Well with the news that Cryptic and PWE are working on the new "Magic the Gathering MMO" I'm not holding my breath that we'll see any massive development (i.e. new content missions) for CO. And I don't say that to be a jerk. I just recall what a wasteland CO became while Neverwinter was being developed. Staff from this game got yanked to work on the new baby.
Would I love to see new content missions on CO? Oh god yes!!! I would squee with excitement. Do I actually expect that to happen? Realistically, I'd have to say no.
Eh, nobody does villain sides right anyway. It's too difficult. CoV was just a reskinned CoH and it was horrible. Villains plan, plot, create traps for heroes, etc. They're more active than reactive and that's really tough to create as a game without making you run a rail.
And your logic is? the REAL reason there will never be a villain side in CO is the fact that PWE doesn't care one bit about the game.
The real reason there won't be a villain side is because it's a lot of work that could be more profitably spent on other things. Writing up a competent villain side is an expansion on the scale of a couple new zones (and I'm not talking zones like QWZ, talking zones like MC), and if they were inclined to spend that much effort on the game, I think adding a couple hero zones would be more popular.
And your logic is? the REAL reason there will never be a villain side in CO is the fact that PWE doesn't care one bit about the game.
The real reason there won't be a villain side is because it's a lot of work that could be more profitably spent on other things. Writing up a competent villain side is an expansion on the scale of a couple new zones (and I'm not talking zones like QWZ, talking zones like MC), and if they were inclined to spend that much effort on the game, I think adding a couple hero zones would be more popular.
Pretty much this. If given the choice between more zones or expansions of existing zones versus a villain side, I'd say more zones anyday.
A villain side to me just isn't a good idea. It did not do COH any favours when they introduced a villain side.
You know what you said in no way invalidates what I said. if PWE cared enough about the game we'd get larger, meaningful updates.
It has nothing to do with caring. If PWE thought that large, meaningful updates would get them enough money to pay for the update plus a reasonable profit, we'd get those updates.
The question is, why do so few people run the comic book series?
The rewards are cruddy relative to the time investment. While they could use some updating for current PC power levels (I've caused Resistance to break because I killed Warden Arcana before she could activate her invulnerability phase), the big issue is terrible rewards.
Exactly! If they fixed these problems, it would open up a whole new set of content. I wonder how many people who are complaining about lack of content have run all the comic book series a few times. I really think a revamp of those, adding in decent and gated rewards and epic gear, upgrading the enemies and tightening up the stories would turn these into regularly run TFs. Then they could add another one every now and then and it becomes content that anyone can run at any level with any set of gear, whether solo or grouped.
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In the end, people don't even have an opinion on what kind of content they prefer. It's just about time/rewards. People will do literally anything so long as the time spent divided by the rewards equals out to the correct value.
And your logic is? the REAL reason there will never be a villain side in CO is the fact that PWE doesn't care one bit about the game.
Who in their right mind plays a game about being a hero to be a villain?
That's not really very logical of a statement. I mean do you seriously think you're a hero? I could play a villain in CO because, well, at the end of the day it's just a game and ultimately me being a villain or hero won't really matter.
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
At the end of the day treating it just like a game kills the immersion.
Okay, but there are limits to immersion. A villain side shouldn't really pose a threat to immersion; there are heroes, there are villains.
Fact, villain sides have been wildly unpopular in the hero medium. You've had two games that had them, both city of heroes and DCUO and both games the villain side was substantially smaller than the hero side.
At the end of the day treating it just like a game kills the immersion.
Okay, but there are limits to immersion. A villain side shouldn't really pose a threat to immersion; there are heroes, there are villains.
Fact, villain sides have been wildly unpopular in the hero medium. You've had two games that had them, both city of heroes and DCUO and both games the villain side was substantially smaller than the hero side.
The same thing happens in other games as well WoW and STO being good examples. I Klingon's & always have. So when STO launched I jumped over to Klingon side and stayed there. The same thing with COH & DCUO I immediately chose villain side. But here's the thing playing "red side" (Why is always red?) is always the least popular choice.
People want to see themselves as being the "good guy", even if their in-game behavior is anything but. I'm in a small and not-very profitable minority who enjoys the "bad" side faction in games. Players like me always get ignored because content for us costs more money than it makes. Pleasing "bad guy" players like me is throwing money out the window. That's just an MMO universal IMHO -- and it ain't changing anytime soon.
As far as CO goes. Expecting a low population game of this type to receive huge content expansions - isn't realistic. I'm not sure why people seem constantly surprised, shocked, alarmed and amazed by this fact. I'm fine with the current trend of updates. They are generally small, but do provide new things to do and some power adjustments. That's good enough.
Expecting a low population game of this type to receive huge content expansions - isn't realistic. I'm not sure why people seem constantly surprised, shocked, alarmed and amazed by this fact. I'm fine with the current trend of updates. They are generally small, but do provide new things to do and some power adjustments. That's good enough.
Klingons aren't "bad guys", they just have a viewpoint on the universe that doesn't mesh with the Federation. In STO, they've even gathered allies - my Gorn Dahar Master is an honored visitor to the Great Hall on Qo'noS.
In WoW, the Horde aren't "bad guys"; they're the victims of racist attacks from humans and night elves, and in the case of the tauren of being in conflict with centaurs over grazing areas (when humans had already settled on centaurs as being "better"). The orcs are also well aware of what could happen if their former masters ever came to Azaroth with the intent of "reclaiming" the Horde, and have no intention of permitting it. They see the Alliance as being too weak and foolish to stand against the ravages of the Burning Legion, and are actively trying to keep their erstwhile foes from laying down their weapons and forgetting how to fight.
Supervillains, on the other hand, are, well, villains. They're psychopaths who don't care about people in general and their victims in particular. Also, they're proactive, initiating plans which heroes are then supposed to try to foil - which, as I'm sure you can see, doesn't work well with the MMO format. As I recall, the folks at Paragon Studios said that after a brief surge, the only people who bought their villain expansion did so because it also introduced supergroup bases, and villainy just didn't attract the money.
"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!"
If the devs only have so much resources to spend, they might at least give us an equivalent to STO's foundry, so some players will at least take it upon themselves to provide the new content that CO lacks (inevitably along with some troll/garbage content as well, i reckon, but then, that's the price to pay for access to UGC).
Foundry would require going through and tagging absolutely everything in the game. This was done in the creation of STO and was not done in CO. It's never going to happen. CO2 maybe, if such a thing ever exists.
Supervillains, on the other hand, are, well, villains. They're psychopaths who don't care about people in general and their victims in particular. Also, they're proactive, initiating plans which heroes are then supposed to try to foil - which, as I'm sure you can see, doesn't work well with the MMO format. As I recall, the folks at Paragon Studios said that after a brief surge, the only people who bought their villain expansion did so because it also introduced supergroup bases, and villainy just didn't attract the money.
Exactly.
On a side note, why doesn't this side of the forums have all the nice buttons at the bottom of the post?
You guys do realize they remove the Foundry from NWO, right? If they're not going to bother with a feature like that in a game that had more attention than CO, then I think the chances of a Foundry for Co is pretty slim to non-existent.
Like decorum says, it will still never happen becuase PWE doesn't care one bit about this game.
I always love how you try to state something as a fact with no evidence. Here is an actual fact; this game has a tenth, at best, the population of the other two games. Which means, at best, this game makes a tenth of the money. I know people love to believe that development is a push button and content is created and some how developers, publishers and such have no bills to pay, but yea. If you think it works that way, I suggest you go to a ritzy restaurant and try and order one of their $25 dollar meals but tell them you are only going to pay $5 or $10 for it. Let's see how fast you get that meal. Or better yet, go to a job and be told you won't get paid for your work, see how much you would try and stick around or what you might actually do.
You guys do realize they remove the Foundry from NWO, right? If they're not going to bother with a feature like that in a game that had more attention than CO, then I think the chances of a Foundry for Co is pretty slim to non-existent.
they didn't remove it... they broke it. Apparently one of the more recent updates to NW corrupted the asset database used by foundry.
Yes, the Foundry (rather a whole new editor) would be nice here. However allow me to inject; Cryptic started the Foundry as a project specifically for Neverwinter. They started beta testing it on Star Trek and it still remains there in beta. However the Neverwinter Foundry development stopped dead in its tracks after the "Shadowmantle" module was released December 5th, 2013. No new assets were ever added beyond that day. To this day there is a bug list as long as your arm on the wiki.
To put the frosting on the cake, Lead Designer, Scott Shicoff, on February 3, 2016 said, "We're looking at some of the most frustrating foundry bugs (creators can't test their content because of a bug with portals [#62 12-28-2015]), but we don't currently have plans to add anything new to the foundry this year.". He was replaced by Thomas Foss. Foss in a video interview said there is "no budget" for the Foundry and recently said they are looking at the statistics (data mining) to see if they want to keep the Foundry or not. For the past 6 months the Neverwinter Foundry was closed and finally reopened just last week. There was no update or changes made to the Foundry during that time.
I am all for a mission editor as long as everyone understands, Cryptic can't make money (or that is their opinion) so it won't happen, might as well be asking them to bring CO out on XB1 and PS4 like they did NW and STO. I really don't see it happening. However, if you seriously want anything accomplished and you want to make a change, you need to write a letter (pen and paper) no emails, no online petitions, and not a forum rant.
The address is; Cryptic Studios, 980 University Ave, Los Gatos, CA 95032
Long story short, the CEO doesn't live on these forums, just players like you and I.
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Actually, adding something like the Foundry would not be good for CO. The only way UGC doesn't break game economies is if it either can't generate rewards worth bothering with, or if the rewards are sandboxed and cannot exit that content. In addition, doing anything sophisticated with an adventure usually requires tools that are too powerful to safely give players access to. This basically makes it unsuitable for producing what MMO players think of as 'content' (though it works for social maps) -- games with good modding communities are almost always solo or small group (often with a player-owned server, such as Bioware NWN persistent worlds), unless they're Second Life.
Actually, adding something like the Foundry would not be good for CO. The only way UGC doesn't break game economies is if it either can't generate rewards worth bothering with, or if the rewards are sandboxed and cannot exit that content. In addition, doing anything sophisticated with an adventure usually requires tools that are too powerful to safely give players access to. This basically makes it unsuitable for producing what MMO players think of as 'content' (though it works for social maps) -- games with good modding communities are almost always solo or small group (often with a player-owned server, such as Bioware NWN persistent worlds), unless they're Second Life.
Pretty much. For evidence of what happens when unchecked rampant use of an editor that allows for limitless rewards happen, check what happened to CoH post Mission Architect. The game world died in favor of elite level enemies that were easier to beat than minions that gave out tons of loot, experience and influence. People were capable of leveling toons to 50 in an hour or less in MA. Never mind, finding worthwhile content is actually a rarity in such systems to begin with. It was so bad they had to literally gut the system to in order to prevent the rampant exploiting.
Actually, adding something like the Foundry would not be good for CO. The only way UGC doesn't break game economies is if it either can't generate rewards worth bothering with, or if the rewards are sandboxed and cannot exit that content. In addition, doing anything sophisticated with an adventure usually requires tools that are too powerful to safely give players access to. This basically makes it unsuitable for producing what MMO players think of as 'content' (though it works for social maps) -- games with good modding communities are almost always solo or small group (often with a player-owned server, such as Bioware NWN persistent worlds), unless they're Second Life.
Pretty much. For evidence of what happens when unchecked rampant use of an editor that allows for limitless rewards happen, check what happened to CoH post Mission Architect. The game world died in favor of elite level enemies that were easier to beat than minions that gave out tons of loot, experience and influence. People were capable of leveling toons to 50 in an hour or less in MA. Never mind, finding worthwhile content is actually a rarity in such systems to begin with. It was so bad they had to literally gut the system to in order to prevent the rampant exploiting.
And they didn't even prevent it's use as a power leveling tool even after they closed the obvious large scale exploits. I'm not sure the Foundry would do CO much good.
Actually, adding something like the Foundry would not be good for CO. The only way UGC doesn't break game economies is if it either can't generate rewards worth bothering with, or if the rewards are sandboxed and cannot exit that content. In addition, doing anything sophisticated with an adventure usually requires tools that are too powerful to safely give players access to. This basically makes it unsuitable for producing what MMO players think of as 'content' (though it works for social maps) -- games with good modding communities are almost always solo or small group (often with a player-owned server, such as Bioware NWN persistent worlds), unless they're Second Life.
Pretty much. For evidence of what happens when unchecked rampant use of an editor that allows for limitless rewards happen, check what happened to CoH post Mission Architect. The game world died in favor of elite level enemies that were easier to beat than minions that gave out tons of loot, experience and influence. People were capable of leveling toons to 50 in an hour or less in MA. Never mind, finding worthwhile content is actually a rarity in such systems to begin with. It was so bad they had to literally gut the system to in order to prevent the rampant exploiting.
And they didn't even prevent it's use as a power leveling tool even after they closed the obvious large scale exploits. I'm not sure the Foundry would do CO much good.
Yeah they did
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
Anyway, here's the issue. Work on beginning content first. Leveling content in this game is a bit stale, as many have attested to. I was even witness to this belief a few days ago. I tried to get my GF to play CO, seeing as she just got a new gaming computer and was looking to try some comp. games. Now, normally I warn anyone I tell who may be interested in trying CO that this game may not be for them for a multitude of reasons. I did the same for her, naturally. She played with me until about level 14(?), of which she told me she had deleted the game from her steam library because it seemed to stale in combat and repetitive. I was thinking of letting her know to just try until maybe 25-30, but, then I thought the odds of her opinion changing on the mechanics of the game/content are slim to none. This made me think that CO definitely needs a more attention-grabbing introductory chain in order to get more people interested/stick around.
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
She played with me until about level 14(?), of which she told me she had deleted the game from her steam library because it seemed to stale in combat and repetitive. I was thinking of letting her know to just try until maybe 25-30, but, then I thought the odds of her opinion changing on the mechanics of the game/content are slim to none.
Is she a gamer that prefers FPS games? The folks I've tried getting to play Champs prefer the action of rapid-fire shooters, and found CO to be slow by comparison.
Actually, adding something like the Foundry would not be good for CO. The only way UGC doesn't break game economies is if it either can't generate rewards worth bothering with, or if the rewards are sandboxed and cannot exit that content. In addition, doing anything sophisticated with an adventure usually requires tools that are too powerful to safely give players access to. This basically makes it unsuitable for producing what MMO players think of as 'content' (though it works for social maps) -- games with good modding communities are almost always solo or small group (often with a player-owned server, such as Bioware NWN persistent worlds), unless they're Second Life.
Pretty much. For evidence of what happens when unchecked rampant use of an editor that allows for limitless rewards happen, check what happened to CoH post Mission Architect. The game world died in favor of elite level enemies that were easier to beat than minions that gave out tons of loot, experience and influence. People were capable of leveling toons to 50 in an hour or less in MA. Never mind, finding worthwhile content is actually a rarity in such systems to begin with. It was so bad they had to literally gut the system to in order to prevent the rampant exploiting.
Enh, they've already dealt with that repeatedly in STO and NW. The best solution seems to be to scale mission reward based on time to completion. But, also cap the max you can get daily.
Enh, they've already dealt with that repeatedly in STO and NW. The best solution seems to be to scale mission reward based on time to completion. But, also cap the max you can get daily.
That implies content that can just be idled through, unless the time scaling is sufficiently bad that you don't do missions for the reward at all. It's better than other options, but still not great.
And they didn't even prevent it's use as a power leveling tool even after they closed the obvious large scale exploits. I'm not sure the Foundry would do CO much good.
The sad part and one of the things that a lot of former CoH fans seem to either forget or deny outright, after Mission Architect came out, Positron made a public update letter/blog thingy on their forums about MA, first praising how successful it was, then stating they knew about the loopholes and bugs, then damning the player base and accusing them of being the problem for exploiting a broken system that they knew was broken. I still wish I had that letter. It was the most hilarious not taking responsibility for the outcome "blame others instead of me" action I'd seen. People like to hate on Jack Emmert, and he probably has earned some of it, but at least he took responsibility for his screw ups during his tenure.
She played with me until about level 14(?), of which she told me she had deleted the game from her steam library because it seemed to stale in combat and repetitive. I was thinking of letting her know to just try until maybe 25-30, but, then I thought the odds of her opinion changing on the mechanics of the game/content are slim to none.
Is she a gamer that prefers FPS games? The folks I've tried getting to play Champs prefer the action of rapid-fire shooters, and found CO to be slow by comparison.
I think so, yeah. But the issue she said was it seemed to be very repetitive/stale, not so much an issue with combat, I believe.
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
Comments
Would I love to see new content missions on CO? Oh god yes!!! I would squee with excitement. Do I actually expect that to happen? Realistically, I'd have to say no.
Can't be a Champion of Evil?
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A villain side to me just isn't a good idea. It did not do COH any favours when they introduced a villain side.
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People want to see themselves as being the "good guy", even if their in-game behavior is anything but. I'm in a small and not-very profitable minority who enjoys the "bad" side faction in games. Players like me always get ignored because content for us costs more money than it makes. Pleasing "bad guy" players like me is throwing money out the window. That's just an MMO universal IMHO -- and it ain't changing anytime soon.
As far as CO goes. Expecting a low population game of this type to receive huge content expansions - isn't realistic. I'm not sure why people seem constantly surprised, shocked, alarmed and amazed by this fact. I'm fine with the current trend of updates. They are generally small, but do provide new things to do and some power adjustments. That's good enough.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
In WoW, the Horde aren't "bad guys"; they're the victims of racist attacks from humans and night elves, and in the case of the tauren of being in conflict with centaurs over grazing areas (when humans had already settled on centaurs as being "better"). The orcs are also well aware of what could happen if their former masters ever came to Azaroth with the intent of "reclaiming" the Horde, and have no intention of permitting it. They see the Alliance as being too weak and foolish to stand against the ravages of the Burning Legion, and are actively trying to keep their erstwhile foes from laying down their weapons and forgetting how to fight.
Supervillains, on the other hand, are, well, villains. They're psychopaths who don't care about people in general and their victims in particular. Also, they're proactive, initiating plans which heroes are then supposed to try to foil - which, as I'm sure you can see, doesn't work well with the MMO format. As I recall, the folks at Paragon Studios said that after a brief surge, the only people who bought their villain expansion did so because it also introduced supergroup bases, and villainy just didn't attract the money.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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On a side note, why doesn't this side of the forums have all the nice buttons at the bottom of the post?
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To put the frosting on the cake, Lead Designer, Scott Shicoff, on February 3, 2016 said, "We're looking at some of the most frustrating foundry bugs (creators can't test their content because of a bug with portals [#62 12-28-2015]), but we don't currently have plans to add anything new to the foundry this year.". He was replaced by Thomas Foss. Foss in a video interview said there is "no budget" for the Foundry and recently said they are looking at the statistics (data mining) to see if they want to keep the Foundry or not. For the past 6 months the Neverwinter Foundry was closed and finally reopened just last week. There was no update or changes made to the Foundry during that time.
I am all for a mission editor as long as everyone understands, Cryptic can't make money (or that is their opinion) so it won't happen, might as well be asking them to bring CO out on XB1 and PS4 like they did NW and STO. I really don't see it happening. However, if you seriously want anything accomplished and you want to make a change, you need to write a letter (pen and paper) no emails, no online petitions, and not a forum rant.
The address is; Cryptic Studios, 980 University Ave, Los Gatos, CA 95032
Long story short, the CEO doesn't live on these forums, just players like you and I.
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I'm not sure the Foundry would do CO much good.
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Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
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42 40s, LTSer.