Too many free innovations ruining the game!

Too many free CoX innovations are ruining the game. Do you agree?

Used to be trains were the only way to get from point a to point b, so we got to spend more time in game travelling without risk of geting experience or influence.

Then came the double experience weekends which made our characters level up twice as fast without having to travel at all.

Then came the Police scanner missions. No more lost time to travel, faster experience, more 50s sitting around collecting dust.

Then came the new maps, TFs, etc. which spread everybody out and Pocket D and Outerboros, further reducing travel time.

Recipes and IOs were introduced and immediately came an out of control market, where lowbies could sell drops and not have to struggle for their the TOs anymore.

Then merits were introduced and ruined the markets, giving players a way to beat the system get recipes that I could otherwise charge them outrageous amounts of influence for.

Then MA and their %&^%S tickets gave players yet another way to get drops without having to be on TF and SFs, or having to commit hours at a time to the game. Made everybody and their uncle either an author or a farmer, allowing them to play the game the way they wanted to with little room for recourse.

And now with I16 - color customization - players are going to be able to "tailor" their characters any way they want them. That means more players will be spending their time fooling around with characters rather than playing. And rumor has it that you'll be able to set missions in a way that you won't be able to spam begs for farms anymore ... unfaily punishing players who prefer to simply doorsitting and collecting experience/influence while they go about the laundry or cooking dinner, etc.

I believe ALL these changes -- taking together -- are ruining the game and any chance of its success.

Fortunately, the game I'm talking about being ruined is CO and DC Universe Online. Do you agree or disagree?

I say time will tell and we'll see what happens a year or two from now...

you almost had me their had i not read the whole thing.

At first, I was tempted to ask you just what it was you were talking about, and then I got to the last sentence. I can tell you, CO was going to have to work to survive anyway, even if we didn't get what is coming in I16. The game is rubbish as far as I'm concerned. Not sure about DCUO, and honestly, I'm not too interested or have the desire to find out. CoX was my first real experience with an MMO, and this is where I'll be until they turn off the servers. That said, as far as I'm concerned, there is no other game.

yeah it is nice to see what they have been doing to move this game away from the tight-[censored] brad mcquaid "the few the proud" everquest model (wherein a dearth of content is compensated for by making people run all over the place and other time wasters like being tight with the xp rate) toward something that recognizes people are here to have fun

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yeah it is nice to see what they have been doing to move this game away from the tight-[censored] brad mcquaid "the few the proud" everquest model (wherein a dearth of content is compensated for by making people run all over the place and other time wasters like being tight with the xp rate) toward something that recognizes people are here to have fun

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Relax, relax. Here's your "I Win" button. Happy now?

CoX is the only MMO where I ever hear people whining about "making people run all over the place and other time wasters". C'mon, at most it's one or two 20 second tram rides. I never heard people whining about "making people run all over the place" in MMOs like WoW or EQ where it might take up to ten to twenty minutes crossing a dozen zones to get to your raid location. Spoiled? Yes, I think that's the word.

QR

There's too much running all over the place in WoW, but not enough in CoH. They should increase the size of every zone by a factor of eight.

Eco.

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I dunno, I remember some pretty looooong flights across IP

Anyhow, you didn't get my point. The point was that in the past games have had a "tighter" feel where xp was hoarded by the developers and handed out sparingly, and things like medding in everquest and other games simply slooooowed things down even more.

wow changed that a bit by making the flow of levels a bit faster, though until recently there was still a lot of running around to do.

now wow and coh have really moved away from the everquest model. There are lots of ways of getting around now. Wow has not come even close though to the fun of travel powers in this game, IMO.

from the point of view of developers, one problem with pacing is that players can chew up content a lot faster than it can be produced. and that is one reason why the pace has to be slow.

Some might argue that cryptic has gone a bit too far now with ae's. but on the flip side, when people actually try to make well constructed ae's. they will begin to see things from the point of view of developers. A well-crafted ae takes a loooooon time to make

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Fortunately, the game I'm talking about being ruined is CO and DC Universe Online. Do you agree or disagree?

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From the previews shown so far, DCU Online has nothing to worry about.

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as far as I'm concerned, there is no other game.

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QFT

I quit WoW
I stopped playing Lineage II
I don't play Guild Wars
I'm not playing EQ2 anymore

I'm sticking with this, the first MMO I tried. It's still the best experience overall. Not to mention I have yet to meet anyone who looks even remotely like any of my characters ... 4 years later.

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as far as I'm concerned, there is no other game.

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QFT

I quit WoW
I stopped playing Lineage II
I don't play Guild Wars
I'm not playing EQ2 anymore

I'm sticking with this, the first MMO I tried. It's still the best experience overall. Not to mention I have yet to meet anyone who looks even remotely like any of my characters ... 4 years later.

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This is my first and only one I have played. I have no intention of trying any of the other ones.

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Some might argue that cryptic has gone a bit too far now with ae's.



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What? They are stealing Paragon Studios idea of AE and putting it into CO? Well, that's what they get for letting so many Cryptic employees keep their comped accounts here.

But if I wait long enough, someone will surely be coming along telling us that AE was originally a WoW idea and that Paragon Studios is just stealing the idea from WoW and that WoW did it better anyway.

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Relax, relax. Here's your "I Win" button. Happy now?

CoX is the only MMO where I ever hear people whining about "making people run all over the place and other time wasters". C'mon, at most it's one or two 20 second tram rides. I never heard people whining about "making people run all over the place" in MMOs like WoW or EQ where it might take up to ten to twenty minutes crossing a dozen zones to get to your raid location. Spoiled? Yes, I think that's the word.

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Umm, when did you play EQ? The old Qeynos to Freeport run was "exciting" the first time, maybe up to the third time. After that, you were standing at the spires in North Karana begging for a druid port to West Commons. And what kinda guild were you in when it took 10-20 mins to get to a raid location? Every era I remember (from Kunark all the way to Omens of War), 10 to 20 minutes would lose the spawn due to another (faster) guild getting there first.

Travel time in EQ has been complained about since day one. That was the reason for the 'Monty Haul' Luclin Spires and Plane of Knowledge books. And then, because people still whined, they added guild hall portals. You don't add features like that if you're not getting feedback that would support doing so.

To Hobo, DCUO has nothing to worry about. It'll draw more people (initially) than CoX has ever had subscribed simply due to its license. I wouldn't be surprised if DCUO had twice CoX's numbers within its first six months. That's because an IP like that can expand the market, drawing people who had never played MMOs before. However, launch numbers mean little (ask Age of Conan and Warhammer), it's retention that matters. So there's a real opportunity for CoX (and CO) to benefit from DCUO's efforts, if their games are "better" in some way(s) than the licensed game. One thing I can guarantee though (and I'd wager money on this) and that is that you're going to see a ton of clones show up just after DCUO launches. I expect NCSoft to add several GMs (at least temporarily) to prevent another Marvel debacle.

CoX isn't going to "kill" any game.

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And now with I16 - color customization - players are going to be able to "tailor" their characters any way they want them. That means more players will be spending their time fooling around with characters rather than playing.


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Internet being what it is i cant tell if you are being sarcastic or not..If not good luck on DC..

Don't agree at all.

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This is my first and only one I have played. I have no intention of trying any of the other ones.

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I've tried Everquest II, D&D Online, WoW, and even subscribed to LOTRO for a time. I liked LOTRO, but there's just too much time wasted in travel.

In LOTRO it's part of the charm of the original source material -- the characters are always getting wrapped up in some local intrigue wherever they go. But it just takes too long to walk anywhere. One time I wanted to meet some friends who were in Bree and I was in the Elven lands. It took half an hour to walk there. It's just silly. You can rent horses, but it costs money and it's always point A to point B, not from where you are to where you want to go.

You can get a horse at level 35, I think, but I never got a character higher than 23 or so. And you still have to physically traverse the entire distance, albeit more quickly.

They do have some teleportation aids for returning to your camp or home base (with an hour cooldown, I think), and you can teleport to your house (sort of like a base). But the house is outrageously expensive to buy and maintain (and you thought bases were bad).

Most of these other games have quest objectives in open zones, which means that it's possible for other players to "steal" them from you, time and again. If someone's being a jerk, he can prevent you from defeating that ogre who respawns every five minutes (because the first player to hit the target is credited with the kill, even if that's the only damage he does).

Finally, I never felt "heroic" in any of those games. At level 1 in CoH you can pretty easily take on 3 minions, and by level 20 a tanker can deal with small armies. I was still having trouble with two or three mobs at level 23.

In CoH, the big zones are despised. Who ever willingly does anything in IP? If I get a contact in IP I never bother to go see them unless they're right by the train.

There's a fine balance between immersion and wasting people's time. In a medieval setting you can get away with a certain pedestrian pace. In a superheroic world where characters should be supersonic, travel times greater than a few minutes are just wasting players' time.

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as far as I'm concerned, there is no other game.

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QFT

I quit WoW
I stopped playing Lineage II
I don't play Guild Wars
I'm not playing EQ2 anymore

I'm sticking with this, the first MMO I tried. It's still the best experience overall. Not to mention I have yet to meet anyone who looks even remotely like any of my characters ... 4 years later.

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This is my first and only one I have played. I have no intention of trying any of the other ones.

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To be fair the MMO I played the most was WoW (most have played it at one point) and the original EQ. If i had said "I have no intention of trying any other ones" I would have never come here. Im an MMO junkie, Ive played all those listed here and then some and I can tell you each offers something a bit diffrent (cept EQ2, its a game that never sparked anything with me). i can honestly say this one is one of the most fun since I can solo most of the content and pick up a mish or two between chores/jobs (very good for that 'quick kill' fix you need after a bad day at work). Most times i keep two MMO's running but given the blandness of alot of them these days I just gave up and will be here till a good SciFi one shows up (so sick of elves/fantasy)

Will MA farming kill anything? naw, just the prices at the market, but players adapt. people who just leave due to something like that probably had more issues with the game than that, and if they leave because of MA IMO thats just silly.

You're forgetting in WoW that the basic flight paths, from one end of a continent to the other, would take 10 minutes (real time), any flight from Booty Bay (southern end of Azeroth) to the Eastern Plaguelands (northern tip of Lorderan before Burning crusade introduced more) I could literally go make a sandwhich, have a smoke and make a cup of tea, heaven help me if I needed to get somewhere on Kalimdor that was in horde territory.

It would involve a boring 30 minute ride (even on the fast land mounts) to actually get there.

Kalimdor is actually longer than Azeroth/Lorderan meaning the flight time can clock up to 15 minutes from one end of the continent to the other.

That's 15 minutes of utter boredom until Burning Crusade came in and Shattrath got introduced with quick access to all the major capitals.

There's taking your time travelling and then there's a right royal pain in the behind.

The game is fine, I played games where incredible distances were needed to travel to get to places. It got old real fast. Id play Daoc, (dark age of camelot..basically EQ with 3 realms.) and Id get asked come out to a team in the shrouded isles expansion. Id have ride all way to southern end of the realm to get to the portal to the isles. Then id have ride all way out to remote area for high lvl stuff, which took like 45 mins to do. Which sometimes the team in question would break up shortly after you got there. Meaning you dropped whatever you were doing for nothing.

I love city of heroes/villains system of getting around quickly. Between my base, ourboros, and my various warp special powers from vet/special pack powers I can be anywhere I want to go very quickly. Reminds me of centurions, they could imediately be where ever trouble was in a moments notice, it actually makes you feel super heh.

Ive played the game off and on since beta. They intially had so you had to repeatedly board trains to cross zones in a loop. Before beta ended they changed it so you could just click and bounce between zones. They ve expanded the routes of the trains, and given us so much freedom. Im glad for this, as I went back and tried play Daoc again, I felt like my character was so slow and grounded, as I couldnt even jump like this game can at lvl 1. You cant sprint for very long. It was pitiful.

Nothing thats been added has ruined the game in my eyes. People can still travel around and see the sights if they want to. I know I get invites to do different things, and go do them. Like i see an alarm for a rikti raid or a fire break out, i go do it if Im in the mood. I still like go fight giant monsters and Avs. You re not stuck in cap au or atlas park. More choices and freedom are never a bad thing. Power to the players heh.