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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Everytime i see this thread, it seens plain wrong...
I am sooo glad the forum people isnt majority on this game...
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We're glad you're not the majority of players too. Everyone happy.
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Everytime i see this thread, it seens plain wrong...
I am sooo glad the forum people isnt majority on this game...
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We're glad you're not the majority of players too. Everyone happy.
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I never said i am on the majority. Quite the contrary, as i am on the forum...
** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************
Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.
I thought that if you don't count the farms AE is balanced because it's so easy to make custom mobs that can wipe out even players that are IOed out to solo normal AVs. At least that was my experience when AE was first released. Haven't played it in a bit but aren't custom mobs still readily made to be overpowered?
Haven't read NEARLY the whole thread yet. Just wanted to slow down the wrecking ball a bit -
No AE in Atlas or Galaxy? Cool. But why Kings Row? By the time the normal course of the game takes you to Kings Row, you have plenty of experience with normal contacts and arcs. You've already done at least two full contacts' worth of missions. At that point I'd say you're mature enough as a player to make a competent decision.
And if the evil vets are in KR, lying in wait to recruit new players against their will, they're going to be lying in wait in Steel Canyon, too, if we decide to make that the lowest level AE zone.
The case FOR Kings Row AE: I honestly believe that everyone (new and old) should be able to start doing AE content at a very early level, should they make the competent choice to do so. Sure, it's easy for us vets to take a 1st level character to Icon in Steel if we change our minds about a costume piece, or to take them to the Peregrine AE if that's the only one there is, but it'd be damn scary for a newbie. I don't believe they should be forced to become true vets before having realistic AE access.
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I'm not saying nerf AE rewards into the ground, but I AM saying recognize that normal content is at a disadvantage right now. The normal content provided a fair leveling experience. AE is the new thing. Nerf it, so that it provides a reasonable leveling experience.
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What i am saying is you leave AE expereinces alone. Most of the time those missions ARE harder then a normal Dev created mission, the higher rewards IMO are warrented.
However i see your point, which is why i think that normal mission content is what should be bumped up. See what i am thinking is what DOESNT the AE offer? It doesnt offer random drops, it doesnt offer merits from story arcs etc.
So why not look at adding more of those rewards to standard mission runs and arcs rather then taking down what the AE does offer. How about every mayhem mission you earn and run gives you 5 merits. (for the mission holder only, maybe 1 for non-mission holders) Thats usally 5 missions to earn the mayhem/safeguard, and one mission to complete it why would giving merits for completing that cycle be a bad thing?
Why not increase the drop rate of purple drops, and allow them to be earned when exempting down. Now you have given a reason for my level 50 to run some TFs or SFs and exempt down. Go back to having a random drop from TFs, and SFs, in addition to the merit rewards. Give me a merit boost if a truely complete all the missions from a contact not using the time portal to do it. If i am playing my toons and finish all the missions from say Maria Jenkins give me 10 merits, not just for finishing her arc.
These are nothing rewards in the long run, but think that is might be worth. Now players have a choice, level quickly with your rewards basicly being xp and influ, or level slower but by 50 think how many merits you could have earned, how many purples you might get with your 50s on exempt, or how many rare or expensive recipies you can now afford because you earned the merits on the trek to level, rather then getting there and now needing to find the money in other ways.
If the Devs actually gave the players a choice in the matter, then you would truely see what would keep players playing v. what becomes a short subscription because all someone did was PL to 50 and quit.
And the thing is the extra rewards cost them nothing. How many players would be happy to know that they might actually earn a 250 merit recipie in good time, or get a couple extra purple random drops? COX has never been about grinding. And i think its a mistake to keep looking at it as grinding out levels, grinding out drops, grinding out money, grinding out whatever. And many of the mechanics they have put in the game are just that, grinds. You dont need inventions sure, however now that they are in the game they hope our anal retentive nature will require us to spend the time cleaning up our characters slotting with them before we decide we are quitting.
Seriously if purples alone dropped like 3-4 times more often then they do, that would still be rare, but see how many people start playing mission to earn drops that might have spent all night earning tickets in the MA instead. It takes alot of ticket redemtion to equal out one armogedon drop on the black market.
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I don't see much meat on the bones of the "omg ae is ruining things' argument beyond a nostalgic fixation on how a lot of us veterans are used to playing.
It's new, it's different, and a lot of people prefer it to the 'real' way to play. That isn't a bug, it's a feature.
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Honestly, this isn't about approving or disapproving play styles. It's about the sovereign experience of a new player. A new player should feel like he's just stepped into a city with a history and a path to discovering all that the city has to offer.
A truly new wet behind the ears player isn't equipped to make the decision about whether spending all of his life in Doctor Aeon's plot to rule the world is a good idea or not.
What does he do after he's power-leveled to 50? Say, "What's next?" and the answer is either "Some task forces or more mission architect missions!" That player is going to wonder why the heck the world is so small. We don't have an end-game here. In some way, Architect Entertainment IS the end-game. You get the most out of it when you already know all about the factions and NPC's you might encounter inside of it. And that's kind of the point. You don't funnel the newbies into the end-game fresh out of the hatchery.
The fact that that you can take a level 1 into Architect Entertainment does not automatically mean that it's a good idea to do so. Newbies should be getting exposed to the breadth of the game, not place in a position where they can be immediately pulled into the very narrowest possible game experience.
You know, Goat, if I make a crack about the screen door on the MAGI vault, you're going to get the joke. It's completely conceivable that a newbie can land in Atlas Park, get sucked into the Architect, and come out WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHO AZURIA IS.
Moving the Architect out of the starting zones isn't going to inconvenience a knowledgable newbie any more than it inconveniences a knowledgable vet. Meanwhile, the real newbies will have the opportunity to experience the actual City and have a taste of the missions that inspired the Architect before they get sucked into it. THEN they'll have some basis for deciding how to divide their time between built-in content and player-generated content, especially when their first exposure to player-generated content has a high probability of being a farm team.
It's not about play style, it's about the initial play experience. That's what's going to determine whether a new player becomes a long-term subscriber or a short-term "I beat the game, time for a new game" player.
Is the AE going to be the only factor in that evolution? No, of course not. The initial impression, though, the sovereign experience, is going to go a long ways towards determining what a player feels a game is "about". IMO, we should try to preserve the "true" experience of the game for the newbies at least until they get out of the newbie zone.
'City of Heroes' is Dead, Long Live 'Single Building of Heroes'
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Everytime i see this thread, it seens plain wrong...
I am sooo glad the forum people isnt majority on this game...
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The thing is, I think a lot of us here see this driving newbies away, and without newbies joining and staying, the game will die. It's all well and good to say "let everyone do what they want" but I'd rather limit disruptive game styles and still have a game to play in 2-5 years time rather than let everyone do "what they want" and not be able to play the game any more because it's become unprofitable.
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MMOs are about balance and even if you take farming out of the equation, AE is not balanced.
-Regular missions have contacts you have to earn/find, then continually travel to until you get their cell. AE puts the contact right next to you.
-Regular missions have doors that can be on the other end of the zone or even in another zone entirely. AE always has the door right next to you.
-If you want to go to the hospital in a regular mission it could put you hundreds of yards away from the mission door, the AE hospital always puts you right next to the mission door.
-Random missions give you random salvage and recipe drops. AE tickets allow you to more selectively choose your drops.
-If you're having to buy enhancements with influence you will have to find a vendor selling your Origin, then you'll have to wade through the sometimes oddly named inventory list (curse you Magic Origin). If you use AE tickets you travel a few feet to a single person who offers not only every type of regular enhancement, they even have a nifty menu that lets you select the type of enhancement you're looking for.
These are just a few of the examples of how convenient AE is compared to regular content. Why does AE not have ANY downfalls to balance all of its amazing features that dwarf the regular content?
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This person asked "why does it not have any of these disadvantages?"
I suggest that it would be better for everybody if the regular content were made more convenient. The hero SO stores are pointlessly inconvenient, and before AE the tendecy of doors to be locataed at distant locations in other zones already led many teams to use scanners as their primary content.
I've attempted to run the basic hero content before and it seriously is not an asset to the game as is. Not only that but it is just about solo exclusive beause it's hard to find people willing to do that rather than scanners or whatever.
And seriously, what was Atlas Park before? Sewer teams. Trying to get a PUG that will do the super inconvenient level 5 maps is hard to start with. The team is of little use to those who aren't the person getting the maps, and rarely are any of the team willing to stay long.
I think it would be worthwhile for the devs to go through those, some of which are pretty neat and would make cool team content, and bring gameplay up to villain standards. In any situation that makes sense to the story, move the doors to the same zone as the NPC. Most importantly, set them to give out phone numbers after 1 job.
I'd also give the newbies some sort of 1-hour charge self-rez that they can use until level 10.
That inconvenience was intended to keep people playing longer, but I think that most everyone would agree that removal of such annoyances, and opening content that many would not do otherwise, would do more for subscription times.
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Agreed. Annoyance as a game-balancing factor is a bad idea. I routinely auto-skip arcs that I've done at least once till I get the contacts cell and some of them don't give you their number till you have done a lot of missions for them. CoV handles this much better.
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You said it yourself, you skip arcs that youve done at least once.
You've already done them, so of course that inconvience bugs ya.
But I think if you did it for the first time and it was easy and uber convienant, you would have not enjoyed it as much and possibly not stuck with the game.
Of course this is speculation but there is the fact that you skip it AFTER you've done it at least once. 
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An arc I am doing for the first time just sent nme to a cave at Perez which was a tech base with sky raiders, and then sent me to a door at Boomtown that is supposed to be an office.
No, I do not consider that enjoyable. There is a reason nearly every hero PUG I find is doing scanner spam before level 30.
Also running back to the NPC 8 times to get a phone number.
Obviously the devs do not consider it an asset since any content introduced since like issue 5 is not like that. Somebody needs to go through those, grant cell phones faster, and regulate the door spawns.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
Snippet from C_Ex_M:
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Obviously the devs do not consider it an asset since any content introduced since like issue 5 is not like that. Somebody needs to go through those, grant cell phones faster, and regulate the door spawns.
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So friggin' agree!! That alone would go a long way in making the game play better outside the AE.
From Zikar:
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The thing is, I think a lot of us here see this driving newbies away, and without newbies joining and staying, the game will die. It's all well and good to say "let everyone do what they want" but I'd rather limit disruptive game styles and still have a game to play in 2-5 years time rather than let everyone do "what they want" and not be able to play the game any more because it's become unprofitable.
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This! If everyone has ultimate freedom in this game, and farms to 50 constantly, they will have little reason to continue playing and burn out. There will only be a few, I think, that will stay on.
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MMOs are about balance and even if you take farming out of the equation, AE is not balanced.
-Regular missions have contacts you have to earn/find, then continually travel to until you get their cell. AE puts the contact right next to you.
-Regular missions have doors that can be on the other end of the zone or even in another zone entirely. AE always has the door right next to you.
-If you want to go to the hospital in a regular mission it could put you hundreds of yards away from the mission door, the AE hospital always puts you right next to the mission door.
-Random missions give you random salvage and recipe drops. AE tickets allow you to more selectively choose your drops.
-If you're having to buy enhancements with influence you will have to find a vendor selling your Origin, then you'll have to wade through the sometimes oddly named inventory list (curse you Magic Origin). If you use AE tickets you travel a few feet to a single person who offers not only every type of regular enhancement, they even have a nifty menu that lets you select the type of enhancement you're looking for.
These are just a few of the examples of how convenient AE is compared to regular content. Why does AE not have ANY downfalls to balance all of its amazing features that dwarf the regular content?
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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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In theory, theory and practice are similar, in practice...
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
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MMOs are about balance and even if you take farming out of the equation, AE is not balanced.
-Regular missions have contacts you have to earn/find, then continually travel to until you get their cell. AE puts the contact right next to you.
-Regular missions have doors that can be on the other end of the zone or even in another zone entirely. AE always has the door right next to you.
-If you want to go to the hospital in a regular mission it could put you hundreds of yards away from the mission door, the AE hospital always puts you right next to the mission door.
-Random missions give you random salvage and recipe drops. AE tickets allow you to more selectively choose your drops.
-If you're having to buy enhancements with influence you will have to find a vendor selling your Origin, then you'll have to wade through the sometimes oddly named inventory list (curse you Magic Origin). If you use AE tickets you travel a few feet to a single person who offers not only every type of regular enhancement, they even have a nifty menu that lets you select the type of enhancement you're looking for.
These are just a few of the examples of how convenient AE is compared to regular content. Why does AE not have ANY downfalls to balance all of its amazing features that dwarf the regular content?
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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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Would increasin Non-AE content mission bonuses be a decent idea? I would highly suggest spreading the Story Arc Reward Bonus to the entire team instead of just the leader.
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That would be great imo, story arcs should be given to all on team.
Otherwsie, one person getsthe rewards and the whole teams has to wait for fed exs, or zone a lot etc. All the minor annoyances for little of the benefit.
Radios/Papers are not a lot different to just running random AE missions as far as I'm concerned.
I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.
Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.
So sad to be ending ):
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I don't see much meat on the bones of the "omg ae is ruining things' argument beyond a nostalgic fixation on how a lot of us veterans are used to playing.
It's new, it's different, and a lot of people prefer it to the 'real' way to play. That isn't a bug, it's a feature.
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Honestly, this isn't about approving or disapproving play styles.
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Really?
Then why is all the whining about playstyles?
"I don't like people spending all their time in AE" is a comment on playstyle.
So is "People should play like me and do story arcs and TFs".
This entire discussion is explicitly about playstyles. There isn't much to any of this anti AE ranting besides "waaaah everyone is spending too much time in AE and not enough doing what I think they should!"
Some points to consider, which I've already mentioned-
Design goal of AE: to allow players to level 1-50.
AE buildings intentionally placed in low level zones.
Auto-sidekicking removes all impediments to teaming between level ranges.
It's a paradigm shift. It's intentional.
The game is moving toward a more freeform, sandbox style of gameplay and away from the old rigid, linear hierarchy of levels.
I don't get why it's so hard for some folk to see.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
It seems to me that sandbox style gameplay doesn't generally involve congregating in a single room around a pillar of light.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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It's a paradigm shift. It's intentional.
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I highly doubt that it is intentional. I think the dev team simply got a lot more than they ever bargained for. A lot of it is lack of foresight IMO.
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The game is moving toward a more freeform, sandbox style of gameplay and away from the old rigid, linear hierarchy of levels.
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Again I don't think that's the case. And I have never seen any dev comment that supports that sandbox play is their new overall goal for the game.
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I don't get why it's so hard for some folk to see.
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Perhaps because it's not there.
Look I agree the devs intended AE to have the ability to get someone from 1 - 50. That is indisputable. I do NOT however, believe they planned it to get someone from 1 - 50 in a MUCH more efficient and rewarding manner than regular content.
Lack of foresight and unintended consequences don't equate to intent. It's why I have always said that this game didn't need AE...it just needed some core gameplay improvements and expansion of the current content.
Sometimes listening to your players(especially forumites) is a bad thing. The same people who are now complaining that AE is a problem are likely the ones who were all for it when they thought it would only be used to 'tell neat stories'.
I consider AE a waste of time and effort really. Because now the core game which I DO care about has been getting content lite in favor of 'putting the power in the hands of the players'.
User content belongs in single player/limited multiplayer games like Neverwinter Nights. Not so much in an MMO.
I think it might have helped if the AE building was its own zone, so it felt more like a separate system and less of an intrusion into the regular gameworld.
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It seems to me that sandbox style gameplay doesn't generally involve congregating in a single room around a pillar of light.
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the pillar of light is substantially more attractive than most of the other mission entrances in the game.
Or do you only accept those round pillars of light all the high level types used to spend all their time hanging around at Portal Corps?
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Or do you only accept those round pillars of light all the high level types used to spend all their time hanging around at Portal Corps?
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I don't accept that the MA is a step towards freeform, sandbox style gameplay. I make no assertions about prior farming practices.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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It's a paradigm shift. It's intentional.
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I highly doubt that it is intentional.
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Well, either you're wrong or the devs all have room temperature IQ's and their gaming experience stopped at Monopoly with their cousins.
I said in a thread long, long ago, before there was even a hint that AE was coming, that player-generated content was the future of the genre and would transform MMO gameplay.
It's blindingly obvious to anyone who's directed their attention at gaming for any length of time.
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I think the dev team simply got a lot more than they ever bargained for. A lot of it is lack of foresight IMO.
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The only thing that surprised them was the farming- note their disorganized overreaction to it.
Again, I said this would transform the game before it came out.
And I know a lot less about MMOs than they do.
That's the only possible result, assuming the system works at all.
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Again I don't think that's the case. And I have never seen any dev comment that supports that sandbox play is their new overall goal for the game.
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Think what you like, it is what it is.
The importance of level has been de-emphasized over the last few years. The game has become more free form, more diverse and more of a blank canvas for players to make of what they wish.
I'm not saying they're turning it into The Sims, but the basic structure of the game is no longer rigidly hierarchical.
tutorial-atlas-kings-steel-blah blah blah isn't the only game in town any more, now it's just one play option.
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Perhaps because it's not there.
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Nawp, that's not it.
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Look I agree the devs intended AE to have the ability to get someone from 1 - 50. That is indisputable. I do NOT however, believe they planned it to get someone from 1 - 50 in a MUCH more efficient and rewarding manner than regular content.
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Sure they did, up to a point.
New content nearly always over rewards- that's one of the ways they get people to run it. Then after a while the "problem" is fixed and things go back to normal.
AE is just more complicated by an order of magnitude than anything else they've ever done. It's not surprising it got out of hand.
And rewards have nothing to do with my main point, which is that AE is intended to provide an alternative to 'normal' content.
If that wasn't the intent, it wouldn't be in beginner zones, it would be some kind of level-gated, limited access deal like the Rikti War Zone.
And the bottom line is the devs don't care if people abandon their old, tired content for AE, as long as they keep paying their subs.
Dirty secret AE detractors are ignoring- most of the content in the game is pretty boring, and most of us have played it 100,000 times. Red side has less junky content, but also a lot less content period.
If AE spares one new player the tedium of clearing warehouses in King's Row and jogging miles back to their contact, it will have served a valuable purpose.
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It's why I have always said that this game didn't need AE...it just needed some core gameplay improvements and expansion of the current content.
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Uh.................that's exactly what AE is.
I'm starting to think I'm wasting my time here.
Have a nice day!
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I don't accept that the MA is a step towards freeform, sandbox style gameplay.
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You can pretty much make any characters you want and tell any story you want with MA.
That's a sandbox, unless the kids today are using some newfangled definition of the term.
And the game overall is becoming a lot more free form.
That isn't really debatable.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I don't accept that the MA is a step towards freeform, sandbox style gameplay.
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You can pretty much make any characters you want and tell any story you want with MA.
That's a sandbox, unless the kids today are using some newfangled definition of the term.
And the game overall is becoming a lot more free form.
That isn't really debatable.
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The term was coined in this context for games that allowed you to go through existing content in as free a manner as possible. The MA doesn't really change the way in which you go through the game's content. And given that the gameplay itself is essentially the same, the game *isn't* becoming anymore freeform.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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The term was coined in this context for games that allowed you to go through existing content in as free a manner as possible.
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Ok, we're using different definitions.
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The MA doesn't really change the way in which you go through the game's content. And given that the gameplay itself is essentially the same, the game *isn't* becoming anymore freeform.
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It changes the way you go through the game's content in a profound way. If it didn't nobody would be freaking out.
You can team with whatever levels you like, you can do content from any level range you like, and via Oro you can cover 'real' content you missed on the way up.
That provides a tremendous boost in flexibility and places much more discretion in the hands of the player.
I call that 'freeform', you may call it something else.
But it's in the game.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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The term was coined in this context for games that allowed you to go through existing content in as free a manner as possible.
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Ok, we're using different definitions.
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I'm using the one that applies to video games. Which one are you using?
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It changes the way you go through the game's content in a profound way. If it didn't nobody would be freaking out.
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You still go through the content in the same way, you just don't go through the world in the same way. The freakout is more due to the community structure being turned inside out, I'd say. It'd be much the same if Portal Corp was placed in Atlas. Except the word "bridge" would be coming up in complaints as often as "farm."
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You can team with whatever levels you like, you can do content from any level range you like, and via Oro you can cover 'real' content you missed on the way up.
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Auto-SKing is one of the few useful things about the AE missions. I often wished regular missions worked that way before AE even came out, or that mobs in missions would be level-less. To me it's a QoL improvement that mitigates the headaches of team shuffling.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
do away with AE, it was a bad idea and all sorts of people that want to run other people lives and recreation time are unable to do so
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
Everytime i see this thread, it seens plain wrong...
I am sooo glad the forum people isnt majority on this game...
** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************
Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.