The forgotten

As much as I like the company, generally like the devs and what they bring to us, and love the game, I have to admit - at times, it seems the people behind the game have a short attention span.

What do I mean by this? I mean ideas, items and projects brought into the game (or related areas, such as the website,) shown off a bit - then forgotten.

By this, I don't mean things like PVP - we know there's (supposedly) long-haul work to be done, and I expect it to get more attention, though we'll see it in dribs and drabs, sometimes as a tweak to a powerset or AT, other times as a whole. Nor do I mean things like the comics (though I'd love to see them back,) stopped for economic reasons, or the City Vault, which had major technical issues. No, by this I mean things like the Paragon Times, like the villain group dossiers, like Ghost Widow's profiles (and similiar bits such as "stalkers of the Rogue Isles,") and in-game items like the Combo system, used only for dual blades.

Now, this was much worse before Paragon Studios was bought out by NCSoft, letting Cryptic go on its way. The team, now, seems dedicated to seeing things through, even if they have to take a long view on them. Heck, they've shown willingness to evolve both the story and zones - though we might not always think the way it's done is quite right (such as all the extra groups diluting hunts in the Hollows.)

Still, some things could use revisiting, expanding, and filling out.

So, what's the point of this little rant? Aside from getting thoughts together for a suggestion, what feels forgotten or half-finished to you that you think the PS team (developers, artists, CS, website, the whole enchilada) should go back, revisit, fill out or expand?

I listed some of mine earlier.
- Villain group profiles. They're interesting reading, but tucked away and forgotten.
- In-"character" story and lore - The Paragon Times vanished with Gilgamesh, as I recall. Someone should have, IMHO, been appointed to fill in his shoes. (Of course, this was on our way down to a 15-person team.) The in-world stories, interviews and such were fun to read, and helped bring people into the game. (No, the city scoop does not fill the same function.)
- The combo system. It's used for dual blades. It feels like it was brought in, played with, shown off - then left alone. Why does nothing else use this, or something similar?
- Quite a bit of website "stuff." Reports from Ghost Widow, for instance. The somewhat disjointed villain bios. The villain group profiles. The monster profiles (far from complete.)
- The manual! When has this been updated? Ever? Yes, I know manuals go out of date for an MMO, and we do have the wiki and such - but even the role examples for ATs are from... well, many issues back.

See my Guides and Tutorials

well, as fror the combos at least, i was always under the impression that they were the "secondary effect" for dual blades. whereas katana and bs had -def and spines had -speed and martial arts had..well something of a hodge podge, dual blades were given combos to make them feel distinct. Now as a personal thing, i'd have liked to see combos become a part of the game, maybe something scrappers had exclusively to help differentiate them from brutes who fulfilled a similar function but had the extra mechanic of fury, and also would work with the theme of scrappers being refined fighters, who may not hit as hard at once like the assassination specialist, the stalkers, but have the expertise to apply the science of a beatdown in a protracted engagement. but them again i suspect i'd have some dual blade talkers, brutes and tanks who would disagree strongly with me ont hat topic,including two of my own, so not pushing it.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

How do you know this stuff is forgotten and not still coming?


EDIT: The thread reminded me of a certain song... so I tagged it.

hmm

Custom weapons, and their unlocks.

Some of those were developmental dead ends. Some were flawed and never saw the light of day (The Vault); some were flawed and there were attempted fixes that never worked out right (Cathedral of Pain); some were implemented but never became popular (but to minority who liked it, they feel abandoned); some are good systems, but there are more pressing needs than to continue to develop them and only so much time in the day.

Just look at the legacy TFs being admittedly too long and clunky... should they fix them or write new ones? (Although, seeing the MA tool in use, I'm getting less and less inclined to give the Devs a bye on the whole 'revamping old TFs is too much work' excuse.)

If something has potential for real future growth, the Devs do develop it. After all, they just hired a content designer whose part-time job is to continue to develop the Mission Architect (fixed maps, new Dev Choices, etc...).

The two things that have been stuck in my craw are the promised revamp of Angus McQueen's "Stop the second Rikti Invasion" arc and Castle's second look at Rage to finally rid it of the defense debuff.

What's behind Ouroboros? I mean, the Midnight Club doesn't trust 'em. . . there's mysterious notes scattered around. . . anagrams . . . you know, STUFF.

I'm very happy to see some new dev choice AE missions finally appear. A few weeks ago the lack of those would have been at the top of my list. We have a few guest arcs too, which is awesome.

When the Arenas first came out there was big talk about having tournaments and prizes and opportunities to play against the devs and so on... and then the arena was pretty buggy and they were busy with CoV, then resources were shifted to other projects, and it just faded away.

The gladiator stuff in the Arena is actually kind of cool. I haven't done it in ages, but it's a neat idea. As I recall, there were a few bugs and a couple of serious balance issues, and I don't believe it was ever revisited.

I'm not going to let them off the hook on the Vault. From their explanations it sounded like scope creep. Fine. Cut the project back to a manageable level and get on it. It doesn't need to make coffee and balance the national budget. Just have a website which displays in-game stuff. That would be a fun and useful tool, and by trying to make it more useful and more cool they wound up with nothing.

I suppose base raids are under development, and I appreciate that, but it's a feature that was supposed to have shipped with CoV. It's late. Same with the CoP. I know there were technical problems. Solve them. That's what you do. That's certainly what I do at my job.

Does anyone else remember when they announced that each AT would have a dedicated redname to work on their issues and be a liaison to the rest of the dev team?

Heh, does anyone else remember the first time they said that they were very sorry that some things had been missed in the patch notes, but they were going to change their process so it didn't happen again? Statesman had a big post about it after one of the first patch notes. How about the second time they posted the same basic thing? Or the third? How about the time they said they would include explanations of why changes were made in the patch notes, along with the changes?

In all fairness, I think the patch notes are more readable than they used to be, though I haven't actually gone back to compare.

Didn't Positron say that he really wanted to get the Calvin Scott TF into Ouroboros? Maybe he still wants to and just hasn't been able to work it in, but I think it's more likely that he has just forgotten.

There are probably other things that have been forgotten, but I can't remember them.