New player experience sucks pretty bad right now
By
Adult_Swim,
Posted on: 2009-07-09 22:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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The game was not made harder, no.
However... that still does not address the fact that people who do NOT 'farm' (for inf or for drops, if not both) are effectively locked out of the market because their return rate is much much less.
It's not a matter of 'working for it more'. It's a matter of 'working' period. Because that's what farming maps feels like to me - repetitious drudgery, in the company of strangers who all too often have the conversational capacity of a pet rock. Guess what? I get enough of that at my day job.
However... if I want to get anything 'cool' or 'spiffy', then I have to punch a clock in this game.
This is not what I consider 'fun' and frankly, it bothers me that the game mechanics and 'economy' not only support this progression, but actively promote it.
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I'll try to say this as nicely as possible. You just come across as another player that wants to accomplish certain things in the game without putting in the necessary effort.
Your claim that players who do not farm are locked out of anything is complete rubbish. As much as I defend farming, I rarely actually do any of it, and if I do, it's hopping up on the wall in Cimerora for 20 or 30 minutes. The only time I ever touch AE is pre-level 20, so my characters will have some tickets to play with. Yet, I still have plenty of influence, get plenty of drops, and make plenty of merits.
However a player gets there, they have to invest time & effort. Whether that be through farming, playing the market, running TF's, whatever. If you want the 'shinies' you have to be willing to invest the effort.
You should worry less about comparing yourself or your characters to other players and enjoy playing the game. The game is not some kind of competition between players to see who has the most 'phat loot', yet that seems to be the way you are approaching it.
I do have a question for you..
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if I want to get anything 'cool' or 'spiffy', then I have to punch a clock in this game.
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What exactly is this 'cool' or 'spiffy' stuff that you cannot acquire except through farming? I'm honestly curious.
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Let me reiterate this:
...they're soloing or running lower difficulty, Item A never drops for them...
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I dont know of anyone farming that is doing it on the lower difficulty. The entire point would be the maximize XP, Infulence, and drops(Tickets). You earn higher amounts of all these running things at higher difficulty, fighting stronger enemies.
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When the AE is the easiest source for A) money and/or B) saleable goods, and when large teams on 'farmable' maps pull in the most of both, then the people who prefer NOT to run the same map with the same mob over and over get edged out... they make less inf, their drops are random and a lot fewer and further in between.
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Again i falsehood. When i do farm, i am doing so only with my two accounts, i do not invite others, i do not make a full team. I pick a mission, and load it up and i put my two characters into it. I can do this over and over on one mission, i can pick a new mission every time it doesnt really matter. And i earn on a level 50 from a real farm maybe 2-2.5 million for a run its its a good one, and probably 1500 tickets max.
But ultimately im doing this solo or on a team of 2. I dont think thats all that hard for most players to accomplish, and if i did run it solo, sure that might go down slightly, however still not so dramaticly that it wouldnt be benefical.
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The choice is "Farm" or "Get Lucky at the Drop Lottery". And lately the lottery odds have been trash.
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I will admit the drop lottery sucks. However if not mistaken the mission drop system still follows the idea that certian recipies are only availible during TF/SF or by spending merits for rolls i guess now. There are things that will never drop during a standard mission. Tickets being that the idea is your running a TF/SF style mission but wont get any random drops reward you by allowing a solo player to be able to take that random chance roll MORE often then a primary solo player would earn merits for that roll.
And again your thinking that the only way to do it is by farming is just wrong. I will earn tickets on any mission i do. I can run one over and over, or i can and often do pick a new mission every time. I dont have to farm. So now please your poor solo player is running say radio missions in PI, he gets different missions over and over again, some kill all, some flashies, etc. Or he could go into the MA pick up missions from the computer and run those same type of missions but be earning tickets in faster quanity to take random rolls that will probably benefit him with better returns to either use or sell. I personally say neither one of those would be farming, but your still going to be earning tickets that allow you to more easily choose if you want to try for better recipies or weaker ones and get more of them. The open mission system just drops whatever it feels like.
Yes again you blame the MA, well we had inventions before the MA, where do you think the recipies in the black market came from then? From farmers maybe? Basicly those that kill the most stuff in either system will earn the most drops when all is said and done. The MA hasnt changed that in teh slightest.
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But, oh yeah, you don't have to use the Invention system or the Market, the AE is optional, you can level up and build a powerful character 'normally'... let's not all forget that...
</sarcasm>
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Sarcasm or not you can. I have about 3 of my 19 level 50s that have any invention sets in them at all. Now one is a perma dom, so its increasingly obvious how often she pops domination. But the other 2 maybe have 3-4 sets in them tops. All my other toons are basicly slotted with common IOs. Though i have gotten comments on the perma dom, i have never once had a player notice on any other character that i seemed stronger or weaker then i should be. Its COMPLETELY optional if a player wants to do it or not. And before you even say ya but even common IOs are expensive, through regular play, buying SOs all the way up, my level 50s usally hit 50 with about 30+ million inf/infl on them. That is more then enough at level 50 to deck out any toon with common IOs.
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Which is why I'm not playing at the moment, and haven't been for the past month. I still love the game, it's the players I can't stand to be around for more than five minutes.
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I probably havent been on more then 5 teams since issue 14 launched. And those would have been supergroup teams. I play mostly alone because im on the west coast and play late at night. Even solo, even not farming, i was earning enough tickets playing peoples arcs to make a few hundred million just recycling the drops into the market at the current market value.
Im sorry but why the ef is it anyone elses problem to make sure you have an easy go of it? And dont give me its a game of heroes crap, its a game. The game has an economy. Players are using it. If you choose not to then fine, but you can make decent money spending like 30 minutes a week in feeding common IOs into the system 5-10 minutes a play night. Its really not that hard. Set up some low ball bids for salvage, pick a good selling recipie that always sells memorize the recipie and then just crank out the enhancments. You store them up and just drop some in to the market when you get a chance. Right now with a memorized recipie i can easily profit 300-350 thousand off selling one accuracy, def, res IO pretty much at will. I usally will only do it for weekends right now to get the player bids, so i load up my 16 sell slots on a firday and just go pick up like 3-4 million on sunday.
But OMG spending 10 minutes to help yourself..... god if that is to much work, i weep for your partner in life. And as far as quitting, maybe you should. Not to be mean spirited but seriously i dont know of a MMO that doesnt requires to actually put time in to earn what they want.
QuiJon wrote:
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Im sorry but why the ef is it anyone elses problem to make sure you have an easy go of it?
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He's not saying it is. Unfortunately, with so many people working the market, the hyperinflation has made difficult for casual players, who would rather play, get the items that they could (previous to the AE) get rather easily.
Yes, you can make money on the market. But you can't deny that the AE phenomenon has inflated the market pretty dramatically.
Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
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He's not saying it is. Unfortunately, with so many people working the market, the hyperinflation has made difficult for casual players, who would rather play, get the items that they could (previous to the AE) get rather easily.
Yes, you can make money on the market. But you can't deny that the AE phenomenon has inflated the market pretty dramatically.
Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
--NT
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On the other hand, this morning, I put in a bid for Scientific Law for 1,000 inf, they were selling for around 10,000 and had about 5 times the demand than supply. In the time it took me to jetpack from WW to my base portal in KR I had bought 10 of them.
I had a number of bids at 50 each for 10 pieces of various common salvage that was selling in the thousands at the time, with no real demand compared to supply, and every time I'd get back to base I'd get a message I bought something.
The point is, except perhaps on the weekend, it doesn't even take the patience to wait 25 hours, it just takes the patience to wait a few minutes, or maybe put in a bid and go run one mission, to get a more reasonable price.
So, rich farmers are not the issue, the lack of a tutorial on market common sense is.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
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Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
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Then someone was either transferring some money to an alt or they had one heck of a typo. You see that all the time.
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Yes, you can make money on the market. But you can't deny that the AE phenomenon has inflated the market pretty dramatically.
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Exactly the opposite.
More "good stuff" is cheaper right now than at any point in the history of the game.
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Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
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And yet I sold one last night for 100 inf.
So?
When you see an insane price for a nondescript item it is one of three things- somebody made a tragic data entry mistake, someone's transfering influence (check out the prices of low level training enhancements sometime if you REALLY want your mind blown), or some eeebil marketeer is having a little fun.
You can get any salvage in the game now for a handful of AE tickets. Salvage is MORE available than ever, is in fact often more available at MA than it is on the market.
Here's what MA has done to the market:
1: inflated the prices paid for anything you can't buy with tickets.
2: cratered the price of rare salvage & most of the 'good' set IOs
3: increased the price in inf of common and uncommon salvage since they aren't an efficient use of tickets. But since anyone who wants can pick them up any time for a handful of tickets, those prices are pure convenience tax. Anyone who doesn't like them can just hit the ticket vendor.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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It's not a supply/demand economy....
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wrong.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
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Run one AE arc, trade your tickets for any piece of salvage you want. If it's a Common, it might take a few random rolls, but you can sell off the salvage gained from the "failed" rolls. One sale (of 80 million or not) does not make for a Market trend.
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Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
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Then someone was either transferring some money to an alt or they had one heck of a typo. You see that all the time.
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Possibly someone just being nice.
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QuiJon wrote:
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Im sorry but why the ef is it anyone elses problem to make sure you have an easy go of it?
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He's not saying it is. Unfortunately, with so many people working the market, the hyperinflation has made difficult for casual players, who would rather play, get the items that they could (previous to the AE) get rather easily.
Yes, you can make money on the market. But you can't deny that the AE phenomenon has inflated the market pretty dramatically.
Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.
--NT
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Or someone made a mistake and bid way more then they wanted to. I once bid 70 million for a 7 million cost recipie, it was won before i even had a chance to see what i had done.
Point being it is absolutely no more difficult to slot out a toon with standard SOs now then before the Invention system was put into the game. Now it might be slightly more costly to slot IOs or craft them yes. But again look at the options. Tickets are easy to come by and common salavage is cheap to buy, so are common recipies in the AE. Nothing requires you to use the markets to get these. Use the terminals in the univresity, use the tickets to buy your recipies and salvage etc. The point IMO is that by the time you reach level 50, if you started slotting what you could afford of IOs at level 32, you have still spent way less then you would to keep the SOs up to date from 32-50.
Bah, we've let this degenerate into another "market is eeeevil!" thread. 
Everyone who believes that - go read The Market forums and learn how you're doing to wrong.
Everyone else, go back to crying DOOOOOM. I want the DOOOOOMiest DOOOOOM that ever DOOOOOMed in DOOOOMsville! 
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In theory, this is all balanced by there being no "end of mission" reward in terms of XP/Influence/Prestige. In practice...not so much.
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How about adding a bit of QoL on story missions? As it stands, it takes forever and a day for most newbies to get into this game, particularly since there's no travel power till 14 when they don't know they can earn one at lvl 5. Something like choosing +50% debt (or 50% of the debt you would get if <lvl 10s got debt) and getting rezzed at mission start. Also, you could tighten the range at which players are given door missions (and maybe FedEx missions too). I know you want lowbies to explore the world, but I almost quit soon after starting because of the frustration involved in running around.
Pick a whole bunch more Dev Choice low level arcs, and then make the AE "dev choice only" until level 14.
That way you don't have to take anything out or deny anyone with the Architect Edition access.
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How about adding a bit of QoL on story missions? As it stands, it takes forever and a day for most newbies to get into this game, particularly since there's no travel power till 14 when they don't know they can earn one at lvl 5.
but I almost quit soon after starting because of the frustration involved in running around.
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QFT and its not just this game. I hope I'm not outgrowing these kind of games, but I no longer enjoy spending time running around all the time - its hard to believe I ever did.
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In theory, this is all balanced by there being no "end of mission" reward in terms of XP/Influence/Prestige. In practice...not so much.
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How about adding a bit of QoL on story missions? As it stands, it takes forever and a day for most newbies to get into this game, particularly since there's no travel power till 14 when they don't know they can earn one at lvl 5. Something like choosing +50% debt (or 50% of the debt you would get if <lvl 10s got debt) and getting rezzed at mission start. Also, you could tighten the range at which players are given door missions (and maybe FedEx missions too). I know you want lowbies to explore the world, but I almost quit soon after starting because of the frustration involved in running around.
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Disagree.
This game was very fun at low levels. I remeber when I was first hacking mobs around Atlas as a noob. I remember remarking then how close everything was, how well designed the mission system.
Seriously, there's no other MMO I'm aware of that has travel and mission options this convenient.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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How about adding a bit of QoL on story missions? As it stands, it takes forever and a day for most newbies to get into this game, particularly since there's no travel power till 14 when they don't know they can earn one at lvl 5.
but I almost quit soon after starting because of the frustration involved in running around.
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QFT and its not just this game. I hope I'm not outgrowing these kind of games, but I no longer enjoy spending time running around all the time - its hard to believe I ever did.
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Do you fight along the way as a lowbie?
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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In theory, this is all balanced by there being no "end of mission" reward in terms of XP/Influence/Prestige. In practice...not so much.
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How about adding a bit of QoL on story missions? As it stands, it takes forever and a day for most newbies to get into this game, particularly since there's no travel power till 14 when they don't know they can earn one at lvl 5. Something like choosing +50% debt (or 50% of the debt you would get if <lvl 10s got debt) and getting rezzed at mission start. Also, you could tighten the range at which players are given door missions (and maybe FedEx missions too). I know you want lowbies to explore the world, but I almost quit soon after starting because of the frustration involved in running around.
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Disagree.
This game was very fun at low levels. I remeber when I was first hacking mobs around Atlas as a noob. I remember remarking then how close everything was, how well designed the mission system.
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I agree with EG. Back in our day (cough) teams actually swept the streets through AP into other zones. You'd be surprised how quickly you chased a hoodlum across the zone into the neighboring hazard zone - and with very little effort or sense of time passing.
Nowadays the streets are empty of players except for a sampling of costume contests, Wentworth investors and MA farmers gathered beneath the big globe. The core dynamics changed - so of course basic street sweeping isn't gonna be worth scratch anymore.
It is a fun "predicament" though when you don't have a travel power.
The only real "trick" to the market is patience. I don't have a lot myself, which is why going on vacation actually helps.