CoV interview - incl. Villian ATs

[Abel]

Lol. Seriously, man. Stop joking around.

Glazius has more of a point then you frankly.

Why should you be able to hit 50 so quickly ? To experience the non-existing endgame ? To get bored of the game by rolling up alts instead of maxing out a single hero ?
Why should you be able to fully equip yourselves with DO's at a low lvl ? Or why not ? This is simply a design decision not to fully trivialise money and gear (allthough they're actually already close to that point).

CoH's main problem is NOT that character progress is slow (actually compared to other MMO's it's only certain builds/AT's that are slow), but that there isn't all that much to do past beating up baddies. A grind manifests itself not by slow character progress in itself, but by repeating the same actions over and over again in order to progress.

As a conclusion, I don't think a faster leveling curve would make the game more interesting. Sure, we would have more alts and of higher level, but I suspect it would only lengthen the players interest on a whole by a little. By the third time you do Hollows the novelty is totally gone, wether or not you do it with a different powerset.

[schild]

Ok, how about this, it's not that 50 is too far away. It's that it's too boring.

There simply aren't enough differing skills to make each level fun and interesting. Level 13 was feeling pretty bad in everquest but we picked up a new skill at level 13.6. I'd never seen anything like that, just over halfway through the level - *pop* a brand new skill. City of Heroes Needs a skill at every level. Either that or it should only be a 25 level game. Quite simply, City of Heroes is for the ultra catass. The curve is terrible. Just terrible. It looks something like this:

|
|
|
|         ______
|    ----'     The\ Fun Threshold
|   /                 |______________
|_/_________________________

When it should look something like this:

       
|      ________________________
|     /
|    /
|   /        The Fun Threshold
|  /
| /
|/___________________________

Just saying. It's a superhero game.

I'm not roleplaying a tax attorney.

Edit: I think I might graph a fun threshold for every MMOG I've spent time in. It's a good way to compare games in a vacuum since they won't be compared directly to eachother. Me likey.

[stray]

I just spent 5 hours doing the Positron task force.

I did it at lvl 16, so no xp (which I wasn't aware of at first). Fucking raw deal, that is. That would have been 2 or 3 lvls right there. I don't even get a souviner, or some kind of gimmick item I can sport around with. I get a fucking badge that says "Positron's Ally".

Two words of text.

Worst decision I've ever made in an online game.

EDIT: Either that, or my mind has been corrupted by single player games.

What was that taskforce supposed to be really? I don't understand.

[eldaec]

What was that taskforce supposed to be really? I don't understand.

That was the first and worst taskforce ever implemented.

Later taskforces are shorter and more fun.

The grind is far from the worst grind ever in a MMOG - but past 30 it does reduce the fun significantly.

[Glazius]

What was that taskforce supposed to be really? I don't understand.

Yeah, with the autoexemp making 15 the highest level to get XP from Positron, it's one of the hardest and least rewarding TFs in the game. But you can do it with three people if you want a change of pace from your normal missions, I suppose...

Positron and its big brother Dr. Quaterfield are sadly wastes of time, not that much different from random missions (though the latter at least has some unique-ish lab maps) but most of the others are nice stories leading up to a climactic showdown with an arch-villain.

If you want to follow along with the story you can click the "i" by the mission description in the nav-bar to get some of it. Sadly, the leader is the only one who gets most of the really important stuff.

--GF

[MrHat]

Personally, I've always felt they should have marketed it as a game with a finish.  Play through to 50, get a neat cinematic or something w/ your character in it.  Then you're alowed to keep playing him, or you start a new character.  That simple.  Break the mould so to say.

And that way, they could lessen that fucking curve, because really, I would still be playing 9 of my 12 characters if I could've gotten past L12 without aging in my office chair.

[stray]

What was that taskforce supposed to be really? I don't understand.

Yeah, with the autoexemp making 15 the highest level to get XP from Positron, it's one of the hardest and least rewarding TFs in the game. But you can do it with three people if you want a change of pace from your normal missions, I suppose...

Anyways...I went to sleep after I wrote that -- and just woke up now.

I swear, that shit gave me a few nightmares. I was whacking bad guys (mostly white, yellow, and orange...some blue and red) for 5 hours straight, and not getting one bit of xp from it. In a 4 person group. I thought that maybe I'd get a payoff at the end or something. And because I was nice guy, I wasn't about to quit on that group. They would have been toast without my help.

Now I'm "Positron's Ally" 

*Just had to rant again, sorry*

[HaemishM]

You could have done it back in the beginning when it was borked and gotten all of jack and shit for it because you couldn't complete the goddamn thing due to a bug.

The Clockwork King one? That was pretty decent fun.

[Llava]

I've completed every TF except for the new ones (Striga) and Positron's.  I have never finished Positron's.

[shiznitz]

Positron was a long haul, but doing it at the right level I remember quite a lot of DO drops which was cool since we could just start using them but couldn't afford them. Then whoever killed the AV got a SO too. The next one was better, though.