Anyone Tired of COX and Paragon Market
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2012-05-12 11:33 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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And remember, this is for posterity so be honest.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Anyone who has the job title "Chief Interrogator" in the security force of a dictatorship is not a good person
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He doesn't need to "play it up" - there's also a PPD rank of "Interrogator", so to become "Chief Interrogator" suggests that he was pretty good at his job - which is torturing people.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
He never played it up, anyway. If you can't acknowledge the man was very noble and put the people, and even the player, before his own safety? I'm going to feel REALLY bad supporting you in the past threads, GG.
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| And really, Cleo? With all of her so-called 'information', couldn't even be ***** to bother knowing you were with the Resistance or otherwise? Kind of questionable. Even so, she herself did some questionable things. |
As a Warden, she's useful to Calvin for inaide info and spying, but as a Warden, she's also likely to disapprove of some of his more radical plans - which is shown by her reaction to discovering the hospital bomb plot - so he naturally levaes her out of the loop several times.
As far as Cleo knows, the player is just another loyalist stormtrooper, so she uses them to stop the hospital bombing, and then sends them into a trap to get rid of them - it's only afterwards that she realizes the player was really with the Resistance.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
While I do respect differing opinions and viewpoints:
If we had wanted to kill off States out of spite, we would have done so years ago. There's been nothing keeping us from doing so. The death of Statesman (and Sister Psyche) was part of a huge change to the City of Heroes franchise; the move to a Hybrid model. We wanted to do something big, something impactful and something that could give us more avenues to make you, the player, the primary focus. Were there obvious allusions and comparisons made to Jack and his relation to States? Of course. There's plenty of press opportunities there, and it's something that drew interest from veteran players, current players and new players alike, as well as gaming journalists familiar with the franchise. I absolutely agree that there was some real world symbolism, as Matt expressed in an article he wrote on the topic, however to say there was malice or prejudice involved would be spurious. This industry is entirely too small to burn bridges. There's also the point that the SSA1 stories weren't directly written by Matt. I believe most of the writing was handled by Dr. Aeon. |
Ok.
I'll accept what you're saying as being truthful, and I withdraw the 'spiteful' accusation.
I just hope that you can see why I (and others) hold that opinion.
Statesman's removal from the game is IMHO detrimental to the game as a whole - if indeed it is the case that he will not be brought back.
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This is one of those times I will admit I shot myself in the foot.
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Originally Posted by Reppu
... Just for a stupid comment like that, I won't debate it further.
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I will at least comment on this;|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
He doesn't need to "play it up" - there's also a PPD rank of "Interrogator", so to become "Chief Interrogator" suggests that he was pretty good at his job - which is torturing people.
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Does that mean all official police interrogators in the real world, simply torture people and are evil villains?
That's a shot to the foot of your claim, GG. Unless you'll honestly claim that, then I'd love for you to meet a real-world interrogator, and stop generalizing.
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The PPD aren't a real world police force - they're a police force in a sci-fi fascist dictatorship that is presented as using torture in a regular basis - there are badges marking torture rooms under all the PPD Precincts, PPD zone mobs have text referring to their use of torture - for example, there are mentions of various "levels" of "interrogation" that they use, and that the BAF seems quiet on the surface, but all the "fun" happens downstairs, and so on - and Cleo's arc even includes a little scene when you're bugging a PPD office of the a couple of PPD officers beating up a Resistance fighter in an interrogation room, while the other PPD just stand around chatting, just to highlight the connection with Washington's job title.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
I will at least comment on this;
Does that mean all official police interrogators in the real world, simply torture people and are evil villains? That's a shot to the foot of your claim, GG. Unless you'll honestly claim that, then I'd love for you to meet a real-world interrogator, and stop generalizing. |
The bio of PPD Interrogators says:
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| "The flash of a silver trenchcoat that accompanies the arrival of a PPD Investigator is enough to send a thrill of fear down the spine of any resident of Praetoria. If an Investigator has arrived at your door then you should already be planning your full-throated confession." |
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| "The Chief Interrogator works directly for Praetor Sinclair as the liaison between the Ministry of Intelligence and the PPD. Washington has the mind of a jackal in the body of a gorilla, and enjoys nothing more than ferreting out those who are not loyal to Emperor Cole and bringing them in for an unmonitored round of questioning. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I saw one point in the OP that might be under the control of the Devs. The rest of the points are purely personal to that person, and a reason why threads like these tend to be frowned upon by Mods. As someone stated upthread, it's turning into a "my way to play is better than your way" or "the game is lame because I don't enjoy it" gripe fest.
Taking a break is the only way to cure staleness. The Devs are not mind readers, and will never make you totally happy with everything new they do. If you come back and enjoy what's new since you left, it was worth the recharge time. If you still don't like what's going on, switch to Premium, stop paying for it, and enjoy what you can for free, or find a new vice to spend money on.
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That's why they hired Penny Yin.
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Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
The Devs are not mind readers
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Well, it's the obvious answer. "I'm tired of the game." "So take a break."|
Originally Posted by TheJazMan
Interesting how so many people suggest taking a break from the game. I think that may help the OP but I also can't tell for sure since I can't read his/her mind.
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'Doc, it hurts when I do this." "Then don't do that."
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| I think the ideas he put forth are decent. I must emphasize I really would hope the devs would make small/low work changes to increase interest in the game. |
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True. Cleo doesn't know the player's loyalties. What she does know, however, is the player has helped her save hundreds of lives by stopping that hospital bombing that her little resistance buddies had planned. |
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
As far as Cleo knows, the player is just another loyalist stormtrooper, so she uses them to stop the hospital bombing, and then sends them into a trap to get rid of them - it's only afterwards that she realizes the player was really with the Resistance. |
That makes her...well, pretty despicable among other things. Worse when she theen, she expects you to save her from Washington by reminding YOU that SHE helped you save all those lives. Pity she the thought of granting the player the same mercy never enters her head.
So, basically, she's okay with murdering a well meaning person who saves a bunch of people because that person may or may not be on the other political spectrum. And that's FINE because loyalist are all evil doing evil things like...saving people from resistance bombings
My big burnout phase was after issue 16. Several of us felt the same way. I was gone for only 5 months at that point.
Lo and behold, they decide to add Ultra settings to issue 17 partway through before GR hit. I came back and haven't lapsed since.
I am temporarily burnt out on melee classes at the moment. I think it is very easy to argue against the OP's points but he has his honest opinion out there and I disagree with much of it. The 'lack of teaming due to so many trials' even contradicts itself. Maybe he meant it as a complaint about itrials instead?
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I go through phases of burnout and moderate interest. I'm rarely excited by this game any more. When I get burned out, I simply play less (or not at all) for awhile. Such is bound to happen with any long term game, in my experience. If this game didn't occupy the niche it does better than its rare competitors, I might not come back to it so faithfully. As it is, they may as well have a monopoly on the Superhero RPG.
As for the Paragon Market - I'm not bothered by it as a whole. Heck, the in-game market irritates me far more.
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*I* thought it was aimed at the iTrials. They do seem to have shifted the focus of the game. I don't like them, personally - there're too many people and too much going on for me to enjoy them. But I'm shocked to admit that over the last few weekends I was able to get a Blaster up to +3. At the rate I play, I expected the task to be much more long term for me.|
Originally Posted by JayboH
The 'lack of teaming due to so many trials' even contradicts itself. Maybe he meant it as a complaint about itrials instead?
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On the down side, doing so has made me want to deal with the early game even less, which really puts a damper on my favourite past time of making alts.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
On the other hand, it finally addressed a part of the game that I think caused MANY players to quit, which was, having no end game compared to other MMOs.
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You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom
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Completely and utterly disagree. We are getting way more stuff NOW because of the existence of that market than we did in any single year of this game's existence.
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Originally Posted by Dusk_LoneEagle
I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the game overall.
As a long time subscriber I am hoping for some player feedback about the overall quality of the game now and the value of the Paragon Market to you. The game overall seems to be getting stale to me, I guess that is too be expected after 7 years. My feeling is that it is due to a couple of factors. 1) My lack of time to invest in Super Group stuff, TF or Incarnate Arcs. 2) Lack of mission teams to join. Trials have destroyed teaming in Paragon. Solitary nature of trial interaction reminds me of PI powerleveling run. Empty zones with almost no one to team with during daytime. 3) Lack of new enemies, staleness of same old foes year after year. Lack of new contact, paper, radio missions for mission teams. 4) Lack of Desire to create new Hero/Heroine The same old powersets nothing new or interesting for free. The new powersets that I have bought have dissapointed me. Same old costumes unless you pay for new options. 6) Lack of Desire to level or roleplay my older Heroes. Do to apathy or boredom with my progress or the game itself. As far as the Paragon Market is concerned, I feel it is a necessary evil. I do like the fact that it has enhancements since some are scarce in WW and BM. I feel it does serve a purpose to F2P and Premium Members. But, for me as a VIP it only serves annoy me since now powersets and costumes are not QL improvements as they have been in the past. The Paragon Market has reduced my choices instead of increasing them. It is too bad new free stuff might have rekindled some interest in the game. Frankly, I have been disappointed with the powersets I have purchased. Now I resist the temptation to buy new powersets due to my boredom with the sets included with my subscription. Overall, I guess you could call me dissapointed in the direction of the game. |
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Having played most of the mmos on the market I'd argue that what mmorpgs are capable of hasn't moved past the stone age when compared to single player games.|
Originally Posted by Fritzy
And some posters are obviously limited in their knowledge of what some other MMORPG's are capable of doing with the RPG aspect. Your loss, not mine.
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Just saying.
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Having left a bit before Freedom, this is absolutely true.|
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Completely and utterly disagree. We are getting way more stuff NOW because of the existence of that market than we did in any single year of this game's existence.
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Discounting the releases of CoV & GR, the core game got more stuff while I was gone than any other point in its history.
I'm not motivated enough to run numbers on things, but considering power sets alone they've added Titan Weapons, Staff Fighting, Dark Assault, Street Justice, Beast Mastery, Beam Rifle...am I missing anything?
That's a TON of stuff in one year.
Costumes, ditto.
There was an avalanche of goodies while I was away. I'm genuinely befuddled by complaints about 'content', when Freedom has delivered the largest content dump in the history of the game.
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Statesman was a stupid *** character. Glad he's gone.|
Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
Statesman was the iconic figure of this game.
He was hardly used by the writers following the split. So, no that's not just my opinion ... that was reality. You saw him as a douchey - others didn't, so that is your opinion. If he had no weaknesses, how come he's dead? |
Sister Psyche on the other hand was an unnecessary death.
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OMG! Dr Aeon hated Jack Emmert and wormed his way into the studio years ago just to eventually write the story arc that killed Jack's namesake out of spite! An epic plan to be sure. Wait... is Dr Aeon really a Nemesis automaton?
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
While I do respect differing opinions and viewpoints:
If we had wanted to kill off States out of spite, we would have done so years ago. There's been nothing keeping us from doing so. The death of Statesman (and Sister Psyche) was part of a huge change to the City of Heroes franchise; the move to a Hybrid model. We wanted to do something big, something impactful and something that could give us more avenues to make you, the player, the primary focus. Were there obvious allusions and comparisons made to Jack and his relation to States? Of course. There's plenty of press opportunities there, and it's something that drew interest from veteran players, current players and new players alike, as well as gaming journalists familiar with the franchise. I absolutely agree that there was some real world symbolism, as Matt expressed in an article he wrote on the topic, however to say there was malice or prejudice involved would be spurious. This industry is entirely too small to burn bridges. There's also the point that the SSA1 stories weren't directly written by Matt. I believe most of the writing was handled by Dr. Aeon. |
@bpphantom
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I never really realised just how true this statement is until I got a few years of City of Heroes behind my belt and then tried branching out into other MMOs. Talk about a disappointment. It seems to me that MMOs have been retreading the same tired old design that dates back to something like EQ which, thanks to WoW's meteoric success, simply became ingrained in the market to the point where everyone's doing it. It's getting to the point where new releases are just WoW with a new coat of paint tossed over them, and with some sort of gimmick to HOPE to set them apart.|
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Having played most of the mmos on the market I'd argue that what mmorpgs are capable of hasn't moved past the stone age when compared to single player games.
Just saying. |
The MMO market needs to start evolving, or else it's going to die a horrible death of stagnation. We've seen enough new games try to be the next WoW fail HARD than there really should be, and for what it's worth, City of Heroes remains one of the few to actually have its own identity, sort of. I can't wait to see what actual creativity can produce in terms of MMOs, because we're really at the point where a bright new idea can wipe the floor with all but the WoW, pretty much.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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As I see it, the main big MMO's out there are Wow, City of heroes and EVE. Mostly because they are so different both in setting and gameplay.
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I feel much the same as the OP, except that I don't think the Paragon Market is a necessary evil -- I think it's plain evil evilly evil.
But I want to comment on the people who are saying that the solution is to take a break. That is not helpful advice.
If I were to take a break from CoX, it means turning off my subscription, because I'm not going to pay for a game that I'm not playing. Once I do that, the following happens:
- My SG fees can't be paid, so my SG base goes dark and eventually vanishes.
- I miss out on months of VIP stipend, which means if I do return I'll be functionally behind -- new content that used to be given to subscribers for free now costs points, and I won't have points to pay for it.
- All my items in the auctionhouse vaporize.
- I lose touch with all my in-game friends, so that when I return I have to start over alone.
- Not sure what happens to my characters -- all of them except two become locked? All of them but two are deleted?
- Meanwhile, I'll be building persistent worth in another game (whatever game that is) that will encourage me to stay there.
That's a lot of reasons to make any separation from the game permanent. It's not a real choice to 'take a break' and come back later. The choice is whether to stay or to go, forever.
I actually did take a break for about a year and came back, and it was never the same. I never regained the cadre of friends that I had lost. I came back because of new content -- the IO system, the auctionhouses, and Going Rogue -- that gave me a reason to want to play CoX again. I've stuck around since then mostly out of momentum, and for lack of better choices. (Those better choices, by the way, either have just arrived or soon will.)
So...yeah. Paragon has to give people a reason to want to play. Taking a break from something stale makes it seem new for maybe five minutes; after that, there has to be a more substantial reason to stick with the game.
...
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The reasons you gave for this don't apply to everyone. I'd dare say they don't apply to most people. I think most of us could leave this game and come back later with little loss of state. People who might leave while I was gone were not going to stay if I stayed, barring catastrophic simultaneous departure of a bunch of our circle of friends. And frankly, even that's not a good enough reason to stay if you're not enjoying it unless you are willing to run CoH as a chat client with real fancy avatars.|
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
That's a lot of reasons to make any separation from the game permanent. It's not a real choice to 'take a break' and come back later. The choice is whether to stay or to go, forever.
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So, no, for most people, it's not a binary choice between "stay" and "leave forever". Not unless we have a reason to want to leave forever outside being burned out.
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I recently returned from a year away no worse for the wear....so, uh.|
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
I
That's a lot of reasons to make any separation from the game permanent. It's not a real choice to 'take a break' and come back later. The choice is whether to stay or to go, forever. |
*shrug*
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My City Was Gone
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You don't belong to a SG and you mostly play solo, am I correct?|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I recently returned from a year away no worse for the wear....so, uh.
*shrug* |
But I want to add and addendum to my last post. I don't want to seem too harsh. City of Heroes is an amazing game. I have played it for the better part of eight years. The only other games I can say that about are old school AD&D and Magic: The Gathering. It's an incredible achievement that our devs have managed to make it third on THAT list.
The problem is that no games last forever without reinventing themselves -- and reinventing themselves in a good way. (So, not like new-school D&D.) Going Rogue was a reinvention that added a year or more onto the game. The incarnate system...was a mis-step, in my opinion, but at least it was a valiant attempt. You need new content of that magnitude to keep such an old game vibrant and fresh.
Costumes, gimmick powers, and even new powersets (as much as I love those) aren't enough.
I've loved this game and I've really enjoyed my time in it. I'm just not feeling a reason to stay, and 'taking a break' doesn't make much sense to me.
...
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I'm still confused at how you guys got off on this subject. But I wouldn't blame you for parting from the topic. GG tends to drain any fun to be had discussing a subject as blatant disregard happens to do.