Has anyone ever made a histogram of content by level range?

I am curious to know how much content there is, on a per level basis, in the game these days. A friend of mine who started, like me, with CoH but then left many years ago to go play WoW, has been spoiled, shall we say, by a game that has made end-game content its number one priority in terms of content expansion over time. But he feels that CoX lacks this end-game committment from NCSoft. Is he right?

I think it is safe to say that he would prefer that 90% of any additional work done to the game by the devs go strictly towards L50 content, and the other 10% to 1-49 level range (hell, he feels that CoX is weak sauce for its inability to deploy a new level cap every year or two). But then, he has sorta been infected by the WoW ideology that the first MAX-1 levels are little more than an extended tutorial, and that the "real game" doesn't begin until hitting the level cap, and that the way to keep a carrot in everyone's face is to raise the level cap with each major expansion.

I'm trying to get him to return to CoX, but he will probably only play Freemium and so will never have access to the Incarnate system. As such, the most interesting branch of end-game play available today, from my perspective, will remain out of his reach, and he will probably only continue to think of CoX as too end-game poor. How do I convince him otherwise?

Yes, he is definitely right. The vast majority of content is sub-50. But at the same time, he is wrong. The vast majority of sub-50 content can be done with a 50.

Granted, it means not running it *at 50*, which is a deal-breaker for most diehard endgamers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

This would be a good place to start.

Ultimately so long as your friend persists in that paradigm of thought, he is unlikely to fully embrace or enjoy this game because it has and continues to have a fundamentally different approach - and one that makes it distinct and that many players count as a strong positive.

So as to how to convince him that CoX has a strong end-game, well, there may already be an insurmountable perception problem on his part and if that is the case then of course there won't be much you can do to overcome it. In addition to the end-game that CoX has always had (making alts, badgehunting, PvP, min/maxing with Inventions, player-made AE arcs and playing missed content using the flashback system), the Incarnate system allows for very difficult 'raid' style content to further progress one's level 50 characters.

This will be roughly analogous to the high-end 'raids' he will know from other MMOs but unlike many of those raids he would not be shunned if he did not happen to have a top-tier build right out of the gate. Badge runs aside (which are a special case), I have rarely if ever seen people pick and choose who gets on teams for Incarnate trials or refuse a spot to anyone for any reason. You might try selling it from that vantage, unless he prefers to grind just so he can be given the honor of a spot on a raid.

If he's focused only on end-game and raiding, and stuck in the "Level cap raise or else" mentality... well, he just may not be happy here. COH grows "wider" as opposed to "Taller," giving more content to do throughout the ranges (and makes it easy for people to team with people of other levels, up or down, to visit it.) Some people just don't "get" that.

Honestly, even if he *sees* our raids, he may not be all that convinced - we don't generally need pinpoint planning or masses of people to do them (and that also, in a way, ties in with the fact we don't need the "holy trinity" type teams... we have no "healer" AT, though we have ATs with sets that can heal it doesn't define the AT.)

(I tend to take the flip side. I hate having to replace powers and replace gear, and feel like someone going "Hey, now you can be 60-80-93000!" is just wasting my time and being frustrating - while any new people see ghost towns and neglected content.)

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As others have said, this may not be the game for him. The concept here is reply value, not endgame value. Also, WoW assumes you have one character who gets stronger and stronger. CoH assumes you have multiple characters (but doesn't force it, though I've heard rumors that forcing alts was tossed around early in the development cycle).

there is a lot of endgame content, but the goal is to enjoy the ride, and to replay the game from different perspectives.

for instance, the original hero tutorial you deal with an outbreak of contaminated thugs who are more powerful than the PPD can handle. In the early villain zone Port Oaks the first mission from Radio lets you be the person who causes the outbreak in Paragon City. It was years before it was possible to experience both sides of the story on the same character and even still to do so requires both changing morality and using time travel. The assumption is that you will play through it all more than once and see different things each time.

So, may not be the right game for him. One way to get him interested would be to pitch CoH less as a MMO and more as something like Mass Effect or Fable or Fall Out where you have a branching story you can approach multiple ways. The goal isn't just to finish, the goal is to explore it all and that means doing it multiple times with different styles. Dunno if that will work for him, but it's one idea.

Well, the problem is that we played CoH in its earliest incarnations for over three years. He got tired of "seeing the same content over and over again from a different perspective" and gave up on the game for other experiences. Playing two WoW toons to the level cap, followed by expansions that kept those toons--and all his invested time in them--worth continued play led him to prefer the WoW paradigm I guess. Once he makes a character whose powers he likes and which he learns how to master in "high level play", he wants to stick with it and experience new content through that one character (or two, maybe).

He also likes PvP play, but I get the impression that there isn't a whole lot of rich PvP activity to be found in CoX; the PvP zones are sort of like ghost towns, right?

I like alts and I have little trouble with the deja vu aspect of repeating missions because it can feel fresh just from the team dynamics of each different team of strangers you do those missions with. But I don't think he gets the same satisfaction from CoX's "replay value" that I do. He's also an advanced graphics junkie, in the sense that he has tended to seek out MMOs that push the limits of graphics cards, and I get the feeling that by comparison to games like Aion or Rift (the two games he's played most recently), CoX's graphical complexity/detail/beauty is rather modest. (Even I am a little disappointed that older costume pieces haven't been revamped to the level of detail/sophistication of the newer pieces.)

Prior to the incarnate stuff, he was a right about the lack of CoHs endgame. Or mostly so. Now, a much higher percentage of the development time is spent on endgame, but I doubt it'll ever hit his happy mark of 90%, even if he had access to the incarnate stuff.

So, as others have said, it may just not be the game for him. If you convince him to play, the only way may be via the social value of you being here. If that's not enough to convince him to try it at least occasionally on the freemium basis, than any other argument you use may be really doing him a disservice, since he probably just won't enjoy the CoH outlook.

Lastly, a minor little nitpick of mine...

"(hell, he feels that CoX is weak sauce for its inability to deploy a new level cap every year or two)"

It's not inability. It's lack of desire. Total lack of desire, in fact, an active desire NOT to have a new level cap. The incarnate system could have very easily been done with additional levels instead, but they specifically came up with a fairly convoluted system just to avoid having a level increase. I'm not saying if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. It's really all a matter of opinion, and I won't even colour the comment by expressing mine on the topic.

Well, assuming a character wants to stay at level 50 (IE, not exemp), let's see what they have available...

Roughly 40 story arcs
Tip missions/morality missions (A couple dozen, assuming he's constantly switching alignments)
A bunch of radio missions
Giant Monster hunting
8 TFs (Statesman, Lord Recluse, Imperious, Lady Grey, Kahn, Barracuda, Apex, and Tin Mage)
Mothership raids
Hamidon Raids
4 incarnate trials, with more to come.

I don't think this game is lacking in anything to do for someone who hasn't been around for a few years. Though on the flip side, I've done all those dozens of times, if not more, so -I- wish there was more for my 50s to do, but pragmatically speaking, it's not a bad amount of content.

I have an older one I made. (Kept it upto date until the issue with the ITF)

Not sure it got transferred to my new PC.

Sounds like a fun project to update it.

I've played both WoW and CoH for quite a few years (i'll pay WoW when a new expansion comes out, hit the highest gear tier i can, then quit because i get bored that i can't raid) And i always come back to Coh.

Ways you can pitch things to him:

CoH literally throws mobs are you in droves. You can fight upwards of 15 mobs at at time, and with proper inspiration usage, or buffs/debuffs you can always come out ahead. WoW, your lucky if you can take on 4 even level mobs without them taking you out pretty quick like.

The stories in WoW you literally have to dig for. Hunting the undead of their legs doesn't really stop the lich king from killing everything in its path. The stories in city are thrown at you left and right. All you have to do is read a little bit, and your suddenly knee deep in rich story content.

Incarnate content is not just rich in story, but actually provides a way to increase your level to above the cap. level 53 players aren't all too uncommon anymore. And the next time he complains about the level cap, just point out that you don't have to replace your gear every time blizzard sneezes. Gear is static, and things like HOs and SOs don't scale very well. Makes things easier instead of constantly wasting your time getting new gear, just to have a new patch make it all useless again.

I have to throw in my 2cp here and say this may not be the game for your friend. This is not a game that starts when you hit the level cap. That's one of the things that I love about it. If they ever start raising the level cap every 6 months and only creating content for that then I will find another game.

Actually, they did try making the mob AI better and the result was that anyone who had a less-than-stellar build was utterly gimped. The ensuing backlash from the players over that is likely still coloring the direction the Devs take, and given the inclusive angle they have opted to take, designing the game so that players can advance in power but not to the point that players without the time or inclination to grind heavily are obsolete, it is unlikely they would undertake another upgrade on the enemies since this could easily leave SO players in the dust, something they have promised specifically on numerous occasions wouldn't happen.

It is more likely that as the Incarnate system matures that higher-tier Incarnate content will begin to assume the presence of lower-tier Incarnate content and the enemies will therefore ramp up in difficulty and AI but only within that system, leaving the rest of the game balanced around SOs. Personally I like that approach.

As for the GDN and ED, if your friend is still upset about those changes then it is highly unlikely that he will be able to be open to what is good about this game. I happen to think that those changes were good and necessary changes to be made (others disagree, naturally), but the implementation of those changes was quite frankly very poor and left many people understandably upset.

However, that was years ago and the game today barely resembles the game then. The Devs have managed to give us an avenue towards becoming almost ridiculously powerful without trivializing all content or making certain ATs head-and-shoulders above the rest as was the case back in Issue 4. I know many people who declared their characters 'unplayable' because they couldn't herd entire maps or solo Archvillains or whatever. If that's your friend, then I wish him luck and happiness grinding for raids in WoW.

It really is a different paradigm. It is apples and oranges, and if you compare WoW-style endgames then naturally WoW will have the better WoW-style endgame. CoX isn't trying to compete with that, it is doing something else entirely, but if he doesn't or won't see that then no argument you can make is likely to be terribly persuasive. Or, if he does see that and just decides he prefers the raid-centric model, you are likewise up a creek.