I didn't appreciate CoX's innovations until ...
By
AlexEss,
Posted on: 2007-12-26 09:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Mhumm... Agree to ost of this... actualy all of it. And i have to say i want to give NC Soft a big tumb up just because of the fact that they are willing to give odd ideas a shot, CoH worked great Auto Assault not so mutch but still they had the balls to give these companies a try.
and for that they deserve praise in my book.
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Not to mention that NCSoft has taken a big gamble with Dungeon Runners, which seems to be paying off. And that is good, because Dungeon Runners is hillarious.
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Funny thing is about travel powers, I am making a character with Swift.. and that's about it. But thank the deities I have that choice, as opposed to being forced to hoof through zones with all my characters like a corralled bovine 
This thread is full of win. (is a one-line poster. Except for this time.)
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I gave a 2 week trial of WOW and remember one quest I was given to find something that I had to fight and I couldn't find it no matter how long I searched. Wasn't really all that impressed with WOW, but really love COX!
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Generally that game will tell you where everything is in the quest text.
You can't just read the "summary" and expect to know everything.
CoX's method of just telling you what to do in an easy to see/find manner is something a lot of quest/mission designers in other games can't seem to grasp.
Though, there are a few missions that sound like you only need to do one thing (like kill X boss) when theres also a glowie you have to look for.
"Through Avarice evil smiles; through insanity it sings"
Forum Troll Rule #1: Anyone who disagrees with my point of view is either a fanboy or an idiot.
I'm a proud carebear.
The only other MMO I've really liked, although it was for the most part like all the other MMOs, had one thing that I think CoH ended up "borrowing" from them. And that was the debt system, and that was Earth and Beyond. While E&B was still primarily about spawn camping, and had precious little instanced missions (ironically, if it had, the Trading and Explorations systems might have worked) the fact that death was not really that significant a loss, and you could just jumpstart your ship, or take a tow and go on, did make the grinding easier. The debt system wasn't exactly the same, you could pay it off by logging off for a while, which you can't do in CoH, and you could get more of it, but overall, the idea was the same. You never stop progressing. You always move forward.
Even the ability to Warp past spawns was a way of avoiding the grind, the way CoH lets you fly over it.
I think the three innovations of CoH are as follows:
1) They eliminated spawn camping and hunting. With instanced missions, you have your own private set of foes to overcome to reach the goal. So there is no hunting because you always know where they are, and there is no camping because you don't have to fight against someone else camping the same goal to get to it. Even newspaper missions are a way of turning spawn missions into instanced missions, instead of forcing you to hunt. CoH is STILL innovating in this area.
2) The sidekick system. Levelling and the tendency in other MMOs for "getting to the fun part" to be getting to level 50 (or whatever the max is) is related. If you are at level 50, you are the same level as all of your friends. Thus, you can team with them. CoH eliminated the need to get to level 50 by making it so you could team with your friends, as equals, at ANY level.
3) Lack of loot and upgrades tied to character customization. This is related to spawn camping, as without loot, there is no need to camp. The greater insight, however, is that the devs realized that upgrades that effect your characters' appearance LIMITS your creativity. Since everyone has to have the exact same gear to be equally capable, everyone has to look exactly the same. So CoH uncoupled the LOOK of the characters and powers from their ABILITIES and allowed you to upgrade your abilities and your appearance separately.
Wait... you played SWG before coming to City of... and didn't appreciate all these things from the get go??
/boggle
My first MMO was CoH. I tried EQ2, WoW, and everything you've said is so right! When I was in WoW I actually asked where the mission door was, and had a whole broadcast of confusion. The concept of an instance at level 2 boggled them.
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and Rikti Invasion notices being sent to the System channel where they are extremely easy to miss
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They were actually moved to the System channel BECAUSE people complained when they were in the Admin channel and appeared in every tab. Funny that. I guess it's true that you sure can't please EVERYBODY.
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3) Lack of loot and upgrades tied to character customization. This is related to spawn camping, as without loot, there is no need to camp. The greater insight, however, is that the devs realized that upgrades that effect your characters' appearance LIMITS your creativity. Since everyone has to have the exact same gear to be equally capable, everyone has to look exactly the same. So CoH uncoupled the LOOK of the characters and powers from their ABILITIES and allowed you to upgrade your abilities and your appearance separately.
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Can I emphasise too much the fact that I like the character generator here?
I love that when I make a character MY character doesn't look like anyone else's.
When I was in EQ I quested for weeks and got help getting that ivy etched armor for my ranger....and then I realized that it was actually not all that great now that several expansions had gone by.
But I liked having my ranger all dressed in green!
Then they added dyes and it wasn't quite as bad, but, still, if you changed your gear, it changed your stats, and therefore how good you were, and your appearance changed too.
I like going to Wentworths...or a costume contest! and my costume won't be anything like any one else's! I like looking different. In most of the games out there, all the "uber" gear looks alike...so all the characters end up looking alike.
I tried Tabula Rasa, and was so disapointed when my little tiny bit of character customization vanished the very first time that I equiped a new piece of armor. =P
Shae Firewarder
Just wanted to add one thing that often seems unappreciated: ease of targeting.
Now I haven't played every MMO under the sun, so I certainly won't go so far to credit CoX as the first and only game to offer the robust targeting options we have. But by golly, they most certainly did refine them.
In SWG, I had to write my own macro scripts just to target the nearest possible enemy (and it wasn't easy or foolproof either). In WoW, it took them at least several weeks (if not months) after launch, just to get a functional TAB targeting system (and last time I played, it *still* has issues).
I often forget as it's become so second nature how user-friendly targeting is in City of. Whether it's the lovely pass-thru assisting (god I love that for my squishies), or the ability to cast a buff/heal on an ally via targeting an enemy. It's sooo seamless, sooo straightforward... and sooo overlooked in other games.
Add to that the strength of being able to custom tailor our own targeting setup via the exhaustive keybind (another seldom appreciated gem), macro and/or slash commands and it's really hard to imagine a game NOT having this level of refinement.
Don't even get me started on our ability to script keybind commands. There's absolutely nothing like having all of my attack-chain bound to the same mouse button. I'm so spoiled by that feature alone I almost want to pluck my eyeballs out whenever I try another game.
One thing I've noticed from CoH Beta on, this is a very stable game. Compared to some games, the servers don't die very often.
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Wait... you played SWG before coming to City of... and didn't appreciate all these things from the get go??
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Ah, but that's the thing. Remember the only MMO games I'd played before that were Anarchy Online and Neocron. I thought that the parts of SWG that sucked (pre NGE) were all unique to SWG. I had no idea that their malevolently awful mission structure was copied from every other MMO in the market, for example, or that their teaming and chatting systems were no worse than anybody else's. Besides, I gave SWG a ton of credit (pre NGE) for its own innovations, like really good player-created town systems, and eliminating NPC vendors altogether in favor of a thoroughly player-run economy, and making armor something that had as many drawbacks as it had virtues. I'm not at all surprised that there's a volunteer effort of open-source programmers trying to re-invent SWG 1.0 from scratch; that game had a lot going for it. Of course, it was less than half done, but which MMO hasn't that been true of at launch? No, the problem with SWG is that they never did fix anything that was broken with it at launch, choosing instead to spend the programmer-hours they had on making it more and more Everquest-like, and to make the player characters more and more Mary Sue-ish. But none of that is to the point; my point is that at the time, I had no idea how common the problems with Everquest were in other games, I had no idea that almost every game on the market, including WoW, was busily and enthusiastically copying the worst features of Everquest. Nor did I realize, until this week, that they still are.
To those of you who brought up character customization, the only reason I didn't bring that up is that I have always appreciated just how wonderful, and how innovative, the character customization system in this game is. Although, again here I must defend the early version of SWG -- I was a Tailor, after all, ran the definitive website for Tailors, and loved the fact that you could craft almost any costume, almost any character concept, you could imagine, including mass-produced uniforms for clans. It wasn't as flexible as this game's costume creator, nobody is. But this isn't the only game that makes character appearance independent of your equipment, at least not any more.
My main point in the original post was to give them mad props for things they've done right that still, three years after they did it, nobody (or almost nobody) has learned from. That's the amazing part to me, now that I realize it.
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Just wanted to add one thing that often seems unappreciated: ease of targeting.
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Can I add targeting (and combat) not dependent on facing?
That irked the hell out of me - think it was the WoW trial again. "You moved a foot to the left, I can't hit you any more!" Dammit, just turn a little!
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I thought that the parts of SWG that sucked (pre NGE) were all unique to SWG.
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LOL, okay... that's fair. 
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Besides, I gave SWG a ton of credit (pre NGE) for its own innovations, like really good player-created town systems, and eliminating NPC vendors altogether in favor of a thoroughly player-run economy, and making armor something that had as many drawbacks as it had virtues.
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/bites tongue
I guess it's mostly subjective. I resented the hell out of those things (and several others), as in my opinion the negatives far outweighed the positives. Bear in mind however that I joined shortly before mounts and player cities went live. Just in time for the holiday holocron giveaway that had a pretty radical impact on the game and its community.
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Of course, it was less than half done, but which MMO hasn't that been true of at launch?
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Um, this one? Okay, maybe I'm being a wee bit biased. 
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...my point is that at the time, I had no idea how common the problems with Everquest were in other games, I had no idea that almost every game on the market, including WoW, was busily and enthusiastically copying the worst features of Everquest. Nor did I realize, until this week, that they still are.
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Amen!
BTW, do yourself a favor and never try reading the forums at MMORPG.com. You'll be driven to homicide. I kid you not. The majority of folks (or least the most vocal) regard the things you've (correctly) deemed as flaws... as virtues!
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Just wanted to add one thing that often seems unappreciated: ease of targeting.
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Can I add targeting (and combat) not dependent on facing?
That irked the hell out of me - think it was the WoW trial again. "You moved a foot to the left, I can't hit you any more!" Dammit, just turn a little!
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This one was big for me playing LOTR Online as well. That game is incredible in so many ways, but as I fought a wolf, I turned the camera to look around me, and my character had suddenly ceased to fight! When I saw the combat warning, I just sat dumbfounded. It felt so primitive to be told that the game couldn't auto-adjust my character, I felt like I was playing Sega Genesis again, forced to complete epic 8 hour games in one run because they hadn't invented the save file yet.
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my point is that at the time, I had no idea how common the problems with Everquest were in other games, I had no idea that almost every game on the market, including WoW, was busily and enthusiastically copying the worst features of Everquest. Nor did I realize, until this week, that they still are.
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With WoW copying EQ, its mostly through the oldest and unmodified quests that you'll see a lot of similarities. Since a lot of the original WoW Devs came from EQ.(Whether that means players or EQ devs, was never made clear to me)
So, its not surprising that they'd borrow a lot from that game.
However, as time passed, Blizz started getting better with their quests.
Go spend some time in the newest zones for the newer races of that game. Those quests were actually interesting for the most part.
And there were no "bring me a body part the majority of the beasts in this zone don't seem to have" quests.
They did still have the "bring me 10 flanks" quests, but the drop rate for the items were about 100%, so you don't spend 2 [censored] hours killing liver-less boars.
"Through Avarice evil smiles; through insanity it sings"
Forum Troll Rule #1: Anyone who disagrees with my point of view is either a fanboy or an idiot.
I'm a proud carebear.
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Also, and most importantly... NO [censored] GIANT RATS. I swear to [insert diety here] that if I have to spend five more minutes grinding wolves/snakes/stupid STUPID rat creatures! just to get their heads which may or may not drop, I'm gonna jab something sharp into my brainpan.
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Not entirely unique, but very nearly, yeah, and worthy of praise. One the list of things I've always given CoH/CoV credit and thanks for is that I'm almost always fighting other people. It's okay with me if I never again get asked by some game to fight a cockroach, rat, spider, or dog.
Must... resist... urge to kick... SWG.... well, OK, I'll cave a little.
I've always thought that the developers here must've had as a prime directive: "How can we make a Superhero setting into an MMOG?" Whenever they came to a design decision, they apparently chose whatever made the most sense for a superhero game. SWG seemed to be an attempt to take several (often new and creative) MMO ideas and wrap SWG around it. It wound up like trying to wrap an octopus in a cardigan -- even when it fit, it didn't fit well.
I have to quibble a bit with your first point; while I agree that the lack of attribute points was a good thing, I believe CoH's simplicity is (was) both a blessing and a curse. It makes CoH really easy to pick up, but it lacked the number-tweaking aspect that a lot of people find engaging in the long-term. Enhancements just didn't do the trick, especially considering that a lot of them just weren't very useful and/or had their benefits obscured without hard numbers. The IO system has apparently filled this gap.
Otherwise, I completely agree with your post, particularly regarding the Sidekick/Exemplar system. Not only does it make sense given the genre, it solves so many problems with teaming that I'm baffled no one ever thought of it before.
this thread has some serious walls of text son
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this thread has some serious walls of text son
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They're called paragraphs dad and they are used to separate out various ideas so they are easier to read. Not every thought can be explained in one single uncapitalised line.
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this thread has some serious walls of text son
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They're called paragraphs dad and they are used to separate out various ideas so they are easier to read. Not every thought can be explained in one single uncapitalised line.
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Burn!
Edit: Okay, I'm better than what I just posted. Allow me to expound:
Sub, Grinnz is clearly reading this thread, otherwise he wouldn't be able to comment. He's just noting the length. It's an innocuous inoffensive comment if you know where he's coming from.
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this thread has some serious walls of text son
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They're called paragraphs dad and they are used to separate out various ideas so they are easier to read. Not every thought can be explained in one single uncapitalised line.
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I'm actually being slightly sarcastic as a true wall of text doesn't have paragraph breaks, therefore the walls of text present in this thread are extremely unsound and I would never use them for support. Just a fair warning.
Good post Brad. CoH/V brought a lot to the MMO table and it's a pity that a lot of MMO devs seem to have pushed those innovations to one side and stuck with the tried-and-true diku formula.
CoH's key difference was that it was designed for casual players and for the most part it succeeds. A lot of MMOs were (and still are) designed around the so-called 'hardcore' player who apparently has the desire to turn their game playing into a second job. Fortunately CoH and WoW did a great job in proving that you can design for casual players (with some nods towards those players with more time) and be successful.
(And yeah, CoH doesn't have WoW's numbers, but it didn't have any of WoW's advantages either - judged on its own merits, CoH had one of the best launches in the MMO industry, a pretty stable player population base and has been profitable for a long time now. It also came from a group of novice MMO developers who could have easily gone the way of Wish or Dawn in terms of project success.)
Mhumm... Agree to ost of this... actualy all of it. And i have to say i want to give NC Soft a big tumb up just because of the fact that they are willing to give odd ideas a shot, CoH worked great Auto Assault not so mutch but still they had the balls to give these companies a try.
and for that they deserve praise in my book.