Coffee Talk Highlights, Jan 18: Crime Incarnate with Second "Redshirt" Measure and Bat-Aeon

Personally I like the Super Packs Z, I think the powers that be will make more money off of these than anything else in game, which hopefully will be pumped into CoH and make the game even better than it is.

Just a suggestion, really throw the wolves to the chicken and put a brand new power set into the super packs as well, sells will go through the roof .

Actually, I would consider the invention of shards themselves to be the bigger change driven by feedback. The original incarnate system did not have shards, nor any way to generate incarnate progress outside of the iTrials except for running high level task forces for components for the Alpha slot.

That's a pretty big change in lots of ways: shards synergize with WSTs to promote running task forces. Threads probably exist only because shards do. And the existence of both set the precedent for conversion recipes. Shards had a pretty big impact overall.

A carefully guarded secret at Paragon Studios is that Zwillinger's hats emit mind control shields. He changes them periodically because they keep burning out.

That day he forgot his hat? Beast Mastery on beta.

Personally I was hoping they'd give us more like 8 packs per token since that's more or less what the other T9 repeatable rewards are 'worth'. Giving us just 5 is a little meh, but I don't really have too much of a problem with it since there's really no hard value to the tokens as it is and I don't know about you but I really don't use my tokens for anything aside from the VIP costume sets. Oh and I used one on my plant/storm controller in Praetoria in order to actually defeat Noble Savage.

That said, I don't really think your not caring about anything in the cards aside from the costume sets (or anyone's not caring really) factors much into the price point of the things. They've made the costume pieces easier to get than they were before with the cards, and if that's not good enough (which I'm guessing it isn't) then just wait until the possibility of getting them through other means opens up in the future. I know that may not happen, but if enough people ask for it and then don't cave and buy or use the tokens to get the costume pieces anyway then I'd imagine they'd put them up for sale on the market or something.

I still think they should be 8-10 packs per token though. As it is 5 is the worst 'value' of any of the T9 repeatables. Granted it actually offers the possibility of things I want over any of the others, but still.

That's why I said "than how some of their customers feel about the business practice" (note the word "some") not "than caring about their players". I do think they picked what they believe to be best all around.

Thank you for reminding me why I should not drink at the computer while reading these forums...

Having beta'd the Super Packs, 5 from a token will get you a large assortment of the same repeatables you can spend tokens on. IE, unslotters, windfalls, xp boosters etc. Only repeatable you can't get with the Packs are the Summon Powers.

While I'd love to get more than 5 packs per token, according to the argument used here, the idea's invalid since those 5 packs give you MORE of those other repeatables than the tokens do.

Most amusing complement I've ever been paid on an outfit, from @Ukase regarding my Blue Eyed She-Devil Anson Maddocs "Fallen Angel" homage:
"She gives my ex-wife a run for the money."

I acknowledged that specifically: the point to the passage you quote is encapsulated in its last sentence: you can choose to believe that the devs don't care about the some of the players whose suggestions went unfulfilled, or you can choose to believe they do care, but that fact alone wasn't the only deciding factor.

The more specific point is you chose to portray the choice as one between dollars and players:

What if it was a choice between players that wanted the exclusivity, and those that did not?

Actually that's not true. 5 super packs are worth way more than any of the other repeatables, both for people who like consumables and for people who don't like consumables but like what's in the packs.

Your post had a lot of talk about consensus in it. I wanted to be clear that I never assumed consensus.

Your post also talked about whether or not the developers cared about the players, as if I'd said that they didn't. I believe that they care about the players. I've met several of them multiple times in person, and they are interested in players. I believe that they (some of them, at least) care about me specifically, even.

Edit: To be clear on my personal belief, in your words, I believe they do care, but that fact alone wasn't the only deciding factor.

I portrayed it as a choice (more of a sub-choice, as this is only about a single aspect of the Super Packs) between dollars and one group of players' opinion about how those dollars are being obtained in this specific instance. You're simplifying it to a degree that I never intended. It makes it sound like I claimed they don't give a crap about players and just want money.

It could have been. I find that hard to believe based on the feedback threads, though, as I only saw a few people that seemed in favor of exclusivity. Based on the evidence I have, which is obviously not complete, I have a guess, and that is that a decision was made that would attempt to make as many people happy as possible, while still maximizing sales.

So what about all that feedback that was given back when castle made pvp the worst that it's ever been? Or the global defense nerf, enhancements and powerset nerfs. Reward nerfs from both dev and player created content.

If the dev team spent more time creating content and less time nerfing and dictating the way people played the game they loved you'd be making way more money than the paragon market is ever going to make for you.

My hat goes off to you Z, I honestly like you as a person and community leader. And as I've said I believe the developers as people are really quite nice people. But the design decisions that have been made for the last few years were not good for the game. You are slowly turning that around with incarnate trials and such. But its going to take to heal this wound, if it is at all even healable.

You might consider going back and fixing everything that has been broken over the years from those past mistakes of ignoring feedback instead of just pushing that content to the side. Been awhile since we had a systems upgrade or clean up issue like power spectrum. (which btw never was finished *looks at ancil/patron powers and sighs*)

Do a few mini issues in between 22 and 23 to fix things like pvp and bases. And slowly fix one thing at a time in mini issues. Perfect way to continue adding new things to the game and also correct past mistakes.

Then have customer services return the name "Smog" to @Cloud Runner (Virtue Server) after they broke company policy and removed it from his account and gave it to someone else.

i disagree with most of your assumptions, but rather than post something that would be far more acrimonious while addressing your specific assumptions/assertions in greater detail i'll just go with...

No, I want to believe that problems pointed out months, even years, ago are being addressed. Instead I see, over a series of major updates, the exact opposite happening.

Zwillinger, as much as I love this game and as much as I respect the development team and the moderation staff, I don't know how to say how much this game is diminished by some of the developer choices.

A question: have you, the moderation team, or the developers gone to various servers on unofficial accounts and looked at how the players are receiving some of the content? Has the development team taken a step back and looked at their work from the perspective "why aren't people doing this?" rather than "what can we do to make sure players are doing this?"

I thank development team and the moderation team for these changes. I'm still unlikely to buy them, but they are welcome. Last night on beta I spent 70+ converter tokens (and tested out 50 more packs) to get one ATO I needed to complete a set. I can tell you right now, that I won't be doing that on live. As much as I'm impressed by some of the costume pieces, I'm still not going to gamble on the set.

I also used about 3 dozen of the inspirations (both individual and team), 3 windfalls and 3 xp boosters, and my opinion of them remains unchanged.

Would it be too hard to respond to some issues being brought up that something isn't possible at the moment, but is being looked at? Or telling us who is the intended target for some content? Because from this side of the screen, what the developers and players see as a target are two (sometimes vastly) different things.

It doesn't feel like a compromise when told that if the development team doesn't see players doing X action more, that the development team will introduce some kind of stick to make sure that action is started. Again, has the development team looked at why players are avoiding that action?

I thank you for that and I respect you for that.

As you've said, it can be shown that some suggestions heeded and some ignored. Some days it seems better, other days worse.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Ah, because they don't fill EVERY request, they don't listen to feedback. Gotcha.

:eyeroll

They have.

The issue, for me, is that there were almost no changes to the packs for the largely costume-minded player. The problem with involving so many things into the super pack is that you are pressing all of our buttons at once. Making ATIOs easier to get w/o packs doesn't really interest me, as all I want is the costumes. That's the risk you run when you bundle things together.

Anyways, I just want to give my visceral response to the packs which persists since they were announced. I feel like I am being told that I am not paying enough. Since freedom I have never let my sub lapse and I have bought every costume set (minus a few one-offs pieces) and every powerset made available. Still, the store is trying to twist my arm to pay more to get another set not unlike the ones I have gotten for less. That is a disappointment. I don't look forward to explaining the super packs to my supergroup, who have even less disposable income than I do (but who, likewise, have bought practically every powerset and costume made available).

Looking at this, I feel a lot of the problem is that while the devs generally do a decent job listening to feedback, you tend to put yourselves in situations where you simply don't have the time and resources to respond. Like most complaints the past few months concerning costume sets. The amount of grief and walls of text would be spared if things were structured differently. Then there's things like Mission Architect that tend to not get much dev discussion. The useful thing about being able to talk with you guys is knowing how to channel our energy. If we know ABC isn't possible but DEF is, we can better plan out DEF rather than throwing ABCDEF all into the mix.

My Arcs
-----
Mission Architect Handyman

And there are also times when it's smartest to say nothing. Often all a red response will do is fan the flames harder to no productive gain.

That isn't what I said. To use a current example, the DD trial on beta. After promising to look into a solo/small team Incarnate path, they stick a 54+3 Incarnate Trial for 8-16 players in the middle of a level 50+1 arc. A level 50 doing said zone content will be level 50+1 by that point.

Does that, in any shape or form, strike you as reasonable?

At best, that character is going to be facing +5 (for a few critters), and +6 critters for the majority of the trial. Even proponents of having difficult trials are giving feedback that the level shifts should be taken out of the trial so that it can be another introductory trial. Instead, the developers have (edit: given the impression) that they are sticking with the trial at +3 (edit: because increasing the difficulty implies "progression").

Sticking to Exalted, Freedom, and Virtue while not going to other servers doesn't count. Neither does showing up with their developer/community team accounts.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

The middle? It's at the end of the very last arc in the zone

They play privately on more servers than those

Heyas, Z. I wanted to weigh in with my own thoughts, since this is definitely a hot-button topic I've had more than a little interaction with.

While I don't believe that the dev team wholesale ignore us, I do feel there's been a noticeable gap in communication as of late. I can't say if it's particularly larger than usual or not, but I feel it's there.

And while in the old days, most of the stuff to get riled up about were "simple" in-game matters, I think far more people have been far more agitated in recent cases because actual real money is on the line.

Right now my favorite dev who posts on the forums is Synapse. Primarily because he jumps right in and solicits feedback straight from us, and he then posts quite a bit as he tweaks powersets based on that feedback. There's a feeling of closeness there that's unparalleled and as a game designer myself, I love watching the refinement process as he and the players get powers into shape together.

There's also something to be said for how he posts. Without being standoffish, he's direct. He says what he's doing, why, and then follows up to say he did it. He posts like he has a plan and wants to stick to it, while also being open to feedback. There's a lot of dialogue there.

Now, obviously other parts of the dev team don't have the luxury of being able to give us running updates with stats and numbers and incremental tweaks (guess what guys, we managed to reduce the number of triangles in that new belt!). But I think people get far more upset over *little to no* dev acknowledgement than dev acknowledgment they disagree with.

If you come out of nowhere and slap me in the face then run off without saying anything, you look like a jerk. If you point out "there's a fly on your cheek", then slap me and run off, at least you revealed your thought process. I still hate getting slapped (and I have dead fly on my face), but at least I can understand why you did it, even if I disagree with it.

Also, as someone who loves debate and really getting into the nitty-gritty (like you couldn't tell), it's much more interesting and probably more important in the long run, to be able to talk about the overarching why of a repeated issue rather than repeat the same individual squabbles about the prices of every new market item or every pre-tinted costume piece or what have you.

Now, I also fully understand that the devs can't spend all their waking moments talking to us on the boards either. And they can't answer every single line of feedback and shower us in minutiae about the ongoing process. But I think there's still some definite room for improvement.

Along those lines, another thing that warps perception of developer interaction is that there's no centralized location where this sort of feedback, if it does exist, can be found. Sure, Super Packs were tweaked based on feedback. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, I was under the impression that a lot of that feedback was received at the Pummit and most of those changes were made before the Packs arrived onto Beta. That effectively renders that feedback process invisible to the masses.

There's also something to be said for the fact that only so many folks know of the beta boards' existence, only so many folks can access VIP beta to begin with, and only so many folks go to the boards at all. Similarly, the sort of bits and bobs of information that get sprinkled into the live streams. Player-curated notes are posted, yes, but you sort of have to know where to look if a team member didn't happen to post in a given stream's thread.

I don't have a particularly good answer for this issue myself. I can envision a sort of curated Dev Digest, where instead of a chronological list of dev posts, it's sorted by topic and includes relevant player posts, outright shining a spotlight on feedback and dev communication. But I could see that being messy and probably obnoxious considering the state of the forum software, among other problems.

But in short, any dev communication, even "unpopular" communication > little to no dev communication. We like talking to you folks. And a bit of additional dialogue would keep the faith as it were.

Thanks.

Link?


Dev digests don't work for me...I don't remember seeing that post.

Where have they said that? I havent seen any posts to that affect.

Was it in the Ustream? I missed it this week... and the cliff notes only say "no comment... ask Baryonyx."

Not being accusitory, but I'd like to see ANY red name response to this issue, even that one.