CoH: a game for Introverts, too

In what universe is providing something neither group is asking for a better compromise than offering some of what each is asking for?

People evaporate their urine to recover the salt too.

Just because it's been done doesn't mean it's the most enjoyable way to do it.

Or in other words, it shows how much they loathe iTrials.

In the same universe that giving those that want team-only-progression-content precisely what they want while waiting months before giving anything to the rest of the group is considered either a fair idea and a good plan for the financial well-being of the game or a compromise of any kind.

There's a reason that I've never asked for solo-only-progression-content: it's a bad idea. It would be unfair to those that play this game to team and hate soloing. I've also never asked for a maximum team size of one for the same reason. I have never, to my knowledge sitting here on my couch at the moment, asked for anything that would actually interfere with the teaming community in this game and their ability to team as they wish.

Paragon Studios/NCSoft stopped getting my money because of their bad decisions. When they corrected the primary issue, my money flowed their way again. This is not the act of some spoiled brat that always gets his way. It's nothing more than the act of a consumer when the product he's been paying for becomes inferior/broken/sub-par or the company behind the product behaves poorly. I don't eat at Chick-fil-a because I disagree with their corporate sponsorship of religion. I don't eat at McDonalds because I want my body to rot properly after I die. Should I behave differently as a consumer of video games?

So again, I ask you, Arcanaville, ye of the +5 in math, the lady I've looked to for insight and knowledge for years, explain it to me since I still don't get it either through ignorance or stubborness:

What's the point of losing income/subscriptions/players when you can easily avoid doing so by making decisions that don't ostracize a sizable percentage of your population?

I already stated so: hypothetically speaking to ensure people you don't care about but I do are fairly represented in any game I'd have decision making power over. Its who I am, and what I would want my game to be.

If its still not clear, then I would say its very close to the truth that were I in the position to make the strategic decision, I would care more about players that say "I want X" than those that said "I want to ensure this game does not have Y." You say that would be costly, but I disagree, and if it was my decision to make, my judgment would be operative there.

Even if I cannot convince you of the practicality of that position, there is another independent perspective. There are lots of people who probably *don't* play City of Heroes because they are just not into superheroes or comic books or the genre in general. That decision is guaranteed to have cost this game many potential customers. But that doesn't mean no one should make such a game. If everyone only served the majority, the minority would never get anything. So even though I believe my position would be more successful than yours overall, even if its not its a position that still has every right to be served. I would rather make my game than your game, not because I can prove mine is better, but because it would be mine. There's no other reason why I would take the lead designer position in any venture, except to realize my design values. If I was just going to be hired to realize someone else's design values, I would walk away.

I believe its highly unlikely you would approach the job significantly differently. That's not to say I cannot be persuaded to alter my position. If you could prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that your position would lead to a better game, I could be convinced to adopt it. But in the absence of such proof, I would follow my own judgment, and such proof has yet to be offered.

But what you continue to fail to address is how allowing people to have a solo path would fail to represent anyone since it would not be compulsory.

Yet, seemingly, in this thread, you have taken the exact opposite position. You have been siding with the people who say "I want to ensure this game does not have a viable solo incarnate path".

Here's where I get completely lost. I want the same thing! Have I not said all along, "hey, now, I want access to the same huge power buffs and level shifts they get!"

Granted, I've also stated "I want to ensure I don't get screwed out of those huge power buffs and level shifts because I have zero desire to run around in game with eleven other players."

The way you've been coming across in this thread, I'm in the wrong for demanding fair treatment.

You speak of fairly representing a group of people that you think I don't care about right after I explicitly stated that I have never requested anything that would block the teaming population from advancement or the ability to team. You do this while apparently maintaining the position that preferential treatment (access to power buffs/level shifts/purple ponies/whatever) for one group (raiders) over another (non-raiders) is an acceptable position to hold for no other reason but that it would definitely be part of your game's design and that you believe such a system will always be superior financially.

On the first, what you do with your game is up to you and I truly hope you get to it someday. I'd check it out based on curiosity alone. On the second, there may very well be something in human nature that proves the second belief true, be it based in addiction processes or whatever else. I'm not going to attempt to dig up hard numbers one way or the other. I certainly can't agree that manipulation of humanity's baser processes for financial gain is a good thing but I would also never disagree that it works.

Why do I need to address that, when I never said it. Perhaps you should address it.

"I do not want any rewards at all, without any exception, gated behind content that requires teaming."

This is an example of someone asking for a game to not include something, as I define it. The specific problem with the statement is not the request to have any particular thing have a non-teamed option of acquiring it, the problem is specifically the phrase "without any exception."

"I want this to have a solo acquisition option" is negotiable. "I want everything to have a solo acquisition option without exception" is not negotiable to me. Any subset other than all is negotiable in theory. All is not. Its a fine distinction, but one I make.

Which is why I said before that asking for a solo incarnate path is not something I object to in principle. But I do object to the argument that the solo incarnate path should exist because everything must have a solo path without exception.

Except that's not what any of this is about. If it were, you'd hear people calling for TFs to be dismantled. I think very few people think that ALL rewards should be obtainable solo.

On the other hand, there -are- a number of people saying "I do not want any solo option at all, without exception, for new end-game content."

There are?

Yes, TonyV and lordlodonis seem to believe that MMORPG means either you team, or you -should- miss out on rewards, period. By design. Left up to them, there would be no viable solo option, ever.

I am responding directly to a question originally addressed to me, about the specific topic I'm discussing.

Yes, but your response was based on the premise that people were advocating that ALL rewards be soloable. That's not what's being advocated. People are asking for MOST rather than all, and only in reference to end-game content.

No, they are not based on that premise. I addressed the question as posed. If you believe you can prove your assertion, please feel free to link to any post I made in this thread where I made that assumption.

Okay, here:

"I want some rewards locked behind team content" = "I do not want a soloable path to everything" = someone asking for a game to not include something, as you define it.

Which is a response to this message:

Which itself quotes and responds to this message:

I was clarifying that we're not necessarily saying the same thing, because Bill says:

But I wasn't referring to actually *blocking* teaming: what I said earlier was:

The critical part of which is:

That means some people want teamed-only content *and* rewards exclusive to that content. Not that people just want content that *can* be teamed, which is the distinction. And all of this is in response to this question:

My specific answer was:

to which Bill replied:


I could have just let that go, but because I honestly believed there was still the potential for a genuine difference of opinion there, I amplified:

The important words there are:

Which caused Bill to ask the specific question:

That direct question, asked about the hypothetical and not about any specific group of players in this game or the developers of this game, but about what my personal design philosophy is, required me to answer within that context:

Which is the post quoted earlier and that leads us to the post you quoted, whose context you would have a better understanding of, if you read the thread before replying to the middle of a discussion.

I disagree. This is not just a quibble about semantics. There's a distinction between the person who makes a request about a single piece of content ("I want this single piece of content to have a reward unique to it") and the person that attempts to impose their will across all content for all time with an absolute rule ("no content that requires teaming is allowed to contain a reward that isn't offered in non-soloable content").

In fact, it goes beyond someone saying "I want *some* rewards locked behind teamed content" because I believe *that* request to be too vague to accept also. However, if a content designer decides to make a specific mission that specifically requires teaming and whose storyline leads to a reasonable conclusion that it should have a reward explicitly and exclusively tied to its content, I believe that content should be judged on whether the benefit of having it exceeds any negative associated with it, and I do not accept the notion that it automatically fails by definition because the negatives are "obviously" too high. If that's the only justification for not including it, that justification will fail for me, because I don't accept that axiomatically.

But that doesn't mean there aren't good alternate reasons why a particular instance of exclusive content is not justified. For example, if level shift was exclusive to teamed content, or even extremely limited to soloers (which you could argue it was prior to I22 being announced) I could *and did* make the case that the intent of incarnate progress conflicted with having no avenue for such progress to solo players. I did not, and do not, have to resort to the "soloers must have access to all rewards" argument and there is a much better argument that exists besides.

Which is one of the reasons why I said I have no problem with people asking for a solo path. My objection is asking for it on the grounds that everything should be soloable.

And yes, Valerika, I'm addressing it here, before you quote this message. That's deliberate, because in the context of *this* reply its now relevant. It wasn't relevant before, because I was talking about my own hypothetical design philosophy. Here, I'm talking about the distinction between Bill asking for a solo option, and Bill asking for a solo option because he thinks everything should be soloable. If Bill is only asking for a solo option for incarnates, and that's all, as I believe he is claiming, *then* I have no disagreement with that. However, if the reason Bill is asking is because he thinks all rewards of any practical value must have a solo path, then that would be a point of disagreement with him. And its important to make the distinction, because Bill hasn't explicitly stated his fundamental reasons either way, and its difficult to interpret "soloers not getting screwed" with precision.

So you're saying if someone specifically asks me how I would deal with a situation, you have the right to say I'm being irrelevant if I address that situation directly but you don't find it relevant to what you want to talk about?

You'll have to forgive me if I choose not to incorporate that particular sensitivity into my posting habits, as it would be both impractical to do so, and also completely ridiculous to do so.

No, I'm saying that no one (Bill included) specifically asked you how you'd deal with soloists who demand that ALL content, without exception, in this game be soloable. Even he admits that's not feasible or a fair compromise, because he's comfortable with workarounds/a more difficult solo path/etc. You're fighting windmills, and you're basing your "compromise" on the idea that soloists are demanding that under all circumstances, EVERY piece of content MUST be soloable.

Essentially what I'm telling you is that your original assumption, which boiled down to "I don't wish to cater to people who demand X" in your hypothetical game design, rest on the assumption that the soloists are the ones making such demands. They aren't. And they aren't likely to do so on other games, either. On the other hand, it's very clear that there -are- people, even in this game, that are demanding X, with X being "No end-game solo option." If you're concerned with not wanting to cater to absolutists, you're looking at the wrong end of the spectrum here.

It's not a case of soloists demanding ALL rewards be soloable. They're simply for soloability to be one of the considerations given. It's not an absolute. If small things (like TF accolade rewards) are team-only, that's fine. But end-game content isn't considered small by any stretch of the imagination.

Haha, post count has nothing to do with being an introvert. I am an introvert (as in I score 100 introvert on MBTI and I avoid people in real life as much as possible) but I participate a lot in online discussions, and I ended up being responsible for 10,000 posts being the "Forum Cartel" title (I don't know if titles still work that way) by virtue of being first to hit P10K. It's simply easier than socializing face to face for a variety of reasons. I also do like to team because it changes gameplay in ways that I enjoy, which aren't necessarily social (I love rolling +3-+4 on a 4-8 person team).

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