Anyone else never use IOs?

It is for me.

For this reason.

I have at least one Field Crafter on each account (I have two) on each server I regularly play on (Infinity, Virtue, Victory). I start using common IOs on every character at level 7 (L10s). This is because the Field Crafter accolade is a goal for every one of my characters that reaches or exceeds level 30. Thus, I tend to have lots of common IOs in stock. Plus, as a result of my market activities, I have a rather large backlog of set IOs (hero base on Victory has 9 complete sets of Thunderstrike and 4 of Detonation. Villain base on Infinity has 5 Crushing Impacts, and more than 8 Steadfast Protection Res/Def IOs. And so on). So moving up to sets in the 30-35 level range is fairly common for my characters. I also tend to keep the salvage parts for well used IOs in stock in the bases (luck charms, Alchemical silvers, Spiritual Essence, Scientific Theory, Spell Ink, Spell Scroll, Masterwork weapon, Ancient Bone, etc). Basically, any of the IO types that I tend to need in large quantities (accuracy, damage, recharge, end redux/end mod) I can usually make at a moment's notice. At first I did it because I hated having to replace SOs, especially since they often went red at the absolute worst times. Nowadays, I do it because I can and to keep the base's stock turning over.

I can definitely understand and respect folks who just don't want to be bothered though. I'd be in the same boat if I didn't decide to get it over with once (which turned into 'get it over with' eight times and counting). Understanding the system wasn't an issue (heh I've played EVE. CoX is a walk in the park in comparison), it was the initial tedium that bothered me. But then, every MMO is tedious in some way so it really didn't bother me that much (though I don't like what that says about me ).

That's just the thing: This is the only MMO I've played that ISN'T tedious for me, because playing the game is never the cost to an alternate self-serving agenda. I almost never sit down and play as work for the goal of achieving some objective through it. I sit down to play because I honest-to-God just enjoy playing the game for the sake of playing the game. On very, VERY rare occasions I may end up needing something specific, like a Romulus Sword, or a Redding Rail Rifle, or an aura, at which point I'll sit down and devote an hour to it or so, get the thing and glisten with glee for another hour, but by and large I want to play the game, not get things over with and out of the way.

All other MMOs feel like work, their ultimate goal being to watch numbers steadily increase like I'm the sort of person who takes photos of my car's odometer every time it clocks another thousand miles. The actual gamePLAY is the actual COST and WORK in this supposed game, and so something to be skipped, sped through and avoided as much as possible for the sake of things that, taken on their own, are actually utterly meaningless. I don't play to win. I play to play.

This reminds me of an experiment I've done in every RTS game that offered a map editor, which was to design a map with no enemies, where I'd start myself off as a single lowly worker and build up a base with all units from there. What I realised very early on was that, despite me building a big, cool, awesome base, having a powerful military force just wasn't satisfying without enemies to use it on. Combat units sat idle, more getting in the way than actually helping, and military upgrades were made without any real satisfaction to them.

The fun is in the using, not in the having, and the more time I spend acquiring, the less time I have to spend actually using the things I already have.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

See, here's where the disconnect lies.

Tedium is in the eye of the beholder. There are people who feel the very act of leveling to 50 through existing content (not MA) is tedious. Are they wrong? No, because it's opinion. There are many people who believe that WoW is the shining example of what a casual MMO should be and that it is devoid of tedium. Are they wrong? No, but if they've never seen the other side of level 70 (and let's not even talk about 80), some folks might call their opinion uninformed. I've played MMOs for going on 15 years now (The Realm and Meridian59 popped my cherry) and MUDs prior to that (Gemstone, among others). I've seen all the various ways developers try to come up with to slow player progress (because not even Blizzard has the funds to produce content at the rate in which players consume it). Some are infinitely more pervasive, obvious, and effective than others. CoX has little in the way of blatant timesinks, pretty much everything is optional (as you alluded to).

However, I have this self-reliance thing and I also realize it's far cheaper overall if I control as many aspects of the supply and production parts of the equation. I don't look at it in absolute 'it takes 5 minutes to buy SOs but far longer to buy IOs' terms. It's business. An investment made now pays dividends down the line. If I can produce IOs myself, I'm never subject to market forces and am actually in position to take advantage of beneficial shifts in the market (like inadequate supply faced by overwhelming demand). I've made a good chunk of change last weekend into the early part of this week with folks overpaying for generic IOs. To me, it's all part of the gaming experience. I don't log in just to make stuff fall down and go boom, that's just one part of it. I don't play to win, I play to succeed, in whatever ways I choose to pursue or by any definition I set for success. My characters are IO'd out (to an extent) because it's easy (for me) and I find it beneficial to my play experience. That's it. I'm not trying to outdo anyone (this game isn't nearly as competitive as even say an old guard title like EQ1). But unlike my Shadowknight there needing 6.5k AC and 40k+ hp to do her job in appropriate content, as Part Troll pointed out, you can function properly naked here (since enhancements are the closest equivalent to gear here).

I consider the march to my first Field Crafter the same way I consider the march to my first 50. It's a journey and I didn't do it in a single day (or a single month, it took about 8 months, in fact). Every subsequent one, to me, is just like chasing accolades (or, more specifically, acquiring a badge specifically for its role in an accolade). I'm not a badge hound at all so besides cool names that fit concepts or requirements for unlocks (Master/Mistress of the Airwaves, for example), I don't concentrate on getting them at all. But being able to pop out an invention table at any given time, is a convenience that I often take advantage of. So I go after those badges for that accolade. It just so happens I play on multiple servers so have a "need" for multiple characters with that ability.

Thread over.

--NT

On big teams with support ATs along, enhancements are pretty much just whipped cream on the delicious sundae of buffs and debuffs flying around. Set IO bonuses aren't even a cherry on top. Soloing, though, is a lot more painful without enhancements :-)

I'f you're "standing around trying to buy" anything, you're doing it wrong. Take two minutes and think about what you're going to want tomorrow or next week, and put some bids in before you go play the game, go to work, go to bed, whatever. Odds are most of your bids will fill in the interim.

It'd be beyond foolish to argue that this is wrong somehow, since it's a post about what you like. And honestly, I'm here to beat stuff up as well. Everything else I do is intended to support that goal.

What's important to realize though, is that other people, even if that share that primary goal with you, still enjoy other things. Having other ways to obtain success add depth to the overall experience, and scoring a great bargain purchase or a huge windfall sale are usually a source of at least short-lived joy, even for very "softcore" market users.

I certainly enjoy such little victories. But completely outside the market, which I almost entirely view as a means to an end, I enjoy more powerful characters. I couldn't tell you why, but I have always (even before IOs) enjoyed having characters that are able to do what they, arguably, should not be able to do. I enjoy that no matter whether anyone else sees it, though I usually have a childish desire to tell other people "ooh, ooh, look what I did!" It's certainly not about lording my superiority over anyone, or "beating" them. I just enjoy it for its own sake.

I also enjoy building things, and I learned long ago that building things in my head and implementing them on computers usually has a faster turn around time (and therefore quicker gratification) than building things with my hands in the real world. This is something that cemented my migration from engineering discipline to software and eventually systems design.

Because of that, I actively enjoy the challenge of fitting together an IO build and finding some balance of tradeoffs that meets my satisfaction in terms of survivability, kill speed, and endurance management. I find a certain pleasure simply in the design phase. But I especially enjoy realizing such a build in game and seeing if I really like it as much as I think. Sometimes I figure out it's not as hot as I thought and I want to change it. That's OK with me (to a point) because I do enjoy the design process.

I recognize that some people simply don't enjoy design at all, and so they won't enjoy laboriously working out character build tradeoffs. Some people certainly don't share my irrational joy at feeling like I'm breaking the rules with how powerful my characters are. And some people clearly have active distaste at various parts of using the market. Somewhere in the various overlapping of those three categories are the people who just can't figure out why anyone like me is like I am. That's cool, as long as they don't try to demonize people like me for being different - I don't sit well with that.

Edit: I do have to back the idea that anyone standing around in the market really doesn't need to be doing that. I do it every now and then when I really feel like deep diving the market looking for either some bargain or just a view of what the market is up to, but it's really quite rare since my goal is usually to beat things up. If anyone catches my characters standing idle at the market, it's probably because I am reading the forums, or I pulled up a build to see what I wanted to buy and I started fiddling with the build instead.

This does a good job of describing different likes and approaches to gaming. As far as I'm concerned, NO game should ever be an investment, because an investment requires both that you do something you don't enjoy (i.e. give something up) and that you put work into the game. Call me childish, call me lazy, call me spoiled if you wish, but I don't believe games should be like this. I'm certainly not going to deny that some people can tolerate this, but as far as I'm concerned, I will not play games that force me through elements that are not specifically designed to be fun. I have no desire to stick it to the man, no desire to beat the system, and so no desire to put in work and invest in my game.

Suppose tomorrow I get a brainfart and decide I really want to play Star Wars: The Old Republic and don't want to see City of Heroes ever again. All of my investment goes down the drain. This both makes it less worthwhile AND it makes me less willing to abandon my investment. Maybe it's just me™, but I don't enjoy being tied down to responsibility. I don't want to have to plan days and months ahead, I don't want to worry about what I might need later, I don't want to worry about missed opportunities, I don't want to keep worrying about whether what I'm doing right this instance is worth the time investment. I get MORE than enough of that in real life, and I just don't want this in my escapist fantasy.

Ideally, I enjoy a game I can play from one day to the next. Worry about what I need RIGHT NOW, worry about killing what I'm killing right now, finding what I'm looking for RIGHT NOW, and live safe in the knowledge that when I need to kill or find something else, I'll be able to figure out how to do it when it comes to that. Speaking of self-sufficiency, this is what I see as that. I realise this is exactly what you're looking to achieve by investing, but I don't play my games to make grand-standing investments on the order of months.

Comparing this to getting a 50 is a good call, but it has one specific problem with it: I didn't get to 50 because I had to get to 50 in order to be able to do something else. I didn't do it for Kheldians, I didn't do it to get me a sugar daddy, I didn't do it to "beat" the game. I enjoyed playing my namesake character so much that I just kept playing him and playing him until one day I went "Huh? I levelled up? I'm 50 now? Cool, I guess. Time to play another character, I suppose." Seriously. I hit 50 fighting a Fake Nemesis near Maria Jenkins, levelled up at Luminary, bought a bunch of enhancements at Holsten and logged out of the game. No fanfare, no big achievement. It was just a fun character I'd played for a long time (19-50 straight). I certainly didn't go "Phew! That was hard, but it was worth it!" It wasn't. No, it was not worth getting to 50. If it wasn't so damn much fun actually doing it, then NO reward would have made me do it. I don't care if they PAID me to get to 50 on a character I don't enjoy playing. I wouldn't do it.

As soon as the game devolves into cost/work vs. reward/pay, I'm instantly turned off and I go looking for a more puppy-eyed, delusionally-romantic game that kind of gives me everything as part of the process of playing and enjoying the game, rather than as the cost of admission to actually enjoying it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Exactly. Once you're talking lvl 30 IOs, it doesn't really matter how long they take to fill -- once they're filled you need never upgrade them if you don't want to.

I don't approach using IOs as something where I need to fill every slot with an IO at 25 or even 30. Once I can use SOs, I fill my slots with them and then start placing lowball bids in WW or crafting the IOs I happen to get the bits for as random drops. Every now and then just scroll down my receipe list, see what's white and decide if it's something I can use. My Controller is now level 32 and is about half IO's now and half SOs. When I bought SOs at level 27, it cost me a million influence. Upgrading my SOs at 32 to level 35 SOs cost me about 800k (even with the much higher cost of SOs at that levels). Out of curiousity, I averaged the slots I had IOs in and estimated a 600,000 inf savings on not having to refill those slots. By the time I hit lvl 40 SOs, almost all of my slots should be filled and it'll cost me almost nothing.

The thing is, placing those bids in WW costs me nothing aside from a little inf tied up and if you're dropping millions in SOs, having 15,000 tied up in salvage bids shouldn't be an issue. Using the drops I get is practically free (minus the lab fees). But I never spend a lot of time on it or spend "hours" trying to build a straight IO build. Heck, I don't spend hours on sets, although I'm sure some people do.

What strikes me about your post is that you appear to feel that investment or effort to achieve an end goal and fun are mutually exclusive. I very much don't feel that way. In fact, what I've discovered is that, without goals, I become aimless and don't enjoy myself as much. Even if I enjoy the character and playing them in game, if I have nothing to strive for in playing them, I eventually stop, and ultimately, I'll find something to do that does give me goals to "work" towards, possibly in a different game.

How I approach level 50 characters is a great example of that, I think. If I get a character to level 50, it's because I like playing them. I won't level something to 50 that's I consider a chore to play, because I make sure I play my characters to 50 (PLs are right out). Before we had inventions, I actually dreaded getting my favorite characters to 50. I faced the contradiction that, despite liking playing them, I would not feel much urge to do so with no larger goals, and pre-I9, getting to 50 was one of the few goals available (badges being the main other one).

Inventions changed that for me. Suddenly I had a reason to play my 50s - progress for them beyond their level. I didn't set deadlines, I just set goals, and I played my 50s until I reached those goals. Sometimes, those goals have been moving targets, or have been reset higher after achieving an original goal. It keeps me playing my favorite characters, and they get stronger along the way. For me, that's win/win.

Notably, I9 stomped my altitis into the ground. What I describe above isn't very compatible with making new alts all the time. My stable of characters actually became rather static, as I have tended to cycle through my existing alts and play them up the way I described. I tend to have supercharged 50s and non-50s, and no 50s that I didn't "invest" more in.

I'm OK with "investing" in my characters, because I'm invested in them emotionally. My favorites have backstories and costumes I'm proud of. To me spending time making them better characters in terms of how they function in the game is a bit of a labor of love. I don't dread it, but savor it.

As far as I'm concerned, "investment" and "fun" are semantically incompatible, because if in order for me to call something an investment, it can't be fun. It might actually BE an investment in the purely technical sense of the word, but I'm talking about the feel things have in the game. If I feel that I'm investing something (time, money, effort) into an activity, then that means I'm paying a cost. And by definition, paying a cost is simply not a pleasurable activity. If I find myself looking at a goal I want to achieve, but through a method I DO NOT WANT to commit to, this is an investment. If the investment is big enough, I don't bother. If I don't bother with too many things, I go play something else.

Inversely, if I enjoy an activity, I'm physically incapable of perceiving it as an investment. I see the activity itself as the actual goal, and anything that may or may not come with it a welcome side effect. I enjoy playing video games, for instance. If I could get paid to just sit at home and play whatever game I felt like, I'd certainly not turn my nose up at the offer, but I wouldn't exactly call that a job or an investment. I'm doing what I was going to do anyway, whether I was getting paid for it or not.

As far as having goals, I can sort of agree with you... But then sort of not. I agree that having goals is a good thing, but by the same token, I've always seen it fit to have the most simplistic of simplistic goals. "Kill stuff and roll with it as it comes." Until when? I don't know. Until I burn out on the character and go play another one. It takes some practice to sense it, but it's a worthwhile goal. Or the even simpler "Keep playing until you hit 50." Yes, that kind of assumes you'd stop at 50 (not that I do), but with 30+ characters all in need of getting there, I'm in no danger of achieving my goal to get everyone to 50 before the game shuts down forever. And that's even if it lasted another 20 years.

In fact, I'm completely the opposite of you - if I set goals for myself, I do so with the intention to see them accomplished. And not at some point in the rough future. Soon. Today, preferably, but tomorrow is good, too. If I have a goal hanging over me for weeks and months, I just end up tuning it out like it isn't even there. If I'm not going to be able to, say, earn a Rularuu Sword until I'm level 40 (think before SSK), then there really is no sense in focusing on getting to 40 as soon as possible. It'll take a long time, so there's no point worrying about it. Just integrate "level up, preferably" as my general strategy of approaching content and I'm good.

I guess this would work a lot better for a goal-driven person, but I'm a whim-driven person, myself. I prefer to tackle things as they come, when they come and I prefer to stick to the things I can achieve soon after I decide to achieve them. Long-term goals just depress me in the long term. And serious Inventions-usage is a VERY long-term goal. Me, I prefer things to have an end. Get to 50 and stop playing? Eh, so what? I have other characters I wanted to play anyway.

See, this kind of thing scares me. I'm not an altoholic, myself, as I've made around 30 characters in six years, which isn't a lot compared to some people. But even so, this notion that you'd be disinclined to play new characters because the investment in a single one is too great to have many... That makes for a very hostile game environment, in my opinion. In fact, this is the SINGLE BIGGEST break from replayability that I have in any game ever made. I've no problem with games that end quickly and easily. It just means I'll replay them over and over again. I've beaten Sands of Time so many times it isn't even funny, and I'm still not getting bored with City of Heroes. It's when a game becomes a pain in the *** to get to the end and finish that I'm basically guaranteed to get to the end once, and then never touch it again for as long as I live.

I love MegaMan X4. It's an old game, it's ugly, it's simplistic and it's kind of silly, too. But I can grab that game and replay it from beginning to end without ever even once doing something I don't enjoy. MegaMan X8 is a MUCH better game in the technical sense, in that combat is more fluid, it has a lot more options, much better graphics and interesting bosses. But it is SUCH A PAIN to gather up all the upgrades, and as I'm told it's not even designed to get them all in a single playthrough without grinding minerals in the mine level. Well, that has pretty much ensured that either I play the game once and don't bother, or I cheat to skip over the metals grind. I've beaten it twice honestly and I think twice with Trainers, for a total of four times. If that. I've beaten X4 over 40 times, and I could play it today without batting an eye.

I cannot believe that a single game exists that can be played for six years without replay value. And if I bothered with serious Inventions, the replay value would be SO LOW that I'd never play the game twice, let alone all the times I've spent replaying old missions. If I can't imagine ever having something for ALL of my characters, then I'm not going to get it on even ONE of my characters. Simple as that.

Far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as a "labour of love." I mean, I can say it, but I can never feel it. If it's love, it's never labour. If it's labour, it's never love. The moment something stops being fun and becomes a second job, I bail. That's why I'm so cautious about what I commit to - don't want to commit to something I might end up bailing on in the future.

As far as being invested in one's characters, I'm invested in mine. As written by me, not necessarily as implemented in City of Heroes. I'm not as attached to their virtual representations here in-game as I am about the abstract concepts of what I have them conceived as. If the game won't let me do what I want with them, I have other outlets, such as writing, art and, worse comes to worst, other games. If this game stops being fun, I'm not going to stay here and keep playing it for the characters. I can always start them over somewhere else.

To be honest, if I'd stay for anything, it's for the veteran rewards and booster packs, because those are a physical pain to get.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

People who build models, restore classic cars, paint or sculpt, I think many of them would disagree with this on certain levels. Sure, they almost certainly love some part of the process of creating, but there is a goal for I daresay most of them. I'm certainly not trying to really compare creating a character to fine art, but I'm saying there are similarities in the process being time invested in order to achieve a goal. In these example analogies that goal is a finished item that can then be enjoyed on its own merits, separate from the enjoyment of having created it. (Of course, there is also often pride in knowing that something "cool" or beautiful was the output of your own effort.)

I don't understand why this should scare anyone. You're looking at this very much in glass-half-empty way. I wasn't disincentived to play my alts. I played alts because I felt no reason to play what I really wanted to play - my favorite characters. I9 gave me a reason to do what I really wanted to do but couldn't stay focused on without some carrot. Playing alts wasn't so much what I wanted to do in the first place - I'm perfectly happy sticking mostly to my most favorites. (Don't get me wrong, I do create new characters, but not as prolifically as I did when getting to 50 felt like "the end".) You're afraid of the game offering me the option to do what I really wanted in a way that keeps me engaged?

I wanted to digest this for a while before I responded to it. There's a lot here I don't agree with.

What's "replay value"? I think that for most people it probably means literally the value of playing the game again from the beginning, more or less.

But that assumes you need to replay from the beginning to be entertained. That you can't continue to enjoy what you got after the 1st (or in my case, the first handful) of times "through". There's no defined "end" in CoH any more, and that's great for people like me. I don't avoid replay because I can't bear the notion of it. I am just having too much fun still playing the first times around. Why would I start over if I'm enjoying what I have going on now? (To be fair, the answer to that for me is that I want to try something different to hopefully enjoy it on its own merits. But that doesn't mean I'll abandon my older characters.)

On most of my characters, yes. Though I do have a couple 50's that have no enhancements at all.

Even if you see a majority here say they do, I wouldn't read a lot into it. The forums are, almost by their nature, frequented by a type of player who's often more curious or looking for a deeper understanding of the game. A tremendous chunk of the forums are dedicated to discussing how the ATs work, power mechanics, etc. A lot (but not all) of the people who come here are the kinds of personalities who have a willingness to explore a more complicated system like IOs. If they're willing to ask questions and read up on things, then they're already "investing" in playing the game.

People who you meet in WW or the BM are another set of folks more likely to have IOs. But when I look at the powers' tabs for characters in other PvE contexts, set bonuses aren't very common in my experience.

I was going to disagree with this because I almost exclusively use SOs on my characters... but then I realized that I have a few characters that use -KB IOs... and a bunch more that are slotted up with Lvl 35 Common IOs so that I don't have to slot much at all post-32.

So.... yeah, even I use them.


Also: Good point UberGuy, the forum community is a rather skewed look at the CoH/V community at large.

I don't think this comparison is very accurate, or if it is, then I'm REALLY playing the game the wrong way. I don't see "building" the character as the point, goal and substance of the game. I could, in fact, play this game absent of any character-specific progress. Sure, I'm a munchkin, so I'll miss the raise in power, but I'd still be able to play the game because my centre lies elsewhere.

If we had to run with this analogy, playing this game would be like driving a scrap car along the interstates and occasionally running across a shop that does work for free, upgrading this or that on your car as you go along. The goal of such an adventure would be pretty much to just cruise the highways, wind in your hair and that's that, with upgrading the actual car only something that happens as part of the road trip.

If this WERE like building a car, I'd probably have left long ago. When building a car, you're basically spending a lot of time doing work, paying money and probably chasing a deadline if you do it professionally, but you don't actually get to DRIVE it until you're done. Well, you could, but it's not really quite the same.

Basically, I don't mind having goals in the long run, but what I really want is to have my immediate short-term goal be "keep doing what you're doing because it's fun to do what you do." That way, nothing ever has a practical cost. If progress happens as you simply go about playing the game, then it's never work. It's like a cart going down a slope - you don't have to push it, you just have to sort of steer. And when the game is fun for me RIGHT NOW, then I don't worry about goals. If they're there, fine. I'll get to them when I get to them. If there are no goals, then eh. I'll just get to the end, or as far along as I find fun and go play something else.

What I'm afraid of is the game offering so much on one play-through that I can never get to the end even once. And if I can't get to the end once, then I'm certainly not going to bother trying twice. And I can guarantee one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt - NO GAME can hold my attention for six years without me replaying a lot. It's the "slow, hard or boring" problem. Any game designed to "last" me for years does so by wasting my time and getting on my nerves, ensure I WON'T get to the end. And once I realise this, I simply won't play it again. Why would I? I don't want to play half a game.

Why this scares me is that it assumes that if the game took longer and required more work to "finish" a particular character, then this is always, unquestionably, unambiguously good. And that's just terrifying to me, because the game's at about the limit of my tolerance as we speak, and we're looking at more "end game" of some sort in the pretty near future. This is the specific, precise, exact reason I don't play any other MMO, despite trying many. Sooner or later, I realise that I'm not going to get to "the end" without trading my soul for in-game rewards. I'm not going to just go play another character and get THAT to precisely nowhere, too, only to go play another and have THAT go nowhere in turn. I'm simply going to play something else.

I currently have 7 level 50 characters in City of Heroes, out of about 30. I still occasionally play those 7 characters, but I don't feel like playing them ALL the time, and I enjoy the fact that they're "done" and I don't HAVE to play them if I don't want to.

I just don't see any way for me to possibly agree with you under any circumstances at all, here. Yes, I very much NEED to replay a game from the beginning for me to keep enjoying it, because not a single game under the sun can hold me for this long on a single playthrough. I don't care if it was designed by God and Santa collaborating, it ain't lasting me six years. Ain't. I can play a single-player game for a week on one playthrough. I can play a really complicated single-player game like Mass Effect for a couple of weeks. But that's the extent of it. I can play an MMO for... Let me think. My first 50 was 750 hours, and I wanted nothing more than to play another character by the end. As soon as I dinged and levelled up, I logged out to remake an old Scrapper girl of mine.

The most I've ever done is play the same character for several months straight, and I was sick to my stomach of it by then. After that, I HAD to replay. That was several months. This is SIX YEARS. That is, and I'm not kidding, a quarter of my entire life. There is NO WAY a single playthrough of ANYTHING is going to last me for a quarter of my life. No. Way. And, to be perfectly honest, I find it utterly incomprehensible to even imagine anything lasting anyone for this long.

Yes, I'm aware that a game can physically take this long to "finish," that's pretty easy to design. Just make rewards puny, progress slow and gear break. Opps, I just described Lineage II! You can easily create a game that takes years to complete. Having to click a button 1000 times, when you can only click it once per day would take around three years. But I see no way that such a game can pull this off without making its content deathly boring, a massive waste of time or so uninterestingly hard that it stops being a game, anyway. And if such a game did exist, I doubt it would fit on my hard drive.

I cannot and will not accept any game that assumes it will last me six years on a single playthrough. And I have more years to go, too.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'd actually go with the analogy that it's more like a computer. Some people just buy a computer out of a box and get to playing on it. Some people buy most of a computer and then spend time adding to it to help boost its performance. Some people spend a lot of time and money trying to keep their computer on the cutting edge and squeeze every bit of performance possible out of it. Some people are happy upgrading by just buying more memory or maybe a new graphics card; others worry about the motherboard or overclocking the processor, etc.

But all these people are actually using their computers in the meantime. The guy who wants the best possible system still puts his components in and fires up his games and plays them until he starts drooling over the next wave of upgrades.

And, just like with IOs, you have some people who can't imagine why anyone would degrade themselves by buying a system at Best Buy or from Dell instead of handpicking the best pieces and assembling it their kitchen table because then the computer is so much better and so much cheaper. And you have people who say "Look, I just want something that'll play the games I want to play, has a warranty in case it stops playing them and requires the least amount of tinkering on my part before I get to the 'fun' stuff."

I guess I'm a pretty middle of the road guy since I'm playing on an old Dell with new memory, graphics card and power supply I replaced and since I advocate for Common IOs but don't spend a lot of time/money trying to noodle out all the best set-frankenslotting techniques.

I think the core place where you and I view things very differently is this idea of what "the end" means. Based on your examples with other games, for you "the end" means you've done everything you could possibly do. You want this game to offer a distinct checklist of things, and once you've done them all, you feel free to start over. To me, CoH isn't like that even now. I just about always can come up with new ways to tweak my existing characters, primarily with regards to what IOs they have slotted, but that also interacts in some ways with what powers they have. My characters are "done" when I decide they are, and I am free to come back and pull them out of "retirement" whenever I feel like it. Of course, declaring a character "retired" isn't something I've ever actually done with any of my characters - I just haven't played some of them in a while (I have 9 50s).

In this regard, CoH was practically unique when it came out, and I think its still fairly novel. The flexibility found in the combination of powersets, power picks within the (locked) powerset choices, slotting, and now IOs, not to mention the costume creator, for me, this allows a single character to remain interesting an awfully long time, if not forever.

By the way, something I didn't mention that's probably important. I am quite so dedicated to the notion of "crafting" each character as I go that I actually take longer than I have to. No one has to take as long as I do, even to get the fairly loot-heavy characters I get, because I insist pretty heavily on paying my way with each character. All my IOd 50s are multi-billionaires, yet by and large, I don't share their wealth between them. I could easily twink another 9 characters to quite high levels of IO builds if I dumped my inf from my existing characters into new ones. But since I actually do enjoy the journey quite a lot, I set myself the goal of earning the inf anew each time. Trust me, I'm sure a lot of people who read that will think it's completely nuts, but it really ensures that I both really enjoy playing the character (or I'd stop) and I know how to play it inside and out.

Thats a great Analogy.

Many games allow you to keep on playing after they're done, basically to pick up on all the things that you didn't do in the actual playthrough. I could bring up Mass Effect 2, but I want to be "oldskool" and bring up Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now. This game had a fixed succession of races punctuated by timed challenges, ending with you pressing the button to launch the nukes to start WW3 and set about the post-apocalyptic future of zombies that the original Camrageddon took place in. Once you do, the game basically unlocks all cars for you to use and lets you replay all of your old races if you really want to. It does not, however, unlock all of its engine, armour and offence upgrades, as those are pickups on the levels, so if you haven't gotten them, you can always go back and collect them after the end.

You can keep playing, there are more things to do, you can still earn money and spend it (largely in lump sum every time you split your car down the middle), but the game is very much unequivocally and unquestionably over. You can play it, but it's already over. That's what I want. A point at which the main progression that the game is built on comes to an end, with only side activities left to take care of. I can deal with Inventions, but why would I want to? The game is almost entirely playable without them. But I still COULD if I so chose to. It doesn't make it any less "over," it just gives me something to do after the end. However, as I don't have to collect ALL upgrades in order to beat Carmageddon, I'm glad that I don't have to collect enough Inventions to "beat" City of Heroes.

What worries me with the new and upcoming post-50 progression system, on the other hand, is that it will move the goal posts and put the "end" too far away. Yeah, you got to 50, sure. But now you can gain another 50 "not-levels" and get a bunch of other rewards, and that will take you TWICE as long as it took you to get here! Oh, and you'll need 50 people to even attempt this! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha! Not for me. I just know they won't sell whatever future system they add in as optional this time around.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.