The cost of retcon and such reminds me of how absolutely ghastly the entire level up power selection is. Everything about respecing is horrid. It's a big **** list of icky. It'd be so much better if I could simply replace that one power I picked way back at level 6 instead of removing this giant list of stuff I don't want to. This would also make respecs cheaper because you don't have to remove the 10 powers you actually want to keep to remove the one you don't. The entire thing needs a miracle overhaul. UI and function are lacking.
Having escaped the puddle of CO and played other games and not been able to even get caught in the current of CO again when I return, I have to say that this game needs a total reboot. Other games just have so much more to do to keep people engaged. This game could do so much better if it embraced the future instead of threading out what was done back in 2004.
Just Cause it was Marvel Super Heroes doesn't mean it can't be Dying Light, if you know what I mean.
The cost of retcon and such reminds me of how absolutely ghastly the entire level up power selection is. Everything about respecing is horrid. It's a big **** list of icky. It'd be so much better if I could simply replace that one power I picked way back at level 6 instead of removing this giant list of stuff I don't want to. This would also make respecs cheaper because you don't have to remove the 10 powers you actually want to keep to remove the one you don't. The entire thing needs a miracle overhaul. UI and function are lacking.
In STO, we have a few fixed powers based on our starting "class" (tactical, science, or engineering), but everything else is pretty much hotswappable. If I don't like a certain kit power, all I do is literally swap it out for a different one, much like like equipping a different item.
Part of why I suspect CO has this god-awful system of "stepping back" rather than letting you swap out a power you don't want for one you do, is to enforce the "you need X powers from set A, or Y powers total" rule. I get why the rule's in place, so people don't just load up on top-tier powers, but yeah, it needs a serious reevaluation.
Just a bit of napkin design here, but:
1) Every level when you'd currently learn a new power, you unlock slots for powers:
1: [Energy Builder] - only energy building powers can be slotted 1: [Tier 0] - Only starting-tier powers can be placed in this slot 6: [Tier 1] - Only accepts powers that require 1 similar (or 2 of any) powers 8: [Tier 2] - Only accepts powers that require 2 similar (or 3 of any) powers ... And so on.
Except for the [Energy Builder] slot, all slots would be backward compatible (you can place a Tier 0 power in a Tier 1 slot, but not vise versa. To elaborate, you have a Tier 1 slot:
Energy Builer: No Tier 0 power: Yes Tier 1 power: Yes Tier 2 power: No Tier 3 power: No ...etc
2) For the sake of easing development and ensuring stability, the restrictions of "requires X power(s) from set A or Y of any power" should be changed to just "requires X non-energy building power(s)."
3) So now, when you level up, you'd be able to pick a power right away if you want, just like you can now. If you want to change it later, you'd still need to visit the Powerhouse. Upon talking to the trainer, changing powers would ideally be as simple as dragging and dropping, with no more undo, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo...undo, undo, undo...finally! The cost should be minimal as well, or (ideally) removed entirely. It doesn't cost me anything to replace a Vascular Regenerator ability with Solar Gateway in STO, and the game isn't exactly suffering because of this flexibility.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
Cryptic's neglect and divestment in CO drove many players away. Rebuilding faith that Cryptic is committed to CO will give players a reason to commit to CO again.
We just got a State of the game for the first time in 3 years. Those 3 years have seen CO basically on maintenance mode with Cryptic siphoning dev talent from CO to feed NWO and STO. There are a fair amount of people like my self that want to like CO but are jaded form all the years of neglect.
Things from the "good ol days" of CO that need to return to prove that Cryptic is serious about CO again: 1. Regular Balance Passes. Ame used to do balance passes regularly. Over the years several different devs have altered the game in the name of their own vision of valance. Now CO balance suffers "from too many chefs in the kitchen" except now all the chefs are gone. Pick one Dev for balance (I suggest @kaiserin) and let him/her bring the game under one balance philosophy. MMO balance is a fluid process and needs regular updates. 2. More regular content releases. Back in the days we had Adventure packs and Comic series updates that came roughly every 3-4 months. Nowadays we get maybe an alert or 2 a year that's equal to maybe the last segment of a comic series. This new team is showing promise with more updates than we saw with Cryptic north If you can deliver on the mysterious end game you hinted at in the Stat of the game and then continue at a pace that provides something quarterly I think players may start to believe that Cryptic is serious about supporting the game. 3. State of the Game. We finally got one after 3 years of neglect. Things give players something to hang on to between updates and suggest that the dev team is actually up to something. Keep these things coming as much as possible. 4. Overarching story. The comic series/adventure packs had interrelated stories that made updates interesting because you wanted to see what would happen next. Players used to make threads and speculate how things would play out. The new content lately are single mission releases with next to no story or explanation or relation to other things going on in the game. What ever happened to the cliffhanger at the end of Whiteout? What about Dr. Destroyer returning to the main CO time line after Resistance? @bulgarex is always on the forums posting about CO lore. Consult him if need be. The game narrative has become fragmented and this isn't a well known comic IP like DC or Marvel so you cant expect us to fill in the blanks. 5. PVP wasn't completely ignored. PVP used to have rewards and every now and then get some pvp friendly balance changes. In the past few years there have been none of that. Even some kind or questionite dailys for PVP would be helpful. PVP is a form of end game and a way to keep players engaged between dry spells when content is scarce. The lack of Balance passes has negatively affected PVP as well. If a dev popped up in the PVP forums and simply asked for a request list, even if most of the things on the list couldn't be done, it would do a lot for morale and be very educational for the dev team. Onslaught has proved that CO players are open to pvp and can enjoy it if its approached the rite way.
The new team is on the rite track to deal with some of these issues. I hope this list will help them understand what their predecessors did rite so that they can benefit form it as they move forward.
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.
I think making one of the Silver slots a FF slot makes sense. People will buy all sorts of things (including retcons) to support their new shiny Freeform. At least it seemed that way from people I chatted with during the last give away. Don't know if there's data to support it .
Endgame.. endgame..endgame. There is effectively no endgame. You hit 40 and your choices for level 40 content are Rampages, UNITY 1&2, and helping your buddies level their alts in Grab Alerts. Someone actually asked in a channel I belong to what they were supposed to do with their new FF 40. They were confused because they couldn't find any more quest-lines to do.
Make use of other zones besides MC. All the action is in MC.. we have to get players to explore the rest of the world. There was a conversation in Zone today by players who were excited to discover Lemuria existed.. they had no idea.
Clean up the questlines. Players aren't really led through the questlines like they are NW and STO. I'm a huge fan of how STO allows you to easily access the quests and re-run them if you want to. And it helps address the "what do I do at Max level" issue.
The rewards for mission content are terrible. That's one reason people just run alerts. They are infinitely more rewarding. That's shouldn't be.
Hire a Social Media manager. The current team is doing well, but there's no way they have time to mange the Facebook and Youtube pages. And yes the neglect shows. Even if it's just a part-timer or an intern. Get someone to make regular videos and updates.
>_> I might be obsessing over the recent Xeno game but I now really want a reskin of the Black Talon become device...It be real easy for Cryptic to do an anime warmech version.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I think one of the most fundamental things anyone can do to bring more people to the game is...tell them about the game. I know that might sound silly, but Cryptic doesn't really advertise. Now, I know someone is about to say "but they don't have anything new to advertise". Well guess what? To someone who has never played before, every single mission in the game is new to them. And since this game is 7 years old, there are probably a lot of people who are young adults now who have never heard of this game because they were 7 years younger when the game launched. So, I for one am trying to get the word out, and have had some moderate response:
I think one of the most fundamental things anyone can do to bring more people to the game is...tell them about the game.
It really takes more than that to get new players into a game, especially an older one like CO.
1) MMOs are a pretty big time investment. As such, most (sane) people are only going to ever dedicate their time to a few. Once they hear about it, what does CO have to offer that will encourage people choose it over something more modern that gets frequent updates and new expansions/content/etc on a regular basis?
2) The answer to #1 is of course the customization. I can literally take just about any character from my own works and make it into a character in CO. I don't just mean "something that sort of looks like them, with whatever character class most closely represents them" either. I mean I can make that character, right down to whatever quirky hair color, body type, etc it has, as well as a close approximation to whatever magic/powers/whatever it has. Unfortunately, the game's resource/money/whatever costs behind fine-tuning these, the game's greatest assets, is discouraging.
3) So you've spent hours designing your character to your specifications, and then however long it takes to level it. Then what? This game doesn't seem to have much of an endgame, and the closest thing it does have, encounters like Cybermind, seem to be horribly broken. I know some have complained about it, but I actually like that the encounter is pretty unforgiving of mistakes. It makes it challenging and more rewarding when you finally do manage to down him...HOWEVER! As we all know, downing him doesn't always credit you for doing so because of some nasty bug. Content-breaking bugs like that should be like #1 top priority to fix, because they reflect very poorly on this game.
So right now, even if everyone tells the world about this game, how many will actually stick around because 1) the game is old and seldom updated, 2) the game's highest selling point holds out its hand for payment when you inevitably try to fix newbie character creation mistakes, and 3) has minimal and broken endgame content?
Unfortunately, since Perfect World Entertainment is a business first and foremost, they assess their games and when they've decided a certain portfolio (a game) is no longer a worthwhile investment, they minimize the amount of assets (employees) assigned to it, then hook it up to life support because it still has a few dedicated players who will buy things related to it. Once the cost of life support outweighs the player revenue, then it's lights out forever.
Almost.
It's not uncommon for really old games to get picked up and maintained by fans, but I really can't think of any game that was magically turned around because the company running it decided one day to have a change of heart and replace a skeleton crew with a full staff to "breathe new life into a game." It'd be nice if they did, but I don't know how realistic it is.
I see some longtime player was hired onto the team, so maybe that will help somewhat. Still, 1 person can't produce new art assets (often the biggest cost in game development these days) design and implement new encounters, create new areas, create new quests, fix existing bugs, improve existing systems, and so on. Not unless they somehow don't require sleep, food, a life, or anything else. Not unless their brain can be surgically removed and wired directly into the servers. They're going to need help, either from PWE/Cryptic or the players.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
I think one of the most fundamental things anyone can do to bring more people to the game is...tell them about the game.
It really takes more than that to get new players into a game,
There are all kinds of people. Some people will try something out if they think it looks cool, without some deep level of research. Not everyone is familiar with the MMO market and is going to compare every MMO before picking one to play. So for some, seeing some cool pics on the instagram might get them to play. But that's just what I'm doing. What about you?
1) MMOs are a pretty big time investment. As such, most (sane) people are only going to ever dedicate their time to a few.
They don't have to sign over their life to it. Sane people can also be convinced just enough to try it...especially since it's f2p....and then if they like it enough they can decide to invest more time into their characters.
DEVS, if you really want to make this game popular with minimum effort (leaving more free time to use it on other good ideas for this game) then focus on PVP crowd first.
Why? Because PvP is a repeatable content that doesn't lose it's fun factor even after many years of playing. Now compare it to a new PvE content that gets farmed and forgotten by people in 2 weeks once they got all rewards.
Don't you think that focusing on people who would stay in game and play same PvP content over and over (even if no rewards are included) is a bad idea? PvP'ers still buy costumes like PvE'ers, they also spend money on your game, and even more than PvE'ers because PvP is a very competitive environment and requires you to have all the best possible gears/stats/devices unlike PvE which can be facerolled with nothing but a block+energy builder+1 heal.
I honestly don't get why you ignore the aspect that can give you TONNS more money and attraction to your game compared to PvE where you have to please players every month with new instance+rewards.
Now what you can do for PvP exactly? Main thing you should focus on is making a BALANCED pvp, where many builds and concepts are viable. Honestly, you have over 300 powers in game, so abuse this fact! Make build diversity the main feature of your game! Yet, currently only like 5% of powers are useful... Where's the diversity that can become the main thing about your game's pvp again just like it was during release? Honestly, this game's balance needs some drastic changes, just take an example from super popular MOBA games, where devs don't have to do much except changing some numbers in power balance during a patch and it already gives players a motivation to play, try out new builds and ideas and simply have fun in pvp again... Low effort=big impact, that's how PvP game development looks like. I was a DotA 1 dev once so i know what I'm talking about.
Ok, i may assume you may have trouble balancing pvp right away, but why not let community select some players that understand the balance well to let you help with that? You can open a poll or something like that. I can bet those community-chosen players can easily help you with balancing job. For example it can be done in a council type system, where each powerset will be discussed and then the results and conclusions of discussion will be provided to devs.
What else can be done for pvp? Well, fixing long standing bugs and abuses would have a nice impact on pvp healthiness and introducing new maps/rewards/game modes helps to promote this mode for other types of players like PvE'rs or even Rp's(if u add emotes/auras n such to rewards), for example Onslaught is played even by PvE crowd just cos it has useful rewards, add something like that to hero games too, for example win *1 type of pvp map every day*!
Honestly, it's beyond my understanding why devs always ignore pvp here, it's much less effort spend on improving it, yet much more impact and a very loyal crowd. Honestly, just look at what are the most popular games in the world currently... Starcraft, Moba's, Counter strike... ALL OF THEM ARE PVP GAMES!!!
Just TRY focusing on pvp crowd for the first time in like 5 years, it will work, i can guarantee it!
FFXIV has the Final Fantasy name backing it up. The franchise name is iconic in popular gaming culture. That obviously factors into just how attractive the game is in drawing players. An unavoidable issue with CO is that the awareness of the Champions IP it's based on is really niche nor is it a well-established video game franchise in comparison to some triple-A MMOs out there.
The only re-haul I can see being done is a graphics one, but even then IMO the graphics don't look terribly-dated to justify Cryptic doing so. I'd rather they don't do a 180 with the mechanics either. Just have them continue to build on more new content and keep focusing on customization which is the game's huge strength.
Cryptic needs to advertise how batsh*t insane Champions Online playerbase is from the Booster Gold like Caliga, the Arnold Rimmer'ish Britannia , the mind **** thats Brou, the rageface Xeno , the gloomy Silverspar, slightly perverted Battle Bot Punchy, the always facepalming Potemkin and so on and so on too many top tier nutbars to list.
I love you all your the reason I play the game.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
There are all kinds of people. Some people will try something out if they think it looks cool, without some deep level of research. Not everyone is familiar with the MMO market and is going to compare every MMO before picking one to play. So for some, seeing some cool pics on the instagram might get them to play. But that's just what I'm doing. What about you?
What am I doing? I'm actually trying to persuade myself that this game is worth staying for. I seriously do like the amazing level of customization it provides, yet all the flaws I and others have already pointed out are making that difficult. That's what I'm doing.
They don't have to sign over their life to it. Sane people can also be convinced just enough to try it...especially since it's f2p....and then if they like it enough they can decide to invest more time into their characters.
Of course not. However today's mainstream games in general, even many that aren't MMORPGs, are pretty demanding in terms of time--or to be more blunt, they're too damned long. People on average don't typically play a ton of different games or MMORPGs, but rather, they choose just a few each year and spend their free time on those. My point is that, if Champions wants to be among the games a person chooses for more than just a month or two, it needs to somehow offer something besides great customization gated behind terrible penalties for messing up or changing things later.
FFXIV; many players knew about it, how could they not, it is Final damn Fantasy, lol. However, players just did not like the game; mechanics and whatnot. It felt rushed. Same thing with CO imo, it just feels incomplete and lacking. FFXIV got a re-haul and is now one of the best MMOs on the market, chart wise.
Realistically, CO needs a re-haul to bring in new faces, as-well as keep the current ones. Realistically, it will not happen.
As the person above me pointed out, FFXIV has some pretty massive branding behind it. I'm among the people who played FFXIV back in beta when it was so bad, it bordered on unplayable. First impressions for games (and anything really) are massive, because even though I've been a childhood fan of the FF franchise, and even though I hear all over the place that FFXIV is now a great game, I don't have a lot of interest in trying it out.
Now, compare that to CO, which has no branding behind it. If Cryptic gives it the huge reboot it needs to be competitive with its other titles (STO and NW), would people really come back? A few old veterans who left might, but what about new people? Or, has that ship already sailed?
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for them to improve this game to make it more attractive. After all, there are things killing my interest in playing it already, and I only just got here. (As I said, I genuinely do want to like this game!) I'm too much of a pragmatist to believe Cryptic will actually attempt to reboot it, though.
That doesn't mean they can't (and shouldn't) fine-tune the rough edges, roll out something new every month (no matter how small), or find some way to integrate the foundry system STO and NW have. Because they most definitely should.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
What am I doing? I'm actually trying to persuade myself that this game is worth staying for. I seriously do like the amazing level of customization it provides, yet all the flaws I and others have already pointed out are making that difficult. That's what I'm doing.
If your having to persuade yourself to play CO then the game is a fail as far as your are concerned nothing wrong with that. I don't know your game history but a lot of people I know like STO better because they says its like a more polished CO and theres the upside that you will still be able to talk to your CO buddies down to the Cryptic chat server thingy.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
How is LoL even relevant? LoL is a MOBA, an entirely different genre and market and therefore has much different factors to it drawing players to the game. The whole MOBA concept has little to do with how well known the playable characters are and more to do with how their varying mechanics and playstyles apply to the game. Who says that character identification is absolute in determining how well a game franchise does?
I've lost count with how many people have claimed that the game has failed over the past 6 years yet it doesn't look like it's going dark anytime soon.
The ship has already sailed imo. Branding aside, LoL, BDO, Tera, Blade and Soul, you don't have to be SE to net an audience. Imo, the ship has sailed, CO has Cryptic, whose is fame is CoH, if they could not get it done, then perhaps the ship has sailed.
Let's not forget the Marvel MMO had a godawful time at first. That game was brought back from near death by a real hardcore attempt to give players what they wanted. Their team listened to feedback, changed some things, and completely revamped others.
And it worked.
Quite frankly, that's what I see going on here right now. I was skeptical at first. But the new dev team has continued to amaze me in how well they listen to the player base. Do we get everything we want? No. But so far we've been getting most of it.
Also -- SuperHero Craze. It's like somebody at Cryptic/PWI woke and realized there is a superhero craze going on in popular culture right now. We could've told them that three years ago . But it's a lot more pragmatic to try to revive an existing game then create a new one from scratch.
So I'm patiently waiting to see what 2016 brings.
If your having to persuade yourself to play CO then the game is a fail as far as your are concerned nothing wrong with that. I don't know your game history but a lot of people I know like STO better because they says its like a more polished CO and theres the upside that you will still be able to talk to your CO buddies down to the Cryptic chat server thingy.
My current forum avatar is from STO, which I've been playing and enjoying for many years now. The reason I want to like CO is because as I said previously, the customization is phenomenal. I've literally never played a MMO with this level of customization, and because of that, I really do want to like it, and to see it succeed. The customization in STO, even with the "alien" race (max customization) is nowhere near what this game offers.
I've got a tug-of-war going on right now, with me wanting to like and play this game vs me not wanting to grind alerts for days just to undo a craptastic newbie failbuild. I considered rerolling, but that would actually mean even more questing, alerts, and time spent getting back to 30 (31 now, actually).
So, grind grind grind I guess, even though I'd rather see the game content.
It's like they give you all this freedom to customize your character, only to turn around and put a kryptonite leash on it. I know, I've complained enough already, but to a new player, both the tailoring costs (for large outfit makeovers) and power-undoing are highly toxic and unfriendly elements that need to go away for good.
In STO, it costs me literally nothing to swap out bridge officer abilities (space) or kit powers (ground) past the initial acquisition fee (if any) for a given power, and changing anything at the tailor is 100% free whether you're silver, gold, lifetime, level 1, or level 60 (max). To put things in perspective, originally STO had the same kind of tailoring fees this game had. Kit powers were locked into the kits, so you had to buy a new kit if you wanted certain powers you didn't have already. Finally, bridge officers were too stupid and could only know 4 space and 4 ground powers at a time. Changing them had a cost as well, albeit not much. After they made those QoL improvements, the game is as healthy as ever, and I think it'd do CO a world of good to get the same type of improvements.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
If many of the CO costs went away (such as tailoring and retcon costs), then G would become an Auction House only currency. (Though there are a few other, minimal uses for it.) The in-game economy would see a large rise in G supply, then inflation.
I'm not sure that the game would handle that sort of massive resource inflation so well. It barely recovered (some say it hasn't) from the easy G farming exploits that existed up until about a year ago.
BOffs still only have four space powers and four ground powers. Just that now they get to use them automatically when you promote them to that level, where before you had to promote them then train them. Oh, and now if you pick up a new BOff candidate you don't want to commission but they have a skill you want on a current BOff, you can turn them into a training manual and make that skill available for the current one.
To make resources to retcon your hero, stop grinding. Just run missions, pick up all that crap you have no use for, and sell it all to a Collection Agent whenever you get to a mission hub. You'd be surprised how fast it can pile up.
"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!"
The reason I want to like CO is because as I said previously, the customization is phenomenal. I've literally never played a MMO with this level of customization, and because of that, I really do want to like it, and to see it succeed. The customization in STO, even with the "alien" race (max customization) is nowhere near what this game offers.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. I love the character that I've created but often find nothing satisfying to do with it once I exit the tailor/power house. This is why ppl joke about CO being a doll house/chat line. This is why ppl joke about logging in just to hang around Rencen. There are some things going on rite now that give me hope. But if things don't start to turn around in 2016 I'll be forced to go to Wild Star. Im posting on these forums not the WS forms because this is where I would prefer to be, but Cryptic hasn't made that an ez choice for me... If people don't like CO that cant be helped. But if people want to like CO then that can probably be fixed and those are the players that are most likely to return.
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.
If many of the CO costs went away (such as tailoring and retcon costs), then G would become an Auction House only currency. (Though there are a few other, minimal uses for it.) The in-game economy would see a large rise in G supply, then inflation.
I'm not sure that the game would handle that sort of massive resource inflation so well. It barely recovered (some say it hasn't) from the easy G farming exploits that existed up until about a year ago.
Probably the only really valid argument in favor of the current gold sinks, however I think having gold sinks in the way this game does is a lazy approach to balancing an economy. Plus, as I said before, it's also extremely discouraging to someone who just started and isn't rich. Instead, look at how other games handle their gold sinks:
Repairs. Ugh, okay I'm not a fan of this because I think it's also lazy, but it seems to work for games like WoW. At least in WoW, low-level repairs are trivial (and nonexistent for heirloom gear) and only get high when you get high-end gear. Even then, they're not bad because they're balanced around player earnings.
Consumable items with prices that aren't completely trivial. I'll admit, I haven't looked at consumable crap in this game, but if it's anything like STO, they might as well be free, even for the semi-good stuff.
Cool vanity items with high costs. Maybe G-only costume sets, vehicles, action figures, travel powers, etc with big price tags in the hundreds or more.
Globally scale back the resource rewards. The entire system is built on scaling, so it can't really be that difficult, can it?
I've done literally nothing with mods. I know it costs to remove one (this is an example of a good gold sink) but does it cost to fuse one or socket one? Maybe it should.
It's far more satisfying when you can use your ingame currency for rewards than it is to feel forced to use it to undo mistakes, or when you want to try a new look. I'm already on day 3 of farming mindless alerts, and it looks like this might finally be the day I get to undo everything.
So yeah, while I totally understand the importance of gold sinks in games like this, it's important to make sure they're done in a way that makes things accessible for newer players. Currently, that's not the case.
- - -
On another note, I made an archetype sorceror/whatever last night for kicks, and it was rough. The whole Kevin Poe chain was extremely brutal and almost unbeatable without some sort of healing item--I had to range the boss far enough to get the out-of-combat regeneration ticking and even then, it was extremely close.
Perhaps archetypes should be changed to allow players to select powers in much the same way freeform characters can, however the selection would of course be confined within the archetype's boundaries.
Also, this game should scale down the difficulty of low-level content, then allow it to ramp up more slowly as the player progresses--as a level 8 or so, I didn't exactly have a lot of tools at my disposal for dealing with the kind of damage the boss threw at me. STO handles this difficulty ramp-up perfectly, so I know it's within Cryptic's power to make this happen a little better than it does in CO.
BOffs still only have four space powers and four ground powers. Just that now they get to use them automatically when you promote them to that level, where before you had to promote them then train them. Oh, and now if you pick up a new BOff candidate you don't want to commission but they have a skill you want on a current BOff, you can turn them into a training manual and make that skill available for the current one.
To make resources to retcon your hero, stop grinding. Just run missions, pick up all that crap you have no use for, and sell it all to a Collection Agent whenever you get to a mission hub. You'd be surprised how fast it can pile up.
To clarify, they have 4 slots for space powers and 4 slots for ground powers, however they can learn every power available to their type (tactical, science, etc) as well as specialization powers like intel, command, and pilot pretty much without limit. All those 4 space/4 ground slots represent is which powers of theirs you've assigned to be the active ones--and switching around powers they've already acquired costs absolutely nothing no matter how many times you do it.
Anyway, grinding resources via alerts seems to be the safest and quickest way, because too much questing means leveling, and leveling means the costs of removing powers goes up.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
I hate repair fees and would rather keep the tailor fees.
There are high value costume bits that sell for hundreds or thousand of globals... It's not really a money sink especially after the new patch comes out and people can bypass the AH safely.
Respec fees are ridiculous though and most of that is the ghastly way you have to do those respecs and partially due to the crazy ramp-up in price after lvl 25ish. I think the easiest way would be to just dump the tier requirement system and then it wouldn't be an issue with removing certain powers without screwing up the progression. It's not like skipping over any low tier powers you don't want is hard.
It's easier just to re-roll and level again if you mess up a build. Grinding for monies is horrid on a non-geared 40. I don't think there's much that can be done for the knowledge curve on this game other than to do some research. You do get ATs as basically a template to help you not screw up your first FF. You can look around / ask what people think are the best ones to imitate. If you go in blind, refuse to take advice, and make things harder on yourself, that's on you.
If you're talking about the Grim, I thought it was barfy for levelling. But I do a lot of alerts and ended up healing most of them with an AT that blows at healing. Skarns, however, makes the Grim 100000x more enjoyable as long as you don't need to heal.
Most of the ATs need some heally devices of some sort. You get one in the starter pack.
There are high value costume bits that sell for hundreds or thousand of globals... It's not really a money sink especially after the new patch comes out and people can bypass the AH safely.
Do you mean through the auction house, or from a vendor? I'd propose having some extremely expensive ones on vendors, because that's money being directly removed from the economy instead of being transferred from player A to player B.
Respec fees are ridiculous though and most of that is the ghastly way you have to do those respecs and partially due to the crazy ramp-up in price after lvl 25ish. I think the easiest way would be to just dump the tier requirement system and then it wouldn't be an issue with removing certain powers without screwing up the progression. It's not like skipping over any low tier powers you don't want is hard.
I totally get the reason why there's tier requirements in place. Something like Force Cascade on a low-level hero would frankly be ridiculous. Earlier in this post, I outlined how the tier requirement system could still be preserved without this completely moronic backstepping mechanic we have now.
It's easier just to re-roll and level again if you mess up a build. Grinding for monies is horrid on a non-geared 40. I don't think there's much that can be done for the knowledge curve on this game other than to do some research. You do get ATs as basically a template to help you not screw up your first FF. You can look around / ask what people think are the best ones to imitate. If you go in blind, refuse to take advice, and make things harder on yourself, that's on you.
The sad thing is I did do some research, but a lot of what's out there is outdated, and research only takes you so far before experience becomes necessary. No matter how prepared a new player tries to be, they're going to mess up somewhere and at some point, they'll want to step back and undo that mistake. CO needs to be friendlier about throwing them a bone.
As for FFs, well a lot of them are actually pretty bad, and they don't really teach you much about decision making, aside from "I really wish my FF template would let me learn one of its god damned heals, or that immensely-awesome block upgrade instead of this crap ability I don't really need yet--or ever."
If you're talking about the Grim, I thought it was barfy for levelling. But I do a lot of alerts and ended up healing most of them with an AT that blows at healing. Skarns, however, makes the Grim 100000x more enjoyable as long as you don't need to heal.
Most of the ATs need some heally devices of some sort. You get one in the starter pack.
Not sure what the Grim is, but yeah, that healing device only helps so much. I really don't think it's good to make builds so dependent on healing consumables that they almost can't progress without them--it's one of the things I absolutely despised about Forsaken World when I played it. I think consumables are better off as tools for bailing oneself out of a bad multi-group pull, fighting something too high-level, or in endgame, making stupid mistakes on a tough and unforgiving fight like Cybermind.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
Cryptic needs to advertise how batsh*t insane Champions Online playerbase is from the Booster Gold like Caliga, the Arnold Rimmer'ish Britannia , the mind **** thats Brou, the rageface Xeno , the gloomy Silverspar, slightly perverted Battle Bot Punchy, the always facepalming Potemkin and so on and so on too many top tier nutbars to list.
As you mentioned, the z-store is there for fast leveling, which nullifies the notion that CO focus on or values the leveling experience, but anyway....
It actually doesn't nullify it at all ( if you look at the entire rest of the game ).
A community that's not constantly at each other's throats to get the last word in?
I dunno, much more valuable is a community where people don't try to constantly be that guy who acts like they're above the conversation and tries to do that thing where they pop in and try to shut the conversation down with some faux sage words
You know, it might feel harsh, but at some point we might have to face the fact that the answer to the thread is "Nothing." Sometimes games are just past their prime, and there's nothing that's going to skyrocket its popularity again. I think "self-sufficient" isn't such a bad place for CO to be in. It's not as if the game is failing or in danger of shutting down, and we're getting a steady stream of stuff about on par with what a lot of other mmos are getting ( and much more than some ).
But if there was a thing... it would be breast physics.
No matter how prepared a new player tries to be, they're going to mess up somewhere and at some point, they'll want to step back and undo that mistake. CO needs to be friendlier about throwing them a bone.
It's possible that this experience could be improved. But I don't think the intention is to make reconning easy for everyone everywhere all the time.
The new player concerns make sense so maybe there are solutions that would only apply to new players? Maybe at level 25 there could be a one-time mission reward that grants an expiring consumable item with a timer on it. The consumable would grant a retcon.
Expiring items, like the OV devices, already exist so presumably the tech could be re-used for this purpose.
No matter how prepared a new player tries to be, they're going to mess up somewhere and at some point, they'll want to step back and undo that mistake. CO needs to be friendlier about throwing them a bone.
It's possible that this experience could be improved. But I don't think the intention is to make reconning easy for everyone everywhere all the time.
The new player concerns make sense so maybe there are solutions that would only apply to new players? Maybe at level 25 there could be a one-time mission reward that grants an expiring consumable item with a timer on it. The consumable would grant a retcon.
Expiring items, like the OV devices, already exist so presumably the tech could be re-used for this purpose.
Or just give every character 1 free retcon that goes away at level 21. Then when a character reaches level 20 have a window pop up that says "You have 1 free retcon that will expire if you hit level 21" so they don't miss it. Or shoot, for everyone's first FreeForm, give them a free retcon every 10 levels, at 10,20,30, and 40 - if they don't use the one they have, they don't get an extra one ( so for example if they never use any of their retcons, then they'll still only have 1 at level 40 ). That way players don't feel like their decisions are so heavy, and they feel like they can experiment and figure things out.
Though to be honest, when I'm leveling toons it actually takes a while before I'm struggling to pay for retcons.
If your having to persuade yourself to play CO then the game is a fail as far as your are concerned nothing wrong with that. I don't know your game history but a lot of people I know like STO better because they says its like a more polished CO and theres the upside that you will still be able to talk to your CO buddies down to the Cryptic chat server thingy.
My current forum avatar is from STO, which I've been playing and enjoying for many years now. The reason I want to like CO is because as I said previously, the customization is phenomenal. I've literally never played a MMO with this level of customization, and because of that, I really do want to like it, and to see it succeed. The customization in STO, even with the "alien" race (max customization) is nowhere near what this game offers.
I've got a tug-of-war going on right now, with me wanting to like and play this game vs me not wanting to grind alerts for days just to undo a craptastic newbie failbuild. I considered rerolling, but that would actually mean even more questing, alerts, and time spent getting back to 30 (31 now, actually).
So, grind grind grind I guess, even though I'd rather see the game content.
It's like they give you all this freedom to customize your character, only to turn around and put a kryptonite leash on it. I know, I've complained enough already, but to a new player, both the tailoring costs (for large outfit makeovers) and power-undoing are highly toxic and unfriendly elements that need to go away for good.
In STO, it costs me literally nothing to swap out bridge officer abilities (space) or kit powers (ground) past the initial acquisition fee (if any) for a given power, and changing anything at the tailor is 100% free whether you're silver, gold, lifetime, level 1, or level 60 (max). To put things in perspective, originally STO had the same kind of tailoring fees this game had. Kit powers were locked into the kits, so you had to buy a new kit if you wanted certain powers you didn't have already. Finally, bridge officers were too stupid and could only know 4 space and 4 ground powers at a time. Changing them had a cost as well, albeit not much. After they made those QoL improvements, the game is as healthy as ever, and I think it'd do CO a world of good to get the same type of improvements.
how much does it cost you to change your captains skills/spec points?
You know retconning your character. some free shots for subs , everyone else it's an item from the zen store.
spec points you can't change
bridge officers are effectively gear/device with powers.
kits are slotted gear
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... You should have seen it about a month after ON alert, when our devs got stripped to help NW, get ready for launch.
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.
both of the other 2 games have over 40 devs working on them. Then you have CO's team.
both of the IP's for them are not owned by Cryptic, so they have to please the IP owner by using it effectively to keep it, as opposed to Champions IP.
and if you read any articles about either game or cryptic/pwe, you will find the other games mentioned but not CO.
Now what we need is a gullible, multi millionaire. Not or anything illegal
Along with many other suggestions here, I feel that MISSION REWARDS need to be looked at.
Make em worthwhile but they don't have to be OP. Costume unlocks, Legacy devices, specialty gear (like things w/ +Perception, +KB resist).
Even the old gear that had stats could be done like the Nemesis gear in that instead of +13 Str, it would give +13 MAIN STAT or SECONDARY STAT. This way, you could still have leveling gear because higher missions would give higher +stat, but with it being Main/Secondary stat you don't feel like it's useless because it doesn't have YOUR stats on it.
And, finally, because I feel this would help keep players around, all gear, even mission rewards, should be BIND ON EQUIP. No more Bind on Pickup. Now you can add it to the economy. Power gamers can farm for the rewards and post em on AH or (I hate this one) hawk them in general chat. This allows everyone a chance at some cool item/gear.
.
-=-=-=-=-=-(CO in-game handle: @WarCan )-=-=-=-=-=- "Okay, you're DEAD, what do you do NEXT?"
how much does it cost you to change your captains skills/spec points?
You know retconning your character. some free shots for subs , everyone else it's an item from the zen store.
spec points you can't change
bridge officers are effectively gear/device with powers.
kits are slotted gear
1) Retrain tokens are only 500 zen--a bit less than half of what retcon tokens cost. While important, choosing the wrong skills is also not nearly as character-destroying as choosing bad powers, or making bad mistakes with stat selections. It's pretty obvious that you'll want points in anything that says "it boosts your damage" and whatnot.
2) Spec points are silly to mention because can't make a mistake with them. The goal is to unlock every single power in a given specialization tree, which you can do each time you "level up" at max level. There is literally no "oops, my character is ruined" when it comes to specializations.
3) No, bridge officers in space combat are a direct way to add powers to your ship. Everything your ship can do is a combination of your base "class" abilities, your bridge officers' abilities, certain consoles and set powers, and a few other oddities like special warp cores. Then there's devices, but that's more comparable to devices in CO. Bridge officer abilities are important though--without them, your ship is going to be extremely ineffective. Bridge officers on the ground are more like pets. Or sidekicks. Or whatever this game has that follows you around and helps you slay stuff.
4) Kits are NOT comparable to slotted gear in CO. Gear in CO is basically just stat sticks with maybe a few set bonuses and whatnot--STO's only real equivalent is armor and -maybe- shields. Kit modules are, quite literally, powers that you choose to outfit your character with. A science "class" character can choose to equip several healing powers or several offensive powers based solely on which kits they equip. They may equip like gear, but they are most definitely powers.
There's no reason CO can't have something like that for character recustomization.
Or just give every character 1 free retcon that goes away at level 21. Then when a character reaches level 20 have a window pop up that says "You have 1 free retcon that will expire if you hit level 21" so they don't miss it. Or shoot, for everyone's first FreeForm, give them a free retcon every 10 levels, at 10,20,30, and 40 - if they don't use the one they have, they don't get an extra one ( so for example if they never use any of their retcons, then they'll still only have 1 at level 40 ). That way players don't feel like their decisions are so heavy, and they feel like they can experiment and figure things out.
If true power swapping can't be a thing, then this is probably best. I think retcons at 20 or 25 were mentioned, and I have to say no, that won't help. Given how bad archetypes are, and being used to that substandard level of gameplay, I didn't realize how poorly made my freeform character was until I made a topic about it here--about 30 or so.
At the very least, a retcon at 40 would help.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
Yeah, it's become clear over time that a1 here is in fact a shill for DCUO, trying his darndest to make all us misguided heathens See the Light and abandon this game to go play his. So far, it doesn't seem to be working; I could wish that would dissuade him from his Holy Mission, but so far I see no sign of it.
"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!"
Comments
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Just Cause it was Marvel Super Heroes doesn't mean it can't be Dying Light, if you know what I mean.
Part of why I suspect CO has this god-awful system of "stepping back" rather than letting you swap out a power you don't want for one you do, is to enforce the "you need X powers from set A, or Y powers total" rule. I get why the rule's in place, so people don't just load up on top-tier powers, but yeah, it needs a serious reevaluation.
Just a bit of napkin design here, but:
1) Every level when you'd currently learn a new power, you unlock slots for powers:
1: [Energy Builder] - only energy building powers can be slotted
1: [Tier 0] - Only starting-tier powers can be placed in this slot
6: [Tier 1] - Only accepts powers that require 1 similar (or 2 of any) powers
8: [Tier 2] - Only accepts powers that require 2 similar (or 3 of any) powers
...
And so on.
Except for the [Energy Builder] slot, all slots would be backward compatible (you can place a Tier 0 power in a Tier 1 slot, but not vise versa. To elaborate, you have a Tier 1 slot:
Energy Builer: No
Tier 0 power: Yes
Tier 1 power: Yes
Tier 2 power: No
Tier 3 power: No
...etc
2) For the sake of easing development and ensuring stability, the restrictions of "requires X power(s) from set A or Y of any power" should be changed to just "requires X non-energy building power(s)."
3) So now, when you level up, you'd be able to pick a power right away if you want, just like you can now. If you want to change it later, you'd still need to visit the Powerhouse. Upon talking to the trainer, changing powers would ideally be as simple as dragging and dropping, with no more undo, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo...undo, undo, undo...finally! The cost should be minimal as well, or (ideally) removed entirely. It doesn't cost me anything to replace a Vascular Regenerator ability with Solar Gateway in STO, and the game isn't exactly suffering because of this flexibility.
Rebuilding faith that Cryptic is committed to CO will give players a reason to commit to CO again.
We just got a State of the game for the first time in 3 years. Those 3 years have seen CO basically on maintenance mode with Cryptic siphoning dev talent from CO to feed NWO and STO.
There are a fair amount of people like my self that want to like CO but are jaded form all the years of neglect.
Things from the "good ol days" of CO that need to return to prove that Cryptic is serious about CO again:
1. Regular Balance Passes. Ame used to do balance passes regularly. Over the years several different devs have altered the game in the name of their own vision of valance. Now CO balance suffers "from too many chefs in the kitchen" except now all the chefs are gone. Pick one Dev for balance (I suggest @kaiserin) and let him/her bring the game under one balance philosophy. MMO balance is a fluid process and needs regular updates.
2. More regular content releases. Back in the days we had Adventure packs and Comic series updates that came roughly every 3-4 months. Nowadays we get maybe an alert or 2 a year that's equal to maybe the last segment of a comic series. This new team is showing promise with more updates than we saw with Cryptic north If you can deliver on the mysterious end game you hinted at in the Stat of the game and then continue at a pace that provides something quarterly I think players may start to believe that Cryptic is serious about supporting the game.
3. State of the Game. We finally got one after 3 years of neglect. Things give players something to hang on to between updates and suggest that the dev team is actually up to something. Keep these things coming as much as possible.
4. Overarching story. The comic series/adventure packs had interrelated stories that made updates interesting because you wanted to see what would happen next. Players used to make threads and speculate how things would play out. The new content lately are single mission releases with next to no story or explanation or relation to other things going on in the game. What ever happened to the cliffhanger at the end of Whiteout? What about Dr. Destroyer returning to the main CO time line after Resistance? @bulgarex is always on the forums posting about CO lore. Consult him if need be. The game narrative has become fragmented and this isn't a well known comic IP like DC or Marvel so you cant expect us to fill in the blanks.
5. PVP wasn't completely ignored. PVP used to have rewards and every now and then get some pvp friendly balance changes. In the past few years there have been none of that. Even some kind or questionite dailys for PVP would be helpful. PVP is a form of end game and a way to keep players engaged between dry spells when content is scarce. The lack of Balance passes has negatively affected PVP as well. If a dev popped up in the PVP forums and simply asked for a request list, even if most of the things on the list couldn't be done, it would do a lot for morale and be very educational for the dev team. Onslaught has proved that CO players are open to pvp and can enjoy it if its approached the rite way.
The new team is on the rite track to deal with some of these issues. I hope this list will help them understand what their predecessors did rite so that they can benefit form it as they move forward.
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.
Endgame.. endgame..endgame. There is effectively no endgame. You hit 40 and your choices for level 40 content are Rampages, UNITY 1&2, and helping your buddies level their alts in Grab Alerts. Someone actually asked in a channel I belong to what they were supposed to do with their new FF 40. They were confused because they couldn't find any more quest-lines to do.
Make use of other zones besides MC. All the action is in MC.. we have to get players to explore the rest of the world. There was a conversation in Zone today by players who were excited to discover Lemuria existed.. they had no idea.
Clean up the questlines. Players aren't really led through the questlines like they are NW and STO. I'm a huge fan of how STO allows you to easily access the quests and re-run them if you want to. And it helps address the "what do I do at Max level" issue.
The rewards for mission content are terrible. That's one reason people just run alerts. They are infinitely more rewarding. That's shouldn't be.
Hire a Social Media manager. The current team is doing well, but there's no way they have time to mange the Facebook and Youtube pages. And yes the neglect shows. Even if it's just a part-timer or an intern. Get someone to make regular videos and updates.
42 40s, LTSer.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
https://www.instagram.com/championsonline/
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
1) MMOs are a pretty big time investment. As such, most (sane) people are only going to ever dedicate their time to a few. Once they hear about it, what does CO have to offer that will encourage people choose it over something more modern that gets frequent updates and new expansions/content/etc on a regular basis?
2) The answer to #1 is of course the customization. I can literally take just about any character from my own works and make it into a character in CO. I don't just mean "something that sort of looks like them, with whatever character class most closely represents them" either. I mean I can make that character, right down to whatever quirky hair color, body type, etc it has, as well as a close approximation to whatever magic/powers/whatever it has. Unfortunately, the game's resource/money/whatever costs behind fine-tuning these, the game's greatest assets, is discouraging.
3) So you've spent hours designing your character to your specifications, and then however long it takes to level it. Then what? This game doesn't seem to have much of an endgame, and the closest thing it does have, encounters like Cybermind, seem to be horribly broken. I know some have complained about it, but I actually like that the encounter is pretty unforgiving of mistakes. It makes it challenging and more rewarding when you finally do manage to down him...HOWEVER! As we all know, downing him doesn't always credit you for doing so because of some nasty bug. Content-breaking bugs like that should be like #1 top priority to fix, because they reflect very poorly on this game.
So right now, even if everyone tells the world about this game, how many will actually stick around because 1) the game is old and seldom updated, 2) the game's highest selling point holds out its hand for payment when you inevitably try to fix newbie character creation mistakes, and 3) has minimal and broken endgame content?
Unfortunately, since Perfect World Entertainment is a business first and foremost, they assess their games and when they've decided a certain portfolio (a game) is no longer a worthwhile investment, they minimize the amount of assets (employees) assigned to it, then hook it up to life support because it still has a few dedicated players who will buy things related to it. Once the cost of life support outweighs the player revenue, then it's lights out forever.
Almost.
It's not uncommon for really old games to get picked up and maintained by fans, but I really can't think of any game that was magically turned around because the company running it decided one day to have a change of heart and replace a skeleton crew with a full staff to "breathe new life into a game." It'd be nice if they did, but I don't know how realistic it is.
I see some longtime player was hired onto the team, so maybe that will help somewhat. Still, 1 person can't produce new art assets (often the biggest cost in game development these days) design and implement new encounters, create new areas, create new quests, fix existing bugs, improve existing systems, and so on. Not unless they somehow don't require sleep, food, a life, or anything else. Not unless their brain can be surgically removed and wired directly into the servers. They're going to need help, either from PWE/Cryptic or the players.
There are all kinds of people. Some people will try something out if they think it looks cool, without some deep level of research. Not everyone is familiar with the MMO market and is going to compare every MMO before picking one to play. So for some, seeing some cool pics on the instagram might get them to play. But that's just what I'm doing. What about you?
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
PARSER USAGE GUIDE: click here for an easy how-to ٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶
Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
Why? Because PvP is a repeatable content that doesn't lose it's fun factor even after many years of playing.
Now compare it to a new PvE content that gets farmed and forgotten by people in 2 weeks once they got all rewards.
Don't you think that focusing on people who would stay in game and play same PvP content over and over (even if no rewards are included) is a bad idea? PvP'ers still buy costumes like PvE'ers, they also spend money on your game, and even more than PvE'ers because PvP is a very competitive environment and requires you to have all the best possible gears/stats/devices unlike PvE which can be facerolled with nothing but a block+energy builder+1 heal.
I honestly don't get why you ignore the aspect that can give you TONNS more money and attraction to your game compared to PvE where you have to please players every month with new instance+rewards.
Now what you can do for PvP exactly? Main thing you should focus on is making a BALANCED pvp, where many builds and concepts are viable. Honestly, you have over 300 powers in game, so abuse this fact! Make build diversity the main feature of your game!
Yet, currently only like 5% of powers are useful... Where's the diversity that can become the main thing about your game's pvp again just like it was during release?
Honestly, this game's balance needs some drastic changes, just take an example from super popular MOBA games, where devs don't have to do much except changing some numbers in power balance during a patch and it already gives players a motivation to play, try out new builds and ideas and simply have fun in pvp again... Low effort=big impact, that's how PvP game development looks like. I was a DotA 1 dev once so i know what I'm talking about.
Ok, i may assume you may have trouble balancing pvp right away, but why not let community select some players that understand the balance well to let you help with that? You can open a poll or something like that. I can bet those community-chosen players can easily help you with balancing job. For example it can be done in a council type system, where each powerset will be discussed and then the results and conclusions of discussion will be provided to devs.
What else can be done for pvp? Well, fixing long standing bugs and abuses would have a nice impact on pvp healthiness and introducing new maps/rewards/game modes helps to promote this mode for other types of players like PvE'rs or even Rp's(if u add emotes/auras n such to rewards), for example Onslaught is played even by PvE crowd just cos it has useful rewards, add something like that to hero games too, for example win *1 type of pvp map every day*!
Honestly, it's beyond my understanding why devs always ignore pvp here, it's much less effort spend on improving it, yet much more impact and a very loyal crowd. Honestly, just look at what are the most popular games in the world currently... Starcraft, Moba's, Counter strike... ALL OF THEM ARE PVP GAMES!!!
Just TRY focusing on pvp crowd for the first time in like 5 years, it will work, i can guarantee it!
The only re-haul I can see being done is a graphics one, but even then IMO the graphics don't look terribly-dated to justify Cryptic doing so. I'd rather they don't do a 180 with the mechanics either. Just have them continue to build on more new content and keep focusing on customization which is the game's huge strength.
I love you all your the reason I play the game.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Now, compare that to CO, which has no branding behind it. If Cryptic gives it the huge reboot it needs to be competitive with its other titles (STO and NW), would people really come back? A few old veterans who left might, but what about new people? Or, has that ship already sailed?
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for them to improve this game to make it more attractive. After all, there are things killing my interest in playing it already, and I only just got here. (As I said, I genuinely do want to like this game!) I'm too much of a pragmatist to believe Cryptic will actually attempt to reboot it, though.
That doesn't mean they can't (and shouldn't) fine-tune the rough edges, roll out something new every month (no matter how small), or find some way to integrate the foundry system STO and NW have. Because they most definitely should.
If your having to persuade yourself to play CO then the game is a fail as far as your are concerned nothing wrong with that. I don't know your game history but a lot of people I know like STO better because they says its like a more polished CO and theres the upside that you will still be able to talk to your CO buddies down to the Cryptic chat server thingy.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I've lost count with how many people have claimed that the game has failed over the past 6 years yet it doesn't look like it's going dark anytime soon.
And it worked.
Quite frankly, that's what I see going on here right now. I was skeptical at first. But the new dev team has continued to amaze me in how well they listen to the player base. Do we get everything we want? No. But so far we've been getting most of it.
Also -- SuperHero Craze. It's like somebody at Cryptic/PWI woke and realized there is a superhero craze going on in popular culture right now. We could've told them that three years ago
So I'm patiently waiting to see what 2016 brings.
I've got a tug-of-war going on right now, with me wanting to like and play this game vs me not wanting to grind alerts for days just to undo a craptastic newbie failbuild. I considered rerolling, but that would actually mean even more questing, alerts, and time spent getting back to 30 (31 now, actually).
So, grind grind grind I guess, even though I'd rather see the game content.
It's like they give you all this freedom to customize your character, only to turn around and put a kryptonite leash on it. I know, I've complained enough already, but to a new player, both the tailoring costs (for large outfit makeovers) and power-undoing are highly toxic and unfriendly elements that need to go away for good.
In STO, it costs me literally nothing to swap out bridge officer abilities (space) or kit powers (ground) past the initial acquisition fee (if any) for a given power, and changing anything at the tailor is 100% free whether you're silver, gold, lifetime, level 1, or level 60 (max). To put things in perspective, originally STO had the same kind of tailoring fees this game had. Kit powers were locked into the kits, so you had to buy a new kit if you wanted certain powers you didn't have already. Finally, bridge officers were too stupid and could only know 4 space and 4 ground powers at a time. Changing them had a cost as well, albeit not much. After they made those QoL improvements, the game is as healthy as ever, and I think it'd do CO a world of good to get the same type of improvements.
I'm not sure that the game would handle that sort of massive resource inflation so well. It barely recovered (some say it hasn't) from the easy G farming exploits that existed up until about a year ago.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
To make resources to retcon your hero, stop grinding. Just run missions, pick up all that crap you have no use for, and sell it all to a Collection Agent whenever you get to a mission hub. You'd be surprised how fast it can pile up.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I love the character that I've created but often find nothing satisfying to do with it once I exit the tailor/power house. This is why ppl joke about CO being a doll house/chat line. This is why ppl joke about logging in just to hang around Rencen. There are some things going on rite now that give me hope. But if things don't start to turn around in 2016 I'll be forced to go to Wild Star.
If people don't like CO that cant be helped. But if people want to like CO then that can probably be fixed and those are the players that are most likely to return.
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.
- Repairs. Ugh, okay I'm not a fan of this because I think it's also lazy, but it seems to work for games like WoW. At least in WoW, low-level repairs are trivial (and nonexistent for heirloom gear) and only get high when you get high-end gear. Even then, they're not bad because they're balanced around player earnings.
- Consumable items with prices that aren't completely trivial. I'll admit, I haven't looked at consumable crap in this game, but if it's anything like STO, they might as well be free, even for the semi-good stuff.
- Cool vanity items with high costs. Maybe G-only costume sets, vehicles, action figures, travel powers, etc with big price tags in the hundreds or more.
- Globally scale back the resource rewards. The entire system is built on scaling, so it can't really be that difficult, can it?
- I've done literally nothing with mods. I know it costs to remove one (this is an example of a good gold sink) but does it cost to fuse one or socket one? Maybe it should.
It's far more satisfying when you can use your ingame currency for rewards than it is to feel forced to use it to undo mistakes, or when you want to try a new look. I'm already on day 3 of farming mindless alerts, and it looks like this might finally be the day I get to undo everything.So yeah, while I totally understand the importance of gold sinks in games like this, it's important to make sure they're done in a way that makes things accessible for newer players. Currently, that's not the case.
- - -
On another note, I made an archetype sorceror/whatever last night for kicks, and it was rough. The whole Kevin Poe chain was extremely brutal and almost unbeatable without some sort of healing item--I had to range the boss far enough to get the out-of-combat regeneration ticking and even then, it was extremely close.
Perhaps archetypes should be changed to allow players to select powers in much the same way freeform characters can, however the selection would of course be confined within the archetype's boundaries.
Also, this game should scale down the difficulty of low-level content, then allow it to ramp up more slowly as the player progresses--as a level 8 or so, I didn't exactly have a lot of tools at my disposal for dealing with the kind of damage the boss threw at me. STO handles this difficulty ramp-up perfectly, so I know it's within Cryptic's power to make this happen a little better than it does in CO. To clarify, they have 4 slots for space powers and 4 slots for ground powers, however they can learn every power available to their type (tactical, science, etc) as well as specialization powers like intel, command, and pilot pretty much without limit. All those 4 space/4 ground slots represent is which powers of theirs you've assigned to be the active ones--and switching around powers they've already acquired costs absolutely nothing no matter how many times you do it.
Anyway, grinding resources via alerts seems to be the safest and quickest way, because too much questing means leveling, and leveling means the costs of removing powers goes up.
There are high value costume bits that sell for hundreds or thousand of globals... It's not really a money sink especially after the new patch comes out and people can bypass the AH safely.
Respec fees are ridiculous though and most of that is the ghastly way you have to do those respecs and partially due to the crazy ramp-up in price after lvl 25ish. I think the easiest way would be to just dump the tier requirement system and then it wouldn't be an issue with removing certain powers without screwing up the progression. It's not like skipping over any low tier powers you don't want is hard.
It's easier just to re-roll and level again if you mess up a build. Grinding for monies is horrid on a non-geared 40. I don't think there's much that can be done for the knowledge curve on this game other than to do some research. You do get ATs as basically a template to help you not screw up your first FF. You can look around / ask what people think are the best ones to imitate. If you go in blind, refuse to take advice, and make things harder on yourself, that's on you.
If you're talking about the Grim, I thought it was barfy for levelling. But I do a lot of alerts and ended up healing most of them with an AT that blows at healing. Skarns, however, makes the Grim 100000x more enjoyable as long as you don't need to heal.
Most of the ATs need some heally devices of some sort. You get one in the starter pack.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
As for FFs, well a lot of them are actually pretty bad, and they don't really teach you much about decision making, aside from "I really wish my FF template would let me learn one of its god damned heals, or that immensely-awesome block upgrade instead of this crap ability I don't really need yet--or ever." Not sure what the Grim is, but yeah, that healing device only helps so much. I really don't think it's good to make builds so dependent on healing consumables that they almost can't progress without them--it's one of the things I absolutely despised about Forsaken World when I played it. I think consumables are better off as tools for bailing oneself out of a bad multi-group pull, fighting something too high-level, or in endgame, making stupid mistakes on a tough and unforgiving fight like Cybermind.
I'll take that as a compliment
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
But if there was a thing... it would be breast physics.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
The new player concerns make sense so maybe there are solutions that would only apply to new players? Maybe at level 25 there could be a one-time mission reward that grants an expiring consumable item with a timer on it. The consumable would grant a retcon.
Expiring items, like the OV devices, already exist so presumably the tech could be re-used for this purpose.
PARSER USAGE GUIDE: click here for an easy how-to ٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶
Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
Though to be honest, when I'm leveling toons it actually takes a while before I'm struggling to pay for retcons.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Each time I look at your toons face its like SMOKE ME A KIPPER!
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
You know retconning your character. some free shots for subs , everyone else it's an item from the zen store.
spec points you can't change
bridge officers are effectively gear/device with powers.
kits are slotted gear
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both of the other 2 games have over 40 devs working on them. Then you have CO's team.
both of the IP's for them are not owned by Cryptic, so they have to please the IP owner by using it effectively to keep it, as opposed to Champions IP.
and if you read any articles about either game or cryptic/pwe, you will find the other games mentioned but not CO.
Now what we need is a gullible, multi millionaire.
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Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Along with many other suggestions here, I feel that MISSION REWARDS need to be looked at.
Make em worthwhile but they don't have to be OP. Costume unlocks, Legacy devices, specialty gear (like things w/ +Perception, +KB resist).
Even the old gear that had stats could be done like the Nemesis gear in that instead of +13 Str, it would give +13 MAIN STAT or SECONDARY STAT. This way, you could still have leveling gear because higher missions would give higher +stat, but with it being Main/Secondary stat you don't feel like it's useless because it doesn't have YOUR stats on it.
And, finally, because I feel this would help keep players around, all gear, even mission rewards, should be BIND ON EQUIP. No more Bind on Pickup. Now you can add it to the economy. Power gamers can farm for the rewards and post em on AH or (I hate this one) hawk them in general chat. This allows everyone a chance at some cool item/gear.
-=-=-=-=-=-(CO in-game handle: @WarCan )-=-=-=-=-=-
"Okay, you're DEAD, what do you do NEXT?"
I'd prefer blind stats on the mission gear- + 13 , pick your stat.
I don't stack SS's on all my gear and there's plenty of levelling gear like that
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2) Spec points are silly to mention because can't make a mistake with them. The goal is to unlock every single power in a given specialization tree, which you can do each time you "level up" at max level. There is literally no "oops, my character is ruined" when it comes to specializations.
3) No, bridge officers in space combat are a direct way to add powers to your ship. Everything your ship can do is a combination of your base "class" abilities, your bridge officers' abilities, certain consoles and set powers, and a few other oddities like special warp cores. Then there's devices, but that's more comparable to devices in CO. Bridge officer abilities are important though--without them, your ship is going to be extremely ineffective. Bridge officers on the ground are more like pets. Or sidekicks. Or whatever this game has that follows you around and helps you slay stuff.
4) Kits are NOT comparable to slotted gear in CO. Gear in CO is basically just stat sticks with maybe a few set bonuses and whatnot--STO's only real equivalent is armor and -maybe- shields. Kit modules are, quite literally, powers that you choose to outfit your character with. A science "class" character can choose to equip several healing powers or several offensive powers based solely on which kits they equip. They may equip like gear, but they are most definitely powers.
There's no reason CO can't have something like that for character recustomization. If true power swapping can't be a thing, then this is probably best. I think retcons at 20 or 25 were mentioned, and I have to say no, that won't help. Given how bad archetypes are, and being used to that substandard level of gameplay, I didn't realize how poorly made my freeform character was until I made a topic about it here--about 30 or so.
At the very least, a retcon at 40 would help.
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However, I think CO is best. I've tried the other two and I prefer CO and continue to pay my subscription and regularly buy zen.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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