f13.net

GO KIL SKULS!

I can't.  Apparently the game doesn't work anymore on my comptuer.  I get the normal startup, and the login screen music, but just a black screen.

And I can't seem to connect to the update server for some reason

Any idea how these guys are doing sub wise these days?

I was in a large consumer electronics store which had WoW and EQ well stocked but no EQ2 or CoH.

Dunno, but on Sundays they do have 2 servers at yellow and the rest at green, population-wise.  Rest of the week they're all green.  At release, they had quite a few red servers and the rest yellow.  But that may not be saying much.

I do see people ingame quite frequently, on the streets, taking the tram, flying about, all zones I've been to (level 35).  Broadcast channel is in use in most zones, not just Atlas Park.  The game doesn't feel empty to me.  People group less, I guess, but I have seen broadcasts LFG, and the search window has some /LFG's in every zone.

I love City of Heroes.

The grind rapes me.

Grouping occasionally helped that for me.  I'm part of a very large SG on Victory(Halls of Justice), and so I can fairly easily get groups in my level-range, whether I'm on my 36 scrapper or a low level alt.

Admittedly, exp has seemed notably slower at 35/36, but probably partially due to my playtime being less, as I've been busier the last week or so.  Exp does roll in okay even when soloing... and if I can get a group of people my level or a bit higher, of 5-6 characters, exp comes in very nicely.  Better if I get SK'd up with some higher people.

Admittedly, I'm a scrapper, the best overall solo archetype, and have my mission difficulty set to 'Unyielding', which pushes mission mob levels up to +1/+2(normal is +0/+1), and loads double the normal number of mobs...  So at 36 my missions frequently have decent sized groups of 37/38 mobs, and will have bosses occasionally(iirc, you get no bosses at all on the default difficulty level).  And yeah, I solo +2 groups with bosses.  *shrug*  I do die occasionally, but not much.

Alkiera

I think everyone who likes MMOG's should play CoH, at least the first month.  It really does a lot so well, its a touchstone in fun game making.  If they could ever pull together an equally as fun end game, they'd really have robot jesus.

The grind is in soloing, and constant soloing is going to bore anyone.  It bored me by level 35, even with a /regen scrapper who was excellent at it.  Actually, too excellent.  Grouping was the only way to have any risk at all. 

The thing is, the only reason it's soloing is because you don't like the other people in the game. If you have a good group that you don't hate the game is much better, quicker, and more fun.

One of these things needs to find a way to make other people (yes, pick-up people) fun to play with. Otherwise what's the point?

I would rephrase this, since as it is its a statement in social engineering that while no game has made progress in, one game did take a step back in (EQ2 group death penalties: fuck you stranger).  What is needed are bigger incentives to group.

I'm not sure that there is a game mechanic that can fix broken people.  If players need each other, we complain that we don't have the time for it and people are assholes so let us solo.  But if we don't need each other to advance, then there's no harm in being an asshole.  The asshole quotient goes up, so more people want to solo, so more assholes are made.  Ad nauseum. 

I'm beginning to see the in-game social "features" of MMOGs as socal "crutches" that are resulting in an atrophy of social skills.  Why do games need to define guilds and groups?  What if guilds could only be held together by a common interest and actual comraderie?  What if a group was simply a collection of people working towards a common goal? 

Perfect example of this. I got invited into a group because they needed a tank to complete an access quest encounter. As we were converging on the encounter location, two players got aggro. No one else in the group was close enough to help. Both died. Everyone got debt from two people we didn't know. Not a lot of debt, mind you, but I wasn't surprised when two others immediately disbanded. I informed the group that I was going to disband as well, but that I would be willing to help if they successfully assembled at the right spot beforehand. I doubt the encounter was ever completed.

Dev Lessons:

- Group debt sucks.
- An encounter system that locks an entire group when only one person, no matter how far from everyone else, gets aggro sucks.
- Access quest encounters that require everyone in the group to either have defeated the encounter previously or be at the appropriate step for the encounter suck.
- Gating content by level sucks (i.e. the aforementioned access quest is to get into a zone before level 30 - used to be level 32.)

Why do I still play then? These problems are generally not an issue for me since I have a steady bunch of guildmates to group with, but they sure as hell make it hard for a n00b.

I'm still amazed this was even a lesson that needed to be learned.

OK, but they have to incentives in the form of increased fun. xp %s don't do anything.

CoH already gives double xp or something for 8 man groups.

It's been awhile since I have played - but that respec trial in the reactor?  That was the most challenging and interesting fight I have EVER had in a MMORPG.  More please :)

The Terra Volta Respec trial is fun.  It goes to show what can be done with PvE when devs try to develop interesting encounters, rather than simply giving mobs more HP and calling it uber.  I think that a lot of players go pro-pvp after experiencing a litany of shitty pve games and then deciding that there's something inherently flawed with cooperative encounters.

The terra volta mission is one of the more challanging fights I have ever done in a game. It really requires a well balanced group to survive it. My normal team which was a tanker a controller a ff/rad defender and a empathy/psi defender did okay at first but we just could not kill the mobs fast enough. Once we blanced off the team with a blaster and a scrapper though it was a very challanging fight but we could beat it.

I am pretty excited about City of villians if they can take everything that worked in COH and fix some of the stuff that didn't work as well it could be pretty damn awsome. If striga is any indication of how the zones in COV will be it should seriously kick some booty.

kaid

If only that was it, but the fact of the matter is you CANNOT master PvP.  Somebody will come up with a new way of doing things that defeats the old way.  This constant evolution and test of strategy will never exist in PvE in our lifetimes.  I've heard whispers of magical mmog's where every creature will have different AI tactics which will actually be designed as if said creature wants to kill you.  Not contribute to your shiney but I maintain a high level of skepticism that it can be done at this point.

Oh there is more of that added in every patch that doesn't introduce a pointless pvp system.

You could do all of your teens and twenties in striga missions, hollows missions, and the respec TF if you wanted.

Most people still solo.


I assume you played in the fisrt couple weeks when it was bugged then.

I've only ever seen it fail once, when the entire rest of my pick up team ran out of reactor room simultaneously for no reason and were followed by mobs blocking their return. Pick up groups do that kind of crazy shit every once in a while, c'est la vie. Normally it all works fine so long as I repeatedly shout things like 'Don't go up that end of the room until we have the key OR YOU WILL DIE'.

The devs have indicated that the hard numbers are that 80% of attempts succeed. I was surprised the number is that low.

The in game sentiment remains that the TF trial is hard.

People are crazy.

Are we doing another nested quote competition?

In my book all debt sucks.  Why is group debt worse than single debt?

Because you can get group debt from someone else's fuckup in which you had no chance to help them, such as if they die on the other side of the zone trying to get to you.

Or just because they have no clue how to play their character and charge their blaster into a group of mobs and start meleeing them. Yes, this happened to me in a pickup group and caused me debt. Yes, I left the group about 4 nanoseconds later.

You seem to be talking about personal debt due to another's idiocy, which also sucks but is still different than group debt.

The term group debt means you got debt but didn't die yourself. That is how we are using it. No one is asserting that there is an amorphous exp bucket for the group as a whole. Why are you trying to confuse generally accepted MMOG terminology?

He refers to a blaster.  How did he get group debt in CoH?   There is no way to accrue debt in CoH unless you personally die. 

Unless there are "blasters" of some kind in EQ2, or blaster has become a synonym for nuker.

I missd that. Yes, there is not group debt in CoH so his refernece to a blaster is confusing indeed.

No, the term group debt refers specifically to EQ2's system of giving some debt to every player in a group when only one of them dies.(or even if all of you die.)  WayAbvPar's example does not seem to be a case of group debt, only one of groupmate stupidity.

Alkiera

In my example, we got gang-raped and the whole group wiped (which caused me personal debt). It was more a gripe about debt in general (and fucktards) , and not specifically group debt. Sorry for the confusion.

Not sure if I understand this question.  Group debt sucks because:

1.  The total debt experienced by a party due to a single death is much bigger (all party members get the same exp debt as the person who died.  If the party WIPES, each group member is saddled with the debt of ALL other group members).

2.  Fuck you stranger.  New to the game?  New to a zone?  With group debt the risk to a group increases enormously if you fuck up and die.  Since with group debt, the burden is not just yours but the WHOLE party.  This penalizes people who are LFG and are strangers.  It just makes the whole grouping problem worse.  Nice going EQ2!

It's really quite funny.  EQ2 "reduced" the death penalty but introduced group debt.  Dying in EQ2 is actually worse than EQ itself.

But yes, I like a stiff penalty for death.  I know it penalizes casual players, but it also penalizes morons.  That trade-off is acceptable.

You know, I just assumed that the debt was divided depending on your group size.  So an eight person group would only get 1/8th the debt if one of their members died, but if they wiped they'd have a full whatever-the-appropriate-unit-of-measurement-is of debt.  Nice to know that I can still be surprised by the retarded design decisions game companies make.

WOW. I'd also assumed that no one was stupid enough to do this.

I'm a bit sceptical even SOE is this stupid (despite 2 years with EQ and 2 monthes with EQ2, natch).  Can anyone confirm this or point to an offical explainer of this or anything?

It was divided equally during Beta, at least. I don't know how it works now.

Hey!  What's with the puppy avatar??

Goddamn rebels.

I may be wrong in the way I stated this.  I assumed this was the case based on subjective experience - but I never looked at the numbers.  I never noticed my death penalty being smaller since I was in a group.  Also - if it was divided - then a group wipe should be equivalent to simply receiving the full brunt of a single death - and group wipes always seemed Far worse than that.  I played until December.

In EQ2, if a group wipes completely, debt for everyone ranges from 8-10% of your current level based on the level spread in the group. This is before resurrections/shard retrievals. After all shard retrievals, debt will drop to 1-2% per person which is equivalent to the amount one accrues on a solo death after shard retrieval. Over 72 hours of real time, all debt decays away so shard retrieval is not mandatory if you don't play every night. Like CoH, exp earned while debt exists gets split 50/50 between progress and debt paydown.

When you are grouped in EQ2 and die, you get X debt, and members of your group get Y debt, where Y << X.  However, if everyone dies in a full group, you get X + Y * 5, which is, to say the least, sucky.

If you are rezzed, or release and come back and retrieve your shard, X gets massively reduced(removes 70ish % of the debt for that death).  However, it does nothing to 'Y' debt, even if those people retrieve their shards/get rezzed.

The only redeeming factor of debt in EQ2 is you can log off for a day or two, and it's gone.  Unlike CoH, where I left the game for 6 months, and came back to find my main with 10k in debt still.  8/

Alkiera

Aye but you can at least brag about your Coh deaths.  Unlike EQ2/WoW/EQ, you're not going to die to a high level Deer or Rat in Coh!  Whatever takes you down - it will be glorious and cool  8-)

My first MMORPG experience was watching over a friend's shoulder as he played UO for the first time.  He decided he needed to kill a deer for fur.

My first hint that something was amiss in this new genre was that such a thing was even attemptable with a staff.

The second hint came when the deer turned and killed my friend in single combat. 

hehe

I can better that!  In EQ2 my guild mate - a druid - in Cougar form, had to flee from a Deer!  LOL a cougar running from a deer it was hilarious.  Not exactly a newbie area either - we were hunting in the Burning Steppes.