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Not the hero that Titan City wants, but the hero that Titan City needs?
[img]https://i.imgflip.com/gicij.jpg[/img]
As an avid player of fighting games, an d also mmos, I think i need to say my piece. I played CoH to have a good time, an d to be able to pick and choose if I wanted a challenge or not. I also play a lot of Mobas, but tend to shy away from PvP because I'm just looking for something somewhat relaxing. I stay away from games with PvP on all the time. I stay away from games that are even remotely included with Dark Souls. I can 't stand that game. I don 't play games to be punished. I play them to be fun, and sometimes, that fun is challenge. A challenge, mind you that I accept, not one I'm forced to play.
I agree with the sentiments that with risk comes rewards, and on some days, I like those. On other ones, I just want to load up,m say something akin to a Mayhem mission and smash things. I have about a dozen games I play depending on my mood and it would be nice to have most of them in one game. Mostly, I'm just asking for some sort of option to have on e of those casual game times, even if they slash the rewards for it. That seems more than fair, in my opinion.
All in all, I don't see anything really dangerous about putting in a more casual friendly, relaxed system along with the rest of the game.
Yes. Yes it does. We're not talking about a difficulty slider here. An "easy mode" doesn't allow people to practice for the harder fight due to it traditionally not including all the mechanics present in the harder fights. It allows people to burn through content even faster than lowering the difficulty would do. It REDUCES the time spent playing the game, so that nixes long term playability. Also putting more pressure on Devs to release new content. Raid tier content does require practice and that pesky "hard work". Not seeing how this would turn off anyone remotely familiar with MMO gameplay, but whatever. Mid core content generally only requires you to be awake and paying attention to the game. If people are having problems with that, I would recommend logging off and getting some sleep. Dark Souls as an argument for easy mode, [i]really[/i]? A game [i]notorious[/i] for punishing it's players? C'mon now, at least use a reasonable example.
This. People, in their rush to justify dumbing down content, seem to forget this in their efforts to make the game "all inclusive". Problem is they also don't go far enough "down the rabbit hole" to see how it can also be detrimental to the life and health of the game. CoH was lauded for it [i]very[/i] accommodating and helpful community, yet we're just seem to be ready to bin that in favor of an easier difficulty of gameplay.
Speaking of sleep earlier, I should probably crash. I'm usually not this prickly with people. :(
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
Yeah. I guess you're right. Should just have it so the enemies stand there so you can just punch them. So you can use anything else. Because learning how to level up is hard too. :p
Training mode.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
And you don't want that. Because then it's complaints of another kind.
"I play and know my character so well, because I play and level up in training mode all the time! So why do people keep kicking me off teams, say they're tired of carrying me, to learn my character, when I obviously know my character by playing in training mode? We need to get rid of the kick feature!"
:p
Also, would we give the same rewards for a mission if one is in training mode, where enemies don't attack you, versus normal, where you actually have to play a bit?
A difficulty slider is an example of including an easy mode.
Why doesn't an easy mode allow you to practice, exactly? I mean that's exactly what it's there for on... Most games. So you can get a feel for the thing without being punished so hard for it. Once you've mastered a difficulty level you switch it to a harder level. Or if you find a game too hard you can switch it's difficulty down so you can have a better time with it.
Maybe we're just talking past eachother here and have different definitions for "easy mode."
And yes. I used Dark Souls as an example. The devs once spoke of the possibility of it including an easy difficulty setting, and people flipped out. I get that the difficulty of Dark Souls is part of the game's experience, but the kind of vitriolic reaction the very idea of including an option induced in people was insane. And I'm kind of seeing a similar reaction here. That the idea of including an option that's easier some how means that the game will have no challenge, or that it'll some how impact people not using it.
Like, the devs have said that they want the game to be inclusive, and that will likely include having options to make the game easier.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Well, when you say easy mode, it sounds like "I'm a Radiation Defender, and I never use the AOE when playing solo, so I never learned to use them on a team, because I played in easy mode and all I needed to do was blast things."
Or, "What do you mean activate armor toggles? I never have to do that when playing solo, it just wastes stamina."
Training modes in games often don't give any rewards except for education and some experience (as in for the player).
And I'd be down as heck to have training areas in CoT. Kinda like the powerhouse in CO. Let people be able to learn how their abilities work and their character functions in a safe environment.
And your "example" is bad. Like really bad. I've seen people kick people from dungeons, teams, or whatever -just- because it was their first time doing the content. Like, apparently people are supposed to have learned the content and done it a few times while never having done it the first time. I've seen teams not communicate and then want to kick someone because they're not sticking to the "plan" (read as "way everyone else who has done this before has decided it should be done this way and only this way"). So yeah, I'd kinda feel for the player in that instance the team aren't being helpful they're essentially telling them to "git gud" without telling them how to. That is an unhelpful team. 2/10 would not team with again.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I had a rad/rad defender who just blasted things, granted he was under level 20 where such things didn't matter so much. More or less was playing him as a corruptor before corruptor was a thing. Had a blast, carried my team through Frostfire. Good times.
If I had the option to have been a rad/rad blaster I would have been.
And also depending on team makeup you can have people not playing optimally. Already got 2 defenders who are doing the defending thing? The fact that the 3rd defender is playing themselves as a blaster is no big deal.
But either way in both those instances that is a prime opportunity to educate them. Be like "Yeah, it's fine for solo play but for high level team stuff you'll probably want to stick closer to the role your archetype is best at." You know, being helpful.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
It was one of my favorite thin gs in CoH. Nabbing an AT and seeing just what were the bounds you could go in terms of it. Could make Blasters that were almost as good at tanking damage as Scrappers, or ones that could take a hit or two, zip in and smash someones and zip out. Or making an Offender, before Corruptors became a thing. Or my Ice.Dark tanker that I tried to run more like a Scrapper, because Ice Scrappers, or Brutes werem't a thing (Oh, how I wish they would have been, along with Shield Stalkers, TW Stalkers, Regen Tanks..)
All goes back to the player whining, "Don't tell me how to play my character." :p
If you played CoH at all, then you know there were Defenders who didn't want to use any of their Primary Powers. Whether it be because they didn't grasp endurance management or because they wanted a Radiation Blaster, but they got upset when people would want to kick them from the team. :p
So?
So, by giving the easy mode, you'll have people whining about how they keep getting kicked from teams, because the team says they suck, but they don't think they do, because they can totally solo just fine. :p
That's not going to change, with or without an Easy Mode. I could content solo without touching the difficulty and still struggle with it teamwise. I also struggled with some solo content and breezed by it with a team on a higher difficultly.
For those of you who say CoT should have an easy mode, what exactly do you mean by it?
Personally I don't think we need more then one maaaaaaybe two difficulty tiers under normal/default difficulty, and that would be all the "easy mode" needed.
CoH didn't have an easy mode early on and still had the problems you speak of, Brand.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
That is pretty much what I'm talking about. Maybe a testing ground for new powers, but other than that, I think the option of running the mission a couple of tiers below the norm for reduced rewards is more than reasonable.
This comment just reminded me of a couple posts a page or two back regarding easy mode.
We discussed how easy mode would be doable in an MMO as long as the rewards were commensurate to the risk, or lack thereof. But I just realized that in an MMO like this, with the ability to make decisions and suffer the story, reputation and alignment consequences thereof, I'm not sure if easy mode for missions would be a good idea after all, even if the rewards are negligible. Easy mode would be a way for players to farm for the non-reward results they want. And since missions can be repeatable, we would end up with certain missions being "recommended" for easy mode in order to min/max story-related and other non-rewards related results like alignment shifts and reputation.
Beware the spectre of unintended consequences.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I see what you mean, but why shouldn't we be able to farm alignment shifts? If I want to farm the same mission for that sweet +1 alignment boost , how does that affect you? Maybe I assume my guy is a boy scout and should start with that rep, but I can't. Maybe I want to see how dramatic a turn it is to start at high rep and slowly turn into a villain, but lack the time to run every mission in the arc? Or maybe e e I find the last couple of missions hard for whatever reason, and my timing to find groups isn't all that great, or I plain don't wanna team? Would I not be able to turn the difficultly down? Perhaps I don't put much stock into the whole non rewards thing and this is a fault of my thinking.
Anyone can farm for anything. I won't begrudge you that. But to do so by reducing the mission difficulty to minimum, and the death penalty to minimum so you can effectively set up a speed-run worthy of Barry Allen... then I worry that you've bypassed the intended design of the game.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Well, what is the intended design of the game? Isn't it to create a superhero of your making? Play the way you wish, investigate or not? Be as evil as you can or be as good as you can?
I'll assume you're being serious and not facetious.
In an MMO, when you allow people to make a choice which path to take to achieve a goal and one of those paths is quicker than the others and takes barely any effort at all, then you have all but mandated that everyone follow that path or be a fool not to. Thus a significant amount of development effort goes to waste. Thus the intent of the game is bypassed.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Two words.
[url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Katie_Hannon][b]Quick Katie[/b][/url]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I was being serious, thank you. I understand the overall intent of a MMO. However, I am still unsure of what you mean by non-reward? Is this just an alignement issue? Is alignment repeatable? Even so, I'm not sure that makes it makes that much of a difference.
Red, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make with the Katie Hannon TF. I don't recall my supergroup running that more than a handful of times, and generally only if we needed a quick grind if I recall. <.< If that was your point..then..we agree?
I highlighted your word "quick" because that was Redlynne's point. The Devs of games like these don't necessarily hate when people farm things in general. The problem is when people figure out how to farm something either so quickly or with so little risk (or both) that it shifts from something that's just "popular" to do to something that's an obvious exploit. That's what "Quick Katies" became and that's exactly why they were nerfed.
So it's not that farming [b][i]anything[/i][/b] is automatically bad. It very much depends on the degrees involved. If this game is allowed to have too much "easy/unchallenging" content then the likelihood of things becoming easy enough to become exploits simply skyrockets.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
There has been some mention of private servers by at least one MWM source. If that plan makes it to reality, then additional customization of things such as the penalty for defeat or the difficulty of raids may be available to players who are not satisfied on either end of the scale.
I've modded enough games before (Minecraft, Europa Universalis 4, MMO private servers, MUDs) to know that no developer team or fanbase can balance a single game's difficulty to please even the ten or twenty people posting here...and each person's mood can change too, making it impossible to tune except through options given to the player. It's pretty obvious that not a single one of us cares - nor should we - about someone else's opinion of what amount of challenge we ought to find fun. Nor is there agreement on what activities / content will keep each individual interested in the game for as long as possible. With the wide potential appeal of a game like this (PvP - PvE, Combat to roleplay, achievement hunting to min-max designing, soloing to raiding), there's no way all game buyers will have remotely similar objectives, or settle on the "fair" reward for each step up in risk and time along the full range of content in a modern MMO.
If CoT provides something reasonably close to CoH in terms of options for its difficulty range and rewards to match, I'll be satisfied. If beta reveals a game outside of those bounds - in either direction - we'll at least have a visible thing to complain or argue about, some game-mechanic levers to point to when proposing changes, and maybe even alternate servers with custom challenge settings to use if we get in the sort of "good day, sir" mood that this topic snowballs toward quite easily.
For those who played after a certain patch or otherwise might not know, here's some more background on the Katie Hannon Task Force:
The KHTF wasn't really a "too easy" or "too quick" problem with that one bit of content; it was a game-wide "taskforce rewards are not matched to time and risk" design problem. Each taskforce rewarded a random recipe...CoH's best and most valuable tradeable gear - on completion, regardless of the difficulty or time commitment. Thus, the longer and more difficult taskforces suffered from lower motivation to run them for essentially the same reward as a shorter or easier taskforce.
It was mostly solved (very well, IMO, on the scale of developer responses to unintended player behaviors) by providing a more fine-tunable reward - a number of merits awarded based on the devs' analysis of what each taskforce should be worth. These could be used to buy cheap random or costly specific recipes. This allowed a wide range of taskforce difficulties and time commitments to still exist, preserving players' options without making a single option the clear winner.
I guess I didn't notice that many plusses to doing the KHTF. It was only ran, if we were pressed for time and realized someone on the team wasn't so tuned and wan ted to run with us (It was usually me that needed tuning >.>). All in all, I never felt like that TF was ran a lot. I always heard people asking for Striga or Reclusem but maybe that was due to supply and demand. I thought it was was a fun, little, low reward, low risk TF that one could run. As long as this game doesn't go to the hours long raids, I'm fine with it, really.
Basically a competent, well-practiced team could sprint through a "Quick Katie" in something like 10 minutes (IIRC). I remember spending at least a few evenings running multiple Katies back-to-back and at the time even I realized it was an "exploit" that wasn't likely going to remain "un-nerfed" forever. That made spending the [b]hours[/b] of time on most any other trial/taskforce essentially pointless.
Again one more time Devs don't hate ALL farming. They just don't want any single thing to be so easily farmable in their games that it's pointless (from a time efficiency point of view) to do almost literally anything else.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/145679#comment-145679]sounds familiar[/url] ...
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Thats why COH was such a bad game...they didnt punish players enough for dying.
Maybe we should have a goon squad to go by the players house and beat the crap out of them. that will teach them to not try to challenge themselves.
[img]https://memeexplorer.com/cache/550.jpg[/img]
Me neither. Did he really say it was a bad game? lol
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
you evidently didnt play the same COH that I did. There were plenty of bad players at max level, it had NOTHING to do with how little or how much they were penalized for failing. Some people will be great in a task force and some wont, that simple. Leveling is NOT basic training for your raid team. When you lose in chess, the next game doesnt start with you having less pawns, yet chess is a game and has been around for a couple of years. I didnt mind the exp debt much, myself, but thats me. Did the exp debt from a hami raid teach us anything? Dont attack a huge single celled super being with 49 friends? This concept of forcing players to "get gud" buy making the game unpleasant isnt a very good idea.
people wont team with you. which is a penalty in itself
It works for deadpool. there is nothing inherently wrong with this strategy. of course if you only have 4 wakies and there are 8 enemies you will be flying back. In coh i never had 100+ wakies on me.
I wasnt aware that you got to grade all other player, how did you get this job?
No one in these forums is arguing against "wakies". And your use of the words I took the liberty of highlighting in your quoted post above refer to another death penalty. So, I've lost track of any point you were trying to make. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or accusatory, I am being honest. What point are you trying to make?
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I think it was transit time was punishment enough?
Well, transit time has been an acceptable death penalty for quite a few games. But so far @ivanhedgehog has been arguing for no death penalties, so I lost track of whether he was changing his position or something else.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
There will NEVER be parity in an MMO. ever. There will be the guy that started on the day of release of the game. there will be the guy that plays 14 hours a day. If you enter a mission with a player that is purpled out, yet you have leveling SO's, will you have the same risk vs rewards? you get the same reward, yet he has a lot more risk. should the grade down rewards the better your gear is? The devs will try to keep things reasonably even, but there is a limit as to what they can do. Running missions at x8+4 already gave you much higher rewards, they didnt need a multiplier/divider added for death penalty at the end. Or you end up with a game that people run x1-4 and harsh death penalty. quick and easy completion with a nice reward multiplier at the end.
Katie hannon TF in croatoa the mobs targeted the healers first off.
sarcastic. coh death penalty wasnt very harsh and it did fine.
the tactic of killing/dying/rezzing/killing another enemy/dying/rezzing is not an exploit. the tatic is filled with penalty. the person I quoted was saying that people could die 101 times to kill 100 enemies. not a very likely occurance.
I liked what coh had. that is enough
You’re basically agreeing with me. The devs will do their best to achieve parity. Having it be perfect is impossible but they’ll at least try. I never said otherwise if you re-read what I wrote.
I had no problem with the death and the penalty after with COH. They gave us enough tools to help with death if you were so squishy such as wakies, temp rez power, and sometimes hospital trip wasn't too bad. If the whole team wiped out there was usually someone with TP friend at the mission door to return those that were far. You had your healers that could rez as well. The debt was punishment enough to make me think twice before running in if I was squishy and maybe just staying back a bit and rethinking my strategy.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
So even if you chose to accept playing alone (because you kept getting kicked off teams for dying too much) how much time did you waste by dying all the time even while playing solo? There should be a "consequence" for dying too much even if you prefer to solo if for no other reason than to [b]teach[/b] you how to [b]save time[/b] you DON'T have to waste as a player.
Death penalties TEACH you how to play the game. Play the RIGHT way and you'll stop dying. When you STOP dying you no longer suffer the death penalty. A. B. C.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
"I'm not real good with Cause & Effect. Why is that ...?"
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
XP debt was very harsh.
Tutorials teach you how to play the game, not punishment. let people play how they want to. If they wish to become better players, they will. If you punish them too much, they will stop paying for an unpleasant gaming experience.
We don't have to make death penalties unpleasant, just annoying enough that most players would want to avoid them but not hard enough so it can't be included in specific tactics (vengeance target).
Honestly, this discussion starts to border a black and white fallacy in my eyes in that death penalties can only come in two "flavors", they are either barely noticeable so people don't care about them or so unpleasant that people quit the game rather than experience them again.
A couple excerpts from a Wired article highlighting why we shouldn't be pushing for almost negligible penalties for dying.
-[i]Videogames have long had a built-in system to punish failure, the Game Over. In the arcades, this was a necessity. At home, it's a measure to slow you down and remind you that you have made a mistake. A Game Over doesn't affect the stakes of the game's story, but handled properly, it can increase the tension of a given encounter by gating it behind a personal challenge. Handled poorly, death offers an unsatisfying and shallow form of failure, slowing you down but not much else[/i].
-[i]Until it isn't. The bomb threat was real, and it's happening. You evacuate, but not in time. The bomb detonates, and you watch it. You feel it, as your helicopter careens to the ground. You try to walk away, but you can't. The in-game interface falls apart as Jackson's body fails, and you are with him as he dies[/i].
-[i]It's a haunting failure, one that sticks with you, defining the rest of Modern Warfare's campaign. From then on, the threats feel more real, and the violence takes on a tinge of reality that it didn't have before. When you race to stop another nuclear threat as another character at the game's climax, you feel the urgency of it. Because now, you know exactly what will happen if you fail. Moments like this accomplish what a simple Game Over cannot[/i].
Failing a fight isn't enough of a consequence. It doesn't incentivize a person to improve their game play, to try something else when you fail. If there isn't a weakened state, XP loss or even just resetting a fight instance then the encounter's urgency is lost.
You're no longer overcoming a challenge (in the loosest definition of challenge), you're receiving a participation award.
*italicized article quotes for clarity
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
You have a link to that article? Would like to read the whole.
[url=https://www.wired.com/2016/10/videogames-need-failure/]It’s Time for Videogames to Embrace the Power of Failure Again[/url]
Not fully on point with what's being discussed here, but some of the concepts in the article span all genres of games.
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
From the quotes it seems like whatever game they're talking about has a lose state. Which I mentioned before in one of my posts.
Failing can have story consequences. The villain escapes, the hostage is killed, etc.
The hard part about that is with a MMO the lose state can't significantly alter the game world.
But you can have things like, "the villain was able to escape and took isotope X with him, so he can use it for another dastardly plan!"
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
There's no law that say a game can -only- teach you how to play properly in the tutorials. A game like this "teaches" you that you have to defeat opponents to get XP while you play. A game like this "teaches" you that you can buy things with the INF you receive from defeating opponents while you play and a game like this teaches you you can be more successful if you learn how not to die so much. Death penalties TEACH you this while you play.
Letting people "play the way they want to" only reinforces BAD behavior and if there's no death penalty then there's NO INCENTIVE to learn how to play better. Do you think they let airline pilots "fly the way they want to" when they learn how to fly? No, they teach them the best way to fly to keep the most passengers from throwing up.
Now obviously if a game's death penalty is TOO HARSH then sure people will be upset with that. But there's absolutely NO INDICATION that the Devs of CoT intend to make their game's version of a death penalty too harsh. Why on earth are people like you worried about this so much? Besides the answer to AVOIDING the death penalty in ANY game like this has been the same for decades - LEARN how to not die so much.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
From the article:
It seems MWM is going in this direction with multiple "mission completion" conditions (where death is one) coupled with branching stories.
As PH effectively says, instead of having a direct penalty for failure there may be a downstream one in that the story changes. I had almost completely forgotten (maybe even ignored) about that aspect as a form of "death penalty" but when you look at it it may be a pretty big one since it's not just the time it takes you get back to the mission that you "loose" but possibly the time spent on the whole episode, story, or arc. Sure not every episode, story, and arc will have it but I hope there will be enough so that we actively think about it most of the time.
Though as with any death penalty, it's effectiveness depends on how much the player cares about that specific "aspect" of the game.
To keep it simpler, dying to a group of enemies means they are all respawned and back to full health if you return. An instance might respawn all of the enemies. And to keep from using suicide for farming purposes, risk XP/resource debt or even lose most or all of what you’d earned in the instance up to that point.
Those are just possible but simple forms of making you able to “lose” on death.
Wouldn't that make it easier to farm up XP by suicide?
Kill all the enemies in a large group save 1, let it kill you, enemies respawn, rinse and repeat.
Honestly to prevent the suicide farming of XP a better idea would be to allow enemies to retain their damage and then when the hero returns to defeat them they give a percentage of their XP based on the amount of health they had left.
But then again if someone wants to face plant their way through missions I have no real problem with that.
Edit: I suppose if it -is- a problem (and again I really don't see why it is) you could have missions set up so they're worth a set amount of XP and enemies inside the mission give no XP. But then people would only level up after mission completion and that would be a pretty steep price to pay to try to prevent someone from earning rewards for playing badly.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Strictly speaking I don't personally care if people actually want to be silly like that.
But here's the key (yet again) where it comes to farming: Devs of games like CoT don't actually hate farming in general. It's only when players figure out a specific way to farm that either nets too much reward in a given period of time and/or lets players do it with little/no risk of negative circumstances is where "acceptable farming" slips down into the realm "unacceptable exploitation".
The line where one becomes the other has nothing to do with what PLAYERS decide is fair - it's strictly a decision Devs will make based on whatever criteria they set for themselves.
So my point is this: If the Devs decide that "farming via suicide" becomes a tactic that provides too many benefits without enough negative consequences they will CORRECT that exploit via any tools at their disposal including imposing reasonable death penalties.
Death penalties aren't just there to annoy players - sometimes they serve as valuable anti-exploit guardrails to keep the game from flying off the edge.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Sometimes death penalties, like repair costs for instance, are there to reduce the amount of ICG players get. Which is kinda dumb because top tier IGC farmers on games likely aren't dying all that much, meaning they don't need to spend the IGC they make on repairs.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Obviously if the optimal farming method does NOT require suicide then death penalties by themselves aren't going to be an effective deterrent against that.
I'm just pointing out that if people figure out a way to make a type of farming easier via suicide (which is plausible) then not having a death penalty would make "farming via suicide" that much more attractive which only makes it that much more likely to become an exploit.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'm gonna add my voice to the "Death and running back to the location is penalty enough" crowd. I find death penalties completely unneccesary in games since players already do not like being defeated.
As long as we can manually reset an instance then suiciding in it is effectively irrelevant for the purpose of determining if it makes it easier or not to farm.
Yeah I get that some people don't understand why a game would impose rules like this. But when it comes to preventing possible exploits games like this will employ all sorts of measures to make those exploits less exploitable. It really doesn't matter if you don't understand why these measures ARE actually necessary.
And as always if you want to avoid death penalties in games you simply have to stop dying stupidly...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
If you're farming to power level then I'd think whether or not there's an XP oriented death penalty would be crucial.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Only if said XP oriented death penalty was great enough to steer people away from that method. But if you do that it's far more punishing to those who aren't trying to farm.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I'll leave "how punishing" it is for the Devs to judge rather than the players. As we're seeing here if it were left up to players there would be no rules to regulate their behavior.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This is a good point. Perhaps they can track completions such that they provide diminishing returns with repeats. If farming the same mission is truly an issue that should curb it.
Beyond this I never thought COH death penalties were very harsh. Honestly I can only think of one time when I really accrued it significantly and even then it was my own fault, hard headedly trying to sweep streets well above my station.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
The CoH death penalty was a simple "reminder" not to do stupid things. Frankly without such a penalty it would only "encourage" people to do stupid things. That's something CoT doesn't really need.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Agreed
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
Stupid things like what exactly?
And how does making it take longer to level up any more of a reminder than having to respawn at the hospital/wait to be rezzed/have wakies on hand?
Honestly all XP debt did was discourage me from playing that character.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Dying too much which wasted YOUR time as a player.
It made dying an "extra bad thing" to be avoided so that you'd learn to spend YOUR time as a player better.
If you had learned the lesson it was trying to teach you you would have adjusted your tactics so that you'd waste less of YOUR own time as a player.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
You see when you aren’t getting anywhere in the game because you keep dying then it isn’t fun so learning how to play to not die not only helps you but makes the game more fun for you and the people you play/team with.
For me it comes down to playing the game not only to advance my character but to overcome the odds because of tactics and developing skill rather than simply being effectively immortal and having enough tries to eventually outlive the mission mobs.
Death penalties keep people from just being jerks and throwing all the firepower at the enemy without thinking about how they will survive. It’s more challenging to do it without dying.
While I know not everyone will see it this way I think it is how a lot of the ole COH crowd liked it.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
So what you're saying is that XP debt didn't teach me anything at all. At least nothing more than dying already did.
"Better ways to spend my time as a player" was RP, but I did that regardless of character effectiveness. So XP debt did nothing there, other than to possibly make me give up on playing the actual game for a time to do something else within it and if I didn't RP I'd have probably just found something else to do, play a different game, perhaps. Which is great for player retention.
Also "better ways to spend time as a player" can translate into "play something else" which is a great thing to invest in people when you want them to play your game and continue to come back to it.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Something else people do when a game stops being fun is to stop playing it.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
No that’s what you’re saying.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
Frankly if a "little bit of XP debt" is enough to make you give up on a game like this so easily it's quite possible you aren't going to be a long time player to begin with. *shrugs*
I'm sorry but I simply didn't grow up in the era of "participation awards" and I actually respect a game that "encourages" me (via things like death penalties that are consequential) to fully adopt tactics that maximizes my enjoyment by motivating me to not die all the time.
If you would like to beat your head against the proverbial wall by wasting time with a game that somehow still let's you "succeed" while dying every 10 seconds that's your deal, not mine.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Ditto on each count!
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
Games with challenge will always hold player retention longer than games without a challenge. If all you learned from accruing XP debt was to go play something else, maybe that was a good lesson to learn? What I've learned about the CoT philosophy is that they want to make the game more accessible to all kinds of people, and that may be why the premise at the moment is a lax death penalty. That doesn't mean that as the game evolves there won't be one in certain circumstances. If a player can't complete content on their own and it makes them quit, it's better than making the content so easy that the greater population quits out of boredom.
I played CoH on and off pretty much since launch. Usually playing for stretches of about a year or so. Sometimes I didn't have the cash to pay for it, other times I just stopped playing for no real discernable reason.
I played it despite XP penalties.
I also didn't grow up in an era of participation awards.
Unlike some on here I can look past my own wants and needs in a game to allow it to be enjoyable to the largest number of people.
I enjoy a challenge in a game, personally. But also I know a game can become frustrating due to that very same challenge. There's a fine line in a game's challenge between a satisfying victory and the player remaining frustrated and angry after clearing a troublesome part.
With XP debt sometimes the death wasn't entirely your fault (or can seem that way from a player's perspective) got knocked into a second group of enemies aggroing them, bad teams, lag, etc.
Also if someone's still having fun progressing through a game while dying every 10 seconds then that's not "wasting time" by any stretch. If a person continues to play a game that does nothing but frustrate and anger them then that's "wasting time."
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Ah yes, that's why the casual game market is doing so poorly. No wait, they're one of the largest most profitable kinds of games. And they generally don't require much skill, nor do they really challenge the players. Huh. Would you look at that... Where as the most challenging games on the market get a small to moderate amount of success but are generally considered niche products.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
If CoT adopts a total "casual game" mentality that requires little/no skill and presents its players little/no challenge I would consider that a sad loss for all of us. If I wanted a "no challenge" activity I could spin my fidget spinner all day long. *sigh*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Profitability has almost nothing to do with player retention. More often than not they are actually at odds with each other.
I would say that for this type of game player retention is somewhat more important than profit in the long run, though of course they need to have some profit to be able to fund further development of it.
Pokemon Go still has over 20+ million players a day. Can a game like Dark Souls boast such a number?
WoW in it's hayday had about 12million.
Edit: granted I don't know how long any of those players have been playing.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Have you even seen the numbers lately? The highest grossing F2P game on the console market currently? Fortnite and their Battle Royale game. PUBG? One of the highest grossing games in years, and battle royale games are the harshest out there in terms of competition and penalties.
Other notable ones, Monster Hunter World, another big player with a very punishing penalty if your team loses, you get no rewards. Call of Duty? I think we already talked about that one from another user. What about NBA 2K18? That has no "death penalty" oh.. but if you don't beat a team, you drop in rankings and don't make it to the finals, that's a pretty harsh penalty, you can't just face roll your way into winning a championship.
Casual games don't mean they lack penalties for losing, they just mean you can pick them up and play them casually. I play Marvel Puzzle Quest when I'm out and about, they sometimes do missions with big enemies, if you fail to defeat that enemy, you lose out on massive points for your alliance. It's a game as casual as they come, but missing out on those points can lose you and your entire alliance a 4 star cover, which is highly coveted. That's a pretty harsh penalty.
So first you offer an example of a game (Pokemon Go) that almost couldn't be more different from CoT if you tried. How that's supposed to have any relevance to what CoT is going to be is anyone's guess.
Then you trot out WoW like no other MMO except CoT has ever thought about trying to match since 2004. Has any other MMO even gotten close to WoW's numbers yet? Besides can you even call WoW (as a MMO) a "hyper-causal" game like you're trying to say CoT ought to be? I don't think so.
Look I get that you think CoT would be better off being a "zero challenge" game just because you got annoyed that you couldn't wildly charge in with your Blasters without getting killed all the time. Thankfully I simply don't think the Devs of CoT are going to be stupid enough to follow your advice in this particular area.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
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