So, something that a lot of MMOs fail to grasp is the concept of actually helping a lot of other players.
As I've said in another thread, I play Guild Wars 2 a lot, and something that always strikes me when I try to play another MMO is the way that GW2 treats players in an open world environment.
A few very basic things - all characters that could be considered an ally benefit from your buffs, as long as they're within range. Monsters grant full experience, drops, and quest progress to everybody involved in it. Resource nodes are player rather than server based, allowing different people to gather from the same node infinitely, but not the same person more than once.
These three things, on the whole, have led to a much happier community in GW2. Everybody treats each other well because, from the outset, the game teaches you that seeing another player isn't a bad thing, because they won't steal your kills or loot or whatever. I think this is a fairly important thing for future MMOs, including CoT to maintain. Now, because of how it's based a lot on how CoH operated I doubt a few of these are going to be a problem, but it's something to keep in mind. CoH was ahead of its time for its good community, and I'd really like to see this game be similar in that way.
Just my ramble for the night. Good Hunting.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
A good point, I think, and something that CoX did well. I never had to divide up drops when running with a PuG in CoX. For starters, individual storage was quite limited. I didn't keep close records, but everyone seemed to come away from PuG runs satisfied with their various new enhancements, inspirations, and salvage.
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This is a point that deserves an underscore for emphasis. In most MMOs, other Players are [i]COMPETITORS[/i] rather than potential Partners. What is "taken" by one cannot be granted/shared/used by others. Usually this happens in the context of resource nodes and then bleeds over into other aspects of the game, resulting in a "first come, first served" mentality which ultimately winds up putting Players in competition with each other.
Halae cites good examples of how to avoid doing that.
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Is a PUG a PUG when you are not in the same group as someone and just so happen to be going after the same mobs in the area, even if it is just for a few minutes and then you leave quickly?
Only asking, because in Guild Wars 2 it doesn't matter if you are Solo or teamed up with them, if you both hit the same mob, you both get rewarded. Same XP and same chance of loot.
I am not sure on how the loot gets distributed (ie a Rare chance for BOTH to loot, or if it does reward a RARE only one person gets it (and that is random), but strangely enough, when I was playing it, there wasn't all the "OMG YOU GOT A PURPLEZZZZ! HATEZ!" going on there.
One thing CoH did that's such a tiny thing, but with a huge impact was to keep loot drops secret. There was no announcement of who got what, your teammates could get five purples and you wouldn't know unless they spoke up. Meaning no one gets jealous about other people's drops in a causal PUG.
And of course, all loot was personal. Not like 40 people do a raid and get one reward. No, 40 people do a raid and get 40 rewards. And thanks to the merit system, even a bad roll could eventually save up for the thing you wanted. That's also a very player friendly thing to do. Buyable epic loot where the currency is gotten through similar actions to qualifying for the loot roll.
Its always handy, annoying when a PUG member does do it... or even when you realise that you actually did get screwed out of the loot (for one reason or another... my gripe with the loot system of CoX was that you were *forced* to keep your bags empty to get loot. Full on salvage? No salvage for you (even if it could have been better).
Yes, there were ways around it (using the AH as alternative storage, along with mailing yourself items), but considering that I have seen CoX players complain about "inventory management of other games" and how bad they are, but were fine with the "inventory management" in CoX, it just boggles my mind.
But that is a whole different system that ties into the loot mechanism
Agreed on the alternative mechanisms to getting loot. So even if you missed out on the "main stuff", you still got stuff that meant that even over time you could get what you needed. For all the grief that "loot centric" games get, they do tend to have *some* form of alternative methods of loot acquisition.
Just off the top of my head (in Wildstar) are the Glory, Elder Gems and Prestige. Elder Gems are the "main" currency (basically any XP at level cap gets converted to Elder Gem currency), Prestige is for PvP rewards, Glory is the PvE stuff.
Now people can complain about the *rate* of acquisition, and that is an understandable worry. But everyone has their own definition for what is acceptable. Some want it done so that just an hour a day is enough (but every day for a month) for a piece, whilst others might only be able to do 7 hours a week in one sitting and that is it. Whilst those both put in the same hours over a month, depending on the system used, one might be up to 7 times slower (and yes, the Alignment Tokens in CoX were like this).
So there are pro's and cons to each acquisition method as well.
I agree with the OP that powers/rewards/etc should be set up to reward group play as much as solo play.
To add my own thoughts to that, I also think there needs to be some care taken in powers and how they behave. A power that buffs teammates may get too good if you can stack like 8 of them in a team of 8 people. That said, complee lack of stacking sucks too, so stacking limits, or even some form of diminishing return function might be good for that. That is, one buff = good, two of the same = better, but not exactly twice as good as one, three = a little better than two, but not my much, etc.
One thing CoX did after a while was take a short recharge, single target buff (Speed Boost) and turn it from single target into group buff, because really, what was the point of making the Speed Booster have to point it at each person individually, then have to RE-apply it again and again the same way? So AoE party buffs are good, where the recharge is short. For longer recharge stuff, the question of single target or group is a more variable one depending on how you want the power to work I guess.
Also, powers the cannot be used when soloing are a little awkward, I feel. It would be nice if there were some way to make a power like "heal target" always be able to target "Self" somehow, just for the sake of making it not useless when soloing. Beneficial AoE buffs ought to include the caster, I feel, as a general rule too.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This to me always seemed the best excuse for multiple builds on a single character. So you could swap out "Group Support" build for "Solo Damage" build, or PVP build, or what have you. I don't see that anywhere in the near future cards, though.
However, it would certainly make sense to me that any AoE power, like heal, for example, included the caster. What if the affect were divided amongst all within the area, so that if you were solo you'd get all the benefit of your AoE? That's awfully simplistic, I know. More math should be brought to bear on it. But as a general principal?
This to me always seemed the best excuse for multiple builds on a single character. So you could swap out "Group Support" build for "Solo Damage" build, or PVP build, or what have you. I don't see that anywhere in the near future cards, though.
However, it would certainly make sense to me that any AoE power, like heal, for example, included the caster. What if the affect were divided amongst all within the area, so that if you were solo you'd get all the benefit of your AoE? That's awfully simplistic, I know. More math should be brought to bear on it. But as a general principal?
+1 OP, Grey & Red.
Just casting my vote, nothing to ad :P.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
This was a sort of pet peeve of mine in City of Heroes, what I'll call the "tyranny" of needing to Divide By 8 for Power strengths when fully Enhanced. The most obvious example of this was [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Pool.Leadership.Defense&at=Class_Defender]Maneuvers[/url] for Defenders. Base buff was +3.5%, which could be meaningfully increased to about +5.5-5.6% with slotting. Multiply by x1 and you get a teeny tiny buff. Multiply by x8 and you get +44-45% Defense vs All.
My thought for how to modify that was to change the default assumption of how the Maneuvers Power worked. Instead of being a Buff Aura Only situation, it would have two components ... Buff Me AND Buff Aura.
Essentially, the character with the Power would get a "double dose" of the effect, while everyone else got a single dose. The math would barely move, since you'd be dealing with a x9 maximum instead of a x8, but the low end would dramatically improve, since you personally would be looking at a x2 minimum instead of a x1.
City of Heroes [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Pool.Leadership.Defense&at=Class_Defender]Maneuvers[/url] for Defenders:
+3.5% All Defense Types, All Defense Positions for 2.25s
Proposed alternative for Defenders:
+3.125% All Defense Types, All Defense Positions for 2.25s (aura)
+3.125% All Defense Types, All Defense Positions for 2.25s (self only)
The math for the theoretical maximum works out to be almost exactly the same under the x8 vs x9 conditions, but the minimum gets raised into the "useful to have" category, instead of being an insufficient return on investment for Endurance cost to support the effect. That would happen because of the "2 for me, 1 for thee" structure of the buff designed to maintain the maximum while raising the minimum.
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The first game I played where I saw this kind of "shared tagging" was DCUO, and I loved it. No more need to be the first one to hit an enemy, no worries about someone stealing an interact-object while you take out the guards and so on. Heck, this kind of "sharing" could speed up the game play for everyone so it certainly got my vote.
If, instead of just putting the reward drop in your inventory, you were able to click-loot the defeated foe, see their loot as a cache, and move stuff from it to your inventory and vice-versa, that would eliminate the possibility of losing out totally on a good reward just because you had automatically filled up on junk (to you) from previous drops. Games where each person in the party gets to loot each boss/whatever provide for a chance to, at least, destroy junk in your inventory before you do so.
(insert pithy comment here)
I've played games where you have to walk up to/over a defeated target in order to loot it. IT SUCKS.
Why?
Because that's a non-issue for melee characters, but can be a pretty big deal for "reach out and kill you" snipers. If you can drop a Foe "all the way across the board" and then have to MOVE over to where that Foe dropped in order to loot them, that kinda sort ignores the possibility that there might be any problems getting from here to there in order to do that. For melee combatants, this is a non-issue, since they're already on top of anything they defeat practically by definition (although there are a tiny few edge case exceptions).
No ... auto looting, like City of Heroes did it, is the way to go. It's casual friendly and prevents hard feelings from developing between Players in Teams. It simplifies and streamlines the entire "loot chain" of events into being something the Player doesn't have to micromanage. This is a GOOD THING™.
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An "overflow bag", that can be opened for a limited time after combat ends, would serve the same purpose.
Or at least there should be a warning that your bags are full. Did CoX have such a warning?
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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Shared mission objectives are necessary.
Much as I love Marvel Heroes and Wildstar.. both of these games launched without being able to even share mission objectives with your teammates. Quite lame.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
It did. A big red floating text going "ENHANCEMENTS FULL" and then the Enhancements text would turn red as well.
I agree with auto-looting being awesome in CoX, but I do wish the default inventory size was big enough to handle at least one max spawn mission, as sometimes it'd just fill up way too fast. Of course, you could buy extra space, I never did, though.
Of course, players being players just means that a bigger inventory would still get filled up, since we'd just go offload it less often. That's an easily predictable outcome.
Yup - inventory size simply dictates how often one goes to the markets - "brb - selling" was a thing from the very beginning with TOs (at least the ones we couldn't slot ourselves) all the way to the end with recipes and salvage.
Yes to this. To me, CoX actually did the best job for rewarding (from a mission perspective) teaming. It also had the best LFG/Team forming mechanisms. It's system did not force teaming (except for some of the hero side ATs poor power options), but rewarded, scaled, shared, etc. mission teaming.
All games that have statistic-based loot drops technically cause competition in the mind of most players. I've played Wildstar and I recall (from say a harvesting perspective) that having others around reduced the amount I would receive of the resource harvested, which makes me think there was some roll-based limit to total items dropped, but not certain. There was so little teaming because of the mission/quest system that I honestly don't recall how this worked for normal game play. Marvel Heroes is based on calculation by player (team or not) and uses a cash shop for boost items to help players increase their good item probabilities. GW2 was similar to this, but to make it worse implemented an insidious grind fest to achieve legendary weapons - was rough and drove me away from the game. Vanguard did this as well before the end of that game.
This comes down to another philosophy of the game - are there loot drops, are quantities determined by the enemy, is it distributed equally or is there is roll-based calculation, does it scale with team (as would the difficulty in defeating said enemy)? Depending on those answers, would the game auto-assign or would there be some Need/Greed vote system implemented (which can just be a pain in the tushy and needs to include settings for loot rarity).
Personally, I like CoX's loot system - play long enough and statistically you can get what you need to accumulate enough currency or resources to sell and then acquire what you need/want. Don't like the drop system, solo. This also help maintain a good tempo of game play instead of everyone stopping after every mob to bicker over who gets what and why.
There could always be different mechanics implemented for Raids, but I still don;t really see the need. Everyone has the same chance (unless we go for a buff-based item find increase for players - whole other topic) for that super rare item - statistically fair.
"it's a long road to wisdom, but it's a short one to being ignored." The Lumineers
Don't forget that for a long time City of Heroes didn't launch with it either, and infact still had mob tagging at the end of its life, which other games didn't launch with (Wildstar didn't have mob tagging... all who helped take it down got credit and a chance at the loot)
In terms of the harvesting, yes, it could get into a race for the next node, but they respawned often enough that at least after the first few weeks it became a non problem. It was only really a problem in the early days of the games life, when *everyone* was going after the same stuff.
However, in terms of rewards from mobs with other players around? Not true. They *might* have put in some balancing feature, but even after I ground on mob in a certain area for over 3 hours I didn't notice any noticable decrease in drop rate NOR quality of items received.
City of Heroes had this problem with its open air "kill X missions". If you had 2 or 3 people in the same zone going after the same stuff, it became a problem. Same as Wildstar going after the same mobs
Side note: In Wildstar, whilst there were "Kill mob" style of missions, it scaled up according to the difficulty of the mob, ie the primes gave more credit than the grunts towards the completion. And so that meant that without the mob tagging system as well, you could have 3 or 4 people (or more) all going through the same area for an objective and all make progress on it.
To be fair with the Guild Wars 2 crafting system, it *is* an Endgame system, and the legendary weapons are a step above everything else, particularly in terms of looks.
However, it is something that they had in the first game as well, and it is *something* that makes the player most unique.
Hey, at least you can sell/buy the legendary on the Black Lion Market if you so desired.
I *personally* have no issues with a need/greed system, with one caveat. That you can only need on what you can use. If you cannot equip it for "class"/AT reasons, you cannot "NEED" on it.
Now sure in PUG's you might get the people who need on everything that you can use, but I never got wound up on those who needed everything that they could, but in Wildstar, I have also ended up in PUG's where I *never* saw a single need go out, and it was just everyone passing/greeding on items.
But then again, I had the luck in CoX of where in the whole invention life span, I had *one* single Purple drop.
And it was a cheap one (50million inf). I basically had crap luck towards drops. WHole party ends up with purple? You can guarantee that I got a pacing of the turtle.
Sometimes I just felt that the luck was more against me in CoX than it has been in other MMO's that I have spent less time in...
To be fair, I think that most people just get along with it and make those decisions a lot faster in the MMO's nowadays. Either this is due to addons which quickly evaluate the "is it better than what I have" factor or what not, but I rarely if ever had to spend time in Wildstar or WoW to go "Is this better than what I have".
To be fair, even tool tip comparisons make this a LOT easier and quicker than what it was in CoX.
Yes, I have deleted/sold enhancements that I thought I didn't need, but that was because I was having to track 50+ enhancements and not just 12 items (24 if you are going for a 2nd set of gear)
This ties into the whole "need/greed" loot distribution and how if it got randomly allocated, how it would go, and if there was any item binding. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of here.