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sterga
Posts: 2,353 Arc User
Last week I was asked my opinion of the state of the game and what I think could be done to make CO the game people fell in love with again. It's something I needed to think about, so here I am, making a forum post by request. I'll briefly go over where I see the game at now and what I think could be done to change things. I'm going to emphasize things that help retention and some monetization.
Where we are now.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the #1 problem CO has right now is that the magic of being a superhero is not there at all.
If you play long enough, you start to recognizing people from their toons. Even with names turned off, I can tell who people are because many of us have a main with a certain look. We are in a city of superheroes. Who wants to show up at a Bloodmoon boss and see four f-ing Foxbat Fliers? People don't hate vehicles because they're powerful or expensive, they hate them because they take away from magic of being in a city full of champions.
Power imbalances take away choices for creativity. It's a struggle to build a theme that is still powerful and can contribute to a team of peers instead of being out shined and relegated to glorified cheerleader. The differences are even more apparent when you start doing "end game" content like Grav or F&I.
CO went F2P under Atari. It was done badly. PW came in a few months later and picked up Cryptic. CO was dumped on the back burner to focus on STO and Neverwinter. This game is in the unfortunate position of having a poorly done F2P and being neglected for so long.
Changes to be made.
Pick a target audience and balance the game for them. I'm under no illusion that the game should be balanced for me, but if I can blow through almost everything as a squishy AT, what do you think the average FF can do? The game should be appropriately challenging so people can feel heroic instead of bored.
Give everyone a FF slot. New accounts can have one AT slot for training wheels and one FF slot for when they figure out what the hell is going on. Balance the game for FFs. Lower the price of FF slot permanently. Give the option to "upgrade" ATs to FF for a modest price. $50 is not modest. $50 is BS.
Balance the powers. There is no reason why a rimfire - hard frost - strafing run build is doing 9k dps while most other builds do 2k dps. That's in Grav not a Burst. There isn't even a reason to participate in TEAM content when you see that.
None of the villains feel threatening. Am I supposed to be afraid of some chick in a teddy going on a drunken rampage? Fire and Ice could have been prevented with couple's counseling. Why am I stopping powerful lore villains from robbing a bank or kidnapping Mayor McDopey? Warlord has killed more heroes than any supervillain not named Dr. Destroyer, but is nothing more than a filthy BlackRedder in game. Gigaton is Dr. Destroyer's head of security, survivor of Project Sunburst, leader of the Destroyers, and totally forgettable NPC that you smack down in two minutes. And I wasn't even talking about the terrible AI.
New Player Experience
The first thing that needs to change is the text when you make a new character. "I'm Done! Take me to the tutorial." No, just no. Superheroes don't do tutorials. That text should be more along the lines of "Answer the distress signal." or whatever. Once the button is clicked we see Defender talking about the invasion and how he needs your help. This is your first mission as a superhero! The cut scene is good. As soon as you take control of your character, you are accosted by idiot boxes. Get rid of them. Every single one. If you can't show players game mechanics, you are failing.
After the first mission (never call it a tutorial) are more idiot boxes. Those need to go away as well. Stop killing the immersion of the game. Every moment logged in should remind you that you are a champion.
The next problem: You just help saved The City of The Future to be given a lame **** mission dealing with gangs. That is such a huge let down. Why not just make every enemy scale to our level? (Considering it's already in game...) Then we can go where ever we want, whenever we want. As a superhero, I have no interest in punting some loony, prescription drug lover up and down the street. Again.
Oh and this is a superhero game not a slapstick comedy. If you don't know how to add humor responsibly, hire someone or stop it.
The Nemesis System
This needs attention. Do you want to retain players long term? (I'm hoping the answer is 'yes'.) Focus on adding function and features to this. I'm going to care a whole lot more about the world I play in if I can develop and hunt my own personal enemy down. Not only do I like creating my nemesis, I like showing off my nemesis. I would like more opportunities to do this than in Q Pi
Where we are now.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the #1 problem CO has right now is that the magic of being a superhero is not there at all.
If you play long enough, you start to recognizing people from their toons. Even with names turned off, I can tell who people are because many of us have a main with a certain look. We are in a city of superheroes. Who wants to show up at a Bloodmoon boss and see four f-ing Foxbat Fliers? People don't hate vehicles because they're powerful or expensive, they hate them because they take away from magic of being in a city full of champions.
Power imbalances take away choices for creativity. It's a struggle to build a theme that is still powerful and can contribute to a team of peers instead of being out shined and relegated to glorified cheerleader. The differences are even more apparent when you start doing "end game" content like Grav or F&I.
CO went F2P under Atari. It was done badly. PW came in a few months later and picked up Cryptic. CO was dumped on the back burner to focus on STO and Neverwinter. This game is in the unfortunate position of having a poorly done F2P and being neglected for so long.
Changes to be made.
Pick a target audience and balance the game for them. I'm under no illusion that the game should be balanced for me, but if I can blow through almost everything as a squishy AT, what do you think the average FF can do? The game should be appropriately challenging so people can feel heroic instead of bored.
Give everyone a FF slot. New accounts can have one AT slot for training wheels and one FF slot for when they figure out what the hell is going on. Balance the game for FFs. Lower the price of FF slot permanently. Give the option to "upgrade" ATs to FF for a modest price. $50 is not modest. $50 is BS.
Balance the powers. There is no reason why a rimfire - hard frost - strafing run build is doing 9k dps while most other builds do 2k dps. That's in Grav not a Burst. There isn't even a reason to participate in TEAM content when you see that.
None of the villains feel threatening. Am I supposed to be afraid of some chick in a teddy going on a drunken rampage? Fire and Ice could have been prevented with couple's counseling. Why am I stopping powerful lore villains from robbing a bank or kidnapping Mayor McDopey? Warlord has killed more heroes than any supervillain not named Dr. Destroyer, but is nothing more than a filthy BlackRedder in game. Gigaton is Dr. Destroyer's head of security, survivor of Project Sunburst, leader of the Destroyers, and totally forgettable NPC that you smack down in two minutes. And I wasn't even talking about the terrible AI.
New Player Experience
The first thing that needs to change is the text when you make a new character. "I'm Done! Take me to the tutorial." No, just no. Superheroes don't do tutorials. That text should be more along the lines of "Answer the distress signal." or whatever. Once the button is clicked we see Defender talking about the invasion and how he needs your help. This is your first mission as a superhero! The cut scene is good. As soon as you take control of your character, you are accosted by idiot boxes. Get rid of them. Every single one. If you can't show players game mechanics, you are failing.
After the first mission (never call it a tutorial) are more idiot boxes. Those need to go away as well. Stop killing the immersion of the game. Every moment logged in should remind you that you are a champion.
The next problem: You just help saved The City of The Future to be given a lame **** mission dealing with gangs. That is such a huge let down. Why not just make every enemy scale to our level? (Considering it's already in game...) Then we can go where ever we want, whenever we want. As a superhero, I have no interest in punting some loony, prescription drug lover up and down the street. Again.
Oh and this is a superhero game not a slapstick comedy. If you don't know how to add humor responsibly, hire someone or stop it.
The Nemesis System
This needs attention. Do you want to retain players long term? (I'm hoping the answer is 'yes'.) Focus on adding function and features to this. I'm going to care a whole lot more about the world I play in if I can develop and hunt my own personal enemy down. Not only do I like creating my nemesis, I like showing off my nemesis. I would like more opportunities to do this than in Q Pi
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Pricing is the biggest downfall in this game. Subscriptions are awesome. But if they want to follow through intelligently into the F2P market, they should keep prices away from absurd.
As for Nemesis, may never happen.
As for Bases, its an inevitable step to any MMO.
I agree, and I still say the solution to this is to allow customization to vehicles. I would rather the game not feature them at all if we're not able to make them our own. Of course, I accept the fact that no one is going to go for cutting them out completely, so we might as well put a band-aid on this thing.
Heroes don't buy stuff off the lot. Your bike is 'The Silver Streak', or 'The Jackal', or Thunderhawk or Mister Flappypoot's Flying Buttcrusher Express. People see it and they know you're the SOB behind the wheel/stick.
Don't sell vehicles by appearance, sell them by slots if you want to monetize them.
I still say that there's a way around this.
First of all, that price needs to be chopped down significantly. It's freeform with nothing but 'freeform power building'. There's nothing else. At least open up ALL the options subscribers have for them.
Otherwise, I'd say offer the option to make a Silver's character freeform at level 40.
It's not just the villains, it's the missions. Why would anyone kidnap a Mayor? It's probably one of the most useless political positions on the face of the earth. Wanna impress me? Kidnap the Chief of Staff of PRIMUS. The only villain that has a reason to kidnap the Mayor that makes sense is Foxbat- he has unpaid parking tickets.
A lot of the villains just don't... feel scary. I know in the books a lot of them were pretty badass and terrifying, so they should look and feel that way. It's like someone making the Playskool version of Megatron... it's kind of sad.
It's actually worse than all those 'parody' movies made by these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Friedberg_and_Aaron_Seltzer
It's sad and not funny and needs to be put to sle- er... 'taken to the farm with all the other puppies to run and play!'
what I'd like changed.
IN big letters at character creation,
as well as the costume and behavior guidelines
You are NOT allowed to copy any character from film, comic or book in name, looks or background. When reported your character will be defaulted.
Have a Short, simple English version of the TOS, instead of the full length legal version which very few people read.
SOB- also means silly old bast...d.
But yes, they really need to be more individual.
imagine going into the vehicle store and choosing,
look - bike, tank, saucer(hey I want one) with a shape adjustment program to stretch it along all 3 axis.
colours- main, secondary, trim.
decals - front, side, rear, fins, underneath(I want a target symbol there, right over the most heavily armoured spot)
accessories - fuzzy dice, weapons on show, sheilds, big **** speakers, flood lights.
slots- choose your weapons, which get added to the price. If you haven't got the full money yet. save the file as a named model and come back later
yes, change all the mobs to skull level and remove the levels on all missions except VB crisis. That is supposed to be at the end.
Start where you want.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
One thing I would change is the banner. I get the meaning behind it, but it's not anything you'd see in comic books. Maybe something like a mascot or a character that's an ally to the supergroup.
Anyway, really cool stuff here.
The C-Store stuff is too expensive.
All ATs should just be free--would give more variety to folks trying things out.
Nemesis system should be CO's biggest selling point. It really could be.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
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!
They once had a Blocking tutorial, it's right after the beginning, before the find code briefcase one. MCPD guys is going to be testing weapons on you and you need to successfully block 4 times to continue, something like that.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
...the ultimate Contrast Moe (or not).
I remember this!
THAT was a good Block Tutorial!
The fact that it was removed was a horrible decision
Anyways I agree on pretty much all accounts w/ Sterga. Esp about making FF more accessible and having an option to raise the Silver resource cap.
Also, all ATs free? Yes pls. Esp if they aren't going to bother making them better- paying for some of the worst ATs out there (Inventor, Impulse) is just silly. W/ all their restrictions and most of them being quite flawed, there just shouldn't be premium ones.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I do think FF slots are much too expensive. I don't agree that all AT's should be free. However, The existing paid AT's need to be tweaked in order to be useful on rampages. (For ex: Give the inventor resurrection serum).
I'm a weird MMO player in that I'm not a huge fan of "Dungeon Style" DnD type settings. I never have been, even back when I played table top. I might migrate back to STO or grit my teeth and try DCUO again. I was hoping Shadowrun would make a go of it.. but that looks like a lost cause.
I understand that Champions is pretty much on maintenance mode. But PWE really needs to throw it's loyal players a bone here. Even if they can only manage one significant content update a year. How much in resources can that really cost them?
My guess is the return isn't worth the investment of time, energy, and money. This isn't a a "oh noes the game is dying" kind of rant. Just more of a .. "I wish PWE would pay more attention to Champions" one.
please cryptic read
To be fair, back before Freeform Slots were a thing, many players on the forums said they'd easily pay $30 - $50 for a single Freeform Slot. Cryptic may have just been going off of what the players were demanding.
Which is about half the reason we're where we're at right now... listening to everyone.
Even when I started playing CO, and I had no intention of subscribing- had you offered me a Freeform slot for $50 I'd have laughed.
$30 I would have considered it but I would have wanted all the colorable powers and my stipend lifted.
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 am speechless.
Now let's see if Cryptic hears any of this.
They'd likely send you this one.
-
-
And I mean the picture. Because even a smashed Zonda is probably worth half-a-mill.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
What I don't agree with is how its implemented. Freeform slot toons should be able to access power colorization too, but only for that specific toon if the player remains silver. I'd go as far as wanting all gold-access costume pieces unlocked for that specific toon as well including the other gold benefits. Make it a "Gold slot" instead of just a freeform slot. Give the silver player the choice between paying smaller-priced, concurring fees to access gold for multiple characters or make a single but larger-priced payment to get the same but for a single character. I think that would better justify the $50 price and make the slot more attractive sales wise instead of slashing the price.
As much as I'd love them to continue working on the nemesis system. The previous Q&A mentioned that Cryptic has no interest in doing anything further about it sadly in black and white.
At $50 price tag acces only to FF builds is not enough. Additions like the proposed ones would add more sense to this pricing.
Wit no changes, as it stands now, when FF slot represents only FF power selection and nothing else (and it must be remembered that Silver account is hit by one big inconvenience with freeform slot - global resource limit that makes retraining at 40 lvl very troublesome) a $20 price tag makes much more sense.
Sorry, I hate to be a naysayer but how many times do we have to be told no before it sets in that we will never get a major expansion.
We can keep sending our great ideas that could possible make this game money and it will keep hitting deaf ears. Hell even half the things people find in the PTS get ignored until it hits live.
Just expect lockboxes and small temp events and you will be happy. nothing more is coming.
I must have missed the <irony> tags in your sig, then.
In the meantime, I'll keep fighting. Kinda comes with the genre, you know.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
This has pretty much become my philosophy concerning this game. It's... quite unfortunate, though.
Oh yeah, the sig is full of Irony. It started long ago with #goatees for helmets. and when that happened someone said I needed to update my sig.
The XP bonus for Golds is only until level 15 or so. I was thinking more along the lines of an all the time bonus. I believe going gold and staying silver should both be attractive options for game play not keeping silvers as "gimpy" status to encourage subs. Because it's not working.
Vehicles are a short term way to make money. They have little to no long term value for the game. I would say as they are now is more of a detriment to the game. Cryptic can still throw vehicles out, but they should not be the focus of the game right now.
The reason why AT should be free is because they're just training wheels for learning the game. No one goes gold for the "premium" ATs. They go gold for crap tons of FF slots. FFs should be the focus of game play experience, not ATs. It's even in line with the game slogan "be the hero you want to be" which is not what an AT is.
The reason I don't agree with $50 for FF slots is because it doesn't encourage repeat purchases. I'm not sure what the price should be, but look at how people go nuts over FF slots when they're 50% off. It makes me wonder what would happen to sales if that was the price all of the time.
Some of the prices are too high and some are too low. It may be too late for them to change the prices for things that are "too low", but it's never too late to make expensive items more reasonably priced.
I tried to make suggestion things I feel would be realistic. (OK, some things are a bit out there.) Since I don't have game data and I'm not actually a developer, I have no idea if any of this stuff is so far out there that it would be impossible. I chose the Nemesis system since it has the most potential to help this game. People love to show off their creations. As for guilds, that's just flat out a retention mechanic. People that keep playing are more likely to spend money.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I agree w/ you 100% on the op and this post. That being said, this is what has me worried:
As a purchaser of many ff slots, if they were offered at a reasonable price (say $10-20) I would go nuts and buy tons. However, a subscription is similarly priced and offers the new player so many more (albeit temporary) benefits, and we don't have enough gold subs at present to warrant a proper paid community rep (yes Turtle is great but he *was promoted). Absent a massive marketing campaign (which we will not get) where in hades do we find a formula to increase game population too the extent they would face the above mentioned choices?
Bah I'm blabbering, apologies.
Next thing they should do is a Dr Destroyer SUPER RAMPAGE :O I want to see Destroyer destroy stuff >_>
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!
Likewise, Takofanes and the other undead heroes need to be doubled or tripled in power--more health, higher defenses, bigger area attacks, and more damage.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
I'm with you on cutting the price of freeform and giving out the ATs for free, though. I know maybe 3 people who've bought one, and I know like half of the game's population at this point.
RIP Caine
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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I would prefer that they keep the FF slots as they are and instead work on balancing the ATs and creating team content which would encourage folks to get together and play.
FFs are great for PvP but the PvE content is way too easy for them....
I will point out that when the game first came out it was both better AND worse at the same time.
From the Tutorial you went straight to Canada or the Desert, Millenium city was actually mid-game content. Now this was better because you lept to dealing with something more akin to actual character progression ("You've saved the city but the attack has caused villain groups to push forward while we were saving the city, we need your help in these hotspots!" kind of thing).
However, note that none of the Millenium city content has actually changed (some of it has been moved around, given to Kodiak for example), so it was actually even MORE jarring to go from dealing with appropriate superhero threats to suddenly fighting streetcrime...after you'd beaten up VIPER agents, Irradiated super mutants and the like.
So its better now than it was (it makes sense for a fresh-faced hero to start out at street level and work their way up to World/Cosmic threats, which is how CoH did it, you started out fighting street gangs and ended up fighting a highly trained, incredibly well funded anti-metahuman organisation with equipment made specifically to screw over metahumans OR evil dimensional dopplegangers OR the remenants of the alien species that nearly successfully took over Earth and cost untold number of lives to fight off OR A supervillain that has been around for over 200+ years and is pretty much Dr Destroyer in a Steampunk brass mecha-suit) but the whole tutorial is still a bit too grand to jump from 'saving the world' to 'has a bit of trouble fighting street toughs'.
Don't worry, I'm sure he is still out there, plotting...infact if any villain (since it seemed numerous heroes) survived whatever RP explanation people have for 'multiverse ending event', then it would be him.
Though don't worry some other villains did survive too (I have a Carnival of Shadows Ring Mistress character (who is currently doing the whole 'pretend to be a hero thing since none of my backup actually made it through and I'm vastly outnumbered' thing) and I've seen a Malta Gunslinger and Malta Sapper cohort as well).
Speaking of which...I do wondered if I could pull off a close copy of old Nemesis..I can already indentify some of the parts required).
The SG I play with is a lot of CoX veterans. They actually RP that theoretically their world was possibly destroyed by horrors from the edge of reality. Their story is that there was a mass-evacuation of several civilians and heroes and villains... but some were scattered or even destroyed outright in the dimensional rift, others awakened with scrambled memories of what their world was. Others are actually entirely new variations of what they were.
My main character has a 'Slobberknocker' developed from a damaged Arachnos Wolf Spider mace. His toddler has an Arachnos shirt.
Malta is actually alive and well according to some- operating in various organizations (even PRIMUS) or as smaller cells under a different name. Truthfully, the organization could do very well in CO...
I have also made something resembling a Widow before.
When this game was launched, ATs didn't exists. They were tacked on in the F2P move. If you take away FFs, you kill a big reason why many people play. CO would be reduced to another ho-hum, class based game with an awesome paper doll maker. Lets face it, ATs are not well build and the only reason they can be used at all is due to how easy the game is.
There are several reason for making all enemies use that scary monster thing. The biggest one is that all content will always be relevant. Having the freedom to just go wherever you want whenever you want means you never have to go to areas you hate and head straight to your favorite sections. Any new content no longer has to factor 'what level should it be' as it won't matter.
CO went F2P because subs weren't working. The whole idea is to make this game appealing to silver players as silver players and not trying to get them to sub or make them feel like they're being suckered when they spend their money.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Yeah, I went with the Earth-1, Earth-2 explanation myself. Each of my CO characters are parallel versions of my CoH characters with similar but subtly different histories.
Still miss Lord Nemesis though. Perhaps I will use that costume file floating around the costumes forum to have Nemesis as my Nemesis so he can Nemesis plot while he Nemesis plots.
I have to agree wholeheartedly with this.
Not exactly right.
CO went F2P not because subs weren't working outright. CO went F2P because the idea of having the game service exclusively accessed by paying a subscription fee upfront was no longer feasible. The tutorial being a free demo at the time is also not the best representation of what the game is about.
F2P was meant to provide more flexible paying options alongside a subscription model, not as a means to replace subs entirely. The game's full content can now be accessed free by silver players because it gives them a better introductory feel for the game. That helps them to make more confident decisions in investing in the cash shop and/or accessing premium features via sub to enrich their game experience.
The whole idea is to make the game appealing to silver players to get them to spend on the game. There's only so far you can go with the free lunches since it's a business and all.
Power Creep: http://youtu.be/Bxszx60ZwGw
Bad Monetization: http://youtu.be/Mhz9OXy86a0
Microtransactions: http://youtu.be/WXA559KNopI
Power of Community:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-04-10-community-is-a-double-edged-sword
Mid-core gaming. Defining, sizing, and seizing the opportunity.
http://www.newzoo.com/press-releases/mid-core-gaming-defining-sizing-and-seizing-the-opportunity/
How to Spot a Midcore Game
http://youtu.be/ZRbJzw1TqT4
Why Core Gamers Hate Free To Play
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/29/why-core-gamers-hate-free-to-play
Retention Microtalks (GDC)
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020594/Microtalks-Retention-Tips-for-Free
Social Whales: Understanding a New Kind of Player
http://youtu.be/PqjoRz7UVRM
Social Whales InfoGraph
http://www.ninjametrics.com/blog/infographic-social-value-finding-the-true-influencers-in-social-games-and-mobile-apps
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009