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As a former COH player, my big fear for a Mission Creator:

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Strawberrycocoa
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As a former COH player, my big fear for a Mission Creator:

Is that it will recreate City of Hero's problem where people NEVER LEFT ATLAS PARK. Some new players I encountered back in the day had no idea there were game zones outside Atlas because they spent all their time from day 1 in the Architect.

I read Tyche mention in another thread that their mision creator model is more involved in the "outside" world than being self contained like AE was, but I still kind of feel like venting this fear I have. :\

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Why does it matter?

Why does it matter? Seriously.

If a player pays for a subscription and then spends all of their game time playing with the UGC tools, why is that a problem for you or for anyone else?

Every individual has the right to play the game the way they want to play the game as long as they are not interrupting everyone else.

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Star Trek Online partially

Star Trek Online partially sidesteps this particular issue by not putting Mission Doors at the same spot as the location where you accept the UGC tasking.

The UGC Contact is located at Starfleet Academy:

But sometimes the Mission Door you need to enter in order to begin the UGC isn't located in this zone. In many cases, you'll need to zone over to Earth Spacedock ...

... and then go to one of the many many "spare" Mission Doors that are set aside in the area which are otherwise never used for anything but UGC, some of which are on an upper level of the zone which you'd otherwise never have a reason to go to.

My point being that the way Architect Entertainment got set up was as an All In One that never provided a motivation to leave the building. That motivation to NEVER LEAVE then turned into a "comfort zone" that PCs never needed to move out of ... and that was a mistake.

So the obvious counter to that is that while you may have to go to the UGC Contact in a specific building in order to accept a UGC story arc, there's no reason why the Mission Door for that UGC would have to be placed in the same location as that UGC Contact. Which means that if you set up UGC such that the Mission Doors have to be "outside the building" out in the wider/broader world, you've already taken the first step to prevent the kind of insulation that developed as a result of Architect Entertainment's design flaws permitting such insulation to happen in the first place.

The flipside of this problem could be seen in places like the original Faultline ... which had next to no content at all and hardly anything ever sent you there to do anything and the place was a pain to get around in (especially for the vertical mobility challenged). As a result, Cryptic had an entire zone that hardly ever had any PCs in it. The place was just this big void for content, meaning hardly anyone was motivated to go out there since it was at the "far end of town" for anyone at that Level range. So the location took extra work to get to, and once you got there you had almost nothing to do aside from Badge Hunt (a one and done operation) or street sweep ... and there were easier, less annoying places to do street sweeping in. So Faultline was just this big abandoned zone that nobody bothered with because nothing really SENT people there, making it kind of a waste.

Architect Entertainment allowed the same dynamic to happen in reverse. Because there was no reason to HAVE TO leave the AE building in Atlas, the entire rest of the game was essentially "wasted" on those Players.

Solution?
If Architect Entertainment had "sent" PCs out to Mission Doors out in the wider open world (just like regular Missions and regular Contacts did) then PCs wouldn't have been able to spend their entire game playing "lives" inside of one single building and never go anywhere else besides Atlas Park.

So ... I'd prefer it if UGC in City of Titans "pushed" PCs to travel further afield than just a single building or a single neighborhood in order to get at the UGC received from the NPC Contact. I'd like to think that the motivation for WHY I'd like to see that done should be sufficiently obvious ...


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On thing that I *could* see

On thing that I *could* see happening is that the Mission builder sends you to a level zone appropriate for the content, and chooses an *appropriate* door as well.

This is assuming that the AE allows you to set a "maximum" level for the content. So if it had a level 25 maximum, and took place in an office... the game would send you to a level 25 zone with a suitable entrance.

Hopefully this would prevent the whole "Office door leads to cave system" setup that cropped up in CoX. Something that never made sense to me.

If the content had no maximum level set, then it would send you to a zone *appropriate* for your level and move you up.

What this would do is whilst making the Mission Architect building a focus point for *building* the content, the running of the content would take place in the open world.

Of course, for those who complain about "travel times for the content"... Suck it up. The game more than likely would have something similar in play with their normal content, and this shouldn't take any longer to get to the content than if you were running Dev Made content.

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Greyhawk wrote:
Greyhawk wrote:

Why does it matter? Seriously.
If a player pays for a subscription and then spends all of their game time playing with the UGC tools, why is that a problem for you or for anyone else?
Every individual has the right to play the game the way they want to play the game as long as they are not interrupting everyone else.

It bothered me to see the higher level zones barren of people. It bothered me that entire leveling zones never saw players because everyone powerleveled to 50 in AE. It bothered me seeing all the areas and stories of the City that people didn't even know existed because they stayed in a holodeck. :\

Sending people to mission instance doors in different zones would be a fantastic idea to help keep Mission Creator playthrough fresh and lively.

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You have to remember, they

You have to remember, they basically made CoH's mission creator an IC arcade scenerio. While RPers may have used it as something else, the IC story for AE was in a nut shell "Welcome to the virtual reality arcade!"

Though CoH did a lot of crappy "Have to have some sort of IC explanation for every little thing in the game"

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

On thing that I *could* see happening is that the Mission builder sends you to a level zone appropriate for the content, and chooses an *appropriate* door as well.
Of course, for those who complain about "travel times for the content"... Suck it up.

The one, and only one, exception I would want to make for this would be when the UGC creator is needing to playtest that content to verify that everything is in proper working order and doesn't need to be adjusted (further). For TESTING purposes only, it would be best to not have to Travel to reach a Mission Door (or Doors in a multi-story arc).

Such Testing ought to be limited to the content creator only, for what should be obvious reasons. Published UGC should still involve the larger open world of the game.


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Strawberrycocoa wrote:
Strawberrycocoa wrote:

Greyhawk wrote:
Why does it matter? Seriously.
If a player pays for a subscription and then spends all of their game time playing with the UGC tools, why is that a problem for you or for anyone else?
Every individual has the right to play the game the way they want to play the game as long as they are not interrupting everyone else.

It bothered me to see the higher level zones barren of people. It bothered me that entire leveling zones never saw players because everyone powerleveled to 50 in AE. It bothered me seeing all the areas and stories of the City that people didn't even know existed because they stayed in a holodeck. :\
Sending people to mission instance doors in different zones would be a fantastic idea to help keep Mission Creator playthrough fresh and lively.

I recall seeing a few cases along the lines of "level 50 characters asking in zone chat how to get to other zones beyond AP" and the like. Apart from feeling a bit sorry for those "AE babies" I never really gave it too much of a second thought.

By the time AE came along in CoH (Issue 14) the game was already 5 years old and very well established. Higher level zones were "barren" of people mostly because the vast majority of people were in mission/trial instances instead of lingering around in the general zones. The mid-range "leveling" zones were also largely empty because most people never really spent too much time in those zones regardless - they either rolled tons of low-level alts or worked their way up through the mid-zones to the endgame in short order.

I would agree that the AE probably did absorb a certain percentage of the CoH playerbase and like the PvPers the subset of people who were zealous fans of the AE mostly stayed in their "holodeck" missions never to see the light of day. But I don't really think the AE alone could be blamed for ALL the problems you seem to ascribe to it.

If the Devs of CoT manage to provide some sort of customizable mission system you're going to have to expect there will be a portion of the playerbase who will be "lost" to it. That doesn't mean it'll be inherently bad for the overall game and that also doesn't mean those players who jump into it should be forced to "interact" with the rest of the general playerbase in any significant way if they prefer not to.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

So ... I'd prefer it if UGC in City of Titans "pushed" PCs to travel further afield than just a single building or a single neighborhood in order to get at the UGC received from the NPC Contact. I'd like to think that the motivation for WHY I'd like to see that done should be sufficiently obvious ...

Color me dense, but I'm not seeing the "why". Seriously.

Why does one playstyle (regardless of which one you pick) have the right to demand other paying customers play the game the same way they do?

I don't like anything that hints at mandatory PvP.
I don't like anything that hints at mandatory roleplay.
I don't like anything that hints at mandatory crafting.
etc.

Now. I'm not opposed to placing mission doors or contacts outside the UGC tools. Heck. I would not oppose having the UGC tools completely outside the game with an upload function once a story arc is thoroughly playtested by the creator with contact and doors then assigned by the game engine once the upload completes.

I'm not opposed to the idea of forcing UGC creators and users outside the tool interface. I just do not understand why some folks are demanding it.

What difference does it make if someone logs in to something like AE and never does anything else? How is that any different from a player who never left Bloody Bay after reaching level 15?

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Greyhawk wrote:
Greyhawk wrote:

Color me dense, but I'm not seeing the "why". Seriously.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
On thing that I *could* see happening is that the Mission builder sends you to a level zone appropriate for the content, and chooses an *appropriate* door as well.
Of course, for those who complain about "travel times for the content"... Suck it up.

The one, and only one, exception I would want to make for this would be when the UGC creator is needing to playtest that content to verify that everything is in proper working order and doesn't need to be adjusted (further). For TESTING purposes only, it would be best to not have to Travel to reach a Mission Door (or Doors in a multi-story arc).
Such Testing ought to be limited to the content creator only, for what should be obvious reasons. Published UGC should still involve the larger open world of the game.

Oh agreed on the testing area. I was just going for "player point of view" thing rather than the AE maker view of testing it.

But making sure that people are out and about in the open world, even if travelling from instance entrance to instance entrance helps make it feel more alive.

Ironically, something like this helps educate the people where to go... I can understand when people ask "where is the entrance to Zone", especially if it is the next zone in the chain. Sometimes people overlevel and just want to move on; which makes sense. They might feel that moving on is the best thing for them.

But if ALL they have seen is the starting zone due to them having never HAVE to leave the starting zone? That is not actually THEIR fault. They used the tools as the developers gave them.

They used them. They might have hit level cap doing so. It isn't THEIR fault.

However, making the players travel to the UGC content? They work out how to go there. They learn their way around the zones. They might even pick up additional content on the way.

The people who might have a problem with this? Powerlevellers and Farmers.

Because they would have to travel to the mission, which would slow down their rate of levelling/gaining currency/items even if they were already going faster than a normal person running content would level, they would still complain that their rate of gain wasn't "fast enough".

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
Gangrel wrote:
On thing that I *could* see happening is that the Mission builder sends you to a level zone appropriate for the content, and chooses an *appropriate* door as well.
Of course, for those who complain about "travel times for the content"... Suck it up.

The one, and only one, exception I would want to make for this would be when the UGC creator is needing to playtest that content to verify that everything is in proper working order and doesn't need to be adjusted (further). For TESTING purposes only, it would be best to not have to Travel to reach a Mission Door (or Doors in a multi-story arc).
Such Testing ought to be limited to the content creator only, for what should be obvious reasons. Published UGC should still involve the larger open world of the game.

Oh agreed on the testing area. I was just going for "player point of view" thing rather than the AE maker view of testing it.
But making sure that people are out and about in the open world, even if travelling from instance entrance to instance entrance helps make it feel more alive.
Ironically, something like this helps educate the people where to go... I can understand when people ask "where is the entrance to Zone", especially if it is the next zone in the chain. Sometimes people overlevel and just want to move on; which makes sense. They might feel that moving on is the best thing for them.
But if ALL they have seen is the starting zone due to them having never HAVE to leave the starting zone? That is not actually THEIR fault. They used the tools as the developers gave them.
They used them. They might have hit level cap doing so. It isn't THEIR fault.
However, making the players travel to the UGC content? They work out how to go there. They learn their way around the zones. They might even pick up additional content on the way.
The people who might have a problem with this? Powerlevellers and Farmers.
Because they would have to travel to the mission, which would slow down their rate of levelling/gaining currency/items even if they were already going faster than a normal person running content would level, they would still complain that their rate of gain wasn't "fast enough".

look at COs on alert system *shudders* That was the point where an ok game got terrible fast. Everyone just stayed in millenium city because there was no need to leave anymore because the alert missions offer better rewards and are instanced. Many story missions and most of the fun content became unplayable because teaming became obsolete. That update essentially killed the game because every zone was barren as there was no reason to leave MC. I can see why this is a fear for COT.

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I haven't decided yet just

I haven't decided yet just how much I agree or disagree with Red and Straw, but the psychology of empty zones or a game that feels empty does seem like a valid concern. If there are a thousand players holed up in "virtual missions" and only 3 new payers running around a starter zone, the game may feel a little dead to those new players. Luckily there were other mechanisms that brought players together like Liberty and the auction houses. On the other hand there were times I enjoyed an area that was essentially all mine. I suppose it is a balancing act.

On a slightly different note, it seems to me that the "Mission Architect" concept kind of breaks the fourth wall. Perhaps it could be a multi-dimensional research facility that "searches" for parallel universes based upon given "search criteria" (= building the mission) Once such a universe is found the facility attempts to create a portal to that universe, but there's no telling where the portal will be (= Red's go to the mission concept).

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sev171 wrote:
sev171 wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
Redlynne wrote:
Gangrel wrote:
On thing that I *could* see happening is that the Mission builder sends you to a level zone appropriate for the content, and chooses an *appropriate* door as well.
Of course, for those who complain about "travel times for the content"... Suck it up.

The one, and only one, exception I would want to make for this would be when the UGC creator is needing to playtest that content to verify that everything is in proper working order and doesn't need to be adjusted (further). For TESTING purposes only, it would be best to not have to Travel to reach a Mission Door (or Doors in a multi-story arc).
Such Testing ought to be limited to the content creator only, for what should be obvious reasons. Published UGC should still involve the larger open world of the game.

Oh agreed on the testing area. I was just going for "player point of view" thing rather than the AE maker view of testing it.
But making sure that people are out and about in the open world, even if travelling from instance entrance to instance entrance helps make it feel more alive.
Ironically, something like this helps educate the people where to go... I can understand when people ask "where is the entrance to Zone", especially if it is the next zone in the chain. Sometimes people overlevel and just want to move on; which makes sense. They might feel that moving on is the best thing for them.
But if ALL they have seen is the starting zone due to them having never HAVE to leave the starting zone? That is not actually THEIR fault. They used the tools as the developers gave them.
They used them. They might have hit level cap doing so. It isn't THEIR fault.
However, making the players travel to the UGC content? They work out how to go there. They learn their way around the zones. They might even pick up additional content on the way.
The people who might have a problem with this? Powerlevellers and Farmers.
Because they would have to travel to the mission, which would slow down their rate of levelling/gaining currency/items even if they were already going faster than a normal person running content would level, they would still complain that their rate of gain wasn't "fast enough".

look at COs on alert system *shudders* That was the point where an ok game got terrible fast. Everyone just stayed in millenium city because there was no need to leave anymore because the alert missions offer better rewards and are instanced. Many story missions and most of the fun content became unplayable because teaming became obsolete. That update essentially killed the game because every zone was barren as there was no reason to leave MC. I can see why this is a fear for COT.

This is a fear for players of every MMO. I have seen countless complaints forwarded at mechanics like this that end up emptying out zones. The issue with empty zones as mentioned before is that can be seriously unnerving to an new player.

With other MMOs it occurs due to the initial exodus of players after launch or when the MMO has a ''Looking for Group'' finder like WoW's. In CoH it occurred with MA too a certain degree (although the zone pops were dropping off in the first place as more and more people hit level 50).

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Seeing a lot of people

Seeing a lot of people hanging around in the game not doing anything in particular, costume contests, hanging out in Pocket D, waiting or looking for a team, constantly seeing the chat window filled with "lft" or "any sewer teams?" etc.... gave me a bad feeling about the game, it made it look like the players couldn't find anything to do and were bored.

In short almost everything you guys say gives you a feeling of an active "community" made me think something was wrong with the game.

What makes the game look good to me, is if people are playing it. That means they're in missions, patrolling the streets or hazard zones or using public utilities like the costume changer, merchants, Auction house, contacts, trainers etc...and above all AE.

Despite the fact that I hated how it was worked into the game I still believe it was one of the best parts of the game and had the potential, if the devs had used it, to improve the whole game by showing exactly what kind of stories people wanted to see more of.

Since I seriously hated Peregrine Island and the Rikti War Zone, it gave me something to do with my high level toons and made the game endless. In fact, until AE came along I really didn't like any of the content for characters above 25th level. In fact I often deleted toons once they made it to around 25th level because that was usually the point where I'd get bored with them. It was almost impossible to solo the higher level content.

Oh, and Mid level zones are always going to have a lot fewer people in them, it's part of "the problem of levels".
Higher level zones are always full of people trying to reach the maximum level or using their maxed out toons because that's when the game really starts. Low level areas will always be crowded because people are always making new toons, but most people people rush through mid level zones on their way to something else.

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TheMightyPaladin wrote:
TheMightyPaladin wrote:

... In fact I often deleted toons once they made it to around 25th level because that was usually the point where I'd get bored with them. ..

It's interesting to me that you mention this. I usually lost interest around 30 something. I never even had a 50 until the last week of the games life.

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25, 30 somewhere around there

25, 30 somewhere around there.
It was too long ago.
way too long

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I guess it all depended on

I guess it all depended on which server you were on and how large your friends list was. I never felt alone on Virtue unless I was idling away the wee hours of the morning. And it seemed when I finally found some alone time I could always do a respect or work on a new costume. My personal experience about levels was that toons didn't really get interesting until they started getting some of the cool late coming powers at level 30 plus. But I understand that this was just my experience.

I reserve the right to have an opinion. You reserve the right to not agree.

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TheMightyPaladin wrote:
TheMightyPaladin wrote:

Seeing a lot of people hanging around in the game not doing anything in particular, costume contests, hanging out in Pocket D, waiting or looking for a team, constantly seeing the chat window filled with "lft" or "any sewer teams?" etc.... gave me a bad feeling about the game, it made it look like the players couldn't find anything to do and were bored.
In short almost everything you guys say gives you a feeling of an active "community" made me think something was wrong with the game.
What makes the game look good to me, is if people are playing it. That means they're in missions, patrolling the streets or hazard zones or using public utilities like the costume changer, merchants, Auction house, contacts, trainers etc...and above all AE.
Despite the fact that I hated how it was worked into the game I still believe it was one of the best parts of the game and had the potential, if the devs had used it, to improve the whole game by showing exactly what kind of stories people wanted to see more of.
Since I seriously hated Peregrine Island and the Rikti War Zone, it gave me something to do with my high level toons and made the game endless. In fact, until AE came along I really didn't like any of the content for characters above 25th level. In fact I often deleted toons once they made it to around 25th level because that was usually the point where I'd get bored with them. It was almost impossible to solo the higher level content.
Oh, and Mid level zones are always going to have a lot fewer people in them, it's part of "the problem of levels".
Higher level zones are always full of people trying to reach the maximum level or using their maxed out toons because that's when the game really starts. Low level areas will always be crowded because people are always making new toons, but most people people rush through mid level zones on their way to something else.

Something you have to remember, no matter the server, from the lowest (which I was on victory my first two years on CoH before I switched to Virtue) to highest populated server, lots of people did not like to run teams in CoH.

Maybe that's why we hear lots of complaints about PvP and raid style content?

I remember hearing people complaining they couldn't get a team on Virtue and I was always forming teams for TFs with general ease. Some of them would occaisionally have a hiccup, but most of the time, done!

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Bleddyn wrote:
Bleddyn wrote:

sev171 wrote:
look at COs on alert system *shudders* That was the point where an ok game got terrible fast. Everyone just stayed in millenium city because there was no need to leave anymore because the alert missions offer better rewards and are instanced. Many story missions and most of the fun content became unplayable because teaming became obsolete. That update essentially killed the game because every zone was barren as there was no reason to leave MC. I can see why this is a fear for COT.

This is a fear for players of every MMO. I have seen countless complaints forwarded at mechanics like this that end up emptying out zones. The issue with empty zones as mentioned before is that can be seriously unnerving to an new player.

I would agree that if CoT implemented something exactly like the "CO alert system" example then yes that might cause problems for the game overall.

But the CoT Devs not only have plenty of "bad examples" like that from other games to learn from but they also have the benefit of hindsight for all the mistakes and fixes that the CoH Devs themselves dealt with from their own AE system as well. Basically what I'm saying is there are a large number of "lessons learned" out there and a big pile of things to avoid based on how they didn't work in the past.

From all this I have relatively little fear that any equivalent customizable mission system in CoT will suffer from the same problems that plagued those other games.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I could have spent all my

I could have spent all my time in the AE if I wasn't so obsessed with collecting badges xD the AE was the best thing since the black market <3

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In CoX, the concept of

In CoX, the concept of mission architect was of a simulation room, a holodeck, if I remember correctly. So it made sense that it was all in one building. But that was a world decision made by the developers. It didn't need to be that way, but it was, and it made sense for what it was.

CoT could do it like the Star Trek example above. If you give the creator the option of using instance gates all over the world (whether they are doors or pits or wells or whatever), they could create world-spanning mission chains and I support this fully.

Going back to the holodeck concept from CoX:
Another option that occurred to me is that the mission architect holodeck would not be any one central location, but rather something that leagues would have to build in their league halls. If your hero league hall was equipped with a holodeck, then your mission would be available in your holodeck in your hall, and you could charge a small fee to run it, which is shared with the creator. If another guild wanted to host your mission on their own league's holodeck, they would have to pay your league a concession for the service in addition to each person paying the fee to run it. The fees would be a pittance for the individuals running through the content, but with a high volume of players, the revenue could be quite substantial.
This could incentivise players to join leagues and even visit each others' league halls and would obviously require architect creators to be members of a league if they ever want anyone to run their mission. I can see the highest esteemed creators becoming desirable for a league to call their own because of the revenue generated by all the other players who want to run the content. I can even see leagues competing to create the highest rated content also, so I think we would see overall quality increase as a result.


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.
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
Gangrel wrote:
On thing that I *could* see happening is that the Mission builder sends you to a level zone appropriate for the content, and chooses an *appropriate* door as well.
Of course, for those who complain about "travel times for the content"... Suck it up.
The one, and only one, exception I would want to make for this would be when the UGC creator is needing to playtest that content to verify that everything is in proper working order and doesn't need to be adjusted (further). For TESTING purposes only, it would be best to not have to Travel to reach a Mission Door (or Doors in a multi-story arc).
Such Testing ought to be limited to the content creator only, for what should be obvious reasons. Published UGC should still involve the larger open world of the game.
Oh agreed on the testing area. I was just going for "player point of view" thing rather than the AE maker view of testing it.
But making sure that people are out and about in the open world, even if travelling from instance entrance to instance entrance helps make it feel more alive.
Ironically, something like this helps educate the people where to go... I can understand when people ask "where is the entrance to Zone", especially if it is the next zone in the chain. Sometimes people overlevel and just want to move on; which makes sense. They might feel that moving on is the best thing for them.
But if ALL they have seen is the starting zone due to them having never HAVE to leave the starting zone? That is not actually THEIR fault. They used the tools as the developers gave them.
They used them. They might have hit level cap doing so. It isn't THEIR fault.
However, making the players travel to the UGC content? They work out how to go there. They learn their way around the zones. They might even pick up additional content on the way.
The people who might have a problem with this? Powerlevellers and Farmers.
Because they would have to travel to the mission, which would slow down their rate of levelling/gaining currency/items even if they were already going faster than a normal person running content would level, they would still complain that their rate of gain wasn't "fast enough".

calling them power levelers and farmers is a bad path to follow. those play styles are no less valid than yours. just because you want the devs to parade people around to make your rp "more alive" does not make it a good idea. high level zones in most games do not have a large population in most cases even if they dont have this kind of content. trying to force this is no different then pvpers insisting that everyone should have to travel through pvp zones so that their areas are more alive. I dont need anyone telling me that I have to play a certain way. I had 34 50's all leveled at least 90% in regular game missions or tf's, yet I couldnt find half of the places in villain zones. was it bad that nobody forced me to be educated in red side? no. I wasnt interested in that. should the character creator have not let me make another alt unless it was red side? no. forcing this kind of garbage into the game to validate how you think people should act is a bad idea.

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Making an argument against

Making an argument against "Forcing people to play a certain way" is specious at best. Every game forces peole to play a certain way. Those are the rules of the game. You can't move your pieces sideways in checkers (an exaggerated simplification, I admit). The point being that this is an MMO and its success and failure as an MMO is directly dependent upon the social aspects of the game. That is irrefutable. I, like many others, actually spend most of my time as a solo player. But even if I play mostly solo, I choose to do so in an MMO because it is a social game with others that make it a wholly different experience than a solo game. An experience I chose when I chose to play the game.
So if one person like this thread's OP states that having no players mixing and mingling is a bad thing, sure it may be that person's opinion, but it is also a valid opinion in a game that is meant to be a social cooperative or competitive experience.

There will always be those that say one persons subscription fee is the same color money as anyone else's subscription fee and that if one person wants to spend their game time farming solo missions and another person wants to spend theirs running taskforces why should it matter? I'll tell you why it matters, because for the success of an MMO as an MMO, the task force runner is more valuable to the game itself. A taskforce runner establishes a social network of dependency and comraderie that actually has a synergistic effect in making those others want to keep logging in to play the game where maybe they wouldn't otherwise. In other words, the more social your players are the more players there will be, and the more successful the game is as a whole.

I understand the argument that you shouldn't force people to play a certain way. I get it. And sometimes I just want to run some content without the pressures of my guildmates and I don't want any game system that prevents me from doing that. But I also understand the needs of the MMO as a functioning holism that needs those social pressures, comraderie and competitiveness to succeed. The more player interaction the game fosters (or 'forces' using your terminology) the better off it will be. Thus, all checkers have to move diagonally (by design).


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.
ivanhedgehog
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Making an argument against "Forcing people to play a certain way" is specious at best. Every game forces peole to play a certain way. Those are the rules of the game. You can't move your pieces sideways in checkers (an exaggerated simplification, I admit). The point being that this is an MMO and its success and failure as an MMO is directly dependent upon the social aspects of the game. That is irrefutable. I, like many others, actually spend most of my time as a solo player. But even if I play mostly solo, I choose to do so in an MMO because it is a social game with others that make it a wholly different experience than a solo game. An experience I chose when I chose to play the game.
So if one person like this thread's OP states that having no players mixing and mingling is a bad thing, sure it may be that person's opinion, but it is also a valid opinion in a game that is meant to be a social cooperative or competitive experience.
There will always be those that say one persons subscription fee is the same color money as anyone else's subscription fee and that if one person wants to spend their game time farming solo missions and another person wants to spend theirs running taskforces why should it matter? I'll tell you why it matters, because for the success of an MMO as an MMO, the task force runner is more valuable to the game itself. A taskforce runner establishes a social network of dependency and comraderie that actually has a synergistic effect in making those others want to keep logging in to play the game where maybe they wouldn't otherwise. In other words, the more social your players are the more players there will be, and the more successful the game is as a whole.
I understand the argument that you shouldn't force people to play a certain way. I get it. And sometimes I just want to run some content without the pressures of my guildmates and I don't want any game system that prevents me from doing that. But I also understand the needs of the MMO as a functioning holism that needs those social pressures, comraderie and competitiveness to succeed. The more player interaction the game fosters (or 'forces' using your terminology) the better off it will be. Thus, all checkers have to move diagonally (by design).

PVPing is a MMO activity. Pvpers form social networks and community. You should have no problem then having every zone be a pvp free for all zone. It will help the function of the game(by your statements) I was not an AE player, but I would not want to see that segment forced to spend travel time just so you can feel "immersed" in the game. I was a tf runner, some times 2 or 3 a night. you probably wouldnt see me much if I was in an ITF or some other instance. COH was by defenition, a heavily instanced game, which I was very happy with. I have played other games that shoved everyone into zones where we fought for a few mobs or glowies, it is not a good experience. Long story short, other players do not have to provide you with a dog and pony show, just so you can feel that the game is active..

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I have to say, honestly,

I have to say, honestly, Mission Architect came and I hardly noticed the apparent apocalypse it caused. I ran a few AE missions with groups and solo. That's about it. A friend of mine tinkered with it a lot.

Also, nothing wrong with teaming, nothing wrong with solo, nothing wrong with PvP, nothing wrong with AE, nothing wrong with hating any or any combination of the previous, nothing wrong with full zones, nothing wrong with empty zones, nothing wrong with people with 100 lvl 50s, nothing wrong with people with no level 50s, nothing wrong with standing around hanging out or LFT, nothing wrong with not standing around and never LFT, nothing wrong with those who liked hero side, nothing wrong with those who preferred red side, nothing wrong with Praetoria, nothing wrong with people who hated Praetoria, nothing wrong with playing the market, nothing wrong with hating and ignoring the market, etc., etc.

What I don't personally get is not just being content to play the game the way you like and allow others to play the game the way they like. Of course within certain generally accepted parameters such as profanity and sexual harassment, racism, etc.

I mean, probably my biggest pet peeve in COH was people who had no absolutely no concept/theme and/or ignored that it was a superhero game and tried to force another theme on the game, because I was there to play a Superhero game and I liked that to be the atmosphere, but... I knew that was my hangup and it was their money, and I played happily anyway. Ok, maybe I grumbled a little, cause, you know, an excuse to complain once in a while is hard to resist :).

But I knew it was really fine.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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I'm OK with Farming when:

I'm OK with Farming when:

- player logs in, hops on a PUG, or does some group content, TF and the like.
- after doing that content, hops in a saved mission to do some Farming for the next 2 to 3 hours.
- repeats the same thing the next day.

I'm Not OK with Farming when:

- player bot logs in, hops in a saved mission to do Farming for the next 8-12 hours.
- spam chat, hoping to get players to pay for Experience through Farming.
- repeat the same thing the next day, every day.

To combat this:

- Use CoSined Rewards.. for XP, or other rewards, for redoing the same missions in a 24 hour timeframe.
- CoSined rewards give the Most rewards when doing content for the 1st time.
- CoSined rewards give the Least rewards when constantly repeating content at 12th hour.
- after 12th hour, CoSined rewards gradually return to Most rewards.
- after 24th hour, CoSined rewards give the Most rewards again.
- players that did a TF at 8PM the day before, that does the same TF at 7PM won't really see a big difference in XP, rewards*.

ex:

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ivanhedgehog wrote:
ivanhedgehog wrote:

PVPing is a MMO activity. Pvpers form social networks and community. You should have no problem then having every zone be a pvp free for all zone. It will help the function of the game(by your statements) I was not an AE player, but I would not want to see that segment forced to spend travel time just so you can feel "immersed" in the game. I was a tf runner, some times 2 or 3 a night. you probably wouldnt see me much if I was in an ITF or some other instance. COH was by defenition, a heavily instanced game, which I was very happy with. I have played other games that shoved everyone into zones where we fought for a few mobs or glowies, it is not a good experience. Long story short, other players do not have to provide you with a dog and pony show, just so you can feel that the game is active..

I don't think it's so much about "forcing" people to travel to make others feel immersed but rather about if it makes sense due to how UGC is presented to exist in-game.

If it's presented like it was in COH (holodeck entertainment) then making people travel around the actual world would be ridiculous since it makes no sense.
If it's presented like it is in Neverwinter (actual people giving actual "quests") then having people travel around would be the preferred way since it makes much more sense.

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Blacke4dawn has a good point.

Blacke4dawn has a good point. It is all in how the devs want to choose how the architect tool is going to be implemented.

Are our created missions going to be as if they were real world missions, or are they going to be treated as simulations like AE was? Since we're in the development stage (mostly) we still have the luxury of debating this point.

It appears as if the OP was trying to make a case for a more open world style of mission instead of simulations in a central holodeck. His reasoning was sound in that it populated the world for the rest of us, promoted engaging the the world the developers created for us play in, and created greater potential opportunities for social interaction; but travel around the world also exposes players to world bosses, invasions, and other emergent content they would not be exposed to if they were hermiting in AE all the time.

But that is purely a design decision, because it could just as easily (one could argue more easily) be implemented in a central holodeck style venue like AE was, which could potentially turn the AE lobby into a vibrant gathering place and players wouldn't need to waste time traveling anywhere to run mission after mission.

I can see the advantages of both, but in my opinion it would be better for the game if they required travel to the mission instances rather than having them all in one place.


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.
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Why not both? You can design

Why not both? You can design "real world" missions with "real world" rewards just like any other game mission, or you can design 'VR' (danger room) missions without the "real world" rewards. Since it is basically designed as a training scenario and is localized in the VR simulator.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Blacke4dawn has a good point. It is all in how the devs want to choose how the architect tool is going to be implemented.
Are our created missions going to be as if they were real world missions, or are they going to be treated as simulations like AE was? Since we're in the development stage (mostly) we still have the luxury of debating this point.
It appears as if the OP was trying to make a case for a more open world style of mission instead of simulations in a central holodeck. His reasoning was sound in that it populated the world for the rest of us, promoted engaging the the world the developers created for us play in, and created greater potential opportunities for social interaction; but travel around the world also exposes players to world bosses, invasions, and other emergent content they would not be exposed to if they were hermiting in AE all the time.
But that is purely a design decision, because it could just as easily (one could argue more easily) be implemented in a central holodeck style venue like AE was, which could potentially turn the AE lobby into a vibrant gathering place and players wouldn't need to waste time traveling anywhere to run mission after mission.
I can see the advantages of both, but in my opinion it would be better for the game if they required travel to the mission instances rather than having them all in one place.

Nyxz wrote:

Why not both? You can design "real world" missions with "real world" rewards just like any other game mission, or you can design 'VR' (danger room) missions without the "real world" rewards. Since it is basically designed as a training scenario and is localized in the VR simulator.

So, there is an easy middle ground taken right from classic comic book precedent that could make all of this work--alternate realities vs cannon.

The devs can say that all "AE" type creations are an "alternate reality" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_If_(comics)--which could make them free to travel in the larger world except for what happens inside the actual instanced missions--and the devs could have selections or contests to see which actually become "cannon" missions in the real world.

"AE" type stuff is basically "What If?" that travel through the existing world to "what if" instances", and the devs can make them cannon as desired.

Win/win?

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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I have recently been playing

I have recently been playing PS4 alot while waiting for CoT. My point is, in the game The Division, I like what they did now its a PvE vs a PvP mode, but you can translate this over to a mission architect type of scenario. The story in game, offers upgrades, powers etc... whatever leveling system is normal, while the Architect can offer a secondary (optional) leveling system that can unlock exclusive type rewards. In a sense you get two games, now I assume something like this would come out in patch or after release, just wanted to toss out the idea.

DaSlaya

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Just to underline the broader

Just to underline the broader point of my previous post--in a Superhero based MMORPG, it might be a good idea to first look at the long and rich tradition of Superhero comics for inspiration, and, if that doesn't work, then look at the broader MMORPG genre in general for solutions.

This appears to be mostly what CoH did--especially considering that CoH came before and many of the current MMORPG conventions and often had better solutions for many game-design problems than games that came after, at least in context to a Superhero game.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

I'm OK with Farming when:
- player logs in, hops on a PUG, or does some group content, TF and the like.
- after doing that content, hops in a saved mission to do some Farming for the next 2 to 3 hours.
- repeats the same thing the next day.
I'm Not OK with Farming when:
- player bot logs in, hops in a saved mission to do Farming for the next 8-12 hours.
- spam chat, hoping to get players to pay for Experience through Farming.
- repeat the same thing the next day, every day.
To combat this:
- Use CoSined Rewards.. for XP, or other rewards, for redoing the same missions in a 24 hour timeframe.
- CoSined rewards give the Most rewards when doing content for the 1st time.
- CoSined rewards give the Least rewards when constantly repeating content at 12th hour.
- after 12th hour, CoSined rewards gradually return to Most rewards.
- after 24th hour, CoSined rewards give the Most rewards again.
- players that did a TF at 8PM the day before, that does the same TF at 7PM won't really see a big difference in XP, rewards*.
ex:

Basically ... this.

The "problem" with Farming purely for Farming is the REPEATED exploitation of rewards for least amount of investment. A game "prospers" more when its Players ... circulate ... through it, doing a variety of content for a variety of rewards, rather than just doing the same (optimized) thing repeatedly AND NOTHING ELSE.

Promotion of that "need to circulate" requires some sort of Diminishing Returns On Rewards When Repeating Content. This alters the Risk vs Reward Return of simply doing a single thing endlessly without penalty.


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
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TECHNICALLY, modulating the

TECHNICALLY, modulating the XP/loot rewards would require more like cosine squared, since cosine and sine both go negative, which would equate to taking XP and loot AWAY from the player as they do the content. Whereas cosine squared oscillates between 0 and 1, which is what you probably want. That or 0.5(cosine +1).

But as devs have pointed out in the past (in other threads), most attempts at curbing the loot rewards from repeating UGC mission farms can be circumvented somehow by the makers of such content. Like just making more copies of the farm and giving them different names, etc. Ideally, you'd want the rewards for all forms of content to be set up such that the game isn't really pushing people into one thing or away from another, such that they're all within the same approximate neighborhood in terms of loot and XP. That said, I think such would be more difficult to do than one might expect, and would require tweaking over time, which people will likely rage against when their own personal favorite play style inevitably get's nerfed for balance. Also, even a small, but measurable and/or perceptible advantage in one style or another will likely cause that style to be the thing people do, like WAY more than other things. The Imperious TF got run a lot in CoX since people though it was the most efficient in a lot of ways, etc.

Also,the game world has to look like a world, and as such it has to be pretty vast. I like that street sweeping makes the world look inhabited by real people, but I doubt you'd ever fill a world that vast with people street sweeping all over the place if you tried, and to even try would require you to cut off all of the door missions, for the most part, or else make them far less rewarding. Trick or treating got people out in the streets briefly in CoX every year, to some extent, and maybe more events like that would be good, I don't know.

I don't think that activities like base design, UGC design, PVP, UGC play, badge hunting, crafting, marketeering, etc necessarily need to be as lucrative in terms of XP and loot as doing missions (to completion) or street sweeping or doing raids and/or TFs. Some of those things naturally don't lead to the player getting any XP/loot in some cases, and you're not going to add them in, are you? If the XP/loot for doing UGC or for repeating the same game-cannon mission over and over were nerfed in an attempt to maintain some semblance of parity in terms of tangible rewards you could accrue over time, assuming most efficient play possible from each style, I'd be fine with that, and I'd probably still do as much UGC as I did before, which is to say I'd do the missions and arcs designed by my friends and SG mates.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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I was assuming MWM Devs would

Radiac,
+1

I was assuming MWM Devs would adjust it to CoSined2, or whatever suits their formula. ;)

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

I was assuming MWM Devs would adjust it to CoSined2, or whatever suits their formula. ;)

I see what you did there. Bravo.


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.
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Speaking from a position of

Speaking from a position of only using the AE missions to do RP missions with my SG, I think having at least an option to make an entry for missions zone-specific would be aces. Like, for example, someone makes a mission where trouble's brewing in a warehouse of the docks and heroes need to go and deal with that. The designer goes to a tab on final details, marks Zone entry point as Docks and chooses warehouse as a specific point of entry. Out of the ten or twenty doors in the docks that are flagged with "AE friendly", one of the five that are flagged "warehouse" activates as a mission entry point for the mission chosen. Go to door, activate mission, have fun, ?????, profit!

As for AE babies... well, I heartily approve of people getting out and experiencing the game, but it's going to be difficult mandating such things. Farmers gonna farm, haters gonna hate and people will try and find shortcuts to achieve their own ends. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try and encourage diversity, though.

Here's to fighting, cheating, stealing and drinking! If you fight, may you fight for a brother; if you cheat, may you cheat death; if you steal, may you steal your love's heart; and if you drink, may you drink with me!

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Having played GW2, I can say

Having played GW2, I can say now that the problem of the game looking like a ghost town because everyone is doing indoor stuff is really not going to be a problem, in all likelihood.

In GW2, there are PVP events, World V World events, TF-like things called "Fractals", and "dungeons", and personal story missions to do, all of which would mostly have you in your own map with yourself and maybe a few others, for the most part not out in the outside world. That game's maps are STILL constantly crawling with people everywhere.

Why? I chalk it up to two things:

1. The game is "one big megaserver" meaning everyone can "see" everyone else. To manage high player counts, the game constantly spawns and collapses instances of the outdoor maps in an effort to try to keep the ones it has running "full-ish" at all times. This means that the game will sometimes move you to a fairly empty-ish instance if you change zones, and it will sometimes ask you to allow yourself to be re-located to a different instance in an effort to manage things. The game gives you a temporary buff for allowing yourself to be re-located as such, which is nice. Also, this re-location can work to your advantage in the sense that you might have just harvested all the harvesting nodes on the map you're on, then when you get re-located, all the nodes are re-randomised and it is as if you never harvested the map, you can essentially go and chop down the same trees again, though their locations are re-randomized (from your perspective) since you're on a different instance than the one you just left.

2. The game has outdoor zones that each have many, many events to do that fire off at regular intervals and give bonus XP and other rewards when you complete them. So like, imagine you're in Brix and some Crey underboss spawns that requires like 20 people to actually defeat it, and when you do defeat it, you get randomized loot drops that are actually pretty good, as well as bonus XP. Now imagine this underboss spawns on a regular clock such that he's going to be there every day at the same time, or every 3 hours, or whatever.

People of all levels have reasons to do these events, not just for XP and loot, but also for badge-type achievements, and because on any given day the event in question or the zone in question might be part of the "daily bonus" suite, which is a set of like 4-5 different things you can do to get bonus rewards. On one day, there might be a bonus for completing events in Ascalon, the next day it might be Kryta, etc. You might get a daily bonus for defeating the Toxic Spider Queen in Kessex hills today, and another for defeating the Megadestroyer in the volcano in Mount Maelstrom tomorrow, etc. They not only have events that happen on differing various time intervals, but they also have "Weekly Strike Target" type rewards that change every day for doing various different things.

I think this is really good and would try to emulate it in some way. I think if they do that, the outside world will not feel so empty. With sidekicking and exemping, you could even allow low level toons into higher level zones to do dailies, which is something GW2 really needs, IMHO. I can't do the daily Tequatl, the Sunless dragon raid with my level 15 toon because you need to be like 65 for that or you just get killed instantly and repeatedly as you try to go from the lowbie zone you started in to that zone where the dragon is. Despite the lack of sidekicking, and the vast amounts of "indoor" stuff you could do, and the constant running of high-level raids like Tequatl and the Octovine raid in Auric Basin (which is level 80 required and gives ridiculous amounts of loot), GW2 is still crawling with people everywhere you go, for the most part, during busier times.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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In addition, when the sewer

In addition, when the sewer mission thing came along, alot of folks leveled beyond the lower-medium zones thus those zones were virtually empty. From playing Champions Online, the "alert" missions did the same thing. I understand those with multiple high level toons not wanting to do the all of the content again, but I wished there was some sort of in-game mechanic where the game could tell you were a new player thus not letting you go "all the way" so to speak. And (regarding AE), one other thing that at times bothered me was newly AE leveled folks wanting to do TF's with others and some not having a clue how to play their toons, much less play them in a team structure.

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I have no problem with people

I have no problem with people playing AE and never leaving till level 50 if they want. Just don't be a "fresh" level 50 and join a TF with me and have no clue how to play your toon, much less play it in a team format. Yes I play for fun and understand mistakes are made, but playing at least ONCE through the game helps you to understand how your toon works, and how it works with other ATs.

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GrazerCoH wrote:
GrazerCoH wrote:

I have no problem with people playing AE and never leaving till level 50 if they want. Just don't be a "fresh" level 50 and join a TF with me and have no clue how to play your toon, much less play it in a team format. Yes I play for fun and understand mistakes are made, but playing at least ONCE through the game helps you to understand how your toon works, and how it works with other ATs.

I agree with you, Grazer, but how do we make an argument that people should learn how to play their characters without sounding like elitist snobs ourselves?

I'm an old fart and I'm not in any rush to do things like I was once upon a time. I have the patience to play with people who make mistakes and I'll play with people who are gaming with their kids or who have other challenges to deal with. But I want my content to be challenging. I want there to be a skill bar to overcome content. That doesn't mean I want it to be an action-combat game, but it does mean that the content should punish mistakes.

I think the difference for me is if I can tell that people want to play better, learn the fight, and keep trying until they succeed. If I am playing with someone who is really trying to win, I will have unlimited patience and we will overcome the content somehow. I get immense pleasure from overcoming content we never thought we could, but we learned and grew and beat it ourselves. When we all stand around chatting for three minutes after the fight about how hard it was or how we finally pulled it off or how timely that healing spell was or whatever, before we realize we need to get along, that is what teaming is all about to me. I get far more satisfaction that way then from racing through it with a bunch of overpowered twinks or pro gamers.

On the other hand, when I am with someone who makes thoughtless mistakes and complains that the content is just too hard and who doesn't try to learn the fight or change tactics, then my patience is very short and I get frustrated and want to change the team.

I don't think that makes me an elitist, and I don't think that makes you one either Grazer.


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.
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Another thing about GW2, when

Another thing about GW2, when I was leveling my first character, I did that mostly by exploring the game world map just to open up all the "fog of war" areas to the point that I had been almost everywhere at least once and could thus teleport back to the nearby Waypoints when needed. The act of unlocking the map for that first toon was in effect all I needed to get to level 80, because of the XP bonuses you got from the exploration process, the stuff you had to fight as you made your way through those zones, the various meta events that would pop up right near you as you were exploring, and the Personal Story missions you did to get the low-level loot they gave you, which you wanted. As such, I had not done a lot of events and raids and so forth at all by the time I was 80 and I still haven't done many of the dungeons.

I would prefer to have the map, once fully revealed from one character's travels, fully revealed for all my toons after that, which is something they don't do. That said, those new toons do get the same XP bonuses for exploring different areas still, so you get the bonuses for exploring the same territory with a new toon all over again. Personally I'd rather just level my toons in different ways and just have all the Waypoints unlocked for all toons once a single toon get's them. I'd even settle for "once you've unlocked all the waypoints with a given toon, they stay unlocked for all your toons forever" thus encouraging people to really explore the whole map. They don't even do that. Every toon has to explore the map as if it we all new to them.

In game like CoT, if Recall Friend will be a thing, and if exploring the game map will be a thing, the Recall helps the Exploration a lot, especially if there are hard-to-find areas, etc. Also, I wouldn't expect CoT to have Waypoiunts that everyone can just use for quick teleportation all over the place. I think that is the stuff of Personal Lair Teleporters, SG Base Teleporters, Super Vehicles (even if it's just a cutscene generator, like the Arachnos Flyer or the Longbow Skycycles, etc).

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Well I don't expect COT to

Well I don't expect COT to have WPs specifically but I would expect a Tram and Ferries of some kind which in effect fills the same purpose as the wp. Just using a different power customization.

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Since nobody in GW2 has

Since nobody in GW2 has travel powers per se, everyonbe needs those Waypoints. In a game like CoT where you might have Fly AND Super Speed, plus public transportation, and maybe eventually a super vehicle or something, and SG base Teleporters, etc, I would think that the Waypoints are definitely not needed.

The need to explore the map with each toon individually might still be a thing though, and a way for you to unlock various things. Definitely a badge. Probably also you'd need to reveal the whole map to get various SG base items unlocked, like teleporters, or whatever. OOH! It would be cool if your SG base or lair had a big monitor screen where you could look at the game map that you have revealed and see what events are happening like everywhere, in real time. Like shen Babbage is up, you'd see a moving Babbage Face icon on your base's monitor map telling you right where it is. Maybe even have notes or visual cues telling you which events will be starting soon in which areas based on known cool-down timers. And like maybe you could even have a total player count number visible for certain areas, so you know how crowded the Hamidon area is right now, like, maybe there's a raid about to start, etc.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

The need to explore the map with each toon individually might still be a thing though, and a way for you to unlock various things. Definitely a badge. Probably also you'd need to reveal the whole map to get various SG base items unlocked, like teleporters, or whatever. OOH! It would be cool if your SG base or lair had a big monitor screen where you could look at the game map that you have revealed and see what events are happening like everywhere, in real time. Like shen Babbage is up, you'd see a moving Babbage Face icon on your base's monitor map telling you right where it is. Maybe even have notes or visual cues telling you which events will be starting soon in which areas based on known cool-down timers. And like maybe you could even have a total player count number visible for certain areas, so you know how crowded the Hamidon area is right now, like, maybe there's a raid about to start, etc.

Phenomenal idea.

Unlocking a zone makes that monitor screen available for that zone. Love it. Granted, our zones won't be walled off like they were in CoX, but I'm sure we could still make it work.

But the information on the screen should only be as good as the information network you've established within it. So getting the screen is only the first part. Getting informants and building reputation would be the next.


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.
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You could make that a thing

You could make that a thing that uses "GPS" and/or "SG Satellites" that you'd have to acquire and maintain, and acts as a IGC sink, maybe.

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In AE, I loved seeing the

In AE, I loved seeing the remarkable creativity of CoH community members (and guest writers, like Mercedes Lackey!!!) and spent A LOT of my post-50 time playing through those terrific scenarios (sometimes playing through series several times). I think that a post-launch CoT mission maker would be an outstanding draw for the game and open-up creative avenues as adjuncts to the Devs' official content.

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Surely the point of the

Surely the point of the simulations is to train people to know the mechanics of monsters, the experience however should be decently lesser to the "real game world" fighting of these monsters but the creator could scale the levels of the creature.

By learning the primary abilities that enemies use they can better fight them in the "real game world".

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

The "problem" with Farming purely for Farming is the REPEATED exploitation of rewards for least amount of investment. A game "prospers" more when its Players ... circulate ... through it, doing a variety of content for a variety of rewards, rather than just doing the same (optimized) thing repeatedly AND NOTHING ELSE.

Promotion of that "need to circulate" requires some sort of Diminishing Returns On Rewards When Repeating Content. This alters the Risk vs Reward Return of simply doing a single thing endlessly without penalty.

Every piece of content that you START receives a "time stamp token" marking when that content was begun. 20 hours later, that token expires.

Use a 1/X formula to determine what the rewards of completing that content will be, where the number of tokens awarded for that content equals X. This means:

  • First time through = 100% rewards
  • Second time through = 50% rewards
  • Third time through = 33% rewards
  • Fourth time through = 25% rewards

... and so on and so forth. This then "permits" the repeat playing of content as much as is desired, as rapidly as desired, but it discourages (without preventing) repeat Farming behaviors. It means that you can repeat a particular piece of content after 20 hours for full rewards (so, "daily") but also encourages Players to "circulate" through the available content rather than hyperspecializing for a single individual piece of content that is most favorably disposed towards their objectives. The result will promote an "optimizing" behavior favorably disposed towards what amounts to Touring rather than just singular obsession Farming of a particular spot of content.


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You're not that far off

You're not that far off Redlynne, only it uses a curved scale rather than a linear.

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Oops ...

Oops ...


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Adding to the conversation

Adding to the conversation (very lately), I agree that we should be mindful of spreading the users out so much that they never see each other. I MOST DEFINITELY want to play solo most of the time and be left alone and not have my play experience affected by others, but I ALSO want to see the cool costume people have, have others to show off to when I have cool bind scripts, have other people around to team with when I need to, see high-level players in low zones.

In the early days, I saw so much cool stuff and it was active. I loved it. Later, there were so many zones (mostly empty) that it was a bit lonely. I think we should not only avoid traps that keep people in one building all day if possible, but we should find ways to encourage people to be around each other. Having high-level content in low zones for example. Stop the "sprawl" that CoH had with adding one zone after another after another and spend that time improving and perfecting the zones we already have.

EDIT: Note that we had the wentworth's stores and I spent a lot of time there just playing the market. I do think it's ok to have people play the game they like, just that we should be cautious how much we encourage people to disappear.

//////************************************************************************\\\\\\

This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.

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Some thoughts on making the

Some thoughts on making the game look and feel well-populated:

1. Different people are going to be playing characters of different levels, and most likely that means being in different areas. In order to make the lower and mid level areas less empty after everyone gets their toon to the cap, it might be good to incentivize the making of new characters, even if it means deleting old ones to make room. For that matter, the fact that you might have to delete a character to make room for a new one is already an incentive NOT to make new characters, so the need to incentivize making and playing new toons would be helpful. Maybe have a bonus you get for hitting the level cap on a toon, or one for each of several milestone levels as you progress. You can only get those once per toon, so you make new toons every so often to get those rewards. This too could be "farmed", but presumably the optimal way to reward people for making and playing new toons is to make the rewards optimal for making a new type of toon with different class and powers than anything else you ever made before and getting it to the cap. This could aloso alleviate the problem of low level treasure items being rarer and more valuable than higher level stuff, in theory. it would create a tension betwen the desire to get those sweet milestone rewards for new toon leveling, and the desire to have a guy or two fully capped and tricked out.

2. In order to encourage people to allow lower level toons into higher level areas, the sidekick system ought to be robust, easy to use, and should reward the mentor in some tangible way.

3. The game ought to have a dynamic system of opening and closing extra copies of the game world (or smaller pieces of it) as needed in order to manage population. Additionally, the players need to be able to hop from one instance to another to get together with their teammates. If there is the possibility of forming a Squad or Army or something out of multiple Teams, then people ought to be able to hop onto a different team and jump to that team's instance, etc. GW2 has this, but it also has sub-divided zones like CoX had, so I don't know how it might work with one big world map.

4. Getting people outdoors where they can see and be seen by each other requires content to do in the outdoor maps which content should be rewarding and fun. GW2 also has a lot of this, in fact, people on that game do way more PvE in the outdoors than they do Dungeons and Fractlas (which are GW2's Taskforces and Trials basically). Every outdoor zone in GW2 has multiple different events that fire off in different places at different times. The day/night cycles effects what and when, some are chains of events where if you succeed in the first one it spawns the second one, etc. I'm not just talking about one Hamidon or Jurassik to fight whenever it spawns at random, but many many smaller events that will definitely start at a known time every day, probably like once every 20 min, every hour, every 2 hours, maybe some big ones would be once per day events, etc, depending on what it is, and how long it takes to do. You could have like 100 different bosses that spawn on 30-minute timers throughout the world map and a badge for defeating all of them, then another 50 that spawn less frequently or at the end of harder event chains for another badge, then another 10 or so that only pop up rarely and randomly, with escalating rewards for all and more badges for completing the set. And that's just bosses. There are other types of events you can have, like defend the convoy, or clear the baddies out of the neighborhood, or defend the base, or collect all the objects while the baddies try to attack you, etc.

5. Repeatable indoor content, like the TFs and Trials, need good controls whereby people can form teams, flag themselves as looking for specific types of content to do with groups, etc. It also wouldn't hurt to have an area which would be the main hub for people to congregate and talk out loud on local chat channels to discuss which TF they want to do, who's looking for what types of toons, etc. Both GW2 and CoX have/had different features to these systems that I like and dislike. The CoX system often required you to have a bunch of 2-way private message conversations with individuals when a multi-person group conversation would have facilitated that a lot better. GW2 has a "looking for" menu that allows people to flag themselves and also create squads to join right from there, but it too does not have any "conversation" ability.

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Skyforge has done something

Skyforge has done something interesting that should be considered.

In it, there are mission rewards for every mission and those rewards show up on the map where you select which missions to tackle. Every 40 minutes the rewards offered change and well as many of the available missions available. The interesting thing here, is that the rewards are different for every client.
So if I want more ammunition and see that the Factory 501 mission offers ammunition as a bonus reward I could choose to do that mission. Another person who wants ammunition may see construction supplies as the reward for Factory 501 and instead chooses to go to Port Naori because to them that mission offers ammunition. A third person has a quest that leads to Factory 501 and is in desparate need for energy modules. On their map, however, Factory 501 is offering gifts. They choose to run it to fulfill the quest because they know they could use the gifts anyway and get the energy modules from another mission.

In other words, if the game offers different rewards to different people for accomplishing all the content available, it could help mix up the population. Note that the game is not forcing anyone to do anything, but leaves it up to the players to make their own valuation of the available options. Granted Skyforge is a very grind-oriented game like Dragon Nest and C9, so it lends itself to that reward system.

Other games like Archeage do this with daily quests. Killing 50 enemies in Halcyona might be a daily quest offered to me, but another player might have a daily quest to spend 200 labor on Artistry crafts. These type of individualized rewards that rotate either daily or more often can help diversify the gaming experience and help the population mingle without forcing any playstyle upon the playerbase.


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.
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Interesting mechanics, thanks

Interesting mechanics, thanks Huck. Getting people to log on every day, just for daily log on rewards does tend to help keep the game looking and feeling more populated, so that's very important stuff too. All CoX had was the Weekly Strike Target(s), but GW2 has a schedule of daily log in rewards (most of which are account bound) and also a menu of daily activity bonus rewards. Last night the daily activity bonuses were something like:

1. view any vista in Maguuma,
2. complete any 4 events in Ascalon
3. Forage harvesting nodes for food items in Orr
4. do the Only Zuhl jumping puzzle in Timberline Gorge

Each item on the list gives a treasure reward and when you complete any 3 of the 4 you get a bonus reward. But that's just the PvE version, which you get to pick when you log in. There are also World v World and PvP menus I could have chosen, but didn't.

As far as I know, the daily PvE log in rewards are the same for everyone that chooses PvE as their thing, but since not everyone has the Heart of Thorns expansion, I'm not sure how they handle that. Other people might be seeing a smaller list than me (one which doesn't include any items that require you to go to the expansion zones), I don't know. That does sometimes lead to huge zergs of people doing the same jumping puzzle or outdoor event at the same time. That many people makes it hard to actually get any damage in toward event completion sometimes, so it can be counter-productive. You never saw a boss get dropped so fast, in some cases.

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Often, there are extra

Often, there are extra Dailies for those with Heart of Thorns. There's also a simplified list that is only shown to accounts that don't have higher-level characters.
You can view the Dailies list dynamically, on the Wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily#Today.27s_achievements

I often check the list before I even start the game, because sometimes they're just 'too much work' and I have other things to do.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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So far I enjoy being

So far I enjoy being surprised. Also, if I don't want to do them, I just go and do something else instead. Another feature I like about that system, while we're on the subject, is the fact that the game does the "Great Reset" once per day at the same time every day. I like knowing that at 7pm EDT I will get my daily log-in rewards, if logged in, all of the treasure chests will reset for me, etc. One of the nicer things about that is the fact that you can get daily bonuses but you don't strictly have to play every calendar day. You could log in after the reset on Tuesday night and get the log in bonus, then be away for all of Wednesday, then log in BEFORE the reset on Thursday night and get Wednesday's rewards AND wait until after 7pm to get the Thursday rewards too. So as long as you get logged in at any time in that 24-hour period between 7pm Tuesday night and 7PM Thursday night, you get the rewards.

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Ultimately, this all comes

Ultimately, this all comes down to motivating Players (and their Characters) to "circulate" through the game, so as to See and Be Seen, rather than rewarding "camping" behavior in which Players effectively park their Characters and never go anywhere else.


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The ideas of stopping farmers

The ideas of stopping farmers won't work. If I was going to get full do from one arc, half the next play through, then a third, or however the curved scale works, I would either make one arc with 50 farming missions in it or make 50 different arcs. Bam now I can farm with full xp.

I think you guys are over estimating the impact of farming. It was really only bad during the meow farm when ppl could get 1-50 for free in 5 hours. Before and after that the only people who were power leveled were vets who had friends with farming characters, which means it was likely they A) already had a 50 or B) had a RL friend w a 50 who they wanted to run content with. I mean a farm run cost 300 mill on Freedom at the end of the game. A new player's not going to get that from the origin arc killing 10 Hellions.

People are going to farm no matter what. If you make a mission creator where people can get xp farmers are going to try and get the most xp as possible as quickly as possible from it. You pretty much need to give xp or some reward to make the mission creator worth while for anyone.

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Pain wrote:
Pain wrote:

The ideas of stopping farmers won't work. If I was going to get full do from one arc, half the next play through, then a third, or however the curved scale works, I would either make one arc with 50 farming missions in it or make 50 different arcs. Bam now I can farm with full xp.

The system would track the number of user generated content missions played within a given time frame no matter how many different ones were played regardless of owner as well.

Pain wrote:

I think you guys are over estimating the impact of farming. It was really only bad during the meow farm when ppl could get 1-50 for free in 5 hours. Before and after that the only people who were power leveled were vets who had friends with farming characters, which means it was likely they A) already had a 50 or B) had a RL friend w a 50 who they wanted to run content with. I mean a farm run cost 300 mill on Freedom at the end of the game. A new player's not going to get that from the origin arc killing 10 Hellions.
People are going to farm no matter what. If you make a mission creator where people can get xp farmers are going to try and get the most xp as possible as quickly as possible from it. You pretty much need to give xp or some reward to make the mission creator worth while for anyone.

With UGC being highly customizable it can be used to generated rewards (including xp) at a higher than notmal rate.

Earn rates, if done well, are intentionally designed for the long-term health of the game. Anything that excedes that can be detrimental to the game.

The intent on curbing rewards is to counter-act the highly customizable system which can be leveraged to generate a greater reward rate and bring them within the expected earn range over time.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Earn rates, if done well, are intentionally designed for the long-term health of the game. Anything that excedes that can be detrimental to the game.

The intent on curbing rewards is to counter-act the highly customizable system which can be leveraged to generate a greater reward rate and bring them within the expected earn range over time.

On one hand you could say the Devs shouldn't waste the effort to try to stop "farming" in this game because as it's been pointed out people will find a way to maximize the earning of "XP per unit time" regardless. But that doesn't mean the Devs ought to go completely the other way and let anybody farm anything they want. The Devs shouldn't prevent people from "PLing" alts from 1-50 in short-order but that "short-order" should likely take far longer than just 5 hours (as per Pain's example).

The Devs don't have to stop farming; they just need to make it painful/hard enough to not be the super-convenient choice. If people could still PL from 1-50 but it took like 100 hours instead of 5 then at least the number of people who would opt to do that would be practically nil.

That's all the Devs need to do - make farming less desirable than actually playing the game as intended.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Pain wrote:
Pain wrote:

I think you guys are over estimating the impact of farming. It was really only bad during the meow farm...

Nah, all the farming actually really destroyed the economy on the Auction House as well. Even the simplest sets became ridiculously expensive.

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MeSoSollyWan wrote:
MeSoSollyWan wrote:

Nah, all the farming actually really destroyed the economy on the Auction House as well. Even the simplest sets became ridiculously expensive.

That's an effect of the unlimited amount of infamy/influence in circulation. Money dropping from respawning enemies causes a huge amount of inflation over time. It's not like if there wasn't farming people wouldn't have influence to spend on those sets. All farming did was transfer money from player to player, not create more than was already in circulation. Probably a topic for another thread though.

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Pain wrote:
Pain wrote:

MeSoSollyWan wrote:
Nah, all the farming actually really destroyed the economy on the Auction House as well. Even the simplest sets became ridiculously expensive.
That's an effect of the unlimited amount of infamy/influence in circulation. Money dropping from respawning enemies causes a huge amount of inflation over time. It's not like if there wasn't farming people wouldn't have influence to spend on those sets. All farming did was transfer money from player to player, not create more than was already in circulation. Probably a topic for another thread though.

Yeah everyone knows that excessive farming can cause inflated prices in a given game's Auction House.

But the problem CoH had with that phenomena was compounded by the fact that the game started off for several years -without- any in-game market at all. There was almost nothing to spend excess INF on so by the time the Auction House was finally added you had a bunch of people who were sitting on billions to spend. It's really no wonder the market prices for the rare enhancements sky-rocketed almost instantly because the currency had practically no value by the time people needed to actually start using it as currency.

If CoT can manage to get its in-game markets going much earlier than CoH did I doubt you'll see the amount of hyper-inflation we saw in the original game.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Just to be clear, farming

Just to be clear, farming itself is not (as viewed by us devs) as a negative behavior. A certain group of players will end up farming for some type of reward.

It only becomes a problem when players find a way to exceed the upper bounds of the expected earning rate over time. However it is done, developers who want to maintain a healthy economy have the responsibility of correcting these occurrences. We can do so proactively within the base designs of systems this minimizes the chances of having to do so reactively later.


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Farming is only a problem

Farming is only a problem when everyone's doing it... I know a lot of us had bad experiences with the farming crowd when the AE system came out, but if we're smart about this that won't happen again...

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Just to be clear, farming itself is not (as viewed by us devs) as a negative behavior. A certain group of players will end up farming for some type of reward.

Just for this case. Creating a mission To farm A certain type of mob. Don't you think this Will participate in deserting some areas ?
Which subject leads To speak about the respawn frequency of mobs. Regarding the previous subject : how Will you manage this ? Will it be dynamic regarding number of players in the area ? (Mobs respawning, deserting areas, few mobs for too much people )


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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Pain wrote:
MeSoSollyWan wrote:
Nah, all the farming actually really destroyed the economy on the Auction House as well. Even the simplest sets became ridiculously expensive.
That's an effect of the unlimited amount of infamy/influence in circulation. Money dropping from respawning enemies causes a huge amount of inflation over time. It's not like if there wasn't farming people wouldn't have influence to spend on those sets. All farming did was transfer money from player to player, not create more than was already in circulation. Probably a topic for another thread though.
Yeah everyone knows that excessive farming can cause inflated prices in a given game's Auction House.
But the problem CoH had with that phenomena was compounded by the fact that the game started off for several years -without- any in-game market at all. There was almost nothing to spend excess INF on so by the time the Auction House was finally added you had a bunch of people who were sitting on billions to spend. It's really no wonder the market prices for the rare enhancements sky-rocketed almost instantly because the currency had practically no value by the time people needed to actually start using it as currency.
If CoT can manage to get its in-game markets going much earlier than CoH did I doubt you'll see the amount of hyper-inflation we saw in the original game.

Even when the market came into play, the lack of inf-sinks didn't help. Even more so at level cap, where your outgoings basically stopped stop.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Even when the market came into play, the lack of inf-sinks didn't help. Even more so at level cap, where your outgoings basically stopped stop.

I'd agree having reasonable money sinks would help, but they'd have to be the right kind of sinks. For instance I'd hate for CoT to have some kind of mandatory "gear upkeep" sink just to make sure your characters all worked the way they were supposed to. On the other hand I probably wouldn't mind paying millions for optional in-game player housing rents.

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TitansCity wrote:
TitansCity wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
Just to be clear, farming itself is not (as viewed by us devs) as a negative behavior. A certain group of players will end up farming for some type of reward.

Just for this case. Creating a mission To farm A certain type of mob. Don't you think this Will participate in deserting some areas ?
Which subject leads To speak about the respawn frequency of mobs. Regarding the previous subject : how Will you manage this ? Will it be dynamic regarding number of players in the area ? (Mobs respawning, deserting areas, few mobs for too much people )

If there is a healthy pkayer popluation, having user-genrated-content should not have a huge impact on the frequency of general players in thee world map.

Keep in mind we are going with a mega-server structure, everyone plays together, nit separate setver "shards".

Spawns will generate dynamically based on the number of players in he area, scaling up or down accordingly.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

If there is a healthy pkayer popluation, having user-genrated-content should not have a huge impact on the frequency of general players in thee world map.
Keep in mind we are going with a mega-server structure, everyone plays together, nit separate setver "shards".
Spawns will generate dynamically based on the number of players in he area, scaling up or down accordingly.

Thanks for the answers Tannim22 ^^
So, all the player, regarding their languages will player together ? I love that idea :)
I hope the translation will be integrated :)


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TitansCity wrote:
TitansCity wrote:

So, all the player, regarding their languages will player together ? I love that idea :)
I hope the translation will be integrated :)

How else were we all going to play on a single mega-server? ;)

Your game client will display the game's GUIs in whatever language is supported (i.e. French). The trick of course is that in-game chat will likely be in whatever language people are using. I suppose you could run text chat through a real-time translator, but obviously they usually leave a lot to be desired.

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I think not having a real

I think not having a real-time translator would be more interesting, it would make the city feel multinational almost.

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Deathwatch101 wrote:
Deathwatch101 wrote:

I think not having a real-time translator would be more interesting, it would make the city feel multinational almost.

I doubt MWM is going to "bake in" a text translator since there are existing third-party ways to do that. Basically "not having a real-time translator" for text chat is probably going to be the default for this game.

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What was Interesting in CO

What was Interesting in CO was the french Channel. I think it could be something good to gather people in at least one main Channel per language :)


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Broadcast channels like that

Broadcast channels like that were easy for Players to organize in CoH. There were global channels for many different interests. I suspect CoT will be similar. What might make things easier would be for MWM to maintain a Directory of top channels, with Language-based channels highlighted for easy access.

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

What might make things easier would be for MWM to maintain a Directory of top channels, with Language-based channels highlighted for easy access.

Yeah something like this should be easy enough for MWM to do considering this would be the main alternative to having entire servers dedicated to specific languages. They could have say a dozen or so of these hardwired language-based channels dedicated to the top dozen or so top-used languages in the world. Presumably anyone would be able to set up their own chat groups as well for any reason, including language used.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Fireheart wrote:
What might make things easier would be for MWM to maintain a Directory of top channels, with Language-based channels highlighted for easy access.
Yeah something like this should be easy enough for MWM to do considering this would be the main alternative to having entire servers dedicated to specific languages. They could have say a dozen or so of these hardwired language-based channels dedicated to the top dozen or so top-used languages in the world. Presumably anyone would be able to set up their own chat groups as well for any reason, including language used.

You just need to ask the language at creation and then you'll be push in the right channel (for me : francophone / frenchspeaker ) and, if it doesn't exist, just create the channel automatically at first connexion ^^ Or even simple, ask the language at count creation and create it automatically in the DB ^^
By the way, i hope their will be the list of allt he channel so as we could be able to jump from one to another, for instance if i wanted to play some US or Coreen players ^^


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TitansCity wrote:
TitansCity wrote:

You just need to ask the language at creation and then you'll be push in the right channel (for me : francophone / frenchspeaker ) and, if it doesn't exist, just create the channel automatically at first connexion ^^ Or even simple, ask the language at count creation and create it automatically in the DB ^^
By the way, i hope their will be the list of allt he channel so as we could be able to jump from one to another, for instance if i wanted to play some US or Coreen players ^^

When you start to play you'll be able to choose a language for your own client. For you that'll probably mean all the game GUIs would be in French.

Then when you're in the game there will likely be a list of predefined text chat channels based on language. People who want to type in French can do that in the French channel, people who want to type in Spanish can do that in the Spanish channel, and so on. Technically you'll be able to type using any language in any channel but if you're typing French most likely you'll get the most response back in the French channel.

After that the game will likely let you set up your own private channels so that you and your friends can speak whatever language you want there. Once again all players are automatically going to be together on one mega-server regardless of where they live or what language they speak. There will not be special "French only servers" or "German only servers". If you want to play with English speakers there will likely be plenty of them around. If you want to play with Koreans there will likely be a predefined Korean channel that'll help you find them there.

All this should be straight-forward enough.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
Even when the market came into play, the lack of inf-sinks didn't help. Even more so at level cap, where your outgoings basically stopped stop.
I'd agree having reasonable money sinks would help, but they'd have to be the right kind of sinks. For instance I'd hate for CoT to have some kind of mandatory "gear upkeep" sink just to make sure your characters all worked the way they were supposed to. On the other hand I probably wouldn't mind paying millions for optional in-game player housing rents.

Well the thing is, CoX *did* have the "gear upkeep" sink, as in you more than likely had to buy enhancements at some time or another (especially if first character), because if they went red... they did *nothing* for you. Which is just like the "gear maintenance" thing in other MMO's (although those tend to be like CoX in that you either have a benefit or you don't. Very rarely if at all does a 50% damaged item give you 50% of the effectiveness).

But the thing with a sink is to make it small but regular. Sure, the penny wise people might be prepared to spend the time travelling themselves between zones, but it is a useful sink (although I do remember there being some pushback on these forums back in the day *against* Travel costs... or even having a "public travel" system)

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Gangrel]Well the thing is,
Gangrel wrote:

Well the thing is, CoX *did* have the "gear upkeep" sink, as in you more than likely had to buy enhancements at some time or another (especially if first character), because if they went red... they did *nothing* for you. Which is just like the "gear maintenance" thing in other MMO's (although those tend to be like CoX in that you either have a benefit or you don't. Very rarely if at all does a 50% damaged item give you 50% of the effectiveness).

I think it's debateable whether what you're talking about here is a true "sink" or not because while your enhancements did go "red" if you out-leveled them there was no actual need/requirement to replace them. Also by the time you hit level 50 your enhancements would never "degrade" again so any "sinakability" related to this would come to an end.

Gangrel wrote:

But the thing with a sink is to make it small but regular. Sure, the penny wise people might be prepared to spend the time travelling themselves between zones, but it is a useful sink (although I do remember there being some pushback on these forums back in the day *against* Travel costs... or even having a "public travel" system)

I agree that for a sink to be effective it would need to be something that was periodic but also related to a benefit that's purely optional. The problem with the "public travel" sink is that people need to be able to travel to play the game. If somehow you have no money the game would literally prevent you from playing because of it. On the other hand I can CHOOSE whether I want to pay for private housing or not so if I can't afford that kind of sink then I simply get locked out of the house.

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One way to make the IGC sinks

One way to make the IGC sinks less necessary is to stop awarding IGC for each and every defeat. CoX gave you like 500 INF for every minion you dropped at level 50. If it was tied to a randomized process, like the INSPs and other item drops, it would cause game play in general to generate far less loose IGC. Guild Wars 2 does this. In that game the times when you get spendable copper/silver/gold from monster defeats are few and far between. You can sell or otherwise process the items you've gotten, but that would involve either the open market (and thus you're getting the IGC from some other player, and there's a transaction fee in there, something like CoX had) or from an NPC vendor, which gives far less than the going rates for most items, and still really low rates for totally worthless garbage.

GW2 also has public-access teleporters called waypoints that you can use to get around quickly, because most of the game is outdoors. I could see makign some form of public transportation viable in CoT, for IGC that's spent when used. CoH had the trains afterall. You could have a temp power that calls Gabby the Cabbie to come pick you up, then you get a cut scene and the game loads you onto your destination map of choice.

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For what it's worth, I think

For what it's worth, I think the decision made by the devs is "no gear degradation" because people don't like it. I think having really top-end gear ought to come with some form of high-maintenance ongoing costs to keep it all running. It could be argued that low-end gear could be cheaply and easily replaced, were it to degrade, and thus you're making people constantly have to manage their ~100 or so Augments and Refinements, which would be too much tedium, even for me. But if you want to have a few (or even a lot of) uniques, procs, etc in your powers to really tweak it to teh uber, then I don;t think those few (or not so few) items should cause you too much consternation as to be "bad" overall. Also, it could be as easy as "pres a button, all of your gear get's repaired for some IGC no mess, no fuss." instead of individual items being fixed individually.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

For what it's worth, I think the decision made by the devs is "no gear degradation" because people don't like it. I think having really top-end gear ought to come with some form of high-maintenance ongoing costs to keep it all running. It could be argued that low-end gear could be cheaply and easily replaced, were it to degrade, and thus you're making people constantly have to manage their ~100 or so Augments and Refinements, which would be too much tedium, even for me. But if you want to have a few (or even a lot of) uniques, procs, etc in your powers to really tweak it to teh uber, then I don;t think those few (or not so few) items should cause you too much consternation as to be "bad" overall. Also, it could be as easy as "pres a button, all of your gear get's repaired for some IGC no mess, no fuss." instead of individual items being fixed individually.

I think maybe having "Epic" Level equipment or something that is deployed specificly for one time events or some big events where you need things like mech suits etc.

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Deathwatch101 wrote:
Deathwatch101 wrote:

... "Epic" Level equipment or something that is deployed specifically for one time events ...

Ah, yes, the MacGuffin that makes it possible to overcome the impossible.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

For what it's worth, I think the decision made by the devs is "no gear degradation" because people don't like it. I think having really top-end gear ought to come with some form of high-maintenance ongoing costs to keep it all running. It could be argued that low-end gear could be cheaply and easily replaced, were it to degrade

To draw on a side example that I've mentioned before, Tabula Rasa had gear degradation mechanics in it, and it was just a simple trip to a vendor who could repair everything for you in a single click to take care of. The thing that varied was the IGC cost of doing so. Since Tabula Rasa had color coded gear (grey, green, blue, purple, if I remember rightly) that was keyed to the "rarity" of items, they also keyed multipliers into the cost of repairs for the various items. Grey items had next to no mods on them and the lowest stats for items in their category, so they were the cheapest to repair and maintain. Purple items had the most mods on them and the absolute highest stats available for items in their category, so naturally they cost several organ donations to repair and maintain.

The practical upshot of this, as I'm sure Gangrel can attest to, was a sort of background "economic warfare" where the logistical support of using the very best possible gear could potentially become unsustainable over time, simply due to how voraciously high end items consumed currency for repairs and maintenance. Simply USING items caused item degradation, on top of the expected Death Penalty of all your items taking a Durability loss upon getting KIA and needing to rez at a Hospital. Depending on your cash flow, it was perfectly possible to be barely break even on income versus expenses ... particularly when grouping for team instance content (basically "dungeons") when dealing with a repeating team wipe situation.

So at a time when a lot of people were trying to go All Purple Gear so as to min/max their stats as high as they could possibly go ... I, predictably enough, went in the opposite direction and went with what I called the Grey Ghost. I deliberately went out and "farmed" to get the absolute WORST gear possible for my characters, the Grey class gear items. I then went to the crafting station, stripped them of all of the modifiers they might have had on them, and then very deliberately loaded them up with the exact (crafted) modifiers I wanted on each and every single item I could equip. Because all of my gear was Grey quality (meaning it was "crap" for stats), it was relatively cheap in terms of resources for me to craft the modifiers I wanted for every item I was going to use, and it was DIRT CHEAP for me to repair any lost Durability rating. Yeah, my damage output and armor rating and so on was "below average" on an individual prowess basis, but it cost me next to nothing to USE that crappy gear and still get the job done of killing stuff, gathering loot and vendoring everything that dropped for cash.

Before switching to the Grey Ghost build plan, I'd been struggling to "turn a profit" at fighting on the battlefields I roamed. Getting killed was always a big hit when it came to losing cash, and the sheer amount of grinding for drops and "stuff" to upgrade a complete set of Purples to max them out was just ... daunting. Like most of YEAR of grinding level of daunting.

By contrast, I was able to put together a complete Grey Ghost set with everything tuned "just so" in less than 2 weeks. Even better, the Grey Ghost gear was all so cheap to repair that I could get killed more than a dozen times and barely notice the hit to my cash on hand. It was totally a Your Equipment Was Supplied By The Lowest Bidder move that was entirely in keeping with a distinctly MILITARY campaign and setting.

The game handed me lemons and I just made lemonade. Rather than going for Maximum Performance and all of the logistical costs of supporting that decision, which would have been decidedly onerous, I instead went in the opposite direction and deliberately settled on Minimum Performance for reasons of investment and support costs ... and was able to make it work to my advantage. I didn't need to be The Best Who Ever Was Or Ever Will Be out on the battlefields, I just needed to be Good Enough To Get The Job Done ... and with my build plan of picking a very specific set of modifiers to put on my full set of Grey Ghost gear, I was able to achieve that latter goal IN SPADES. Whereas other Players simply "couldn't afford to die" out in the field, I could afford to get killed dozens of times and still come out ahead on cash flow. Other Players had to compete for the most lucrative drops and areas, while I could go literally ANYWHERE in the game and turn a profit just by using my weapons and gathering up the loot. My income might have been lower than that of other Players with higher performance builds, but my costs were next to nothing, meaning almost everything I got was profit.

When I posted my plan to explore the "low end" option of the Grey Ghost build, the response was basically what you could imagine. The mockery was widespread and very nearly universal, since what I was doing was essentially "self-gimping" my characters by deliberately choosing to use vendor bait trash items as the basis for my build. To the min/max crowd, this made NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, and they heaped their derision upon me for even thinking I had something worthwhile to contribute.

But then I got the Grey Ghost build items together, got them all modded up exactly the way I wanted, took them out for a test drive and ... started demonstrating an endurance to punishment that absolutely no one (not even myself!) had expected. Other random Players would see what I was doing, they'd watch my Armor and Health Bars go down and then come right back up since I'd modded all of my gear to for hugely stacked up regeneration (a mere 11 seconds out of combat status was enough to recover to full health and armor ratings) and I started getting questions. People started asking me what the heck I was using, since the way I fought was essentially like a Regen Scrapper/Blaster combo and THEY couldn't afford to fight like I could or use the combat tactics that I did. I took damage, but was able to recover from it. That which did not kill me only left me colder and more embittered. They took damage, but it took them forever to recover from it, meaning that they were usually "fighting hurt" and at less than full health/armor when in combat. They had to "play it safe" with their expensive gear. I could recklessly "dive into anything" and succumb to Scrapperlock without any worries, and even if I died, it cost me next to nothing to repair and get back in the fight.

I posted my discoveries and experiences in the forums. The mockery (of course) continued, but now there was some new interest in attempting a "low end" rather than a "high end" build strategy, simply because of the economics behind the "low end" strategy that I'd pioneered. Some other Players dared to try out the principles behind the Grey Ghost build and they were astonished by how well it performed. It wasn't Top Of The Line, but it was resilient, durable and exceptionally easy to maintain. All you needed to do was learn your limitations and then work around them. Within a month, some of the other Players who had attempted to replicate my experiences with playing the Grey Ghost were lauding my discovery of the kind of high end performance a decidedly "low end" build could produce without breaking the bank in order to deliver that performance profile. Soon, I had other people saying in the forums that the Grey Ghost was the best build they'd played yet, in part because it was such a "profitable" way to play the game (until NC$oft killed it).

Anyway, the reason why I bring up this story from a game that's been gone for almost 9 years now is because this sort of low-end versus high-end strategy was only really made possible by the fact that the game had gear degradation in it. Without that economic incentive to even give "low-end" Grey items a second glance, rather than treating them as Vendor Bait not even worth picking up (let alone selling), you basically never provide a counterbalance to the maximalist strategy of the min/max crowd. It's very difficult to engineer a way in which "less than optimal" gear can actually be a better investment decision. It's kind of like how in City of Heroes, MOST of the Invention Sets were considered garbage (mainly because they WERE garbage from a stats and modifiers standpoint), which then "crowded in" just about all of the demand in a handful of Invention Sets in each modifier category. There really was no reason NOT to get "the best stuff" for every single slot you needed to fill, because ... hey ... nothing ever degraded if it was an Invention. This removed an entire dimension of possibility from the permutations of acceptable, let alone successful, gameplay strategies.

However, since City of Titans is not planned to have any gear degradation mechanics included in it, even as a minimalist IGC sink, my entire point and story above is effectively moot.


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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

For what it's worth, I think the decision made by the devs is "no gear degradation" because people don't like it. I think having really top-end gear ought to come with some form of high-maintenance ongoing costs to keep it all running. It could be argued that low-end gear could be cheaply and easily replaced, were it to degrade, and thus you're making people constantly have to manage their ~100 or so Augments and Refinements, which would be too much tedium, even for me. But if you want to have a few (or even a lot of) uniques, procs, etc in your powers to really tweak it to teh uber, then I don;t think those few (or not so few) items should cause you too much consternation as to be "bad" overall. Also, it could be as easy as "pres a button, all of your gear get's repaired for some IGC no mess, no fuss." instead of individual items being fixed individually.

There were many reasons taken into consideration.

A few of the major things about gear degration and repair costs miss when it is vendor / click the button repair is that:

1. When currency is gained from defeating your enemy and gear degrading - you can achieve the same result of controlling how much currency is gsined over time. See 2.

2. The upkeep costs are (or should be) calculated in conjunction to currency earn rates in order to remove a percentage of currency from world in angiven time frame.

3. Gear degration when used well is almost never in a vendor / click this button system. It was best applied when players had characters with skills that provided ways to repair and improve gear.

Over time, players eschewed such dependencies preferring to have the ease of vendor / click here because it is easier and familiar from solo games.

Not only did we consider this, but also took into consideration of this type of gear management fit the game we wanted to make (and by extension, the type of game our players wanted to play). In the end it just didn't fit. Even on the conceptual level, we don't view augments and refinements - the stuff that makes powers more effective or efficient - as gear.

Maybe those temp powers are more...disposable is about as close as we'll get.

I, personally, don't mind gear repair systems, so long as there are supporting systems which make sense for the game I'm playing. In an MMO, I would like to visit an npc vendor as little as possible. Relying more on my character's skills, the skills of other players, my character's earned inventory, or the inventorynof other players. Reinforcing the social aspects of an mmo and having players breathing life into the "living" mmo world.


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Tannim's posts always make me

Tannim's posts always make me happy.

Spurn all ye kindle.

Radiac
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Joined: 10/19/2013 - 15:12
I enjoyed Red's Grey Ghost

I enjoyed Red's Grey Ghost story. Again totally moot point, the decision has been made, but hey, they can always add new stuff in later, right? What is nice about "high-maintenance cost" gear is that you can choose to spend a lot of IGC for some major short term power gains, but then if it becomes unbearably difficult to keep that level of gear going indefinitely, you have the option of reverting back to less costly options. You are thus giving people choices that have consequences. I also like that just using your power cause gear wear and tear. as an IGC sink. Having it tied to player defeat is not really a concern of mine. I don't MIND that, but I don't think it's necessary as an IGC sink per se. It works as a penalty for getting defeated, which is a different problem, but as an IGC sink I don't think it makes a dent.

I also like that imposing limits creates opportunities to bypass or manage those limits in different ways. More stringent rules means more opportunities to make individual rule-breaking widgets that then become valuable and fun to play with.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

Gangrel
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Joined: 09/15/2013 - 15:14
Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
But the thing with a sink is to make it small but regular. Sure, the penny wise people might be prepared to spend the time travelling themselves between zones, but it is a useful sink (although I do remember there being some pushback on these forums back in the day *against* Travel costs... or even having a "public travel" system)
I agree that for a sink to be effective it would need to be something that was periodic but also related to a benefit that's purely optional. The problem with the "public travel" sink is that people need to be able to travel to play the game. If somehow you have no money the game would literally prevent you from playing because of it. On the other hand I can CHOOSE whether I want to pay for private housing or not so if I can't afford that kind of sink then I simply get locked out of the house.

The thing with the "public transport" thing is that it is a "faster" method of travelling between area's than doing it yourself manually. Now in World of Warcraft, you had the griffon flight points, but you also had insta warps to certain points. Those cost money (although if there was only "one way" to get somewhere, that generally had a zero cost to it).

In FFXIV, I can manually run to *any* of the zones if I so desire, or I can take an instant trip via AetherCrystal (or whatever they call it). The AetherCrystal is to a general "hub" area, so chances are you will have to travel from there to get to where you really want to go.

Redlynne wrote:

STUFF

Yep, I can attest to that... the grey ghost was particularly useful for the specs that high running costs (ie ammo usage), whilst for others (like the Spy), it was not so much of a problem (due to main weapon costing *nothing* to use). Although IIRC it still took a fair few deaths to actually "break to oblivion" your gear. (20-30)

((side note: I still believe I have a crafting cost spreadsheet somewhere... purple stuff was *extortionate* to mod compared to everything else)).

For me though, I had a nice grind route that made money... and I could go from 40-50 in roughly 3 hours with the use of XP booster... and when they introduced the HyperXP booster, I made it from starting zone (ie level 2 or 3) to 50 in under an hour....

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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