The perils of 'official' content
By
Amy_Amp,
Posted on: 2009-08-13 11:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
conveience is probably part of it but if ma teams are any indication repetitive content isn't much of a turn-off
Damn. I was really hoping this would be another thread on the differences between PowerLeveling and Farming.
I see. Guess someone should post next about how mundane mist AE content is or how their 5 year old nephew with down syndrome could write more enthralling content.
Me? I like to use my travel powers so FedEx missions, etc don't really get my panties all bunched up and force me to log off. And doing the same mission isn't a large concern of mine either. Crushing critters and having fun are my usual goals and both are accomplished in most defeat all missions.
To each their own I suppose.
Considering that content you did was from Issue 1, do you really think the recent offfical content is like that now?
In the Arena of Logic, I fight unarmed.
Quick tip: If you have a delivery to Steven Sheridan, the base TP to Brickstown drops you right around the corner from him. You can then open an Oro portal and jump right back to PI. Total round trip time should be under 2 minutes.
...I forgot what experience means.
If the content is going to be repetitive anyway, there's no reason to make you waste time zoning and running all across several different zones to do it.
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Judging from the reminisces I see from former EQ players, here and elsewhere, apparently there really are people who enjoy spending a great deal of time just preparing to play the game. Who spent hours of uneventful traveling and waiting so they could get to whatever would finally make them money and/or experience. Or maybe they didn't actually enjoy it so much as endure it with gritted teeth, and now they're considering themselves leet and moaning about how soft players are these days. Could go either way.
I don't mind repetitive if the combat system is entertaining and/or there are drops involved (enhancement drops count too), but lengthy travel time is something I don't care for, especially when there's no story reason for it. If I'm in Peregrine, there better be a darn good reason why the mission is in Perez, otherwise I get annoyed. Office buildings and caves can be anywhere. I don't do AE, but I can see the temptation.
Villain Dev content from the early 30's on up is "What EB(s)/AV(s) will you fight today?"
My favorite AT is Dominator. So yeah.....I do lots of papers and MA when my friends aren't on. Some EB's are soloable for me, many aren't. Given the dearth of teams Villain side, I usually just do papers until folks in my global lists log in. I get to kick some rumpus on my Dom and not worry about getting one shot by a mob immune to half my powers every other mission.
For me at least, base teleporters, mission teleporters, the pocket D teleporter, Wentworth's teleporters, and the O-zone portal make travel just about trivial at this point, so this is not an issue anymore.
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Good tip Space- my problem was using Oro to get there in the first place.|
Originally Posted by SpaceNut
Quick tip: If you have a delivery to Steven Sheridan, the base TP to Brickstown drops you right around the corner from him. You can then open an Oro portal and jump right back to PI. Total round trip time should be under 2 minutes.
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I don't have much call to visit Bricks so I didn't realize the base exit was right in his lap.
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I'd found myself getting very very bored with the early 40s heroside - after the seemingly endless succession of near identical defeat alls in The Terra Conspiracy the seemingly endless succession of near identical defeat alls in Tina McIntyre's missions reduced my scrapper's progress to a crawl.
Thankfully A Hero's Hero is better, but really the Praetorian arcs are showing their age, and hopefully they'll be revamped for Going Rogue.
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My /Inv brute lives in terror of the day when the words "defeat Sister Psyche" show up on the mission screen.| Villain Dev content from the early 30's on up is "What EB(s)/AV(s) will you fight today?" |
Is it my imagination or are the redside EBs a lot tougher than most of the heroside EBs? My scrapper shredded every single Praetorian on the first attempt (well, except Malaise, but he got lucky) but the Freedom Phalanx, Vindicators and Arachnos Patrons and their flunkies usually KO my villains at least once.
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With all the crying people do about how awesome and unmissable "official" content is and how people are "cheating" themselves by using alternatives, it's asking too much that it be better than something a 5 year old with 'down syndrome' (sic) could come up with?
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Originally Posted by Clouded
I see. Guess someone should post next about how mundane mist AE content is or how their 5 year old nephew with down syndrome could write more enthralling content.
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My City Was Gone
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Travel QOL has vastly improved over the 'good old days', which I appreciate.|
Originally Posted by Mental_Giant
For me at least, base teleporters, mission teleporters, the pocket D teleporter, Wentworth's teleporters, and the O-zone portal make travel just about trivial at this point, so this is not an issue anymore.
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It's still irritating to sojourn halfway across the city and back so you can clear the same map you just finished.
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My City Was Gone
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That's my impression as well.|
Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree
Is it my imagination or are the redside EBs a lot tougher than most of the heroside EBs? My scrapper shredded every single Praetorian on the first attempt (well, except Malaise, but he got lucky) but the Freedom Phalanx, Vindicators and Arachnos Patrons and their flunkies usually KO my villains at least once.
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However, you can test that proposition by writing some AE missions and then running your scrapper against those same EBs. Then you can run your villains against the Praetorians to check that out as well.
Yeah, I powered through the Tina, Maria, and Unai arcs the other day on my tanker. There were a few points where I grumbled to myself, "Yar, this is why people sit in MA all day." Overall I like those arcs, but there are a few parts that are all kinds of annoying.
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The oldest official content? Sure. But the newer content (from CoV on up, for the most part) learned those lessons and adapted. The Faultline arcs and Croatoa are more representative of what official content is now. The older stuff is still available for play, of course, because why would you take completed content out?
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This is a much bigger problem blueside, which is yet another reason CoV is the better game experience. As if it needed it. |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
or, why MA (and before MA Radio missions) appeals to so many players.
Running Tina McIntyre's arc with a scrapper. Things are going along fine, then I hit a 'defeat all' hydra mission. Okay, the map isn't too huge, no problem. "Oh you beat the hydras...okay, now run to Brickstown and talk to this guy on the other side of the zone!" Well, I don't run that many story arcs and it's been a while since I did one of these annoying FedEx missions, so alright, off I go. Oro to Bricks, run across the zone to the hospital, talk to the guy, get the totally predictable mission right back where I started...and it's the same freakin' kill all, on the same freakin' map that I just cleared. Oh wait, this time there are some glowies to click and a boss to beat, so I guess that makes it okay? Logged out in annoyance to check the market on some of my other characters and to whine about it here. Just a reminder to everyone that there's a reason lots and lots of players prefer the convenience of content that doesn't send you all over the world before handing you a carbon copy of the mission you just did. |
Go Red!
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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The devs learnt from their mistakes, look at the recent official content, it is mostly purely in the same zones [with an odd exception where you do have to travel but storywise it makes sense].
I'ld gladly travel 50 zones to get another magic man arc!
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
With all the crying people do about how awesome and unmissable "official" content is and how people are "cheating" themselves by using alternatives, it's asking too much that it be better than something a 5 year old with 'down syndrome' (sic) could come up with?
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Of course not, but youa re running some of the content that was created with the game. Most of the newer content, including most of CoV, avoids the FedEx missions. The Kill-Alls are still around though.
Heroside, we get defeat-alls on huge maps, looooong arcs where you're fighting the same enemies over and over again, every mission in a different zone (I have travel powers, Ouro, a base, etc. I hate staring at the loading screen.), fed-exes, hunt 60 Carnies in PI...etc.
Villainside, we get Longbow, Arachnos, Longbow, Arachnos, the Arachnos base map, Longbow, Arachnos, contacts who are jerks and EBs in nearly every arc, most of them with a tier 9 and/or ranged mez and/or a nuke and/or massive damage, debuffs, exotic damage types, or all of the above.
That's why I mostly do AE now. It has this awesome feature, where if you find yourself in an arc you don't like, you click two buttons and you're out. No annoying missions you don't want to do clogging up your tray until you can drop them.
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The main points of the thread have been made multiple times now, so I feel comfortable with a threadjack.|
Originally Posted by Primal_NA
Judging from the reminisces I see from former EQ players, here and elsewhere, apparently there really are people who enjoy spending a great deal of time just preparing to play the game. Who spent hours of uneventful traveling and waiting so they could get to whatever would finally make them money and/or experience. Or maybe they didn't actually enjoy it so much as endure it with gritted teeth, and now they're considering themselves leet and moaning about how soft players are these days. Could go either way.
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EQ was the epitome of repetitive content, and it served as the model upon which, for a few years, the entire industry was based, due to its (at the time) incredible success.
The massive irony of the situation is that the players themselves were responsible for it. When faced with a continent full of places to explore and things to fight, the players would sit their butts down at the nearest monster spawn point and "camp" it for hours. The lowbie areas even had names and waiting lists where people leveling up alts would sit around and just kill the same damn mobs over and over and over and over while a perfectly good dungeon one zone over went almost completely unused because it was too dangerous or just less convenient.
"Healer for Orc 3" was a typical cry in the Eastern Commonlands. Translation - "Cleric or Druid wanted at Orc Camp 3". It was the players that assigned and agreed upon the numbers, a grass-roots convention that became fact by virtue of everyone using it.
In a lot of ways, the lingering residue of repetitive content in every MMO out there can be blamed directly on the early players of Everquest who taught game developers that "repetitive gameplay makes people happy".
In reality, the lesson was that "High reward, low risk content makes people willing to play repetitively" but not everyone actually caught onto that particular lesson. Even when the developers understood it they still didn't want to take the risk of alienating the players who had grown up playing that way and who now believed that such gameplay was the "right" way to play.
Despite the many innovations of the early City of Heroes, Boomtown, Perez Park, the original Faultline and the original Rikti Crash Site all owe their existence to the belief by Jack and his team that mob camping was what players wanted and they needed to provide it. That's even why missions were originally given hardly any rewards. It was initially viewed by the devs and also many of the players as a kind of "cheating" to play missions and get rewarded for it. Killing stuff is how you get rewarded, and you do your killing out on the streets and in the hazard zones. It took a certain amount of time to change that perception as well as the perception that street-sweeping was somehow higher risk, a "fact" that was patently untrue for many, maybe most archetypes when the game launched.
About the "preparing to play" observation - A lot of us old farts still have mixed feelings about how easy it is to travel around nowadays in pretty much every game. Going back to the Everquest example, travel time meant that the world FELT like a world. It was DANGEROUS to go from one place to another, at least initially. One of the great "coming of age" moments in Everquest was the day your level 10 or 15 character decided to relocate from one coast of Antonica to the other and you did it by walking/running/sneaking/praying your way through seven zones, at least one dungeon, and a hostile countryside full of critters all just waiting to eat you when you made a mistake. It was an ADVENTURE. Spending three hours getting the whole guild to a remote place for a raid was different adventure and a social exercise as well. It was a team-building experience and a lot more guild social bonds were formed in the "preparing to play" time than were forged in the relatively short "accomplish what we came here for" time.
City of Heroes has never really had any content with requirements that replicated that down-time bonding and team-building. The Hamidon comes close, but it's not really the same. Travel, already reasonably easy in this game, has only gotten easier so that it's perfectly feasible for a new player to join a supergroup and use teleporters to get everywhere and, perforce, never actually learn how the zones connect to each other, let alone feel a need to pass the knowledge on to some other new player as a bonding experience.
Would I go back to Everquest? Lord, no! Every time I do, I leave within an hour. (They have their own versions of free weekends.) Despite that, I still see the value in a lot of the legacy that Everquest created in its heyday.
I prefer it against teams farming large groups of Crazed in AE farms (which I have been tricked into joining by controllers and their lowbie friends I don't care about)
I don't mind missions being pretty much the same (unless it's against enemies I do poorly against) - as long as I take down the enemies at a decent pace and earn xp it's all good. All the travel can be annoying for sure though. That's why I hop into PvP zones (very empty on my server, even more so since I13) and RWZ post level 35 every now and then and do mission after mission for an hour or two.
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Yup it's pretty sad sometimes but when you get to PI everything past 45 in the 45-50 range most of the missions are pretty meh. Some of the storylines are interesting like Crimson and his World Wide Red arc but other than a few exceptions the missions are pretty sub-standard.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
or, why MA (and before MA Radio missions) appeals to so many players.
Running Tina McIntyre's arc with a scrapper. Things are going along fine, then I hit a 'defeat all' hydra mission. Okay, the map isn't too huge, no problem. "Oh you beat the hydras...okay, now run to Brickstown and talk to this guy on the other side of the zone!" Well, I don't run that many story arcs and it's been a while since I did one of these annoying FedEx missions, so alright, off I go. Oro to Bricks, run across the zone to the hospital, talk to the guy, get the totally predictable mission right back where I started...and it's the same freakin' kill all, on the same freakin' map that I just cleared. Oh wait, this time there are some glowies to click and a boss to beat, so I guess that makes it okay? Logged out in annoyance to check the market on some of my other characters and to whine about it here. Just a reminder to everyone that there's a reason lots and lots of players prefer the convenience of content that doesn't send you all over the world before handing you a carbon copy of the mission you just did. |
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or, why MA (and before MA Radio missions) appeals to so many players.
Running Tina McIntyre's arc with a scrapper. Things are going along fine, then I hit a 'defeat all' hydra mission. Okay, the map isn't too huge, no problem.
"Oh you beat the hydras...okay, now run to Brickstown and talk to this guy on the other side of the zone!"
Well, I don't run that many story arcs and it's been a while since I did one of these annoying FedEx missions, so alright, off I go.
Oro to Bricks, run across the zone to the hospital, talk to the guy, get the totally predictable mission right back where I started...and it's the same freakin' kill all, on the same freakin' map that I just cleared.
Oh wait, this time there are some glowies to click and a boss to beat, so I guess that makes it okay?
Logged out in annoyance to check the market on some of my other characters and to whine about it here.
Just a reminder to everyone that there's a reason lots and lots of players prefer the convenience of content that doesn't send you all over the world before handing you a carbon copy of the mission you just did.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone