Quote:
I've been running lots of Vaz missions on an alt and they didn't use it before I16.
|
Originally Posted by Myopic Aardvark
How long have the Vazhilok zombies been doing that zombie walk emote - I don't recall seeing it before Issue 16?
|
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
The distinction you're straining for here doesn't exist.|
Originally Posted by UnSub
Mathematically: yes. Practically: no.
|
Since I16 launched I've spent a substantial amount of playtime logging in old characters for a power makeover- that's content.
I've also spent a substantial amount of time REALLY ENJOYING running stock missions for the first time in a LONG time thanks to the mission difficulty changes.
New gameplay experiences are content.
Your opinion of their practicality doesn't apply to anything but your game experience.
You can personally dislike the content or not use the content....it remains content.
I haven't run a TF other than Katie in the last few years.
And yet the new TFs of the last handful of issues are still content. I don't have time to run them, but other people do.
They're content.
I haven't played a /fire scrapper yet, but other people have.
That's content.
Etc etc.
Defining "content" as "developer created story arcs" is an idiosyncrasy of some players. I'm sure it's relevant to them, but it is not a useful global definition.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
I never said that everyone should care about it. My question was more or less directed at those who have gone to CO and are still here somewhat; the main ones saying "too little too late" |
Originally Posted by Lazarus
You wonder why some people might not care about recoloring powers after having gotten used to the way everything looked over the past 5 years?
|
I wonder if DCUO and SW:TOR will have them saying the same thing about CO when they jump ship from there as well?
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-anim.php
Can't come up with a name? Click the link!
Can't come up with a name? Click the link!
Quote:
I wonder if it's like a preview for something they might be doing for the Halloween event?
|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I've been running lots of Vaz missions on an alt and they didn't use it before I16.
|
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
Right back at you. Meaningful content is in the eye of the beholder. |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
The distinction you're straining for here doesn't exist.
Your opinion of their practicality doesn't apply to anything but your game experience. |
You can make the argument that unless you play through every mission with every single possible powerset combination and on every variation of team composition, then you haven't experienced all the content in CoH/V. Although technically true, it is holding the content levels to an extremely liberal standard that is unrealistic. There might be content, but it isn't significantly different from what has been previously experienced.
My major interest is in canon storylines, of which there has been extremely limited updates for a while now. I16 continues that trend. I don't see I16 as a weak issue per se, but it is one that doesn't add much to CoH/V for me. That it lets players change their power colours and is a farmer's paradise doesn't add much to my gaming experience.
I like the new powersets and powers. Customization is nice, seeing everyone with different looking powers. The new difficulty settings are the biggest thing for me, although it'd be much, much better if drop rates were fixed.
Quote:
Or very old depending on when you started.|
Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
The 5th in Steel are new.
|
Anyway, power customization is excellent.
I'm also very glad for another "super" flavored powerset for Scrappers which, until they got fire a while back, was mostly a playground for natural heroes and martial artists.
To be honest, the idea that some of my villains would be able to come in from the cold with Going Rogue upcoming has somewhat overshadowed i16 for me.
Then I tried the difficulty settings.
Putting two of my scrappers at +0 x6 Fight Bosses
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooo
The joy of having to rapidly make use of your inspiration tray again. The wonderful sensation of being actually at risk of dying!
It's wonderful.
I'll have to try to find time to twiddle with AE and finally make part two for me Hunter of Beasts arc
Thrythlind's Deviant Art Page
"Notice at the end, there: Arcanaville did the math and KICKED IT INTO EXISTENCE." - Ironik on the power of Arcanaville's math
Quote:
Interesting. My experience is the exact same opposite. Yesterday, I ran Montague Castanella's arc, beginning to end, "The Eternal Nemesis", also beginning to end, on two different servers, and all on teams.|
Originally Posted by MasterJediJared
I love CoH for teaming. Before issue 15ish I could find teams very quickly and I ran tons of TFs. About half-way through issue 15's life cycle folks started dropping off or did mainly farming. Searching, asking in /b and LFG channels I will run around for two hours now on Virtue and Freedom without finding a team that isn't farming.
|
SSKing has made putting a team together and maintaining it much easier. It used to be a chore that I did only when unavoidable (and, of course, you still have people not responding to tells even though they're flagged as LFT or not understanding that now they get XP when exemplared), but since I16 it has been a pretty straightforward exercise. Set up your macro (such as: macro query "tell $target, <polite message asking whether they want to join a team with a given objective at a given level>"), use /search to find people with roughly the right powerlevels (e.g., SO level for 40+ content), and invite anybody who is interested. The key difference is really that you can invite just about anybody to just about any team (high levels may have objections exemplaring to very low levels, and really low levels may be ineffective at high levels and high difficulty ratings, but you've still got a LOT of leeway). Augmented by the occasional shout-out in /b, and it's really easy to put together teams now.
Quote:
Yes, yes I know how to put together teams. It's also drearily boring to do so for me. It's sorta at a point for me that if in a team-oriented MMORPG I can't readily find teams on the two most populated servers (building or getting invited to one) then what's the point?|
Originally Posted by Sorciere
Interesting. My experience is the exact same opposite. Yesterday, I ran Montague Castanella's arc, beginning to end, "The Eternal Nemesis", also beginning to end, on two different servers, and all on teams.
SSKing has made putting a team together and maintaining it much easier. It used to be a chore that I did only when unavoidable (and, of course, you still have people not responding to tells even though they're flagged as LFT or not understanding that now they get XP when exemplared), but since I16 it has been a pretty straightforward exercise. Set up your macro (such as: macro query "tell $target, <polite message asking whether they want to join a team with a given objective at a given level>"), use /search to find people with roughly the right powerlevels (e.g., SO level for 40+ content), and invite anybody who is interested. The key difference is really that you can invite just about anybody to just about any team (high levels may have objections exemplaring to very low levels, and really low levels may be ineffective at high levels and high difficulty ratings, but you've still got a LOT of leeway). Augmented by the occasional shout-out in /b, and it's really easy to put together teams now. |
To be fair, I'm getting more or less jaded on MMOs in general. Probably the main reason Issue 16 is most disappointing to me is because CoH has always been the MMO that keeps me interested in a genre that is typically filled with contrived and lame titles (my opinion, I don't care to get lambasted for it). Even beyond the genre itself I liked how CoH has usually in the past been able to provide something new and interesting for my characters to do; something that makes their career feel substantial. Getting "omg colorz!" isn't quite in that vein (again imo).
Quote:
Well, my point is that putting together teams is much less of a chore (or "drearily boring", as you put it) now. Somebody has to do it, and if you just rely on others to do it for you, you may be out of luck. There are only so many players willing to form a team, and if that falls significantly below 1/8 of the player population, teaming may just not be in the cards for you. That has little to do with the absolute size of the server population, and a lot with the relative sizes of the server population who are (1) interested in teaming and (2) willing to organize teams. If the relative sizes of (1) and (2) are too far apart, then it becomes a problem.|
Originally Posted by MasterJediJared
Yes, yes I know how to put together teams. It's also drearily boring to do so for me. It's sorta at a point for me that if in a team-oriented MMORPG I can't readily find teams on the two most populated servers (building or getting invited to one) then what's the point?
|
There were some MUDs in the 1990s that had minimal populations by modern MMO standards (less than 100), and yet they still had substantial teaming going on, because they had made it easy to form teams. And, in fact, I've sometimes found it easier to find a team on the less populated CoH servers than on the big ones.
In general, if there's a problem with it being too hard to find a team, then that is probably not because of the server size, but because it is too hard to build and maintain a team. I16 took an important step to make that part easier (though I'd still like them to improve upon it, say, through a better LFT/LFM interface, open teams or open slots on teams, etc.).
Quote:
Content is content.|
Originally Posted by UnSub
Right back at you. Meaningful content is in the eye of the beholder.
|
Whether you use it or I use it is irrelevant- it exists in the game.
Quote:
| You can make the argument that unless you play through every mission with every single possible powerset combination and on every variation of team composition, then you haven't experienced all the content in CoH/V. Although technically true, it is holding the content levels to an extremely liberal standard that is unrealistic. There might be content, but it isn't significantly different from what has been previously experienced. |
Quote:
| My major interest is in canon storylines, of which there has been extremely limited updates for a while now. I16 continues that trend. I don't see I16 as a weak issue per se, but it is one that doesn't add much to CoH/V for me. That it lets players change their power colours and is a farmer's paradise doesn't add much to my gaming experience. |
Content is content, whether you like it or use it or not. It's about the game as a whole, not your personal preferences.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I wish they could somehow limit rep to those with better reading comprehension than a typical banana slug.
"It's about the game as a whole, not your personal preferencs, yet you say it added huge amount to yours?"
Yes. Why does that confuse you?
Un Sub thinks it's boring, I think it's great.
Nothing the devs do will ever excite 100% of the players. Nothing they do will bore 100% of the players.
It's still CONTENT however relevant or irrelevant this or that player finds it.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
Gorf. I remember that one.|
Originally Posted by Ultimo_
Way back in the old days, we DID have games that went on forever (as long as you had the skill and patience). Examples include Pong, Pac-Man, Gorf, and so on...
|
Enjoy your day please.
I have read this thread till now and judging by your posts you have been some sort of a -rep magnet? Oh dear.
But yeah, more seriously. While it's obvious that everything devs do will not excite everyone.
However I agree with unsub, we are talking about this particular issue anyway. Issue 16, which added "power" customization, some profileration and revamped difficulty switch.
So I try to judge this issue by its merits, ie. what the 16th issue brought. So yeah this is basically how I feel. Maybe others who have expressed their critique agree aswell.
I'm not quite sure about new experiences brought in this issue however. The new difficulty system basically just lets you add more mobs without fillers now. Fighting team (or full) sized mobs isn't anything new, solo, small team or full. You could have done this easily before this issue, even without fillers. I think we have all fought smaller mobs and very huge mobs solo and team. If not, then yeah, I guess it is something new.
But for me and my friends, the difficulty system doesn't change how the excisting missions play in practise or richen us with new experiences.
As for power customization, this doesn't add any new experiences or new things to do. Well you could count the actual "picking colors UI" as a new thing to do, but I believe players in this game are expecting something more as things to do.
As for the actual colors, I can't really see how its any different. Running the same mission with fire blaster isn't exactly anything new. Going to icon and switching colors to blue and running the same mission again doesn't change a whole lot, I wouldn't say it's new content.
Just like unsub, me and others were expecting something new gameplay mechanic/mission/powerset wise, not aestheticly reharsed stuff we already done. I'd be so bold and classify it all under QoL. If this makes any sense ,or are we just stuck in semantics here?
Maybe I'm thinking this too deeply, or not thinking it all, or looking from wrong perspective. There's always that, aswell. Believe me however when I tell you, I really tried to get kicks out of this issue and I just can't. Even with new colors. I can appreciate if someone does however get kicks out of this issue. I just got my hopes up for GR, or the yet unannounced issue 17.
Quote:
Trying to shoot the tiny slot on the underside of the spaceship in the game's most annoying stage made me destroy a Vic 20 joystick...
|
Originally Posted by BashfulBanshee
Gorf. I remember that one.
|
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
Quote:
This is a circular argument.|
Originally Posted by Gaspard
I'm not quite sure about new experiences brought in this issue however. The new difficulty system basically just lets you add more mobs without fillers now. Fighting team (or full) sized mobs isn't anything new, solo, small team or full. You could have done this easily before this issue, even without fillers. I think we have all fought smaller mobs and very huge mobs solo and team. If not, then yeah, I guess it is something new.
But for me and my friends, the difficulty system doesn't change how the excisting missions play in practise or richen us with new experiences. |
Someone says "uh it's boring", someone else says "uh it's exciting" and around and around they go.
You don't have to like it or use it for it to be content.
New stuff to do = content, whatever a random player off the street thinks about it.
Quote:
| As for power customization, this doesn't add any new experiences or new things to do. Well you could count the actual "picking colors UI" as a new thing to do.... |
I'm a simple creature- rolling through a mission with the Goat spitting purple and black fire instead of red and yellow fire is a new gameplay experience and it does excite me. I love shiny superficial stuff.
If you don't, that's great.
But it's still content.
Quote:
| Just like unsub, me and others were expecting something new gameplay mechanic/mission/powerset wise, not aestheticly reharsed stuff we already done. |
Content is content.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
.... if "content" is boring, it does not benefit the player. This creates a perceived lack of value.
The underlying idea behind "picking new colors for my powers is new, and I like it, so... this is new content! Yay new content!" is just bewilderingly short-sighted.
One would also be justified in responding "So you view picking new colors as 'new gameplay content.' Check. But tell me.... how long will picking new colors for your powers hold your interest? A week? A month?...? How long?" Because this is just me, but picking new colors for your powers is fun, but a new strikeforce or two, it ain't. A new zone or two... IT AIN'T.
That seems like really, really lowballing your expectations for an issue. I mean, REALLY LOWBALL. Are you willing to let the developers off the hook that easily?
Now I fully expect the tirade of snark, insults and what-all that proceed from your keyboard every time I make a point. But you don't have to admit it in public, just ask yourself this one question in the wee hours of the night: Am I willing to let the developers trade this sort of thing for a new zone or three?
Me, I'm a tough audience and I'm letting this issue pass with little comment, but if we do not see significant content in the next issue or two, and by that I mean content with actual meat on its bones for those among us with higher standards [do pardon the pun].... that won't be looking good for the longevity of the game.
Or so it appears over here. No doubt you have a million reasons to declare contentment with changing the color of your fire-blasts every week, and there is where we differ... or one point, amongst the millions.
Quote:
well, i will sadly have to dissapoint you on the snark, as im feeling quite chipper today, but do you consider going rogue an issue? If so, then i would be forced to assume that our next "issue" will be where a lot of the mission creation resources seem to have been focused, and I am expecting quite a lot , both in terms of missions and costumes, at least in line with cov. If its is less than i will outcomplain pretty much anyone, but i suspect i wont be.
|
Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
Me, I'm a tough audience and I'm letting this issue pass with little comment, but if we do not see significant content in the next issue or two, and by that I mean content with actual meat on its bones for those among us with higher standards [do pardon the pun].... that won't be looking good for the longevity of the game.
|
Quote:
This.| Someone else" On top of all this, a 6 year old game engine (since its alpha/beta times) is buggier and laggier than heck on a machine that's running modern brand new games at full without flaws. New patch day brings (yay!) more lag and bugs. |
After a lot of thought, what is happening is apparent: the game engine is incapable of keeping up with my machine. I am moving way, way too fast and the engine simply cannot handle it! And it is more annoying than I can say.
Am I quitting over it? No. Does the creaky, clanking old engine they are running now need an upgrade? HOW ABOUT YES
Quote:
I DO have to address this though. color customization(and animation customization, people keep ignoring this, and it is quite a big thing really, something the new kid cant do to the level coh can) are more to me than just aesthetic options. They are a sign to me that the game that is admittedly aged at this point still has the capacity to grow significantly and that the developers have the resources and skill to cause that growth. To me thats a great deal bigger than letting rian finally punch, and giving violet better looking thorns. If anything the willingness to invest the resources shows quite the opposite of a dying game, if the game were dying, they would just focus on tossing us more low hanging fruit each issue to keep us placated, a game that is sticking around for a while is one that reinvests in growth, so i am afraid that you and i make a significantly different read on the issue.
|
Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
The underlying idea behind "picking new colors for my powers is new, and I like it, so... this is new content! Yay new content!" is just bewilderingly short-sighted.
|
Quote:
You were not the person to whom I was responding, but nonetheless some actual polite, calmly-stated conversation is always welcome. |
Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
well, i will sadly have to dissapoint you on the snark, as im feeling quite chipper today, but do you consider going rogue an issue? If so, then i would be forced to assume that our next "issue" will be where a lot of the mission creation resources seem to have been focused, and I am expecting quite a lot , both in terms of missions and costumes, at least in line with cov. If its is less than i will outcomplain pretty much anyone, but i suspect i wont be.
|
I am waiting with interest to see what happens with Going Rogue. I have very high expectations and will they be borne out? We shall see.... but it is time for some content, and quite a bit of it, with teeth. Make me proud, devs
Quote:
agreed entirely, and i can be snarky, so i always apologise when i dissappoint my legions of fans|
Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
You were not the person to whom I was responding, but nonetheless some actual polite, calmly-stated conversation is always welcome.
I am waiting with interest to see what happens with Going Rogue. I have very high expectations and will they be borne out? We shall see.... but it is time for some content, and quite a bit of it, with teeth. Make me proud, devs |
One bone to pick, did a Citadel TF today (started at level 25) and only got to 26. XP for doing the TFs flattens out in a big way come mid-20s. The grind at used to be mid-30s has moved.
Talking about my Rad/EM blaster here:
from 13 to 16 doing Posi TF
from 17 to 21 doing Synapse
from 22 to 24 doing Sister Psyche
from 25 to 26 doing Citadel
Will continue on with Moonfire and Hess to track the progress there also.
Quote:
I have relatively low hopes for Rogue. The reason is that I have lost a lot of confidence in the Devs here. I'm sure that they're good people and all, but I sometimes wonder if they ever read a comic book. They take good ideas, and execute them in a half-hearted way.|
Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
You were not the person to whom I was responding, but nonetheless some actual polite, calmly-stated conversation is always welcome.
I am waiting with interest to see what happens with Going Rogue. I have very high expectations and will they be borne out? We shall see.... but it is time for some content, and quite a bit of it, with teeth. Make me proud, devs |
A good example is the fires in Steel. Can we rescue people trapped in the burning building? Is there a Paragon Fire Department, fiighting the fire? No, it's just another "beat things up" scenario, with a nonsensical conclusion.
Another is street sweeping. I've seen dozens of good ideas regarding how to make patrolling the streets more interesting and interactive, but none have happened. Instead we got a lame system of monitoring police radios for bland missions.
I'm well aware that there are some limitations in the engine, but many suggestions have been made over the years that couldn't take THAT much effort to realize. I don't know why it is, but the Devs never seem to get it quite right. They stop part way.
Consider the new upgrade. We can now change the colours of our powers, but only some. We can't change pool powers, and some power sets have startlingly limited changes available.
How about the new animations for Super Strength? I'm sure they've seen Vanden's avatar by now, surely they realize how much better those animations would be (and they're ALREADY in the game!) than the ones we have now?
Every time there's a new "improvement," it's invariably distinctly disappointing. Thus, I have no particularly high hopes for Going Rogue. Hopefully, I'll be pleasantly suprised.
Power Customization is something I could have gotten excited about back around issue 4, by now all characters have been designed around the default appearance of the powers or I simply liked them to begin with. That is why I'm getting very annoyed with the ways that PC has broken some of the default colors and animations that I wanted to keep and didn't give me a way to stay with them.
I've heard the same from a lot of friends. They've customized a few new alts that they made this week (ones that actually have options, not all powersets do still) but existing characters have been left alone as they were already happy with how they looked.