quick Reply>
I personally have never tried any of the other MMO's out there. CoH was the first one for me.
I know the fantasy genre is the most popular, something about fighting ancient animals and such appeals to the masses.
I could never really get into going to a city called Farnworthfloghavingnowater or some such thing. Nor fighting Adorkus De Animalwholookslikeapigus .
The names just didnt appeal to me.
Here is Paragon, set in modern times, with things we can easily understand, is my cup of tea.
Everyone comments on the costume creator, and I mean everyone does. It is a fantastic piece and the first piece we get to really see of CoH/V. From all I have heard, it is second to none in the whole industry. That is some accomplishment for a first time game.
The play style is what you make of it here. If you want it easy or have a specific goal to not level up that fast, you can go that route. If you want the AV's, you can go that route too. Many choices in how you play.
So I guess for me, they got it right. I too look forward to additions to the game, as I feel any game that doesn't add, will become stagnant causing people to leave.
I guess you could say I will be around till the servers shut down.
-Cos
Member of Team Awesome���
Justice Server
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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.
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Goddamnit. Please don't be so damned smug about that fun thing, when you've missed the mark in so many ways yourself. When you wrote that word up on the board you should have written 'caution: may be subjective' next to it, and used it to remind yourself not to judge your players for pursuing behaviors that you arbitrarily deem not to be fun. You put kill X tasks in the game, and then act surprised when people camp spawners.
UGh. I find it so frustrating when he trots out this 'we're so great' mentality. This game could have been the first *real* game MMO, instead it's become more canned, and more treadmill-like as time goes by.
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Wow, I had no idea that making mistakes meant one could not be proud of the end results.
I find a Superhero MMO, first of its kind, originally only released in America and gaining enough subscribers to keep itself in the top 5 MMO category after 3 years when many others have come and gone a damn fine accomplishment, whether you agree with every step along the way or not.
CoH/V made some glaring horrible mistakes tis true. The implementation of ED, the purple patch debacle, a slight misjudging of where new content should go first, getting players hopes up about systems that were barely past the concept stage only to have them disappear and disappoint.
But CoH/V also made some amazing strides in the MMO genre, strides that if I were a developer I would try to steal for my own personal use. The balance between an interactive world with threats to respond to and instances to prevent camping. The LFT system that makes finding others simple, the global chat system that allows you to recruit from ANY server if people are members of your channel. (Oh how sweet it is to be able to play on Justice and yet still respond to the call for that one badge mission I need on Liberty!), Flight, Superjump, Superspeed, Teleport...simply amazing.
Obviously CoH didn't fit your desire for an MMO, although you are still here playing so that says something in itself. But missing the mark on a few things while hitting it out of the park on a few others sound about par for the course in any endevor, and unless you're striving for a level of perfection you're never going to attain, I'd say its a damn good track record for the Devs out there in Los Gatos.
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All I have to say is that I'm glad you enjoy it here. I'm not the fan of Paragon and Rogue Isles that I used to be. I find myself wanting to move in some direction that's not here, let the Age of Heroes take hold, and have some new hero take my place should one choose to.
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Different strokes for different folks as they say...I've got a friend who to this day still regularly plays and LOVES UO. I've watched him play and had to bite my tongue when he showed me all the "cool stuff". All I could think in my head was "Wow...this game might be cool if they updated it and made it look and act more like CoH."
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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.
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I had this problem with World of Walking. There are many more problems with it than just this, but not getting an early travel power had to be the worst. 
"I never said thank you." - Lt. Gordon
"And you'll never have to." - the Dark Knight
Awesome pair of posts. Personally, earlier this month I was considering shutting down my account. Then I saw what was comming in issue 9.
Time to put up another years worth of account time! 
Seriously though, the reason I love this game is it's still fun after 3 years. How can I argue with that?
I'll put in my own /thumbsup for CoX being fun.
I'm a little worn out right now, but I'm not letting my billing lapse. I'll play something else for a couple of weeks and then be back at it.
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
I have tried 4 or 5 other MMORPG and still after over two years find myself as enthralled with CoX as I ever was. Sure, sometimes leveling an alt has become a grind, especially that 1-22 but I still love it.
Along with the money I have dropped on these various other PC games, I have bought a PS3, a 360 and we have a Wii. Nothing compaes for me. Well, I love the Wii, that is just awesome family fun but I still find myself back in my den mashing away with whatever hero/villain fits my fancy that day. My kids all have accounts, so all in all we have 5 CoX accounts that I pay for. I do wish there was a group discount.
Anyway, every other MMO I have played, after about an hour or so, I find myself comparing it to CoX. The main thing for me is the interface. it makes so much more sense to me than the other games i have tried. It is easy to understand, yet customizable and sexy enough to be appealing. Teaming and missions are easy to find and understand. Waypoints are easily visable and after 14, I can boogie around to my mishs without much trouble. I like to do interesting things (like acutal mission) in my games, not plugging around from quest to quest finding it takes more time to get ot the quest than to even do it, a feature I found very dis-satisfying in many MMOs. The character customization in CoX is simply uber compared to other MMOs IMO. I think that is one thing I find so fun about making an alt, is coming up with a new and cool costume. I don't constantly see 100 other people that look just like me and I absoutely love it.
Is there things I would like to see changed in CoX? Sure. I have a few beefs but I can handle them. Hell, I have been using Windows with it's many bugs for 12 years now and have no intention of changing.
Anyway, great job on the game Cryptic.
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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.
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I just need to take a second to say ... what the F. Words cannot do justice to my amazement that developers are still using this ... rotting donkey carcass smeared with rancid vomit ... of a gaming idiom.
Great posts Euler.
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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?!?
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I love you Sam. Best laugh I've had all morning.
I, too, was vastly disappointed by that...uh...other, unnamed ruin of a game. Happily I was in its closed beta so I didn't have to throw away good money to find out that, yep, I'd rather be playing Tetris (my test of a game's worth; used to be Starcraft, but then nothing was measuring up, so I lowered expectations).
CoX has a lot of problems that aggravate me, but no game, particularly an MMO, will be perfect. However, it gets so much stuff *right* that it's hard to imagine why game developers would ever design a game differently.
There's also an amazing sight around Ponto Underhill in Bree where one of my characters are at... Dozens of players all throwing seeds noisily at him. I guess it's some sort of farming tradeskill. He's just swarmed with players every time I've ever passed by him.
Upsen.
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Then find a copy of my Open Letter to Cryptic
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I need better training in the ways of search-fu, apparently.
[EDIT:] Aha. Evidently it got pruned. Lame. Original text posted anywhere else?
Also, a couple people misread Arcanaville's post ... go back and look again. She never said that Fun should be erased and Balance and Sanity put in its place. She said that whatever is written right under Fun should be erased and Balance and Sanity put in its place.
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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.
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Please make Sam an NPC and make some portion of this his quest. Trolls can be frogs and thieves! It'll be great!
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No joke! That was an actual mission. The blacksmith had lost a shipment of ore and frogs had eaten it, so I was supposed to kill frogs until I got 20 drops of ore.
Yeah, sure, the dialogue was all mine, but the mission is as-is
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Had that mission as well. Asked around if it was bugged and was told are you sure you are in the right swamp? For me that game was fun for a couple weeks and then the sameness was unbearable. "We don't want to actually show you where your missions are so you can enjoy looking at the country side" got really, really old.
The author of this post is speaking in generalities from his personal experience.
Your experience may vary.
Also, a 'response' to no one in particular ... I see a few slams here and there against the fantasy genre. I feel like I should speak up for it a little, it is a great genre, very engaging, it sparks my imagination a lot. If there was a fantasy game that gave me incredible character customization, had a sidekicking system or something similar to allow me to actually play with my friends regardless of level, enabled a primarily soloing playstyle, and avoided all the boring behavior (such as endless hours of walking) that fantasy MMOs all seem to have, I would check it out with high hopes.
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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.
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I just need to take a second to say ... what the F. Words cannot do justice to my amazement that developers are still using this ... rotting donkey carcass smeared with rancid vomit ... of a gaming idiom.
Great posts Euler.
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The only problem with that snippet is that he must have been walking from one end of a zone to the other end. I've timed it before. I can run from a certain Bridge between talk folks and halflings to the main Tall Folk town and do so in under 10 minutes. That's one of the longest paths in the unnamed MMO and he's grossly exaggerating how slow it is.
Then again, he also didn't mention that you have fast travel (basically travel that is faster than using the Pocket D teleporter) available between major cities and a somewhat slower mount travel from town to town.
I also suppose he failed to mention that other forms of teleportation ARE available, just not at the level restricted section the unnamed MMO is at right now until it goes Live.
You see, he failed to mention these other salient points in his diatribe on how unnamed MMO = horrific and CoH/V = gotta be a cheerleader.
The bad part is... no one will listen to the facts I've posted and will only remember the untrue negatives the OP stated.
Virtue: multiple characters.
CoH/V: Woot! Maybe Fun is to be had once again.
Ack! RUN! Regen is glowing mean & green!
If it reduces you, it's a nerf.
If it buffs the mobs, it's challenge.
They are not the same.
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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.
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Please make Sam an NPC and make some portion of this his quest. Trolls can be frogs and thieves! It'll be great!
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No joke! That was an actual mission. The blacksmith had lost a shipment of ore and frogs had eaten it, so I was supposed to kill frogs until I got 20 drops of ore.
Yeah, sure, the dialogue was all mine, but the mission is as-is
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Oh, I know, I know. I've done countless numbers of these kinds of missions and just the way you actually wrote it out was grand. I think it would be a perfectly good shot at all other MMOs out there.
The boss troll on that mission can be Frogre or maybe just Frog.
I don't understand the point of view many people have that they can afford to buy new games but can't afford to overlap subscriptions EVER. It is like they are being unfaithful to their wife or something.
The cost of the new game far outweighs the subscription cost and if you can afford to keep buying new games you can probably afford 2 subscriptions. It certainly makes things less tedious when you can go between games at will.
Just because I like the CoX games doesn't mean I never play anything else nor does it mean I cancel my subcription every time I want to play solitare lol.
Now if money is a problem I can understand but then you probably can't afford a lot of new games if money is a problem heh heh sort of a Catch 22. $15 a month is not the grand investment some make it out to be. It costs that much to see "Meet the Robinsons" in 3D by yourself.
So YES I'm UNFAITHFUL! I play with other games. Oh I feel so dirty.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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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.
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And thank you for that. The design descisions which stemmed from that is what made this the first mmo that stuck for me.
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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.
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HAH!
A friend tried to get me into a certain Sci-Fi based MMO (rhymes with Steve).
I literally got lost in the tutorial.
/dash back to CoH/V
Ah, nice yellow and red arrows on the maps
Nin-Jak level 50! (Kat/Regen Scrapper)
Hank Venture:
"*sigh* Why must you be the screen door on my submarine Brock?"
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I can run from a certain Bridge between talk folks and halflings to the main Tall Folk town and do so in under 10 minutes. That's one of the longest paths in the unnamed MMO and he's grossly exaggerating how slow it is.
Then again, he also didn't mention that you have fast travel available between major cities and a somewhat slower mount travel from town to town.
I also suppose he failed to mention that other forms of teleportation ARE available, just not at the level restricted section the unnamed MMO is at right now until it goes Live.
The bad part is... no one will listen to the facts I've posted and will only remember the untrue negatives the OP stated.
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I'm listening! That's interesting. If travel isn't actually much worse than in Co*, then way to go, developers of that game! Sounds like camping is still an issue, but I'm willing to accept that the old time rotting carcass "travel problem" isn't actually all that bad in the new game. I'm still not especially eager to try it, at least until I hear about other features that will make me like it more than Co* ... and I guess this might not be the appropriate place to talk it way up, but feel free to PM me or post a link to some good resources.
In any case, it's good to hear that another developer has made some progress out of the mire of the Bad Old Ideas.
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*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!
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Oh, look here's my objective, "Kill All." Funny, I thought I did that already. Well, I don't see anybody, but I better double check. Hmm, I've checked every room in the building twice...Oh wait there's a guy stuck in the wall that I can't seem to hit.
20 minutes later...
Time to go back to that semi-mmo where you're an assassin/whatever.
Just had to chime in because the topic was looking a little one sided. I agree on most of the things said here, but CoH is not without its faults, some of which are shared by these other games.
On the subject of travel powers, I can see how the OP can prefer them to mounts, but I think it's a problem that either are regarded as such a necessity. It's as if what's going on around the player isn't important or dynamic enough to him, and so the journey to the mission needs to be skipped.
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It isn't as if that's the whole point, in any game. I'm yet to meet any MMO where what's going on around you is dynamic enough to stop and say "ooh" "ahh". You do it the first time then every time after that its ho hum.
Also I'd rather have the travel powers in this game then mounts any day. The mounts in those other games do not travel anywhere near as fast as the powers in this game.
The ability to move quickly and precisely in combat is something I love in this game.
Don't know if you pvp, but it comes across as a true battle with speed when travel powers are involved--you know . .. the way a game of super-powered beings is supposed to be. None of this crap where a troll can move faster than my elf and catch me dead by running up to me.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
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