f13.net

Don't make this bigger than it has to be - I have not seen anything since we last talked about it - so I am wondering if you guys have become stymied by making the project too big?

I would like to see a Chart with the appropriate categories (discussion!) that the staff on F13 have arrived at in evaluating the current MMORPG offering.

Since there is no news here, I will offer something - so you can shoot it down and actually tell us what you're thinking  :-D

1.  Trade / Economy.
2.  Combat
3.  Social
4.  Graphics
5.  Polish
6.  Solo Content
7.  End Game
8.  Grind/level
9.  Death Penalty
10. Character Creation

CoH
Trade/Economy na; Combat 8/10; Social 5/10; Graphics 9/10; Polish 10/10; Solo Content 7/10; End Game 4/10; Grind Moderate; Death Penalty Moderate; Char Creation 10/10

EQ2
Trade/Economy 6/10; Combat 6/10; Social 8/10; Graphics 8/10; Polish 7/10; Solo Content 5/10; End Game 6/10; Grind Bad; Death Penalty Bad; Char Creation 5/10

WoW
Trade/Economy 6/10; Combat 7/10; Social 4/10; Graphics 7/10; Polish 8/10; Solo Content 7/10; End Game 7/10; Grind Minimal; Death Penalty Trivial; Char Creation 6/10

EQ
Trade/Economy 5/10; Combat 7/10; Social 8/10; Graphics 5/10; Polish 6/10; Solo Content 3/10; End Game 8/10; Grind Severe; Death Penalty Severe; Char Creation 5/10

Shadowbane
Trade/Economy 5/10; Combat 7/10; Social 5/10; Graphics 3/10; Polish 3/10; Solo Content 5/10; End Game 5/10; Grind Light; Death Penalty Light; Char Creation 8/10

I will say it again:  this site needs some summary review of some sort to help focus discussion on the boards as we recycle some the same topics endlessly.  It also gives newcomers an overview without having to pour through pages of threads.

Even for the staff here reaching a consensus will be tough I know.  But that's no excuse.  Surgical teams and presidential adminstrations reach a consensus to communicate to others, and their problems are almost as complex as games  :lol:

EDIT:  I have added a few things above as I look at the feedback below.

It's still high on the list. Unfortunately much more important things are higher. We're still constantly working in the background.

CoH has an endgame? really?

Honestly I don't know - I got to level 38 so I can't comment.  Taking stabs in the dark )

There is a level 38 in CoH?  Really?

My endgame started at level 32 and it was World of Warcraft.

Easy jokes aside, I too would like to see something like this.

If it helps the scoring any, I am not currently subscribed to any MMOG, not even CoH. I'm sporadically playing Guild Wars.

Well at least the kittens are safe for now.

From what I can tell within my SG, the endgame is raiding Hamidon for the double-duty enhancers he drops, and rolling up alts.  For me, it doesn't really matter, as I haven't reached 50 yet, and the game is still fun to play at 36.

Admittedly, I'm not the guy trying the Solo Controller Project, nor trying to solo a defender to 50...  tho the solo controller guy is in my SG.  My main is a scrapper who kicks butt and leaves name-taking to the authorities/clean up crew.

Alkiera

Those aren't endgames, they're workarounds to endgame...you're raiding Hamidon for the double-duty enhancers...but to do WHAT with them?  Have them?  BLARGH!!!

And rolling an alt isn't an endgame, it's finding something ELSE to do so you don't get annoyed at the fact there's no endgame...

My point is, there's no point to continue once you get there.

For example (and I'm not saying this is GOOD engame, but it IS an endgame), in WoW, once you get to max level, you can go into Battlegrounds where you can 'win' a battleground to gain honor contribution points that then sticks you on a ladder, as it were, for your server...which then grants you access to other content.  The fact that you can get knocked off said ladder down a peg means there's impetus to continue to compete.  So there's something still to do which has purpose at the endgame.

In CoH there IS no purpose once you hit max level and max enhancement...there's no meaningful PvP with any kind of goal to be achieved or maintained...

I'm not trying to intentionally bash CoH, I'm just trying to understand the fascination with it...it's fun, don't get me wrong, but after 30 levels, I realized there's no purpose behind the grind...I don't get to do anything at max level that I wasn't already doing at level 30.  I'd have some new powers to play with, and rearrange some enhancements, but that's about it...am I missing something?

PVP? While I don't play anymore the arena was patched in.

And to go back to Jpark's original post.. What the hell, giving EQ2 a better graphics rating than WoW is like giving SWG props for better music than Last Ninja. More advanced yes, better... No. EQ2 looked like someone had taken a crap on my monitor, for a second I was pissed at my X800, then I realised it was Sony's problem.

Edit: msuci does not spell Music.

There's an arena, yes, but PvP doesn't DO anything for ya...there's no ladder system, there's no loot from beating on another player...there's no real reason to do it beyond bragging rights really...

And a ladder system is what? A way to gain XP?

Well this is quite funny - I totally agree with you.  I actually think EQ2 graphics are so bad they are inferior to EQ, because there is NO STYLE and NO ART whatsoever.  But, I gave them a decent score reflecting the views of others on these boards.

I must be part of that .02% that actually Liked EQ2 graphics; For once, a game looked kind of "different."

Also, I thought the game to be a lot of fun before I hit the Wall of the upper 20's.

No, where you are in the ladder unlocks access to content for certain things.

It's fun?

It's fun to fly. It's fun to superjump across King's Row and trick off a water tower, a power line, and a crane boom on the way to a mission. It's fun to line up the alpha strike to blow up an entire pack of Nazis^H^H^H^H^HCobra and then hose them all down with firebreath. It's fun to stand in the middle of 30 mobs and laugh off their attempts to perpetrate lasting harm on your person. It's fun to drop a quicksand patch just in time to catch the trailing zombies so the rest of your team can polish off the vanguard.

It's fun to play lone hero and chug inspirations to challenge things just at the edge of your safety zone. It's fun to team with the same people all the time and evolve tactics to help each other out. It's fun to team with random strangers (barring the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) and fly by the seat of your pants bringing order out of chaos.

It's fun to clap your hands and suddenly everything within 100 feet has a giant stone prison around it. It's fun to drop an ice patch and lay the smack down as everything just slips and falls. It's fun to manage a small group one at a time by sending psychic lances into their brain from five stories up.

I realize there's nothing new beyond 50. Or beyond 30. Or, in some sense, beyond 1. But I don't care, because I'm having fun.

--GF

The "purpose" to the gring in CoH is fun. It's really kind of weird that way, since the game is fun all along the way, having an endgame is somewhat anti-climatic. Think about super-heroes for a second. Some of them have been having new stories written about them for almost 70 years. And lots of those stories are really just retreads of older ideas. The heroes change, but not too much.

That genre is the ultimate in constant treadmill. And this is from someone who loves superhero comics.

There really isn't any over-arcing purpose to CoH's grind. I think it's a bit of a slow advancement curve, once you pass about level 15, and could stand to be sped up. But really, it shows that the concept of endgame in MMOG's, the concept that has really been hammered into MMOG players, is fucked from the word go.

I think this is the fundamental problem I have with it then...I dislike grind even if it's fun, and yes, I'll admit, that raining fire down on my enemies and then pounding them with a fireball and watching them all keel over IS fun...for the first few times I did it...

For me, a game's gotta have story to keep me interested in it...and in CoH, that's sadly lacking.  The quests have very little variety in story.  As for the stories in comics being old themes rehashed, while the story is, comics aren't about the story, they're about (usually) some type of conflict the main superhero/character has going on within themselves.  Batman's got his inner turmoil with regards to his guilt about his parents and the anger that created, Spiderman has the conflict of not wanting to get close to people for fear that his enemies will use that against him. There's person connection in that way.  In a MMORPG, that's necessarily removed because there's 1000's of heroes, and the story cannot cater to each individually.  The genre isn't geared to that type of story really.

So for ME (I'm not saying this is for everyone by any stretch) I need more than a fun grind.  CoH doesn't offer that to me, so I guess it's clear that it's not the game for me.  For a game like WoW, I'm having a blast, because (if you actually read the quest logs) there is a story unfolding in each quest line.  Granted not all of them are very good, most of them aren't, but there are several that are real gems of storyline in there.  However, I also recognize that I'm going to hit 60 and have done all the quests at some point.  So then there has to be an endgame, and battlegrounds, once Blizz gets their head out of their ass and solves the imbalance in alliance/horde issues, solve that problem for me by providing a fun, repeatable experience, that also has an in-game effect of placing me on a ladder of my peers that has content reward.

I hope we don't have a huge derail on this:  I think f13 calls something a grind when to level you do things which are not fun.  If you're not having fun leveling, by definition I think most here would call that a grind.  In your case - if you find the CoH stuff unfun - then by definition - at least for you - its a grind.

There is actually a good number of stories in CoH, the problem comes in that it takes way too long to get each part of the story and thus it's easily missed. That's part of the "treadmill is too long" thing. If advancement speed post-20 were halved, it'd be just about right, I think.

Totally agree with you...after reading some more on the CoH boards, it appears that the story stuff starts between 15-20, and my poor blaster, alas, is only level, uh...12? 13? something like that...so I had written it off as just being that bad...I mean, if you haven't seen anything resembling a story by 20% into your character's career (purely by the numbers, I know that's rather arbitrary) than my assumption was there really wasn't...apparently I'm mistaken. :)

A blaster might be a dubious choice in CoH.  Implicitely, some of us accept the class may be unbalanced to cater to a different kind of player for that game.  Other character classes, might demand a bit more strategy.

At your level it does not even sound like you have had a hit squad come after you in game.  That brings questing to a whole new level my friend :)

You're somebody in CoH when the villians start coming after you.  Enjoy!

"I'm on the hit squad"
"You are the hit squad!"
[sic]

I'll have to play on for a bit then...I also have a scrapper I've played around with who's around level 7 ish.