An Open Letter to the CoH Community
By
Aces_High,
Posted on: 2009-05-16 21:32 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
To the OP - good job on the post and well thought out. I disagree with your suggestions to do things in a manner you see fit. For example suggesting people go quietly if they are going to CO and not throw a fit. Well, I agree with the 'fit' part while others may not.
Each person has the option to post the way they desire as long as it isn't too obnoxious or mean etc.
I do enjoy CoX but it seems you have a strong like for it. That's great. I prefer to voice my likes and dislikes and hope the product turns out to be better in the end, partly due to the fact that the forumites made their desires known.
I have noted that I am likely leaving when the other super games come out and I see nothing wrong with that. I will not pay for more than one sub. to a game and I am not really a gamer and CoX may lose my business in the end. I think this game has tons of pros but the cons are there. The main ones are the repetitive tiles sets, very slow updates (it's better now but is that the norm or just for now?), weak engine (can't throw items in the environment, run up walls etc) and the list goes on.
Honestly, I would be happy if this game gave us good, regular updates every few months. I could live without the rest. I have been here almost 18 months and Architect was the only decent update. Day Jobs was a huge waste and the VEATS was small.
Anyway, good OP but I must disagree with you on a few points. 
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can't throw items in the environment, run up walls etc) and the list goes on.
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I bet a lot of things on that list, like running up walls or running on water, are things the devs have in fact said they could do but are simply "not worth our time". That was the case with running on water and running up walls.
Well if they're worth it to you, and it seems they are, and other games will give them to you, I agree that moving on is the best action you can take.
I also agree Day Jobs was a waste of a feature concept.
Good luck whatever you end up deciding.
.
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I also agree Day Jobs was a waste of a feature concept.
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What would you have done with it?
Nice letter. /agreed.
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
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"Champions Online is new so it will kill CoX"
I got tired of hearing it too. Most of this seems to come from people who left here bitter
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Maybe you should wonder WHY they're leaving bitter.
Maybe the devs should too.
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Jonny, for all of your rigamarole why can't you accept the simple fact that no matter what the devs do or don't do, someone is going to be bitter about it. That is not a failing on the devs part, that's a failure on our part as players for being human. Voicing opinions and providing suggestions is one thing, but you put entirely too much effort into defending your ideas or trying to sway other people's opinions.
I don't think this game will ever be what you personally want it to be, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. It's just not the game for you. I'm not even sure that game will ever exist, but from most of the things I've read from you it's even less likely to exist in an MMO format.
I do think you're seriously deluding yourself if you think those other games on the horizon will deliver you to the promised land of comic-book godhood, but I do hope that you can find enjoyment out of your recreation time in whatever game you end up in and learn to temper your expectations a bit so you don't sweat the small stuff so much.
Formerly "Back Alley Brawler"
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I've said this so many times that I should just make a cut and paste for it: A rising tide lifts all boats.
Back in the day when Everquest ruled the waves, new games were coming online every year and the same people were always crying "This new game is where it's at. EQ is dead. Anybody who disagrees is just a blind fanboi."
Lo, all these years later, EQ is still around. Ultima Online is even still around.
The EQ devs just smiled and welcomed each new game. The truth of the matter was that every new game brought new people into the market. While some people left EQ for those new games, many more were encouraged to try EQ, either because it looked interesting or because the new game turned out to be a poor fit for them.
People who cry "Dooom!" for City of Heroes are essentially being short-sighted and imagining that the audience for CoH is the only audience there is for ANY superhero game. This just isn't true. There are many, many gamers out there who would consider a superhero game, and many who would be open to trying an MMO for the first time, but they want a licensed IP instead of one that they're unfamiliar with.
If Cryptic and SOE do their jobs right, they're not going to cannibalize the City of Heroes playerbase. In fact, they're not going to draw much at all upon our players. Anybody with some sense will realize that basing a business plan on stealing another game's customers is a foolish plan to start with. That game would never be launched in the first place.
Champions and DC Universe are going to establish NEW markets and bring in new players. City of Heroes will experience a dip, probably temporary, and some of those new players of those other games will be dissatisfied but instead of quitting entirely, they'll look for another game to play and they'll decide to give CoH a shot.
People who imagine that everyone playing CoH is just champing at the bit to move to "the next big thing" are the same as those doom-criers who thought that everyone playing Everquest was a sheep waiting to jump to the next shiny thing.
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This essentially nails it. QFT.
My 2 cents:
Consider how many people who were not previously MMO gamers before entered the market with just World of Warcraft. Blizzard didn't just steal/trade subscribers from other MMO's, they brought millions of new ones to the market by making MMO's mainstream. In that regard the more MMO's that are out there, the better it is for all of them, since each one potentially expands the market, which, honestly, was niche prior to WoW.
PS: Not a WoW fanboi, just giving credit for what it did, which is bring MMO's out of computer nerd basements and into the mainstream, for better or worse, depending on who you ask.
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Okay, I've gotta ask, it's bugged me for too long.
WTF is up with the dot three lines down at the end of all your posts? Is it representative of some lost loved one, or a reminder of some epic event from your childhood? Because it's driving me INSANE!!!! 
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OK... I do it too, but maybe 2 lines below.
MY reason is that I usually leave my sig out of my posts.
And that means the last line of the post just lays there crashing into the top of the next post.
Like if a book I was reading was printed down to the last bit of white space at the bottom of the page.
And the last statement I make in a post is often my "wrap up the main point" line.
So I like it [u]framed a little higher[u] than resting on the next post.
ALSO, you notice, when you get quoted, all your paragraphs get scrunched together
I sometimes also include a dot in the blank line between paragraphs, as well as the one at the bottom.
________________________________
Unless a quoter goes to the trouble of removing them, my control over paragraph and frame formatting, . . . remains.
ETA: (and why a '.' ? . . . Just because it is the least obtrusive character...)
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On the flip side, I still see people sometimes who claim that X character was "retired due to ED" or is now "unplayable due to ED", which is hogwash.
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Well, my rad/rad defender was my favorite character before ED and to this day I cannot stand to play him because of the damage loss ED caused.
I felt that way about my blaster too but with the damage buff and defiance they added he's acceptable again.
For the rest of my characters ED just meant I couldn't sleep through missions anymore.
Inventions took a lot of the sting away but it took a while to get here. But I still hate my defender. I will always go for a controller unless defenders get a damage buff.
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"Champions Online is new so it will kill CoX"
I got tired of hearing it too. Most of this seems to come from people who left here bitter
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Maybe you should wonder WHY they're leaving bitter.
Maybe the devs should too.
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[snark] Yes, because they, like, NEVER come to the boards and SAY why they're bitter and leaving (repeatedly)! This is mysterious and unknown information! [/snark]
Dec out.
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"Champions Online is new so it will kill CoX"
I got tired of hearing it too. Most of this seems to come from people who left here bitter
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Maybe you should wonder WHY they're leaving bitter.
Maybe the devs should too.
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[snark] Yes, because they, like, NEVER come to the boards and SAY why they're bitter and leaving (repeatedly)! This is mysterious and unknown information! [/snark]
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Well, given the OP's post and the resounding chorus of "YEAH! You tell 'em, Mr. Hypocrite!", leaving a few parting thoughts doesn't appear to be encouraged.
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
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"Champions Online is new so it will kill CoX"
I got tired of hearing it too. Most of this seems to come from people who left here bitter
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Maybe you should wonder WHY they're leaving bitter.
Maybe the devs should too.
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[snark] Yes, because they, like, NEVER come to the boards and SAY why they're bitter and leaving (repeatedly)! This is mysterious and unknown information! [/snark]
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Well, given the OP's post and the resounding chorus of "YEAH! You tell 'em, Mr. Hypocrite!", leaving a few parting thoughts doesn't appear to be encouraged.
[/ QUOTE ]you know, i wonder some times if you read posts or just look at it through a dense filter of victimization. people arent saying dont let the developers know when a problem becomes intolerable for you, theya re saying eb constructive, and dont run out screaming about how you cant wait for the game to die(as a number of members of a specific subset of the community did in regards to warhammer) really, at what point are these simple aspects of common decency foreign to people, just because you are paying for something does not mean that basic social rules are not still in play, neither is because you are "honest" or "not sugar coating things" its just being a jerk and the worst perpetrators(which does not include you ) are the ones that the initial post was aimed at and the irritation from seeing their venomous screeds time after time after time is what galvanizes people in the way that you have noted. to summarize, parting thoughs, perfectly acceptable, parting SHOTS... what does basic common sense tell you?
Lack of encouragement never stopped anyone before, from all appearances.
Dec out.
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Lack of encouragement never stopped anyone before, from all appearances.
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It's making me consider whether to make a goodbye post in a few months, simply because I'm likely to mention several features that will be on my wishlist and it might be construed as a parting 'shot' (like the phrase play, rian; occurred to me when I wrote 'parting thought').
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
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can't throw items in the environment, run up walls etc) and the list goes on.
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I bet a lot of things on that list, like running up walls or running on water, are things the devs have in fact said they could do but are simply "not worth our time". That was the case with running on water and running up walls.
Well if they're worth it to you, and it seems they are, and other games will give them to you, I agree that moving on is the best action you can take.
I also agree Day Jobs was a waste of a feature concept.
Good luck whatever you end up deciding.
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If I remember correctly, I think it was reported the CoX engine does not have the ability to have us throw pieces of the environment or run up walls or have various weather situations (I could be wrong but that is what I rem.).
The engine is old and it is showing. Not the DEVS fault but that is the way it goes.
Like I said before, I can live without those 'lesser' items but what is not cool is a lack of decent new material. I have not played most of the 'content' but that is because it's the same tile set and opposition ALL the time. No thanks.
I don't know if the DEVS take much of our desires into consideration but, to me, it seems like they do not and that is their option.
Weather was not a case of "it can't be done," but "(a) it would be too computationally expensive to do it right" and "(b) we (specifically War Witch - Melissa Bianco) think it'd end up detracting from the game" (the second thanks to experience with it in other games - which went from "This is cool" to "More freaking rain, ugh!" rapidly.)
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Good day to you all. This the The Player (Formerly Known as The Philotic Knight).
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Can somebody please explain to me why people change their global/forum handles then constantly refer back to what their handle used to be? Wouldn't you just keep the name you used to have? Or is this a cry for attention?
Speaking of which... Was this post really necessary? Its not conclusive of anything other than being an opinionated blog. If you're gonna blog, then get a website (or use LiveJournal). If you're gonna comment, then post a comment and get on with it.
Seriously.
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Good day to you all. This the The Player (Formerly Known as The Philotic Knight).
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Can somebody please explain to me why people change their global/forum handles then constantly refer back to what their handle used to be? Wouldn't you just keep the name you used to have? Or is this a cry for attention?
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Some people change because they want to "reset" - those people won't.
Some people change because they feel like something new, or have a new main they enjoy - these people may, especially if they're known for something specific.
Think of it as the difference between the Witness Protection Program you see used on TV and a woman who's just gotten married referring to herself as "Susan Jones, formerly Smith."
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Speaking of which... Was this post really necessary? Its not conclusive of anything other than being an opinionated blog. If you're gonna blog, then get a website (or use LiveJournal). If you're gonna comment, then post a comment and get on with it.
Seriously.
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Are ANY posts really necessary, including this one? 
It got discussion going, which has generally been civil, so IMHO - no harm, no foul.
Please try to keep all posts in THIS thread at least, as Spock posts. That one was a Kirk post.
Blogs are for information about someone's personal life, this post was about the game. It is quite appropriate here.
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Please try to keep all posts in THIS thread at least, as Spock posts. That one was a Kirk post.
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It was chasing after a green alien female post?
It was emotionally based. I could sense the irritation and slight anger through my monitor. Yes, I'm now Obi-Wan apparently.
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I do think you're seriously deluding yourself if you think those other games on the horizon will deliver you to the promised land of comic-book godhood
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Toc, you don't get it. You never will get it.
Perhaps you would if one day you play a soccer MMO where some designer who admits he's only ever been to a single soccer match has decided that it would be "unfair" for the goalie to be able to touch the ball with his hands when no one else can.
Or a racing MMO where their Porsche was interpreted by a dev who doesn't even have a driver's licence as a car that handles like a garbage truck and tops out at 45mph.
Maybe then a Porsche fan would say something about it on their forums and in response they'll get a kind of Prisoner-esque unlogic from the people who flocked to the Porsche/garbage truck like "Whoever said Porsches were fast, Number Six?"
or
"We can't have fast Porsches that break 100mph because that would be unbalanced and then nobody would want to drive the Pontiac Fiero. Ignore the fact the Fiero goes 350mph, can drive up walls and shoots fireballs. That's OK and fair because it doesn't team well."
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Perhaps you would if one day you play a soccer MMO where some designer who admits he's only ever been to a single soccer match has decided that it would be "unfair" for the goalie to be able to touch the ball with his hands when no one else can.
Or a racing MMO where their Porsche was interpreted by a dev who doesn't even have a driver's licence as a car that handles like a garbage truck and tops out at 45mph.
Maybe then a Porsche fan would say something about it on their forums and in response they'll get a kind of Prisoner-esque unlogic from the people who flocked to the Porsche/garbage truck like "Whoever said Porsches were fast, Number Six?"
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So, are you trying to say that these devs fail at developing and running a superhero MMO because they were never superheroes themselves??? 
Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny_Butane at his... well, usual.
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I'm not debating that CO won't give us competition at all. I just don't think it will outright kill this game. It IS possible for multiple MMOs of a similar genre to exist.
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Nail, meet head.