I posted a consolidated summary of my feelings about CoH and my hopes for any game that tries to follow it: http://www.jeremyduffy.com/jordans-town/?page_id=41499 (not a page endorsement, that was just the best place for me to put this).
I welcome comments and suggestions for improvement. I intend it to be a consolidated place for me to list my feelings about what made CoH great and what it needed to do differently.
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
I agree with much of what you said, except for the Incarnate System - I actually liked it. That said - I only Alpha'd 2 or 3 of my 50's - didn't realty feel the need to kit out my entire roster.
To be clear, it wasn't so much that I thought it was bad so much as the barrier was too high for me and completely wrecked my morale. I thought it was pretty cool as far as the mechanics went :)
What do you think about not requiring TF grinding? For instance, perhaps the rewards could have been for doing various other mission arcs or challenges.
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
the Incarnate rewards/powers aren't meant for everyone to get, meaning, it targets a subset of players, doing content that's not easy, or part of the norm. If it was structured in a way for all players to participate in without much effort, then ever player would have all the Incarnate rewards/powers, which is nice, but not very unique. I'm for letting certain players slag through certain content for that +5% Buff. Sounds elitist, but making it work this way, means we have yet another End Game strategy / path to play through, even if that means replaying the same handful of TF's again and again. The target audience for this kind of End Game might not be the casual players, and it might not ever have been created for them.
I suppose I might fall under the Min / Max'er camp, coming up with a strategy for using the right powers in a most efficient way, to take out the most enemies in the shortest or safest manner depending on the archetype i might be playing. Being able to last a second longer than anyone else, which makes me harken to see Spider-Man 2 again, when Aunt May says:
"Everybody loves a hero, people line up for 'em, cheer for them, scream their names, and years later tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who told them to HOLD ON a second longer. I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble. And finally gets us to die with pride. Even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want most, even our dreams."
That's what a TaskForce is for many. Holding on just a little longer, not giving in when things don't always play out the way you thought it would.
I dunno. I was far from a hardcore player. Just a few hours per week. But I enjoyed the incarnate system and progressed through it without much trouble.
Took a while, but I was playing anyway, so...
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I can understand your preference for solo play, and I myself soloed often. However I also liked doing lots of team content as well - especially the TFs'/Trials/Raids (at least when I had the time). I would appreciate a wide variety of things to do in-game, solo and teamed, but with CoT being an MMO I think there should definitely be big incentives for grouping and am personally rather ambivalent about the need for everything in the game to be soloable. That said, if the devs provide a way for solo heroes to gain access to all rewards, even if it might take a little longer, and it doesn't harm the teaming, I could be down with that as well. Depends on the nature of the rewards and implementation I suppose.
I always preferred content that could be done by a solo or a small team. Giant TFs were not fun for me.
Be Well!
Fireheart
My philospohy is, there should be content for all play styles, but you shouldn't try to modify all content to fit every play style. Let giant Hami raids be giant Hami raids and require like 50 people. Not everyone loves that, not everyone loves other stuff. Having a lot of stuff and thus something for everyone is good, trying to make any one thing a one-size-fits-all solution is generally not so good.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Quite right.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Word.
Even playstyles I could care less about.
It's not all about me. Or you.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
In that case, one must enure that the rewards for TFs/missions that require a group aren't such that you have to do them to remain "on par" with others (or at least close in power capability).
(insert pithy comment here)
I thoroughly enjoyed the Incarnate System. Unless it was a concept character, I literally tiered out over a dozen characters, probably closer to twenty. The system allowed me to enhance my utility by granting me abilities that my AT wouldn't normally have access to, and/or allowed me to hyper-optimize my AT towards it's originally designed purpose. I could build for concept and/or for performance.
I understand the risk vs. reward outlook where you have a higher chance of getting better (or faster) rewards by grouping for content, or the slower but more reliable method of performing the task solo. I believe both options should be available for players.
The easiest solution is to scale the enemy to the number of players involved, which isn't to say it's the best or the most elegant solution but it does make the content attainable, even if it's challenging, to everyone. Or instead of single target attacks for the solo encounter, the boss uses PBAoE and and Targetted AOEs to account for the larger number of players. I feel that there's a way to do it that doesn't force the devs to create truly separate content for both the soloist and the people who are willing/comfortable with grouping up for the encounter.
Just my .02.
I don't disagree, though would it be a bad thing to have alternate paths to the same or similar rewards? They could take longer, be harder etc. What do you think?
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
Can't answer for him but that is essentially how I read his statement. Content in this regard would be what you need to do to get the reward, not the reward itself, so having different content that caters to different play styles but ultimately end with rewards of effectively equal "power" would be ideal.
I think that using the Hami raid as an example was more to illustrate that some things don't really make sense to make soloable rather than that HO's being a "unique" reward only attainable in a raid, we did get 3 different "origin versions" of them in the end in CoH.
As an aside, I remember there being vague mentions in-game about the dangers of having "too many HOs" enhancing your character. Which would make sense in a way, that you're attaching/absorbing/utilizing some outside lifeform, and I was kind of hoping that it would have some measure of negative repercussion(s) or maybe even unlock something. Not necessarily an AT or something like that (because locking an AT behind raid content would definitely be a d!ck move), but maybe a costume piece or two that you could use to show corruption to your body, being it bulbous lesions or amoeboid particle effects on your powers. Or if they wanted to go all out, losing control of your character to the influence of the Hamidon, and then you'd have to roll a new character to save your old character.
Man, I would have initially been super pissed that I just lost control of my character, but I think it would have been kick ass to fight to win him back. I think if they had did it correctly, warned the playerbase sufficiently, that could have been cool.
Anyways, pardon the brief derailment. Moving on.
When you say "corruption to your body" I'm thinking something more like this: [url]https://youtu.be/uGr27imHXmU?t=59[/url]
If you could acquire the desired stuff you want for PvP just by doing PvP, would it matter whether the rewards in PvE were balanced or not? I mean, I can understand people who want to just build a toon for PvP and then get PvPing will want to just get the stuff they need fast and go.
But if you're just into PvE (solo or not) then what does it matter if the rewards are different? Other people having better stuff faster than you are getting it doesn't actually affect you, does it? This is of course assuming that we have difficulty sliders like CoX and that the game isn't impossible to play without the best gear. CoX was very forgiving in that sense, and I think this game will try to be as good in that regard if not better.
As far as balancing is concerned, the most lucrative content, whatever it is, will tend to attract the players who just want swag. That's always a considerable segment of the game population, so balancing content right is important to avoid making the game stale and grindy. Apart from that, if bigger events that require larger teams give better rewards, I'm ok with that. The amount of coordination and so forth required makes them more difficult to succeed at, with the (probably) higher chances of failure as compared to soloing a mission on a comparable difficulty level. I think those factors make the large group content harder to "get paid" for at the end unless you really make an effort to pull it together with a team that listens, etc. If the rewards for each player were EQUAL for doing that as compared to doing a solo mission, I think the solo mission would be the thing everyone would do, hands down, because it's the same reward for less "work". So the balancing has to take that into account.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It's also possible to give out different types of rewards for different types of content such that you tend to encourage the players to do all kinds of content in order to get the full boatload of swag they want. I'm not saying that's something I do or dont't want, just that its possible.
In GW2, you can get pretty good gold if you do some of the large meta events that pop up every 2 hours that require like 50 people to do them. But the amount of Mastery Points you can get from doing any one of those events is low. I got the 2-3 Mastery Points you can get from the Tequatl, The Sunless event after doing it like 5 times, and I got all the Octovine mastery points in my first 4 runs, I think. Both of those events run every 2 hours and can be done once per day for "bonus" daily rewards (i.e. more gold) but to get the Mastery Points you want in order to unlock MKastery Tracks, you probably want to do the solo story missions. I mean, you don't HAVE to solo them, but getting anyone else to do it with you requires some negotiation, because the other person likely doesn't get anything out of it (they definitely get nothing if they already did the content on their toon).
So theoretically, you can make one set of swag, unlocks, etc most easily acquired from mostly solo content and another set most efficiently acquired by doing large events. People will likely want both types of stuff, so there's a pull toward doing some of each.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It doesn't matter if the powers are different as long as there is a level of parity, or if the use of pvp rewards have "pvp only" powers and are otherwise the same in pve. Forcing someone to pvp just to maintain parity, or forcing them to do a group event to do the same, would mean that those who prefer solo play will always be notably weaker than those who have a large Super Group or something who churns those things out regularly.
My main concern is that one play style is not overly rewarded or punished, and that the inevitable power creep as the game goes on is kept to a reasonable level so that soloists or pve-only players aren't punished for playing their game.
(insert pithy comment here)
I think this is basically what I'm concerned about. It's not that I want participation trophies for showing up, but rather there are some things I'm not capable of doing and it would be nice if there was another way. For example, I don't have the reflexes for PvP so basically unless I'm in a large group or I can sneak in when the zone is empty, PvP everything is out for me.
In some ways the Market served this purpose in that I could do other missions or work the market to gain money and then buy the things I couldn't get in PvP, but that only works if the economy isn't broken with most things costing 10 to 100 thousand or so and a few others costing 50 million.
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
The devs have always maintained that PvP will be totally optional. I assume that applies to gear one might get from doing it as well as the PvP itself. The discussion of the CoX style "PvP zones that dangle bait in front of you to get you to go there just to get ganked by the same Stalker over and over again" pretty much seems to have ended on the side of "we're not doing that" as far as I remember.
Now, I have always sided with the idea that some content SHOULD be too hard to solo, period. The idea that everything, literally everything, should scale up and down to the point where any one person could set their difficulty such that they could theoretically solo Galactus leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing, Galactus should be a big enough Big Bad that he requires like a 50 person squad to have a chance of success against him. He's just not Galactus-ish enough to be worthy of the name Galactus if one person can solo him through brute force. If you want to have a solo story line where you steal his Ultimate Nullifier and trade it back to him for leaving Earth alone, that's probably a soloable story, but nerfing his stats to the point where you do actually defeat him solo is a terrible idea, to me.
In GW2, bosses that basically cannot be soloed, by design, pop up all the time. Impromptu mobs of people accumulate around the monster and bring it down, with nobody officially joining a team. Everyone that got some damage in gets rewards. I'm fine with that. I'm against putting "must form a team" content in otherwise soloable mission arcs, which GW2 does (the last mission in like every arc requires more than just me to beat it, or maybe I'm just bad, IDK). But I understand why they do that. The crescendo of the arc should be the toughest hill to climb and maybe you can't really solo it. It thus seems harder and as such more like an ending to the story and not just another "ho hum, I'll beat this, yawn" mission.
I'm against the CoX practice of putting "you need a team for this one" missions in the otherwise soloable arc you're doing just to force you to go get a team. But I'm all for having dungeons, fractals, TFs, trials, raids, etc that are written with the intention of people forming a team of 3,4,5 or big squad, which you know you're going to need, up front, to do the content.
If you took the Rikti Mothership Raid in CoX, assuming you made the pylons all soloable in the timeframe neeeded to actually spawn the invasion force and eventually Ukon Grey, it would leads to problems. First, the Ukon Grey that spawns, they pylons defeated, and the mobs you have to defeat would all be less in number and of lesser quality than what you'd face in a large group, with the added buffs, etc from having so many other people helping. Thus, the gear awarded ought to be less. Second, the event itself would be a pathetic excuse for a mothership raid. It would be a pale imitation of the real thing, and as such it would be a joke. I think there is a real need, in terms of story and difficulty level and overall design of the content there that the mothershio raid should feel epic and should require a large number of people to deal with the expected ARMY of aliens you're going to have to fight. Otherwise that mothership is lame and silly and not worth the name "mothership", to me. The nerfed, scaled down mothership is like a spark as compared to the lightning bolt of what a real mothership should be expected to encompass, to me. In scaling it down, you lose the crucial essence of a mothership event, to me. Your nerfed mothership sucks at being a mothership from the get-go.
The insistence on not teaming up and also on having the ability to do all content, even the not-intended-for-solo-play kind is, in my opinion, overconstraining the design of the game. It's asking too much of the devs. Not that it would be technically impossible to deliver that, just that I think the game overall suffers from being too easy if you do that.
Now, CoX made some mistakes with the Incarnate System. One big one: there was no open-world "mob the big monster and defeat it to get rewards" casual PUG type content to it. Almost EVERYTHING was a trial or TF that needed a large ghroup to offcially form to try to do it, which was narrow in vision. They SHOULD have had more soloable Incarnate stuff to do. I just would not attempt to nerf the trials they had to make them soloable, I would have written more new content in the form of soloable incarnate story arcs for that purpose, and also some outdoor world PUG-able monster/event spawns like GW2 has all over the place.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
That would be fine in a classless game. But in a game with healers and supprt classes, that sort of formula has some obvious flaws for the people who don't do enough damage.
Several other games have had to deal with this problem and they all have their own algorithms to deal with it. RIFT was really the first game that had to come to grips with it. FFXIV originally made that mistake by scoring participation by damage dealt and to this day is still fine tuning ways of giving credit to healing and support classes.
I've often pondered how I would do it if I designed the games. Since I'm not a programmer, I'm sure my solutions wouldn't be the best, but here goes:
[b]Buffs:[/b] If a damage dealer gets a buff from a suport character, that additional damage that damage dealer does (above what they would have done without the buff) should be attributed to the buffer, not the buffee.
[b]Heals:[/b] All damage done should have an additional attribute associated with the unique ID of the entity that dealt the damage. This way, if a healer heals damage attributed to an NPC from a particular instance, then those heals count toward participation in the instance. I would make it so all healing (even the healing associated with resting and natural regen) affects the oldest damage first.
[b]Debuffs:[/b] Debuffs like [i]slow, sleep, confuse, charm[/i], and interrupts like [i]stun[/i] could all have contribution points associated with them, which can be scaled according to the challenge level of the opponent targeted. Either translate these contribution points to HP equivalents, or convert damage done into contribution points; but either way, there needs to be a single measure of contribution.
[b]Debuffs like [i]damage reduction[/i] and [i]defense reduction[/i]:[/b] One could make an argument to score [i]defense reduction[/i] the same as the damage dealing buff on allies, such that all the additional damage not defended against gets credited to the debuffer. Likewise, with attributing all the damage not done as a result of a [i]damage reduction[/i] gets credited to the debuffer as the equivalent of preemptive heals performed.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
No disagreement. I suggested this as a general philosophy and not a hard rule. Certainly I never minded joining a Mothership raid now and then or invasions or random monsters. That's fun stuff :)
Exactly! Why couldn't I pick up incarnate goodies from zone monsters? That would have encouraged people to go kill Lusca now and then. And it would make the game seem more fun instead of like a party where no one showed up :(
Honestly, I did love being solo, but I still wanted to see activity. I realize in other games where there aren't instanced missions, that can be a problem, but in CoH, it was cool to see people's creative costumes, people playing, having fun :)
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
I picked up all of my incarnate goodies -Solo- in Dark Astoria. Let's not forget that there Was a solo/non TF path to incarnation. It was just pitifully slow.
Be Well!
Fireheart
They (CoX) were definitely listening to the soloers who screamed for soloable Incarnate stuff to do. It came later than the first Incarnate team content by like 2 years, though, right?
In CoX, the primary "level up your toon" content, for most, was the missions we got from NPC contacts. While there was street sweeping (especially in the early years when people actually did it) and there certainly was team-able content like TFs, the basic unit of content was the mission, and it was usually done on a map that only you, the mission-haver could access (you and your team anyway, if you wanted to form a team for it). This kept most players, whether they were teamed up or soloing, in their own instanced maps while leveling, for the most part. There's nothing wrong with that, people like being able to just play a game on their own without having to wait for other people or whatever, and you could still team up with friends etc if you wanted to, but I think it made the outdoor maps look more empty. Of course, CoX had LARGE areas of outdoor map to get lost in and multiple servers which made it look empty too.
In GW2, by comparison, the outdoor areas pretty much always feel inhabited by other players. You go to any zone and there's chatter on the map channel. The basic unit of content that levels you up in that game is the "event" (also called "meta event" or just "meta" by many), which is a thing that happens in the outdoor areas of the game, on a pretty continual constant clockwork basis. Some events are triggered by other events, forming chains of events, others always start at a given time on a given map and will over-write anything else that might be in progress in the same area when they do.
The need to walk around and thus unlock waypoints so that you can use them for the rest of your life as a means of quick travel around the world causes people to wander the outdoor maps while leveling up and while you do that you WILL often run across small to large sized mobs of people doing the events that are running at the time. E.g. I'm walking around Kessex Hills trying to get to the part of the map I haven't uncovered yet and all of the sudden I turn a corner and there are like 15 people beating on something called The Toxic Spider Queen, so I join in. That game also has some private instanced stuff (the personal story missions) but not as much as COX had. It also has TF type content, i.e. dungeons and fractals, which are also instanced and have a tendency to sequester people away, but it doesn't seem to have the effect of making the maps empty. I didn't start doing fractals and dungeons until after I leveled my ton to the cap first and got the better gear. But that's probably because I was prioritizing may exploration at first, to be able to waypoint around as easily as possible.
So what I'm saying is, if you took CoX and added in a lot of reasonably sized events that fire off at known times and/or chain into each other, even of the end boss of the chain is too tough for any one person to solo, you'd still get a lot of "zerg" type PUG mobs that form and defeat the boss etc, hopefully, and the outdoor areas would feel more inhabited.
Another nice feature GW2 has is the team and squad formation system. If you want to form a 50-person squad to do the Octovine, you can create such a squad shell in the "LFG" tab, give it a name like "Auric Basin Octovine Squad" and people on any copy of the Auric Basin map that map can just click "join" to get into that squad, then they can hop to the copy of Auric Basin that the squad is on in order to get with the rest of the group. No chat no invites, no private messages, etc, just "oh, this is a squad doing the event I like, I'm in" and as soon as you join, you can talk to the others on the Squad chat channel and off you go.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think if you gave some tangible rewards for uncovering the entire outdoor map, be it the unlock of quick transportation devices in GW2 or something else, if it were a thing that couldn't be gotten any other way, and if it were a real benefit, people would run around the outdoor maps to get that thing, and as such that outdoor content which exists would get done a lot, and the outdoor areas would feel more inhabited. Because if I make a new toon, and that toon has like zero map completion because it's new, I'm either going to want to uncover the map or not care. If I don't care, I'm just going to go do whatever gets me rewards, if I do care, it's probably because exploring the map gets me something I want in addition to just revealing the whole map for cartography's sake.
In GW2 the rewards for uncovering map areas are XP, some loot (when you finish a whole map, you get some loot rewards) and the use of the waypoints. When you get defeated, you will have to respawn at a nearby waypoint. The farther away your best waypoint is, the longer it's going to take to get back to the the monster that killed you and as such you want to have like ALL of the waypoints unlocked as soon as possible. That and just being able to go to a location when your friend is like "hey, come join us were' in PLACE doing THING".
In a game like COT, which is going to be all one great big map, you might even have people do marathon runs to reveal the whole map and get everyone their rewards as a thing that people organize to do with their guilds etc. You could maybe tie some from of leveling up or give some character build enhancement slots for exploration, etc, I don't know. If you treated map completion as an expected thing that unlocks a somewhat necessary part of the toon's build, be it more powers, more slots, good loot, etc, I think people would actually do it as a way of levelign their toon, and as such the outdor areas would feel more full.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And here we get to something I've had to come to grips with in CoX and DCUO and other games where the characters are supposed to be special. How many other player-characters do you want to see running all over the world?
I would like to see hubs or social areas where there are loads of other characters. Atlas Park was one such place. When I was there and saw dozens of other characters zipping around, I felt like a part of something bigger. But when I was out running my mission, if I was surrounded by a dozen other characters there, or even just a couple more, I would feel like I was just another peon in the grinder that would continue just fine without me.
So in my opinion, we need to have a big enough world where we feel like it actually needs us when we are out in it. But at the same time we need to have areas where we can concentrate together and mingle, mix and see each other.
I'm not saying we should be alone when we are out in the world, I am saying that we should be spread out. And if some emergent content shows up that requires a group to tackle it, we put out a hero call and come together.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
If an area or map is getting too densely populated, the fix is to spawn a new copy of that area or whatever and move people to the new copy. In GW2, there are different zones separated by what are essentially War Walls, so this is easy to do. Now, if you have plenty of people playing but the maps still look and feel empty (by feel empty I mean, if I'm on a map, and I type in the map chat channel, is anyone going to actually see it?) I would say that is more of a content problem than a population problem.
And to be clear, I'm absolutely in favor of having instanced content like CoX had, I just would add in events in the outdoor areas that would be a "draw" for those areas, which are public and serve as window dressing to make the game look and feel well-populated.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
If I type in the chat channel I would like all people in parallel spawned copies to be able to see it. That way we maximize community without overpopulating the content.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
TSW had a nice method of dealing with instances. You could team with people in other ones and they would be allowed to transfer into your instance to join in the mission (which are essentially their own separate instance except for outdoors missions), then return to where you were afterwards, or I suppose you could stay in the new instance if there was room.
Of course, I don't want a game that's just like TSW, or GW, or SWTOR, or whatever, but maybe make use of some of the better aspects of each if possible.
(insert pithy comment here)
A lot of games have the ability to switch instances. Somewhere there would be a channel switching UI, usually by the minimap, that would allow you to pick which instance of that map area you want.
This was especially beneficial in games with boss monster spawns, like TERA and GW2, where if the boss monster wasn't in your instance, you just flip through the channels until you found him, then you would announce that such-and-such monster was up on channel 4 and you'd see people pop in as they changed channel to yours.
Also, games with separate instances should allow you to switch instantly to the channel of the party leader if you join a party. In fact, it should be an automatic prompt when you join, informing you that your party leader is on a separate channel, press ok to join.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I think this pretty much sums up my feelings. Sometimes it was nice to be alone too :)
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
There are three things that will help alleviate that I think:
1) I think people will naturally spread out as people level up, start new characters, etc. Seemed to happen in many MMOs I've played.
2) Also remember that if this game uses as much instancing as CoH did - people will likely be on their own private maps for most of the time anyways. You might only see the occasional other hero or group speeding past on the way to their own mission on the world map - not counting "hubs" of different kinds (trainers, stores, special contacts, etc).
3) Another thing to keep in mind are the shard population caps. There will probably not be 500 people on one "Phoenix Plaza" instance. You might pop into "Phoenix Plaza 3" after exiting a mission because the other 2 shards are full. This will help with the "crowds" as well.
I think you're right on with the first two. Instancing will go a long way towards making the game seem less crowded, because even if ten people are on the same mission to the same door at about the same time, they won't run into each other unless they are literally there within seconds of each other.
I worry about shards, however. As long as we can communicate across them it could be okay, but sometimes you just want to hang out and people-watch and if I was only seeing a third of the total population because that's all was allotted to my shard, then I would be missing out.
On the subject of a number of people running the same mission at the same time... I wonder how beneficial it would be if there was a little UI pop-up that notified you of others who are running the same mission arcs. It would have to be different from the party-finder, because it is more of a group of convenience than a party I set out to make.
In my experience, doing something with someone else is usually more interesting and sometimes faster than doing it alone. So if I see others running the same content I am, I will courteously extend a party invitation to them . Sometimes people join me, sometimes people ignore me. I am fine either way. I would not have set out to run the content with a party, but since we are there at the same time, we may as well help each other.
So it could be with this UI element. You see a little icon showing the class of the other player, their name, and a notice telling you they are on the same story arc, one step ahead, on the same step, or one step behind. Then I can click on their name and send a PM to them asking if they want to join forces for the mission.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Something that just occurred to me, I can't offhand recall if any of the games I've played feature this (largely because I tend to disable global channels due to generally awful player populations) perhaps instanced mission maps should still be a part of the Chat Channel for the zone that they take place it (or the zone where the mission door is situated in cases where the mission "transports" you to a differing location), that way even people in private instances can still participate in regional chat and still contribute to a game zone feeling alive, even if they're not physically present.
This could also benefit Radiac's ideas regarding zone events, because it would allow easier notification/participation for a larger group of players. Instead of only the 20 people in Alexandria (the zone) knowing that the Doombot 5000 just spawned, all 60 players in Alexandria (the zone and its subset of instances/mission locations) would know and could exit/finish up their missions and come help.
I really liked the incarnate system. It breathed new life into the game for people who ran out of unique end-of-game stuff to do. It wasn't something everyone HAD to do. The rewards weren't huge, it was more a badge of honor, an exclusive club for people who've pretty much done everything else there was to do.
Communication across zone shards should be easy to do - if I recall correctly the Cryptic MMOs pull this off - as in people in Spacedock #1 can communicate with people in Spacedock #5 over zone chat. Map servers and chat servers are usually separate entities after all. As for how many people can fit in one shard at a time, I suppose that will come down to hardware requirements. Can anyone remember what the shard population caps were for CoH zones?
Now this, on the other hand, might be a bit too much in regards to info overload. As long as there is a team channel so you can easily see what the team is saying and not be continually avalanched by the constant spam of zone chat - maybe I could get behind it, though I'm not too sure it's very desirable. I think I'd rather have discreet channels for each zone. As for zone events or global channels - we might have the ability to set up dedicated event/topic channels that we can subscribe to. Ultimately it all comes down to the capabilities of the chat system in COT I suppose.
In STO, zone chat is across all zones. And in the beginner zones, it's constant noise, usually politics that make baby Roddenberry cry. You find yourself looking forward to Gorny puns...
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
The ironic thing about Incarnate powers to me is that they seemed most noticeable when playing solo. Teams generally operated in a chaotic fashion which made it more difficult to tell what any one player was contributing.
So powers acquired by being encouraged to team were most evident when playing solo. Kinda funny.
Agreed. It was all part of the variety I loved about CoH in the first place in my mind. I had a ton of different moods. If I was in the mood for a Hami raid, that naturally meant I was not in the mood to play solo.
I don't know programming, but if I were a dev designing a chat system, I would personally like the ability to decide what specifically is going onto any given channel per my own design specs. Can I make a channel that is used by all people in Phoenix Plaza (all shards)? Can I make one that is seens/used by all people in Phoenix Plaza 2 only, but with all PP2 indoor maps included, if such exists? Because if I go from PP2 into a warehouse, then back out, I assume its going to consider me to be in "PP2-Warehouse map#####" such that when I exit that map, I go back to PP2, if it hasn't gotten emptied and destroyed by then. If it has, I would hope that the game knows which PP shard my warehouse is now "connected" to.
I don't know if it works like that, or if chat can be handled that way, but I think it might be nice. Because if that Doombot 5000 spawns like RIGHT near my mission door, I probably want to exit and fight it, then go back to whatever I was doing.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Even with that kind of chat, nobody's gonna say anything about the Doombot, though, because that would ruin the surprise! ^_^
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I remember my first Synapse and wondering why no one headed to the next objective after a certain mission... #Babbage
I remember zoning from Eden to Founder's Falls and running smack into a Kronos someone left behind.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I was a hardcore monster hunter on Champion, so I always enjoyed turning out for Kronos or Babbage or Jack-in-Irons or Eochai et al (and eventually for the CoV GMs when GR launched). Actually, one of my favorite things to do was hunt for Eochai when someone would say that he wasn't up, and I would be able to find him "hiding" as a tree, just like the lil' Fir Bolg. Invariably, someone would [i]always[/i] not believe me that it was really Eochai as that big flaming tree right over there and would get too close and agro him before people were ready. #LeeroyJenkins
Usually this is solved by not counting damage but by checking if a character got on the aggro list of the enemy. Tanks, DPS and healers all go on that list. Any character that only does buffing does not, but that usually is considered only fair as a character that does nothing but providing a few buffs (at the beginning of the fight) does not actually contribute anything that an NPC could not also contribute. As soon as a character turns to debuffing or mezzing they go on the aggro list and thus are part of the effort to beat the enemy.
1- For the game to feel lively and played it is important that the non-instanced zones are full of players. This is relevant because an empty game does not invite new players to stay, and it does not help new players find help either (e.g. the teleporter taxis who helped out new players stuck in Perez Park or the Hollows could only do so because there were plenty of players in the non-instanced zones).
Instances were introduced in MMO games to prevent congestion (where especially early on hundreds of players were competing for the same handful of enemy spawns thus resulting in either frustrating early experiences or ridiculously quick respawn rates). This is a valid concern so instances are necessary, but they should never become the entire experience (or we end up with a lobby game and almost no social cohesion). GW2 was already provided as an example of a game that relied lightly on instances (a bit too lightly) and as a result could provide world events where impromptu groups could easily form for mini raids, the same way that a few of the giant monsters in COH worked). TSW is another game that lightly uses instances (mostly for its dungeons) and otherwise has its missions in the open world.
Congestion can be alleviated by having enemies spawn in special 'overlays' for each group that takes a mission. This makes the enemies only visible and aggressive to that group (initially) with spawn exclusion rules ensuring they will not show up on top of the enemies for another group (or another player),
2- Players actually do not evenly spread out. Not even in a game like COH that encourages alts. Players tend to concentrate in the medium to high level zones (because they take relatively longer to get through), leaving the early zones virtual wastelands. This was clearly visible in CoH towards the end of its run too (though not as badly as in e.g. Everquest or WoW).
Rather than create zones with a strict level range that players spend perhaps an hour or two in, it is better to provide events (and enemies) for a wide range of levels for each zones, so players of different levels mix. This has the added advantage of showcasing higher level skills and enemies to low level players and thus creating a sense of anticipation. (I remember seeing the Kronos Titan ambush stomp around in a low level zone with one of my earliest characters. That certainly was quite impressive. And deadly. But it certainly made me want to see more of the game).
Heh! it was my first time and I didn't know/understand what everyone was talking about. How was I supposed to know it was a giant monster? It [i]looked[/i] like a weird tree!
LOL everyone does that... once.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Here's a thought: what if the BEST swag could only be generated through a combination of PvE solo, PvE group, and PvP play? Like to make the BEST blaster enhancement in the game, you'd have to theoretically get Item X from solo, item Y from group TFs etc, and item Z from PvP. BUT all of those items would be different for different classes and builds, and the items could be sold on the market. So you could try to grind a lot of TFs for the ultra rare you want, and maybe get that and a few others, then sell the others to people who want them and use the proceeds to buy some of the PvP or PvE solo stuff you need. This wouldn't "require" anyone to do any type of content they don't love, but it would require you to buy the stuff you're not getting for IGC from the people doing that content. Or if you'd rather just spend real money, you could trade them Stars for that stuff, or use Stars to buy IGC, or whatever.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I like solo play, I like group content, I do [i]not[/i] care for content requiring PvP, so I'm not such a fan of this idea. I get it, I do, you want to spread the wealth and have people enjoy [i]all[/i] the content and be rewarded for it, but I don't feel it should be required even for the bestestest and uber-phat lewtz. Mandatory fun is exactly the opposite of what it intends, as with most things that are mandatory, or in this case, required. And making it marketable just means it'll have some insanely inflated cost, just like PvPIOs in CoH/V.
What I liked previously in SWTOR was that I could grind out solo or grouped the IGC (I figure this to mean In-Game Currency? I know the phrase, but never seen the acronym) and buy the pieces I wanted at my leisure. Not (as currently implemented with GCC) random drops that I may not even be able to use but have to hope that I can hock it on the market or engage in trade to get what I want (yes, there's a buyback but it's insultingly low). Even if the solo method was slower (which I agree with, risk vs. reward and all that), but at least I know that I would eventually get to where I wanted to be in regards to item/gear level.
TLDR: Basically that all gear should be available to everyone, depending on their preference, but at different earnable rates that's balanced against risk vs. reward.
I'll *strongly* oppose anything that requires pvp to earn. In fact, I'd oppose anything that is not available unless you play a certain style, in a group, etc. People who do not like pvp, who prefer to solo, etc should *never* be punished by being excluded from things.
(insert pithy comment here)
I concur.
Even if we have the "mitigating factor" of being able to get those items from the AH it is still a form punishment since they are still dependent on others not only doing said content but getting what they want and putting it up on the AH.
I've heard the anti pvp sentiment often enough, group content not so much. Did you oppose, for example, CoH's Incarnate system because people playing solo were "punished" because they didn't have the ability to complete that? What about badges? Should everybody have access to everything regardless of playstyle or are they being punished? Even if there are more time consuming methods of obtaining the same thing? I am not trying to put words in your mouth but rather more understand your position.
I think I was rather clear in what I oppose. Locking things to a certain style of play isn't fair to those who dislike pvp, or who dislike being forced to group, or whatever. Locking certain salvage needed to craft higher powered enhancements (or whatever) inside such content is, imo, detrimental.
I was adamantly against what SWTOR did with certain drops, requiring one to visit a pvp area and engage in pvp, even if one chose specifically chose a non-pvp server to play on.
Badges, unless I am mistaken, are not required for you to be able to play at the same level as everyone else. As long as they don't give a perk that gives one character an advantage over another, then they're not seen as "required" content.
(insert pithy comment here)
There are always various degrees to consider whenever you "force" players to do certain things to get certain rewards. For example there were badges in CoH that you could only get if you entered PvP zones but out of those only a small minority actually required direct PvP activity. Many of them were for things like "Spend X hours in PvP zone Y".
I'm not saying I'm actually in favor of directly forcing something very specific like PvP activity just to get certain things. Everyone knows that if worst came to worst the extreme anti-PvPers in those cases would simply figure out ways to help each reach whatever requirements were necessary by trading fake kills or whatever. Basically if the game forced people to do highly specialized (unenjoyable?) things then people will always figure out the easiest way to work around those bottlenecks.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Why even contemplate forcing players to do unpleasant things? There are certainly many, many options regarding where and how certain required pieces of salvage/whatever are obtained.
Again, I'm not talking about things that aren't really required for enhancements or whatever - a badge that gives nothing more than the badge itself and the bragging rights is fine locked behind whatever content there is, as long as it's somehow available for everyone to obtain.
My only point is in regards to items that are necessary to keep a character on a level field with others, i.e. salvage/whatever needed to make an enhancement to a power. There should be either more than one way to get those items, or the one way should be something that doesn't *force* a certain type of play, like pvp or a 6-hour task force. If you do that, you alienate those players who hate pvp, or those who have families or job requirements and so don't have time for long tf's. I have seen what that did in SWTOR as people were essentially forced to pvp in order to keep their characters on par with everyone else, and eventually everyone I would game with left the game since they couldn't compete. That's an entirely foreseeable outcome, and entirely preventable as well.
(insert pithy comment here)
I agree with you Lothic on degrees and that is why I personally have a problem with absolutes (I guess I took a slight rebuke above for being dense but that is ok, happens all the time). There is a difference between "incentive" and "force". For example, we recently found out that there will be a perk for completing the tutorial in CoT. Nobody seemed to have a problem with that. Many thought it was a great idea. Mention three letters (pvp) and you immediately trigger a backlash on not forcing anyone to do anything or giving out unfair perks. I think I get it now.
It was my impression that the CoH community wasn't into PvP that much.
So linking some kind of reward to PvP probably wouldn't be popular. Few would PvP to get it, and the cost on the market would be astronomical due to there being few PvPers.
That was my impression as well. It seemed that the majority of the overall community wasn't into PvP, but those that did PvP regularly were very much into it.
Well "tutorial content" is (likely) just another type of PvE content. There will always be a much more polarized divide between anything having to do with PvE vs PvP in a game like this. For better or worse there are people out there who would have no problem doing some mind-numbingly repetitive task for dozens of hours in PvE as long as it avoided even 30 seconds worth of active PvP.
So whenever there's a "required" activity needed for a certain specific reward the amount of PvE vs PvP involved can greatly influence one's interpretation of whether that requirement is "fair" or "forced".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
For the record, I loathe PvP, but I have to admit:
1. This idea I proposed does not actually require me to do PvP. I mean, you aren't even REQUIRED to have the best gear. In old CoX, my toons mostly had rares and procs and very few Purples, and I got by just fine. At that point it was mostly a question of difficulty settings.
2. In the proposed system, whatever is the least popular mode of play will, based on expected economics, yield the least numerous items, and thus those items will be the most expensive on the AH. This means that the PVPers can generate a ton of IGC for themselves to buy the stuff they need to make their toons totally baller, and they're buying that stuff from the PvE Groupers and Soloers. So if I want to go do TFs for a week and get a few more items that I already have and can't really use, I can sell them to a PvPer to get the item I do need from them and we both benefit.
3. In Magic, nobody ever makes a deck just out of cards they pulled out of packs, unless you're playing a format that requires that by rule. I doubt anyone in CoT will survive SOLELY on stuff they got to drop at random from content they did. There will be commerce.
Admittedly one way I can see this going sideways is if PvP ends up being INSANELY more lucrative than PvE, and as such becomes almost mandatory that you have to do it to get enough IGC value out of your time, which would probably cause people to run away from the game entirely. On the other hand, if PvP just sucks and people generally don't do it, then you'll never get any of that ultra rare gear made unless people set up bots to fight eachother just to generate it. That would just be sad.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The problem with group stuff was more confined to "outleveling" group content, like the Positron Task Force, or most egregiously, the Caverns of Transcendence, which had a game mechanic at the end that required a full team of 8, and usually generated enough XP that someone on the team was going to outlevel it before finishing, meaning no retries for them.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
And this is the main problem with locking certain drops to certain content. It's a path towards a headache that MWM should avoid as much as possible.
The only time that it can make sense to lock items to specific content is if those items are only usable/effective within the content that it's acquired from.
Technically, the Posi TF only needed eight [i]to start[/i] and just about everyone else could log off or quit except for one other person besides the team leader. This allowed someone that didn't want to trudge through max scaled mob size to solo the TF, which was smart thinking on part of Cryptic. I never soloed it myself, but I do remember it being a thing for a while.
As for Caverns Trial in the Hollows, whenever we would host a run, TONS of people would turn out for it because it was so rarely done (because it was out-leveled so quickly, as mentioned above), and people wanted the badge of course. We'd usually have to do it at least twice.
Okay so forget PvP for a sec, what if there were components needed to make very rare, high-end gear such that the one component only ever drops at the end of TFs and other group content, and the other one only ever drops at the end of solo missions?
And by "solo missions" I assume these are missions I can try to do alone, or form a team to help me, but the team members don't get the very rare item drop at the end, only I would, as the guy who has the mission. Thus nobody has the same in-game incentive to help anyone else do them, unless you can get he same mission yourself and sync up with someobody.
Or, failing that, what if the "solo" item drops only occur at the end of a mission you actually did entirely by yourself?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Or rewards could be gained from any type of content so that people could play whatever content they preferred.
Spurn all ye kindle.
QFE.
Why?
What would the big benefit be from this compared to allowing any component to drop from any content?
That puts us squarely back at "Why can't I get a HamiO from soloing content? Why do I have to do a Hami Raid when I don't like group play?" to which the answer had been "Because harder content ought to exist in the first place, and the harder the content is, the better the rewards ought to be, out of a sense of fairness in terms of how much time and effort people have to spend in doing different types of content." Also, even in CoX, you could have just grinded solo for IGC and bought the HamiO then, so the play style itself was never absolutely required of you.
It seems to me that the rarest, best gear could be a thing that encourages/rewards playing like ALL of the different parts of the game, because being "the best" gear, it might require players to go to greater lengths to acquire it as opposed to just finding it on the street here and there, like common, less powerful gear. Also, this type of system would treat all players fairly in the sense that no matter what your preferred style is, there will be some elements of the item you want to make that drop from that, and some that drop from other stuff that you then have to acquire somehow. It would cause people to engage in different play modes if they don't hate them that much and/or engage in commerce activities with each other.
But most importantly, it wouldn't put all of the best gear behind the soft wall of group PvE content specifically, despite the fact that group content is or can be made to be harder and more time consuming than soloing, in theory, which was the justification for HamiOs in CoX being given out only by the Hamidon, at least at first. The groupers would still have to get those solo items, presumably by either doing some soloing of their own or just buying them, and the soloers would have a similar proposition in front of them. So this way everyone would be inconvenienced the same, and the players would not be able to complain that the game is slanted in favor of any one style.
At least that was the idea, going in.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
No one should be inconvenienced at all. Not if you make all the things available to everyone. And even then, you won't be able to keep people from complaining. The people that solo want to get stuff as fast as the people doing Group Content, or PvPing, or Raiding. For example, there was a vocal social justice warrior on the CoH/V forums that constantly complained about the disparity between soloist and people that engaged in group content, be it Hami Raids or iTrials, saying that everything should be available to everyone without the same level of effort. I, to a certain degree, agree, that all things should be available to everyone, even though I was a hardcore player putting in eight hours a day easy with my wife during the week and even longer on the weekends. I fully incarnate-d out almost two dozen characters, and this is me saying it should be available to everyone, despite being someone that engaged in the highest risk content in the game. My solution and suggestion back then is much like it is now:
The rate at which advancement should be earned, in my mind, is Solo < Group < PvP < Raid.
The soloist, or the person with the lowest amount of risk, earns it the slowest. As mentioned previously, CoH/V built the majority of it's non-subscriber content around SOs, which was attainable by anyone and everyone. Low risk because you could even adjust the mob size and level of the enemies to suit your needs.
Small, non-Raid group content, be it a Flashpoint or Task/Strike Force, doesn't require any drastic gear changes like it would for PvP or Raiding but does require involvement with people and therefore the risk goes up because the content is scaled against multiple players.
PvP can and usually does require either build changes, gear changes, playstyle changes, or any combination thereof. As the level of effort involved is higher, the rewards should also be higher. They should also be higher because the risk is greater as getting a gear drop in PvP usually means you have to defeat the other player(s), which is going to be more difficult than a PvE foe. More risk, more reward.
And finally, Raid content should give you the best gear as it requires not only better gear to begin with but could also require all the things you would for PvP (gear, build, playstyle changes), and you now also have to coordinate potentially complicated fight sequences with a large number of people for an extended period of time. Due to all these factors, you incur an even greater risk of failure, and therefore the pay-out should scale appropriately.
This seems to be a pretty standard risk vs. reward behavior that MMOs have adopted, which I mostly agree with. Mostly. I do [i]NOT[/i] believe in walling rewards behind content, but instead it should be behind time. I don't think it should be exactly, but something along the lines of:
1hr Raid = 2hr PvP = 4hr Group = 8hr Solo.
That means if I, as a soloist, put in eight hours of solo time, I should be able to earn the same reward(s) as a raider who put in one hour of raid time, be it gear selection or IGC to buy same reward(s).
The AH was of course supposed to take care of the "all things available to all people" problem. But in a free market, many felt "insane" pricing resulted in the old game because it didn't account for the fact that enough people despised some aspects of the game that provided unique items (PvP, "six hour" tf's, etc.). In theory, if you an establish an advancement rate between solo/group/pvp/raid, you can establish an IGC earn rate and thus a ball park "fair" price for unique items. It would mean turning a market into a "store" (or at the very least a market cap) but it's possible. I would look at that rather than throwing unique rewards out the window because a certain segment of the population refuses (for whatever reason) to do the task needed to earn them. I'd also, of course, not make them "necessary" to enjoy the game.
I see where you're coming from Cobalt. And I almost agree with the philosophy. But I just don't subscribe to the 'participation trophy' idea.
I think that there should be some awards that are walled of behind certain content. There should be titles or aesthetic options or other non-gameplay affecting awards so that prople can take pride in their accomplishment. A [b]KING OF THE HILL[/b] title should be awarded to the PvP'er who lasts the longest in a 64 player deathmatch held once a week. The thought that a solo player could get that award would diminish it.
Likewise with some base items. They should be trophies of accomplishment, not just a trophy that says you put in as much time as the next guy.
A solo player should get some amazing NPCs as contacts, maybe even get some NPCs to stroll around in their base every once in a while. The only way for a PvP player to get that would be to build enough trust with that NPC by doing in-world missions like the solo player did.
And where did that 10' tentacle come from that is hanging on your base's wall? It came as a trophy awarded by beating the famed [i]Elder Thing[/i] during the Miskatonic Antarctica task force.
To give any of these awards to people who didn't accomplish those specific achievements would be doing everyone a disservice.
Now we've taken this far from the proposition Radiac made in post #49 that started this latest discussion. I'll join those opposed to the idea. From a game publisher's point of view itlooks good on paper because the more elements of your game the players try the more value you get out of your resources and the longer it takes the players to consume what you have created. I could see something low level that could be awarded to characters who have [u]sampled[/u] all the types of content. But to require players to [u]persist[/u] in a playstyle they do not find entertaining does not lead to good outcomes.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I don't disagree with anything Cobalt said above, except possibly the first sentence, which Cobalt sort of backpedaled on anyway, IMO. If you define playing different parts of the game as "inconveniencing" anyone, then people will be inconvenienced. There's no avoiding it at that point. That said, I think we can agree that harder stuff that takes longer to do ought to be more rewarding than easy stuff that goes fast, lest we end up with the Katie Hannon Effect. For that reason, I think it would not be inappropriate for the best gear to require players to bend over backwards, search all over hell and creation, and spend massive amounts of IGC to acquire it, and such efforts could require a play style I personally do not 100% enjoy as some part of the acquisition process, especially if that part could be avoided by spending IGC on the auction house to buy the item in question from someone else who likes that style of play.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
My mistake. I should have emphasized that my suggestion is mostly in regards to what's considered character progression, like better gear or slottables. Decorative or flavor items/pieces... I'm 50/50 on walling it behind something. Sure, I had the old Immortal badge, but let's make things realistically achievable, shall we?
My suggestion is basically that no one is inconvenienced because they can play the way they want and get the same stuff in regards to character progression, so I'm not entirely sure where I backpedaled. I did admittedly clarify about character progression and not applying it to everything in the game. Again, that was my mistake.
Oh yeah, that's fine. Like how PvP enhancement drops only dropped in PvP. I didn't PvP so it didn't effect me.
Let me throw a slight curveball into this line of discussion. I've never been against having various "awards that were walled off behind certain content" but what gets me is when certain awards are too obviously geared to be trivial for some builds and nigh-impossible for others.
Clearly sometimes that kind of thing can't easily be avoided (i.e. the CoH Empath badge was obviously much easier to earn for characters with a lot of high powered healing powers). But even taking your KING OF THE HILL title for example - that likely would ALWAYS be much simpler for a Tank-like character to earn than say a typical Controller-type character.
To be absolutely clear I'm not saying that all badges/titles should be equally accessible by any class/build. But I will say that the Devs of CoT need to be mindful that some awards will ALWAYS be easier for some types of characters vs. others and they need to make sure that they avoid having too many awards like that which are extremely skewed too far in favor of certain builds vs. others.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Maybe "backpedal" isn't the right word. I just meant that the statement "Nobody should be inconvenienced." sounds good if you define "inconvenience" properly. If you define it as "I should get a HamiO just for logging on, because having to do content takes time and effort and is thus an inconvenience for me." then I think that's crossing the line.
I'm also not against rewards being content-specific themed for doing the appropriate content. I wouldn't be against awarding a "Vampire Hunter" badge for defeating enough Vampires, and if there's vampire swag that can drop, then sure, that too. You could even have content award some on-theme rewards and some generic "you did a daily event so you get the daily bonus" type stuff that's totally unrelated to the event itself. So if your end boss in your TF is a Vampire, he drops vampire stuff and generic end boss stuff, plus maybe a daily bonus if it's his turn that day, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
No matter what you do, it won't be "fair".
Like how it could be argued that solo play is actually more risky than team play, for instance. Or how solo play is more risky or less risky depending upon which character you are playing. I had a ton of characters which I played depending on mood. If I was in a solo mood, I would usually play either one of my Scrappers or one of my Blasters. Almost no risk with the Scrappers, but high risk with the Blasters. The increased risk was actually the [b]reason[/b] I would choose the Blaster that day. It usually took careful planning as I went through a mish to make sure I didn't die. The AR/Dev Blaster actually could lower risk but the tradeoff was time. I could set up minefields and pull one or two mobs at a time.
Solo play with a Defender or Controller was less risky than the Blaster but more risky than the Scrapper. They were of course more time consuming than both. Tankers were safe but crazy time intensive....I never soloed with a Tanker personally for that reason.
So how do you balance that? Risk vs time which changes depending on the toon/AT.
I found team play to be a lower risk in general really. It was pretty relaxing being a Blaster on a team. Just wait a couple of seconds for the aggro to get set and start killing. So really giving more reward for team play for a Blaster would sound backward to me.
Making a game sure is easy, eh? ;)
I agree, I'm not for the aforementioned 'participation trophy'. I think everyone should contribute in enough of a way to gain something. Using the HamiO example, do I think someone should take up a spot in the zone, snake a single hit, get credit for the kill, and therefore equal share of the lewtz? Of course not. I immensely disliked leechers and moochers. Outside of Hami, you had to deal a certain amount of damage to get kill credit, which I agree with. That generally meant that you contributed enough, in comparison to everyone else, to get credit.
Yeah. Unfortunately, my very simplified example won't work for everyone. There will always be outliers and people that don't fall within the standard deviation of the bell curve distribution. I imagine the devs try and develop the majority of the content for the majority, and the rest they put towards those outliers to keep them appeased. However, I have seen occasions where the squeakiest wheel got the grease. Or basically if someone complained, griped, and moaned loud and long enough, they got their problem fixed, even if they're only reflective of a very small percentage of the playerbase. And that's not to say that they don't have valid complaints, they certainly can and probably did, but if it's a matter of delegation of resources, my personal preference is efficiency and putting the most resources towards the biggest return on investment. But I digress.
You could, if you wanted to, take a shot at modifying reward size based on AT while soloing (or pvp). Give say a range type more than melee for solo. It all depends on how far you want to take this "fairness" business. Personally, I find it a pretty big deal that you solo at all with any AT you want... and you can use just about any mix of ATs you want and make it through even the most difficult group content. My view is if the devs can do that much of a balancing act it's a cause to declare victory. Balance certainly needs to be a consideration. But you can really drive yourself crazy if you take the fairness thing too far. Still, I like the idea of some kind of metric between solo/group/pvp/raid.
Regarding fairness and balance, I wrote this almost nine months ago in the petition for Gunner thread:
Will this game care more about parity than about classic roleplay teambuilding? Probably. Therefore I expect the game developers will be spending a significant amount of time and attention and playtesting, with our help, in attempting to gain something as close to parity as they can get.
As players, our ability to make or break our characters' builds with masteries and augments is up to us and will certainly result in disparity despite the developers' best efforts. But that part of the equation is up to us, and it should be.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
My mains were freaking nuts. I worked hard for it and I loved it! Made me reallly feel like a Superhero. I would hope, as Huck implies, I can do this in CoT too :D.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
This. And none of that Statesman business where a PC should be equal to three minions bullplop. We should be putting the SUPER in superhero and supervillain.
I should mention that I meant (and I think so does Azurean--correct me if I'm wrong) "at endgame" in my previous post.
I'm perfectly content as a starting out/leveling hero paying my dues and face-planting to minions :P.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Correct! My namesake was a Nrg/Nrg blapper, so I six-slotted my face-planting power early on.
You six slotted Rest? :P
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Yes, and Brawl. Didn't everyone make that classic mistake on their first character?
I always thought it would have been funny if the CoH Devs had hidden a secret proc attack with Brawl so that it did like a million HP damage and 1,000m KB but only against the final boss in super-long Trials. That way the power would be semi-useless for everything EXCEPT a final boss fight where it would be a super-secret instant one-shot killer. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think I put like 4 slots into Hover on my firs toon. I also deleted him before respecs were a thing. I also didn't bother to try to get anyone to hold his INF for me temporarily, so I just lost everything that toon had, which wasn't much. He was a weather/elec defender ad had ATROCIOUS endo problems.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
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