CoH: a game for Introverts, too

The one Arcanaville mentioned that prompted my reply. Yes, I get lots of shards nightly as well. Now go calculate how many shards it takes to make a T2 incarnate power that isn't an alpha. It's fun!

140 shards converted to threads over a 280 hour period, not counting the time necessary for those shards to drop, not counting any threads gained from running SSAs every week (10 additional per week), and not counting the XP necessary to unlock the slots (~30 or 50 more threads, depending on slot). I don't think anyone's going to argue that it's feasible to do anything past your alpha slot by getting shards solo. Perhaps you should have been explicit that you didn't mean an alpha slot, if you wanted that to be clear.

Calendar time is a useless figure

some people can accomplish a lot in a day because for them a day of playing is 16 hours of play

others take 3 weeks because 3 weeks is 3 hours of play

you need in-game time numbers to be useful

I haven't read the entire thread, so maybe somebody has already said this, but I'll post anyway.

I'm sure most here are at least aware of the fact that WoW has lost about a million subscribers in last year or so. As of tomorrow, I'm one of them (officially cancelled my sub last week; it runs out on the 26th). While the reasons for all those cancelled subs are varied, one common reason given is the simple fact that, once an expansion is released, Blizzard concentrates all their subsequent development resources into end-game, group-required content. And the result of that is that those of us who, for whatever reason, don't enjoy raiding find ourselves with absolutely nothing worthwhile to do at max-level. Running the same circuit of daily quests on multiple level-capped toons (I have six) is a sure path to burnout, especially when running this "solo content" doesn't provide any significant rewards beyond "more gold".

A common sentiment I've seen expressed regarding MMOs is probably stated most simply as, "The playerbase has changed a lot since EverQuest". Basically, the playerbase has gotten older and more casual. I'm 45, and have been gaming for more than 30 years (the hours and quarters I spent playing Asteroids...). The people who were playing EQ in high school and college are still playing videogames, but their needs are different now. Speaking for myself, I want "more depth, less twitch" in my games. I have neither the reflexes nor the eyesight I had in my teens and twenties, and I'm more likely to play a videogame to relax, rather than to try to impress anybody or challenge myself.

Regarding the "why play MMOs if you don't want to group" argument, I look at games like I look at books. I read a lot, and I've noticed one big thing about my reading choices: I tend to prefer long, ongoing series over one-shot standalone novels. I love the persistent universe in a series, the chance to really get to "know" the characters over the long term, and the feeling that the overall story doesn't end. Single-player games are like one-shot standalone novels. MMOs are like ongoing series.

Linking reading with gaming, I'll mention the Pulitzer-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. One of the characters owns a company called "Levy Pants" (they make ... pants). The character inherited the company from his father, and one of his complaints about the company is the fact that his father insisted on "sticking with what made us successful", and ignoring the son's suggestions for changes. In the case of Levy Pants, that meant continuing to manufacture the same style of pants that were popular in the 1920s and ignoring changes in fashion, and by the time the character inherited the company from his father, in the 1950s, he was stuck with a product line that was 30 years out-of-date (the book is set in the early 1960s). By the same token, what customers want from games changes over time, and the games need to change to match what's "in fashion", not just keep hammering away at the same formula that worked several years ago.

And then there's the superhero genre itself. It is, more than anything, a "solo" genre, historically. The main reason DC Comics has had to do such major reboots and retcons over the last couple decades is that when their major characters were originally created, those characters didn't even exist together in the same universe - they were all "solo" artists, or "solo + sidekick" at most. All manner of historical timeline-twisting and hoop-jumping and "alternate Earth" explaining had to be done to plausibly get all those characters to where they existed in the same universe and could plausibly interact with each other. And to be completely honest, while the majority of "super groups" are explained as "a way to deal with bigger threats we can't handle individually", the real reason for these "team" books is simply to provide a place for B- and C-list characters who can't support their own "solo" titles, so that the publishers don't lose the trademarks on those characters. That's also why, in the big, epic crossover storylines, the central hero character who ties everything together is almost always some B- or C-lister (Deadman in DC's Blackest Night/Brightest Day crossover event, for example).

Interesting point. The only MMOs I'm playing now both have significant non-endgame content and ongoing development of more. Which makes me a lot happier.

Quick it's Goat, grab a net! The market could use a good spanking you know...

I won't discuss the Other MMO thing here (though people who'd like to discuss it are welcome to PM me or look around for other places I post, I suppose; I'm the_real_seebs on some forums, seebs on others). I will say, though, that variety and depth of content matters a lot to me, and that a game which has nothing but big-group endgame content being added is a game which I will likely not play.

In addition to playing CoH, I'm also playing another MMO - the one with hobbits in it - and as I advance into the higher levels there, my one thought of CoH is that it stopped way, way short of what it could have become.

While the other game grows with each expansion by adding more territory; greater depth to its story; 100's of new solo quests; a few small team and raid quests; and absolutely nothing that has to be repeated to gain the major rewards, CoH remains basically a quaint little game where everything worthwhile can be gained comparatively quickly with little thought or time investment. And, oh, how much more so the devs of that other MMO understand the true potential of solo play and ceaselessly work to keep that at the forefront of their development goals.

But that isn't an all bad thing to be. I think of CoH as my MMO comfort food where I can come into it and play relaxed "point, click and shoot gaming" for a bit before heading off for the deeper immersion in a wholly realized RPG fantasy world that the other game provides.

CoH - massive unrealized potential - but, oh well, what can you do about it.

When Party Kake hit 50 and I decided I wanted to try out the incarnate raids, I ended up in a BAF right off the bat after only seconds of waiting, and even though I was so weak compared to everyone else that my robots were being torn up like tinfoil and I was being punted around like a football, and had a hell of a time just trying to figure out what was going on, Even if you realistically call that "Just watching a BAF happen" it got me halfway to an unlock in only about 15 minutes and I was able to spend cash and threads to finish it. That's pretty damn fast.

So maybe my perception of expected unlock speed was skewed somewhat, but when the DA progression hit beta I assumed it was artificially or mistakenly slow, as after the entire DA story arc the level 50 +0 character I was testing with was now at 4% or so to unlocking the first new slot.

I hear they've switched completely over to threads and there's a way to get empyrean merits now. that's fantastic, because those emps really shouldn't be gated down as raider only content.

Been running DA solo on a brute, +2x4.
One mission left on Doc's arc, I'm at 97% unlocked and 1 uncommon away from my tier 2.

As I have avoided Incarnate content 100% before now, I have no real basis for comparison on speed. I was just hoping I'd be able to get the first level shift before the end of the zones storyline.

Unlocking the Alpha slot in DA is a massive waste of IXP - just run Ramiel's arc, and use the WSTs to fill it up