And this is why City of Heroes will always be unique

Indeed! Don't anyone mistake my lack of enjoyment of those games to mean that I think they were not good games.
In a lot of ways, those games probably came close to what I would like.
Possibly so close, but not quite close enough, that they ended up being worse (for me) than if they weren't close at all... if you know what I mean.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

No reason for you does not mean no reason for anyone.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

If you look at my original post, that was indeed what I was refrring to.

Sam, you nailed it with this statement right here.

And another aside...

As much as some of us love playing solo... that does not mean that a lot of us don't like teaming as well! I team sometimes because... (wait for it)... I want to. It's fun to see other characters, it is fun to interact with other people. Forcing soloing, forcing teaming, forcing anything... is not something I'm for.

TonyV, this very game seems to defy your opinions. Without forcing teaming, it has a very strong teaming community.
The Incarnate content didn't change that. It didn't improve it. The only thing it did, along those lines, is make a bunch of people complain about the lack of being able to make incarnate progress with small teams and/or solo.
The teaming and soloing will go on... and on.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

...Except that I already addressed. Right now (or more precisely, before Issue 22), "important" was defined as "Incarnate content." In days past, "important" has been defined as "costume pieces." "Important" has been defined as "temporary powers." "Important" has been defined as "HO enhancements." "Important" has been defined as "badges." I've even seen people complain that it was unfair that people who team progress through the game much faster than people who solo all the time.

"Important" is in the eye of the beholder, and it has always been defined according to whatever argument the poster is making at the time. Now that Issue 22 is released and there is a solo Incarnate path, "important" will undoubtedly be redefined yet again as the angst du jour.

Or you could watch a movie by a better director with a better sense of pacing and very likely not see those things.

It is possible for more than one thing to be important.

That's an interesting viewpoint.

Usually forced teaming generates resentment from the CoX forum. I remember some hot debates when taskforces was needed to slot the alpha incarnate slot and when trials was for a time (think still is) the only reasonable way to progress on the rest of the incarnate system. That's not including some requests to do taskforces without requiring a team of 6-8 to, not necessarily to finish, but to just start it.

Being unique has its perks but can also lead to being niche and thereby not getting enough paying customers. A certain previous glow sword mmo was also unique and apparently too unique for many potential mmo players' taste.

I might just be odd but i actually prefer the other game's way of having teamed content where the game itself doesn't prevent you from taking part. It might prevent you from succeeding if you solo it at the intended level but it doesn't actually say "nope, sorry you need x number of people or we won't let you try." And having a max team of 4 means most content is balanced for a number of teammates that theoretically won't take as long to fill as say requiring a team of 8. Especially when npc companions can be used to fill in for some of that team spots if needed.


As for traveling...that too has pros and cons. The pros is obvious, it saves time...but a con is that if taken to a certain point, the persistent world becomes almost irrelevant that it could be viewed as an imposition that you have to travel through it at all no matter how quickly. I've seen some people still complain how some missions make you "waste" a few minutes traveling to a different zone to get to the door.

It makes me wonder if the mission teleporter temp power had an instant recharge that that most players here would be activating that instead of their travel power most of the time.

My first mmo was that fantasy one 13 years ago i actually liked that travel was a big deal, it felt immersive for that genre i mean watch any fantasy show/movie and you often have characters traveling distances. But even though i didn't mind the travelling much, what i did mind was times where i had to wait with nothing else to do. Anyone who played that game and "missed the boat" knows this.

Which is interesting to me that the new glow sword mmo actually gives me something to do while i'm on autorun or waiting for team or a friend to join me...their skill system.

Maybe that's why traveling in CoX seems more laborious and have to be mitigated by various game/temp power shortcuts. The world is not that compelling especially if you've been exposed to it for a long time and there's not much to do during.

Well, again I have to disagree with you there. Just numerically speaking, it's going to be far easier for me to gather two or three friends (let alone just one if we both have companion NPC's) to get together and do missions together than it will be to gather eight or sixteen or whatever sometimes the very mandatory requirements this game asks for. And when those numbers are reached, you can control mob size and difficulty, but you can never change what occurs in a raid setting. But this is precisely one of the things this other game is going to do, and that's for the sake of ensuring everyone gets to see the content on a casual to hardcore scale.

Our game does not do that. Our game approaches raids particularly now with a set requirement (and dare I say expectation) of 'gear readyness'. There's no option for me to say 'okay, I don't want to charge around with twenty four people who might decide that they want to speed run this thing' at all. I either do it or opt out of the system (which is what I have done, because I've never found raiding fun). But on this other game, I have. And why? It's small, it's easy to pick up...it's mobile (I even took a transport to another section of the instance! It was great and broke up the 'quick, run here!' aspect of raids I often can't stand) and I felt totally engaged and never overwhelmed. That is a huge stride forward for casual gamers in my book and something CoH could stand to learn from.

Again, I think it's unfair to characterise the other game as having its design priorities wrong: CoH hasn't existed in a vacuum where the very same criticisms until what...only two years or so ago now?...were addressed. For the longest time, we couldn't instantly join our teammates for a mission. In fact, we suffered bugs where just zoning to try and do so would shut off the majority if not all of our abilities. A lot of what we call a great success with transporting to missions 'easily' hasn't existed until recently. Group teleporting was priorly a veterans' feature, and teleporting to a contact is less than six months old.

Alright, so they didn't get things right such as friending, communication and so on. But there's never been in my personal experience a completely smooth launch of any MMO. Yes, there's the 'in 2012, you should have these basics' argument, and that's not unfounded, but at the same time half the battle for any new game these days is to have a unique selling point that distinguishes it from the other. And the two things the other game does better than this one are its story and its voiced dialogue. Like it or not, people are in this day and age less inclined to read text and instead listen to voice, and that's largely through the advancement of technology we have. We're verbal creatures and we respond to it viscerally. I'm frankly surprised more games haven't taken to it, even though it's obviously expensive. But it works, and we know it works from console game design.

The other obvious factor here is the number of people playing. Yes, CoH has an enviable record of maintaining its base of around 120,000 people (or thereabouts) for the majority of its lifespan, but the other game is currently reporting 1.7 million players in its first two months. I can't attribute that solely to the license it represents; clearly that game is doing something right. And noone's going to be able to convince me the CoH devs wouldn't love even half those numbers.

This is where again I disagree with you saying they're gambling with not optimising what they don't have. I can't think of a company in recent times that within three months of launch invites its players for feedback and also then declare they weren't going to rush out their first game update. The other game's production house has a reputation for quality and perfection I have seen nowhere else in the industry; even casual talk about their prior games speak of a standard I frankly wish more would aspire to. That to me speaks of a dedication to perfection and a willingness to admit when they're wrong. Every transcript or article I've read in the last few days has surprised me with the dev team's accurate and honest assessment of where they went wrong. And that's a big call, given how much was sunk into the development of that game.

City also has a good reputation with largely straight-shooting with their playerbase, and I think that's largely a big reason why retention rates for this game are so good. They listen, they admit their mistakes (albeit sometimes grudgingly) and do their best to work cooperatively with the community to provide an experience everyone enjoys. I see the same with this other company, and I think we as game players can suffer from a sense of entitlement that suggests we should have all the things (to borrow from a meme) now. These things will come, as it took City so long to do, and especially after the lean years post-2006, when I first joined and saw the most amount of complaint and criticism levelled at this game (when Inventions were introduced, I thought there was going to be serious fallout from it if the forums were anything to go by). And I don't think I need to mention the missteps with PvP here.

I see far more positive potential in the other game than I do negatives, because I percieve a long-term and 'let's get it right' approach than I do leaning on design priorities. Again, it's unfair to compare what CoH decided to do to this other game; and while to some people's eyes that's what makes City of Heroes a unique and fun game, it's what makes it an uninteresting and unchallenging game to others (and I've heard that directly from real life friends of mine who played briefly). As I said before, it's apples and oranges, and I see their positive steps being ones that a heck of a lot of dev teams would balk at in their first year.

The final point I'd make is that City isn't our special snowflake of a game; I really think it's only been since the game was bought by NCSoft and we got Paragon Studios that the game came into its own and achieved some of the potential it had strived for from the beginning. What this game got right, it did through trial and error and not without its share of detractors (yourself included). I am just not going to punish the other game for what it doesn't have yet when there's such an obvious showing that there's intent and design to fix that. I'd cite the debacle that was the launch of a game set in another supehero city made by this game's former developer team as the model of what not to do if we were going to discuss it.



S.

There is at least one game out right now that does just this. And GW2 is said to be doing similar things along with an auto level-adjusting feature for lower and higher level zones and PvP.

But maybe you knew that already. =)


Ashley Hudson
Virtue - Rocker Girl; Justice - Cinnamon Spider; Protector - Sweet Venom & Black Autumn

And it shows

I'll take that as a point of favor towards the game, rather than the probably derogatory that you intended. And by the way, thanks for cherrypicking your quotes....



S.

Not quite

Tough. :P Now, the door to another thread you can bother is that way. Off you go now, because I won't be responding to you again.



S.

I disagree. I think we were better at launch than most MMOs including the referenced one are now, we're just even better now.

I also don't think its fair to compare raid content in this game with teaming in general in that game.


Its that very reputation for quality that gives them less cover to say they are just learning the ropes and you can't expect them to get silly things like talking to other players right the first time. You can claim other dev teams might just be idiots, but you can't claim Bioware is clueless when it comes to gameplay. So either their experience is extremely brittle and they couldn't transfer it to the requirements of MMOs, or else they were fully aware of the issues, and just didn't think they were important enough.

Most of the "errors" our dev team makes isn't because they are too stupid to see the issue. Its because they didn't prioritize them high enough relative to the requirement to release the content or spend more time perfecting it, or they underestimated the consequences of the issue. The same is almost certainly true for Bioware, but in this case its on issues that to my way of thinking are foundational ideas of MMO game design. Those are not things you just change your mind about overnight, not even with a gun to your head and not even if your entire customer base demands that you do. Human beings do not work that way.

I think it is. If you're going to argue the relative merits of ease of teaming, you can't be selective in what areas those things occur. Ultimately both forms of teaming are about the act of socialisation and achieving a goal. The mechanics at their base are ultimately the same. As for whether this game was better at launch, I think that's an entirely subjective opinion. I certainly wasn't there for it, nor can I think of any articles that were particularly glowing in their reviews of it.


Maybe they don't, but you can't demonize them for it, either. I remember the Ustream from just a few weeks ago where Positron stated he was glad not to have the pressure of a licensed IP to work with, and I imagine Bioware was under enormous pressure to get this right in the face of the closure of the last game with the same theme.

But you said yourself earlier; these are your ideas of what you consider foundational MMO design. This doesn't mean they're universal or even necessarily going to be the ones fundamental to their success. I mentioned the subscriber numbers before; if they were such hurdles for people, this game would've folded in the first two weeks, let alone the first two months. I personally haven't been hindered in my ability to group, let alone add friends or communicate with them...

But again, we come back to crucifying a dev team for making errors. Does it matter whether you or I consider them fundamental? The point is that they're made. They decided that the features they pushed through to Live were important, and the subscriber base agreed in large numbers. Just because you personally take umbrage or issue with whether it's a fundamental design issue does not make it the single dominant factor in whether the game survives or falters.

I'm not going to get hung up on them, because it's done. The players (and presumably that includes both of us because we're both subscribing currently) are having faith in the developers these issues will be dealt with. I have no doubt they will be, and I'm unconcerned because in my personal experience, I'm not finding it game breaking nor so unpalatable it's coloring my viewpoint of the game generally. There is a lot a launching game can get wrong, and my view is they got a lot more right than they did wrong. And what they did get wrong is not so traumatic to me that I consider it bad decision making. Perhaps you do, and you're entitled to that viewpoint.

I'm simply just taking the longer view on this because I don't see the issues as insurmountable. And they have a track record I can take confidence in.



S.

You're comparing the 1% of the game that involves trials to all of teaming in another game and telling me I can't be selective about what areas to compare teaming to?


*How* to prioritize these issues is a matter of opinion. *That* they are the foundational issues every MMO dev team has to consider isn't an opinion. Its a generally recognized fact.

But this gets into a bit of a side-track: comparing our precise teaming mechanics with another game's. That's not the point. I'm not explicitly trying to make the case that teaming sucks in that other game. That's not even remotely a unique idea to me. What might put me ahead of the curve is that I was calling this particular game a massively single player online roleplaying game long before I heard anyone else describe it that way (there are people on these forums that have PMs from me describing it that way long before it was released). Are all of the people now saying that teaming seems to suck in that game all wrong? Doesn't matter to me. What does matter to me is what people are saying would be the right way to fix it, of the people who do think its broken. And a sizeable chunk of those people are saying that the problem with teaming isn't that the barriers are too high, its that there aren't enough tasks which mandate crossing those barriers.

I conjecture that the dev team for this game itself probably feels not too dissimilarly, because this particular dev team hails from a company that isn't known for being ignorant on the impact of gameplay mechanical decisions. Especially because while so much of our casual friendly nature is demonstrably accidental in nature (like for example the original powers design team couldn't balance a checkbook in three tries) so much of why teaming barriers exist in that game appear to be the result of very specific design decisions that correctly generate other desirable game features. They do not appear to be accidents.

Why does it take so long to join other team mates? Because its supposed to take long to get anywhere, because its not supposed to be easy to bypass different physical regions of the game with different challenges. Because actually reaching a location is often part of the design of the content, and because a lot of the non-linear content is based on side-track missions and hidden contacts and discovered locations. You do not do all of that and then just accidentally forget to think about what impact that has on teaming. You *know* what impact that will have, and you either assume most people will get circumstantially lucky and not face those issues, or you believe that's a reasonable price to pay to team.

To a certain extent, I think both assumptions are probably ones the developers adopted, but I would also bet money that both assumptions turned out to be far more likely to be false than the devs predicted.


What if you think teaming *isn't* broken in that game? Well, then you probably don't believe it needs to be fixed by being made more mandatory either. I'm commenting on the surprising percentage of people who believe it does.

How much would the company have to pay writers and programmers to create and update the content?

How much does the company have to pay the fans who maintain the wiki?

There's your answer.

I don't know about those people being wrong. But it's debatable to say there isn't enough reason to team. If you only look at intent, you'll see there are reasons to team. If you attempt their group content solo "at the intended level" most will likely need other player's help.

The big difference i think comes from the fact that you have the option to not have to do that group content at the intended level. Barring level cap group content of course.

You can choose to solo those group content...but for many, they'll probably have to outlevel it first if they intend to succeed. If they do that, then yes, there's not much incentive to group for it...except you won't maximize your rewards and possibly even render the end gear loot meaningless because you might have already gotten something better by that time.

However, that can be taken as an opportunity to experience that content/story by yourself if you choose to forgo maximizing the rewards (xp,cred,gear).

I can't say the same with CoX. Because i'm not into large groups, i miss out on the tf/sf/trial content this game offers. But i can experience the equivalent content (mostly) in that other game.


I think that's where the disconnect is. Maybe some of those people are not seeing it that way. I know i am still seeing numerous requests for teams on those content over there so...*shrug*

I would probably pick a different example other than that blog writer linked in the op for a dissenting opinion about their group content. His biggest gripe is that the pvp zones and group content is disconnected from the rest of the game and that there's no consequence for skipping them.

I can say the same thing about CoX's pvp zones and group content. I've taken many alts from 1-50 without ever touching group content here.

Hmmm... The route I'd try would be Thorn Tree » VG base » RWZ » Peregrine » FBZ » Chantry » Faathim; the longest part of that would be the flight from the entrance to the Chantry to Faathim.

We won't have to wait long before we can wave to them a they go past

To be fair, I'm not telling you anything. What I am talking about is the 1% of the game that is played by the majority of people who do play this game, or are faced with it as a consequence of having a level fifty. It's an entirely relevant situation. All the tools built for teaming now come as a consequence of them being designed for Trials. I'm not trying to be facetious about it or even trivialise your point, but the situation as it stands has our game being built around and even sold on a teaming mechanic that as designed, is meant to provide from level one through level fifty and into the Trials. And your point was about how effectively the other game was in forming and retaining teams.

That's not me being selective or cherry-picking my argument, because as much as their game has been built on a companion/small number system, ours has been rebuilt around the LFG/Supersidekicking/Trial model. To go beyond that is going to get not only me, but the rest of this thread modsmacked, which we're skating along the edge of anyways, I think.


No, I do believe it needs to be fixed to some degree, but what I implictly disagree with are the assumptions behind it. Your entire argument for this is based around the notion that because the physical limitations of travel take an additional amount of time to physically put a party together to adventure, that this is an intentional and acceptable situation to the devs of the other game because they reasoned teaming was 'low on the totem pole' of things to work on.

If that's the case, then why was one of the first updates to that game a team-based scenario? That'd seem to fly in the face of that logic, that even knowing that'd it be problematic and difficult, they'd institute a system that would just frustrate people. And as you said, this is coming from a company with not only a reputation but an apparent knowledge of what player expectation would be.

The number of teaming incidents in that game occur that involve a necessity of teaming would be two or three times in a zone, as far as I can anecdotally tell. At the same time, there's absolutely no barrier that I can see to teaming in regular missions for the same. There's no lockout for someone new coming into a group, because missions can be shared. Even personal class missions can be shared with a simple check in the options menu. As Pebblebrook said, there's nothing stopping you from trying the designated group content on your own, but everything in the mission notes to even the labelling says 'Group', so beyond the travel reason you cite above, I have trouble seeing where the low prioritisation occurs.

The majority of play I've had in that other game has been with groups. And here's the thing: outside of this game...I can't think of too many others that have the overabundance of 'quick' gathering tools that this one has. And that's fine, there's a lot of tools that enable that, but I think as the Trial experience has shown, people found their own way to group when the tool appeared to be broken, and embraced that policy enough to continue with it when the tool was fixed.

The point I'm making there is that people will only see teaming as an issue if they percieve they're having one in the first place. And more directly to your point, there'll be a perception that the other game is a single-person MMO if their experience is one that seems to validate that claim.

And I'll reiterate: for me, it is most categorically not a single-person MMO experience. Nearly everything I've done I've done in groups, I've never once felt that it was overly difficult or overly time consuming to be in one or form one, and most importantly, I never felt impressed by a notion to think that I should be playing the game more on my own than with other people.

Pebblebrook's again right when they say that if you wanted to, you could just as easily turn CoH into a single-player experience, and I've had people argue to me in person that there's no reason to be in a group at all in this game because of the difficulty sliders that seem to reward you for doing so.

But as I said before, this isn't presenting as a problem to me and if it is to others, then I see a developer team responding in a positive and efficient manner. So I'm having trouble even seeing what precisely it is we're arguing over other than semantics.



S.