New player experience sucks pretty bad right now
By
Adult_Swim,
Posted on: 2009-07-09 22:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I honestly think most of this is great ideas. Though i think the teleporter would be pushing it, i think looking at some zones and maybe putting in a zone teleporter might not be a bad idea.(like something that can split Indy Port into 3 different zones that take you to a localized pad and you choose a souther, Terra Volta gate, or northern spawn point to reappear at.)
But here is also my suggestion, first, increase the rewards. No matter how easy you make it if another system gives better returns, then it will be used. We have seen this for 5 years worth of upper leveling farmming missions even before MA.
Then i would say let all contacts offer some type of repeatable mission, i know radios already do this, but still, if i want a hunt mission i might as well be able to get one. And offering the cell phones right away is great, or maybe after the first mission you complete.
I would also say let contacts offer you ALL their arcs from the start, unless their is a story progression that is needed to follow. With Oroborus its pretty stupid to make me work 3 arcs from a contact to get the one mission i wanted in the last arc to get a badge from to begin with. But also this allows me to say "oh i hate that arc, its all malta" or whatever and avoid it without having to skip the rest of the contact.
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Though i think the teleporter would be pushing it, i think looking at some zones and maybe putting in a zone teleporter might not be a bad idea.
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Look at it this way: the MA system already allows you to just jump into mission after mission with no travel, and return from the hospital with no travel, selecting any mission you want. Even if you gave everybody perma-Mission TP (which would make perfect sense in-Lore even) regular missions would still be less convenient since you have the whole rigmarole with contacts, hunts, fedexes and the like. Mission TP, even if it is pushing it, would only push it back closer to balance.
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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Though i think the teleporter would be pushing it, i think looking at some zones and maybe putting in a zone teleporter might not be a bad idea.
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Look at it this way: the MA system already allows you to just jump into mission after mission with no travel, and return from the hospital with no travel, selecting any mission you want. Even if you gave everybody perma-Mission TP (which would make perfect sense in-Lore even) regular missions would still be less convenient since you have the whole rigmarole with contacts, hunts, fedexes and the like. Mission TP, even if it is pushing it, would only push it back closer to balance.
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But if the problem everyone [censored] about is that there is no one in the zones, this doesnt solve that issue. You still will have most everyone popping from contact to mission door and be inside a instance.
What i would kinda like to see is a bonus to patrol xp for stopping crime/or committing crime when out on the streets in the city zones. So i get my mission and if i stop some muggings and such on the way i earn more patrol xp which is a bonus to my xp earning.
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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It is if you're just playing for levels/tickets. Which, apparently, is a decent sized chunk of the player base.
Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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And? I'm sure everybody realizes that there are levels of reward that can induce the players to do boring stuff. I'm sure there's a level of drops you could set that would cause players to jam themselves all into Perez, but so what? Even if you could revive Hydra farming, you shouldn't want to.
Getting players out of MA isn't (or shouldn't be) an end in itself. The better MA missions are as much fun to do as pretty much any mission in the game. The Devs did a great job of delivering all the stuff that you can do in a mission, but that removes any reason to do "official" missions...and there are lots of reasons not to put up with the hassles involved in non-MA content. Wouldn't it be better to remove those hassles and come up with new stuff that uses the zones to deliver an experience that the MA can't duplicate than to figure out how far you have to tilt the rewards 'til, like with Hamidon mitochondria, you can get a lot of players to do it despite it being a drag?
I'm not sure what, besides more events like the SupaTroll rave and the Steel Canyon fire, or like I said using the scaling code to get rid of zones of nothing but greys...but if travel is just a time-sink, people will skip it as much as possible. As the years have rolled by they've added more and more ways to do that, but the enthusiasm with which people greet each new short-cut should be telling them something about how much fun people are having slogging from place to place. Maybe now that they have factions that fight each other, and zone-event triggers, they can finally make it so that player action can temporarily change the power-balance in the zone, e.g. clearing enough Skulls out of the Boneyard triggers a Police raid invasion that helps clean up Perez for a while. Or smack enough Sky Raiders and there's a Family invasion.
There needs to be more incentive to do things outside of AE content. My return to the game has been miserable and I'm already regretting buying the game for my girlfriend.
I haven't played Coh/CoV consistantly since 2006 according to the PlayNC account info--I couldn't even tell you what issue was the newest because it was so long ago, capes were the newest hottest thing when I quit.
My girlfriend is brand new to MMOs. She has absolutely zero MMO background knowledge. The quintessential newbie. She's been muscling through both CoH and CoV content up to the teens. Once we hit the teen levels in our duo we've been wanting to team with other players. We play on Virtue (obviously one of the highest population servers) and it's been hell trying to find teams that don't want to mindlessly run bubble farms. We're lucky if we can get a 4 man team going (and by 4 man, I mean us and two others).
The learning curve with inventions absolutely slaughtering regular enhancements has been tough for her as well. There needs to be a more in depth tutorial to inventions before you get loaded with salvage and recipes. Or there needs to be a smoother transition or higher level transition from training enhancements to DOs to Inventions.
Everytime she hits level 12 or 14 with a character, it's time to reroll because she's so frustrated. She doesn't understand why anyone would avoid all of the beautiful city and hazard zones and instead choose to whack at things that provide zero challenge.
I feel as though we just wasted $50 (between my reactivation fee, her box purchase, and her first months play) coming back to a broken game. The simplicity of the original T/DO/SO enhancement system, the rich roleplay and character customization is what drew me to CoH over all of the available MMOs. Only the character customization seems to have survived from the CoH I remember. I feel robbed that this is going to be her first MMO memory.
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There needs to be more incentive to do things outside of AE content.
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Sad but true. I think a couple problems could be solved if the MA missions in each zone were level restrictive (ie, you can't go to AP to play a lvl 45-50 mish - you'll have to go to Peregrine Island for that one).
That however would require enforcing players to "choose" a level range when they create missions (and once participants have outleveled the mission's set range, they will auto-exemp down for cash upon further repeats).
Probably a bad idea though. Ah well.
On the roleplay end of things, check out Pocket D, if you haven't been introduced to it yet. Entrances are in Kings Row, Talos, and Founder's Falls for heroes, Port Oakes, Sharkhead, and St. Martial for villains. It's where a lot of the RP on Virtue takes place nowdays.
(pre-emptively in before jokes about catgirls and/or sex)
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
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On the roleplay end of things, check out Pocket D, if you haven't been introduced to it yet. Entrances are in Kings Row, Talos, and Founder's Falls for heroes, Port Oakes, Sharkhead, and St. Martial for villains. It's where a lot of the RP on Virtue takes place nowdays.
(pre-emptively in before jokes about catgirls and/or sex)
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My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
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n00b: Me and my buddy want to level really fast. Can you do it for us?
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Not seeing how this is AE's fault.
I've been getting PL requests from total strangers almost as long as I've been playing the game.
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quoted for enormous truth.
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.
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Someone else's game of golf shouldn't prevent me from playing a game of baseball though.
The inflation alone from the rapid leveling and disposable income (without real money sinks) has prevented me from even thinking about getting into inventions seriously. I've poked around with bubbling on one of my old characters to see what it's all about, and from what I've seen, the rate that you can gain infamy/influence in bubbles compared to regular missions is ridiculously disproportionate.
Twinking would naturally contribute to this, much like it does in every MMO--however, the ability to earn crazy amounts of money through exploiting at early levels isn't often there like it is here. Bubbles are an exploit of the games mechanics, and it has a drastic effect on those who don't bubble themselves.
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.
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Someone else's game of golf shouldn't prevent me from playing a game of baseball though.
The inflation alone from the rapid leveling and disposable income (without real money sinks) has prevented me from even thinking about getting into inventions seriously. I've poked around with bubbling on one of my old characters to see what it's all about, and from what I've seen, the rate that you can gain infamy/influence in bubbles compared to regular missions is ridiculously disproportionate.
Twinking would naturally contribute to this, much like it does in every MMO--however, the ability to earn crazy amounts of money through exploiting at early levels isn't often there like it is here. Bubbles are an exploit of the games mechanics, and it has a drastic effect on those who don't bubble themselves.
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Gasp, I am 1 man short of my 4 man golf team, better cancel your baseball game so we can force one of your players to fill in.
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.
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Someone else's game of golf shouldn't prevent me from playing a game of baseball though.
The inflation alone from the rapid leveling and disposable income (without real money sinks) has prevented me from even thinking about getting into inventions seriously. I've poked around with bubbling on one of my old characters to see what it's all about, and from what I've seen, the rate that you can gain infamy/influence in bubbles compared to regular missions is ridiculously disproportionate.
Twinking would naturally contribute to this, much like it does in every MMO--however, the ability to earn crazy amounts of money through exploiting at early levels isn't often there like it is here. Bubbles are an exploit of the games mechanics, and it has a drastic effect on those who don't bubble themselves.
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The cost of things on the markets has relatively not changed dramaticly, and infact i think though purples might have gone up, almost everything else is probably lower due to earning more random drops from tickets then merits or missions allowed for.
As to your baseball/golf comparison. No it shouldnt prevent you from playing baseball if you want to. However what your saying then is that what if more people just like golf, and they dont have alot of time to play 2 sports and you can no longer find 18 people that want to play baseball to feild 2 teams to have a game because so many are playing golf.
So at that point should people be discouraged from playing golf, or even forbid to help support those that want to play baseball? If your having trouble finding teams its because more people are wanting to do other things. Afterall Golf is more casual paced, you can play it with just a couple of your friends with no PUG general screaming what to do or when to do it as if the game is rocket science.
If people want to play baseball more power to them, however the general impression right now is that they feel that people shouldnt be allowed to play golf so they can field a team.
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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to some people? apparently yes. Do you honestly think people powerlevel to 50 because they DONT find it fun to do so?
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.
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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?
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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.
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Someone else's game of golf shouldn't prevent me from playing a game of baseball though.
The inflation alone from the rapid leveling and disposable income (without real money sinks) has prevented me from even thinking about getting into inventions seriously. I've poked around with bubbling on one of my old characters to see what it's all about, and from what I've seen, the rate that you can gain infamy/influence in bubbles compared to regular missions is ridiculously disproportionate.
Twinking would naturally contribute to this, much like it does in every MMO--however, the ability to earn crazy amounts of money through exploiting at early levels isn't often there like it is here. Bubbles are an exploit of the games mechanics, and it has a drastic effect on those who don't bubble themselves.
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Gasp, I am 1 man short of my 4 man golf team, better cancel your baseball game so we can force one of your players to fill in.
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You misunderstand the point.
The amazing amounts of MONEY people are making playing power golf is driving up the cost of sporting goods across the board... apparently because a good Louisville Slugger makes a great 3-wood and people are using baseball hats as sunshades.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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AE buildings out of Atlas, Galaxy and King's Row, yesterday.
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You misunderstand the point.
The amazing amounts of MONEY people are making playing power golf is driving up the cost of sporting goods across the board... apparently because a good Louisville Slugger makes a great 3-wood and people are using baseball hats as sunshades.
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No, RMT and the dev's nerfing of drop rates have contributed far more to this than AE. AE's dropping the average price as more of the rarer items are showing up (except for purples, but that again is not AE related at all.)
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I feel as though we just wasted $50 (between my reactivation fee, her box purchase, and her first months play) coming back to a broken game. The simplicity of the original T/DO/SO enhancement system, the rich roleplay and character customization is what drew me to CoH over all of the available MMOs. Only the character customization seems to have survived from the CoH I remember. I feel robbed that this is going to be her first MMO memory.
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I agree with, and am saddened by most of what you say, but this in particular I need to comment on. Please, take this as the most sincere form of suggestion:
You do NOT need to get into Inventions.
Sure, they make you more powerful and provide a "second game" for people who are into that sort of thing, but they are by no means critical to your success, especially not at the level of DOs and SOs. In fact, with people paying ridiculous amounts for simple things, it's easier than ever to garner enough money to kit yourself out in DOs and SOs for almost no effort. Yes, they're not as power and yes, they do age, but you can get well into the 30s before you even consider Inventions and you won't miss out on much.
And if you want something more but don't feel like engaging in the rat race of Inventions, you can actually stick to Common Inventions. They are almost identical to SOs, only they do more (from about level 30 onward), they don't age, and they get stronger with each level bracket. The recipes to make them are sold at the university for reasonably fair prices, the salvage to make them is available on the market, though it may be expensive to buy, and they don't cost too much to make. Moreover, people make them for badges, so if you don't feel like going through the hassle of Inventing, you can buy ready-made enhancements right off the market for a relatively stable price.
Inventions are pricey, though. Where a SO goes for between 30 and 50 thousand, a Common bought off the market will set you back anywhere between 150 and 400 thousand, though if you make your won, the price is somewhere in the middle. They're pricey, but they don't go for 50 million a piece, and just selling the stuff you get off drops is going to net you about enough to outfit yourself with a set of 'em every 5 levels.
I honestly don't know what people are talking about when they beat their chest, grab their crotch and proclaim "Bah! I can make 500 million a day!" because on no character ever have I had more than around 80 million at any one point, and 50 million of that came from a single respec recipe.
It all depends on how strong you want to be and how high you want to push your difficulty and how fast you want to kill and so forth. If you want to play on the highest difficulty, never stop, never rest, never be in danger, etc., you're going to need to get into inventions. If you're like me, though, and you just want to kill stuff your level as well as you can, then stick to SOs and Commons.
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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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The learning curve with inventions absolutely slaughtering regular enhancements has been tough for her as well. There needs to be a more in depth tutorial to inventions before you get loaded with salvage and recipes. Or there needs to be a smoother transition or higher level transition from training enhancements to DOs to Inventions.
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Skip IOs until you (and she) feel comfortable with everything else new. Your toons still play just fine without them, nothing in the game has been ramped up to be harder because of IOs. Just sell them as they drop at WWs/BM and be done with them for now. This is not BS or bad advice I assure you.
AS for the teaming problem? You'll hear a lot of advice about making new friends who don't farm, joining an active SG, adding chat channels, etc. I've been working on doing those and so far my luck's been a tad poor, but I'm not giving up yet. It is rather an uphill battle I agree.
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And this differs from the tells i would get from lowbies asking for team spots with my 40+ characters exactly how?
I am not saying that there are not going to be iratating PLing requests, there always have been and will continue to be. Its the idea that the MA/AE is responsible for it all that IMO is false.
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While requests for PL have been with us forever, back in the day I did not have people sending me tells in the middle of missions, requesting that I leave my mission and hook them up IMMEEEEDJUTLY because "they want to level fast." Don't we all want to level fast?!
And while yes, requests for PL were out there, I missed out on the sense of extreme entitlement that I am seeing from new players these days. Its not enough that I should PL them, I should leave my mission and do it now, this instant - and if not WHY NOT??!!! I'm not in the AE bldg? WHY NOT?!
As if I owe such people an answer. Or as if I owed them PLing.
Last night was on a SG team with a new member of the group. Newbie was completely new to the game. Our SG leaders were PLing him out of kindness. I don't agree with this strategy, but kept my mouth shut. Besides, I needed some Prestige on that character. On the team: eight people.
As we were steamrolling along killing everything in sight in record time, newbie says: "If we had a real team we could be doing this a LOT FASTER. Wish this was a *real* team!"
I nearly choked on my drink, and only controlled the urge to all-caps "**** OFF YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE [censored]!" out of courtesy toward friends on the team. A zillion xp/minute wasn't enough...? Truly, ROTFL. Tired of these spoiled-rotten little ubar-entitled brats. I don't care how old they are, they act like whiny brats many of them.
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The MA creating stupid players is IMO one of the best forms of entertainment this game offers.
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I am glad one of us sees it that way.
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As we were steamrolling along killing everything in sight in record time, newbie says: "If we had a real team we could be doing this a LOT FASTER. Wish this was a *real* team!"
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I can understand that anger, but if you could just have held onto your anger long enough to ask him what a "real team" would have been, that could have been comedy gold.
Personally I'm with you though, I'd have walked or kicked him if I was the leader. Come to think of it, if my SG was allowing someone to get away that sort of thing I might feel the urge to walk anyways.
Hmm...
I will change my position on this...
Yes, new player experience suckes pretty bad right now.
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Because there is a whole cadre of veterans that treat then like trash, always seeking for "Quality People" who are not "Polluting the game".
And it wasnt directed to anyone but those that know what i am talking about. I am using QR.
** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************
Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.
It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times. Given the option to skip running around from contact to mission and back, getting sent to talk to this or that tutorial liason, having to run Fedexes, and just get into the missions, players are voting to spend their time doing actual content. A lot of the game was designed before anybody had any clear idea of how much fun the various parts would be, particularly when it came to replaying it over and over.
The way to restore parity isn't to bribe/threaten players to do the boring stuff of slogging around Paragon, trying to get the contacts to cough up the interesting missions. The Devs should concentrate first on making the boring stuff optional/skippable, and then to make it interesting. Since not everybody finds the same things interesting it's really important to not make any of it mandatory.
They could start by making all contacts give out cell-phones immediately, and get rid of the contact tree. Contacts could still suggest the next logical person to go to, but if you walk up to unfamiliar contacts they should just give you their missions. They should remove the limit on how many missions you can drop; if there's a reward/time issue, then make it you can drop 1 per 3 days for the reward, or as many as you like without any reward. If players don't want to arrest 30 Crey, making them do it to get an interesting mission just funnels them into Radios or AE. Sending everybody to Perez Park to arrest 10 CoT is just a reason to out-level all the early contacts to avoid that mission (or save your initial Drop Mission for the Perez Security Chief).
Next they could give everybody Mission Teleporters and make the recharge trivial. It should be a big red flag how happy people were to get those suckers and how frequently they use them. If you've got "content" that people are so eager to skip, you should let people skip it until you've found a way to make it entertaining. Otherwise they'll use MA to skip it instead. While they're at it, they could award everybody the Traveler Vet power, or at least let them buy Jet Packs in AP, so if they do take a mission that involves running around they can choose to do it at a reasonable pace. Again, the overwhelming popularity of skipping all the low-level content, e.g. by grinding the sewer, to get to KR and do the Rocket Pack mission should be read as an indicator that sprinting around is not fun and should be optional.
They should also remove all the security level restrictions on zones. It serves no purpose any more, and makes it a hassle when you have a mixed-level team actually trying to follow some of the arcs. If you stick to MA and radios, you never have that problem.
When players are finally able to concentrate on the content they actually want to do, the Devs can turn to figuring out why the boring content turns people off and what they can do about that. Zone Events are good, or at least attract people to the zones. Maybe they could add zone-specific events...big gang wars between the factions that normally inhabit the zone, say, or a Bank Robbery that actually takes place in the zone, with Arachnos fliers and troops versus Longbow. Right now the drawback to the Zone events is that it makes travel through the zone a hassle or even impossible for lowbies; if almost all the in-city travel became optional, though, that would be less of a consideration. Maybe they could use the Monster code for the Zombies and Rikti so that all the zone mobs scaled to level, so that no matter what zone you travel to there's stuff to interact with if you choose to.
This turned out to be longer than I had planned, but there's so much that could and should be done so that the players can concentrate on the content that they actually find worth doing, without the cruft of left-over design decisions from five years back when it seemed like a good idea to force every character to go talk to Lt Wincott...