Remember when hitting 50 was actually an accomplishment?

I copid this from BestBuy.com where someone posted a review of the AE Edition of CoH. I thought it was relevant to the discussion:

I think the whole issue starts with this question: Is farming wrong?

On the surface that may seem like a black and white issue, but it is not. It is against the EULA I'm sure, but it is rarely enforced and enforcement in CoH has had absolutely no effect on the amount of farming going on in Atlas. I don't believe AE is evil. It's great if it is used for creating story arcs. But, it is not being used for that. Any reasonable person can see that there is a real problem with how players are using AE. If the devs supplied the players with the mechanism to farm and continue to do nothing about the escalating farming problem, I believe we can safely call that "enabling players to farm". And that is the real issue at hand and that's why you can't blame the players, especially the new ones, for going nuts with farming.

If the tool is enabled by the devs, it can be disabled. You don't have to remove AE, all it takes to solve the problem is to make changes to AE followed by some enforcement of the policies. For godssake is it absolutely essential that AE XP be the same as doing missions? Is it unreasonable to think that we should remove the ability to be bumped up to a minimum level for missions in AE? We don't have that feature when playing regular content.

The way I see it, it is most of us who have spent years here and/or those of us who earned our way to 50 are feeling like everything we enjoyed about the game has been replaced by AE and farming. The fun factor for those of us who love PLAYING the game is being replaced with frustration. As fun as it is to team with other people, I am finding it very irritating experience to do it anymore. And if my only option is to solo, why even log in? I can play other games that don't require anyone else to play.

Pretty much my problem with a pure empath is simple. I don't see it as a valid playstyle. A good empath should be nowhere near busy enough with pressing empath powers to need to ignore their secondary. If your teams are that incompetent that they cannot possibly survive without you spamming the living hell out of your heals, then they're worthless teammates.

Eh, I enjoy soloing, so it's not that big of a deal for me. I just recently started playing villainside more, so there's a lot of stuff there that I've never seen. I'm the kind of player who will stop and read every clue in a mission if I've never run it before. Teams get irritated with that because it tends to slow them down, so I prefer to solo or duo with my wife through content I haven't seen yet.

Unfortunately, AE probably IS the beginning of the end for CoH. Veteran players are starting to leave for other options and the turnover rate with AE is pretty fast. New players get 9 or 10 level 50 characters and quit out of boredom before they ever explore the rest of the game. It won't happen overnight, but eventually the game will start losing more players than it's gaining, leading to a slow, painful death and the final dimming of the servers.

I'll probably still be here, but I don't personally know too many people that would say the same.

True vets will totally ignore the AE whining and stay because they know the rest of the game is awesome, the devs are awesome, and the playerbase is awesome. People leave games because they find a new game to play, not because of some aspect of the game (that can be ignored) isn't to their liking.

People were supposed to quit because of CoV. People were supposed to quit because of ED. People were supposed to quit because of Villain Epics.

I'm still here, and so is everyone else who loves this game and what we get out of it.

I've been around since Issue 2 and have seen it all. Many times over. I've played every class/power combination a zillion times and explored hundreds of costume options. The only 50 I've ever had is a fire/ice tanker, leveled in the days of fire tank farming. That was in the great days before class butchering, erm, balancing. I had played for well over a year before I finally got my tank to 50, and I was thrilled to death to have finally discovered a class combination that offered me the right balance of fun, skill and level progression to keep me motivated to the end level (notice I didn't say end of the game!). Even with farming/herding 18 hours a day, it still took me several weeks to get to 50. After that, trying to get an MC/Emp controller up there seemed an impossible feat, or at least an exquisite form of masochism I wasn't interested in experiencing. DXP weekends helped push many alternate characters I've made into their 30s and 40s, but that final struggle to 50 always became too boring, too monotonous. The fun just wasn't there to keep me going. And so I began to vacillate between cancelling my subscription and returning a few months later. Base building kept my interest for a short time, but it never rekindled my spark for end-game leveling. Eventually, my interest waned again. The result: I play CoH one or two months a year now, and then switch to another MMO or take a break and refill my desire to play for another month or two. The point I'm making is this...

I have learned something which veteran gamers appear to know, but are seemingly afraid to talk about. Gaming is not about speed or ease of playing. It never was and never will be. Gaming is about goal setting (nothing beats a fancy sword with sparklies on it!), content challenge, and the immersive experience of the MMO genre. It is not about impossible challenges or endless grinding, but a good dose of challenge and grind IS good for the soul. There is no reward without challenge, no feeling of success or catharsis without patience and willpower. Success is the feeling of triumph over difficulty. And in the world of gaming, that also equals fun. That elusive emotional quality all game designers hope to offer their paying clientele. Games that keep getting easier to level in order to keep a player's interest erode that player's opportunity to experience the feeling of triumph and accomplishment. Leveling becomes a mental exercise, not an emotional rollercoaster ride (and I live for the ride!). This is akin to making games that are too difficult to solo or require large teams to experience advanced content. Not that group/guild content is the bane of all good gaming, but if there is no alternate path offered for the solo player to experience the rewards garnered through group play, then all you have really created is a class system in a digital domain. A system where only the priveleged get to experience the most exciting and desired content.
Unfortunately for many, online gaming is, for the most part, a solitary experience. This is simply due to the fact that we all have different schedules, we lead different lives, and all place different values on our time. MMOs offer a 24/7 experience into a different world, but unlike the 'real' world, your favorite neighbor might not be 'home' for a few weeks or months at a time. And so we are left to entertain ourselves in these fabulous, digital landscapes, continuously forced to make a new 'friend-for-an-hour'. In the end, MMOs have evolved into large-scale, shared, solitary console gaming experiences. And that is why they have now attracted the social misfit and scourge of the MMO gaming community: the speed leveler. Honed on beating levels as fast as possible on console systems (often with the help of cheat codes), trained on progression over immersion, these pariahs of the MMO environment invade the community experience of the MMO world and turn it into a Frankensteinian conglomeration of MTV, MySpace and Unreal Tournament. Complete with foul language, poor typing, and cyber-bullying in its finest and most pure form.
But MMOs attract these speed players at the cost of content players, because no content player can stand to play with a loudmouth, braggart. They ruin our experience. They are fun suckers to the 100th magnitude! And in the end, the economic model for that game's business is inevitably harmed. Games survive because content based players stay with them. Speed players lose interest quickly and move on to something else (thankfully), but not before they have driven away some of the games core, content-driven players. I know this personally, having left several cherished characters behind just to avoid further exposure to that game's online community. (Here is a good time to plug those first two magical years in Everquest... ahhh). In every MMO, you have this seemingly endless stream of new players who think MMO gaming is about being the first or the fastest to experience a game's content. As if everyone playing the game is one of their silly friends who lives one street over and is trying to get to the end of the game before Monday, so that they can gloat in homeroom over it! As if gaming was about being the strongest, the coolest, or the rudest digital hombre on the ranch. Comming from the grandfather of all MMO based gaming, pen-and-paper gaming, I can assure you that my imagination is better than your imagination, so my character will ALWAYS be cooler than yours (Being able to "see" a character on the screen does not make it 'awesomer' in my mind). And the hallmark of this style of gamer is to universally brand anyone playing the game for its content as a 'loser' or (my all time favorite insult): a noob. They seem to thrive on insults and beligerance. You know the guys. The ones who don't understand the social aspect of MMOs yet. The ones who somehow believe that the game was created specifically for them, while all the rest of us bystanders simply pay our monthly tithe to admire them. To be the Barnie to their Fred. They are the ones that consume content like a speed-eating hotdog eater consumes Ballpark franks. And never tire of belly-aching. But I am telling you now, they have it backwards. They have traded speed for quality (not unlike the world business/economic model), and are starving themselves to death from lack of content, due to rabid short-cutting and power leveling. They have bypassed all the content to get to the end, not realizing that the point was to EXPERIENCE all that crap they skipped over. They have this idea that somehow, once they get to the max level or get ALL of the best gear, that they will have earned the right to put other players down, to mock them, or to gloat in their speed and girth of aquisition. That somehow THAT behavior is the true reward for playing the game, rather than the actual playing of the game. They believe that they have somehow earned the right to stand at the top of the hill and spit on everyone else below. To revel in the glory of items bought on E-bay, or stand under the Atlas statue and flex menacingly (assumingly to belittle us other players with the "size" of their level). But what have they earned? Undoubtedly, not my respect (I cannot speak for all the jealous 13 year olds who would wrestle a live bear to be in their shoes though). It is like the 16 year old driving his parent's Porche, acting as if having something is worth more than earning something. Their is no value in something that comes easy, and there is no respect afforded to the person who achieves too rapidly or too easily (except from the bear wrestling adolescents mentioned above). And they cannot understand this, because they take the fast track to everything, and never enjoy the effort or ride to the top. Ironically, it is they who are to blame for their suffering, as we who level slowly and patiently enjoy the great teams and the ironic mission twists that persist years after our subscriptions have expired. Meanwhile, instead of bathing in the bliss of the gaming world and its denizens, speed gamers spend hours on message boards screaming for more content to plow through at lightspeed. Can they play the game? Can they play their character? Do you really want a player that is doing AE's on DXP weekend to tag along on a respec mission? The only sane answer is Of Course Not. And by realizing that, you have learned the key to your own salvation. AE's are not the devil people make them out to be. Like morphine in the wrong hands, people have become addicted to them. But it is not the fault of the AE system, nor any other game content that allows quick leveling. It is the speed player's mindset that has failed them. The only thing they have is the ability to type in local or broadcast (while standing under Atlas flexing), and pray to the great lord above for a reaction from you. ANYTHING to give them the attention they crave so badly. And if we offer them no attention, then what have they really earned? Nothing. And in the digital realm where you really don't own your character and there are no physical rewards to hold, the only tangible is attention (be it in the form of admiration, loathing, etc). They can say or do anything they want, but you don't have to let their level or sparklie sword make you feel inadequate. Even if you've played 3 years and don't have a 50 yet. If you've played 3 years, then you've found something they haven't. It's the key to having fun. If you weren't having fun, then you wouldn't have stuck around for 3 years! I've been 50 for years now (um, level 50, not age 50), and there is nothing super special about it. I have A LOT more fun running sewers from 4 to 8 than I ever had running Praetorian missions at 45-50. Just remember this. Levels do not equal fun. Only fun does. And whatever you need to do to get there, don't let the noise from other players distract you from experiencing what they simply don't know how to. Maybe you can teach THEM something. One can always hope.

I never thought I'd say this, but tl;dr.

I read the first paragraph, and skimmed the rest.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that veteran gamers are afraid to talk about gaming not being the speed or ease of playing. The common battle cries on the forum are "The game starts at level 1" and "It's the journey, not the destination."

Sorry, I just can't slog through the rest of it. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say except that in YOUR opinion, gaming is etc,etc,etc.

PS. Some folks like to solo, that's what's fun for them.
PPS. Some folks like to grind, that's what's fun for them.
PPPS. Some folks like to play the market game, that's what's fun for them.

So, bottom line:

Play the game how it is fun for (generic) YOU, but try to remember it's the journey, and pay it forward when you can.

Clawsandeffect, yes, i accept what you are saying, and that you weren't attacking my play style per say, where as Cavatina clearly has twice now, that is what has got me so PO'ed.

Teleport and SS for me are taken purely as filler powers as with 4 pools used already i see no other powers to take to fill what i see as my primary role with this toon.

When i first created it i tried to balence the primary and secondary powers more, and to be honest, could not do it.. the attacks did so little damage that there was no point fireing them off most of the time and my heals and buffs suffered because of it. so i simply decided to stick to my primary role as i saw it with this toon, and that was healing and buffing and to be as good at it as i could be.

And yet again Cavatina is making assumptions based on 0 facts. I never once have said i am too busy spamming heals like mad to make up for a "useless" team. I am buffing, attacking with me def debuff powers occasionally and keeping my end at a respectable level so i have enough if any player gets into a spot of hot water. but no, Cavatina would prefer to pack my build out with much weaker versions of a blasters attacks, drain my end so that when someone accidently pulls another mob ot 2 that start ripping into the team i don't have enough end to cast my significantly weaker and slower to cast heals in order to keep them alive.

But then, Cavatina must be able to solo invincible mishes without taking a single point of damage because they are that much of a better player than i am.

I am sorry... being told my play style with one of my 30 or so toons is invalid without the player ever having seen me play really makes my blood boil!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

Well, i can assure you i'm not a bad empath, i may not be the best one out there and i have never claimed to be. but i made a toon to do a job and so far it is doing that job well, as one of my fellow SG mate has just confirmed for me, refering to the team we were in last night when he went suicidal and pulled the aggro from the ice/fire tank and lost nearly a full hp bar in the blink of an eye, then regained it just as fast!

I also care not a bit for praise, I don't play, ot build characters for that reason either. I prefer to build support characters that do their job well enough that you don't even realise when they have done a job.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

This isnt WoW, you can have a borked build and still be able to do stuff. If you feel that the build they have is too borked to be useful dont group with them or ask them to poke around the forums for builds. I had a guy in one of my groups that had three travel powers. I asked him why he needed to get three of them he said it just made traveling easier for him (He had Fly, Super Jump and super speed). I told him he really didnt need three because having that many really wasent all that useful, however since it was PVE content it really didnt effect the outcome of the mission so i didnt really care. I just pointed him to the forum builds after we finished the mission.

Ive also been called a noob for having two travel powers on my stalker (Super jump and super speed) which i use to pvp with. *shrug*

Edit: lol anyone eles notice one of the tags for this thread is "Cheese with your whine?" :P

This is not a snarky question, but I keep reading thread after thread about how AE is ruining the game. Are there really that many new players to the game anymore?

I really don't know as I've played with the same group for years, but I can't even remember the last time I met someone new. Of course, I also don't play on the big two, so that could also contribute to my confusion.