And this is why City of Heroes will always be unique

Even though there's a 50/50 chance of this being modded in some way, I thought this was worth posting. I was just reading an article in Forbes magazine talking about a recent laser sword-wielding MMO. It should be easy to google search for, but if the link survives its here.

I've commented on this game before, specifically as it pertains to certain aspects of the game that I think are so dramatically different - and worse - than City of Heroes. I thought these things were obvious. But apparently not:

*shrugs*

When I played that one game once in a beta a while ago; I joined someone else to do a certain quest (which I guess wasn't necessary; thought it was at the time). It wasn't hard or cumbersome...

Then again I was the one that got invited so...*shrugs*


Still think all MMOs need a video tutorial on how to do things. I'm not talking about a tutorial in the game that you can skip through and never have to actually read the text that is displayed in front of you.

I mean a full fledged video that says, "okay, here's how to do x!" Have an NPC in the game or something with all the various documentation.


I'm all about documentation! Something like this would work for, in this game, iTrials. If you're wanting to know what's this new DD iTrial all about, go to the NPC, go through the text and say "show me the video!" And then it'd show you a video of what to do, how to do it, etc...

That's just me I guess....

"How to do" is shown here, in the forums, or in Help channel, or in, I dunno, exploration maybe in how the game works/doesn't?

I'm not tryin' to be smarmy, but I think that's an important key: Discovery.

/If you had all the answers of life, life would really be disappointing.

I frequently run into people who think games are less sociable because they do nor force you to group.

As I recently commented in an in-game chat:

If there's one thing I've learned from the past hour of interesting and civil discussion among a dozen or more players, it's that no one in MMOs ever socializes anymore.

I recall the old (old fantasy based on-line game) days of travelling from one continent to another before all the high level wizard and druid ports, or the moon ports. If I'm not mistaken, there was one particular voyage that could take 45 minutes, between sitting at the docks waiting for the right boat, getting to said boat, travelling on that boat, zoning, traveling, zoning again, and arriving at the docks of your destination.

Then I discovered that by hopping off the boat after the first zone, at the right spot, swimming and catching another dingy to another boat, you got to your destination faster. That's if I remember all that correctly. Either way, it was a horrid mess.

Sometimes you really did feel like the world was really large, and there was so much to explore, and that was wonderful. But it sure got old fast, particularly if you were trying to catch up with others to form a team.

Any subculture, whether it's an interest-based group like internet forumites, a professional group like doctors, lawyers, or airline pilots, or even a segment of an industry, in this example, develops its own definitions of the thing it does. Sometimes, that includes arbitrary restrictions or attitudes that have nothing to do with its core mission or organizing principles.

"MMO's must force people to team" is one of those things. As Arcanaville notes, nothing in the nature of a multiplayer, online game requires forcing people to operate in groups, but that is the way the genre has evolved and probably the way its producers think without even noticing they're doing so. It doesn't make sense, but it seems unlikely that it'll change any time soon.

In playing a certain game discussed in the OP, I was actually a bit frustrated that there was no way to assemble the party without travel time, as is possible in a certain other game which has done a lot to streamline finding parties and doing party-level content.

More generally, I think MMO design is struggling toward easier teaming, but not all at once, and many of the pieces that already exist don't get coopted when they probably should be. The certain game in the OP for example has made teaming significantly less painful than certain other games, but still falls short of this one by a lot.

I am still trying to understand why people compare these two games.

It's like comparing "A link to the past" to "Mass Effect 3" because they are both rpgs. Would you do that? Would you argue that one game is better or more "unique" than the other in rpgdom? (the examples chosen were not done so randomly by the way...)

I just see two completely different experiences, sharing only that one label (mmorpg).

I have seen many complaints about how any given MMO does not sufficiently force teaming, like old MMOs did. MANY complaints. Always from people who were imprinted on an MMO which has long since become irrelevant.

Forcing people to team is stupid. Enticing them to team works beautifully.

I frequently can't team ("can't" might be a bit strong, but I'm autistic and much of the time, grouping would be far too stressful), and what I've found is that if a game entices me to team, but leaves it optional, I'm much more likely to team when I'm up for it.

Radio you should invest in a Pocket D teleporter

I completely forgot I had one! That would shave a pretty significant chunk of time off.

Of course, in the spirit of Worst Case Scenario, twelve minutes is still a pretty good ballpark for someone who has nothing more than sprint and some temp powers.

Less, of course, since as I think on it, even without the Pocket D porter you can catch the truck to the D in Shark and skip Indy faster than you can get to Janus anyway.

This is a very connected game we have here.

I agree that the teaming feature is one of the best things City of Heroes offers.

I wish we'd finally get a dedicated channel for it though. Just FYI, the first time I quite CoH (and got reeled back by a later issue) its because I didn't know about global channels.

We shouldn't need global channels for the way they are being used. Just let us talk to each other globally, and not on the Help channel.

[Although I have a simple proposal for something to make that possibly even better: an alerts board. People forming events post to a message board anyone can see from a panel in the game. That way there is no need to spam channels. Basically the reverse of the Looking for Team flag. The important thing is to not over-engineer it like the LFG Queue. Very basic functionality to announce you are leading an event is what the game critically needs, whether that event is a raid, TF, team, or something free form like a costume contest. Truly "leaderless" teams are actually something CoH does NOT do well IMO.]

In two MMOs I play, you can post your group to a 'find teams' tool, which shows what you're up to, who you've got, and optionally what you're looking for.

Players can attempt to join the group directly from this interface, subject to final approval from the team lead.

It works remarkably well in my experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

In fairness, CoH's teaming system wasn't nearly as defined as it is now, when it launched.

We've had 7 years of QoL improvements to consider. I'm sure that Space MMO will improve it's over time as well, given the chance to of course.

*Wanders off recalling the endless broadcasts for bridges in PI*