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Thank you. A million times, thank you.|
Originally Posted by Brakner
I so hate “end game content” crap that WoW has brain washed people into. I really whish WoW wouldn’t have screwed it up for all other MMO’s and tainted a generations brains to what it is to actually play an MMO’s through all levels.
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I saw people posting crap like "the game begins at 50" in the MARTy thread and wanted to slap them. That line of thought is true in other games like WoW, but not this one. This game has always, always been about the experience of going to 50 with a new class, gradually feeling more and more super, making new friends, new alliances.
Maybe I'm just jaded by remembering what it was like to have a level 50 during i1, when there were no badges, no raids, no PVP, no crafting, no epic ATs, and just the original Freedom Phalanx TFs. "Congrats on hitting 50, now go make a new toon and do it again immediately!"
We should be thankful that they've added any end game at all. That said, I'm not terribly fond of the Underground Incarnate Trial. The length, mechanics and players feeling the need to organize leagues by perceived perfect group composition is starting to smell a bit too much like WoW's end game.
Partial Character List:
LENINA 198-DELTA - 50+3 DP/Kin Corruptor (Main) / Captiosus - 50+3 Energy/Energy Blaster
Highlands.Hellraiser - 50+1 DS/Fire Tanker / SpazRat - 50 Claw/SR Stalker
Col. Gregor Aktaybr - 45 Robots/Time MM
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The game changed. You can still play that way, but we have an end-game now and it is only going to become more important as time passes and more of it is released.|
Originally Posted by Captiosus
I saw people posting crap like "the game begins at 50" in the MARTy thread and wanted to slap them. That line of thought is true in other games like WoW, but not this one. This game has always, always been about the experience of going to 50 with a new class, gradually feeling more and more super, making new friends, new alliances.
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| We should be thankful that they've added any end game at all. |
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| That said, I'm not terribly fond of the Underground Incarnate Trial. The length, mechanics and players feeling the need to organize leagues by perceived perfect group composition is starting to smell a bit too much like WoW's end game. |
People want "challenge". "Challenge" has its' requirements. One of the requirements of "Challenge" is that the sub-optimal are excluded from the content because the optimal can't afford to carry them and still succeed at the "challenge". The greater the "challenge", the more narrow the optimal range becomes and the more the suboptimal are excluded by necessity (assuming the league wishes to succeed).
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Well, the Cheesecake Factory does pretty good business around these parts.
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Originally Posted by Indiramourning
/thread
I'd like to add that if 'End Game' is what you look for when selecting a MMORPG that would be like selecting a resturant based only upon what kind of deserts they offer. |
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You could argue that not having that has contributed to keeping this games community largely a positive place for the past seven years, compared to others.
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Originally Posted by Sun_Runner
People want "challenge". "Challenge" has its' requirements. One of the requirements of "Challenge" is that the sub-optimal are excluded from the content because the optimal can't afford to carry them and still succeed at the "challenge". The greater the "challenge", the more narrow the optimal range becomes and the more the suboptimal are excluded by necessity (assuming the league wishes to succeed).
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I'm going to respectfully disagree with you. I play City for FUN, not challenge. My life is not the easiest day to day, I don't log into a game for grinding out to a reward. I pal around, I set the regular missions to a difficulty that is 'challenging' but requires minimal trips to the hospital. I chat people up and play with costumes. I do occasional tfs and the like. I PUG when I can.|
Originally Posted by Sun_Runner
People want "challenge". "Challenge" has its' requirements. One of the requirements of "Challenge" is that the sub-optimal are excluded from the content because the optimal can't afford to carry them and still succeed at the "challenge". The greater the "challenge", the more narrow the optimal range becomes and the more the suboptimal are excluded by necessity (assuming the league wishes to succeed).
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And the great part is since it's a MMO, not a closed system, you can have your in-game "challenges". You can grind as much as you want to get gear that 'excludes' me. And I can go play on builds that would make optimal players cry and have just as much fun. And not affect you, or your league at all. And that's awesome.
Tl;dr, your end game isn't my end game. And I've been playing this game since a couple months after launch, so I've had a long time to polish my 'end game content'. And despite what you say, the devs are still releasing content that makes my 'end game' better in addition to the high end things. Have you seen the new costume packs and mission content? It's pretty cool.
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Gods, this argument? What is this, Burning Crusade-era WoW?|
Originally Posted by Sun_Runner
People want "challenge". "Challenge" has its' requirements. One of the requirements of "Challenge" is that the sub-optimal are excluded from the content because the optimal can't afford to carry them and still succeed at the "challenge". The greater the "challenge", the more narrow the optimal range becomes and the more the suboptimal are excluded by necessity (assuming the league wishes to succeed).
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Stacking groups with 'perfect' compositions is not a challenge. It's antithetical to being a challenge because the concept of stacking perfect comps is so you can blow through the content with minimal effort. Saying "We don't want to carry a weaker AT" is just a veiled excuse trying to justify the behavior.
A challenge is taking anyone who meets the basic requirements and making the raid work, regardless. There's already enough challenge in hoping to assemble people who are capable of listening and following directions, now it's OK to bench people unless they play the FotM, percieved "best", powersets for their AT for a specific raid?
I had to defend against this exact same line of reasoning back then when WoW Mages were poorly designed and raid groups were stacking Warlocks at the exclusion of Mages. And that was, ultimately, the beginning of the end for me and that game and why I returned to this one. If this game follows the same path with the incarnate trials, I suspect I will end up the same way, except with F2P, since I'm 2 tokens from full Tier 7, I'll just stop subbing and still have access to the vast majority of the game at no cost.
Partial Character List:
LENINA 198-DELTA - 50+3 DP/Kin Corruptor (Main) / Captiosus - 50+3 Energy/Energy Blaster
Highlands.Hellraiser - 50+1 DS/Fire Tanker / SpazRat - 50 Claw/SR Stalker
Col. Gregor Aktaybr - 45 Robots/Time MM
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Actually it launched with a level cap of 40. Issue 1 increased this to 50 and added peregrine island, malta and carnies. Likewise, City of Villains launched with a level cap of 40 until it was increased in issue 7 with the addition of Grandville and the beasties therein.
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Originally Posted by Torroes_Prime
CoH had 50 levels the day it launched. It was designed from day 1 to have 50 levels. Level 50 was always intended to be the top level in the game.
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Around here they found other, more efficient, ways to accomplish that feat.
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Originally Posted by Giant2005
Having a higher level cap isn't increasing the end game content, it is increasing the grind to get there...
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Duo MoITF - 26:06 | Duo MoKahn - 25:50 | Duo MoLGTF - 29:34 |
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Actually it had 40 levels at launch, but you're right in that it was designed to have 50 levels.|
Originally Posted by Torroes_Prime
CoH had 50 levels the day it launched. It was designed from day 1 to have 50 levels. Level 50 was always intended to be the top level in the game.
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Tacking more regular levels on top of the current levels would break the game in a number of ways since the powers system works differently than most other MMOs.
The Incarnate system's use of a secondary progression tree is a good workaround.
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Originally Posted by Sun_Runner
One of the requirements of "Challenge" is that the sub-optimal are excluded from the content because the optimal can't afford to carry them and still succeed at the "challenge". The greater the "challenge", the more narrow the optimal range becomes and the more the suboptimal are excluded by necessity (assuming the league wishes to succeed).
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Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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I agree completely. I used the scare quotes for a reason. I've made posts in other threads indicating my (rather negative) opinion of "challenge".|
Originally Posted by Fluctuation
You could argue that not having that has contributed to keeping this games community largely a positive place for the past seven years, compared to others.
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Originally Posted by Tinier Bolt
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you.
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Originally Posted by Captiosus
Gods, this argument? What is this, Burning Crusade-era WoW?
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Bolded bit is the important bit. (yet) If my memory does not fail me the incarnate trials are supposed to increase in "challenge", with each new trial being more "challenging" than the previous ones. I recall something about the ever-escalating difficulty being part of the point.
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Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Not true. At least not for CoH yet. You can't expect to succeed if the entire league is 'suboptimal', but then i guess it depends on where you put the line between 'optimal' and 'suboptimal'. Even with the new trials that line still can be placed pretty close to 'can use keyboard without shorting it out with drool'.
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I really appreciate all the fantastic, well thought out responses guys, it's been really helpful.
While I have no intention to zoom all the way to 50 ASAP (reading and experiencing the game's missions is way too awesome to rush them, I love reading everything) I do enjoy knowing there's plenty to do at the end other than just fly around aimlessly
Progress side note: Thanks to the awesome Sewer Trial which someone pointed me to, I am now level 21
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Ahah, see, I haven't read you (that I know of) in other threads, so I read the scare quotes as a derisive wave of the hand on CoX's challenge system, which is 'lacking'* compared to some other system's. Context, I has it now!|
Originally Posted by Sun_Runner
I agree completely. I used the scare quotes for a reason. I've made posts in other threads indicating my (rather negative) opinion of "challenge".
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*YMMV
And to Rapthorne--glad you've decided to stick around and give us a chance!
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You don't?
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Originally Posted by Indiramourning
... that would be like selecting a resturant based only upon what kind of deserts they offer.
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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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Sounds like a lot of MUDs, the precursor to the modern MMO. |
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
I'm going to create a MMO with a thousand levels and the End Game Content begins at level 5.
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The first online game I played was a MUD called Avatar which had 50 "low mortal" levels, then 999 "hero" levels, followed by 999 "lord" levels, and you got the new spells/abilities of each tier within the first 100 levels, making the rest pure "endgame". I'm not sure if they ever did get around to the 999 "legend" levels.
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Originally Posted by Rapthorne
While I have no intention to zoom all the way to 50 ASAP (reading and experiencing the game's missions is way too awesome to rush them, I love reading everything) I do enjoy knowing there's plenty to do at the end other than just fly around aimlessly
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A List of things you can do at 50.
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Level_50_Hero_Content
I couldnt find a Villain version of this list but it should basically be the same.
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This game doesn't really have "end game content".|
Originally Posted by Rapthorne
Alrighty, I'm new and I'm hanging around CoH a heck of a lot lately.
One thing I've noticed is that there's only 50 character levels, for an MMO that's 7 years old that's.... not very much So, considering the max level is so low, what's the end game content like and how long will it keep you busy for? As it's one area almost every past MMORPG I have played has let me down in. |
The real content in this game is the different power and AT combinations. Which is very very good
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
The game doesn't need more levels. It's designed around there being a set number of levels and a set number of powers. Unlike other MMOs, we don't replace powers with better versions of the same power, we just make the original power better. Adding more powers to that will just end up with everyone having more powers than they can ever reasonably use. Look at a level 50 blaster, most of their powers are attacks, and you can only use so many attacks. Adding more slots wouldn't do much good, once everything is 6 slotted there's nothing more you can do with a power.
Raising the level cap would serve no practical purpose in this game. The only point to a level cap raise is to keep people grinding to reach the new end game, which invalidates the current end game. Instead of expanding the game upward, the devs decided to expand it sideways instead. Instead of raising the cap, they juts give us more to do at the cap. And unlike a lot of MMOs, the devs routinely give us more to do below the cap as well. First Ward, which is a new zone, is level 20-29. Any MMO that regularly raises the cap would never consider adding more content to lower levels, but they do it here all the time.
Additionally, when you reach level 50 and get your character built and slotted how you want it, it is DONE if you decide it is. There is no possibility that they will add more levels and your formerly finished character is now below the cap again.
One of the other points about it is the devs have repeatedly and consistently stated that one of their goals with this game is to keep it alt friendly. I personally have and play over 30 different characters, and I don't have that many compared to some players. If the level cap was routinely raised, I would be forced into playing only a few characters if I wanted to keep them caught up with everyone else. I enjoy each and every one of my characters and would rather not have to pare down how many I play because I have to grind to a new cap.
The Incarnate trials were only recently added, and they are the first "raid" like content this game has ever really had. CoH does not revolve around raiding to get the gear you need so you can raid to get the gear you need for the next raid to get the gear you need for the next one. It is now an option if you're so inclined to play like that, but it's not the point of the game, unlike a certain 800 lb gorilla MMO I could cite (if I were permitted to by the forum rules)
TL/DR version: CoH doesn't need to raise the level cap because it was designed in such a way it isn't necessary in order to add new content.
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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. |
One thing I've noticed is that there's only 50 character levels, for an MMO that's 7 years old that's.... not very much
So, considering the max level is so low, what's the end game content like and how long will it keep you busy for? As it's one area almost every past MMORPG I have played has let me down in.
CoH had 50 levels the day it launched. It was designed from day 1 to have 50 levels. Level 50 was always intended to be the top level in the game.
Now with the introduction of the incarnate they are getting into "God level" material for lack of a better phrase but then again, only 1/2 of the incarnate system has been released.
For me, the End Game content is about playing with my friends. I have multiple 50s. I don't play them that much right now. Why? I'm working on stories for my level 35 scrapper, level 37 troller, and level 37 brute. I work on those stories by running missions with my friends and RPing the characters. That's my end Game Content. And for me, that'll keep me coming back for a long long time.
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