Observational Comment/Question

Probably the best way to describe why CoH has succeeded I've seen yet. CoH isn't a huge game. We don't have 11 million players. We don't have TV commercials running during what the developers think are the kind of shows our player base would watch.

What we DO have is an intensely loyal playerbase. Look at the number of forum posters here with a registration date of 2006 or earlier. And a lot of those posters have a large post count. That means those people have been here for a long time. Most other MMOs don't have that kind of longevity out of their players. They get a couple years out of them and the raid-grind burnout sets in and they move on.

Here, you see stories on the forums of people who kept their subscription active, even when they had no intention of playing at all for months at a time. Why did they do that? Because they wanted to do their part to make sure the game was still here when they wanted to come back to it. You can't buy that kind of loyalty to a game.

In spite of our occasional complaints about how things are done, most of us have to admit that the devs have done something right with this game. Even the most disagreeable posters have to admit it, because they are still here despite all their complaints. Part of it stems from the fact that OUR devs will pop on themselves and explain why something was changed. A lot of other games will have seemingly random nerfs happening with no explanation whatsoever.

Our devs also listen to us. That's exceptionally rare in an MMO. I've seen player suggestions actually put into the game. That's pretty rare in an MMO. Our devs are more like the guy behind the counter at Starbucks than they are the faceless CEO. And they play the game too, so they have an interest in making sure the game is fun.

There are a lot of contributing factors. Even for the occasional jerkwad on the forums (sometimes it's me), ours are some of the friendliest forums you'll ever find for a video game. I perused the forums for a certain game developed by Big Snowstorm and was wondering why anyone in their right mind would ever come there to ask a question. "Lrn2ply" is considered the height of wittiness over there, as though the people saying it are blissfully unaware that by asking questions the people they're berating are TRYING to "lrn2ply". To those douchecanoes I say: "lrn2use VOWELS"

All in all, our playerbase is a little more mature than most MMOs. And I don't necessarily mean that they are older. Just that our players, for the most part, don't act like petulent children on a regular basis. And the ones who DO behave like children here are the exception, rather than the rule.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I had forgotten about that until you mentioned it. All-in-all though it wasn't much worse than when people "left" their higher lvl ambushes in lower level zones.

It's interesting that so many of you have at least been aware of the unique atmosphere CoX has. It would be fun to know if this was a deliberate design concept or a happy accident. Either way, I wouldn't change a thing.

Your comments make me even happier - it sounds like our devs actually do something about it when griefing happens. I think that was ultimately what hacked me off so often "over there" — "X" happens, "X" has always happened, and the devs know "X" will happen again, and yet they don't even take simple, preemptive steps to prevent it. That scene I linked of all the large mounts on top of the questgivers could have been nipped in the bud by either establishing a "no mounts" zone around the questgivers (functionality that already existed in other areas of the game world, so it's not like they didn't know how to do it), or by giving the NPCs collision detection so that players/mounts couldn't occupy the same space (something they bizarrely implemented after the fact for one faction's version of these questgivers, but not the other faction's).

Heh. After falling victim to somebody's "left behind" level 50 gun drones in IP, I've made a point of clearing out my high-level ambushes in low-level areas.

I've actually seen a Vigilante Mercs/Time MM named Cleanup Crew who runs around sweeping up ambushes just like that.

That is brilliant! Kudos to whomever runs that character!

When I see beautiful women in spandex, my thoughts aren't particularly moral.

This, plus our general lack of competition for world-spawns... and pretty much no PvP.

Seriously, I know you PvP folks don't want to hear it... but in my experience, it's absolutely true that the more PvP-centric a game is, the more obnoxious its community is apt to be. It's not just the endless dick-waving that goes along with players trying to out-gank each other. It's the whole mind-set. Given a free rein, it gets very toxic very fast.

Really weird, because I'm fairly hardcore in that all my builds are useful, accoladed, twinked and 50 in no time yet I never have trouble finding teams or forming them. Must be the water in the Rogue Isles I guess. :-)

To the OP, it's just a casual game...there's nothing to compete for or stress over. Even the hard badges can be had while having a drink and AFK for half the missions.

Having powerful builds is not a problem. Demanding them from others is what gets people laughed at.


On a more general note, I agree that this game being far more cooperative than competitive is one of the main reasons why the community here is so friendly.

I find it very interesting that another upcoming MMO, from NCSoft no less, is also implementing similar things: no mob tagging, no competition for resource spawns, flexible team composition. And many call that new and innovative, heh.

I don't think it is the heroic setting/mindset. I know some redsiders who are friendly, including myself. If the mindset theory was correct, redsiders would be at least twice as nasty as WoW's community.

It is possible that there are more mature gamers here. I have heard it said that WoW has too many 12-year-olds.

I think that another good reason is the size of the community. It is nowhere near the size of WoW and I think it gives the game a small family feel.

I was referring to build-restrictors and elitists. You seem level headed and nice.

Considering the most common meaning of this term, I still bust up laughing whenever I hear someone use it.

Do you have ANY idea how utterly confused my friends and I were when, in Big Fantasy MMO, the entire PvP crowd started referring to themselves as 'twinks'? We thought maybe we'd joined the wrong kind of game.

Yeah, our gear grind is NOTHING like theirs...thank goodness for that!

interesting choice of the word grind

Then you need to improve your thoughts

Some of those ambushes are left by mistake, and not laziness - not every ambush spawns right by the mission door, so it's quite possible to sometimes exit and head to the next mission without realizing that you've triggered an ambush.

Amen...lose the spandex, instant improvement.
quite right, plus if you go travel powers, and later ios with travel bonuses, you may be blissfully unaware that company was coming.

Did I say they were left maliciously? No. I just mentioned a kind MM who helped people out. Don't bruise yourself falling off that high horse.

Without spandex, there are no superheroes