3 years and i have a few things to say.

I'm going to start this out by saying that I have been a loyal player of CoH for 3 years now. But, I hate to say it, there are a number of things that I can't ignore as things that are killing the game as a whole. Given all the changes to the game within the last year i felt that i should make some of these things known. I'm sure there are rafts of people that would agree with me and a number that would say i am full of crap. After speaking with a number of vet players and a number of newcomers to the game, I have come up with a list of things that were changed and could be could be re-changed to keep players interested in maintaining an active account.

I'll start the list off by saying AE was a tremendously BAD idea, now i'm not saying allowing players to make thire own content is a bad idea, I am however saying players were given too much freedom with the system. This lead to massive exploiting of the system resulting in a large increase in lvl 50 toons and a number of good-standing accounts being banned. There is also alot of players that don't even use the rest of the game. they spend all their time in the AE building in Atlas or Mercy island farming AE missions to get to lvl 50 in a manner of days some even with in hours of making a toon it took me a little over 3 months of playing to get my first 50 this was just after issue 10 was made live, It seems to me that AE was a good idea gone VERY VERY bad, it is basically an exploit machine and a way for inf selling websites to make money off of the CoX game as a whole.
On top of that your Dev. team is wasting time coming up with fixes for said exploiting when they could be working on new in-game content or fixing system that have been taken out of the game (e.g.; base raiding/Item of power system). The only way i can think of for AE to be free of exploits is to make all user made content be submitted for review before it is published. which in turn would cost NcSoft alot more money cause they would have to employ more testers to cover the massive influx of new user made content. I say Blow up all the AE buildings and say it was all a nemesis plot to gather data on all "supers".

Which brings me to the next item on my list Base Raids and Items of Power.
This system was removed from the game along with the Cathedral of Pain Trial on October 11, 2006 due to an exp exploit. The Cathedral of Pain Trial was returned to the game with issue 18. sadly the Item of power system was not returned to the game base raiding was also left out in issue 18. What is so frustrating about this is the fact that the base building system still has base defense objects that have no use at all without the base raiding. I will admit some of the defense objects make really good decor. we should still be able to use the objects for that which they were intended to be used. I personally have spent the last year building my SG's base to be a Trial in its own right. To my dismay i was told that the items of power and base raiding were not added back into the game along with the whole reason they were taken out in the first place the Cathedral of Pain Trial. I know a number of people myself included that would love to be able to base raid. A number of things could be cited as being more then ample reason to fix the system in its entirity, one of which is the new aspect it would bring to the almost dead pvp community another being that it would bring new loyality to SG's and VG's.

The PvP system now there is something i can talk about for hours on how its so one sided. I understand that the PvP system was mainly built for the Villain side of the game, because of lack of content in the Rogue Isles. The System is as i said, way too oriented toward the Villain Archetypes, Yes i know that with going rogue you can have a villain archetype as a hero. The point is the other archetypes should be more equal in pvp.

One point in which i found alot of people were more angry about than happy was the Zone Restrictions. Given some zones are still lvl restricted most are not, I understand the restrictions were taken off to add more freedom to the new player to see the game. BUT and this is a big'ol but.... When a Mother ship raid is happening in the War zone and zone is full but 30 to 40% of the people in zone are under lvl 35 this causes the people who would be of actuall use to said raid to not be allowed in. Moreover zone restrictions were once used to denote the minimum power lvl you had to be to contend with anything in a particular zone. Which meant the higher lvl you were the more places and stuff you could do and gather such as badges and unlockable content such as the Rularuu weapons, etc... Which, in turn, kept players interested in the game. I have found that a lot of people would rather have the Zone restrictions put back on.

Praetoria I love it I really do.... But really ANOTHER War. We still havent delt with the rikti War in our own back yard. I mean after 2 years of fighting them on our home turf, we don't know how to get to or even know where the rikti homeworld is. Give us more to the story that's already playing out.

I'm not saying that what has been done to the game since issue 10 is bad but there are alot of things that are lacking that could be fixed or CoX might lose people to the DC universe release or even worse to WoW.

I will step down off my box of Palmolive and say i hope to see what's in store for issue 20.

Dicro
Virtue

Popcorn... Get your popcorn here... Popcorn...

Heh, I've been here for a while, ragequit for a while, and while I don't think I've seen it all I've been around the block a few times.

AE Babies. This is just another take on PLs and bridging and the like. Within every group there are always people who don't think the journey is the reward. They want to get to the end so fast they believe that it's their way of winning.

AE really didn't introduce anything different in that regard. While it is like growing up on a diet of sugar and empty calories, people who stick with AE generally won't bother you much. As long as they are paying players, they are also helping your experience by funding the publisher and the developers of this game. Which is a good thing.

The only thing I wish the devs did better with AE is give better tools for the people who are genuinely writing content for AE, instead of getting lumped in with the regular farms and marginal content.

For example, Cai has a contest that is contained in AE that seems to be very well received and his arcs are very well written and engaging, and go beyond what the devs have done.

I'm not saying that exploits are good, in fact I think they're bad for the game. And AE is a big point of contention there since it is so much easier to find exploits in AE due to the complexity of the mission architect. I just wish that they'd stay on top of exploits and shut them down much earlier.

The other point you make is PvP. They stuck a fork in it and now it is really done. I know that wasn't their intent but I don't know how they could have really fixed it. This game was founded on PvE and no numbers, and most of the player base who've tried PvP are extremely frustrated that the rules are completely different from PvE. There are a subset of PvP players who still love it, but I think they loved the old system more. Not sure what they can do to fix it since it is majorly broken.

Base raiding. Probably dead until they fix PvP.

Hanging story lines. Not really great but comics did that all the time. Too bad this game suffers from the same problems on a loot basis as well. Brain storms, base salvage, task force merits, candy canes, vanguard merits, alignment merits etc. There's a lot of cruft in the system because the devs felt like introducing something and then there is nothing else built on top of it. This shallow but wide loot system makes it seem like the devs can't decide on which way to go.

It seems like they've abandoned the economy lately because inflation is so high, and their response is to basically shelve it by making things that are harder/impossible to trade, like alignment merits and incarnate shards (bind on pickup).

Of course, that's just griping on my part. There's a whole slew of things that have been done right, like third builds, a whole slew of Quality of Life improvements, Ultra mode, Incarnate TFs and other content, Praetoria that show that this game is still vibrant and alive and able to keep (my) interest.

Like you, I just wish they were more consistent in all the facets of the game instead of it being so uneven after 6 years.

Don't get me wrong there are tons of things they got right. That are amazing but why bring in new stuff if the old stuff isn't fixed or working right..