f13.net

How can it be improved??

I have been playing CoX for a long time now. Over this time i have heard comments such as "This is to easy", "The devs jump from one extreme to another" etc.(PvP situation comments)

It seems that in CoX, aslong as you have the right  builds you can dominate PvP alot have left because of this and gone to other games which are more competitive.

Personally i would like to see a zone stat system, e.g the type they have in FPS you press tab and kills, deaths, time you have been in the zone comes up. This would be very intresting to see.

I have noticed that the Devs try to hard to make everyone happy and doing so, do stuff like make "Instant healing" a clicky or because on the hero side people complain that CoH PvE  is to easy they bring out CoV issue 1 and make the Recluse Strike force extra hard and limited to 8 people and once every 24 hours you can do it. On the hero side they have "Hamidon" which 200 heroes are able to participate and it respawns every 6 hours, both give a Hamidon Eqivalent enhancement it allows you to improve more then one attribute of a power.

What would you like to see in the game? What would you like to see changed?

Lower the fucking grind.

What would that accomplish? It's not like there's anything to grind to. It would be better either to make the grind more fun or add a real end game.

In my opinion, CoX tend to be improved by either an increase in size, or just by being pleasantly formed.  A slight angle to one side or the other can even be amusing.  Personally, I prefer it if they angle to the left, if they must angle.

WARNING MORTALS!

I AM STUCK ON STAFF DUTY.

THOSE OF YOU HAVE HAD THE ULTIMATE DISPLEASURE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT KNOW WHAT THIS COULD MEAN.

In short, I have to work all night, but have no actual work to do.

I still have access to a computer.

But that computer cannot go to any "real" gaming websites.

Sadly for y'all, I can still access here.

THERE WILL BE WEEPING AND WAILING AND GNASHING OF TEETH!!!!!!

I'll second the 'lower the fucking grind' and explain a little about why. When you get a new power it changes the game slightly, that change helps keep the game interesting. Once you hit level 30ish not only does it take longer to gain a new level, it takes more levels to get a new power.

This seriously slows down the rate at which gameplay changes, which means it becomes stale and boring. There isn't enough variety of enemies to compensate for this slowdown. So, my suggestion is to add more 'new shiny' moments - not necessarily new powers, the long postponed skill system or similar would help and/or add a wider variety of things to fight. Not new models, but genuinely new fights, different AI, different powers. Anything to introduce more changes to gameplay.

Damn, tar.

That's some serious dedication to staying on-topic.

:P

I tend to be pretty single-minded, yeah. One thing at a time :)

Ok.

Are you finished talking about that other thing so we can talk about MY needs now?

The grind is not really that bad, but it is very repetitive which pisses me off. Once you have one 50 on the hero side then you have probably seen all the content. Aftr i got my first 50 i PLed another 3. In CoV it is not as much of a grind, newspaper missions make it easy to level and certain missions are enjoyable.

I just felt no motivation to advance.

I could see all the powers I would gain later, and I watched my character blast away at things.

And I just didn't care enough to keep going.

I think I need the little things.  Like the sound a ring makes when it drops.  Or to see that corpse glowing with the evil possibilities of loot.  Or that little treasure chest that I saw and nobody else did.

Okay, yeah.  I'll admit it.

I ONLY LIKE GRINDING IF COOL SHITS DROPS WHILE I DO IT.  OTHERWISE IT SUCKS MORE THAN ____________________.

I never played to grind in CoH/V, there was always something to do for it's own sake but I need a bit of variety and post 30 there just isn't enough. I was a huge altaholic (30+ at last count), mostly due to my need for new powers to play with that just wasn't dealt with in the higher levels. I'm still subscribed but I haven't played for more than an hour a week for several months now. Sub runs out in september and if nothing new has happened by then, that'll be me done with it.

@Xerapis: sure, go for it.

I bought WoW a few months ago, i have stopped playing it because i was alte into the game and no one was leveling up and shit its a long game to play on your own.

Anyway enough about WoW what i was trying to get at was that i actually liked the game, the bit i liked the most was the exploration, the zones they have look pretty good.

Things like "old ironforge" a hidden place things like this made it intresting. If CoX had this then it would be a better game, features, places in the game which are not shown on the map or told in the manual.

 This included with better looking zones more zones like "eden" and the "hive" would make it better. Not exactly like them, a map with a volcanoe which can be like a trial.

I think it would be more intresting and not as repetitive.

I think Cox would be vastly improved if they had lots of ridges.


Oh wait....

So they should be more like Ruffles that way?

I'd re-sub to CoX if Cryptic got their heads out of their asses and fixed ATi support. A MMOG that hardlocks the system at random intervals is not acceptable, and when it did work performance was nowhere near where it should've been.

They should also stop with Statesmans vision shit and let superheroes/villians be super.

I play it on an ATI.

The current major ATI problem is related to buggy ATI support for dual-threaded processes. I think you can force the game to run as a single thread to work around that.

Or are you using an older card? I've managed to get it to run fine on an old Radeon Mobility in safe mode.

Er, edited to add: "Statesman's vision shit" is a terrible, terrible misinterpretation. It's not the threat that every hero can only be capable of dealing with three even-level minions. It's a promise that every powerset combination, if properly built, will be able to deal with at least three even-level minions. If it was supposed to be the former there'd be no need for the difficulty++ NPCs (who are on the minimap now.)

--GF

There _are_ places in the city that aren't shown on the map or detailed in the manual. Somebody hid out in Atlas Park for about half an hour once, challenging people to find him - he was standing in a little park in one corner of the city where nobody ever went, and I only knew about it because I'd run a mission out there as a newbie Kheldian.

There are some interesting culverts under the streets in Skyway City, and Brickstown is built on top of an underground maze of sewer conduits and access ramps. Talos Island does some really interesting things with natural grottos on the northern islands, and have you found the lighted tunnel that cuts through the streets of the main island and heads down to the docks? There's a huge underground mausoleum in Moth Cemetary. Striga is crazy well-built in that you can follow a road from the docks, jumping various checkpoints and whatnot, and wind through the defense tunnel and end up in the secret Council base.

If the devs incentivize heading out there, via badges or whatnot, then the locations will be up on spoiler sites in a matter of days and everybody will go there just long enough to get the badge, then promptly complain there aren't any interesting places in the game that aren't on maps or spoiler sites. It's a vicious cycle.

--GF

Scale the exp so that everyone gets full xp in a group.
Auto sidekick everyone in a group -2 levels of the highest hero with.
Put random glowies in missions that removes 2 deaths worth of debt.

My X800 XT card is getting there, but I wouldn't call it old just yet. I could play CoH just fine performance wise, albeit with random hardlocks to the system but CoV had dreadfull performance and also featured the dreaded lockups ( Theese also happened to a couple of friends who are also using ATi cards ).

I may have misinterpreted Statesmans vision, but all I know is the second he started talking about it my tanker and my scrapper went down the fucking drain. The only good that came out of it was making my Mind Controller somewhat more powerfull solo but that was a poor trade-in for the utter devastation that happened my firetank.

Edit: What I would like for CoX, a stable engine and Issue 3.

My ATI RADEON 9200 got fucked with the last patch, ice fixed it now got the 6.5 drivers and disabled geometry buffers which have aloways been a problem with ATI cards. I have to play in safe mode now to play.
I am going to upgrade my comp and get rid of ATI, GeForce seems to be alot better for gaming.

Yeah in retrospect I should probably have gone for an Nvidia card, but still Cryptic isn't exactly in a ideal position constantly fuck a large part of gamers based on their choice of graphic cards.

The grind has been mentioned and so has my other main gripe. The "purple nerf" really sucked. After that change, a full group of superheroes usually fought a group of villains the same size. That is lame. CoX is best when your enemies outnumber you 5-10x.

CoX is also best when you bastiches recognize all the hard work that Signe and I putting into firmly establishing the CoX = cocks line of humor.

The sooner you get the proper acknowledgement out of the way, the less time we will have to spend grinding away at the CoX.

~evil giggle~

Purple nerf took the fun out of beating up on tons of villians and villians way higher than you.

ED drove us into crappy builds with less potential, probably needed for pvp, but sure screwed up everyones frame of thinking.

Reducing the grind would be great.  I want to get to level 50 and then try diffrent builds of diffrent characters.  I don't buy into the thinking that if you make the game too easy to get to level cap people will quit.  UO didn't have that problem, nor does WoW, but for some reason CoX wants to keep slowing down leveling time.

Lack of powers after 32.  I do think if they keep making everything less powerful, they ought to go ahead and let us have a power every other level (well maybe not that many, but enough to make it seem not so barren).

Maybe introduce  crafting thing, where you could make duel or triple enhancments, this would be nice since I have some powers that I would like to slot up with more than just damage and accuracy.

Vehicles!  Let me tool around on a bitching motorcyle.   :-D

Oh yes, another thing they could do to improve CoX, unlimited respecs.

Or just charge $5 for every respec beyond your third. That is a reaosnable price.

I don't want to pay extra to get things my game.  Whether it be respecs (though CoX desperately needs them constantly) or server transfers or anything else.  I think those are all terrible ideas.  I do think a resolution would be a respec a month... especially since they keep changing/nerfing/whatevering stuff.  If it comes down to games charging for things... on regular, not special... servers, I won't pay.  I'll fall behind the majority of the customers, I won't be able to have nice things like them, and I'll quit.  I wonder how many other people would do the same thing.  Personally, I don't think these innovative publisher/devs/whoevers are so much changing the nature of MMOs, I think they're just driving people away.  I suppose time will tell.

Well, for me that depends on what extra I get for my buck.

If it's a few bucks for a whole new area to explore...yeah, maybe, if it looks interesting.

A few bucks for a respec...not a chance.

A few bucks for an extra stable slot for my hunters in WOW?  OMGYES!!!!!!!!!!

It all depends.  Different folks are gonna find different value in different things and all that.

I didn't mean I wouldn't pay for expansions that contain content or adventure packs such as the ones that EQ2 offer, just not for things like I mentioned. 

You say that now since they are free now, but if a game launches with these kinds of extra payments players will tolerate them. Of course, the game has to be good in the first place.

What CoX (yes, yes, lol, okay, old joke) suffers from is binary PvP and a lack of continuing variety in PvE.

This goes beyond just standard "missions all look the same" stuff.  They can keep throwing money at that and bring some unique art to a few missions, but overall it's not going to change anything.  That's an expensive and difficult way to go about making missions feel unique, when there are better and cheaper ways to do it.

What's needed for missions are:
More objectives.  Mayhem missions are awesome largely because of side missions.  Give me optional stuff to do in most of my missions, just as a fun bonus- WITH A REWARD.  Let me find a secret door inside the warehouse that takes me to a hidden cave where the Circle of Thorns hid an artifact.  Let me find an ally locked up in the Council jail cells.  Let me into the basement of the office building where I can plant a few bombs to take out the building's support and hinder my enemies (that is- let me find some cool ways to debuff an archvillain before engaging them if I explore).  Let's say I'm running missions for Indigo- what's to stop her from saying "Alright, you go in through the entrance we discussed and I'll slip in another way, we'll meet up inside"?  She's a hero, shouldn't she and some of the other contacts take up a more active role in the missions they want done?  Harcase is a demon hunter- what does he actually /do/ and why don't we ever see it?  Why doesn't the supposed "hero hunter" Crimson Revenant help me actually hunt some heroes?
More enemy variation.  The best missions have more than 2 groups of enemies inside.  There are about 2 missions that currently have this- one is the Outcast auction, and I can't remember any others.  Is it possible to even throw in a couple enemies from different factions into one group?  Maybe the Freakshow and Warriors have signed a temporary truce to take me out- couldn't I find a group half composed of warrior minions and half of freakshow, instead of one group of freakshow, one group of warriors?  Mixing the groups together causes different power combinations to deal with- meaning more unique gameplay.
Better use and design of enemy groups.  The Tsoo are very rarely used, but they're one of the best designed groups in the game.  The huge amount of variation between their minions, lieutenants, and especially their bosses make them always fun to fight.  More enemies like Sorcerers, who act as support for the other guys, would go a long way towards making all battles more interesting.
MORE CUSTOM BOSSES!  One of my favorite low level contacts is Billy Heck, because you go up against both Pitbull and Bloody Vicious in one mission.  They're not like any of the guys around them, because they were hand crafted.  These missions are memorable.  Hell, you could even award a badge or gladiator for taking them out.
Meaningful decisions in missions.  I don't know how your code works, but the "choices" you've added in missions really... aren't choices.  They're "Do the mission, or don't."  What it ought to be is "Do this mission, or do this mission, and whichever one you pick will affect the outcome of the story".  I know it's a pain to write diverging story lines, but you really gotta or it's not a real choice.  Most contacts make you feel like a pawn or an errand boy, and this is why.  You don't have input- they tell you what to do and you go do it.  But maybe while Hardcase is trying to convince me that I should go stop these demons rampaging in St. Martial, he accidentally mentions some place I could rob.  Then it's my choice whether I let the demons run loose and steal souls left and right or ignore the chance for direct profit to stop them.

For players and powers:
More variation between powersets.  Brutes for instance:  Maybe you've got one set that's great at generating Fury, another that's really endurance efficient, another with really fast attack animations, another that's not great at generating Fury but isn't that reliant on it because it has pretty high base damage anyways?
Or maybe for ranged blast sets, something doesn't have the sheer range of something else, but makes up for it in another way?  Inherent benefits to the powers are intriguing and make for fun synergies.
But with the game as it is, people would hate fundamental changes to their sets, so the best option to implement something like this would be a horizontal customization option.  This goes outside of enhancements (because, face it, you're not wasting a slot on range enhancement when you need those slots for damage, or accuracy, or endurance).  Think up some various stats players can apply to all of their powers, and let them pick a couple.  This changes gameplay much more frequently and to greater effect than tossing in a situational power every 3 levels.  Enhancements don't change gameplay this much because at most you get 3 slots per level, which means either one power will be majorly affected or three powers will be minorly affected.
Lower the grind.  Yes.  People should level up faster.  You already don't expect each character to see all the content, so let's make it so that getting to that content on another character doesn't take months.

PvP:
It's too binary.  Stealth, for instance- either they can see you or they can't.  You've discussed some system whereby you can determine how far away you can see a stealthed character, but that doesn't really display itself in practice.  There should be stealth and perception enhancements, for one (including perception debuff- for powers like Smoke).  And, rule of thumb, if someone is standing right next to someone else, in most cases they should be visible to one another- unless the stealthed person is /really really/ stealthy. If they're over a hundred yards away from one another, and one of them is stealthed, in most cases the stealthed one should not be visible- unless the viewer is /really really/ perceptive.
Crowd Control powers are the same way in PvP.  For the most part, either they work or they don't.  This ends up making debuffs actually more effective in PvP than crowd control- my Ice/Ice Dominator was useful because he could Slow the hell out of anything, not because he could Hold stuff.  Frankly, CC is so broken that I don't know how to fix it.  Half the time it's way too powerful and half the time it's way too weak.  The situation as it is is especially bad for Dominators, because they are completely reliant on crowd control and completely vulnerable to it.  A Scrapper or Tanker can stun a Dominator with a single power, taking him out of the fight, but it requires many, many applications of a Dominator's power to do the same to a Tanker or Scrapper- despite the fact that the Dominator is supposed to be better at CC than a Tanker or Scrapper.  Melee classes with some light CC abilities and CC resist are better able to utilize CC powers than the classes built entirely around those powers.

Course, I'm still having fun.  I still like the game a lot.  But it could be better.

God yes. It's fun to protect something or to cart around an NPC helper. Randomized mayhem-style side objectives sound fun too. My favorite part of the generally squee-worthy "break back into the Zig" was seeing Jenkins as a Huntsman, though I have no idea how the spaz made it up in the ranks.

You're off by a couple orders of magnitude. The Tsoo enter into negotiations with Outcasts, Trolls, Warriors, and Family at various points. Warriors hold contests of strength with the Tsoo and Freaks. The CoT, Tsoo, and Warriors all throw down with the Banished Pantheon under various pretenses. Nemesis negotiates with the CoT to fight the Rikti, then turns around and plays Hero Of Justice when the CoT are trying to blow Brickstown out from under them. Sky Raiders break into a business that's actually a Council front. Crey try to obtain a sample of the Devouring Earth's mind-control spores. The Freaks put pressure on councilman Carmen St. Iago and the Family try and take care of their own. And the beat goes on.

Every mission map, however, has a "primary enemy". Any enemy groups that are _not_ that enemy, even if they're mixed, have to be specially placed. Or so I gather.

People gravitate toward the "easier" enemy groups and away from the "harder" ones. Plenty of enemies in the later game act as support - Nemesis 'surgeons' and lieutenants, Rikti guardians, Crey across the spectrum. But people tend to prefer the more monolithic enemies.

God yes. Billie Heck also gives you 3K Kelvin, a custom Hellion elite, and then there's "Duke" Mordragor, the Herald of Bat'Zul (though he doesn't look it), and Professor Echo.

Some ideas to implement this. First is at a mission level - how you act in the mission determines what comes next. This is a bad idea for obvious HAY GUYS I'LL CLICK THE GLOWY THING reasons. Second is having the contact give you "choices". This will need some good writing to not be Communist Choice caliber, but doable. Third, only on the CoH side, the five or so contacts of the same origin at every tier can all open up and you can tackle various segments of a story arc from different angles. Again, writing-intensive.

I like the idea of going beyond enhancements to do some "custom tailoring" at various levels.

This one could actually run into some problems. How are people going to, for example, get the hang of Warriors and Tsoo so they know how to deal with them grouped together, if all you have time to do are like two Tsoo missions, two Warrior missions, and one teamup before you outlevel everybody involved?

A properly built "custom tailor" system would make the dead stretches seem a lot less dead.

And when an attack connects it either kills you or it doesn't. Way too binary! :-(

Balancing PvP 1-on-1 is a hopeless cause. There are some control powers with secondary effects - most of Earth Control does -def, Grav Control does -speed, Ice Control does a slight slow - but all Controller powers need that effect a) to be present and b) to be enhanced in PvP. Dominators actually seem to have a slight chance of applying an effect regardless of any status protection. Is that good or bad?

--GF

Part of the reason why CoX has so much trouble with ATI cards is that the ATI OpenGL driver sucks big time. ATI has been promising a rewrite for a long time now but AFAIK they haven't done it yet. I used to play CoH when it was first released on a 9600 Pro so I had to suffer through that. Of course now, thanks to I7 changes, the game will freeze on me even with my NVIDIA card (I'm one of the many Kinetics players who suffers from the sound loop freeze bug) which never happened before pre-I7 on either my NVIDIA or ATI cards.

Reread what I wrote.

More than two.   Not two or more.  The Outcast auction has Tsoo, CoT, Outcasts, and Hellions.  I'm sure the system right now requires that groups not belonging to the primary enemy faction be hand placed, which is why a lot of missions lately will see only 1, maybe 2, of the other enemy group in the whole mission.  That needs to be reworked.  Either more hand-placement needs to go on, or they need to figure out how to tell the system "Make this mission 25% this, 50% this, and 25% this."

You're being a smartass about the binary comment:  DAoC stealth isn't binary because there are different levels of how effective the stealth is.  Not so in CoH.  They claim it's so, but on both ends of the spectrum I haven't seen anything to indicate as much.  Either you're visible at full range or you're totally invisible.  So if they had a system like that in place, it needs to be reworked to be meaningful.  I think Perception and Stealth enhancements would go a long way towards doing this.

Easier VS Harder:  That's why the "hard" groups need to either be worth it, or all groups need to be equally hard.  Easier is the former, which they've already done.  But I'd really like to see a group decide "Hm, let's do the Tsoo mission.  It's harder, but really good exp."

Rikti Guardians are a good example of support.  The Surgeons aren't so much- one heal every so often that heals about as much as one decent attack isn't really worth a lot.  Nothing compares to Sorcerers or Pantheon Shamans, though, in pure levels of "omg, kill them first ALWAYS".  They make fights interesting.  The Council's almost a shame, because there's so much effort in there to make them a varied group, but very little of it actually shows in the gameplay.  Varied bosses are a great idea- Longbow Wardens and Tsoo Bosses are my favorite to fight, because it's always something different.  Freakshow bosses... it's either smashing damage or lethal damage, otherwise no difference.  I go up against Tsoo, I could be dealing with a kinetic, a stormer, a spines scrapper, a fire blaster....... same with Wardens- sonic, storm, empath, super strength, martial arts, the list goes on.  Much more fun.

Hell, with Freakshow bosses the smashing/lethal difference doesn't even matter, because there's what, 1 power in the game that gives protection to one but not the other? (Increase Density)  I don't even have to use a different shield.

People complain about the grind, but that's only because they're not having fun.  So they think the grind needs to be shorter.  Thing is, they still won't have fun- it'll just take less time for them to do the things they DO enjoy.  So they get all pissy when the game gets harder because they think the grind is longer, and they want it to be shorter, but really if the game gets harder it requires more thought which means more active involvement which means more  fun, which means the grind won't suck.

It should still be shorter than what it is, but that won't solve any problems.  Asking for the game to be easier is the same as asking for it to take less thought, which means you get bored faster and stop having fun sooner.  That's why herding groups sucked- they felt awesome at first, but got boring really quick and diverted player attention away from gameplay and onto the experience bar.





Also, it'd be cool if NPC text would recognize if you have a "The" in front of your name.  If my name is The Marked Man, I want people to go "Oh no, it's The Marked Man!"  Not "Oh no, it's Marked Man!"

And I want a pwny.

I just remembered the other mission with more than 2 villain groups in it:

The Nemesis recruitment drive.

I put on my robe and wizard hat.




Damm. To late for the party  :sad_panda:

Exact same.
CoH/CoV is semi-intended as a casual player friendly game. Past-level 30 it clearly is not. The XP grind hits you in the face. Not only do you start leveling at snail pace but powers are far and far between.

My toons are all stuck between 30-40. No point at all in leveling for dozens of hours just to gain one level.
Sometimes I just fire Herostats because I can't just believe my eyes... that XP bar just isn't moving even though the perfect group I am in kill dozens of enemies per minute.
Time to level: 10+ hours. Eeeeeek !!!

This is only seconded by:
- Make Stamina inherent. Get over it. Everyone is getting it.
- Get a clue and balance influence costs. Being piss poor from level 1 to level 32 is not fun. Being uber rich post 32 isn't either.
- Change CoH so that most zones are not dead... and contacts don't make you cross 2 zones just to get to your new mission and those kill 40 x ceased to be a challenge after the third one in a row.

d

For those with ATI problems - a small patch has gone live that has fixed some people's problems. YMMV.

To improve CoH/V:

 - More powersets. I want more options for my hero / villain.

 - CoH has to be updated to take in all the good stuff from CoV. This is going to take time and not attract any new players, so it probably isn't a priority.

 - Some zone events would be nice too - the kind that have a meaningful outcome, that is...

Funny, I get mine in about 5. Granted, it's solid yellow, orange, and red to get there, but that's even with pickup teams.

No they're not. Stamina isn't nearly as awesome as anyone thinks it is. The REAL benefit to getting Stamina is NOT having three more powers to press as fast as possible and whittle down the blue bar. Stamina's alright for soloing but in a decent-size team there's generally somebody who can pick the blue bar back up.

Supergroups bleed off the wealth after 32. As for the rest? Don't fill up on DOs at 12 or SOs at 22. The game doesn't assume you've got them slotted until 20 and 30.

Now that I can get behind.

--GF

Surgeons don't even get to heal if someone with an aura stands next to them.  I didn't realize they had a heal until I had been doing Crey missions with my tank for several levels.  I had to purposefully not get close to one to confirm what power they used because it was the first use of Aid Other I had ever seen.

Tsoo were always my favorite group because of their diversity.  My friends thought I was crazy. :|

I don't mind the Freakshow as they are.  They have some of the best dialog.  A little variety would be nice, but if they were given annoying powers and I had to fight them a second time because they rezzed it could get tiresome.

One more vote for lowering the grind.

I've been level 39 for about eight months for one reason: I ran out of missions. I have a new set of contacts but they won't give me a job until I hit 40. I play casually (usually do a mission or two a couple of nights a week), and solo grinding is now my only option. If the grind weren't EQ-hell-level painful, I might be arsed to continue. As it is, I log in, smack some fool Crey in FF, notice my meter is not moving, and log off in disgust.

Logging on to smack some fool Crey and logging off makes you a highly profitable customer. That is not the way to communicate displeasure. If you truly log off in disgust and continue paying them each month, you lose.

They have an endgame. it's called making an alt. I've subbed, cancelled, and resubbed to this game at least eight times. Every single time I get a character to about level 15 or so and say, "Fuck this shit." Let me get to 50 or whatever, get some PvP going and then make alts. Don't make it more fun or whatever because the fun is running a bunch of toons with super powers around beating the shit out of stuff... but not in a static environment. Taking a month to go five levels up near the cap is about a static environment as I can imagine.

I also want to thank Cryptic for fucking their download servers with Issue 7. Saved me fifteen bucks.

Two words: War. Burg.

Two other words: Pickup. Team.

One of these sets has to scare you less.

--GF

Do you mostly team or mostly solo?

CoX soloing is very low-frills. Two different teams will turn "the same mission" into something very different.

At least they do for me.

--GF

If I wanted to be forced to group there any number of other, better, games to suit my taste.  If I want to solo I have WoW, also a better game.

They need to hand Emmert his fucking walking papers and revert to issue 3.

You guys need to get off the Emmert thing.  He's not even the lead designer of the game anymore.  He's still with Cryptic, and still has control over CoH if he wants it, but the day to day stuff and most of the design is done by Positron these days.

But, frankly, I don't want the game to revert back to Issue 3.  I'm having much more fun now than I was back then.

Until Positron undo's Emmert's decisions, it may as well be about Emmert. People still had legitimate complaints about SWG (1.0) even when Raph left. Because it was still his game. He designed it.

I like you Llava. Honestly. But you and Glazius both are deep in fanboi/apologetic territory when it comes to these discussions. Always with the convenient little excuses and workarounds that, in effect, lay fault at the players somehow instead of the devs. You guys rarely admit to anything negative about the game itself. It's irritating.

[edit] OK, I'm being a bit unfair here, but the last few posts seemed to be spiraling down that path.

Sometimes I just find (Glazius more than you) that you guys have more solutions and advice for the people who want to like this game than the people who are making it.

I mostly solo where I can and group where I have to. That doesn't matter. The problem that *I* have with it is the grind. Shake things up a bit. Give me different stuff and faster. If I get to 50 and there's nothing to do but PvP, then I'll make a new toon (which is the real charm of this game) and PvP some. Just explicitly make the "endgame" about making alts; it is in reality so quit dicking around with it.

Ditch debt.  Speed up leveling.  Eventually they'll realize that the character creator is the best 'good' thing they brought to the MMOG space and let people experience it more regularly without having to worry that they're wasting time by not playing their main.

Everything else is pretty optional, though (as a guy with a Dominator main) I'd like them to get rid of the purple triangles on boss mobs when fought on lower difficulty levels and maybe reduce the effectiveness of BF's in PvP too.  That said, I'm willing to cede never being able to matter (ever) in an AV fight or in PvP if it doesn't take so goddamned long to hit 40-50, though.

Truth be told, even with my "Fire Statesman, bring back I3, beeyotch!" attack, that wouldn't make a difference either.  CoX is in the death spiral, and the only thing we have left to look forward to is the long, slow, but inevitable continued dwindling of playerbase until, like an old dog, they put the old bitch out of her misery.

I'm glad you said it, as I was begining to wonder if they weren't Jack and Positron, trying to somehow mind control us into thinking the game is super great even though we are pissed about what has happened to it.

Reduce the grind to like WoW and the game might have still had a ton of people playing it. 

I've been staring at this box for about an hour, trying to think of something to say that will make sense.

I guess what it boils down to is: for me, CoH is fun at an atomic level, and in some way that keeps me from understanding how it can't be for anybody else. Me and my team, one spawn, one fight, fun. Advancement doesn't matter, as long as we're not fighting just to get to the next level. When they nerfed tanks and AoE controls that atomic level got more fun, because it wasn't just a matter of "tank wads them into a big ball, controller perma-holds everything, damagedamagedamage."

Putting in more enemies who do "support functions" would put a little blip even inside that atomic level, and for that reason I should technically stop CALLING it the atomic level, but nyeah. Taking a sorceror or a shaman or a radiologist or a voltaic tank or a DE emanator out of the fight is a way to immediately turn the tide, to stop your enemy from getting stronger or making you weaker.

Putting more mini-objectives in missions, like people to escort, NPCs to fight with, or objects to protect, gives a fight scope beyond the fight itself but narrower than the dozens of fights inside your average mission - for some period of time you can't control the pace. The NPC will start his own fights ("man, look at all those Red Caps. Okay, you drop an ice slick here, I'll snipe from the tree, you have that nova charged and ready, and-" "Alright chums, let's do this! KAAAAATIIIIIIIIEEEE HHHHHHHHHHHANNON!" "oh my god she just flew in"), or your escort/object will get hunted down. But when that's over you're rewarded both with the objective's reward and control of the pacing again.

I can understand those. What I can't understand is the assumption that somehow, the atomic level stops being fun. Because... it's been two years, and it hasn't, yet.

--GF

A straight week of awesome pickup teams probably doesn't help either.

Bam, nailed it.  That's exactly what I'm trying to say.

And most of the player base, which is by even the most grim estimates still over 100k, agrees.

The problem here is that you guys are trying to turn the game into something the playerbase doesn't want it to be.  That's fine that it's not the game for you, but I like CoV like it is- please don't fuck with it.  Go make a different game.

Does it need improvements? See my above long ass post.  But reverting back to Issue 3 or whatever is a fuckup approaching (not matching, but approaching) the level of the NGE in taking a game people like and turning it into a completely different game.

Therefore, I suggest having our cake and eating it too:  alternate server rulesets.

Downside, of course, is there are about 500 different incarnations of CoH people would want to have their own servers.  But for you guys, they could just make a "purple server".

2nd downside is that I doubt they want to start up whole new servers as it is.

I don't think it's a matter of want, I think it's a matter of "can't afford to/not enough players to justify it".

And I understand the atomic level of enjoyment for CoH, because I used to share it.  I'd been subscribed for over a year, playing from launch, and only quitting in disgust after seeing CoV.  Shit, look at my back posts on this game; I was the number one CoH fanboy on this site.

The thing is, that atomic level of enjoyment has been killed off in the countless deluge of nerfs this team has served up from month to month.  Fuck, I could even handle the grind, which is the biggest complaint most folks have.  The continual need to respec, the neutering of my tanker in favor of balance, the lackluster, truly shitty PVP, and the dictum that "thou shalt only be capable of whupping three even minions" led me to say fuck it and take my money where it was better appreciated.

I've always been the #1 CoH fanboy on this site, Mister.

And regarding "can't afford to", yeah that's pretty much what I meant.  Or, rather, I'm sure they could afford to but it'd be a money losing prospect.

It is not that we can't understand why you 2 want to keep your slow leveling, but why you all are defending it tooth and nail against everyone who has quit because of the grind or stopped playing past 30 because of the grind.  If you all think CoX should keep just a smaller base of players around 100k that is fine, but why stem the potential that could come from a larger player base.  More accounts into CoX = more stuff they could pass along in content.

Things that most people want is to feel like Hero's  not just a reskin of EQ with capes, especially a EQ clone that was bent on keeping the leveling slow.  We want the old system of letting us level up fast solo or level up even faster grouped.  We want to continue where pick up groups rocked, because you wanted 8 people to spawn an ungodly amount of villians and it made if feel super hero'ish because we could take them down.

I don't mind adding skill, but the only thing they were focusing on for a long time is how they could slow the game down.  And the lame ass-ed posting Jack would do on the official boards about how a character shouldn't be matched up with more than 3 equal con mobs, god that was so annoying and the fact that we were used to blasting so much more and then he wants to change it.

Okay.

I'll say it again.

Leveling isn't any slower than it was before.

You're not fighting as many guys at once, true, but they are worth more now.

I say this being one of probably 2 or 3 people on this board who have leveled all the way to 50.

Herding wasn't fun.  I know you remember it as being fun.  It wasn't.  Memory and reality sometimes clash.

Lastly, I'm not fighting for slow leveling.  I think the grind /should/ be reduced.  And I've said that.  A lot.  In this thread.  But that alone isn't going to fix anything.

Riiiight. You should only be able to match up with three even-con mobs.

That must be why there's someone in every zone who can tune your missions so you're fighting twice as many +1 mobs! That's why you fight elite bosses to cap off your storyarcs!

So many people seem to willfully misinterpret that. Three even-con mobs isn't the ceiling, it's the floor. It's what every combination of power sets, even the force field/psychic blast defenders, has to be capable of.

It's because everybody who quit "because of the grind" didn't actually like the gameplay to begin with but was entertained by the shinies. There's nothing to grind to! I can sidekick up a level 20 out to fight the level 53 Praetorians who are holding Statesman hostage, fercryinoutloud. Can't handle purples anymore? Reward-wise, oranges (what you get on Invincible) are BEYOND where purples used to be, and that's just assuming you're fighting the ordinary rank and file. If you're throwing down with like Fake Nemesis or Malta, the "challenge XP bonuses", which weren't even _there_ pre-purple patch, make orange into deep purple and red into, like, cosmic radiation or something.

(Besides, when you were fighting purples you were only getting XP for them like they were reds. No, seriously.)

--GF

Spare us the "I know better, I'm 50th!" horseshit.  Getting to 50th is not difficult.  I did it with my tanker and my Kheldian, and I'm here to tell you that playing an invulnerable tank being swarmed by purples while your teammates lay down AOEs, scrappers lay waste, and imps run amok  was fun.  I DIDN'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THE XP, SINCE I WAS ALREADY 50TH.  I had my own SG, and we had around 50 members, 20 of which were on practically every night.  This was not a game that I just left willy nilly.

What I cared about was feeling like a comic book version of the Hulk or Juggernaut.  Having to constantly watch your endurance bar while fighting 4 or 5 oranges just wasn't fun after taking on legions of the naughty for the good of your SG.  And guess what?  All that COH had going for it was combat.  When that's no longer fun it's time to pull up stakes.

No, it was fun.

Two can play at the infallible declaration game.


I got to kill as many guys at once as I do in every other superhero or action game. Quickly. I like that. That's better than killing less guys at a slower pace (and in turn, getting bored easier). General apprehensiveness in pulling is encouraged in the latter situation too --- Seeing that 9 out of 10 camps are filled with 6 mobs or more.

Herding got boring after awhile. What i loved to do was run the Ghost Falcon rikiti PL mission, the number of mobs was just fun to fight against.

And on a more general note, only in the MMO world will I see someone actually encourage less heads being rolled -- and at a slower pace. Only there would someone find that more "fun".

For me, the minimum minion body count in an action-y type game is half the fucking screen....At the very least. All able to be wiped out in 30 seconds or so.

Maximum downtime after that is .5 seconds (the time it takes to swallow a potion) -- and on to the next group of baddies.

Reference God of War or (if RPG's are more suitable to be mentioned here) Dark Alliance to see if I'm exaggerating.

You tell me what's "fun", but I don't think you understand how extreme I'd be willing to go if I was allowed to adjust City of Heroes to my kind of "fun".

Lotsa words in here. I skimmed and didn't see any mention of my idea (if it's already been said I apologize). Would CoX be more fun if they implemented an instant 50 level character type just for PVP ala Guild Wars? No grind and all the blasting you can stand. Well, maybe a little grind. Any influence you got could be put to your groups base or the augmenting of your existing powers.

What Stray said. My tanker, Flame Boy, used to be one seriously tough (Fire/Inv) fellow, even at level 24. Now he fears the wolves on Striga Isle. He gets no play any more. When I killed things slowly, but could stand the damage and keep my group safe, it was a blast. Now that I am a poor man's WoW prot-spec warrior, it is no fun.

When Vegemite, my 39 scrapper, could jump into a fight with a ton of yellow and orange mobs and trust to his fists, feet and occasional use of an inspiration to keep him alive, it was fun. Getting alpha'd by two yellow-con lieutenants is decidedly non-fun and non-heroic.

CoH used to be fun for me at an atomic level, too. To some extent I still derive some joy from my lowbie brute on the villain side. And so I play a few times a week, mostly my <20 characters, mostly grouped with my 8-year-old daughter. But i sure don't look forward to playing the game every night, nor to I make time in my daily schedule to do it. Maybe keeping my sub running encourages bad dev/designer behavior, but for me the gaming with the kid makes the money worth it. I just wish the game compelled me to play on my own as well. But when I play solo, I feel less like a hero and more like a catasser. So i don't.

You're either exaggerating or built very, very poorly.  No class should get alphaed by two yellow con lieutenants.  My Controller could stand next to them with no pets for a good 15-30 seconds before even having to do anything.

From levels 1-50 I simply cannot imagine a build or scenario that would cause this.

I just got tired of it seeming like they spent all of their development cycles dicking with the game mechanics.  I know that isn't the case, but for some reason that's exactly what it feels like.  Villain missions just didn't seem substantively different then Hero missions (yes, Villain ATs play differently then Hero ATs, but the underlying mechanics being the same made that difference no much different then playing a different Hero AT).

Got to admit the Stalker conversations annoy(ed) the hell out of me.  In my book Cryptic ends up being another MMO developer that puts a stealth-glass cannon in the game and is surprised when there are balance issues. fucking duh!

In retrospec, I guess I ran out of patience with the development house, rather then the game itself (although that is largely a symptom of feeling like I just keep doing the same thing over and over again while in-game).  I'm only speaking for myself here, but I just got real damn tired of them adding shit to the game that only ended up annoying me (ED, Stalker, base PvP implementation, travel suppression, endless stream of patch-day bugs, etc)

I concede; it was two yellow con bosses. Paragon Protectors. And, regardless, my point stands. I used to feel like a hero. now I feel like a Diku-er.

Two yellow-con bosses with access to what would be a tier 9 melee power for any hero?

Even then, since you're regen, they would have ganked you at launch. Because when you get alpha struck, regen doesn't actually have time to work. This has always been its greatest weakness.

...well, that and popping Moment of Glory against psychic archvillains.

--GF

CoX grind lowering would undoubtedly help in the short term, but the real issue is that if you feel the grind it's because you did everything in the game, and you might as well move on.

The game still has the best group mmog combat out there, and undoubtedly also the most varied. But ultimately you are always going to tire of the combat system and then move on. The only way I'd play more regularly than an occasional one month resub is if there was something different to do when tired of group missions.

It's a decent game, and they were pretty brave about trying to balance powers to be as swingy as they are. Personally I always felt that while some pretty crazy nerfs have been tried out on test, by the time they reach live they've never been half as bad as the forum whining would suggest.

The 'I don't feel like a hero because I can't kill x' argument always seems dumb as well.

Superman spends most of the time killing grey shit in atlas park. That's why he kicks ass most of the time. When superheros fight something 'yellow' (ie. as powerful as them) they get their collective asses kicked repeatedly until the big showdown in the third act. If you want to act like a hero, go rescue old ladies in atlas park for 90 minutes before fighting a boss in Peregrine Island.

I can understand the criticism from people who want to solo. But I never really understand either why such people want to play MMOGs in general, or CoX in particular where the best experiences have always been group based.

 Actually, lessening the grind would help a lot from my perspective, as it is the one of the major reasons I don't play more. Maybe the game would get old after that, sure. But it would probably keep me around for quite a while. I am an altoholic, and with less of a grind I would happily level them all to at least mid-30s. Even with my gripes about combat.

As for the "I don't feel heroic because I can't kill X" argument, maybe it is stupid. But I used to be able to do it (with my tanker, setting my regen scrapper aside), and now I just monitor an end bar for all of my interminably long fights. I used to feel heroic, now I don't. Stupid or not, it is how it feels. This is in groups as well as in solo play.

I don't see any major revamps of the system on the horizon (non-combat skills seem to be well and truly dead, etc.), so to me those are the things to improve.

Problem back with pre-I3 is that lots of players lvled (or powerlvled) to 50, went, "Is that it?" and went off to WoW. They didn't create alts, or hang around, because that isn't what MMOG players generally did 2 years ago (or maybe even don't generally do today) - they quit entirely. CoH which (at the time) was one of the least grind-y MMOGs you could find, suffered with player retention BECAUSE of that lack of grind and an ever-grinding endgame to keep players hooked on their mains.

The devs responded by powering down the tactics that let gain lots of experience at little risk to yourself. This saw Tankers get hit quite badly and the other ATs to differing amounts. A lot of players and ex-players are still pretty irriated by this change. All I can say is imo that it made CoH more balanced and allowed for greater diversity in how teams work in combat.

Of course, those who played I3 Tankers probably aren't going to come back to the game, regardless of what Cryptic does at this point.

Currently it seems that I8 is going to put in an endgame that will allow lvl 50 characters to keep improving themselves, but we will have to wait and see what the details of this system are before getting too excited by it.

I've always thought that CoH/V would have worked better as a console mmog than a PC mmog. Up the regen rates a little bit and refine the controls for console and the game would probably get a reasonable playerbase (espeically with an increasing population having consoles with broadband access).

Oh please ? Not "realm abilities" again ...  :heartbreak:

The problem with CoX on a console would be that the key to the fun in it's combat system is the number of powers you have, the game would always need a keyboard to support that.

Oh, and crappy resolutions ruining the graphics and text box, insufficent ram for a large variety of character textures in city zones, yadda yadda yadda.


CoX is built from the ground up for realm abailities, ordinary powers operate *precisely* like the realm ability model.

And as it isn't pvp focussed, realm ability balance isn't really that important. If a lvl 50 still finds group combat missions fun then they need a new bar and new shiny power to work toward /shrug. If the amount of villians you 'defeated' to reach that point already turned you off the combat system then options at level 50 are irrelevant to you.

CoX would be very difficult (or impossible) to implement on a console, I agree. Any mmorpg would. It's just how they're designed. Fun and engaging comic book games do exist on consoles though. Also, many of them, in their own console-ish way, have just as many attacks as City of Heroes. It's not like it's 1984 and all we've got are 1 button Atari controllers.

Take the Spider-Man 2 game, for instance. You've got your basic attacks -- Punch and Kick. And Jump+Punch and Jump+Kick. And you've got webs for range attacks (which shoot out at a bad guy and stick to his face).

Then you've got extra attacks that work off of those, depending on certain sequences (like tapping the same button, comboing buttons, or using some directional flick with a button). You can uppercut, flurry, do various grappling and tossing moves, flipkick, flurrykick, etc.

Then there's different web attacks. You can wrap enemies in a web completely (besides just shooting them), you can grab them with a web and swing them into a wall, you can grab them and spin them around and hit other baddies, you can swing them to yourself, which, in turn, opens up other unique melee attacks.

Then there's environmental attacks. Attacks that work by propelling yourself off walls and other objects. Attacks that work off your general webslinging (the traveling based ones) moves.

Even without mentioning all of the cool things you can do while roaming around and traveling, there must be at least 30 different attack available to you. That's more than enough. And top it off, everything you do responds in real time (no silly bullshit like "combat timers").

Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is another fine piece of superhero gaming.

With voice communication being what it is today I see no problem at all with making a MMOG work for the consoles, especially an action oriented one like CoX. Heck, and replacing the tired hotkey system with button combo's would be pretty nifty. Finding the scrapper with the tactical awareness to know when to unleash fury, and the skills to pull off the combos to boot would be awesome.

I must not pursue this line of thinking any longer, it will just make my drool.

Frankly, this might be interesting, but we know this sort of thing just plain isn't going to happen.  Such a discussion would perhaps better be contained in a "What I want in a superhero MMG" thread, rather than a "How can CoX be improved?" thread.

No you wouldn't. Just like you have CTRL and ALT on the keyboard to act as "modes" to increase the number of powers you can activate you can do the same with a controller.

Using the Xbox controller as an example you have the 4 standard buttons plus the white and black buttons for 6 buttons on the right side. Then you have the direction pad which can use be used for at least 4 more "buttons" if not 8 if you wanted to allow diagonals (but that's a bit finicky to control so you might not want to do that). So that's 10 "buttons" right there. Then you have the left and right trigger buttons which you can use like the CTRL and ALT -- i.e. Hold Left trigger gives you another 10 buttons and Hold Right trigger gives you the third set of 10. So that's 30 actions total.

Or you could do it like this: the 6 buttons on the right plus the hold left and hold right give you 18. Then you could use the direction pad to swap sets so that's 18 * 4 = 72 actions.

Cool, now how do you represent all that on the screen?

Remember you have to be in whatever crappy resolution consoles run at these days.

Maybe when we all have 1080 line TVs this sort of thing would get more practical.

But for now I reckon any MMOG-for-consoles would have to be much simpler, and not much like CoX at all. GTA Online I can see, it might not have the same long term retention as a PC MMOG, but I don't think you could practically do much more than that with the interface available.

I'd suggest Planetside might even been worth trying - but controllers + multiplayer fps... ahem.

You have one bar of X number of powers on the screen just like CoX has by default and as you hold down the various "mode/switch" buttons the bar changes.

PS inventory management would be extremely painful with a controller.

I wouldn't say FF XI is much simpler than CoX.

I there a difference between "Lower the fucking grind!" and "I'm bored, this game isn't for me?"    They sound the same.   If you find the basic game a grind, how will speeding it up help?  (I'm not being obnoxious, I'm really curious.)

PS.  Improve COX by contributing to Jay's Costume Request Thread.  I asked for a beast mane for the monster heads.  http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Dev&Number=5985252&bodyprev=#Post5985252

In my case there is a difference.  Loved the game, hated the way experience paid for abilities that matter.

0-20 - leveling pretty quickly, getting powers and enhancements that have a noticeable effect
20-32 - leveling not as quickly, but still getting powers and enhancements that are impactful
32-50 - leveling very slowly, powers and enhancements are "fine tuning" only

So the game is a ball-busting grind for approximately 40% of the levels, which I'm guessing is more then 60-70% of character time played.  My suggestions would be; 1) add something compelling in that 32-50 range, something that I cannot do from 0-32 (so I'm not already bored of it by the time I get to 32), 2) make the exp curve match the rewards/changes to the character (i.e. the 'best' abilities a character get are in the 5-25 range, make this steeper, make the 35-50 wasteland easier)

I was playing my Mastermind a few days ago.  He's level 40.  He was about 4 bars into the level.  I joined some pickup groups, and probably 2 or 3 hours later I was 41.

Granted, they were pretty good pickup groups, but I don't think the grind is as long as you guys remember.

Plus, 41 got me my first Patron Power- I went the Black Scorpion route and got Web Envelope.  It's an AE immobilize, but what really makes it useful is that it prevents jumping or flight.  I use it all the time in PvP.  Between that and my other Slow ability, the only escape I can't prevent is Teleport.  I'm pretty happy with how he's doing in PvP now, there is one set that I know I can't take one on one, and two sets that are difficult, but everything else I have a pretty damn good chance of winning.

A lurker adds and once long-time CoH player his two cents (a little late):

As an echo to many of the previous posts, one of the most tedious and easily fixed aspects of CoH is the "Grind" of the post level 20 game. I loved making Alts in that game, but I could never stomach getting them much past 25, if that far, because it took so long.

I get what some users are saying about the "atomic" level being fun; that aspect and the genre itself were two aspects which kept me in the game as long as they did. But as a player (and I do not think I'm alone in this sentiment), that's not enough: I have to feel like I'm progressing, accomplishing something, and being some one who doesn't have a lot of time to invest in such games, I didn't feel my time was being well spent in the late game.

While I was lowering the Grind, I'd also do away with Debt.

Now, if I suddenly could wave a Magic-Origin Wand and alter a few other things, these are some other aspects of CoH I would tackle:

- Play through Old Content: Let me take missions I've outleveled. I don't care if they're 'grey' to me. I think there's an undue fear with the Devs that if people can play 'too much' content with one character, players will quit afterwards. I think instead, some of us are just 'completists' who like to have a character finish all the content, if possible. If anything, it keeps us subscribed longer while we try to get in every last quest, rather than quit in frustration from not being able to. My main motivation to roll up Alts to try out new characters/powers or play with different groups of players, not to try to see unfinished content.

- More information for the Player: Emmert was fond of saying something to the effect of "never let the player make an uninformed choice", but I fear CoH hid more information from the player than any MMO. Let the players see the numbers. And perhaps even let the players have a way to test their new power before committing, since it is such a big investment.   

- Easier Respec: I hated that Respec'ing required you to run a lengthly mission with a group, especially if your build needed help.

- Group/Solo Play: While this game has a lot for solo'ists to do, I think Emmert's old philosophy, that it's better in groups, permeates much of the game. I would rather see Archvillains left for Task Forces and group-oriented game-play, and let the standard Story Arcs and missions be without them (or if not, let us have the option to abandon a mission).
- Archetypes: I think the CoV Archetypes did a better job, but the CoH Archetypes just felt like they were *too* over-specialized and too steeped in the EQ/Diku-style class paradigm. A few tweaks would both allow certain Archetypes to be both a little more solo'able, and also better allow players to mold heroes after their favorite stereotypes. (Really, very few 'Scrapper' type heroes in comics don't have a few thrown/shooting type toys; and an iconic hero like Spider-Man is virtually impossible to build). The recent addition of the Origin-based powers feels like a step in the right direction. Even WoW lets Rogues shoot a bow if they want... that's not game breaking there.   

- Stamina: I never liked the whole fitness power-pool. Without it, all my characters felt too limited, too weak, but I resented having to revolve all my builds around it. I would do away with Stamina and just up the Endurance regeneration. No one enjoys down-time, and without your Endurance you don't even have any secondary, weaker-attacks to employ (perhaps instead of not being able to use your powers at 0 Endurance, you could still use them but at a reduced effectiveness). 

- Enemies: Part of the repetetive nature of the game, I think stems from the nature of the enemies, who, for the most part, stand about waiting to attack. With few exceptions, regardless of their appearance, origin, and the enemies all shoot for a certain amount of damage and melee for twice that. This means that from fight to fight, your tactics are largely the same. Couple that with a finite set of mission maps, and things start to become repetetive. One way to fix this is to create more variety among the enemies, let them break the standard behavior mold a little. Another is to add in more 'special' villains: one thing I missed from the comic-book genre as a hero, was a chance to beat up b-list rogues' gallery foes. You mostly found yourself pounding nameless thugs and cookie-cutter bosses/lieutenants, or you were facing the Archvillain Lord of DOOM. Where were the named, but low-tier "non-Arch" type-villains? (Yes, some Bosses and Elite Bosses fit this bill, but they were rather sparsely used in this manner).

- Vehicles: A purely wish-list, pie-in-the-sky desire, but having some kind of super-mobile that removed reliance on the Trams/Ferries would have been fun.

- Travel powers: I think a better way to have done this, was at level 14, you simply get a free slot called "Travel Power." Later, if you want to buy additional ones, you could use your normal power-slots for this purpose. 

- Add Drops: No, I don't think a super-hero game should be about phat-lewt's, and I applaud the philosophy in getting away from that design, but at the same time, not having any kind of goodies to manage (aside from the rather static Enhancements) does make the 'grinding' rather dull. The super-base items are a step in the right direction, but only useful in a limited sense. Perhaps City of Hero type drops could have included temp-powers, or various components which could then be 'crafted' into a temp-power, inspiration, or enhancement. Even having minor-temp powers occassionally drop would have added a lot.

- Add more Interaction with Instances: If the game revolves around Instances, why not create instances with more interactivity... add some destructable elements to the maps, or let the heroes actually destroy the enemy's base. Perhaps even put in a 'rescue' type mission for heroes, where they can swoop in and save people from various disasters. I think there's a lot more that could be done than the straight bad-guy/glowie hunts that exist. Some of the newer content, like the Mayhem Missions, I think are moving in the right direction.

Well, I've rambled enough. As I said, I love the genre and wanted CoH to be *more* than it is, 2 years down the road. And right now, there just aren't any alternatives. Given the past record of the publishers of its would-be competitors, DC (SOE) and Marvel (Microsoft), I find I really can't get too excited about additions to this genre.     

/back to lurking

I will wave my magic wand and go back several months in time, and insert code into the game that causes archvillains to be downgraded to elite bosses unless players set the difficulty high enough or bring enough players into the mission.

And it is done.

Apologies for the Brucing...


The enhancements show exact percentages, the exact base numbers for the powers are all available in the official forums (brawl index etc).

What information are you missing?


This one comes up a lot, and it's something I find interesting, I've run the respec mission 7 or 8 times with pick up groups and failed once, because people couldn't follow complex instructions such as 'do not open that door you fucktard'.

I do accept that it needs a group - and that everything before the final mission is a bit pointless. But the 'too hard' thing always seemed odd - where do you die?

I vaguely remember the devs saying they had datamined the outcomes of the final respec mission, and the success rate was over 70%. Once you ignore the proportion of teams that insist on playing teams of 8 Blasters with their feet whilst watching 1970s reruns of The Young and the Restless, 70% seems like a decent success rate.


Spider man is a martial arts / super reflexes scrapper (you could argue he's a tanker - but it's a marginal issue)

The only thing you can't build from Spiderman is webslinging and super-punning.

And the mechanical effect of webslingling would pretty much be the same as Spines plus super jump.


Compared to what? If anything the variety of opponent in CoX seems much bigger than any other MMOG I've played. (witness the moaning about the xp bonus on Rikti, Longbow etc being too small - and the only difference is the tactics and power mix that these guys use)

I agree with Jay about this one, actually.

You get plenty of information about your enhancements, but information on the actual powers is pretty sparse.  Unless you've  seen the power before, you frequently don't really know what you're getting into.  Animation time, base damage/defense/whatever, duration, etc could all be shown- in fact, they are for the new patron powers.  But Cryptic is taking the stance that patron powers need visible stats because you can't respec out of whatever pool you pick.  So I guess they feel it's okay to be uninformed about most  powers because you can always respec out of them.  Which is bullshit, really.

First, my thanks to Llava for the Magic-Wand miracle of transforming AVs into Elite Bosses.  :-D I didn't know it would be as simple as that... next time I'll know who to go to! I offer a /fancybow in gratitude.

(I'll plead ignorance from my having not been part of the game since shortly after City of Villian's release.) 


Still, I found it a bit frustrating to have to check external sources to find this information. I certainly scanned the forums and downloaded player-made utilities, but at the same time I thought that the game itself should have provided this information. And I had more casually-minded friends and family who really didn't know how to find these resources, and who had on many occasion made a poor power-selection choice that they later regretted that could have been avoided with some simple feedback from the game.


My beef was less about the difficulty and more about requiring the group and being reliant on them for your success. Most of the respecs I failed either stemmed from players simply leaving an hour or two in, or players who didn't follow the orders (such as the 'don't open the door!' example you provided). The original Timer in the reactor room was also a source of much grief (glad it's gone now).

Understanding that the Devs can't allow people to just Respec willy-nilly, in a game where your power-selection is *critical* to your character's success, I do wish that they had made the process a little easier. Perhaps they could have allowed 1 or 2 free Respecs for the life of the character. Later, if you found you needed more, you could run the mission.


Well, I would argue that with the MA/SR combination, you've got 60-70% of a Spider-Man. The ability to entangle his foes with his webbing is a signature part of the character and one attribute which makes him unique.

But my real point was that the Archetypes always felt too constricting to me. I would have liked to have seen a web-grenade or a 'throw-a-rang' type power in a Scrapper set, or even as a "Utility Belt" Power Pool. Some minor attacks like that wouldn't have broken the Archetype, but would have added a lot to the super-hero flavor of the game. It seemed that there was a fear (of Tank-Magism?) of letting an archetype go *at all* outside of its "role." The once-called "Epic" Power Pools tried to address this to a limited degree, but they came far too late in the game to be of much use. The Origin powers seem to be in the right direction however, and I applaud this.

And I do think that the City of Villains Archetypes were *much* better designed. They offered a lot more flexibility, were more solo-able, but still complimented one another well in teams. I wish that they could be played as Heroes too.

(And overall, it could be that I'm being too nitpicky here. You could say my fatal flaw is that I'm more a fan of the super-hero genre than the MMO convention, so my desire is to see more super-heroism cliches come alive).


Yes, the variety of enemy types is huge in CoX. More where I was driving at was that a minion or lieutenant generaly fights like a minion/lieutenant regardless of faction. It isn't until you reach the Boss level of badguy that you really start to have to take account of *what* kind of foe he is. Only in the cases where Minions/Lieutenants posssessed significant mezzing abilities (The Lost, The Malta, and the caltrops... oh the caltrops...) did much of my fig hting strategy change, and even that was limited to: Take out the mezzer first... ack, nope too late, now I'm mezzed and out of break-frees: Time for debt!

What I would've liked to have seen is something more like I've encountered in the much-maligned WoW. Enemies seem to be divided up into Caster Types, Healer Types, Animal Types, and Warrior Types. Casters sit back and shoot you from a distance and are squishy if you get into melee with them (as opposed to say, a Circle of Thorn Mage who is still tough up close and still inflicts fierce melee damage), Healers heal themselves and their allies (Crey can do this, but I think they're an exception), Animal types blindly charge for you, and Warriors have heavy armor, and may have a minor ranged attack but will primarily fight in melee.   

I think I know why they CoH's Devs took their approach: It makes it easier to balance the enemies overall, prevents certain exploitive behavior (especially with the numerous Mez powers players have access to), and allows enemy-to-archetype balance (a Blaster/Defender's main defense is always range because the enemies are always weaker at that).

But mixing it up a little would have given me more cause to look at the types of foes I was facing, and perhaps would have encouraged different strategies (for example, if the CoT mage was weaker in melee, my "Blapper" might be encouraged to use his Bonecrusher attack instead of shooting).
 
However, now that Villains has been launched, PvP is in place, and the sweeping Archetype changes have been done, the Devs might now have time to add new gameplay features to the game. It seems some encouraging developments have already taken place and/or are in the works. I will continue to watch from the sidelines with cautious optimism!

Cheers!

I agree with everything Jay has said.

Especially the part about me being amazing.

In reference to Jaytravis' request for more respecs - there have been at least 3 freespecs given out to all characters, probably more. Usually it's been one at Christmas and one whenever they release some new powersets. So that does make somethings easier.

Also, imo, you have to work really, really hard to gimp a character. Not slotting enhancements will do it, as will taking multiple pool powers, but in most cases 80% of your primary and secondary powersets are very usable.

Definitely more than 3.  It's been almost 1 free respec for each Issue released.

There are scrapper sets - claws and spines - with significant ranged power. But, uh, aside from that, the game's also got a lot of "temporary powers" on both sides which start showing up in earnest around 20. Most of them are either duration-based or time-based - my controller, who hasn't been trying that hard to grab them, has a set of cryonic armor that'll run for an hour total time, and the Sands of Mu which are a shadow-maul effect that'll go for another 22 hours or so spent logged in.

I'll attribute that to lack of experience with CoV. The reality is that in the high end you can basically get by with Brutes and Corruptors, with Masterminds being an occasionally valuable addition and Stalkers and Dominators being sort of fifth-wheel-y. (And in CoH replace left-to-right with Tankers, Defenders, Controllers, Scrappers, Blasters.)

There are at least four classes of enemies in CoH, too. Charging melee (will always try to close, may use a ranged attack on the way), lurable melee (will try to close if their target isn't immediately engaged, otherwise will stay at range), situational melee (will only break their melee attack out if you're in their face), and permanent ranged (only has/uses ranged attacks). Among your basic Outcast minions, Crushers are charging, Coolers and Chargers are lurable, and Torches are situational.

And there is some use to closing in sometimes. Getting next to the Vazhilok surgeons may get you a little more damage from the cleaver, but you aren't getting tranq darted into uselessness. Closing on any Council marksman will seal off the incendiary/cryonic shells. Getting next to the CoT's lieutenant mages will seal off the range attacks that heal them/drain your endurance/sap your power/floor your accuracy and hold you. If you have the stones for it, getting up in the face of a Rikti chief mentalist/mesmerist will usually get them to try to pound you with the big sword rather than using their mind control schticks. And lord knows I'd rather be getting clubbed with the butt of a Crey N2 cannon or plasma launcher than getting hosed down by it.

The one villain group I'd really like to see fleshed out are the Praetorians, but I guess since you come up against most of them a grand total of three times, tops, they were meant to be simple enough to understand halfway through the first mission.

--GF

Plus generally 1 at Christmas, launch anniversaries, tuesdays...


Corruptors need Brutes?

What, just so we have someone to make tea/coffee, do the washing up etc?

Unfortunately the free respecs doesn't stack. Also they really need to give out two respecs per issue since if you use the first one immediately after the patch you'll usually regret it one month later when they nerf things to fix whatever problems the new Issue introduced.

What's the big deal about being stingy with the respecs to begin with?  They've made respecs so mandatory that allotting a limited amount of them seems stupid to me.  Why not just provide a chamber in city hall that "reconfigures your metabolism" whenever you need to?  Hell, follow WoW's example and charge influence for it.  Big deal.

I wish I could sell respecs in cox.

Seriously, it beats me how people get through the 3 basic respecs + 1 per issue + 1 given given out every now and again for the hell of it.

To be honest, even on my oldest characters I've never used  a trial respec more than once or twice.  As far as I know, all of my characters, even several years old, have the ability to respec if I feel they need it.

Thing about respecs is that you rarely end up with a build so broken it needs respeccing, but they are rare enough that making a "What the hell, this seems like fun to toy around with for a few days" build goes right out the window.

Even aside from the... I don't want to say rarity of respecs, but non-triviality I guess, it's such a huge pain in the ass to respec that I can't imagine myself doing it just for the hell of it.

Yeah.  Respeccing my 43 invulnerability tank with completely redone power levels wasn't very fun.

I was in the same boat: all my chars had re-specs in reserve and I had no desire to use them cause the process was tedious.  That said, answering "why can't we have more re-specs" with "why would anyone want to respec so much?!" just seems broken to me.

Just because I don't want/need more re-specs doesn't mean that I want it to be made punitively difficult for those folks that like to respec

What is the motivation for that anyway?  Is it so that you/I can be smug about having made good choices?.  If other people like to reconfigure their character abilities more often, what difference does it make?  The "then people will all congregate to the same uber-build" also doesn't hold much weight with me - if a build is broken, it needs to be fixed.  If it's simply popular/fun, then other builds need to be made more fun to encourage diversity - easier said then done?  Yes.  More sensible then locking people into builds they don't like?  Also yes.

In my opinion, if WoW has done anything for the MMO market it is that fact that it has made it clear that there is no compelling reason to put punitive game mechanics into a game.

There it goes again.

'needs a group' I can understand.

'needs a couple of hours continuous play session' is fair.

Are people actually failing the respec after getting a group together?


It's a question that comes up because people keep accusing the system of not having a sufficient number of respec opportunities, I guess I'm just interested in how anyone has come to use more than 3 or 4 on one character.



Have they?

Apart from things like ED which come with free respecs, I'm not sure why you'd think they are mandatory?

I think you've made it clear that you have this question.  Over the months and years, any number of people have answered on the main forum with answers ranging from, "cause I screwed up", to "cause I like to play with my builds", to "cause I think it's arbitrarily restrictive" to "because this particular character is a lone-wolf and never groups"

The inference I draw from you asking this question, without stating explicitly whether you care if they change the mechanic or not, is that you like that there are only so many chances to respec, and you think less of those who require more re-specs.  I may be completely off-base, but I hope you can see why I might draw that inference.

In my opinion, if no one has come up with a compelling reason why more/easier to get respecs are a bad thing, and some people feel strongly enough about having them that they go on year long campaigns to get it changed, and there is a better system in another game that hasn't resulted in a broken game, then it's an arbitrarily punitive mechanic. (yes, I'm quite please with that run-on sentence, thanks)

As long as I'm visiting, I had to drop a line on CoX.

Reduce the grind?  Yes, definitely.  From level 12 onward there's too much repetition, too little variety of gameplay to make it worthwhile.  This is the single most important thing CoX could do to improve itself.  Rolling back the purple nerf, allowing full teams to once again engage foes +5 levels above them, is a way they could simultaneously adjust the grind back where it should be.  Incidentally, their data mining from beta was done prior to the +5 level adjustment, so that's probably why the grind sucks so much now: they didn't consider this when they pushed the purple nerf.

Task Forces, events where you sit and grind with your team for some 2-6 hours, are a pretty solid way to level up if you have the time.  However, the funny thing about them is that the foes are at a relatively static level.  So if you start the Synapse Task Force at level 15, you're going to get stopped cold by level 20 foes.   Some builds, like massive uber debuffs from Dark or Radiation sets, can massively debuff foes enough that this might be possible.  However, because of the purple nerf, hitting foes +5 levels is very iffy so this really is a brick wall.

There have been complaints CoX lacks content.  I don't get these because actually Cryptic has added a ton of content for their game since release.  I'm talking, second only to EQ2 (and maybe the original EQ if that still counts) in terms of free content addition.  Good luck having the patience to stick around an endure it, though.  With nothing to do but pummel the bad/good guys, there's not a whole lot of variety to keep you playing.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that CoX, in it's current version, is an unabashed system hog.  To crosspost, "I've ran into a little problem with City of Heroes lately. Namely, my frame rate has dropped down to about 20 FPS. That's with the lowest settings. With relatively good looking settings, it hovers around 10 FPS and it gets as low as 2 FPS in the middle of heated combat. It's very uncomfortable, if barely playable. Now, my existing system isn't top of the line, but you'd think an AMD 3000 XP 64 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro which runs Guild Wars and Half-Life 2 quite comfortably could do better than that on a 2 year old game. I don't have the $1000 I'd need to get a dual processor motherboard with a PCI-X SLI video card setup to make CoX run like butter."

Yeah, the game definitely used to run much, much more smoothly.  Hell, it was more smoothly than DAoC on my computer at release.  Now it runs like shit.  Whatever they're doing to the graphics, it's not very efficient.

I have noticed that I'm the only one who isn't bitching about load or lag times, but I'm running with a pretty decent system (FX-55, 7800 GTX, 2 gig ram) and cable modem, so I'm usually the first to zone in the missions.  One person had such a horrible load time that we were more than half way threw a mission before she got in, and one guy just said he isn't doing mayhem missions 'cause his machine takes forever to load it.

I've had problems, too, and it was the reason I let my subscription lapse again.  Grind or no, I don't have much fun if graphics lag hampers my play.