Well, I don't think this is it. I do stuff without any reward, I don't think I've got any sort of reward from playing the game in weeks as I PvP / chat / make costumes for most of it but also when I do PvE I play a theme with friends on elite mode. And yet what's the point in elite mode if it isn't even that much harder, you can run through the entire thing go to the final boss and laugh your head off at how pointless the entire thing was because the most fun you had was laughing about how little fun you got from beating the game so bad. There is challenging content you say, and you say it is because the content gives no reward? Well this content you speak of must be PvPing on a theme build because I don't know anything like that in PvE.
What you're looking for is more something that actually requires some forethought on the player's part rather than self-imposing challenges on themselves or having a nerf that adds more tedium to every other encounter. Yeah, I could get behind that.
The only problem is that you can't really account for the dimness of the average player. I mean, look at how people managed to get completely baffled by Cybermind's evil kindergarten lesson.
That doesn't sound challenging at all... that just sounds like it would take forever to finish any given encounter, and also that encounters would have no tactical depth whatsoever since all I would be doing is rotating active defenses while leaving my energy builder on.
I'll give you a hint... the point isn't to find a way to make the game more boring... and it's also not just about making the NPCs have greater health in relation to my damage output. Longer fights does not equal challenging fights.
Also, I don't think you actually read the OP... I already tried the whole "Build a bad build to make the game more challenging" thing, and I'm now looking for new advice, because that advice turned out to be a dead end.
For sure, the game needs (DISCLAIMER, IN MY OPINION, BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES AND PUNCH THE KLAXONS IN THE FACE-HOLES) some action-based difficulty. Well, more of it. Hi-Pan's Ying-Yang of Punishment was awkward and susceptible to lag, but it's on the money. We need more positional advantages, use of travel powers, fights that factor line-of-sight, quick movement and on-the-spot reactional judgment (I think I made up words there) to make the game less "easy in the sense of numbers" and more "difficult in the sense of action." Like, I don't care if you've got 800 Constitution, you shoulda pole-vaulted over the atomic squid-missile and busted up that ceiling computer console, because clearly it belongs there in the ceiling, and that's why you died.
atomic squid missile
skip the rest, i want to know what I collect and how I build it. I want to fire squids.
as for, not doing anything unless theres reward. meh. I don 't expect to get rewards
If I get a costume drop, i think of it as a bonus(especially since the RNG hates me)
as for end game, hoepfully we are NOT talking about the BORING end game , gear grind, in so many other games.
Where the aim is to grind one to get the gear to grind another...rinse and repeat till you get sick of it and leave
you did on another thread or at least it really seemed that way.
Chances are if I'm quoting someone and going over the top on "CO should be HARDCORE" I'm making fun of that person. Especially if it's someone telling me to play another game if I want challenge. Or someone known to flip out at any suggestion of the slightest bit of challenge. For some reason, people think I'm being serious all of the time instead of a sarcastic jackass. Hint: It's probably the latter.
Considering "hard" to the devs means Gravitar or Fire and Ice (boring, non-moving HP sacks) or trash mobs with unresistable grenade and shotgun spam (irritating, rule breaking), I'd rather they didn't make anything hard.
I'm far more interested in combat being fun. Most of the time, I'm looking at my HP or my cooldowns and not paying attention to combat. Sometime I take advantage of being able to use the controller even when CO isn't the focus window. That's right, I can button tap with a browser window blocking out most of the game and it doesn't matter.
battletoads is a very different game. extreme difficulty does not belong in CO.
Part of the problem is that you tend to overreact in these conversations... for some reason, you can't see that people are asking for more difficulty... you always imagine that they're asking for "EXTREME DIFFICULTY DARK SOULS BATTLE TOADS INSTAKILL". You gotta stop that.
The part of the game that you people claim is challenging. Ya'll keep swearing up and down that it exists... yet every place you point me to is more of the same ol'.
You realize that the only way Cryptic knows to "increase challenge" is to buff dmg or HP which in itself is so much BS I'm not going to bother going into it again.
Not sure how anything cryptic might or might not do factors into this at all. I'm not asking the devs anything here, I'm asking other players.
I play this game quite a lot, and I spend very little time opening lockboxes. I believe I opened one lockbox last week... and the last time before that that I opened any boxes was at least a month ago. So, maybe this game is all lockboxes to you, but it clearly isn't all about lockboxes for everyone.
No wonder people don't stick around, what for? There is no feeling of progression because the gear you get is not earned it's bought.
Progression isn't all about gear. In fact, gear isn't really a big part of progression at all since in most cases gear isn't the end goal of progression, it's actually the key to unlock the next phase. Progression is primarily about overcoming new challenges, because that's the part of the experience that is actually fun, that's the part of the experience that is actually a game; the part where you pick up the reward is the end of the fun part, the end of the part that's a game.
I don't intend to run the same content over and over again on a higher difficulty for no reason than to waste time.
How is running the same content over and over again on the lowest difficulty not also a waste of time? How is playing video games, no matter what you do in them, not a waste of time? I understand if you personally don't find challenging games fun, and that's fine, but many gamers do like a challenge and play games because of the prospect of overcoming them. Many of us like the "overcoming challenges" part so much that we don't actually care if there are rewards or not (think about all those single player video games you played... they didn't have any rewards in the context that we're talking about, but you still played them).
If Cryptic actually added CONTENT not ALERTS that drop gear and costumes and devices then yeah people would play.
Alerts are content. Content that many people actually enjoy.
Do we need a gear ladder? HELLS TO THE NO! That's why I'm not so keen on content that has gear drops... because it always ends in a gear ladder. See NWO for examples on why gear-focused games are bad.
Costumes on the other hand are a great thing for all content, including alerts, to drop.
As it stands, there is no reason to run the content anymore once your reach 40 because you get nothing (well once you have all the Costume pieces you can get). Endgame in CO is lockboxes and the RNG is the difficultly.
Again, not everyone cares about getting gear for running stuff. Many players just want something more fun and interesting to run than "stand'and'spam encounter #34". I think that there are many players who, like myself, are content with content that just awards questionite, resources, mods, costume drops, and maybe some neat temporary devices, so long as that content is actually fun to run and doesn't require raid-level setup times. See Gravitar for an example of this that went well. See Sky Command for an example of how to do it poorly.
I primarily play on level 40 characters in this game, and have done so for quite a while, and I know I'm not the only one who prefers to do that. Fact is though, this game needs more challenging content at all levels, because that's how you retain players: By keeping them stimulated. Players who aren't being stimulated are the ones who leave... wether there's gear dropping or not, because in the end gear dropping from an easy encounter is functionally the same as gear dropping out of a lock box.
I'll ask not about harder regular encounters per se, because it would be just tiresome in the long run.
But about more diversity.
One reason why VIPER and ARGENT are standing out of the crowd is because their groups are about the only ones using even simple tactic. It's actually needed to kill Brickbusters/Combat Engineers first. Or not aggro too many grenade tossing infiltrators. Or counteragents.
Also, maybe changing Elder Worms from telepathy and TK to Darkness. It suits them more on a theme level, also... Then they may be even remotely threatening (just give them Ebon Ruin instead of drains overused by all Darkness NPC). Currently they're more like Safe-AFK-Worms. I think even leveled Purple Gang is more threatening.
I primarily play on level 40 characters in this game, and have done so for quite a while, and I know I'm not the only one who prefers to do that. Fact is though, this game needs more challenging content at all levels, because that's how you retain players: By keeping them stimulated. Players who aren't being stimulated are the ones who leave... wether there's gear dropping or not, because in the end gear dropping from an easy encounter is functionally the same as gear dropping out of a lock box.
Be careful w/ that thread of thought, though. Newcomers can get put off by going into an XP alert w/ other lowbies flinging enough corpses at the objectives until they manage to scrape by.. Or, they run across AO w/o the numbers to out-dps Shadowfeast and hoo boy I wonder what a fresh player would think after seeing that- I surmise it wouldn't encourage most of them to keep playing.
There is definitely a subjective, difficult balance between too hard and too easy. Best solution, for now, is making more content like alerts follow the adjustable difficulty design, imo. All the more 'dynamic/action fights' concepts are awesome, but probably too much for the devs to handle now.
Could also be nice and throw a bone to silver/AT players and make an easier version of Gravi w/ way less (Q) reward and maybe no chance to drop the costume unlocks.
And whoops, I'm moving the opposite direction than the thread intended. Don't mind me :redface:
As far as making things more interesting- Do what I sometimes do on my pure tanks in alerts- pull rooms of mobs instead of just mobs. May get some melee ATs complaining about the splash damage, but oh well. Damned melee ATs- ruining everyone's fun..
(*being facetious, don't maim me*).
Oh for pete's sake, just port over some of STO's mechanics.
Give us more levels of difficulty, and have some of those levels involve injury mechanics. People who want to play casually can, and those who want a challenge, well, there ya go.
Before someone says no sharing tech whiteknighter crybaby I'd say play STO and NWO.
If you don't see any tech relation between the 2, I'll print this post and eat it.
Well, NW has ground "vehicles".
Can't be just port over to CO.
It's not like we have Difficulty Levels, those just don't work well. Like come on, we have 'Elite' difficulty....
CHAMPIONS ONLINE:Join Date: Apr 2008
And playing by myself since Aug 2009 Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Well, NW has ground "vehicles".
Can't be just port over to CO.
It's not like we have Difficulty Levels, those just don't work well. Like come on, we have 'Elite' difficulty....
I look forward too the adventures of the starship, Moustache. It's 27 year mission: too explore new outposts, and new civillizations.
To Boldly take us on Mustache Adventures.
queue music
Go get a ship and run it some FInn, you'll see the point
Ofcourse theres similarities and some features are portable between games. All are 'Made With Little Cryptic Engine That Could'.
My starship USS BUTTFRAG has been docked and shall stay that way. The Captain couldna't taek it.
And heck, more variable difficulties would be welcome.
Something like:
'Enemy groups are scaled to team size +2, +3, +4'.
'Enemies are +1, +2,+3, +5.....+99 levels higher/lower than Player'.
'Enemy groups now have Heavies/Enforcers/Clowns in them and will scale to Team size'.
'Enemies now have Cosmic Level Knockback, Health, Range and Pie'.
And so on.
-The positivity of this post was brought to you by
CHAMPIONS ONLINE:Join Date: Apr 2008
And playing by myself since Aug 2009 Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
PvE vs PvP rant... There is challenging content you say, and you say it is because the content gives no reward? Well this content you speak of must be PvPing on a theme build because I don't know anything like that in PvE.
What are you talking about? I never said that.
Still not all content is without challenge, Gravitar or Forum Malvanum for example.
snip....because I'm not mad to write a reply to EVERY SENTENCE YOU WROTE :eek:
First of all nobody does something for nothing. You and a couple others might be an exception but the general rule you are not.
You made a couple of baseless assumptions which you only made so that you could rant on them and nothing else. Let's see....yeah, I don't like a challenge right? That is what you said not me. Unlike YOU I have things that I need to do in RL (job anyone?) so no I don't do things for nothing because I don't have the time for that.
This is not like a single player game where you run through it at high difficulty once or twice, in this game you run the SAME content over and over and over again. That is neither fun, nor worthwhile without a reward.
If you don't have anything else to do except play CO then I guess a reward for your time might be meaningless to you but not for me. As I said, I have other obligations outside CO so NO, I'm not interested to waste time on higher difficulty for nothing.
Unless we are talking about a higher difficulty setting (above Elite) in which case I'm fine with that since that is your choice to run it. I'm against buffing things across the board as that imposes upon others your "play for no rewards" play-style.
Again, how do you expect people to tell you a way to make things more challenging? You realize that in most games raising the difficulty means more dmg, higher hp, better AI and in some cases the addition of special moves to enemies. Except for the first 2 none of that is happening in CO. For things to be challenging mobs have to be somewhat "smart" and not "dumb" as they are now and making "weak" heroes does not increase challenge it simply makes encounters more annoying.
First of all nobody does something for nothing. You and a couple others might be an exception but the general rule you are not.
You made a couple of baseless assumptions which you only made so that you could rant on them and nothing else. Let's see....yeah, I don't like a challenge right? That is what you said not me. Unlike YOU I have things that I need to do in RL (job anyone?) so no I don't do things for nothing because I don't have the time for that.
This is not like a single player game where you run through it at high difficulty once or twice, in this game you run the SAME content over and over and over again. That is neither fun, nor worthwhile without a reward.
If you don't have anything else to do except play CO then I guess a reward for your time might be meaningless to you but not for me. As I said, I have other obligations outside CO so NO, I'm not interested to waste time on higher difficulty for nothing.
Unless we are talking about a higher difficulty setting (above Elite) in which case I'm fine with that since that is your choice to run it. I'm against buffing things across the board as that imposes upon others your "play for no rewards" play-style.
Again, how do you expect people to tell you a way to make things more challenging? You realize that in most games raising the difficulty means more dmg, higher hp, better AI and in some cases the addition of special moves to enemies. Except for the first 2 none of that is happening in CO. For things to be challenging mobs have to be somewhat "smart" and not "dumb" as they are now and making "weak" heroes does not increase challenge it simply makes encounters more annoying.
Bringing in the RL card, are we?
I think playing this game is fun and worthwhile without any rewards to show for the time I put into it. The gameplay by itself is fine enough for me. Don't use your opinion as fact here, it's not good for you.
I think playing this game is fun and worthwhile without any rewards to show for the time I put into it. The gameplay by itself is fine enough for me. Don't use your opinion as fact here, it's not good for you.
Lol there is no RL card. I'm guessing you are one of those who have nothing else to do except play CO that's why that comment hit a nerve.:rolleyes:
What do you mean "opinion as fact" ? How about you make sense when you post ?
This game has no challenge because it has no rewards. Everything you want to get (devices/gear/costume pieces) are all lockbox related.
Like really? You said the game has no challenge because it has no rewards, so you think adding rewards for gear such as legions as a 0.01% chance drop so people can grind some mob. That doesn't sound fun to me, and FYI this sounds like you are saying there is content that is challenging but there is just no reward for doing it. >.>
I'm not one for grinding, I play a game to have fun not to work which is why FTP games work because there are a lot of lazy people like me. I just want something fun to do and some content that wont end in a 30 minute run, I really liked that lemurian event they did but everyone always forgets about it when they think what content has been done in the past year. The had the right idea with the big boss and all that, it was a very interesting event thats for sure.
Like really? You said the game has no challenge because it has no rewards, so you think adding rewards for gear such as legions as a 0.01% chance drop so people can grind some mob. That doesn't sound fun to me, and FYI this sounds like you are saying there is content that is challenging but there is just no reward for doing it. >.>
I'm not one for grinding, I play a game to have fun not to work which is why FTP games work because there are a lot of lazy people like me. I just want something fun to do and some content that wont end in a 30 minute run, I really liked that lemurian event they did but everyone always forgets about it when they think what content has been done in the past year. The had the right idea with the big boss and all that, it was a very interesting event thats for sure.
Look, the moment they add a drop worth getting people will farm it and thus there will be something to do. In itself, that should not affect you in any way since you play for fun. As such, adding things won't impact you negatively in any way or form, or am I mistaken here?
First of all nobody does something for nothing. You and a couple others might be an exception but the general rule you are not.
So first you say nobody... then you admit that "me and a couple"... and then you make an unfounded "general rule" that has no data to support it and actually runs counter to common sense. People do something for nothing all the time in video games... like literally every second you're playing a video game (unless you're one of those lucky folks who makes money by playing video games) you're doing something for nothing... nothing besides fun that is
You made a couple of baseless assumptions which you only made so that you could rant on them and nothing else. Let's see....yeah, I don't like a challenge right? That is what you said not me. Unlike YOU I have things that I need to do in RL (job anyone?) so no I don't do things for nothing because I don't have the time for that.
You don't think there should be more challenging content... even though you like challenge? That sort of makes you the exception to the rule... that rule being, people generally want more of the things they like.
So you have a job, good for you. So you don't have time to do things for nothing... so then how do you have time to play Champions Online(or any video game) at all? After all, after you log out and turn the computer off, what is the "something" that you have acquired from playing the game? Keep in mind, that "something" has to be something you wouldn't have acquired if the game had more challenging content.
This is not like a single player game where you run through it at high difficulty once or twice, in this game you run the SAME content over and over and over again. That is neither fun, nor worthwhile without a reward.
You don't have to you know? You could just run through this game once or twice and then go play something else. If the content actually isn't fun enough to run over and over, and the only reason you keep running it is for the rewards, then you really need to ask yourself why you're still playing this game. After all, you can't take those rewards out of the game with you... the only place you can use them is in the game, running that same content over and over again.. the content that you don't think is actually fun.
If you don't have anything else to do except play CO then I guess a reward for your time might be meaningless to you but not for me. As I said, I have other obligations outside CO so NO, I'm not interested to waste time on higher difficulty for nothing.
The only reward that matters is the fun you had, because again: You can't take any of the in-game rewards out of the game with you. If you didn't have fun playing the game (running the SAME content over and over, which you did say isn't fun) and the only satisfying part for you was the brief moment where you picked up your reward, then how can you possibly consider that time well spent, considering you spent most of that video game playing time not actually having fun?
Just to remind you, here is where you directly stated that you don't have fun playing this game's content:
Unless we are talking about a higher difficulty setting (above Elite) in which case I'm fine with that since that is your choice to run it. I'm against buffing things across the board as that imposes upon others your "play for no rewards" play-style.
I'm not sure how people on your side of this debate keep missing the facts that I keep plainly putting out there, but I'll go ahead and state them again
I'm not in favor of changing everything, I just think a substantial amount of the game needs to have more challenging options, and not just difficulty settings for instances; I also want more challenging open world leveling content.
You know... new stuff, more interesting stuff... because, since you think running the SAME content over and over isn't fun, you should naturally be excited at the prospect of new content with new mechanics that require a more active playstyle (unless you want new content with the same lackluster "stand'n'spam" mechanics.. which would just be more of the SAME that you seem to think isn't fun...).
Again, how do you expect people to tell you a way to make things more challenging?
I don't. I already knew a long time ago that there is almost no even remotely challenging content in this game, and of the "challenging" content that exists the majority of it is just "stuff has more HP and does more damage, but does the same stuff" so I know for a fact that no one will be able to tell me any sort of way to actually make things more challenging.
However, there are people who will swear up and down that this game has challenging content, and on the off chance that those people have found some part of the game I've never been to, I ask them to produce information regarding where this challenging content is located.
You realize that in most games raising the difficulty means more dmg, higher hp, better AI and in some cases the addition of special moves to enemies. Except for the first 2 none of that is happening in CO.
Pssst, this is kind of the point I'm making when I say this game has no actual challenging content glad we agree on this point.
For things to be challenging mobs have to be somewhat "smart" and not "dumb" as they are now and making "weak" heroes does not increase challenge it simply makes encounters more annoying.
Pssst, you're agreeing with me again, how 'bout that
I've NEVER had any fun with injury mechanincs. NONE.
I have to agree on this. Injury mechanics to me really have always just been "You don't get to play for a while, deal with it".
Anyways, we technically already have an injury mechanic... it's those five stars under our portrait, and I think that's enough. Having my super hero limping around with a broken leg doesn't seem very heroic... plus I would just switch to another character to get around it, since I wanna play not wait.
I'd be ok with that if it applied in combat only. although on second thought an injury mechanic like deus ex makes no sense in a game full of invulnerable/super tough heroes. in combat debuffs, yes, but marking them as injuries would make no sense for many toons.
My definition of an "injury" mechanic is best implemented as a dangerous debuff. A broken leg should slow you down, damaged arms reduce accuracy ect. Every play deus ex? That game has excellent "injury mechanics", each body section had it's debuffs associated with it when injured, a torso/head with 100% injury results in FUN.
Note: Debuff still lets you act, but not as effectively.
Hmm if you mean like after you die I don't think this is the right way to go at all.
On the other hand if a boss puts a debuff on a single player that will slow them for a while and another player or themselves have to hurry to get rid of it with a power or probably best for this game by going over to a lever to get rid of the debuff. I think that cryptic could add a few random things that spawn to keep things interesting, like something comes after you hunting you. I don't know if there are any super villains that stalk heroes to kill them while they are in the middle of something. They have that mechanic in Warframe, a guy comes in to kill you randomly. Just a random idea that could be in some way linked to an injury mechanic. But getting a death penalty for 10 minutes is sort of lame, it sort of punishes new players for trying to learn from mistakes.
Not after you die but while your still alive. In deus ex, damage to an arm or even head lowered your accuracy. If you took 100% damage to the head, you died, arms though you still were alive. Similarly, legs slow you down as does torso damage. 100% torso damage resulted in death to. Partial damage though always debuffed you even while alive, healing it removed the debuff.
It's not like the guild wars death penalty debuff, that one was horribly crippling, though if someone got 60% death penalty they were often dead-weight even before dying once in a mission.
Ah yeah well as I said I like the idea of getting debuffs while still alive. Debuffs and buff removal is what makes people need a team for team content in other games I'm supprised there never really messed with some of the cool debuff mechanics other games have.
Losing = failure, if your discouraged from it for losing once then perhaps the content in question isn't for you? I will be honest a foundary arch I will make if this game somehow EVER gets it before some certain games near completion(I will not return when either enters beta), I will be excluding casuals. My archs are not for them, will not be for them and I'll make it plain and clear.
This thread is about challenging stuff thats not for casuals.
Then the mythical Foundry is your only possible hope. CO isn't designed with the "uber-l33t-hardcore" in mind, and from all indications, never will be.
In all honesty, you would be better served with looking elsewhere for your hardcore fix, or purposely challenging yourself. Taking off all the gear and running a Grav, or tackling a world boss.
It's been my experience in not only this game, but any game where there has been a clamor for "more hardcore" content, or "excluding casuals", the result is invariably the same; if/when said people get the content they are asking for they blaze through it in a week or less, figure out the mechanics, pick the mathematically-perfect powers and skills, acquire the new gear that drops (which further trivializes previous content) and have it trivialized. Then the clamor begins all over again.
It's why developers have started getting away from, to use a WoW dev term, "feeding the locusts", because the cycle of spending months creating new content for a select set of the player base, only to have it lay fallow after less than a month of release, is an unsustainable business model.
The Foundry is by far the best option for this solution. It doesn't require dev resources to provide content exclusively for a small section of their playerbase, and lets them focus their attention on content/bug fixes/etc for the entire game. CryptNorth seems to be in the position the late Paragon Studios once was, in that they are playing clean-up behind Emmert & Friends mismanagement of the IP. If this analogy holds true, in about a year's time they should be done sweeping away that wreckage left behind, and start being able to produce new quality content, like the much-wanted Foundry.
Actually most MMORPGs don't have real buffs/debuffs or crowd control, usually all three are so weak that it's utterly useless. Thats one of the core reasons I loved city of heroes, in fact, was that the three made a very, very siginficant difference, enough that you didn't need someone being a dedicated healer, you could prevent damage in the first place, which was fun. The game was still hard, but you had many many ways to deal with it, the game had depth.(in fact, the mobs also had very potent buffs/debuffs beyond the low level range, making buffs/debuffs even MORE important. Crowd control to)
Challenge and depth, honestly go hand in hand, with no depth you have no challenge anymore.
Edit: No, not asking to make this game city of heroes for those who are prejudiced enough to make that assumption and PLEASE do not make that assumption of me. It's one of my berserk buttons.
Well pretty much when champions was first being made, a lot of the mechanics were things that were suppose to be done for CoH but apparently it wouldn't have been commercially viable at the time. Funny though because it would literally of been the father of the action MMO which pretty much every MMO is trying to go more towards.
By the way I have played a lot of MMO's and in pretty much all of them, for PvP even more so it has been a lot about debuffs and crowd control. I know a lot of games use a lot of the silence mechanic which in CO is used in serpent lantern but the problem is when it happens to you the mobs don't actually hit enough to kill you anyway.
Pretty much all the hero MMO's have been heavily based on debuffing or CC. One of the recent MMO releases FF14 was heavily based around interrupting the boss although they built interrupt resistance and if you didn't interrupt them they would one shot you. The problem is if this was CO I would see people complaining so much about any sort of one shot mechanics.
Something CO could do to make it viable for all levels of challenge is make a survival on timer or a defend. The survival could be where you need to not die and keep killing mobs to keep up some sort of gauge like in Warframe that way you can't just be a super tank you actually need damage too. Then they should make a way for the mobs to get much harder as time goes on and there to be many more some of which could use some kind of strong holds. To keep this in theme of CO they could make it surviving in a prison with lots of villains / henchman you have locked up trying to kill you.
I know that all sounds like it may be a lot of work for what we too be honest have grown to expect from our devs although the thing this would give is lasting content. If you get more of a reward as it goes on longer but it gets hard enough so that it's not possible to get too much of a reward with some afk build somehow then it would work for all types of player. It would also be pretty repeatable, you'd be trying to beat your last score and if they had some sort of scoreboard somehow then you'd be trying to beat your friends scores.
That all just sounds totally random for CO but I think it may work.
Edit: FYI the foundry isn't viable for us, we are on a different version of the engine than NW and STO and it'd just be calling for lots glitches / bugs / game crashes if they did work on it. I don't really think it would be possible for them to do it that easy without them damaging the game in some way.
but plenty of people are. or superman. best for a debuff system to be more generically themed. that's all I'm saying.
I think most superheroes are not. Sometimes what makes superheroes more interesting is not what they can do while fighting crime, but things that make them more human.
I certainly will never read any comic book that has a main character that is invincible. That's just boring.
I think most superheroes are not. Sometimes what makes superheroes more interesting is not what they can do while fighting crime, but things that make them more human.
I certainly will never read any comic book that has a main character that is invincible. That's just boring.
I knew you secretly admired Frank Castle!
Gradi: The injury/ship damage mechanic I mentioned was optional. OPTIONAL. As in, in STO if you want to play without damage/injury, you CAN. Also winning 100% is just flat out boring. However, you would still retain that ability. OPTIONAL DAMMIT!
Then the mythical Foundry is your only possible hope. CO isn't designed with the "uber-l33t-hardcore" in mind, and from all indications, never will be.
In all honesty, you would be better served with looking elsewhere for your hardcore fix, or purposely challenging yourself. Taking off all the gear and running a Grav, or tackling a world boss.
It's been my experience in not only this game, but any game where there has been a clamor for "more hardcore" content, or "excluding casuals",
I agree, excluding casuals from all content in the game would be a terrible move. Just as terrible as not making any content whatsoever for the hardcores, as well as all the players between the super casuals and the hard cores.
That's the problem at the moment... nearly all the content in the game is aimed at super casuals. We need more of the game to be aimed at the various other levels of challenge as well.
Not saying you specifically need to be told this Ravanche, but I feel that it's prudent for me to once again point this out:
There's no reason that the entire game has to be set to be one particular challenge level. There's also no reason that more challenging content has to be restricted to instances (and in fact, it currently is not... because Elite isn't challenging... and just upping HP and damage isn't challenging either, it just means you have to build for bigger numbers ).
Comments
Well, I don't think this is it. I do stuff without any reward, I don't think I've got any sort of reward from playing the game in weeks as I PvP / chat / make costumes for most of it but also when I do PvE I play a theme with friends on elite mode. And yet what's the point in elite mode if it isn't even that much harder, you can run through the entire thing go to the final boss and laugh your head off at how pointless the entire thing was because the most fun you had was laughing about how little fun you got from beating the game so bad. There is challenging content you say, and you say it is because the content gives no reward? Well this content you speak of must be PvPing on a theme build because I don't know anything like that in PvE.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
The only problem is that you can't really account for the dimness of the average player. I mean, look at how people managed to get completely baffled by Cybermind's evil kindergarten lesson.
For sure, the game needs (DISCLAIMER, IN MY OPINION, BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES AND PUNCH THE KLAXONS IN THE FACE-HOLES) some action-based difficulty. Well, more of it. Hi-Pan's Ying-Yang of Punishment was awkward and susceptible to lag, but it's on the money. We need more positional advantages, use of travel powers, fights that factor line-of-sight, quick movement and on-the-spot reactional judgment (I think I made up words there) to make the game less "easy in the sense of numbers" and more "difficult in the sense of action." Like, I don't care if you've got 800 Constitution, you shoulda pole-vaulted over the atomic squid-missile and busted up that ceiling computer console, because clearly it belongs there in the ceiling, and that's why you died.
skip the rest, i want to know what I collect and how I build it. I want to fire squids.
as for, not doing anything unless theres reward. meh. I don 't expect to get rewards
If I get a costume drop, i think of it as a bonus(especially since the RNG hates me)
as for end game, hoepfully we are NOT talking about the BORING end game , gear grind, in so many other games.
Where the aim is to grind one to get the gear to grind another...rinse and repeat till you get sick of it and leave
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Chances are if I'm quoting someone and going over the top on "CO should be HARDCORE" I'm making fun of that person. Especially if it's someone telling me to play another game if I want challenge. Or someone known to flip out at any suggestion of the slightest bit of challenge. For some reason, people think I'm being serious all of the time instead of a sarcastic jackass. Hint: It's probably the latter.
Considering "hard" to the devs means Gravitar or Fire and Ice (boring, non-moving HP sacks) or trash mobs with unresistable grenade and shotgun spam (irritating, rule breaking), I'd rather they didn't make anything hard.
I'm far more interested in combat being fun. Most of the time, I'm looking at my HP or my cooldowns and not paying attention to combat. Sometime I take advantage of being able to use the controller even when CO isn't the focus window. That's right, I can button tap with a browser window blocking out most of the game and it doesn't matter.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Part of the problem is that you tend to overreact in these conversations... for some reason, you can't see that people are asking for more difficulty... you always imagine that they're asking for "EXTREME DIFFICULTY DARK SOULS BATTLE TOADS INSTAKILL". You gotta stop that.
The part of the game that you people claim is challenging. Ya'll keep swearing up and down that it exists... yet every place you point me to is more of the same ol'.
Not sure how anything cryptic might or might not do factors into this at all. I'm not asking the devs anything here, I'm asking other players.
No, the game has no challenge because it has no challenging encounters. Challenging encounters can exist without rewards.
The point is fun. Remember video games?
I play this game quite a lot, and I spend very little time opening lockboxes. I believe I opened one lockbox last week... and the last time before that that I opened any boxes was at least a month ago. So, maybe this game is all lockboxes to you, but it clearly isn't all about lockboxes for everyone.
Progression isn't all about gear. In fact, gear isn't really a big part of progression at all since in most cases gear isn't the end goal of progression, it's actually the key to unlock the next phase. Progression is primarily about overcoming new challenges, because that's the part of the experience that is actually fun, that's the part of the experience that is actually a game; the part where you pick up the reward is the end of the fun part, the end of the part that's a game.
It's really not though, for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph.
How is running the same content over and over again on the lowest difficulty not also a waste of time? How is playing video games, no matter what you do in them, not a waste of time? I understand if you personally don't find challenging games fun, and that's fine, but many gamers do like a challenge and play games because of the prospect of overcoming them. Many of us like the "overcoming challenges" part so much that we don't actually care if there are rewards or not (think about all those single player video games you played... they didn't have any rewards in the context that we're talking about, but you still played them).
Alerts are content. Content that many people actually enjoy.
Do we need a gear ladder? HELLS TO THE NO! That's why I'm not so keen on content that has gear drops... because it always ends in a gear ladder. See NWO for examples on why gear-focused games are bad.
Costumes on the other hand are a great thing for all content, including alerts, to drop.
Again, not everyone cares about getting gear for running stuff. Many players just want something more fun and interesting to run than "stand'and'spam encounter #34". I think that there are many players who, like myself, are content with content that just awards questionite, resources, mods, costume drops, and maybe some neat temporary devices, so long as that content is actually fun to run and doesn't require raid-level setup times. See Gravitar for an example of this that went well. See Sky Command for an example of how to do it poorly.
I primarily play on level 40 characters in this game, and have done so for quite a while, and I know I'm not the only one who prefers to do that. Fact is though, this game needs more challenging content at all levels, because that's how you retain players: By keeping them stimulated. Players who aren't being stimulated are the ones who leave... wether there's gear dropping or not, because in the end gear dropping from an easy encounter is functionally the same as gear dropping out of a lock box.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
But about more diversity.
One reason why VIPER and ARGENT are standing out of the crowd is because their groups are about the only ones using even simple tactic. It's actually needed to kill Brickbusters/Combat Engineers first. Or not aggro too many grenade tossing infiltrators. Or counteragents.
Also, maybe changing Elder Worms from telepathy and TK to Darkness. It suits them more on a theme level, also... Then they may be even remotely threatening (just give them Ebon Ruin instead of drains overused by all Darkness NPC). Currently they're more like Safe-AFK-Worms. I think even leveled Purple Gang is more threatening.
Be careful w/ that thread of thought, though. Newcomers can get put off by going into an XP alert w/ other lowbies flinging enough corpses at the objectives until they manage to scrape by.. Or, they run across AO w/o the numbers to out-dps Shadowfeast and hoo boy I wonder what a fresh player would think after seeing that- I surmise it wouldn't encourage most of them to keep playing.
There is definitely a subjective, difficult balance between too hard and too easy. Best solution, for now, is making more content like alerts follow the adjustable difficulty design, imo. All the more 'dynamic/action fights' concepts are awesome, but probably too much for the devs to handle now.
Could also be nice and throw a bone to silver/AT players and make an easier version of Gravi w/ way less (Q) reward and maybe no chance to drop the costume unlocks.
And whoops, I'm moving the opposite direction than the thread intended. Don't mind me :redface:
As far as making things more interesting- Do what I sometimes do on my pure tanks in alerts- pull rooms of mobs instead of just mobs. May get some melee ATs complaining about the splash damage, but oh well. Damned melee ATs- ruining everyone's fun..
(*being facetious, don't maim me*).
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Years have passed, people know how to make builds for old content.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Give us more levels of difficulty, and have some of those levels involve injury mechanics. People who want to play casually can, and those who want a challenge, well, there ya go.
Before someone says no sharing tech whiteknighter crybaby I'd say play STO and NWO.
If you don't see any tech relation between the 2, I'll print this post and eat it.
Can't be just port over to CO.
It's not like we have Difficulty Levels, those just don't work well. Like come on, we have 'Elite' difficulty....
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
I look forward too the adventures of the starship, Moustache. It's 27 year mission: too explore new outposts, and new civillizations.
To Boldly take us on Mustache Adventures.
queue music
Go get a ship and run it some FInn, you'll see the point
My starship USS BUTTFRAG has been docked and shall stay that way. The Captain couldna't taek it.
And heck, more variable difficulties would be welcome.
Something like:
'Enemy groups are scaled to team size +2, +3, +4'.
'Enemies are +1, +2,+3, +5.....+99 levels higher/lower than Player'.
'Enemy groups now have Heavies/Enforcers/Clowns in them and will scale to Team size'.
'Enemies now have Cosmic Level Knockback, Health, Range and Pie'.
And so on.
-The positivity of this post was brought to you by
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
What are you talking about? I never said that.
Still not all content is without challenge, Gravitar or Forum Malvanum for example.
First of all nobody does something for nothing. You and a couple others might be an exception but the general rule you are not.
You made a couple of baseless assumptions which you only made so that you could rant on them and nothing else. Let's see....yeah, I don't like a challenge right? That is what you said not me. Unlike YOU I have things that I need to do in RL (job anyone?) so no I don't do things for nothing because I don't have the time for that.
This is not like a single player game where you run through it at high difficulty once or twice, in this game you run the SAME content over and over and over again. That is neither fun, nor worthwhile without a reward.
If you don't have anything else to do except play CO then I guess a reward for your time might be meaningless to you but not for me. As I said, I have other obligations outside CO so NO, I'm not interested to waste time on higher difficulty for nothing.
Unless we are talking about a higher difficulty setting (above Elite) in which case I'm fine with that since that is your choice to run it. I'm against buffing things across the board as that imposes upon others your "play for no rewards" play-style.
Again, how do you expect people to tell you a way to make things more challenging? You realize that in most games raising the difficulty means more dmg, higher hp, better AI and in some cases the addition of special moves to enemies. Except for the first 2 none of that is happening in CO. For things to be challenging mobs have to be somewhat "smart" and not "dumb" as they are now and making "weak" heroes does not increase challenge it simply makes encounters more annoying.
Bringing in the RL card, are we?
I think playing this game is fun and worthwhile without any rewards to show for the time I put into it. The gameplay by itself is fine enough for me. Don't use your opinion as fact here, it's not good for you.
Lol there is no RL card. I'm guessing you are one of those who have nothing else to do except play CO that's why that comment hit a nerve.:rolleyes:
What do you mean "opinion as fact" ? How about you make sense when you post ?
Like really? You said the game has no challenge because it has no rewards, so you think adding rewards for gear such as legions as a 0.01% chance drop so people can grind some mob. That doesn't sound fun to me, and FYI this sounds like you are saying there is content that is challenging but there is just no reward for doing it. >.>
I'm not one for grinding, I play a game to have fun not to work which is why FTP games work because there are a lot of lazy people like me. I just want something fun to do and some content that wont end in a 30 minute run, I really liked that lemurian event they did but everyone always forgets about it when they think what content has been done in the past year. The had the right idea with the big boss and all that, it was a very interesting event thats for sure.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Look, the moment they add a drop worth getting people will farm it and thus there will be something to do. In itself, that should not affect you in any way since you play for fun. As such, adding things won't impact you negatively in any way or form, or am I mistaken here?
So first you say nobody... then you admit that "me and a couple"... and then you make an unfounded "general rule" that has no data to support it and actually runs counter to common sense. People do something for nothing all the time in video games... like literally every second you're playing a video game (unless you're one of those lucky folks who makes money by playing video games) you're doing something for nothing... nothing besides fun that is
You don't think there should be more challenging content... even though you like challenge? That sort of makes you the exception to the rule... that rule being, people generally want more of the things they like.
So you have a job, good for you. So you don't have time to do things for nothing... so then how do you have time to play Champions Online(or any video game) at all? After all, after you log out and turn the computer off, what is the "something" that you have acquired from playing the game? Keep in mind, that "something" has to be something you wouldn't have acquired if the game had more challenging content.
You don't have to you know? You could just run through this game once or twice and then go play something else. If the content actually isn't fun enough to run over and over, and the only reason you keep running it is for the rewards, then you really need to ask yourself why you're still playing this game. After all, you can't take those rewards out of the game with you... the only place you can use them is in the game, running that same content over and over again.. the content that you don't think is actually fun.
The only reward that matters is the fun you had, because again: You can't take any of the in-game rewards out of the game with you. If you didn't have fun playing the game (running the SAME content over and over, which you did say isn't fun) and the only satisfying part for you was the brief moment where you picked up your reward, then how can you possibly consider that time well spent, considering you spent most of that video game playing time not actually having fun?
Just to remind you, here is where you directly stated that you don't have fun playing this game's content:
I'm not sure how people on your side of this debate keep missing the facts that I keep plainly putting out there, but I'll go ahead and state them again
I'm not in favor of changing everything, I just think a substantial amount of the game needs to have more challenging options, and not just difficulty settings for instances; I also want more challenging open world leveling content.
You know... new stuff, more interesting stuff... because, since you think running the SAME content over and over isn't fun, you should naturally be excited at the prospect of new content with new mechanics that require a more active playstyle (unless you want new content with the same lackluster "stand'n'spam" mechanics.. which would just be more of the SAME that you seem to think isn't fun...).
I don't. I already knew a long time ago that there is almost no even remotely challenging content in this game, and of the "challenging" content that exists the majority of it is just "stuff has more HP and does more damage, but does the same stuff" so I know for a fact that no one will be able to tell me any sort of way to actually make things more challenging.
However, there are people who will swear up and down that this game has challenging content, and on the off chance that those people have found some part of the game I've never been to, I ask them to produce information regarding where this challenging content is located.
Pssst, this is kind of the point I'm making when I say this game has no actual challenging content
Pssst, you're agreeing with me again, how 'bout that
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I have to agree on this. Injury mechanics to me really have always just been "You don't get to play for a while, deal with it".
Anyways, we technically already have an injury mechanic... it's those five stars under our portrait, and I think that's enough. Having my super hero limping around with a broken leg doesn't seem very heroic... plus I would just switch to another character to get around it, since I wanna play not wait.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It's not Jackie Chan...
Not everyone is Wolverine. :P
Wolverine sucks.
Hmm if you mean like after you die I don't think this is the right way to go at all.
On the other hand if a boss puts a debuff on a single player that will slow them for a while and another player or themselves have to hurry to get rid of it with a power or probably best for this game by going over to a lever to get rid of the debuff. I think that cryptic could add a few random things that spawn to keep things interesting, like something comes after you hunting you. I don't know if there are any super villains that stalk heroes to kill them while they are in the middle of something. They have that mechanic in Warframe, a guy comes in to kill you randomly. Just a random idea that could be in some way linked to an injury mechanic. But getting a death penalty for 10 minutes is sort of lame, it sort of punishes new players for trying to learn from mistakes.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Thank God for that.
We'd all be indestructible Mary-Sues.
Ah yeah well as I said I like the idea of getting debuffs while still alive. Debuffs and buff removal is what makes people need a team for team content in other games I'm supprised there never really messed with some of the cool debuff mechanics other games have.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Then the mythical Foundry is your only possible hope. CO isn't designed with the "uber-l33t-hardcore" in mind, and from all indications, never will be.
In all honesty, you would be better served with looking elsewhere for your hardcore fix, or purposely challenging yourself. Taking off all the gear and running a Grav, or tackling a world boss.
It's been my experience in not only this game, but any game where there has been a clamor for "more hardcore" content, or "excluding casuals", the result is invariably the same; if/when said people get the content they are asking for they blaze through it in a week or less, figure out the mechanics, pick the mathematically-perfect powers and skills, acquire the new gear that drops (which further trivializes previous content) and have it trivialized. Then the clamor begins all over again.
It's why developers have started getting away from, to use a WoW dev term, "feeding the locusts", because the cycle of spending months creating new content for a select set of the player base, only to have it lay fallow after less than a month of release, is an unsustainable business model.
The Foundry is by far the best option for this solution. It doesn't require dev resources to provide content exclusively for a small section of their playerbase, and lets them focus their attention on content/bug fixes/etc for the entire game. CryptNorth seems to be in the position the late Paragon Studios once was, in that they are playing clean-up behind Emmert & Friends mismanagement of the IP. If this analogy holds true, in about a year's time they should be done sweeping away that wreckage left behind, and start being able to produce new quality content, like the much-wanted Foundry.
It's not Jackie Chan...
Well pretty much when champions was first being made, a lot of the mechanics were things that were suppose to be done for CoH but apparently it wouldn't have been commercially viable at the time. Funny though because it would literally of been the father of the action MMO which pretty much every MMO is trying to go more towards.
By the way I have played a lot of MMO's and in pretty much all of them, for PvP even more so it has been a lot about debuffs and crowd control. I know a lot of games use a lot of the silence mechanic which in CO is used in serpent lantern but the problem is when it happens to you the mobs don't actually hit enough to kill you anyway.
Pretty much all the hero MMO's have been heavily based on debuffing or CC. One of the recent MMO releases FF14 was heavily based around interrupting the boss although they built interrupt resistance and if you didn't interrupt them they would one shot you. The problem is if this was CO I would see people complaining so much about any sort of one shot mechanics.
Something CO could do to make it viable for all levels of challenge is make a survival on timer or a defend. The survival could be where you need to not die and keep killing mobs to keep up some sort of gauge like in Warframe that way you can't just be a super tank you actually need damage too. Then they should make a way for the mobs to get much harder as time goes on and there to be many more some of which could use some kind of strong holds. To keep this in theme of CO they could make it surviving in a prison with lots of villains / henchman you have locked up trying to kill you.
I know that all sounds like it may be a lot of work for what we too be honest have grown to expect from our devs although the thing this would give is lasting content. If you get more of a reward as it goes on longer but it gets hard enough so that it's not possible to get too much of a reward with some afk build somehow then it would work for all types of player. It would also be pretty repeatable, you'd be trying to beat your last score and if they had some sort of scoreboard somehow then you'd be trying to beat your friends scores.
That all just sounds totally random for CO but I think it may work.
Edit: FYI the foundry isn't viable for us, we are on a different version of the engine than NW and STO and it'd just be calling for lots glitches / bugs / game crashes if they did work on it. I don't really think it would be possible for them to do it that easy without them damaging the game in some way.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
I think most superheroes are not. Sometimes what makes superheroes more interesting is not what they can do while fighting crime, but things that make them more human.
I certainly will never read any comic book that has a main character that is invincible. That's just boring.
I knew you secretly admired Frank Castle!
Gradi: The injury/ship damage mechanic I mentioned was optional. OPTIONAL. As in, in STO if you want to play without damage/injury, you CAN. Also winning 100% is just flat out boring. However, you would still retain that ability. OPTIONAL DAMMIT!
I agree, excluding casuals from all content in the game would be a terrible move. Just as terrible as not making any content whatsoever for the hardcores, as well as all the players between the super casuals and the hard cores.
That's the problem at the moment... nearly all the content in the game is aimed at super casuals. We need more of the game to be aimed at the various other levels of challenge as well.
Not saying you specifically need to be told this Ravanche, but I feel that it's prudent for me to once again point this out:
There's no reason that the entire game has to be set to be one particular challenge level. There's also no reason that more challenging content has to be restricted to instances (and in fact, it currently is not... because Elite isn't challenging... and just upping HP and damage isn't challenging either, it just means you have to build for bigger numbers ).
My super cool CC build and how to use it.