a thread to discuss alternatives to "the grind"

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There are a [very few] things that count as "puzzles" in this game. You can tell because players have been consistently and extensively complaining about them, and avoiding them, for five years straight. Ever get lost in the Perez maze.

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The Perez maze is complained about for numerous reasons:

- Non-visible openings (that space between two trees that looks like the space between every other pair of trees you can't go through? That's the opening,)
- No guidance, unless you're going to Vidiotmaps, and the biggie
- Mobs that often outlevel you on your way to mission doors inside the maze.... yet when you're sent there at 30+, the door's along the outer wall.

It's not disliked because "it's a puzzle," it's disliked because it's a badly designed deathtrap for the lowbies who get sent into it for missions.

[/ QUOTE ]QFT. I think thats the reason folks stopped going there after the first few issues. We traded one death trap for a slightly less deathtrap with the Hollows. Pretty much every toon that gets the fortune teller missions only does it when they are so high the critters con grey and I have a jetpack to get over the walls. The mission tp power has helped this some but I still would end up needing a way out with a lowbie.

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Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator

Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!

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No. CoV is the name of the first paid expansion. The game has always been City of Heroes.

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uh wrong.

CoV was an expansion, but it was also a stand-alone game.
For quite a while plenty of players *only* had CoV, with no access to Paragon City.

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Hence the birth of the horrid term: "expansalone."

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Thats not even a real word!

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What are you talking about? It's a perfectly cromulent word.

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You used cromulent wrong, ignoramicil.

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@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff

here's a way. Deathtraps.

Introduce a villain group with a penchant for elaborate puzzles... such as giant pinball machines where you are trapped in the ball, elaborate mazes with lots of pop up turrets and nasty little traps, living chess peices where you have to make the right moves or the captured NPC gets a trip to the hospital...

Make the death trap oponents completely optional, and normal xp for spawns. Treat them like minigames.

I'd love to see some of my toons spinning around in an unbreakable force bubble, careening into walls. or trying to punch my way out of a prison trap BEFORE it fills with water.... etc... such a staple in comics, but completely ignored in COH.

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Quick question - what does the rest of your team do while you're conversing with the Skull. For that manner, what do the rest of the Skulls do while you're conversing with one specific Skull? If the answer is "wait," we have a problem.

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Ideally, this would be something that's easy enough to do you can do it in the middle of combat if you wanted.

Maybe hold down a button to make the wheel come up, slide mouse in a direction. Let go of button to select. Maybe if you have evidence it asks if you want to use that too.

So, the answer is "Same thing they do if you're holding or buffing or attacking. Helping in some way."

It should be an addition to the system. Not required for normal progression or anything.

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here's a way. Deathtraps.

Introduce a villain group with a penchant for elaborate puzzles... such as giant pinball machines where you are trapped in the ball, elaborate mazes with lots of pop up turrets and nasty little traps, living chess peices where you have to make the right moves or the captured NPC gets a trip to the hospital...

Make the death trap oponents completely optional, and normal xp for spawns. Treat them like minigames.


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So the devs should pour energy into a system 99% of their players will skip?

Huh.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

... and not just a little energy, either.

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

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here's a way. Deathtraps.

Introduce a villain group with a penchant for elaborate puzzles... such as giant pinball machines where you are trapped in the ball, elaborate mazes with lots of pop up turrets and nasty little traps, living chess peices where you have to make the right moves or the captured NPC gets a trip to the hospital...

Make the death trap oponents completely optional, and normal xp for spawns. Treat them like minigames.


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So the devs should pour energy into a system 99% of their players will skip?

Huh.

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Why not? They did it for PvP.

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the new guys are smarter than the old ones.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

I'm actually not opposed to the addition of traps in missions. Remember the mission against the Sea Witch on the Carpe Diem? The Legacy Chain there have this cute little sigils on the ground that, when you walk over them, explode and summon a Lumpy Rocky, a trio of Fire Monkeys and a renamed Phantasm. It's a very basic "spawn" that I think is part of the map, and it's really a LOT more annoying than it's fun to encounter, but it's not a bad idea.

We already have the Terra Volta trial explosive barrels, the Mayhem Mission alarms that summon ambushes and the Legacy Chain monster traps. The foundation is there to give at least a few enemy groups their own traps. Say, the Malta Group could have motion scanners and claymores, the Devouring Earth could have gas bags that burst when you step on them, the CoT could have wards that debuff you when you walk over them and so forth. Might make perception a bit more useful in PvE, too.

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Devouring Earth could have gas bags that burst when you step on them

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As long as it doesn't stir up a swarm of angry bees. I hate Swarms so much.

Introducing more traps could be interesting. It was something they really should've thought about a lot when they made they took the Rogue class and twisted it up into Stalkers. Barracuda lets you slap a killswitch trap...I hope SO HARD that City of Rogues will have story content building on that idea. Players are too lame to invite ATs because "lol ur not a broot or a corr gtfo"? Work in reasons TO invite ATs that players, due to game mechanics, have deemed undesirables.

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You ought to be very careful not to make things require a specific AT or be either impossible or at least a major pain. There are plenty of other reasons to invite Stalkers to teams than their stealth. In fact, their stealth is pretty much the primary reason NOT to invite one.

I'm also a very big opponent to "stealthing" missions as a valid game mechanic. Let people who like doing that do it to their heart's content. They're missing more reward than they're getting for the time it takes. But City of Heroes does not have a good mechanic for sneaking around, beyond "they can't see you past 5 feet." No climbing pipes, shimmying on ledges, sneaking up behind guards and so forth. Hell, why bother when you can just teleport?

I'd say let stealth be a combat tool, and leave it at that.

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So the devs should pour energy into a system 99% of their players will skip?

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, but isn't that what these devs specialize in?

For reference please see: Arenas, Boomtown, Dark Astoria, Ouroborus, Level 10 IOs, PvP Zones, and all four Shadow Shard Zones.


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the new guys are smarter than the old ones.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah! Our current devs are way more smarter than the ones that spent all of that time and energy completely changing the way PvP works thus preventing them from having enough time to do any improvements in bases whatsoever, way way back in Issue 13.

Oh wait!!!

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Choosing between working on PvP and working on bases is a little like choosing between a sack full of rats and getting kicked in the nuts.

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And working on base raid PvP is like setting that bag of rats on fire and throwing them on a guy, kicking him in the nuts, and stealing his wallet.

I do wish they'd make the Cathedral of Pain (I STILL BELIEVE IT'S COMING SOON™!) a task force though. Stick it in Ouro as a time distortion, or in the Shard since it was supposed to be fighting Rularuu anyway, I think. I'm sure they had some usable stuff made. Just not the base raiding and items of power part of it.

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So the devs should pour energy into a system 99% of their players will skip?

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, but isn't that what these devs specialize in?

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the current batch are immesurably better than the ones we used to be stuck with.

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For reference please see: Arenas, Boomtown, Dark Astoria, Ouroborus, Level 10 IOs, PvP Zones, and all four Shadow Shard Zones.

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Lots and lots of people use Oroboros, I'm not sure where you got that one.
The rest date to the relative prehistory of the game. The trend lately is stuff players have been clamoring for that they actually use.


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Yeah! Our current devs are way more smarter than the ones that spent all of that time and energy completely changing the way PvP works thus preventing them from having enough time to do any improvements in bases whatsoever, way way back in Issue 13.

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You're whining that they chose to try and repair one poorly implemented legacy system instead of another one?

Try making sense next time.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

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Lots and lots of people use Oroboros, I'm not sure where you got that one.


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Using an o-portal to switch zones doesn't really count as using Oroborous.

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Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break

The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens

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What grind?

Seiously. The "grindiness" of a game is a state of mind. I don't look at this game as a "grind" at all, I look at it as a fun means of escapism that allows me to realize a concept for a character I find intriguing. It only becomes a "grind" when you see the rewards and the XP as the "fun." Socializing and seeing what my character can do, and the challenge of keeping a team together in the current post-AE game is half the fun! Occasional RP and base design is also rather enjoyable, not to mention badging and running TFs.

There are a limited number of avenues to procure advancement for a reason: XP and loot should not be the only things in this game that you are looking for. If it is, then IMO, you are doing something wrong.

Therefore, I ask: where is this grind of which you speak?

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Thank you, Thirty Seven. What I wanted to say much better than I could have said it.

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Lots and lots of people use Oroboros, I'm not sure where you got that one.


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Using an o-portal to switch zones doesn't really count as using Oroborous.


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Yes it does.

It's a great design because it serves a practical purpose everyone enjoys and also opens up a lot of content for those players who're interested in exploring it.

It also quieted multiple categories of whiners.

It's an elegant system and an excellent blueprint for adding multi-use content to the game.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

I've been spending time in Free Realms, which is a fun online world packed with cute little minigames. There are various "jobs" your character can do. Some of them involve monster fighting and are levelled through combat, but others (like Cook, Miner, and, um, Postman) are advanced through little mini-games.

The mini-games are your standard "here's a grid of tiles, match at least four tiles in a row, and they vanish and different tiles pop up to replace them". You've probably spent at least a couple hours somewhere playing a Flash game of this type.

Here's where the interesting part is: when listening to people talking about Free Realms, I was surprised to hear that some of them complained about the grind. "I had to run that posting minigame dozens of times to max out my Postman level!", they say. "This game is a grindfest".

What is most puzzling is that the only thing that you get from levelling up the Postman job is... unlocking more types of Postman minigames in different towns. Oh, and some nifty new outfits. That's it.

Personally, I find tile-matching puzzles irresistible. I count the time I spent in Free Realms sorting letters in the same category as the time I spent on Popcap's website playing Bejeweled. The fact that I levelled up in Postman is pretty much incidental.

But I guess to some people, whatever increases the time between now and them getting whatever shiny number they want next to their name is grind.

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Character index

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But I guess to some people, whatever increases the time between now and them getting whatever shiny number they want next to their name is grind.

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QFT!!!

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Lots and lots of people use Oroboros, I'm not sure where you got that one.


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Using an o-portal to switch zones doesn't really count as using Oroborous.


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Yes it does.

It's a great design because it serves a practical purpose everyone enjoys and also opens up a lot of content for those players who're interested in exploring it.

It also quieted multiple categories of whiners.

It's an elegant system and an excellent blueprint for adding multi-use content to the game.

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Yes. If you're using Oroborous to flashback and open up content at the various levels, you're fully taking advantage of the system. And yes, like you said, it's a wonderfully elegant system.

But if all a user does is just use it as a fancy teleporter, it's not really utilizing Oroborous. That'd be like saying "Eden is a great zone because I use it all the time to get to the Hive".

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Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break

The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens

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But if all a user does is just use it as a fancy teleporter, it's not really utilizing Oroborous. That'd be like saying "Eden is a great zone because I use it all the time to get to the Hive".

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Yes it is, and no it isn't, respectively.

You're wrong an awful lot, aren't you.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

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But if all a user does is just use it as a fancy teleporter, it's not really utilizing Oroborous. That'd be like saying "Eden is a great zone because I use it all the time to get to the Hive".

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Yes it is, and no it isn't, respectively.

You're wrong an awful lot, aren't you.

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I take it you don't actually listen to yourself much. Anyone who would say what you say, and actually listened to themselves saying it, would shut up pretty quickly out of pure embarassment.

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Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break

The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens

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Personally, I find tile-matching puzzles irresistible. I count the time I spent in Free Realms sorting letters in the same category as the time I spent on Popcap's website playing Bejeweled. The fact that I levelled up in Postman is pretty much incidental.

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You sound like a Puzzle Pirate! Yarr!

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