Power Creep video

Ah! Now I see what ya mean totally. Very glad I asked for you to expound, as that's not what I was thinking you meant. Now that I'm on the same page, yes, I'd very much like this sorta thing.

I'll give you that Arcana... but some people where were acting as if the game would be around fooooooooorrrrrreeeevvvveeeerrrr. Which it won't.

I have also been playing Magic for about 16 years, and I have to vehemently disagree with your appraisal. There are aspects of Magic which have grown in power, but that has mostly been a re-balancing of the game's mechanisms, not straight power creep. As an example, creature cards tend to be a lot more powerful in modern sets, because early in the game's life, creatures were relatively weak and had little effect on the outcome of matches. On the other hand, many types of non-creature spells, specifically counter-magic and fast-mana, have been significantly reduced in power in recent years. This has lead to games being more focused on interactive elements such as creature combat, rather than one-sided permission control or turn 1 auto-win combo decks.

As somebody who does a LOT of research regarding games (INTP personality, I tend to spend more time reading about games than actually playing them) I have a great deal of genuine respect for the team at Wizards of the Coast. They really know what they're doing.

As for City of Heroes, I also think this game has done very well combating power creep, at least compared to most other MMOs I have played (UO, EQ, EQ2, FF11). I think the core virtues that set CoH apart are the sheer volume of power choices--which allows for many varied approaches to each combat encounter--and focus on replayability.

Even though, as Arcanaville has pointed out, CoH's reward structure does rely almost entirely on killing MOBs, it is also one of the most open-ended MMOs I have experienced when it comes to the actual means of achieving that goal. Many games, such as the Everquest franchise, restrict each character to filling one of four basic roles: tank, healer, DPS, and support. While CoH obviously does include those roles, it is much less reliant on them, and allows far more freedom to blur the lines. You don't need a healer, or even a tank, if your buffs/debuffs or controls are strong enough. The content in CoH doesn't force you to build your teams in a specific, predetermined fashion, allowing people to get more creative with their character choices and making it so even less-optimal builds can still be fun and useful.

Since there are so many possible fun and useful builds, it's a good thing that CoH focuses heavily on playing multiple characters through content designed to be repeated. While some may see the lack of depth available for individual character advancement in CoH as a flaw, it undeniably has advantages as implemented. It is true that a seasoned MMO vet could easily acquire every mechanically-relevant advancement option on any given character within a month or so, a far cry from the years of possible development characters in games such as EQ2 would provide. However, by not requiring such a massive investment on any given character, players are more likely to create new ones and experiment without feeling like the opportunity cost to their "main" is overly severe.

So, essentially, CoH avoids the deadly effects of power creep that runs rampant in the more "traditional" MMOs by providing more variety in viable playstyles, while simultaneously encouraging starting new characters. While EQ2 (for example) is stuck in an endless spiral of ever-worsening mudflation and content obsolescence due to the need to continually provide avenues of advancement for 8-year-old characters, CoH isn't afraid to say,
"Okay, you're done. Play again?"

BS. Quote someone that supports this fake crappola. No need to lie.

Obviously, nothing in the universe is immune to the effects of entropy, and MMOs are no exception, but you make it sound like CoH is on its deathbed. MMOs are heavily affected by inertia--once an MMO community is sufficiently established you can count on a certain minimum population that will basically be there until the servers are unplugged. Once the cost of initial development has been recouped, an established MMO franchise provides very solid, reliable revenue stream, which is very valuable to any company. However, the VAST majority of MMO projects fail to become sufficiently established, so any company that is in the possession of a successful MMO property will exploit it as long as possible.

In other words, the chances of CoH (or any of the big MMOs) being shut down are fairly non-existent, barring some kind of major economic catastrophe for the company (or, in the case of Star Wars Galaxies, legal issues). At worst, the game would be relegated to "life-support mode" and cease to receive further development resources, but that also seems pretty unlikely, since there is no logical reason for Paragon Studios to neglect such a valuable asset.

In other words, CoH is "slowly dying" in the same way as a healthy 40-year-old man. Sure, he's not as spry as he was in his youth, but he's still got plenty of future ahead of him.

You're saying that there is more than one developer with Reppu on ignore?

I smell BS.


And for that I will be putting you Jay on ignore along with everyone else never worth my time because they talk ****.

Dude, *Everquest* is still around. *And* adding new content, if only on an annual basis. If people think that the game's heyday is coming back, yeah, they're kidding themselves. But I do not think it's unreasonable to expect this game to still be around in 5-10 years.

It's dying like a Bonsai tree....

You mean just like the sun? Oh noez! Whatever shall we do?!

Damn you Nethergoat! Now I need to look up Bonsai Trees... I mean, I know what the are, but feel somehow I don't know enough about them (and I suspect, their longevity or lack thereof) to get your joke.

How DARE you make me go forth and learn something new.....

Hurrah, another satisfied customer! =)

Anyone in 2006 who said the game was on a downward path, wasn't making itself appealing except to people that had it as an ingrained habit would now have compelling numbers to say "I told you so" with.

Thanks for the interesting link. And, well, that answers that question.

Some of the mill decks are no joke. The ones built around the plainswalker cards like Jace Beleren are almost unbeatable if built and played right.

While I am under no illusions that COH is a "growing game with decades ahead of it!" I would also like to say... there have been several games that have come and gone (gone as in shutdown) since COH launched. The fact that COH is still going for like what? Eight years? It's been around longer than WoW hasn't it? That fact alone is a testament to the quality of the product. Sure it's dated. All things age. But that doesn't take away from the fact that it's a good game.

I love COH for what it is. My only wish for the future is when the time comes for COH to shutdown (and hopefully that is still many many years away), that NC Soft puts the Paragon Studios team on the job to make a new game based on what City of Heroes was but with all the new options that the latest tech offers and all the experience they had working on COH over the years. Hell if I had the money I'd invest in making such a game, but sadly I am not a wealthy person =\

Yes - maybe that's why they slowed down on slot releases. I want to see Genesis soon though anyway.

Neither will I.

Any of the people who said the game was doomed back in 2006 are welcome to step forward, so I can tell *them* I told them so.

If I recall, CoH came out slightly (6 months or so) before WoW. So for CoH to still be around, having had to compete for market share with WoW for basically it's entire existence, is fairly impressive.

Personally I think they slowed down on slot releases for two reasons. First the initial release of four slots together meant that people farmed the hell out of them just on BAF and Lambda and then burned out. If they'd just released two slots with BAF/Lambda (possibly moving the level shift form Destiny to Interface so we got one shift then) and then released the othe two later as they built up the number trials I think it would have gone a lot smoother. Hybrid (and presumably Genesis, Mind and Vitae) uses a new type of iXP so rationing the slots out while they build up the number of trials with new iXP helps prevent burn-out.

My second reason is more speculative. I think they may be feeling their way into how they want to gate access to the higher tier slots. People complained a LOT about the switch from Shards to Threads to the point that the devs felt compelled to pretty much promise "No New Merits/Salvage". Now this is pure speculation on my part but I suspect that somewhere on Positron's hard drive is an old design document detailing the new Salvage and Merits that would be used for building Hybrid, Genesis, Mind and Vitae abilities. Given the push-back from the community they've obviously shelved that idea (assuming they did have it anyway) but that may well have made them more cautious about how they award the new slots. With Hybrid it's just a new form of iXP which means most people just farm the kills at the start of the trial to unlock the slot and then run older and easier content to make abilities. By releasing only one slot they can observe player behavior and then decide if they want to change things up a bit for the next slot (for example for Genesis they could make the requirement that you have to get the requisite iXP but also need a particular Trial Completion Badge to unlock the slot or change the trial to back-load the iXP).

I was thinking the same thing. I expect that something will change on how we open the new slots. Since most PPL simple farm the latest trial for the IXP I'm sure the devs will make a change to the last 4 and I wouldn't be surprised if that did include new salvage as well.