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How to please almost everyone - a Compromise.
gradii
Posts: 11,744 Arc User
Introducing the Unified Recognition System!
All recognition becomes "Champions Recognition" Prices on gear and rewards are adjusted and given a flat "Champions Recognition" Cost.
Champions Recognition is earned from ALL tiers of content, the higher the difficulty the more it grants. Missions and Alert dailies would grant the least, Rampages a medium amount, and Epic content and Cosmics the most.
Everyone plays the content they enjoy, everyone earns gear. Want to earn gear faster? Do tougher content!
Really a simple solution at least MOST people should be able to get behind.
All recognition becomes "Champions Recognition" Prices on gear and rewards are adjusted and given a flat "Champions Recognition" Cost.
Champions Recognition is earned from ALL tiers of content, the higher the difficulty the more it grants. Missions and Alert dailies would grant the least, Rampages a medium amount, and Epic content and Cosmics the most.
Everyone plays the content they enjoy, everyone earns gear. Want to earn gear faster? Do tougher content!
Really a simple solution at least MOST people should be able to get behind.
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My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Member of Paragon Dawn: Because some people like friendly helpful communities.
Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
True. Not a problem either, those people can just not do that content. They'll have to forgo the rewards tho, which is perfectly fair. Yes, that's because people will always complain. They would still be complaining if your idea was implemented. Can I get some documentation on that "vast majority" thing though? Thanks. While you're at it, get me some metrics on how many people there are that are happy and have no reason to post about anything.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
You're trying to fix a problem that really isn't broken here. The gear isn't a huge leap over what is available for those that just want to do solo stuff and people acting like said gear is required to do anything is getting ridiculous at this point. Further kind of funny that people think they need the gear right this second to be complete or it's unfair to alts as well or any number of things. It's essentially like walking into a restaurant and expecting to get the presidential booth in the end.
The content isn't as difficult as people claim either. We take new people into TA all the time, and I've already told people, multiple times, why the dino fight fails all the time. Whether people choose to listen or not is up to them. There's only so many times a person or group of people can take individuals in and carry them, they have to learn on their own and if they are unwilling to do so, we can't really help much further.
And in the end, trying to please everyone is just the road to mediocrity. You end up making the content you want people to play worthless as people will just take the easy road for their rewards. This is not a good solution, and in the end, you are trying to make a system of cake and eat it to, when such a system has provably just made people leave, even here in Champions.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Silverspar on PRIMUS
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
The economics of MMOs usually mean that the devs have to play to the mediocre - there's more of them, and they'll pay, if it's fun - while indulging the elite. CO might well be the first MMO where the game population is so low that they no longer have to do that, and can be completely elitist. Which would be odd.
I'm mostly of the opinion that there's too much faff in Champs with the money raising, but I'll admit I'm not as hardcore as others who've played as long as I have, so maybe there's some major money sink that's super important to the game at some point.
Like, apart from a few travel powers and the costumes, is there anything worth having in the recognition stores? Like, enough to seriously want to grind up enemies in the hope of maximising your recognition point returns?
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
That should read like this instead: "Trying to please everyone is difficult, but being as inclusive as possible is the road to being a successful game designer." After all, more people are getting enjoyment out of your game so more people are playing it, which means more money for the designer (and everyone else). Completely untrue unless the content is abysmally unenjoyable in the first place. Some players will take the easy route, and that's fine because they're engaged in and enjoying your game in the process. Others will still take the hard road, either because they enjoy challenges or because the road will get them to their precious rewards faster.
Let's imagine a hypothetical tier of content and gear comes out. It offers an easy daily quest anyone can do solo for 1 widget. There's also a hardcore group daily quest which rewards 5 widgets. Players can only complete one of these two quests on a given day, so they have to choose--easy or hard. If each piece of gear costs 50 widgets, would you take the hard 10 day route or the easy 50 day route? Note that for a full 6 piece set, that's 2 months vs 10 (!) months.
The other problem with that statement is this: "the content you want people to play"
In the world of game design, this isn't how you do things. A game designer's core job is to create content that players enjoy and want to play. I get that it's a growing trend in online games to artificially inflate participation in undesirable, poorly-made content by way of dangling carrots, but that doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. A good thought experiment would be to imagine what content you'd do, if any, if all the rewards in the game were shut off for a month.
A good game designer doesn't say, "I want you guys playing this content!" Instead, he/she will step back, see what parts of the game people enjoy and which ones they don't, and then go from there. Too many game designers get so caught up in their own "vision" for their game that they lose sight of what the players are actually enjoying about it. I don't get what you're trying to say here. How can you even compare the sub numbers of this game to WoW? WoW is a popular game because their devs completely understand the value of making their most meaningful content accessible to everyone. To emphasize this, the last 2 expansions had questlines for a legendary cloak and ring, respectively. These were doable by the most hardcore raiders as well as the most casual of scrubscakes like myself. WoW has varying difficulties for their raids as well, ensuring that everybody gets to experience them. In CO terms, that'd be like TA having multiple difficulties instead of just 1.
So exactly what kind of comparison were you trying to make here?
It's actually not untrue and again you have since 1997 evidence and proof that backs these facts up. When you create content that anyone can get equal rewards in you remove the incentive to keep playing. Fun has little to do with these facts when the fun for many is actually growing more powerful with the character(s) they play with. Try as you might you can't ignore those statistical facts. The industry continues to try and make their games more accessible and involve less of the things people said were "too hard" and in their attempt for convenience push those same people away again because the games become too easy. This is not some misconstrued debate it's plain fact that the majority of reasons given for leaving a game tend to be too easy. You are just blatantly ignoring what I am saying at this point so even though I've explained it multiple times over the years, people still refuse to see this fact. There is 17 years of evidence, there is a reason WoW's biggest growth period was during Vanilla, there is a reason that Nolstarius server got such a huge following that Blizzard shut it down. Convenience doesn't always make the game better, and making the game easier is the worst solution you can give for a game designed around longevity and keeping people around.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Most people are going to do the fastest / easiest / most efficient content they can to achieve their goals. This is basically what happens in every game ever. Content made worthless is content that wasn't designed well in the first place.
WoW's number have gone down due to numerous types of changes in the game, in the mmo market, tech changes, aging gamers, and other things. To say it is due to the game becoming easier is to ignore a whole lot of other things even within the game.
"[...] making the game easier is the worst solution you can give for a game designed around longevity and keeping people around."
Uh, no. There are people who enjoy easy games. Different people have different values. I generally don't play games for their level of difficulty, but for their customization. I don't play Path of Exile because it's more challenging than CO, I play it because the build customization has a lot of depth and options. I have no problem with CO being the easy game I can mow over bad guys in because it still has the customization.
Not everyone determines if a game is good or not based on how "challenging" it is. And let's face it, CO was never a game about challenge.
The OP seems pretty clear that the most "challenging" content would still be the fastest way to gain currency, but it wouldn't be the only option for people who still want the currency. If someone can't or isn't interested in that "challenging" content, they have other, less efficient, options. I fail to see a problem with giving people more options. Some of us don't care about ghetto 2004 scripted raid mechanics or trying to show off how big our epeen is so some idiot on the interwebz can tell us how "special" we are.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Also, the biggest complaints people had about WoD weren't the "too easy" issue you keep going on about, but:
1) Garrisons made the game feel too chore-y, like some crappy facebook game.
2) There wasn't much to do during the endgame initially. Blizzard kinda oopsed on that.
3) Blizzard, for the first time ever, tried to make the expansion a no-fly zone. That generated so much backlash that they later realized the mistake of "developer vision" colliding with what players actually like, and flying went back into the game. Things got a lot more positive from there.
As for the rest, saying "its numbers are falling because it tried to please everyone and failed" (essentially what you're saying) is complete nonsense with no actual facts to back it up. Arguably the biggest factors are more likely:
1) Time: It's been on a steady decline over the years because its playerbase has grown up, gotten jobs, started families, and had less time to play overall.
2) Saturation: There's a much larger assortment of quality MMOs to choose from now than there was 10 years ago when wow was a baby. Back then, WoW pretty much had the monopoly, crushing popular-at-the-time games like Everquest. Know what made it so successful? It tried to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible. In a sea of MMOs where you either grouped up or sat around doing nothing, WoW had something to offer to the person who just wanted to log on and quest by themselves for an hour or so. Likewise, it had stuff for the cutting-edge raiders. This is something it has continued since it's been running, and it's managed to fully sustain itself for over 10 years on a subscription model. Not too many other MMOs can wear that badge of honor. Huh. Tell that to Star Trek Online, which is totally crushing CO in terms of popularity and success. Not counting the lockbox/lobi cash shop nonsense, everyone in STO -can- get equal rewards and gear. So maybe your logic is flawed.
Your statement: People leave games because the developers try to appeal to too many people and it makes the game too easy.
So how would someone concerned with facts go about proving this? How about you poll people who leave various games to find out why they leave? The results you'll find are probably going to be something like this:
- Not enough time to play
- Didn't like it
- Too expensive
- Too hard
- Mom took away my internet
- Too easy
- Found a better game
- A recent change pissed me off
- Got banned
- Too grindy
- Got hacked
- My class got nerfed
- Toxic community
- Friends quit
...etc
Conclusion: Yes, some people will quit a game because they find it too easy, however, I feel pretty safe in saying that the people who quit because it's "too easy" are going to be a very, very tiny slice of the pie. Feel free to use the scientific method (not the reverse scientific method) to prove your point if you like, but until then, it's easily dismissed as nonsense. LOL don't just say it's there--share that "evidence" if it even exists.
You're not taking in all the facts that might be relevant to that growth period. I stated plenty of other factors above.
Also, "Nostalrius" got shut down because of a thing called copyright infringement. You don't just get to take someone else's IP and do whatever the hell you want with it. That's not how the adult world works.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
They only give the 1st place trophy to the person who finished the race first for a reason - maybe the people in 2nd and 3rd want to argue that they should also get a 1st place trophy if they agree to run around the track a few more times, but that completely devalues the 1st place trophy and then nobody has a trophy that means anything. This has a lot of meaning to people who have studied the psychology behind "fun" and know that it's not just about making colors and shapes move around on a screen.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Glad to see you coming over all sensible and agreeable after all this time. What kept you?
meaning you need special rewards for higher difficulty in order to make it a valid choice
Generally speaking higher difficulties aren't rewarded with better drops, they're rewarded with a higher frequency of high-end gear drops and perks/recognition (as bragging rights tend to be the main interest of the difficulty-minded). This is fairer - undertake a task of greater difficulty to progress towards the goal more quickly, and obtain the justified rewards, titles and appropriate community respect. The recent content is CO does not scale in this way - it just shuts people out behind a brick wall of obscure build requirements and irritating tactics, making content unplayable and unappealing. This has been a problem in the game forever and the developers - having hinted at a solution during the Nightmare Invasion event - have now run back to their bad old ways.
Well no, in many games higher difficulty rewards better gear, as well as other exclusive rewards, and this tends to make it more meaningful. If everyone can get it just by taking "the longer road" then when you say "Look what I've got!" people just shrug and say "Neat, you did the easy stuff a bunch to get that". You don't obtain the community respect at all, and gaining the rewards/titles had nothing to do with you facing greater challenge because that guy over there who never faced them has the same stuff.
Again with this talk of "shutting people out". Again with this talk of "obscure build requirements". Complete nonsense. Just shows that you don't actually know anything about the content, what it requires, and who can achieve success in it.
Irritating tactics... gonna guess you mean trinity tactics? Stop playing trinity games then. Yes, CO is a trinity game, and there is no getting away from that ever... well, other than making brain-dead easy content, in which case it just becomes a "everybody plays dps or is slowing us down" game.
You say the content is unplayable... and yet I see people every day playing it. You find the content unappealing? Neat. I find a lot of the ezmode content in the game unappealing... you know what I do? I don't play it, and I don't ask for it to be removed.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I don't play for "community respect". I can see it's important to you, though, which would explain the constant grandstanding and the need to insist that the newer content is just what the game needs, when all the evidence - and in particular the lack of participation outside of your group of mates - flies in the face of it.
Again with this talk of "shutting people out". Again with this talk of "obscure build requirements". Complete nonsense. Just shows that you don't actually know anything about the content, what it requires, and who can achieve success in it.
I understand the content, I just find it extremely dull. I can only play it with certain builds, which aren't very interesting. Due to the low game population trying to play it involves a great deal of hanging around, which is tedious - there are other, equally challenging games that I can play with no waiting required. The way that it's been constructed, particularly the Cosmics and some Rampages, means that success is dependent on having certain build types around. I don't know what those requirements are, or how to work towards building them or acquiring the gear necessary. The gameplay isn't feeding back what I need to know to develop. Impasse.
I find a lot of the ezmode content in the game unappealing... you know what I do? I don't play it, and I don't ask for it to be removed.
And neither is anybody else. Another in the endless, constantly spammed, mis-representations of other people's opinions. Will you ever stop doing this?
The Nightmare Invasion Mil City event allowed players of all levels to participate at an appropriate level of difficulty, without constantly getting creamed for being the wrong level-gated zone. How refreshing that was. Having cracked it once, It really shouldn't be difficult to make end-game content on the same basis where the challenge and reward scales properly according to the player's ability and wish to compete. And yet it still seems to be evading the devs. And that - combined with their decision to make their new content an absolute necessity for end-game gear - is turning people off the game.
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
The irony of course is that they probably waste even more time waiting for it to change from PP to RR than they'd spend if they just went into PP.
Well if you find it dull, don't play it, problem solved.
People have repeatedly told you that the "certain builds" thing is a myth. You're onto something when you say you don't know what those requirements are... go with that, and start listening to people who have attained success in the Cosmics and do know what the requirements are ( specifically with how very very low those requirements are ). The game isn't telling you about which specific builds you need to be using because the entire concept of doing so is a myth.
Did you think I was saying that people are saying easy content should be removed? I just need clarification on that point because if it's true I need to explain how badly you read what I typed.
On the other hand if you're claiming that nobody is demanding that challenging content be nerfed to suit their personal taste, then you're just plain lying or completely oblivious to the fact that people have done that every single time anything even remotely challenging has ever been produced for the game, and with cosmics they do so on a daily basis.
Not all content needs to be the same challenge level, it's okay for content to have different challenge levels. What don't you get about that?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Case in point, today there was a good Dino run going. We were passing the dps checks, got it down to 1% health. Then one idiot tank who was standing with the dps pulled aggro. Dino sprays breath attack, dps gets wiped. Event failure. Then some key players' real life shows up, they have to log off, and the group never reforms. 39 people had two hours of their life wasted. Sure, you could say 'because of the one idiot', but there's always going to be one idiot on an open world map. The real reason is that 'the mechanics of the event give the one idiot all the power'.
TA doesn't have the same problems, but it is a big time investment, and you need to have a group of friends to run it consistently. Overall, more variety is always better. They should consider revamping some of the older content to drop GCR too. They could make an 'Elite' version of Alerts, which would take minimal dev resources. Just please, no more cosmics. We have enough of them and they aren't really that fun.
What's elitist bullcrap is the raising the bar over new players. Justice Gear used to require mastery of the Rampages. Now, players will have to master Rampages and either Cosmics or TA to get it.
You got Justice Gear by jumping over a 4 foot bar, and expect the next guy to have to jump a 6 foot bar to get the same gear. Why? Because you were here first? That's bullcrap and your explanations are merely excuses to rationalize your utter selfishness.
If JG is the top reward at least for now then it needs to be linked to the top content. Rampages are not that level anymore. The players as a whole got better.
For the record I only have two JG sets and ~ 20 alts with which I play end game content. I'm in for a long trip if I want them all in JG so this isn't a case of "I've got mine."
The people who would be irritable about everyone having the same rewards would be the people who did the harder content, and rightfully so. Many people choose (and want) the path of least resistance but there should be a reward for harder content. Criticize the content if you like but making the rewards match the effort and difficulty is a no-brainer.
The main complaint with linking the two (top gear/top content) is that they are not linked currently. It isn't about "who was here first" but about making the top level content and rewards match.
I suppose the other way to make the gear and content match and make it more fair to everyone is to introduce better gear than JG and make it GCR gear. People would still be complaining but in that case we wouldn't have *any* chance to get the top gear without playing top content like we do now. So feel lucky you had the chance before the change.
And anyone who is here complaining was also "here first" anyway as you can still get tokens through rampages. The devs have given us ample warning that things are going to change. They didn't have to do that.
Can't wait for the new zone so we can at least have some different complaints.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
It's not easy. And it's not fast. My JG set took six months with an AT, off and on. And that's the problem with the changes. It's all about slowing down people who are farming recog, trying to prevent frantic effort from going through content "too fast". Which those types of player will always find a way to do. In the meantime everyone else, who was just playing because it was fun, in the hours that they could... they'll take a hit which could stop them playing altogether.
People have repeatedly told you that the "certain builds" thing is a myth. You're onto something when you say you don't know what those requirements are... go with that, and start listening to people who have attained success in the Cosmics and do know what the requirements are ( specifically with how very very low those requirements are ).
Well, durr. Of course they are to you. You could probably roll a new toon and level it up with your eyes shut. A newbie would find Kevin Poe an impassable barrier. That's because you've got all this internalised knowledge of the game - going back half a decade, or so, pre-On Alert - which you're drawing on. And it's the same in the end game. There's a whole generation of level 40 CO players who've never even run a Lair. So what you think is unchallenging is, to them, incomprehensible and a certain fail. And to buy themselves the in-game time to work anything out, the other players look to the known solutions - gear and builds. A few hundred extra CON or a bit of DR might let them work out what to do, rather than Boom! You're Dead! But the current dev approach doesn't allow that. We've now got a triple whammy of difficult content (Did I read Bluhman say that the Shadow Destroyer gives "0% chance for error"?), bind-to-character currencies and high currency requirements for end-game gear... all of which is going to make it difficult for the people who don't currently understand the content to work it out. And that's a problem.