Future of CoX..

I've played a few MMoRPG's in my time, CoH is one of the few I've consistently enjoyed.

There are a few things I am a bit confused about, which I believe effect the future of this game, and of course, hence make me wonder about the time investment I am making in it,

I'll list the points I believe effect CoX's future, I'd like to hear everyone's comments on them,

• Grind: This is a very confusing topic for me. 'Other' popular MMoRPG's tend to have much more of a grind to them than CoH, yet, they have WAY more subscribers, orders of magnitude more - I don't quite get it. I thought that most players would want to avoid the grind and instead want games they can play more casually. Yet, the case seems to be different.
  
  It seems that CoX is gravitating towards the grind concept more (with the incarnate trails? months and above to max out a character even when playing regularly?). Luckily the grind is limited to 50+, not for every player in the game.
  
  This brings up the question though, will this new 'grind when you hit 50' model work? If so, is this what we want CoX to truly be?
  
• End Game Content: Till recently, end game content was kinda sparse on CoX; in fact, when I joined, I kept putting of IO'ing up my toons thinking 'what's the point of having IO's when you're already 50! Isn't that the end of the game' - then I started realizing, that to a large extent, this game 'starts' at 50.
  
  Now WAY more 50+ content is being added, but it is being made so that people will only get benefit from the content to the 50+ toon that is running that content. Earlier, I could do 50+ TF's and rake in inf, that I could use to slot/power up lower level toons and make the game more enjoyable for them. Now, it's more to the tune of 'you have to put in a lot of time, to make that 50 toon better, who is, well, already 50'
  
• PvP: This is a sore point; how can a game the size of CoX totally ignore PvP like this? Most other games with higher subscriber numbers have WAY more focus on PvP. Do the devs not get that this is really important to players?
  
  I understand that their inclination to work on this is lower since very low percentages of players PvP, but that is also because to a large extent because of the mechanics of PvP.
  
  Considering the focus on incarnate content, is PvP really just going to be dismissed? And if it is, what will people do 'after' they have all their incarnate slots? Or, what if they really don't care that much about getting their incarnate abilities?
  
• Mid-Game and Starter Content: I have only one major complaint against this - rewards. Why would anyone really want to play much mid/start game content when they know that most of what they'll get will be close to worthless? Who buys a level 30 LOTG defense? Or a Aegis Resistance/Endurance?
  
• Age: The game is 7+ years old - most games tend to start to die out right about this point, even if wildly successful earlier.
  
  Considering CoX was never a top contender for successful to start with, what does this bode for the future of the game?

Most of my IOs are in the early 30 range. My tanks end up defense capped, and my doms perma dom 1, by then. Hardly useless, and I get to be awesome half my journey to 50. But yes, obtaining them is much difficult at these levels.

As for the OP:

Grind:

Yes, it does seem the incarnate bit is leaning more toward "grind" - but on the other hand, with shards planned for "Any content" (or something close to that for a 50,) it's less of an issue.

See, when I think of "grind," I think of two things -

"Bring bat 10 bat nose hairs," where you're having to stay in a limited area (often with other groups competing for the same thing) and these items drop out of maybe 1/10 of what you kill. We just don't have this. You *can,* I suppose, argue we do for IOs and whatnot - but that's a personal choice to go after, it's not required by the game.

"Do X useless task just to be allowed to move forward." Aion comes to mind for this, for me. I had skills that just didn't get upgraded because, after a certain level, the books you needed got expensive. And don't get me into the wings - I'm glad I had vet rewards and (IIRC) a collector's bonus for them. There just aren't any non-self-created brick walls like that.

Now, yes, we have hunts, and some people will say "Hunt 50 Carnies" is a grind... but for me, it's orders of magnitude smaller. Plus, of course, we can drop missions.

End game content:

Eh. I'm down to "wait and see." I've never been big on "raids" - the ones we've had (Mothership, primarily) have been fairly friendly, casual-wise, and not required for anything. Plus we haven't had the "Raid to get gear to raid to get gear to raid" treadmill. I feel like we're seeing this trying to creep in with the Incarnate stuff that's been revealed, and don't particularly like it... but I've said my piece on that, and am sitting back and waiting to see what happens when all this is released.

(Again, Aion - I actually liked trying to take forts. There was more to it than just "swarm," though, as there were outlying islands in the Abyss that could be taken - divert a force to take them and get some help, or keep people there to guard them so you don't get nuked. However, for the most part - if you weren't at or near top level, it could be somewhat frustrating.)

PVP:

You're going to hit a nerve here.

The game launched without PVP to begin with. Even when it was just heroes in the arena, though (issue 4,) there were balance issues. Tweaks were made all the way through issue 12 - and then they dropped issue 13, which really did a number on the PVP population. We went from a learning curve to a learning cliff, thanks to suppresison, powers working differently and the like. Revisiting PVP is going to be a *huge* project for them - if they do more than talk about it and send in the occasional Community Redname to post "What did you like" posts. Much like the bases, there's a sense of being left to dangle in PVP.

Also, the fact this launched without PVP is part of why some people LIKE it.

WoW, Aion, Lineage and others were designed with PVP in mind from the start. COH, not so much. There was talk about it, but - well, go to my "Early COH trailer" guide and go through the dev diaries. Early designer comments, specifically - like Dakan saying "One city full of heroes, another full of villains is silly, really" (or something to that effect)... yet what do we have?

Mid-game:

For one, you're getting into the lore of the game, finding out what's going on with groups and whatnot. And there are some great arcs in that range. And if you're rewards focused, well... low and mid level salvage and recipes are sought after. *shrug*

Age:

So what? The game has been successful - if it weren't, it wouldn't still be here. WoW is an outlier, and one some companies got the wrong message from ("If we don't have millions of subs, we're a failure!") We've been profitable enough for NCSoft to buy the game directly and hire on most of the developers, give them their own office building and expand the team (from 15 to 60+.) Future of the game? We'll keep going as long as we're profitable.

As far as most games "dying out at this point," I'd argue most die early (1-2 years.) Either they crash and burn (Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Earth and Beyond, Hellgate) or they go F2P (CO) or, if they're with sony, go on as part of the Station Pass for a while (think this kept the Matrix going for a bit.) For COH to keep going on its original subscription model for this long? Hey, that's great. And they keep adding new stuff... like, oh, GR. Stuff that's rather labor (and time and money) intensive, as opposed to little bugfix and QOL patches. We're not in "maintenance mode," in other words - we're still growing.

Future of COX? Still has a few years, I think.

See my Guides and Tutorials

"People hate grind" is a myth. People say they don't like it, but it's still an attractive activity and provides a reason for players to stick around. Get over this idea of a grindless MMO; the only successful games that don't have grind are the ones that rely on a one-time up-front fee.

Grind: An MMO without grinding would be a dead MMO. Think about this for a second if you are getting all huffy. An MMO is designed to sustain subscribers for the longest period of time, the way you do that is by artificially padding out content to make it last longer. In my opinion CoX is one of the most grindy MMOs on the market. It is litteraly 50 levels of doing the same thing over and over again until you reach 50 in which case you either continue doing the same things or reroll and do the same thing with a new character. Task Force are the divergence from this in that sometimes you get a mission in the TF that gives you something to do other than one of the three mission arc types in this game (Kill, Glowy, Escot.) People love to grind, it just has to be more involving than hitting the same button over and over again, hence why a LOT of people hate the low levels in this game.

End Game Content: I am surprised it took them this long to release it honestly. From what I have seen of i20, even though it is a little sparse, it is enough to keep me entertained for a couple of weeks at least. Apex and Tin Mage are STILL fun to me because there is a CHANCE of failure unlike any other task in the game thus far.

PvP: Yeah good luck with this, the majority of people in this game would rather see all the PvPers chased out than see it ever get attention again. If the devs DO work on it it will be to a bunch of whines that their time could be spent better elsewhere, for example look at the new end game content and all the detractors whinning about it.

Mid Game: Ehh this one I just say needs more TFs which we have coming down the line in i20 so...maybe eliminate TOs and DOs at this point just so it isnt like pulling teeth playing a low level character? As for rewards...well what do you want? All recipe drops to be 50? I just save merits on my characters until they reach 50 then buy what I need for their build.

Age: I have played a LOT of MMOs in my time and you are right, most games do start to fade away a little before 10 years but this game has the special rights to being the king of a very small genre so it will probably last longer. But you are right that more and more people will leave every month and it will get smaller and smaller but it will be years before it has to worry....Unless the devs pull another i13 or ED and drive away a chunk of their player base, cause that may do the game in at this point.

As far as everyone laughing at Champions, why do you have to mock another game to make you feel better about the one you play? Are you so worried about CoX that you have to constantly pat it on the back and tell it how great it is so it can keep on trucking? I just don't get it but I see it all the time in this game.

If grinds weren't "popular" (either directly or by teasing some part of our monkey brain) you wouldn't have a bajillion people playing Farmville.

I'm hoping beyond hope that Cryptic, and Jack by default, never get their hands on another IP I actually care about...

So much potential only to be wasted.

Shade, we mock CO not to make ourselves feel better or superior. We mock it because it deserves to be mocked. If it had been all that was promised we wouldn't be here to mock in the 1st place. It was touted for such a long time as the COH killer yet we see how that went.
We earned the right to mock CO when their Dev's actively used our forum to recruit.