There are an assloads of costume bit to unlock as you progress levels. Gear progression sucks balls. No thanks. DCUO has players coming back because Batman. Hell, people play CO because they can BE Batman. Or Superman. People don't dress up as the Champs unless they're making parody toons. They sure as hell don't go over to DCUO to do it.
DCUO can stay DCUO. I uninstalled it before ever getting a single toon to whatever the level cap is. I don't want CO to be DCUO or to emulate their poopy mechanics.
My thoughts exactly. I play CO because-despite it's faults you actually play a hero. NOT a sidekick to a hero. from it's rookie beginnings to becoming on par with the champions themselves. Especially if you are using freeforms. DCUO does not alow this. Does the game need improvements. of course it does. But I hope CO soul stays the same as it does.
(and yes I have played DCUO and I'm a long time ex-CoXer who happens to love playing CO)
Costume unlocks are sprinkled throughout the entire game, including at the end of it.
I don't know why people are obsessing over gear progression. Don't we have enough games for that? There are things I'm tired of seeing in every damn game ever and one of those things is never ending gear progression. It's horrific for getting new players into the game and for convincing people to come back if they've been gone too long. Starting with nothing and seeing how far you have to go compared to the bulk of the existing population is a great way to encourage people to uninstall.
PoE works because there is always a fresh economy for new players AND there is an established economy for those who've been around for awhile. A new person can get into the game because temp leagues are never longer than 3 or 4 months. Which means no one is sitting on an assload of stuff, catching up with long time players is easier, and you don't have the inflation issues that occur in a long standing game. They can then transition to Standard, the permanent league, where people have amassed hoards of stuff.
I doubt even WoW is doing well to attract and keep new players. The biggest difference is it'll take significantly longer for their sub numbers to dwindle down to nothing since they started well above what most games can even dream of getting. A new player to WoW can be immediately left in the dust as many of the other low levels are obviously alts decked out in heirloom gear. Kinda noticeable when some level 1 has a chauffeur driving them around while new players won't see their first mount for a bit. All the big cities that aren't in the end game being dead doesn't help welcome new players either.
DCUO has gear progression, which keeps players coming back...
DCUO has neither the huge power gap nor the history of avoiding gear ladders nor the focus on freedom of play that CO has. Like I've told people who think Fallout4 should have been multiplayer, just because a particular gameplay feature works in one game does not mean it will work in all games.
FFXIV has neither the huge power gap nor the history of avoiding gear ladders nor the focus on freedom of play that CO has. Like I've told people who think Fallout4 should have been multiplayer, just because a particular gameplay feature works in one game does not mean it will work in all games.
Lockouts and gear progression does that, the proof is in the pudding. Most successful MMOs have gear progression.
This is not going to convince anyone that this would work in CO. Also, if we're talking about pudding, you seem to have missed the proof in CO's pudding. I pointed it out, so just reread my posts and you'll see it. Gear ladders and content gating have been considered, and summarily rejected. It's fine if that hurts your feelings, I'm surprisingly okay with that.
And CO is indeed a money grab, as is DCUO. Not sure why that offends people.
It has nothing to do with being offended, it has to do with facts. Fact is, CO is not a money grab. When they give you this much of the game for free and give you no real motivation to buy things, calling it a money grab stinks of entitlement issues. I'm tempted to think that you believe anything with a price tag on it is a cash grab.
On the other hand, new gear with new effects and new ways to customize our characters, without trying to be some sort of "progression ladder", would definitely work. CO players are always excited about some new way to meaningfully tweak our characters.
I don't know why people are obsessing over gear progression. Don't we have enough games for that? There are things I'm tired of seeing in every damn game ever and one of those things is never ending gear progression. It's horrific for getting new players into the game and for convincing people to come back if they've been gone too long. Starting with nothing and seeing how far you have to go compared to the bulk of the existing population is a great way to encourage people to uninstall.
^ this. Every time I try a new MMO, it seems to be the same story... most of the population is on Tier Z, I'm on Tier X. Have fun trying to catch up. I like that I can have a bunch of characters, and that I can pick whichever one I want to do whatever I want... I don't relish the idea of "Hmm... okay which of my characters are geared enough to do this...". It's actually one of the selling points for CO... freedom of play. Go to any part of the playground you want to, no gates.
I mean hell they brought in Fire & Ice so we can have the "LF2M NEED TANK AND HEALER" aspect that those super successful MMOs have... but for some reason it didn't get those players piling into the server to participate.
Legacy mission rewards need a revamp. Start giving players more of an incentive to bother with them as opposed to taking the alert XP fast track. Give recognition or even questionite rewards for completing missions. If that's too generous, then perhaps for completing a certain number of them given by the mission NPC.
Spinny, a1 has made it clear that he's only playing CO until one of the CoH clones comes to fruition, assuming they ever do - he's already claimed that Valiance Online will "destroy" CO. Of course he's going to grab any buzzword he can find to badmouth this game.
Jon, if you don't mind, please..quit commenting on people who've played CoH(a1 in particular), thanks . Even if what you say is true, just be the bigger man, and stop. Seriously. It's annoying. Again, thanks!
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
I don't know why people are obsessing over gear progression. Don't we have enough games for that? There are things I'm tired of seeing in every damn game ever and one of those things is never ending gear progression. It's horrific for getting new players into the game and for convincing people to come back if they've been gone too long. Starting with nothing and seeing how far you have to go compared to the bulk of the existing population is a great way to encourage people to uninstall.
Not only that, there's absolutely no reason to add any more to gear progression. There's no incentive for it, and no content to use it on. Heroic gear still does just fine in all the content we have. Until they add some super-hard content that is somehow equally difficult for power-builders and theme builders, gear progression just doesn't matter right now.
Legacy mission rewards need a revamp. Start giving players more of an incentive to bother with them as opposed to taking the alert XP fast track. Give recognition or even questionite rewards for completing missions. If that's too generous, then perhaps for completing a certain number of them given by the mission NPC.
I think actually giving a more significant xp reward for completing missions in a chain would mean more. I'm not sure how many folks would run legacy missions more for just questionite or recognition. If you go that route it would have to be a SIGNIFICANT amount that I don't think the devs are ready to give.
I think we already have a ton of content that is effectively new to most of the game population because they just play through alerts.
It'd be great to come up with ways to expose that content to these players. Yes it needs an update, but a lot of it is quite good and fun. Maybe if you complete all the missions then you get a freeform slot?
The thing that will bring players back is curiosity. In what way can you update CO to raise questions in players minds that can only be answered by logging in?
What is popular in NWO and STO that CO does not have? How can you at least bring back players that already enjoy other Cryptic MMOs? STO was in bad shape once upon a time. What strategy did they use to revive it?
Borrowing Tech/Systems from NWO and STO would probably be the most cost effective way to make an update substantial enough to warrant curiosity. If you cant utilize tech from other games that run on the Cryptic engine, then whats the point of having all Cryptic games on one Engine?
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Exactly how do the steamchart numbers correlate with the gear progression mechanics for those games? Mind showing that in the steamcharts? Does the steamchart say that gear progression is the no. 1 reason for the highest player activity spikes?
All I'm seeing is some bogus claim saying that gear progression specifically is the reason behind why XIV and DCUO seem to be doing better to validate CO playing copycat, and providing no concrete evidence or any sort of survey study to show that correlation, when games have more than just one feature or mechanic that players would find appeal in.
I think we already have a ton of content that is effectively new to most of the game population because they just play through alerts.
It'd be great to come up with ways to expose that content to these players. Yes it needs an update, but a lot of it is quite good and fun. Maybe if you complete all the missions then you get a freeform slot?
I've said this before, but the game needs to tell the players about the story content which is appropriate for their level, and encourage them to go out and play it. That means adding mission arc starter missions to the Crime Computer, or as Emergencies, to take on via Socrates / in-game e-mail. These should be sent out as the player levels up. Enhance the rewards available - bonus XP or resources, player to pick which they want - and give out real perks for completing mission content rather than as freebies. Themed vehicles for completing x number of missions in a zone (or just for entering Lemuria!) and decent rewards for gaining perks (which can only be gained by playing content).
I'd like some thought given to the Crafting system - removing level restrictions from nodes, and preventing players from just having to carry around hundreds of mods they don't have a use for. More moddable secondary gear would be a nice twist, too.
There are many factors which make any game more successful than any other. You can't prove that gear progression is the deciding factor, let alone a deciding factor, of any game.
That is off topic, not going to feed into you guys derailing threads anymore. This must stop, and in order for it to stop, I will continue to be the one whom goes back to the original topic. The proof is right in front of you; believe it or you don't, I am not trying to convince you.
Back to the original topic.....
You touted gear progression as being design law that CO must follow in order to draw the players and used steamcharts to back that assertion up. All I was asking is for you to point out how exactly the steamcharts support that claim. Off topic? It's very much on topic. The topic is about what changes need to be made to bring more players into CO after all. You just brought the whole "DCUO and FF XIV has it, therefore CO must have it too" angle into it and called it fact backed up by faulty logic.
Spinny, a1 has made it clear that he's only playing CO until one of the CoH clones comes to fruition, assuming they ever do - he's already claimed that Valiance Online will "destroy" CO. Of course he's going to grab any buzzword he can find to badmouth this game.
Jon, if you don't mind, please..quit commenting on people who've played CoH(a1 in particular), thanks . Even if what you say is true, just be the bigger man, and stop. Seriously. It's annoying. Again, thanks!
Oh, the comment I made had nothing to do with CoH players in general. Some of the better players I've encountered have been refugees from Paragon City. It had more to do with actual statements made by the actual person. Now, if Spinny wants to waste his time arguing with a1, that's his business, I just wanted to make sure he knew his time was being wasted by someone who had no interest in engaging in any sort of discussion [i]per se[/i].
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
I think actually giving a more significant xp reward for completing missions in a chain would mean more. I'm not sure how many folks would run legacy missions more for just questionite or recognition. If you go that route it would have to be a SIGNIFICANT amount that I don't think the devs are ready to give.
Well having questionite rewards for legacy missions might be a feasible option for a player to earn a little extra questionite outside the daily alert missions. Players can queue up for alerts and jump straight into it in any of those mission areas if they want to get XP buffs. It can be a mix of doing both legacy missions and alerts on the go while exploring zone to zone.
and someone apparently has 200 people n their friends list, no longer playing because PvP got stripped
someone else says players leave because 'fun' items got nerfed.
A lot of players have left saying " I'll be playing X, tell me if we get a non lockbox/vehicle update"
different reasons for not staying.
going on the comments by the 'rewards for efforts' group. Unless the reward is a lot more for doing a mission than the rewards for spamming alerts in the same time. They aren't interested.
we need things to do at the start, things to do in the middle and things to do at the end.
People need to be able to find out things, easily. Having only one start area which has a chance of trolls ambushing you for Onslaught points doesn't help.
we have some rewards which are, quite frankly, a lot for what you have to do for them and others which have sweet FA for a lot more effort. The gear rewards in a lot of missions is just plain weird combinations of stats. Yes, I'm still levelling by missions with the boost top ups from alerts. Different start areas, even if it's only a short intro like the tutorial.
More missions would be good, I've done them so many times, I can be half asleep and do them on automatic.
we have old items and skins which new players might be interested in, that were removed. Costume drops which were in Lairs, which were removed. Put these back so people can go hunt them. Gear replacers make into weapon skins or devices.
we have vehicles and stuff all use for them- how about an area or side missions for them. Instagibb if you leave your vehicle during the mission.
we have no crafting system, I refuse to call mods/fusing crafting, it's gear enchant. Gradii came up with a nice idea of max level crafting missions with some components in Lairs to get people to do the lairs. NW's crafting is too close to the piles of junk we had, a modified version of STO's would be better. Unfortunately, short of wholesale copy and paste , it's probably way out of our budget.
we have a PvP system with a borked queue and what can be politely described as minimal rewards. That needs fixing and some decent rewards, items, costumes, titles.>.> <.< wooden spoon weapon skin for a consistent loser.
Fix the blasted queue. Ditch Acclaim and put in rewards for taking part and a different token for winning/most dps/best tank/best heals/best CC. Have the Best items and costume in the Win token list. Have consumables and PvP devices in the taking parts list.
That is off topic, not going to feed into you guys derailing threads anymore. This must stop, and in order for it to stop, I will continue to be the one whom goes back to the original topic. The proof is right in front of you; believe it or you don't, I am not trying to convince you.
Back to the original topic.....
Brings up topic. Condemns anyone else who tries to talk about it.
Oh, the comment I made had nothing to do with CoH players in general. Some of the better players I've encountered have been refugees from Paragon City. It had more to do with actual statements made by the actual person. Now, if Spinny wants to waste his time arguing with a1, that's his business, I just wanted to make sure he knew his time was being wasted by someone who had no interest in engaging in any sort of discussion [i]per se[/i].
I think actually giving a more significant xp reward for completing missions in a chain would mean more. I'm not sure how many folks would run legacy missions more for just questionite or recognition. If you go that route it would have to be a SIGNIFICANT amount that I don't think the devs are ready to give.
I'm actually reversing my position on this. I think lowering the XP gain on Grab Alerts would be the way to go - if we're going to have people doing mission content the last thing we want is for them to outlevel it due to inflated xp gains. Us speed levelers can take the hit - anyone who just needs to level super fast now has Z-Store items to do that with.
One thing that I think could add something to mission content is a slight change to the Recognition system. First off, have missions reward Recognition. Second, implement gear sets(bind on pickup) for Recognition ; these sets would have useful effects on them like health regen, energy gain, random temporary damage buffs, ( the player would choose from various pieces that have on effect each ) and other stuff like that that can help bridge some of the gaps in people's builds as they're leveling up. As a trade-off, this gear has worse basic gear stats - the primary reason to use them is the special effects.
Each "tier" of Recognition has a different piece of the set, two per tier of recog(a primary and a secondary). The set would have a set bonus that increases the overall effectiveness of special effects by a %, which motivates players to keep building the set as they level, and to keep doing missions ( the set would have a high recog cost, and missions would have a high recog reward rate ).
The last part I'm not sure sure about, and that's having the special effects diminish in strength as the player crosses the gap from level 35 to 40. This would be to keep players from using it at level 40, but I'm not sure that needs to be done since the gear would have **** poor basic stats like defense, crit rating, etc, and wouldn't have mod slots. Also, I think Archetypes would possibly want to keep using the gear at level 40, if only for the health regen.
This would solve the problem of bad quest rewards, while also not requiring anyone to go through mission-by-mission improving rewards, and would also motivate players to go do some quests rather than just do Grabs. Of course, people who want to still just do Grabs can do this, and use Nemesis Heirloom Gear to do it.
some of the suggestions in this thread would improve the game but not make a sexy headline on Massively prompting players to return.
At this point I think "Free Fee-form/new endgame/revamped costume creator" is about as sexy a headline as CO can pull off within budget restraints. I would buff ATs to free-form levels of power, make free form free and release whatever endgame they are working on at the same time.
"Gear progression" like dcuo is probably not sustainable for this teams budget. We don't need another system that is tried and then abandoned... but "horizontal reward progression" may be doable. Its been said before but things that make you "different" but not "stronger" (powers as rewards,unique mods, devices, ect) may be a suitable carrot on a stick for this game. The devs may even want to make a poll thread that asks players what kind of rewards they want to see more of.
Once players return QOL things like balance and bugs need to be under control. Once kaizerin is done with fixing the costume creator, Cryptic needs to let her do some power balance.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
AT's put in a basic self heal between getting a form and getting a sheild. There's plenty of space,
and put a BIG sign above Karneeki's head. HEAL ITEMS HERE
But seriously. Your in no position to say that. The only potential barrier to every account in CO having a "fee form" slot is financial viability and none of us have access to the numbers. Free Fee forms will bring at least some players back. Its up to Cryptic to decide if its economically viable.
I agree that ATs need a buff, but that's not sexy enough in and of itself to bring players back.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
some of the suggestions in this thread would improve the game but not make a sexy headline on Massively prompting players to return.
At this point I think "Free Fee-form/new endgame/revamped costume creator" is about as sexy a headline as CO can pull off within budget restraints. I would buff ATs to free-form levels of power, make free form free and release whatever endgame they are working on at the same time.
"Gear progression" like dcuo is probably not sustainable for this teams budget. We don't need another system that is tried and then abandoned... but "horizontal reward progression" may be doable. Its been said before but things that make you "different" but not "stronger" (powers as rewards,unique mods, devices, ect) may be a suitable carrot on a stick for this game. The devs may even want to make a poll thread that asks players what kind of rewards they want to see more of.
Once players return QOL things like balance and bugs need to be under control. Once kaizerin is done with fixing the costume creator, Cryptic needs to let her do some power balance.
I'm going to once again mention breast and butt jiggle physics
I am with Darqaura here, and this is why. We already out level most of our missions. Personally, I don't do alerts, simply enjoy the ride of mission grinding, and by level 30-ish, my journal was full of level 23-27 missions. In the early level stages, I had to drop several missions I have out leveled, but it is far from a huge deal. Just drop the missions, we are not obligated to do them all, just reach level 40.
Reducing hurts, increasing can only help, albeit some my be against it, nothing is being taken away. Increased exp may bring in newbies, because they could level swiftly, and perhaps level multiple toons. A great deal of MMO players are casual, hence this would benefit those whom play for an hour or so.
Also, the Z store item sort of nullifies this theory, because someone could just out level their current status by using the level 30 item. I never brought it, not sure how it works, but I assume one would reach level 30 upon using it? In that case, most may outlevel their current journal.
Here's the bad news though: If players are routinely outleveling content and dropping quests, then you are effectively taking a large chunk of the game's content and throwing it in the trash. Yes yes "reducing hurts" and all that touchy feely nonsense....so then why are you okay with reducing the amount of content that players will experience? "Not enough content" has been repeatedly stated in this thread... heck I think even you said it. Now suddenly it's okay that players are skipping content. Really?
I've heard people in other mmos say "I leveled to max level in like a week", and it was always a criticism of the game. If the game is going to have all these missions in it, then it might as well have players actually do them( and no, expecting that any number of them will just voluntarily do it despite the game telling them that there's nothing in it for them is not a realistic expectation ).
AT's put in a basic self heal between getting a form and getting a sheild. There's plenty of space,
and put a BIG sign above Karneeki's head. HEAL ITEMS HERE
But seriously. Your in no position to say that.
The only potential barrier to every account in CO having a "fee form" slot is financial viability and none of us have access to the numbers. Free Fee forms will bring at least some players back. Its up to Cryptic to decide if its economically viable.
I agree that ATs need a buff, but that's not sexy enough in and of itself to bring players back.
So what sort of fee's will we get for free?... hang on, don't answer that.
people are skipping missions entirely because they can do alerts, piss all effort and a big reward.
bring in some thing from STO or NW to here? The foundry of course, even though they have told us time and again that it's not worth the work apparently. (even though many of us think that it would greatly change the game for the better). make more costumes as rewards for new missions or for legacy missions or other quests that most people are not doing now for the lack of rewards. I think costumes as rewards for quests is a nice idea too in general.
Jonsills is one manning his fleet base. Me and a friend are two manning ours. we just got transwarp installed.
the fleet lets you make ships.. we don't have them. Closest would be making power replacers or power skins.
it lets you mine dilithium.. there's a Q farm waiting to happen.
it lets you get extra doff missions, now if only we had a crafting system.
you mean you haven't been caught in the rain yet? Or the fog or the dark?
1) Unlock all the archetypes for everyone, including silver players. After claiming my free freeform slot during the giveaway, I think it's safe to say that anyone with access to freeform is going to use it over an archtype, making archetype unlocks pretty much a silver-only thing. Speaking as a silver player myself who isn't stupid with money, if I'm going to spend money on the game, it's going to go into additional freeform access, not another restrictive archetype unlock.
2) Lighten up the costs for removing powers. As a new player (especially with the free freeform slot) all the choices this game throws at you in terms of character progression can be daunting and it's very easy to make mistakes. Feeling trapped by those mistakes is frustrating and discouraging, but I doubt this will change.
3) This one is huge, and won't likely change due to the work required, but the quest flow in this game is beyond awful. Like the early days of vanilla World of Warcraft awful. You talk to one guy who sends you to talk to another guy halfway across the city. Who then sends you to fulfill 2 objectives, each one vastly far apart. One of those objectives of course leads you to talk to yet another guy in another far corner of the city who in turn sends you on even more objectives...including yet another quest giver and so it repeats. Before you know it, there's quest objectives all over the place, each tugging you off into different directions and you don't know which one to do first. Finally, you just say screw it and either close the game or just drop them all and start chain-running the XP alert instead.
4) The questing loot is just awful. I'm not a fan of items with randomized stats, because in just about every game I play or have played that uses them, these items equate to clutter and vendor trash that you'll almost never want to actually use. It'd be nice if quest rewards were guaranteed to have at least 1 of my chosen super stats
5) The new-account chat restrictions are something I totally get. Especially over at Star Trek Online, we get spammers all the time and it's annoying. However, as a new player, I couldn't really interact with anyone properly until the time limit expired, even though my account had long since unlocked chatting in Star Trek Online. Basically, unlocking the chat restriction in one game should unlock it for all other Cryptic games.
6) This game needs more events, as a stagnant game is far less likely to attract new players than an active one. To see what I mean, head over to STO's news page and look at all the new entries. We literally have something new posted almost every day, and even though I don't play Neverwinter, I suspect it is also quite active. There's always something new going on, and that keeps things interesting. Here, it seems like weeks go by without anything at all, which is unfortunate. I'm not actually sure what I'll do once my character hits 40...
7) This game just doesn't seem to get much exposure from PWE/Arc/whatever. On the main page, you'll see things about Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, Forsaken World (lol that game is so bad), etc. But Champions? I literally had to put the name into the search box to find this game.
So yeah, that's just my thoughts as someone new to CO, but not Cryptic games in general.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
"Yes yes "reducing hurts" and all that touchy feely nonsense....so then why are you okay with reducing the amount of content that players will experience?"
Nobody is stopping them from going back and doing it, lol. An exp reduction is irreversible by the players, open world missions are not; just go back and do them. Anyway, players will experience a crap-ton of missions on their way to 40, if it is done by mission grinding. Only the hardcore will focus on completing every single mission. Realistically, we do what it takes to reach endgame (Not to say that we do not enjoy leveling). In MMOs, the game truly begins at endgame. Leveling equates to players learning the ropes, which should not take the completion of every single mission.
Newbies may want to get to the 40 without much of a hassle, but unfortunately, there does nor appear to be much going on past 40, imo of course.
"They'll go back and do them just because" is an unreasonable expectation. The moment they realize what the colors of the quest names mean, they're going to start dropping quests and go searching for ones that give actual rewards ( sure sure you'll run into that occasional player who will do them just because, but most players are going to listen to what the game tells them to do, and the game is telling them to drop those quests and look for new ones ). Their perception of how much content there is in the game will be drastically reduced by the fact that they skipped so much of it - further, any player with any critical thinking ability will wonder why the game lets you out-level quests constantly, which will not leave a positive impression.
In some MMOs the game "truly begins at endgame", but CO is not one of those games. I don't know if you're a newer player, but CO is actually a game focused on the leveling experience - it's all about repeatedly making new characters and developing them. That's part of the reason there isn't all that much endgame here, and why most endgame overlaps with the leveling game. In CO the game truly begins when you first create your character... in the tailor.
This being the case, the game can't afford to fast-forward players through the core of the game, catapulting them into the part of it that has almost nothing going on.
Comments
DCUO can stay DCUO. I uninstalled it before ever getting a single toon to whatever the level cap is. I don't want CO to be DCUO or to emulate their poopy mechanics.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
(and yes I have played DCUO and I'm a long time ex-CoXer who happens to love playing CO)
Please keep with the good ideas to get more people to play THIS game.
I don't know why people are obsessing over gear progression. Don't we have enough games for that? There are things I'm tired of seeing in every damn game ever and one of those things is never ending gear progression. It's horrific for getting new players into the game and for convincing people to come back if they've been gone too long. Starting with nothing and seeing how far you have to go compared to the bulk of the existing population is a great way to encourage people to uninstall.
PoE works because there is always a fresh economy for new players AND there is an established economy for those who've been around for awhile. A new person can get into the game because temp leagues are never longer than 3 or 4 months. Which means no one is sitting on an assload of stuff, catching up with long time players is easier, and you don't have the inflation issues that occur in a long standing game. They can then transition to Standard, the permanent league, where people have amassed hoards of stuff.
I doubt even WoW is doing well to attract and keep new players. The biggest difference is it'll take significantly longer for their sub numbers to dwindle down to nothing since they started well above what most games can even dream of getting. A new player to WoW can be immediately left in the dust as many of the other low levels are obviously alts decked out in heirloom gear. Kinda noticeable when some level 1 has a chauffeur driving them around while new players won't see their first mount for a bit. All the big cities that aren't in the end game being dead doesn't help welcome new players either.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
On the other hand, new gear with new effects and new ways to customize our characters, without trying to be some sort of "progression ladder", would definitely work. CO players are always excited about some new way to meaningfully tweak our characters.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I mean hell they brought in Fire & Ice so we can have the "LF2M NEED TANK AND HEALER" aspect that those super successful MMOs have... but for some reason it didn't get those players piling into the server to participate.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
42 40s, LTSer.
It'd be great to come up with ways to expose that content to these players. Yes it needs an update, but a lot of it is quite good and fun. Maybe if you complete all the missions then you get a freeform slot?
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What is popular in NWO and STO that CO does not have? How can you at least bring back players that already enjoy other Cryptic MMOs? STO was in bad shape once upon a time. What strategy did they use to revive it?
Borrowing Tech/Systems from NWO and STO would probably be the most cost effective way to make an update substantial enough to warrant curiosity. If you cant utilize tech from other games that run on the Cryptic engine, then whats the point of having all Cryptic games on one Engine?
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
All I'm seeing is some bogus claim saying that gear progression specifically is the reason behind why XIV and DCUO seem to be doing better to validate CO playing copycat, and providing no concrete evidence or any sort of survey study to show that correlation, when games have more than just one feature or mechanic that players would find appeal in.
I'd like some thought given to the Crafting system - removing level restrictions from nodes, and preventing players from just having to carry around hundreds of mods they don't have a use for. More moddable secondary gear would be a nice twist, too.
There are many factors which make any game more successful than any other. You can't prove that gear progression is the deciding factor, let alone a deciding factor, of any game.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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someone else says players leave because 'fun' items got nerfed.
A lot of players have left saying " I'll be playing X, tell me if we get a non lockbox/vehicle update"
different reasons for not staying.
going on the comments by the 'rewards for efforts' group. Unless the reward is a lot more for doing a mission than the rewards for spamming alerts in the same time. They aren't interested.
we need things to do at the start, things to do in the middle and things to do at the end.
People need to be able to find out things, easily. Having only one start area which has a chance of trolls ambushing you for Onslaught points doesn't help.
we have some rewards which are, quite frankly, a lot for what you have to do for them and others which have sweet FA for a lot more effort. The gear rewards in a lot of missions is just plain weird combinations of stats. Yes, I'm still levelling by missions with the boost top ups from alerts. Different start areas, even if it's only a short intro like the tutorial.
More missions would be good, I've done them so many times, I can be half asleep and do them on automatic.
we have old items and skins which new players might be interested in, that were removed. Costume drops which were in Lairs, which were removed. Put these back so people can go hunt them. Gear replacers make into weapon skins or devices.
we have vehicles and stuff all use for them- how about an area or side missions for them. Instagibb if you leave your vehicle during the mission.
we have no crafting system, I refuse to call mods/fusing crafting, it's gear enchant. Gradii came up with a nice idea of max level crafting missions with some components in Lairs to get people to do the lairs. NW's crafting is too close to the piles of junk we had, a modified version of STO's would be better. Unfortunately, short of wholesale copy and paste , it's probably way out of our budget.
we have a PvP system with a borked queue and what can be politely described as minimal rewards. That needs fixing and some decent rewards, items, costumes, titles.>.> <.< wooden spoon weapon skin for a consistent loser.
Fix the blasted queue. Ditch Acclaim and put in rewards for taking part and a different token for winning/most dps/best tank/best heals/best CC. Have the Best items and costume in the Win token list. Have consumables and PvP devices in the taking parts list.
anyone won the Lottery?
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Condemns anyone else who tries to talk about it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
One thing that I think could add something to mission content is a slight change to the Recognition system. First off, have missions reward Recognition. Second, implement gear sets(bind on pickup) for Recognition ; these sets would have useful effects on them like health regen, energy gain, random temporary damage buffs, ( the player would choose from various pieces that have on effect each ) and other stuff like that that can help bridge some of the gaps in people's builds as they're leveling up. As a trade-off, this gear has worse basic gear stats - the primary reason to use them is the special effects.
Each "tier" of Recognition has a different piece of the set, two per tier of recog(a primary and a secondary). The set would have a set bonus that increases the overall effectiveness of special effects by a %, which motivates players to keep building the set as they level, and to keep doing missions ( the set would have a high recog cost, and missions would have a high recog reward rate ).
The last part I'm not sure sure about, and that's having the special effects diminish in strength as the player crosses the gap from level 35 to 40. This would be to keep players from using it at level 40, but I'm not sure that needs to be done since the gear would have **** poor basic stats like defense, crit rating, etc, and wouldn't have mod slots. Also, I think Archetypes would possibly want to keep using the gear at level 40, if only for the health regen.
This would solve the problem of bad quest rewards, while also not requiring anyone to go through mission-by-mission improving rewards, and would also motivate players to go do some quests rather than just do Grabs. Of course, people who want to still just do Grabs can do this, and use Nemesis Heirloom Gear to do it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
At this point I think "Free Fee-form/new endgame/revamped costume creator" is about as sexy a headline as CO can pull off within budget restraints. I would buff ATs to free-form levels of power, make free form free and release whatever endgame they are working on at the same time.
"Gear progression" like dcuo is probably not sustainable for this teams budget. We don't need another system that is tried and then abandoned... but "horizontal reward progression" may be doable. Its been said before but things that make you "different" but not "stronger" (powers as rewards,unique mods, devices, ect) may be a suitable carrot on a stick for this game. The devs may even want to make a poll thread that asks players what kind of rewards they want to see more of.
Once players return QOL things like balance and bugs need to be under control. Once kaizerin is done with fixing the costume creator, Cryptic needs to let her do some power balance.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
AT's put in a basic self heal between getting a form and getting a sheild. There's plenty of space,
and put a BIG sign above Karneeki's head. HEAL ITEMS HERE
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But seriously. Your in no position to say that.
The only potential barrier to every account in CO having a "fee form" slot is financial viability and none of us have access to the numbers. Free Fee forms will bring at least some players back. Its up to Cryptic to decide if its economically viable.
I agree that ATs need a buff, but that's not sexy enough in and of itself to bring players back.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
42 40s, LTSer.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I've heard people in other mmos say "I leveled to max level in like a week", and it was always a criticism of the game. If the game is going to have all these missions in it, then it might as well have players actually do them( and no, expecting that any number of them will just voluntarily do it despite the game telling them that there's nothing in it for them is not a realistic expectation ).
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
So what sort of fee's will we get for free?... hang on, don't answer that.
people are skipping missions entirely because they can do alerts, piss all effort and a big reward.
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make more costumes as rewards for new missions or for legacy missions or other quests that most people are not doing now for the lack of rewards.
I think costumes as rewards for quests is a nice idea too in general.
images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/1083393438932291918/E7827587DA1E372BD8C64140E453F2ABC003F432/
the fleet lets you make ships.. we don't have them. Closest would be making power replacers or power skins.
it lets you mine dilithium.. there's a Q farm waiting to happen.
it lets you get extra doff missions, now if only we had a crafting system.
you mean you haven't been caught in the rain yet? Or the fog or the dark?
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1) Unlock all the archetypes for everyone, including silver players. After claiming my free freeform slot during the giveaway, I think it's safe to say that anyone with access to freeform is going to use it over an archtype, making archetype unlocks pretty much a silver-only thing. Speaking as a silver player myself who isn't stupid with money, if I'm going to spend money on the game, it's going to go into additional freeform access, not another restrictive archetype unlock.
2) Lighten up the costs for removing powers. As a new player (especially with the free freeform slot) all the choices this game throws at you in terms of character progression can be daunting and it's very easy to make mistakes. Feeling trapped by those mistakes is frustrating and discouraging, but I doubt this will change.
3) This one is huge, and won't likely change due to the work required, but the quest flow in this game is beyond awful. Like the early days of vanilla World of Warcraft awful. You talk to one guy who sends you to talk to another guy halfway across the city. Who then sends you to fulfill 2 objectives, each one vastly far apart. One of those objectives of course leads you to talk to yet another guy in another far corner of the city who in turn sends you on even more objectives...including yet another quest giver and so it repeats. Before you know it, there's quest objectives all over the place, each tugging you off into different directions and you don't know which one to do first. Finally, you just say screw it and either close the game or just drop them all and start chain-running the XP alert instead.
4) The questing loot is just awful. I'm not a fan of items with randomized stats, because in just about every game I play or have played that uses them, these items equate to clutter and vendor trash that you'll almost never want to actually use. It'd be nice if quest rewards were guaranteed to have at least 1 of my chosen super stats
5) The new-account chat restrictions are something I totally get. Especially over at Star Trek Online, we get spammers all the time and it's annoying. However, as a new player, I couldn't really interact with anyone properly until the time limit expired, even though my account had long since unlocked chatting in Star Trek Online. Basically, unlocking the chat restriction in one game should unlock it for all other Cryptic games.
6) This game needs more events, as a stagnant game is far less likely to attract new players than an active one. To see what I mean, head over to STO's news page and look at all the new entries. We literally have something new posted almost every day, and even though I don't play Neverwinter, I suspect it is also quite active. There's always something new going on, and that keeps things interesting. Here, it seems like weeks go by without anything at all, which is unfortunate. I'm not actually sure what I'll do once my character hits 40...
7) This game just doesn't seem to get much exposure from PWE/Arc/whatever. On the main page, you'll see things about Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, Forsaken World (lol that game is so bad), etc. But Champions? I literally had to put the name into the search box to find this game.
So yeah, that's just my thoughts as someone new to CO, but not Cryptic games in general.
In some MMOs the game "truly begins at endgame", but CO is not one of those games. I don't know if you're a newer player, but CO is actually a game focused on the leveling experience - it's all about repeatedly making new characters and developing them. That's part of the reason there isn't all that much endgame here, and why most endgame overlaps with the leveling game. In CO the game truly begins when you first create your character... in the tailor.
This being the case, the game can't afford to fast-forward players through the core of the game, catapulting them into the part of it that has almost nothing going on.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.