its not the population, its interest level, why bust your butt almost an hour looking for a team fora lair that provides te same CP that this smash alert is going to give you? heck its next to impossible to finda team for therakiels temple anymore [at least for me, maybe im not paying attention to zone
simply put, the rewards do not hold equal to the effort put in anymore in lairs, and thats the other half of the problem.
True, but now, one can level to 40 in a week of casual play, rather than furiously trying to hit 40 with massive play sessions. You can get, in 2 min, double the XP of a major mission that normally takes 10 min. That's a factor of x10 increase.
Intstanced Missions like "Help a Citizen" mostly take maybe 5 minutes, also a Smash with
the wait time from the Queue is also more around 4-5 minutes.
Also there are a lot of Questlines in the open World where you can collect 10 quests and do
them all in one session .. like maybe the Paintball Camp .. or the quests at Officer James Candy.
A good way is however to mix that all now .. make a smash for the Exp Bonus, then finish
some Quests. Or make some more smashes when you see that there is one available with
a low fail chance and you just have only quests that you don't like that much
And avoid VB .. try to go not before 31 to MI .. make all the quests in the first Area, since they
give more Exp than later quests .. also do the first part of Lemuria and late Canada .. and then
maybe again some smashes now and then, so that you can reach 40 just on MI.
A good way is however to mix that all now .. make a smash for the Exp Bonus, then finish some Quests.
That's my preferred method - go run a quick Smash, grab that XP Bonus, then go run an entire chain of missions and make sure I turn them in before the timer expires.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. If they ever get back into the lair revamp business, the new rewards will be Q and maybe costume pieces.
_________________________________________________
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. If they ever get back into the lair revamp business, the new rewards will be Q and maybe costume pieces.
I'm still betting on 'Lair Vendors' as a possibility, myself, but combo'd with Q and costume pieces.
The solution is simple: rewards should be calibrated to encourage players to do a variety of content, not to just loop alerts endlessly all the way to the level cap. And the easy way to do this? Nerf the rewards from alerts.
Your answer seems biased towards getting you what you want, rather than doing what's good for the game as a whole.
If people don't want to run Moreau's Lab with you, then why should the developers try to force them to do so?
If it takes you too long to get a group for Moreau's Lab, there are a few options open to you:
1- Do other missions while looking for more members. You probably did this, grats, problem solved.
2- Run the lab with less than 5 players. Totally doable.
3- Solo it. Also doable, depending on which AT you are, or what sort of FF build you're running, and what level you are.
4- Drop the mission from your mission log, and ignore it. There is no downside to doing this, there is nothing in there that you will miss.
5- Demand that the devs change the game to force people to do what you want them to do so you can finish the very small number of missions that potentially require a partial team to complete. Unlikely to succeed.
The real solution is even more simple. Let players do what they want. Players are doing what they find fun. Video game.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
The alerts problem is really just one of power creep. When you release new content, you want players to do it. And one way to ensure that players do it is to make it give vastly greater rewards than the old content. It's a stupid kludge and it often breaks a lot of other things, but most games seem to go through something like this.
If the new release increases the level cap, and the new content is targeted at a higher level than the old content, then it isn't really a problem. Players do the old content while leveling up, then do the new content at the newly available levels.
ok, let's think outside the box for ones, remove the alerts as they currently stand and make them open world events.
let me explain, the reason why players don't team up so much anymore is simply because the game ether offers instance missions that auto-teams you regardless of your build or gives you the option to play a story you can easily do on your own.
let me say this bold but plain and simple, this is horribly wrong and should be removed.
now the story can remain but outside that the world needs to be more involved, so now instead of having an alert that forces you in a team you might or might not like, you simply experience it while the game simulates it in the open world.
let me be clear that this is not like open missions, the open missions are both horribly implanted and doesn't promote any team work at all.
open world alerts:
in open world alerts thing just happen randomly, one time a villain destroys cars and buildings while an other time a huge robot walks trough the city destroying everything in it's path. (and i am not talking about the mega D size, i am talking about 5X bigger)
now normally you just go there and beat the crap out of it/him/her, when you do that this time around you just dig your own grave.
the goal of the alerts vary but for the most part you need to take it/her/him down fast but while keeping the damage to a minimum.
enemies scale on the mass so one player has just as much problems to take it/her/him down as 20, skills the enemy uses depend on the amount of enemies.
when you and your "team" took the enemy down, everyone will get the same amount of reward.
it does depend on your involvement so just getting there and shooting a few blasts isn't going to get you anything, you don't have to fully attack all the time (like when you're the target, it's best to block when you can) but as long as you are a part of the mass that took down the enemy you get the reward you earn.
there are no score boards or lame quest logs, it's straight forward taking down your enemy as fast but tactical as possible.
you are never useless regardless of your level, it is a global enemy of a certain rank and that's all.
the best thing about this is that the world becomes a living breathing world and challenges you to search for crime, it's a super hero game and in my mind i should find crime not search it.
as i said they can be everything but keep in mind, nothing is forcing you to do any of them, you are the one choosing to play them.
I thought alerts were supposed to be open world in the first place. It probably woulda made more sense that way anyway, yeah. Having that extra bar is just clutter, and it's too easy to just click it and dive in. No other content in the game works that way, it's too much of an easy button.
In game, I am @EvilTaco. Happily killing purple gang members since May 2008. RIP Caine
Add a queue for alerts, buff their rewards to actually mean something and call it a day.
I'm NOT going to stand around waiting ****ing 20 minutes for something that's terrible content.
And monraue's (however the hell you spell his stupid name) lab (and most of the lairs) are ****ING terrible vs things like TT, Nemcom, Adventure packs etc.
Notice I never once mentioned alerts in that 3rd sentence.
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
I'm still betting on 'Lair Vendors' as a possibility, myself, but combo'd with Q and costume pieces.
That indeed seems like a solid bet.
I hope they have the vision to come up with the lair vendor rewards that might entice folks to do the lairs. I believe that a lair vendor with exclusive stuff may be necessary to get folks interested; then, the lair itself needs to be fun.
_________________________________________________
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
The alerts problem is really just one of power creep. When you release new content, you want players to do it. And one way to ensure that players do it is to make it give vastly greater rewards than the old content. It's a stupid kludge and it often breaks a lot of other things, but most games seem to go through something like this.
If the new release increases the level cap, and the new content is targeted at a higher level than the old content, then it isn't really a problem. Players do the old content while leveling up, then do the new content at the newly available levels.
Giving more xp actually isn't an example of power creep. No one's more powerful because they're leveling faster, because we all end up at the same power level in the end.
Never mind Moreau's Lab for a moment. Let's go back to first principles. Why should alerts give vastly greater rewards than normal content?
Missions cannot be failed. Smash Alerts on the other hand, can fail.
Missions are solo content, and solo content has normally given fewer rewards.
What justification is there for missions to give equal, or more rewards, than alerts, other than your theory that it would cause players to pick missions over alerts?
So you agree with me that developers shouldn't be trying to force everyone to do all alerts all the time, and ignore everything else?
The developers aren't forcing you or any other player to do anything. You are not required to do alerts. In fact, you're not required to do anything. You can log in, and do neither missions nor alerts.
The concept that the developers are forcing players to do alerts requires that there be some driving need to reach maximum level within some sort of time frame that the developers are imposing on players. There is no such time frame, there is no driving need to reach maximum level as fast as possible, unless that driving need comes from the player's own desire to have a max level character.
Rather than forcing players to adhere to one particular playstyle, alerts in fact give players the freedom to choose. Some players, perhaps like yourself, prefer a more "take in the scenery" approach; to them, reaching max level as fast as possible is less important than absorbing the entirety of the game's content. Other players couldn't care less about the entirety of the game's content, they just want to reach max level as fast as possible and are willing to grind for it.
The question is then, does either group lose out in some way due to the rewards from alerts being what they are? The answer is no, no one is losing out. The speed levelers get what they want. The mission runners get what they want.
In fact, I have found when leveling through missions that the expirience is improved in that there are no longer many other players competing for the same mission objectives that I'm after.
To drive the point home... if you are taking the slower path, and enjoying the scenery, why is it suddenly unacceptable that you had to wait to run Rhinoplasty?
Final note- the title of the thread is "The playerbase is too small for group content to be viable"... so then why is it that you are asking for alert rewards to be nerfed, which would drive players out of group content, which alerts most certainly are, and out into missions, which are solo content? Shouldn't you be asking that lairs be nerfed so they can more easily be run by solo players?
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Having that extra bar is just clutter, and it's too easy to just click it and dive in. No other content in the game works that way, it's too much of an easy button.
Part of the problem is just the playerbase getting smaller. That's not a trivial problem to fix, of course. But look at Millennium City: while the other zone populations have collapsed, Millennium City has gone from 8 zones at peak a year ago, to 8 zones at peak today. What happened?
Alerts happened. A lot of the players in Millennium City aren't doing Westside, City Center, or Downtown. They're doing alerts. That means they aren't available to do normal content. For purposes of trying to recruit for a group, such people might as well be offline.
The problem is that alerts siphoned off most of the playerbase. For purposes of doing other content, moving 2/3 of the players to alerts is equivalent to having 2/3 of the players quit the game. I don't know how that will play out with Cryptic's game revenue. But I can't see it making sense from a game design perspective.
Strongly agree.
Solution at this point. Stop angering existing customers and driving them away, and get on your parent company about advertising & marketing this game some more. Better yet, pick up a promotional deal with an advertiser, that's win-win for both them and you. (they get more of their product sold, you get more customers)
The solution is simple: rewards should be calibrated to encourage players to do a variety of content, not to just loop alerts endlessly all the way to the level cap. And the easy way to do this? Nerf the rewards from alerts.
Actually, this idea is correct but will just cause more rage as written.
Better method?
Increase the quality of rewards from mission/quest chain content. Balance it upward, not downward. You're forgetting about human behavior and perceptions here. In particular the XP reward from alerts is what's doing it, worse than there ever was an issue with the Shadow Colossi farming, because everybody knows about alerts.
The trap developers & players fall into with MMO's: having to level up as fast as possible.
In truth, the goal should be less about leveling up and more about the epic journey you take to get to max level. But meh, what am I saying, logical thoughts I speak will just get overwritten by all the "GIVE IT TO ME NOW!" people who rant & rave... Hurry up and wait eh? This is true for every MMO that has ever existed. The player base eventually pressures the developers into giving them ways to level up faster & faster and that kills the adventure. Level 40 should mean something.
I just did Moreau's Lab. It took 44 minutes from the time I started recruiting until I had a full group.
...
The solution is simple: rewards should be calibrated to encourage players to do a variety of content, not to just loop alerts endlessly all the way to the level cap. And the easy way to do this? Nerf the rewards from alerts.
I have 35 characters, of which 11 are level 40. I have never done Moreau's lab, nor the Doctor Destroyer lair (other than one foolish attempt to solo it). I haven't even done Resistance. I haven't even done Nemcon.
And it isn't Alerts that keep me away from these things. Before Alerts I was almost entirely a solo player. Alerts encouraged me to group when I was never doing it before.
The trap developers & players fall into with MMO's: having to level up as fast as possible.
In truth, the goal should be less about leveling up and more about the epic journey you take to get to max level. But meh, what am I saying, logical thoughts I speak will just get overwritten by all the "GIVE IT TO ME NOW!" people who rant & rave... Hurry up and wait eh? This is true for every MMO that has ever existed. The player base eventually pressures the developers into giving them ways to level up faster & faster and that kills the adventure. Level 40 should mean something.
This is all a matter of opinion, and fails to address the fact that players are often going to end up leveling through that "epic journey" several times over. Quite frankly, a lot of us are over it... it's no longer an epic journey.
I've only leveled up 16 characters, and by number 13 I was already rolling my eyes at having to level up through yet again the same series of missions where I had to travel all over the place one-shotting the same bad guys yet again, wishing that there was an alternative to this "experience grind"... something more action-based. Then alerts came out and I was overjoyed, because alerts put that epic feeling back into the fight, and it let me get right to the part of the game I enjoyed, the fighting. This made leveling those last 3 characters a lot more enjoyable.
There are people with 50+ characters. Imagine how they felt.
"GIVE IT TO ME NOW!"
My question to you is... why not? Is there really a reason we should have to wait to get to the action in video games? Is there a reason that leveling up has to take longer? Does it somehow make us lesser people if we would like a choice between the "smell the roses" and the "race to the finish line" playstyles?
"Level 40 should mean something."
Which is why you rally for more endgame content. Trying to make it take longer to get to level 40 doesn't make level 40 more meaningful, if anything you're trying to turn this "epic journey" to level 40 into a grind that requires patience and dedication to achieve... and since when are those required or even desired values in video games? I'm not here to make grandma think I'm a good person, I'm here to have fun.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Everything below max level (40) is XP. Main idea about 'levels' is to levelup up, right? So why would I bother with harder, slower, low XP below level 40 content? I mean in those 40 mins (how long OP was making group) I could get a level up doing regular content.
On top of that, those lair are not even much of a content. Its like regular missions, but a bit longer and with much bigger mobs. Its not that its more complex, need better tactics, its just inflated numbers.
The way things are, lairs would literally have to give me level up, or maybe two level ups to be 'profitable'. And if they'd drop good loot, I'd do them with level 40 char.
To some, it's the journey that matters, not the destination :biggrin:
Which one?
I do that 'journey' thing, but mine is not 'level from 1 to 40 by doing all missions I did many times before', but more 'how to do all max level epic raids solo'. Not ez-mode with perfect group (tho getting a perfect group is a journey on its own), but totally solo.
Not that many max level stuff here. And some are of those 'must enter with group coz we said so'.
I just did Moreau's Lab. It took 44 minutes from the time I started recruiting until I had a full group. From the time the group filled to the time we were done with the lair was 20 minutes. See the problem? Today was a bit of an outlier; more typical is 20 minutes to fill a group. But that still means that in order to do group content, I have to spend half of my time just trying to recruit people to join the group. And that's even with time spent sharing quests, waiting for people to come to the lair, and trying to convince 40s to sidekick down counting as part of the "good" half, not the recruiting half.
It used to be that about half of the lair runs that I'd participate in would be in groups that I organized myself. That still leaves about half being organized by someone else. Naturally, only 1/5 of the players in any group organize the group, so I organize a lot more groups than "average". Since I returned a little over a month ago, I've done 16 lair runs in groups that I organized. I've done 0 in groups that someone else organized. Zero. Not one. Less than epsilon.
It's not that I don't want someone else to put in the work of organizing a group. In fact, I'd prefer it. It's that hardly anyone organizes groups anymore. I've only seen two people recruiting for a Moreau's Lab group in that time. In one case, I had to log off soon enough that I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish. The other didn't know how to organize a group, so I joined his group, and after seven minutes, he hadn't sent a single recruiting message nor gone to another zone to recruit, so I suggested that it would help if he did recruit, and he responded by kicking me.
What changed? It's not that hard to figure out. At peak, it used to be about four zones in Canada, three in Desert, and two in Monster Island. Now those zones are lucky to get a single zone half full. A much smaller pool of players to recruit from means it's much harder to find four people willing to group.
Part of the problem is just the playerbase getting smaller. That's not a trivial problem to fix, of course. But look at Millennium City: while the other zone populations have collapsed, Millennium City has gone from 8 zones at peak a year ago, to 8 zones at peak today. What happened?
Alerts happened. A lot of the players in Millennium City aren't doing Westside, City Center, or Downtown. They're doing alerts. That means they aren't available to do normal content. For purposes of trying to recruit for a group, such people might as well be offline.
The problem is that alerts siphoned off most of the playerbase. For purposes of doing other content, moving 2/3 of the players to alerts is equivalent to having 2/3 of the players quit the game. I don't know how that will play out with Cryptic's game revenue. But I can't see it making sense from a game design perspective.
The problem is that repeatable content largely kills all content in its level range that gives worse rewards than it. People who want to level as quickly as possible will go for whatever content gives the best rewards and ignore the rest. Repeatable content implicitly gives slightly better rewards here than it would otherwise, because you don't have the learning curve of figuring out what you're doing.
And what about repeatable content that scales to your level? If the rewards are good enough, that can nearly kill all other content in the entire game. Cryptic started on this path over a year ago with adventure packs, but those weren't available to free players, so they didn't have the hugely noticeable effect on the playerbase size available for lairs.
I will at least give Cryptic credit for avoiding some of the traps that other games fall into that destroy the possibility of group content. 90% of the playerbase isn't automatically disqualified from grouping with me on the basis that they're on a different server and can't switch. Nor is 90% of the playerbase automatically disqualified because they're the wrong level; rather, they can sidekick. Nor does it take an hour to cycle through the various zones and get a recruiting message in front of nearly everyone with zone chat. Nor does it take half an hour for people to reach the lair once the group is full.
There's another problem with encouraging players to loop the alerts endlessly. Repeating content too many times in a row is boring. Games need more variety to be fun. There are players like me who will go out and do a variety of content for fun, even if it isn't the fastest way to level. But those who want the fastest way to level should be encouraged to have fun on the way, not to grind until they get sick of it and quit. Or to put it another way, the means of getting in-game rewards should coincide with the means of having fun.
The solution is simple: rewards should be calibrated to encourage players to do a variety of content, not to just loop alerts endlessly all the way to the level cap. And the easy way to do this? Nerf the rewards from alerts.
Preaching to the choir , even if they improve grouping , how the hell are you going experience that content when almost half the players don't really give a hoot and holler anymore. Oh yeah the player base for this game is a revolving door , isn't it great?! :biggrin:
Oh yeah the player base for this game is a revolving door , isn't it great?! :biggrin:
Nah. If the game did have a high turnover in players, they'd have introduced lockboxes in order to get a fast buck out of them before they left. As for grouping: If PWE thought they could make the game a money maker, they'd put the resources into giving players reasons to group up... Like the fleet bases in STO.
Since they haven't that sort of player base, and thus no will to add those things to this game, it's just been a case of introducing new low-effort shinies to the core group of players with ALTitis . They'll squeeze that particular stone until it's out of blood and then toss it aside.
Those of us who have some mental imbalance and DO want to continue to play this broken game have banded together in tight knit groups of 3-8 and play only with each other because most of the new people who DO join this game play like idiots.
Those of us who have some mental imbalance and DO want to continue to play this broken game have banded together in tight knit groups of 3-8 and play only with each other because most of the new people who DO join this game play like idiots.
That pretty much sums it up.
I wouldn't say the playerbase is too small for group content - I'd say the playerbase tends to make group content painfully unpleasant.
Those of us who have some mental imbalance and DO want to continue to play this broken game have banded together in tight knit groups of 3-8 and play only with each other because most of the new people who DO join this game play like idiots.
that is the realest statement i have seen in a long time
Comments
simply put, the rewards do not hold equal to the effort put in anymore in lairs, and thats the other half of the problem.
Intstanced Missions like "Help a Citizen" mostly take maybe 5 minutes, also a Smash with
the wait time from the Queue is also more around 4-5 minutes.
Also there are a lot of Questlines in the open World where you can collect 10 quests and do
them all in one session .. like maybe the Paintball Camp .. or the quests at Officer James Candy.
A good way is however to mix that all now .. make a smash for the Exp Bonus, then finish
some Quests. Or make some more smashes when you see that there is one available with
a low fail chance and you just have only quests that you don't like that much
And avoid VB .. try to go not before 31 to MI .. make all the quests in the first Area, since they
give more Exp than later quests .. also do the first part of Lemuria and late Canada .. and then
maybe again some smashes now and then, so that you can reach 40 just on MI.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
I'm still betting on 'Lair Vendors' as a possibility, myself, but combo'd with Q and costume pieces.
That indeed seems like a solid bet.
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Your answer seems biased towards getting you what you want, rather than doing what's good for the game as a whole.
If people don't want to run Moreau's Lab with you, then why should the developers try to force them to do so?
If it takes you too long to get a group for Moreau's Lab, there are a few options open to you:
1- Do other missions while looking for more members. You probably did this, grats, problem solved.
2- Run the lab with less than 5 players. Totally doable.
3- Solo it. Also doable, depending on which AT you are, or what sort of FF build you're running, and what level you are.
4- Drop the mission from your mission log, and ignore it. There is no downside to doing this, there is nothing in there that you will miss.
5- Demand that the devs change the game to force people to do what you want them to do so you can finish the very small number of missions that potentially require a partial team to complete. Unlikely to succeed.
The real solution is even more simple. Let players do what they want. Players are doing what they find fun. Video game.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
If the new release increases the level cap, and the new content is targeted at a higher level than the old content, then it isn't really a problem. Players do the old content while leveling up, then do the new content at the newly available levels.
Never mind Moreau's Lab for a moment. Let's go back to first principles. Why should alerts give vastly greater rewards than normal content?
So you agree with me that developers shouldn't be trying to force everyone to do all alerts all the time, and ignore everything else?
Quaternion from the previous forum
let me explain, the reason why players don't team up so much anymore is simply because the game ether offers instance missions that auto-teams you regardless of your build or gives you the option to play a story you can easily do on your own.
let me say this bold but plain and simple, this is horribly wrong and should be removed.
now the story can remain but outside that the world needs to be more involved, so now instead of having an alert that forces you in a team you might or might not like, you simply experience it while the game simulates it in the open world.
let me be clear that this is not like open missions, the open missions are both horribly implanted and doesn't promote any team work at all.
open world alerts:
in open world alerts thing just happen randomly, one time a villain destroys cars and buildings while an other time a huge robot walks trough the city destroying everything in it's path. (and i am not talking about the mega D size, i am talking about 5X bigger)
now normally you just go there and beat the crap out of it/him/her, when you do that this time around you just dig your own grave.
the goal of the alerts vary but for the most part you need to take it/her/him down fast but while keeping the damage to a minimum.
enemies scale on the mass so one player has just as much problems to take it/her/him down as 20, skills the enemy uses depend on the amount of enemies.
when you and your "team" took the enemy down, everyone will get the same amount of reward.
it does depend on your involvement so just getting there and shooting a few blasts isn't going to get you anything, you don't have to fully attack all the time (like when you're the target, it's best to block when you can) but as long as you are a part of the mass that took down the enemy you get the reward you earn.
there are no score boards or lame quest logs, it's straight forward taking down your enemy as fast but tactical as possible.
you are never useless regardless of your level, it is a global enemy of a certain rank and that's all.
the best thing about this is that the world becomes a living breathing world and challenges you to search for crime, it's a super hero game and in my mind i should find crime not search it.
as i said they can be everything but keep in mind, nothing is forcing you to do any of them, you are the one choosing to play them.
RIP Caine
I'm NOT going to stand around waiting ****ing 20 minutes for something that's terrible content.
And monraue's (however the hell you spell his stupid name) lab (and most of the lairs) are ****ING terrible vs things like TT, Nemcom, Adventure packs etc.
Notice I never once mentioned alerts in that 3rd sentence.
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
I hope they have the vision to come up with the lair vendor rewards that might entice folks to do the lairs. I believe that a lair vendor with exclusive stuff may be necessary to get folks interested; then, the lair itself needs to be fun.
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
Giving more xp actually isn't an example of power creep. No one's more powerful because they're leveling faster, because we all end up at the same power level in the end.
Missions cannot be failed. Smash Alerts on the other hand, can fail.
Missions are solo content, and solo content has normally given fewer rewards.
What justification is there for missions to give equal, or more rewards, than alerts, other than your theory that it would cause players to pick missions over alerts?
The developers aren't forcing you or any other player to do anything. You are not required to do alerts. In fact, you're not required to do anything. You can log in, and do neither missions nor alerts.
The concept that the developers are forcing players to do alerts requires that there be some driving need to reach maximum level within some sort of time frame that the developers are imposing on players. There is no such time frame, there is no driving need to reach maximum level as fast as possible, unless that driving need comes from the player's own desire to have a max level character.
Rather than forcing players to adhere to one particular playstyle, alerts in fact give players the freedom to choose. Some players, perhaps like yourself, prefer a more "take in the scenery" approach; to them, reaching max level as fast as possible is less important than absorbing the entirety of the game's content. Other players couldn't care less about the entirety of the game's content, they just want to reach max level as fast as possible and are willing to grind for it.
The question is then, does either group lose out in some way due to the rewards from alerts being what they are? The answer is no, no one is losing out. The speed levelers get what they want. The mission runners get what they want.
In fact, I have found when leveling through missions that the expirience is improved in that there are no longer many other players competing for the same mission objectives that I'm after.
To drive the point home... if you are taking the slower path, and enjoying the scenery, why is it suddenly unacceptable that you had to wait to run Rhinoplasty?
Final note- the title of the thread is "The playerbase is too small for group content to be viable"... so then why is it that you are asking for alert rewards to be nerfed, which would drive players out of group content, which alerts most certainly are, and out into missions, which are solo content? Shouldn't you be asking that lairs be nerfed so they can more easily be run by solo players?
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Join a channel dont be a hermit u get the groups.
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!
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Strongly agree.
Solution at this point. Stop angering existing customers and driving them away, and get on your parent company about advertising & marketing this game some more. Better yet, pick up a promotional deal with an advertiser, that's win-win for both them and you. (they get more of their product sold, you get more customers)
Actually, this idea is correct but will just cause more rage as written.
Better method?
Increase the quality of rewards from mission/quest chain content. Balance it upward, not downward. You're forgetting about human behavior and perceptions here. In particular the XP reward from alerts is what's doing it, worse than there ever was an issue with the Shadow Colossi farming, because everybody knows about alerts.
The trap developers & players fall into with MMO's: having to level up as fast as possible.
In truth, the goal should be less about leveling up and more about the epic journey you take to get to max level. But meh, what am I saying, logical thoughts I speak will just get overwritten by all the "GIVE IT TO ME NOW!" people who rant & rave... Hurry up and wait eh? This is true for every MMO that has ever existed. The player base eventually pressures the developers into giving them ways to level up faster & faster and that kills the adventure. Level 40 should mean something.
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
I have 35 characters, of which 11 are level 40. I have never done Moreau's lab, nor the Doctor Destroyer lair (other than one foolish attempt to solo it). I haven't even done Resistance. I haven't even done Nemcon.
And it isn't Alerts that keep me away from these things. Before Alerts I was almost entirely a solo player. Alerts encouraged me to group when I was never doing it before.
This is all a matter of opinion, and fails to address the fact that players are often going to end up leveling through that "epic journey" several times over. Quite frankly, a lot of us are over it... it's no longer an epic journey.
I've only leveled up 16 characters, and by number 13 I was already rolling my eyes at having to level up through yet again the same series of missions where I had to travel all over the place one-shotting the same bad guys yet again, wishing that there was an alternative to this "experience grind"... something more action-based. Then alerts came out and I was overjoyed, because alerts put that epic feeling back into the fight, and it let me get right to the part of the game I enjoyed, the fighting. This made leveling those last 3 characters a lot more enjoyable.
There are people with 50+ characters. Imagine how they felt.
"GIVE IT TO ME NOW!"
My question to you is... why not? Is there really a reason we should have to wait to get to the action in video games? Is there a reason that leveling up has to take longer? Does it somehow make us lesser people if we would like a choice between the "smell the roses" and the "race to the finish line" playstyles?
"Level 40 should mean something."
Which is why you rally for more endgame content. Trying to make it take longer to get to level 40 doesn't make level 40 more meaningful, if anything you're trying to turn this "epic journey" to level 40 into a grind that requires patience and dedication to achieve... and since when are those required or even desired values in video games? I'm not here to make grandma think I'm a good person, I'm here to have fun.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Everything below max level (40) is XP. Main idea about 'levels' is to levelup up, right? So why would I bother with harder, slower, low XP below level 40 content? I mean in those 40 mins (how long OP was making group) I could get a level up doing regular content.
On top of that, those lair are not even much of a content. Its like regular missions, but a bit longer and with much bigger mobs. Its not that its more complex, need better tactics, its just inflated numbers.
The way things are, lairs would literally have to give me level up, or maybe two level ups to be 'profitable'. And if they'd drop good loot, I'd do them with level 40 char.
Below max level, 'lair' is pointless.
(Fixed that for you
To some, it's the journey that matters, not the destination :biggrin:
| ME | A "Guide" Book" | | I, have a "DREAM! | ( Member since Feb 2008 ) ... ?
[SIGPIC]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b132/AngelOfCaine/STILLS/Misc/CO-Sig_01e.png[/SIGPIC]
I do that 'journey' thing, but mine is not 'level from 1 to 40 by doing all missions I did many times before', but more 'how to do all max level epic raids solo'. Not ez-mode with perfect group (tho getting a perfect group is a journey on its own), but totally solo.
Not that many max level stuff here. And some are of those 'must enter with group coz we said so'.
Preaching to the choir , even if they improve grouping , how the hell are you going experience that content when almost half the players don't really give a hoot and holler anymore. Oh yeah the player base for this game is a revolving door , isn't it great?! :biggrin:
Nah. If the game did have a high turnover in players, they'd have introduced lockboxes in order to get a fast buck out of them before they left. As for grouping: If PWE thought they could make the game a money maker, they'd put the resources into giving players reasons to group up... Like the fleet bases in STO.
Since they haven't that sort of player base, and thus no will to add those things to this game, it's just been a case of introducing new low-effort shinies to the core group of players with ALTitis . They'll squeeze that particular stone until it's out of blood and then toss it aside.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
14 months ago there were 12,000 to 15,000 logins a day coming from the Steam community alone.
Now there are less than 500 every 48 hours.
Those of us who have some mental imbalance and DO want to continue to play this broken game have banded together in tight knit groups of 3-8 and play only with each other because most of the new people who DO join this game play like idiots.
That pretty much sums it up.
I wouldn't say the playerbase is too small for group content - I'd say the playerbase tends to make group content painfully unpleasant.
that is the realest statement i have seen in a long time