I'm here to kick *** and chew bubble gum. So what's this about gnoll leather?

From time to time, I burn out on City of Heroes and feel compelled to try other games. For the most part, these are other, usually free to play MMOs that a friend of mine keeps coming up with. We play them together for a couple of days, then he's busy and I don't see him for another week, and by the time we come back together, neither of us wants to play the game any more. For him, I get it. He has his favourites and these F2P games are a passing distraction, but why can't I get into games that I genuinely like? And I mean "like enough to sink an 8-hour weekend into one." So why can't I stick with other games the way I stick with City of Heroes?

At first you might assert that it's because I have no-one to play with. As I said, my friend tends to play a while and then leave me to my own devices. But I started City of Heroes solo, I played it solo for the most part and still do to this day, so obviously lack of teams, uncommunicative community and gold spam doesn't bother me. Single player is what I do anyway, and I've gone as far as to lock my teams so random people don't join them and ruin my fun. Sure, a few forced teaming tasks remain off limits to me, but even then - why would I find myself to not just dislike a very solo-friendly MMO, but outright quit in anger TWICE?

The MMO in question I will not name, as that's not the point, but the problem I can summarise as simply this:

Gnoll leather

See, like every MMO, this one has "crafting" of a sort, and "crafting" in MMOs always seems to translate as "hoarding." A large number of the quests in that game revolve around gathering a full set of armour. Said armour cannot be purchased or found, it has to be made. Said armour has to be made of materials that I need to procure, and here is where the problems start. Here is where gnoll leather enters the picture. I needed to make a set of armour that required a large amount of "fabric" and "gnoll leather," and all the game tells me is that these "drop from dungeons."

So I fought in dungeons, but drops are infrequent and what I get from them is somewhat random. After much searching, I gave up and bought said gnoll leather from the "auction house," only to be given another quest for another set of armour which needed more gnoll leather, a fire spirit remnant, a few life energy crystals and other assorted garbage of the kind that had been littering my inventory from day one. I could never sell anything as I didn't know if I wouldn't need it, I always had to go out expressly looking for all manners of esoteric crap and scouring the game's wiki because... Honestly, how would I know that to get the helmet I needed, I had to hit the Gnoll Chieftan in the head with a spear about three times?

Each day I was left with a mile long shopping list of items I needed and no idea where to start, having lost patience with the niggling micromanagement, and each day I came back to the game determined to just buy the crap off the "auction house" and be done with it. But the thing is... I can buy pretty much anything and make pretty much anything, so why am I even playing the game? Moreover... City of Heroes does pretty much the same thing with salvage and recipes, doesn't it? So why does it bother me in that game (and most others) but not here?

Then I got to thinking, and I started realising things.

City of Heroes does the same thing? Well... No, not really. See, in City of Heroes, any piece of salvage that I could need has a chance to drop from any enemy I defeat, given that I keep to very obvious, rather broad categories like tech/magic and level range. And even then, I could just pull up the info screen of the enemy I was fighting and directly check what stuff said enemy will drop. Or I could damn it all to hell, dump all my crap at the Market and outright BUY the stuff I needed when I needed it. So why can't I do that in other games?

Well, for one, the classic "auction house" interface is horrible, for one simple reason - it does not permit players to register standing bids for items that sellers could fulfil. If I wanted to sell something to an "auction house," I would need to pick my own price, and what this means is going through the prices listed and trying to infer the best one. Not so in City of Heroes. Here, I can easily infer price by looking at the number of people actively bidding for said item, and I don't need a price - I can just dump the item I'm selling for 1 monies and it will instantly go to the person with the highest bid. If it's easy for me to sell without doing market research, I will have more money and thus be more likely to buy without doing much market research, but City of Heroes is the ONLY MMO I have ever seen who allows people to make standing bids. That one little innovation has made both selling and buying in City of Heroes easy for me, and both selling and buying TORTURE to me in every other game.

But suppose I could get off my lazy *** and learn the game's economy. There's still a problem: Why would I play the game at all if I could just buy all my gear from the store? I mean, granted, I'd have to grind for gold, but I don't need to innovate or face new challenges to do that. I could rerun the same tasks over and over again and just farm them. Yet in City of Heroes, I only ever get all of my Inventions from Market-bought materials. Why? Why is that?

To a large extent, I suspect it's because the game really isn't all that focused on gear. Granted, great enhancements make a big deal of difference, but not-so-great enhancements still work. Put in simple terms, this game isn't "about" inventions. Almost every other MMO out there is pretty much mostly "about" gear. For the longest time in City of Heroes, enhancements were essentially free. My choice was never "how can I find these enhancements" as much as it was "what do I put in those slots?" If one day the game allowed me to right-click on my slots and auto-fill them with enhancements the same way Mids' Hero and Villain Designer does, then I would use it in a heart beat and not bat an eye. In City of Heroes, finding enhancements (if you stick to SOs and Commons) was never a "thing." What to do with them once you've found them was, so that the process of getting them was essentially sidestepping the acquisition quest doesn't really bother me.

And this brings us back to the gnoll leather problem. In the very simplest of terms, I play games to kill stuff. That's the sum total of "gameplay" I need or even want. Of course, a good story to explain WHY I'm killing stuff is essential, but that doesn't get in the way of killing stuff, it just gives me a reason. Inventory management, material hunts and min/maxing, on the other hand, do get in my way, and BAD. City of Heroes is not without any of these, obviously, but they're rare and concentrated. If I need to buy enhancements, I do this once and then not again for another five or ten levels. If I need to plan out my build, I do this once and just follow it. If I need to make a whole bunch of stuff, I can find the materials on the spot. Outside of isolated instances, the game never stops me in my tracks to tell me "You can't go kill stuff now until you do this and that."

City of Heroes is unique in this way, as every. Single. Other. MMO I've ever played is different. As with the game in question, I can never JUST go kill stuff for the sake of it, because these games aren't "about" killing stuff. They're about searching for drops, with killing stuff being only a means to an end. I don't go to kill the Gnoll Chieftan because he's a threat to the village or because he's a cool fight, I go to kill him because he drops the Crimson Rage Helm, Gnoll Chief Shoulders, Gnoll Chief Leg Armour and the Gnoll Chief Hammer, which I need to craft the rest of the Crimson Rage Set, which I need to wear and to complete a quest. And by the time I've gathered and made all that crap, I'm sick to my stomach of that god damn Gnoll Chief.

When I log out of any other MMO, it's because I can no longer keep track of all the drops I need to find, all the places I need to go to to find them and all the stuff I need to make with them. When I log out of City of Heroes, it's because it's 3AM and I have work in the morning. THAT is why I'm still here and still strong after seven years. THAT is why I take breaks of only a day or two - because it takes playing any other MMO for just a day or two to realise how good we have it here. Sure, City of Heroes has all the standard MMO crap that passes for depth. We even have raids now with Incarnates. But all of that "stuff" has been put into the game in such a way that, if I don't like it, I can pretend it doesn't exist.

MMO stuff in City of Heroes is done in such a way that if all I want is to flip out and kill stuff, the game is more than happy to provide. And that is very, very rare.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I always felt the same way. In City of Heroes, I actually have a CHOICE to take it lazy and just do SOs, or do IOs without worrying about bonuses, or min/max a character with specific IO focusing on set bonuses (which I found extremely boring, by the way). Keep in mind, all 3 options allow me to play the game without worries of being barred from doing any activity in the game.

In a certain other powerhouse MMO which I left City of Heroes for because they had a shiny new expansion on the market, starting the game fresh from level 1 with no money or materials, the game was abysmal and hard to play, unlike in City of Heroes where one can start fresh from level 1 with no money or materials and STILL have fun. Anyways, back to the other MMO. I felt like I eventually HAD to learn the market and how to play to have any money, and I actually had to HALT my leveling process to traverse the world and farm materials to sell, use, and upgrade stuff with, just so those new shinies could be replaced in short order by something else I stumble upon, therefore making the material grinding moot. So despite all of this, I somehow made it to the level cap, and I'm kinda wishing I didn't. Now I had to farm materials, tedious dungeons, and other unfun stuff just so I could get my hands on the newest shiny armor to meet the requirements of other "holier than thou" players so I could do the raid content. A week in, I was sick of it. I quit and came back to City of Heroes.

Moral of the story? Never, ever, make grinding materials a focus of ANY game.

I feel ya, Samuel. I've checked out other MMOs, but in the end, I don't give a crap about them, because, as you said, they're all about loot, whereas CoH is not.

CoH is the only MMO I will pay to play, and the only one that has my loyalty. When CoH finally ends, I'm done with MMOs. No CoH2. No WhateverElse. I'm done.

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Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:

I do enjoy the freedom that CoH allows in comparison to other MMORPG's.

Especially when it comes to the grind, there's no sense of utter urgency in that you HAVE to be max level yesterday, it allows you to chose your own pace and accomodates for all, from the level 1-50 in 10 hours types to the level 1 to not quite the top of the 40's in a month casuals.

Yet another reason why I am so happy to have found CoH. The only other game I play now is one I hold an official position on, so it's become more an obligation than anything.

CoH is my mistress when it comes to gaming.

Thank you, Paragon Studios, for training my mistress well

It's actually quite amazing how refreshing it is to go back to City of Heroes after even a short break. And before we say it's just familiarity, I hopped over to Beta to have a test of Titan Weapons - a powerset so different from what I'm used to that I haven't the foggiest where to begin. And yet, even figuring all of that out in stride still feels more welcoming than trying to work out which bits I need for what items, which of those items I actually need, where to obtain them and whether I'm just unlucky with drops or what I'm killing doesn't actually drop any of what I'm looking for. And there are few things worse than having 20 Spider Webs but needing one more sheet of cloth, selling those Spider Webs and realising that your next set is the Spider's Silk set. Argh!

With all other MMOs I've played, the actual gameplay - that is, the going out and killing things - isn't intended to be fun. It's a means to an end. You HAVE to kill stuff in order to get the materials, the money and the gear that you need. Not so in City of Heroes. Here, what the game "wants" me to do is go out and kill stuff. Everything else it offers in terms of depth spawns from this one central mechanic. You kill stuff, and in the process you get drops that you could ignore, or use to make yourself kill stuff better. Progress itself is not the goal. Fighting is, and progress is only a means to that end.

And I love it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

/Samuel L. Jackson on

Synopsis, mother$#%*^@, can you type it!

/Samuel L. Jackson off

The synopsis is in the title, essentially. That's why the title is so long.

*edit*
Incidentally, I just came back from Beta, and the quote in your sig is safe and secure

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Out of curiosity, does this game start with the letter 'v' and involve spinning around at enemies while dual wielding spears until they die?

The very irritating thing about that game is that it originally began with an emphasis on combat and story, and proclaimed to avoid all that *other* unnecessary garbage such as fetch quests, inventory management, and farming for that 0.05% drop rate item. It's only very recently that it's switching over to a more item obsessed model in an effort to keep players playing and paying money. A lot of people, like myself, quit playing because of it.

It's actually the last game I played before I came *back* to City of Heroes.

try nine dragons, where they've accurately reproduced the medieval process of seeking out a martial arts master and the necessity to put in hours of practicing a move for hours on end to perfect it

there is even a wide blank space to run laps on because the longer you run with "lightfoot" up the more skill you get with it

they even have fractional improvement, the only way I know I'm getting faster is by comparing to higher level players and seeing how fast THEIR lightfoot lets them run

oh and there is basic wanderer lightfoot and then there is lightfoot from the clans

and ALL the techniques are like that

Many MMO's that are designed from the ground up as F2P have some type of inventory management trickery where they have lots of different drops for quest items and crafting, such that it can be hard to hold everything you need or think you might need. That's an intentional design decision. You'll notice that you can buy more inventory space from the cash shop.

BTW, when I play Vindictus I typically sell off everything that I can't immediately use, then just buy required quest/crafting components as needed. The transaction fee is only 3%, so the way I see it I'm using the AH as an extra 'bag.'

You'll also notice that in most other MMOs you can rarely craft something that's actually that useful to you before hitting the level cap unless you focus more on crafting than actually playing the game. Crafting tends to be a huge money sink until you reach the high end items so by the time you have the resources to craft a +1 Shiny Bopping Stick for your warrior you are probably carrying around the equivalent of a +2 Shiny Bopping Stick that you got as a quest reward. Actually being able to buy or acquire as loot a recipe that you can then craft to make something you actually want to equip, without having to first craft 500 lower level recipes to build up your skill, is a rare thing in MMOs.

Ok, I read through more of your post. A couple of points:

I've heard more than one person on non-CoH gaming boards call the invention system a complicated mess. I don't have a problem with it personally, but I've played with it since its inception so maybe I've just had plenty of time to absorb it all.

I don't go trying these games these days, myself, but you remind me of some of my past experiences (albeit brief ones!)...
And I think the worst problem for most other games is how you not only have to piece together your new armor, bit by bit or whatever... but you need that upgraded/better armor in order to take part in the content that will earn you the next needed upgraded/better armor... and so on and so on...
I've never stuck with a game like that.

I really only enjoyed one other mmorpg before CoH and it was very much a sandbox and nonlinear.

I happen to love the basic gameplay in CoHF (cough cough) and that is a very large reason why I play it... But another large reason and great thing that they did here is not only do you not have to earn some precious loot to keep your character on par... You're not going to be locked out of playing at your level because you didn't follow the mandated progression to get there (If you didn't get the loot to make the BlahBlahBlah Armor, then you can't survive fighting the Booglar Monsters -whose hides you need- in order to get the Greater Booglar Armor).

I guess this is why the Incarnate system chafes a bit for many of us.
It skirts this very line, that some of us detest.
Fortunately, it's still not as extreme as what we're referencing from other games... Plus it is only at the endgame as well, which makes it more tolerable.
Anyway, I'm not looking to attack the endgame system with that... just saying there's a bit more of a similarity between it and other games than the rest of the game's enhancement system.

Maybe try playing non-mmos for your other games, Sam? Space Invaders is fun!

I play table top and subject my players to mind-twisting plot lines of sheer evil and fun.