So, something I have always wondered about the PTA
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-04-23 11:05 in Player Questions
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I havn't been following STO at all, I know it launched, is it not doing well? is it possible that another very popular franchise (like D&D) is failing online?
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Originally Posted by EvilDeathBee
Quoted for truth, unfortunately.
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That's MR. Frost. (espically if your that **** kisser from Buffalo).
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Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
I agree with you, however, would like to ask, how many times did you take a low lvl mish in Steel that sent you right to the lvl 14 nazi's?
That was probably part of the thought process. I just dont think it was fully thought out. Of course, that is me saying this here, where hindsight is 20/20... Robert_B, Sorry for the thread jack. BTW, looks like you got some Andy Frost on your avatar. |
actually since I am complaining about trivial stuff, why can't I switch detectives so I dont have to go indoors to get a mish?
Freaking Unions!
Another potential reason in addition to the above-mentioned ones is that the devs originally probably didn't want people to move between zones too quickly - for example, the original Paragon Dance party had an entrance/exit in Steel Canyon that got relocated because it was too close to the Yellow Line station. Of course, in the age of Ouroboros portals which when combined with the trains can take you almost anywhere quickly, this doesn't make quite so much sense anymore.
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
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Wouldn't be the state that executed him/her (Patterson probably couldn't even see him/her). At least not in THIS state. |
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Wanna go from the Bronx to Brooklyn? Simple, transfer in Manhattan. Just get off at the Cloisters and walk to Battery Park for the transfer.
If any civil engineer did that in real life, they'd be executed by the state. |
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Originally Posted by Robert_B
I havn't been following STO at all, I know it launched, is it not doing well? is it possible that another very popular franchise (like D&D) is failing online?
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@Remianen / @Remianen Too
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(shrug)|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Wanna go from the Bronx to Brooklyn? Simple, transfer in Manhattan. Just get off at the Cloisters and walk to Battery Park for the transfer.
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There are a few places in New York City where you have to walk BLOCKS to get from one line to another. Still, I guess it meets the OP's criterion of being 'in the same building' since you can get there without going outside (via honking long tunnels).
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Of the MMO's that I've played, CoH is by far the easiest to navigate rapidly. I can move to any part of the city in only a couple of minutes. I have:|
Originally Posted by Mnemnosyne
I don't know about lore-wise, but this is something I was complaining about just recently, having made my first hero since City of Villains came out. Paragon City is so spread out and annoying to get from one place to another in, and one of the main problems is a lack of easy transfer spot between Green and Blue lines, as opposed to the ferry in the Rogue Isles which is the only method of transportation needed to access all level 15+ zones.
I imagine it was indeed an attempt to slow down travel, but these days that concept is very backwards and kind of irritating. They really need to add in some sort of central station from which you can travel to pretty much any zone directly, especially those hazard zones. |
trams
war wall tunnels
consignment house teleporters
mission teleporter
Pocket D teleporter
travel powers
team member single and group teleportation
RWZ zone portal
Midnighter's club pathing
Oroboros teleporter
...and probably some I've forgotten. I've only covered blue side, of which I'm most familiar. I realize some of these are earned, some bought, and some dependent on others, but there's still a lot of speed and choices available to a seasoned character. Even a new character has a lot of movement potential nowadays, especially since they can access the RWZ which puts Atlas Park "close" to Founder's Falls Green Line.
We can't really do comparisons to other MMO's here, which is too bad because the time sinks elsewhere are spectacular. Here it is a minor annoyance at times.
War wall tunnels? WHere do you find those?
Enjoy your day please.
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he's talking about the gates between the cities. E.G. Gate from Atlas to Skyway.
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Originally Posted by BashfulBanshee
War wall tunnels? WHere do you find those?
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Talking about lore - duri g the rikti war, it so happened that the zones hardest hit were all serviced by he redline in Paragon City. The tracks themselves were even frequent targets after a while because the redline drivers/conductors/pilots kept the lines running to help enable the heroes.
This is why the train cars all say, as I recall, that they are red line and not green or yellow.
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Might be hard to accept, however, Geco was the one who said they intended for teams to street sweep between mish's. I extrapolated the relation to the tram lines because it seemed a logical extension of their design philosophy at the time. |
Originally Posted by Robert_B
I have a hard time accepting this at all, CoX is not the first MMO by far and all other games have experienced this after being online for a period of time, and of course there is a segment of every games population that has no clue about the games lore and just levels.
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Originally Posted by Robert_B
That's MR. Frost. (espically if your that **** kisser from Buffalo).
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I h8te you.
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Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
Funny, he always insisted I call him Andy when I was buying him beers at the pheonix...
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You should accept it. It's factually correct. They really did expect people to slog from mission to mission on foot, despite giving them access to (literally) high-flying and/or high-speed travel powers. We have this from their own mouths.|
Originally Posted by Robert_B
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Originally Posted by SinisterDirge  They didnt foresee that teams would just ignore missions(and story, content) altogether, and just street sweep, so they ended up incorporating mission bonus xp to move folks into missions(Thus having the playerbase ignore other created content such as hazard zones...). So, if I had to guess, they probably imagined that people would street sweep between the tram lines... I have a hard time accepting this at all, CoX is not the first MMO by far and all other games have experienced this after being online for a period of time, and of course there is a segment of every games population that has no clue about the games lore and just levels. |
They also not forsee that people would prefer something that gave them more consistent, higher XP gains. Originally, there was no halving of debt in missions, and mission completion bonuses were significantly smaller. Missions used to always be +0 mobs or lower. Street spawns were the only reliable place to find large spawns of mobs over your own level. Thus, street spawns were the better reward/time. I think the jury came in a long time ago on what people do in MMOs when presented with a consistent better reward/time.
Never, ever assume that the makers of an MMO know the lessons learned by makers of other MMOs, even if the lesson seems blindingly obvious to you without prior knowledge from another game. Not only did the original makers of this game fail to do so, some of them went on to repeat lessons already learned in this game in successive ones they worked on.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
You should accept it. It's factually correct. They really did expect people to slog from mission to mission on foot, despite giving them access to (literally) high-flying and/or high-speed travel powers. We have this from their own mouths.
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That may be true, but I always thought the Yellow/Green lines were separated due to keeping the zone list small enough to quickly find where you wanted to go and reducing the amount players blocking the entrance gates. Of course, I tend to think logically, which may not apply here.
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C'mon. A little artistic freedom for architects who have figured out how to convert buildings into TARDISes!|
Originally Posted by EvilDeathBee
I'll vote for the architect who designed the city's office buildings first. I mean, I take the elevator up to the second floor, enter a room that requires me to turn left, go up some stairs, down a hall to the right, turn left, down another flight of stairs and then turn right, only to find a hallway that leads to another room, in which I have to either go down a flight of stairs and turn left or climb over a railing and turn right, then go up some stairs and down a hallway to the left, then down another flight of stairs and turn right in order to find the elevator to the third floor.
After that, you complain about the roads? |
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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As far as the line separation, I don't really know. They once told us that the enhancement stores used to only have "power 10" enhancements in order to keep the scrollable list of things to buy smaller and easier to manage. So that logic went that in order to keep the list more manageable, they denied you better enhancement for, among other things, mezzes and endurance modification until higher levels. Is there logic there? Oh, yeah. Is it logic most players would come up with? I have to wonder.
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Originally Posted by MrVacant
That may be true, but I always thought the Yellow/Green lines were separated due to keeping the zone list small enough to quickly find where you wanted to go and reducing the amount players blocking the entrance gates. Of course, I tend to think logically, which may not apply here.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Actually, I'll say that scrolling through the enhancement lists in RWZ, PI, and Cimerora is a freaking pain in the rear end. I can think of better ways to present the lists to players "now" ... but I imagine that when the game was created there just wasn't the tech or engine work available and the developers exposed the enhancement lists in the best way possible.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
As far as the line separation, I don't really know. They once told us that the enhancement stores used to only have "power 10" enhancements in order to keep the scrollable list of things to buy smaller and easier to manage. So that logic went that in order to keep the list more manageable, they denied you better enhancement for, among other things, mezzes and endurance modification until higher levels. Is there logic there? Oh, yeah. Is it logic most players would come up with? I have to wonder.
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One of the other factors to keep in mind is how resolutions have changed over the years the game has been active. When both CoH launched the most common monitor size was 1024*768. Yes, 1600*1200 CRT's existed... and enjoyed what the Radeon 9700 could do... but unless you were spending mega-bucks, your highest resolution was probably 1280*1024.
Given that most players using the popular graphics cards at the time; which for reference were the Geforce 4 TI, Geforce 4 MX, Geforce 3 Ti, Geforce 2, Geforce 2 MX, Radeon 7500, and Radeon 8500; would probably be running the game in 1024*768 or 800*600. In these really low resolutions enhancement scrolling is a bit of a pain. Modern users running 1280*800 or 1440*900 displays often can find the in-game windows just too short sometimes.
So yeah, when the game came out... the enhancement limiting really made sense from a UI perspective.
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As to how I would address it now?
Well.. with the introduction of recipes and salvage, we now have systems that allow us to sort each by tabs, and the Auction House brought a nested drop list.
It'd be "nice" if the enhancement vendors would also use tabs or nested drop lists to expose enhancements to players. This would make life much easier on lower resolution systems, but not be annoying as the resolution goes up.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
As far as the line separation, I don't really know. They once told us that the enhancement stores used to only have "power 10" enhancements in order to keep the scrollable list of things to buy smaller and easier to manage. So that logic went that in order to keep the list more manageable, they denied you better enhancement for, among other things, mezzes and endurance modification until higher levels. Is there logic there? Oh, yeah. Is it logic most players would come up with? I have to wonder.
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Enhancement lists are irrelevant since they're used for a completely different purpose.
Think about it, how incredibly annoying would it be to scroll through the list if every main zone popped up? And how often would someone accidentally click on the wrong zone in haste while on a TF or whatnot (even though that still happens even with the current set-up)?
I'm not saying that the PTA system is perfect, because it's fairly clumsy as it is, but it could be a lot worse. I tend to think it was designed to limit congestion and in that respect, it's doing a pretty good job.
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I believe the engineer responsible was this chap here.
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
As an exercise to the reader, tell me how many lines run through Skyway... no, don't look at a map. Go there and count the number of lines, how many above ground and below ground stations (yes, below ground stations) there are and where they leave and enter the zone. Go go go.
When you come back, I'll have the civil engineer who designed it strapped to a chair and I'll let you throw the switch. |
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
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I think the enhancement lists are a better example of how things were not fully thought through. Then when asked about it, it almost seems as though a certain Dev made a reason up on the spot.|
Originally Posted by MrVacant
Enhancement lists are irrelevant since they're used for a completely different purpose.
Think about it, how incredibly annoying would it be to scroll through the list if every main zone popped up? And how often would someone accidentally click on the wrong zone in haste while on a TF or whatnot (even though that still happens even with the current set-up)? I'm not saying that the PTA system is perfect, because it's fairly clumsy as it is, but it could be a lot worse. I tend to think it was designed to limit congestion and in that respect, it's doing a pretty good job. |
As for the transit system, I doubt they thought at any time, "Oh, we want to limit the congestion at the stations... lets not add Founders Falls to the list, and we might as well keep the lower level zones on their own lines... That'll do it!" Of course, I could be wrong. But Jack seemed more of a "This is how I want them to play" kinda GM...
DEVS: "This is high level content. It's dangerous and difficult and far out of the way."
PLAYERS: "This is high level content. It's slightly inconvenient so I'm going to do things the easy way."
Back in the day, if you were a level 40+ hero you didn't HAVE any easy options for content- no radio missions with thorns and council, no level 51 Rikti, no Ouro back and get XP, no XP when running Sister Psyche, no AE farms. You had choices like "Malta or Infernal, or go find the Shadow Shard."
There were about TWO missions that were high-level and relatively easy. Freaks and wolves. Guess which two missions everyone did?
EDIT: Boy, I got off topic in a hurry. My alleged point was, the game still has the skeleton of "higher level = less convenient" built into it. There are so many workarounds, though. . . Ouroboros back from the far end of the Shadow Shard still feels like cheating to me.
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While I never waited for a bus, I used to leave my toon at the bus stops. This was before they added auto-log. Believe it or not, the baddies (no CoV yet) would leave a person who was at the bus stop alone.|
Originally Posted by Master-Blade
I always found that funny, considering there are bus stops all over the place. I wonder if anybody has ever seriously waited around for a ride at one. haha
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Rich the Stop Guy
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Step Up or Step Aside
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I think you rather thoroughly missed the point. The early devs in particular made all sorts of decisions - be they interface, zone layout, game balance, or what have you - based on logic that was either fairly radically at odds with what a lot of players ended up actually wanting or just plain internally inconsistent.|
Originally Posted by MrVacant
Enhancement lists are irrelevant since they're used for a completely different purpose.
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The enhancement interface was just an example, specifically of one of the things that is not something the players wanted. When people found out the reasoning behind the "power 10" enhancement situation was because of concern about unwieldly lists at store vendors, "flabbergasted" is probably the kindest description I can give of the posted replies.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Well, I suppose we'll truly never know exactly why things are the way they are. So, until we all try to generate and market our own superhero games, these kinds of things will continue to bewilder us. 
So, if I had to guess, they probably imagined that people would street sweep between the tram lines...