I really hope the 'big stuff in the works' doesn't turnout to be as poorly thought-out as alerts or utterly unwanted like vehicles.
(Alerts: no questionite for PvP, no balancing of reward for missions
Vehicles: people wanted travel powers, not... that.)
Only problem with vehicles, IMO, is the lack of cosmetic customization. If we could have some control on the appearance (color schemes at least), I think people would have been exponentially happier.
Only problem with vehicles, IMO, is the lack of cosmetic customization. If we could have some control on the appearance (color schemes at least), I think people would have been exponentially happier.
Yes. This. Or at least when you sell a vehicle offer different color versions so people can buy one that more closely matches their color scheme.
Champions Customization options are still probably the best available in a game these days. Why make something that doesn't take advantage of your customer base's interests?
And if it helps, here's a piece of info. I'm the guy who handles the weekly reports for our studio -- it's one of my jobs as the rookie product manager -- so I see the numbers. Champions isn't selling more than STO, of course, but it's doing quite solidly. From a financial standpoint, we're rather pleased with Champs right now.
Then why aren't we getting new content other than lockboxes and alerts? Most games, when they're doing well, keep reinvesting to keep old players and to get new players. We've been playing the same zones for four years.
Vehicles: people wanted travel powers, not... that.)
What zahinder said. All the time they put into Vehicles was just wasted time in my eyes since (nearly) nobody (in my eyes) really wanted glorified become devices but just travel powers that looks like you ride a vehicle but where still the hero you created and not just some kind of mechanical device.
All the time they put into Vehicles was just wasted time in my eyes since (nearly) nobody (in my eyes) really wanted glorified become devices but just travel powers that looks like you ride a vehicle but where still the hero you created and not just some kind of mechanical device.
They could have designed the vehicles as travel powers and instead of making the vehicle powers, they could have done character categorized animations for each power type that replaces the animation of specific powers while on your vehicle.
Oh dear...That post right there from Tumerboy/Tacofangs:
...............................
"Champions has it's own team. That team is the size it is because that's how much Champs brings in. If it were a bigger game, it would have a bigger team. People aren't removed from the team to punish players, the team is scaled to the revenue being generated".
...............................
I find that both incredibly disappointing and incredibly naive of Cryptic-Studios if that is how they have been (and are) operating.
It has left me feeling sadly resigned to this IP now languising in this half-finished state.
I most certainly will not ever be investing in a Cryptic-Studios title ever again if that is their attitude towards development. [To paraphrase]: What part of "If you do not build it [in the first place] - they will not come!" does Cryptic not understand?.
Is this really the current and future basis for a Cryptic-Studios' F2P strategy for their MMOs?.
As far as the situation Champs finds itself in (through continued neglect by Cryptic-Studios) If you don't put in - you don't get out. So basically Cryptic-Studios are too weak-willed and short-sighted to invest without seeing revenue generated first in an individual title in their portfolio. This is not how you evolve a game if you are serious about growing it.
I also feel that revealing statement reveals a hypocrisy that I wish to highlight that speaks volumes about Cryptic's attitude, and in that the revenue generated by Champs in it's lifetime thus far certainly has not been invested back into this title specifically - everyone and their dog knows that!, but has instead been diverted to both STO and Neverwinter to get them up to speed when they were both in their infancy..... (anyone wonder where that much reported 1000% increase in Champions-Online's revenue that Cryptic were celebrating several months after our F2P re-launch went to anyone?, it certainly was not reinvested here!) - so, so much for 'each individual title on it's own merits' re: revenue streams then!.
The door swings both ways thank-you gentlemen! (or at least should do for all your customers investing in and expecting development for this game specifically).
If Cryptic-Studios are going to manage a suite of titles, take proceeds from a title, funnel to another to speed-up it's development - and then to all intensive purposes change their tune and refuse to reinvest back into Champions after the other projects take-off citing: 'that's how much Champs brings in' when its been financially harvested from for the other projects benefit and then left neglected for years.... that right there is horrendously inconsiderate business practice.
Way to let down Champions fans and the potential in the Hero Games IP guys!..... thanks for nothing!.
..........................................
Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
Oh dear...That post right there from Tumerboy/Tacofangs:
...............................
"Champions has it's own team. That team is the size it is because that's how much Champs brings in. If it were a bigger game, it would have a bigger team. People aren't removed from the team to punish players, the team is scaled to the revenue being generated".
...............................
I find that both incredibly disappointing and incredibly naive of Cryptic-Studios if that is how they have been (and are) operating.
It has left me feeling sadly resigned to this IP now languising in this half-finished state.
I most certainly will not ever be investing in a Cryptic-Studios title ever again if that is their attitude towards development. [To paraphrase]: What part of "If you do not build it [in the first place] - they will not come!" does Cryptic not understand?.
Is this really the current and future basis for a Cryptic-Studios' F2P strategy for their MMOs?.
As far as the situation Champs finds itself in (through continued neglect by Cryptic-Studios) If you don't put in - you don't get out. So basically Cryptic-Studios are too weak-willed and short-sighted to invest without seeing revenue generated first in an individual title in their portfolio. This is not how you evolve a game if you are serious about growing it.
I also feel that revealing statement reveals a hypocrisy that I wish to highlight that speaks volumes about Cryptic's attitude, and in that the revenue generated by Champs in it's lifetime thus far certainly has not been invested back into this title specifically - everyone and their dog knows that!, but has instead been diverted to both STO and Neverwinter to get them up to speed when they were both in their infancy..... (anyone wonder where that much reported 1000% increase in Champions-Online's revenue that Cryptic were celebrating several months after our F2P re-launch went to anyone?, it certainly was not reinvested here!) - so, so much for 'each individual title on it's own merits' re: revenue streams then!.
The door swings both ways thank-you gentlemen! (or at least should do for all your customers investing in and expecting development for this game specifically).
If Cryptic-Studios are going to manage a suite of titles, take proceeds from a title, funnel to another to speed-up it's development - and then to all intensive purposes change their tune and refuse to reinvest back into Champions after the other projects take-off citing: 'that's how much Champs brings in' when its been financially harvested from for the other projects benefit and then left neglected for years.... that right there is horrendously inconsiderate business practice.
Way to let down Champions fans and the potential in the Hero Games IP guys!..... thanks for nothing!.
where did he post the orange part of your post? I cannot seam to find it.
I agree this is a huge letdown for the champions players.
Oh dear...That post right there from Tumerboy/Tacofangs:
...............................
"Champions has it's own team. That team is the size it is because that's how much Champs brings in. If it were a bigger game, it would have a bigger team. People aren't removed from the team to punish players, the team is scaled to the revenue being generated".
...............................
I find that both incredibly disappointing and incredibly naive of Cryptic-Studios if that is how they have been (and are) operating.
It has left me feeling sadly resigned to this IP now languising in this half-finished state.
I most certainly will not ever be investing in a Cryptic-Studios title ever again if that is their attitude towards development. [To paraphrase]: What part of "If you do not build it [in the first place] - they will not come!" does Cryptic not understand?.
Is this really the current and future basis for a Cryptic-Studios' F2P strategy for their MMOs?.
As far as the situation Champs finds itself in (through continued neglect by Cryptic-Studios) If you don't put in - you don't get out. So basically Cryptic-Studios are too weak-willed and short-sighted to invest without seeing revenue generated first in an individual title in their portfolio. This is not how you evolve a game if you are serious about growing it.
I also feel that revealing statement reveals a hypocrisy that I wish to highlight that speaks volumes about Cryptic's attitude, and in that the revenue generated by Champs in it's lifetime thus far certainly has not been invested back into this title specifically - everyone and their dog knows that!, but has instead been diverted to both STO and Neverwinter to get them up to speed when they were both in their infancy..... (anyone wonder where that much reported 1000% increase in Champions-Online's revenue that Cryptic were celebrating several months after our F2P re-launch went to anyone?, it certainly was not reinvested here!) - so, so much for 'each individual title on it's own merits' re: revenue streams then!.
The door swings both ways thank-you gentlemen! (or at least should do for all your customers investing in and expecting development for this game specifically).
If Cryptic-Studios are going to manage a suite of titles, take proceeds from a title, funnel to another to speed-up it's development - and then to all intensive purposes change their tune and refuse to reinvest back into Champions after the other projects take-off citing: 'that's how much Champs brings in' when its been financially harvested from for the other projects benefit and then left neglected for years.... that right there is horrendously inconsiderate business practice.
Way to let down Champions fans and the potential in the Hero Games IP guys!..... thanks for nothing!.
What did you expect. As much as I love CO and its predecessor CoH , Cryptic are a bunch of douches that don't really care about the original playerbase that put them on the map in the first place.
Cryptic you should have left Champions alone.
Know this Cryptic most long time CO players started out in CoH it was the Superhero Genre that made you famous . The reason you got where you are is because gamers where given the choice of playing Blizzard's Everquest rip off or try this new type of Hero MMO from relative newcomers Cryptic.
How did you repay us, you made d@%k moves that led to the death of City of Heroes and continue to make similar d@%k moves that are killing off CO. Make no mistake getting into bed with NCsoft was the beginning of the end of CoH.
BUT! You just didn't want to stop there. Lets talk the Marvel online failure. You actually bought the Champions PnP IP and plastered Defender over Iron Man when you lost the rights to Marvel Online. Now this Champions Online you made feels like a low budget Marvel Game than what a real Champions Online would feel like , another d@%k move.
Heck I was playing the Champions PnP long before most of your devs and employees where born. To quote one of our more infamous players "stupid mortals".
Problem is when CO dies you will most likely kill the PnP along with it. The PnP that inspired City of Heroes. If it was just CO that was in danger I wouldn't be so pissed but the PnP game is under threat with all this BS. A PnP game you guys had no reason to go anywhere near.
Good Game guys.
*edit* And you know what , if you want to start fixing things get The Boy Blunder to fix the PvP queue he busted and put gear back in the acclaim vendor. Just a thought.
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!
Of course, Champs isnt based on a TV series so it cant get actors from its IP, but the fact that STO has a budget large enough to pay celebs to do VO work in addition to normal content development just makes Champs minimal budget look that much worse.
I think this article from massively support my point that the argument of revenue/investment causality was not always used in STO.
The most interesting part for me was:
"Exactly what has Cryptic been doing for the past year?
The question was blunt: Over the course of seven months (from August 2010 to March 2011), the game saw the introduction of 15 featured episodes plus nine related "daily" missions for a total of 24 missions. The game has not seen one mission introduced in the past year. The acting Executive Producer, Stephen D'Angelo, recently announced that there will be two Featured Episode series released during the course of 2012, meaning a probable total of 10 missions over the next 12 months. What were Cryptic personnel doing during the past year that made content releases at the pace that was seen before impossible?
Rivera, now free from previously imposed NDAs, seemed eager to explain. Yes, a lot of it goes back to what was a very rocky relationship between Atari (Cryptic's previous parent company) and Cryptic. Rivera stated that Atari "never really did understand" the MMORPG market or Cryptic's involvement in it. Since Atari was a retail box company, its executives had trouble comprehending the persistent need for money to be spent on the constant upgrade of a game that had already been released. Finally, when Atari announced it would be divesting itself of Cryptic, Cryptic essentially "went dark."
No money went into Cryptic at all. A hiring freeze was put into place, and it was hinted that the staff, which at one time had a roster in the mid-30s, fell to about 20 people. Those people continued to work on placing what content they could get into the game while they all struggled with yet another change of ownership.
Rivera stated unequivocally that Perfect World Entertainment understands the game's potential and has a much firmer grasp on what an MMORPG actually is. PWE has a proven track record of making money using a free-to-play format.
While Rivera didn't deny that STO had already been pegged as going F2P before the PWE purchase, PWE definitely sent the conversion into high gear the moment it became involved. Since then, the teams have been working non-stop on building the duty officer system, the economy, the new ships, and the featured episodes, the first of which are due for release late next month.
He also reminded us that D'Angelo is also CTO, and since he has taken on the additional role of EP, many of his other duties have understandably not been given his full attention. He reiterated once more that the company is now free of its Atari-imposed hiring freeze and is looking forward to rebuilding a full crew with intent to focus on those items outline by D'Angelo: Klingons, PvP, crafting and Foundry changes.
The interview contains an enormous amount of additional information, most of which I can't even touch on in my normal column here. I invite you to listen for yourself and hear what Rivera has to say about the current state of Cryptic and STO.
Then why aren't we getting new content other than lockboxes and alerts? Most games, when they're doing well, keep reinvesting to keep old players and to get new players. We've been playing the same zones for four years.
Apparently we are running out of room (again if this is case, do we really want to squeeze a 4th title into this mix?), though we seem to have plenty of room for gamble boxes, and there are 'tech issues' keeping us from getting permanent content. Heck we still haven't heard anything about the supposed reward people were suppose to get, but didn't because of these 'tech issues' for buying the NWO founder pack, a list they claim they hadn't forgotten to place us on.
This is also kind of par for the course for PW, they make money off of them because they invest just enough to make gamble boxes.
At this point, unless we see some drastic action, I don't feel comfortable spending any more money on the game.
I've had my LTS for a while, and I've put money in on a steady, regular basis. But everything I'm seeing right now points to a game with no future.
I'm not going to spend money on lockbox keys.
I'm not going to waste money (or even my stipend) on the stupid aura implementation.
I'm not even particularly interested in leveling up any more characters and running them through the same 6 zones and the same missions over and over and over again.
Outside of "event" content, the game's stagnant and there are several badly broken systems (PVP, Nemesis, etc).
Layering fluff on just isn't going to cut it. And I severely doubt a slow approach is going to recover/regrow any player base here. Cryptic needs to put a major effort into this game and they need to make a BIG splash to recover from it's current trajectory.
Otherwise, about the best thing they can do is hand Steve Long his IP back, kill the game outright and then move on to their next McMMO.
Don't get me wrong. The game has a lot going for it.
The problem is there just, flat out, isn't enough content.
Now the game isn't QUITE single-leveling-path. But it's not far from it.
And no, I don't consider grinding alerts a leveling path. I consider it "grinding".
The game needs to offer players more to do than play endless alerts or endless repetions of:
Also the fact that missions content is hard level-locked the way it is, is a weakness. If it could scale up/down within a couple levels for the character, that at least would allow for a bit more flexibility and utility in sticking a zone out and playing all the content in it, rather than walking away the minute you outlevel the zone.
The things is, with the afterglow of Neverwinter's success still strong, if they shutter CO to replace it with a brand new shiny CO that does the PnP ( and its predecessor justice ) and allows us to transfer our toons and stuff over your original idea has more merit than one would give it credit for.
Cryptic has regained a good few of it original devs from Paragon and they should take a look at how Square turned around FF XIV.
Perfect World isnt a poor company they have the crew and resources to make this stuff possible .
Have it the CO we all know and love but rebuild it from the ground up.
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!
So, my reading on this thread is that there are two different lines of conversation going on. The first is, "Why was Champions fairly quiet between December 2012 and around March of 2013?" The second is, "Should we be worried about the future?" (To make sure this is above the fold -- the answer to the second question is no.)
The first line I'm not going to be address too closely, unfortunately. There are things that go on backstage that we can't talk about, mostly because we're a publicly-traded company. What I can say, though, is that sales of lockboxes, vehicles, etc. didn't magically change the equation at Cryptic or PWE; they are a solid addition to our sales, but we have a long-term view of the game.
We have a long-term commitment to CO, and while that quiet period did happen, it wasn't like we pulled the plug and then changed our mind. We're a business, but Champs has proven itself as a solid product, and we're smart enough to think long-term instead. It was unfortunate, it was unavoidable, and it is past.
Re: the second line of conversation, I think we can all agree that the last UNTIL Field Report over-committed us. When we needed to be flexible and responsive to new opportunities, we'd publicly set out an agenda that was static. We don't want to be in that situation again, so we're not announcing things until we're confident we can deliver, and that it's the best plan for Champions.
That being said, this timing is excellent: I spent much of yesterday putting Jira tasks in. I can't say any more right now, until we're confident in the contents, but stay tuned -- we've got some good stuff planned. Cryptic North's been making good-quality content, and I'm happy with what I've seen.
And if it helps, here's a piece of info. I'm the guy who handles the weekly reports for our studio -- it's one of my jobs as the rookie product manager -- so I see the numbers. Champions isn't selling more than STO, of course, but it's doing quite solidly. From a financial standpoint, we're rather pleased with Champs right now.
Can't help but feel this is generally just rehashing the same response the Players have always been given/known.
Basically "We're not promising anything because there's a very good chance we won't deliver, so don't get your hopes up because chances are, there's no reason to."
We'd love to be proven wrong and for actual content to be added to the game such as Zones and such, but as it is We can't really see anything more than lockbox trash and the occasional event/rampage.
Admittedly the costumes have been nice, it's just.. comparative to other games, Champions feels like it's really being neglected hardcore.
The problem is there just, flat out, isn't enough content.
Nah. There's tonnes of things to do in the game. Far more than Neverwinter yet Neverwinter takes a similar amount of time to level through.
The two reasons for this are that you can travel to that content very quickly thanks to your "out of the gate" travel powers. This is also why everyone thinks the maps are small. Unless they want a riot on their hands, there's nothing to be done about this... Beyond expanding the maps.
And all of your mission chains are all in the same location. That means that any group of missions that might take thirty minutes to an hour in any other MMO will take ten (at most) in CO because you can do five or eight things at the same time. Often from the same enemies. Given the time and resources needed to redo the maps and spread missions around a bit more, this isn't going to change either.
As I said, it's not the amount of content. It's that they set it up to be done speedily. The idea of "no content" is an illusion brought on by your speed... and your familiarity as a long term player. (A new player will have to hunt around for the Grond Hunter pits. You do not.)
What you meant is "There aren't any zones and missions for me to play that I haven't done a million times already."
Also the fact that missions content is hard level-locked the way it is, is a weakness.
I completely agree with this idea and think that it'd be better if all the enemies were Skull and instead of XP you got skill points to place into your abilities. The classic level-up-new-power system is what it is, but I think it's a holdover from an older style of gaming and there are better ways to advance a character. But the level of changes needed are such that it'd be easier for them to simply start again from scratch.
The two reasons for this are that you can travel to that content very quickly thanks to your "out of the gate" travel powers. This is also why everyone thinks the maps are small. Unless they want a riot on their hands, there's nothing to be done about this... Beyond expanding the maps.
I love it when games let you get a travel power right from level one. I find it painful to jog from area to area when I could be flying or riding my horsey.
I completely agree with this idea and think that it'd be better if all the enemies were Skull and instead of XP you got skill points to place into your abilities. The classic level-up-new-power system is what it is, but I think it's a holdover from an older style of gaming and there are better ways to advance a character. But the level of changes needed are such that it'd be easier for them to simply start again from scratch.
Having enemies be Skull instead would be great as long as you gained XP and drops at your level even if you're 39 in Westside. And once you reach 40, either get globals instead of XP or they could put that XP gifting thing in.
Nah. There's tonnes of things to do in the game. Far more than Neverwinter yet Neverwinter takes a similar amount of time to level through.
The two reasons for this are that you can travel to that content very quickly thanks to your "out of the gate" travel powers. This is also why everyone thinks the maps are small. Unless they want a riot on their hands, there's nothing to be done about this... Beyond expanding the maps.
And all of your mission chains are all in the same location. That means that any group of missions that might take thirty minutes to an hour in any other MMO will take ten (at most) in CO because you can do five or eight things at the same time. Often from the same enemies. Given the time and resources needed to redo the maps and spread missions around a bit more, this isn't going to change either.
As I said, it's not the amount of content. It's that they set it up to be done speedily. The idea of "no content" is an illusion brought on by your speed... and your familiarity as a long term player. (A new player will have to hunt around for the Grond Hunter pits. You do not.)
What you meant is "There aren't any zones and missions for me to play that I haven't done a million times already."
I completely agree with this idea and think that it'd be better if all the enemies were Skull and instead of XP you got skill points to place into your abilities. The classic level-up-new-power system is what it is, but I think it's a holdover from an older style of gaming and there are better ways to advance a character. But the level of changes needed are such that it'd be easier for them to simply start again from scratch.
We're stuck with what we have.
I agree with STerga, I hate games where you jog around till about Level 20
I know what you mean, I usually grab a whole set of missions and do them in one loop. yes please. I find I out level areas/groups too fast. If they were skulls, they would always be my level.
and while everyone is complaining, has anyone read the posts AFTER the initial STO in the OP. ITs got some great complaints about THEIR lack of updates
Bunni is the direct result of me taking super jump as a power on my ill fated starter character (she lived for roughly 10 minutes lol) and thinking how hilarious it would be to have a bunny girl with super jump.
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
Ha, weird, it wasn't even the fact that my character could fly that really got me into this game... it was how they could grant that ability to others owo
Of course, Champs isnt based on a TV series so it cant get actors from its IP, but the fact that STO has a budget large enough to pay celebs to do VO work in addition to normal content development just makes Champs minimal budget look that much worse.
Tim Russ! Good for him. I liked Voyager and Tukok. Did you know he was making his own Star Trek movie?
Most MMO's now let you have some kind of mount relatively early in game, around lv 20 or so.
I always hated that in WoW. It made no sense to me, especially when around lvl 10 they started sending me to neighboring regions. What, until I've slain enough kobolds to overload Hell, and run hundreds of miles back and forth between various areas, I can't learn how to sit on a horse??
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
If it were me, I'd allow everyone to have a cart and horse as soon as they could pay for it (IE: if you start as a dirty peasant with a pointed stick, when you've earned enough to be a drover or whatever)
I would have skill at various levels or something to use a mount _effectively_ and get more speed.
Neverwinter, for example, has a thing where a mount's quality determines how fast it goes and how easy it is for enemies to knock you off the mount. Which is handy in a mount's ability to get you through stupid pointless mobs, rather than taking an extra 15 minutes fighting random stuff.
IMO, it'd be more accurate to have some sort of combination effect -- player abilities/skill/whatever x mount's quality ~= bonus speed/durability/whatever.
And possibly some mounted attacks and whatnot.
This could be extended to vehicles and the like.
Now. Somebody give me a billion dollars to develop a MMO!
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
City of. was the exception to the rule, when you hit l14 and got that travel power you had a since of accomplishment
In my eyes it was just bad design. Walking around all the time when you're supposed to have super powers, and then magically out of nowhere you can just fly... For me it was more of a "Finally, that was such crap walking around," rather than a sense of accomplishment.
Was there an in-game reason why we couldn't use travel powers in City?
In my eyes it was just bad design. Walking around all the time when you're supposed to have super powers, and then magically out of nowhere you can just fly... For me it was more of a "Finally, that was such crap walking around," rather than a sense of accomplishment.
Was there an in-game reason why we couldn't use travel powers in City?
By that line of reasoning we should start at full powered.
I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with either approach. From dcuo of having tp at lvl 2 to CoH having it at 14.
Not having travel powers introduces small time sink which gives at the same time opportunity of checking the beginner zones more in detail.
Was there an in-game reason why we couldn't use travel powers in City?
CoH travel powers were seen as the equivalent to mounts in fantasy MMOs, so you had to earn your way up to them because That's The Way It Had Always Been Done. I don't remember ever seeing an in-lore reason like the "unlock capes at 20 as a tribute to Hero One" thing, though.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Technically every hero finds out something about what power they may hold in some way. Then after this a lot of what they do is working out what they can actually do with their power, or if their power is technology then what they can actually create or get their hands on that may make them better. Not to mention the emotional development a hero has to go through. It's perfectly viable for a hero to get much, much stronger at the end of the game. I do think there shouldn't be a running grind though. I hate having to go here to here to here being told where ever to go and yet you have no mount so it takes ages to get to everywhere. It just seems like sloppy game design to make the content last longer.
It's bad game design because it runs counter to the style of superheroes the game is about.
Flying and superspeed and so on are integral parts of a lot of moderate to high level supers, and the idea of being essentially a street level vigilante just... doesn't mesh well.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
In my eyes it was just bad design. Walking around all the time when you're supposed to have super powers, and then magically out of nowhere you can just fly... For me it was more of a "Finally, that was such crap walking around," rather than a sense of accomplishment.
Was there an in-game reason why we couldn't use travel powers in City?
There wasn't an in-game reason that I recall, however, from what I understand, contrary to popular hate mongering, when CoH was in development, orders came from on high from NCSoft that CoH original vision wasn't meshing (aka NCSoft didn't believe it would do well without following standard MMO tropes). So, the basic order was to make CoH more like its fantasy contemporaries, so standard ideas like delayed travel powers to "earn" and other such trappings you could find scattered throughout the game were implemented.
I do feel that heroes should earn their capes, as it were (not literally but figuratively) but I do agree the travel power delay was just old ideas being forced into the medium for no reason than because everyone else was doing it.
There should have been a new adventure pack every 2 months. Alternate ones that silver could play, and ones that only gold could play.
The story, greater detail, varied combat, any variety really is a good thing. the utter lack of useful rewards or any reason to run them more than once or twice is a big downfall. And the significantly lower XP/time spent in them is a huge drawback as well.
Add in alternate missions/leveling paths in the same zone - so my god you dont have to do the same West Side Story on EVERYONE - that is until Alerts then people just camp them being mostly gimpy until level 40.
Customization and the awesome powers and effects and flying and running and jumping are huge - the game suffers because every single mission is either "Go into a set of about 5 rooms, kill 3-4 groups of 3-4 enemies casually standing around in each room, until you get to a slightly harder enemy in the last room" or "do all that, AND click on the 5 glowing boxes after beating up the same sets of enemies in scenario one" - that is like 80% of the content in CO.
Lairs, final missions in chains, and adventure packs are at least different experiences.
Millennium city could be a wealth of adventures. Heck you could have 'lairs' in single buildings where you had to fight your way up floor by floor. You could add 100 of that kind of mission and barely make a dent in the real estate. Make lairs drop better than average gear and Questionite and have a higher XP/time than random grunt missions and poof, plently of reasons to run them.
So, my reading on this thread is that there are two different lines of conversation going on. The first is, "Why was Champions fairly quiet between December 2012 and around March of 2013?" The second is, "Should we be worried about the future?" (To make sure this is above the fold -- the answer to the second question is no.)
The first line I'm not going to be address too closely, unfortunately. There are things that go on backstage that we can't talk about, mostly because we're a publicly-traded company. What I can say, though, is that sales of lockboxes, vehicles, etc. didn't magically change the equation at Cryptic or PWE; they are a solid addition to our sales, but we have a long-term view of the game.
We have a long-term commitment to CO, and while that quiet period did happen, it wasn't like we pulled the plug and then changed our mind. We're a business, but Champs has proven itself as a solid product, and we're smart enough to think long-term instead. It was unfortunate, it was unavoidable, and it is past.
Re: the second line of conversation, I think we can all agree that the last UNTIL Field Report over-committed us. When we needed to be flexible and responsive to new opportunities, we'd publicly set out an agenda that was static. We don't want to be in that situation again, so we're not announcing things until we're confident we can deliver, and that it's the best plan for Champions.
That being said, this timing is excellent: I spent much of yesterday putting Jira tasks in. I can't say any more right now, until we're confident in the contents, but stay tuned -- we've got some good stuff planned. Cryptic North's been making good-quality content, and I'm happy with what I've seen.
And if it helps, here's a piece of info. I'm the guy who handles the weekly reports for our studio -- it's one of my jobs as the rookie product manager -- so I see the numbers. Champions isn't selling more than STO, of course, but it's doing quite solidly. From a financial standpoint, we're rather pleased with Champs right now.
The point of contention for many though is that over on the STO boards we've already been told that Season 9 (the next update) will be launching in April, and that we'll be getting the second part to the episode "A Step Between Stars" probably shortly before that. When this was announced by the devs it was well over two months away from when we could expect this content, despite it still being deep in development. Compare that to what we consistenly hear over here about upcoming content, and you can see why some are losing their patience, the STO team at least keeps their customers interested and abreast of when roughly their next major updates are scheduled to release.
By that line of reasoning we should start at full powered.
Actually, we should be given a choice on this. Some heroes come out in their first comic with all the powers they're ever going to have. Other heroes pick up more powers over time. So how does this translate into gameplay mechanics?
Combine Power Points and Advantage Points; for the purpose of clarity we'll call these new points Champion Points.
- Champion Points can either be spent to acquire powers, or on advantages.
- You would start getting Champion Points right away at level 1, and by the time you hit level 6 you would have enough of them to buy all 14 of your powers; skipping the tutorial would mean you start at that point.
This would leave it up to the player. They can either start with all their powers right from the start, or play the type of character that acquires more powers over time, or that learns new ways to use their given power (i.e. acquiring more Force powers as the character learns to use their force-based powers in new ways).
Players who opted for less powers would have more advantage points in them, leading to a specialized characters with a few well developed powers. Players who opted for more powers would be more versatile, but with each individual power being less powerful.
I would even want to extend this by adding additional Advantage ranks to powers, making it so that even at level 40 you could choose to have less than the maximum number of power, and instead have only a few powers that are highly powerful (this might put a bit of oomph back into specialized characters).
By that line of reasoning we should start at full powered.
Not at all. Say I'm making a Might character, I start the game punching things. Or a fire-themed character, I start the game burning things. As you progress you find new and better ways to do the things you had already been doing. Sure, conceptually it doesn't always make total sense, but it's an easier pill to swallow than "I've fought 145 crimes! Now I can fly!"
There are some choices that need to be made considering that it's a game. Power progression fits okay in there. You generally don't want to give players too many powers, especially early in the game (looking at you, Old Republic).
But limiting the way you travel, by level, in most games is pretty stupid. Like, in WoW, I've been solving crimes and ridding the area of monsters, and no one wants to give me a horse? Even a slow one? Gimme a break, that's dumb. And even in Champs, I think it's unnecessary for the tutorial to not have travel powers. It'd be much easier for people to be like "Oh neat I can fly!" and spend 20 minutes flying around then realize they don't know where to go or what to do because they have ADD, but I'd bet that it wouldn't happen too much.
City was painful for me, especially since I'm an altoholic. I spent a lot of time on my Chevrolegs.
I can't actually think of one super hero that never develops his powers over time learning all kinds of new tricks he can do with it. If there is one then he'd be one of the most boring comic book heroes there is.
Well I do think that to a new player technically CO doesn't show it's full capability off in any way. They start with a costume creator with hardly anything in and cant' exactly see how much more customization there will be as they collect things. Also most will start as an AT and the game will feel like any other which isn't really what you want. It sort of underwhelms the new player.
I can't actually think of one super hero that never develops his powers over time learning all kinds of new tricks he can do with it. If there is one then he'd be one of the most boring comic book heroes there is.
Right, and like I said, that mostly makes sense in the game terms, but like, Spider-Man swung from his webs from the beginning. Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound (then he reached level 35 and could fly, haha). Batman had his batwing/batmobile/batwhatever. Flash... I can't remember what Flash had.
Thing is superheroes always had some way of getting around, and if it's part of their superpowers, well, I'm sure it may have happened, but I can't think of any who developed that power in issue 76.
I can't actually think of one super hero that never develops his powers over time learning all kinds of new tricks he can do with it. If there is one then he'd be one of the most boring comic book heroes there is.
In the beginning, even Superman couldn't fly, just "leap tall buildings in a single bound".
Comments
You didn't get it? I left it under your doormat.
But THAT would be super fun, especially if you can steal a Segway and use it like a heavy weapon :P
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
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Yes. This. Or at least when you sell a vehicle offer different color versions so people can buy one that more closely matches their color scheme.
Champions Customization options are still probably the best available in a game these days. Why make something that doesn't take advantage of your customer base's interests?
Ooooo!
I would come back for that!
CellarRat33 :: formerly Bsquared
***
"The great thing about glory unending is that it's dirt cheap!" - Tateklys
From the Adventures of Thundrax (canadascott)
***
Then why aren't we getting new content other than lockboxes and alerts? Most games, when they're doing well, keep reinvesting to keep old players and to get new players. We've been playing the same zones for four years.
What zahinder said. All the time they put into Vehicles was just wasted time in my eyes since (nearly) nobody (in my eyes) really wanted glorified become devices but just travel powers that looks like you ride a vehicle but where still the hero you created and not just some kind of mechanical device.
Lets us pray for a better game. Amem.
They could have designed the vehicles as travel powers and instead of making the vehicle powers, they could have done character categorized animations for each power type that replaces the animation of specific powers while on your vehicle.
...............................
"Champions has it's own team. That team is the size it is because that's how much Champs brings in. If it were a bigger game, it would have a bigger team. People aren't removed from the team to punish players, the team is scaled to the revenue being generated".
...............................
I find that both incredibly disappointing and incredibly naive of Cryptic-Studios if that is how they have been (and are) operating.
It has left me feeling sadly resigned to this IP now languising in this half-finished state.
I most certainly will not ever be investing in a Cryptic-Studios title ever again if that is their attitude towards development. [To paraphrase]: What part of "If you do not build it [in the first place] - they will not come!" does Cryptic not understand?.
Is this really the current and future basis for a Cryptic-Studios' F2P strategy for their MMOs?.
As far as the situation Champs finds itself in (through continued neglect by Cryptic-Studios) If you don't put in - you don't get out. So basically Cryptic-Studios are too weak-willed and short-sighted to invest without seeing revenue generated first in an individual title in their portfolio. This is not how you evolve a game if you are serious about growing it.
I also feel that revealing statement reveals a hypocrisy that I wish to highlight that speaks volumes about Cryptic's attitude, and in that the revenue generated by Champs in it's lifetime thus far certainly has not been invested back into this title specifically - everyone and their dog knows that!, but has instead been diverted to both STO and Neverwinter to get them up to speed when they were both in their infancy..... (anyone wonder where that much reported 1000% increase in Champions-Online's revenue that Cryptic were celebrating several months after our F2P re-launch went to anyone?, it certainly was not reinvested here!) - so, so much for 'each individual title on it's own merits' re: revenue streams then!.
The door swings both ways thank-you gentlemen! (or at least should do for all your customers investing in and expecting development for this game specifically).
If Cryptic-Studios are going to manage a suite of titles, take proceeds from a title, funnel to another to speed-up it's development - and then to all intensive purposes change their tune and refuse to reinvest back into Champions after the other projects take-off citing: 'that's how much Champs brings in' when its been financially harvested from for the other projects benefit and then left neglected for years.... that right there is horrendously inconsiderate business practice.
Way to let down Champions fans and the potential in the Hero Games IP guys!..... thanks for nothing!.
Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
@Mothers_Love
where did he post the orange part of your post? I cannot seam to find it.
I agree this is a huge letdown for the champions players.
What did you expect. As much as I love CO and its predecessor CoH , Cryptic are a bunch of douches that don't really care about the original playerbase that put them on the map in the first place.
Cryptic you should have left Champions alone.
Know this Cryptic most long time CO players started out in CoH it was the Superhero Genre that made you famous . The reason you got where you are is because gamers where given the choice of playing Blizzard's Everquest rip off or try this new type of Hero MMO from relative newcomers Cryptic.
How did you repay us, you made d@%k moves that led to the death of City of Heroes and continue to make similar d@%k moves that are killing off CO. Make no mistake getting into bed with NCsoft was the beginning of the end of CoH.
BUT! You just didn't want to stop there. Lets talk the Marvel online failure. You actually bought the Champions PnP IP and plastered Defender over Iron Man when you lost the rights to Marvel Online. Now this Champions Online you made feels like a low budget Marvel Game than what a real Champions Online would feel like , another d@%k move.
Heck I was playing the Champions PnP long before most of your devs and employees where born. To quote one of our more infamous players "stupid mortals".
Problem is when CO dies you will most likely kill the PnP along with it. The PnP that inspired City of Heroes. If it was just CO that was in danger I wouldn't be so pissed but the PnP game is under threat with all this BS. A PnP game you guys had no reason to go anywhere near.
Good Game guys.
*edit* And you know what , if you want to start fixing things get The Boy Blunder to fix the PvP queue he busted and put gear back in the acclaim vendor. Just a thought.
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!
http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-tim-russ-joins-the-star-trek-online-cast
Of course, Champs isnt based on a TV series so it cant get actors from its IP, but the fact that STO has a budget large enough to pay celebs to do VO work in addition to normal content development just makes Champs minimal budget look that much worse.
The most interesting part for me was:
"Exactly what has Cryptic been doing for the past year?
The question was blunt: Over the course of seven months (from August 2010 to March 2011), the game saw the introduction of 15 featured episodes plus nine related "daily" missions for a total of 24 missions. The game has not seen one mission introduced in the past year. The acting Executive Producer, Stephen D'Angelo, recently announced that there will be two Featured Episode series released during the course of 2012, meaning a probable total of 10 missions over the next 12 months. What were Cryptic personnel doing during the past year that made content releases at the pace that was seen before impossible?
Rivera, now free from previously imposed NDAs, seemed eager to explain. Yes, a lot of it goes back to what was a very rocky relationship between Atari (Cryptic's previous parent company) and Cryptic. Rivera stated that Atari "never really did understand" the MMORPG market or Cryptic's involvement in it. Since Atari was a retail box company, its executives had trouble comprehending the persistent need for money to be spent on the constant upgrade of a game that had already been released. Finally, when Atari announced it would be divesting itself of Cryptic, Cryptic essentially "went dark."
No money went into Cryptic at all. A hiring freeze was put into place, and it was hinted that the staff, which at one time had a roster in the mid-30s, fell to about 20 people. Those people continued to work on placing what content they could get into the game while they all struggled with yet another change of ownership.
Rivera stated unequivocally that Perfect World Entertainment understands the game's potential and has a much firmer grasp on what an MMORPG actually is. PWE has a proven track record of making money using a free-to-play format.
While Rivera didn't deny that STO had already been pegged as going F2P before the PWE purchase, PWE definitely sent the conversion into high gear the moment it became involved. Since then, the teams have been working non-stop on building the duty officer system, the economy, the new ships, and the featured episodes, the first of which are due for release late next month.
He also reminded us that D'Angelo is also CTO, and since he has taken on the additional role of EP, many of his other duties have understandably not been given his full attention. He reiterated once more that the company is now free of its Atari-imposed hiring freeze and is looking forward to rebuilding a full crew with intent to focus on those items outline by D'Angelo: Klingons, PvP, crafting and Foundry changes.
The interview contains an enormous amount of additional information, most of which I can't even touch on in my normal column here. I invite you to listen for yourself and hear what Rivera has to say about the current state of Cryptic and STO.
In the meantime, live long and prosper!"
Apparently we are running out of room (again if this is case, do we really want to squeeze a 4th title into this mix?), though we seem to have plenty of room for gamble boxes, and there are 'tech issues' keeping us from getting permanent content. Heck we still haven't heard anything about the supposed reward people were suppose to get, but didn't because of these 'tech issues' for buying the NWO founder pack, a list they claim they hadn't forgotten to place us on.
This is also kind of par for the course for PW, they make money off of them because they invest just enough to make gamble boxes.
I've had my LTS for a while, and I've put money in on a steady, regular basis. But everything I'm seeing right now points to a game with no future.
I'm not going to spend money on lockbox keys.
I'm not going to waste money (or even my stipend) on the stupid aura implementation.
I'm not even particularly interested in leveling up any more characters and running them through the same 6 zones and the same missions over and over and over again.
Outside of "event" content, the game's stagnant and there are several badly broken systems (PVP, Nemesis, etc).
Layering fluff on just isn't going to cut it. And I severely doubt a slow approach is going to recover/regrow any player base here. Cryptic needs to put a major effort into this game and they need to make a BIG splash to recover from it's current trajectory.
Otherwise, about the best thing they can do is hand Steve Long his IP back, kill the game outright and then move on to their next McMMO.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
No, thanks. Some of us like this game.
I have to agree with this line here. The health of the PnP is a lot more important than the health of the MMO.
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!
Don't get me wrong. The game has a lot going for it.
The problem is there just, flat out, isn't enough content.
Now the game isn't QUITE single-leveling-path. But it's not far from it.
And no, I don't consider grinding alerts a leveling path. I consider it "grinding".
The game needs to offer players more to do than play endless alerts or endless repetions of:
Westside-Southwest/Canada-Monster Island-Lemuria/Vibora
All with very VERY little differentiation.
Also the fact that missions content is hard level-locked the way it is, is a weakness. If it could scale up/down within a couple levels for the character, that at least would allow for a bit more flexibility and utility in sticking a zone out and playing all the content in it, rather than walking away the minute you outlevel the zone.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
The things is, with the afterglow of Neverwinter's success still strong, if they shutter CO to replace it with a brand new shiny CO that does the PnP ( and its predecessor justice ) and allows us to transfer our toons and stuff over your original idea has more merit than one would give it credit for.
Cryptic has regained a good few of it original devs from Paragon and they should take a look at how Square turned around FF XIV.
Perfect World isnt a poor company they have the crew and resources to make this stuff possible .
Have it the CO we all know and love but rebuild it from the ground up.
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!
Can't help but feel this is generally just rehashing the same response the Players have always been given/known.
Basically "We're not promising anything because there's a very good chance we won't deliver, so don't get your hopes up because chances are, there's no reason to."
We'd love to be proven wrong and for actual content to be added to the game such as Zones and such, but as it is We can't really see anything more than lockbox trash and the occasional event/rampage.
Admittedly the costumes have been nice, it's just.. comparative to other games, Champions feels like it's really being neglected hardcore.
Nah. There's tonnes of things to do in the game. Far more than Neverwinter yet Neverwinter takes a similar amount of time to level through.
The two reasons for this are that you can travel to that content very quickly thanks to your "out of the gate" travel powers. This is also why everyone thinks the maps are small. Unless they want a riot on their hands, there's nothing to be done about this... Beyond expanding the maps.
And all of your mission chains are all in the same location. That means that any group of missions that might take thirty minutes to an hour in any other MMO will take ten (at most) in CO because you can do five or eight things at the same time. Often from the same enemies. Given the time and resources needed to redo the maps and spread missions around a bit more, this isn't going to change either.
As I said, it's not the amount of content. It's that they set it up to be done speedily. The idea of "no content" is an illusion brought on by your speed... and your familiarity as a long term player. (A new player will have to hunt around for the Grond Hunter pits. You do not.)
What you meant is "There aren't any zones and missions for me to play that I haven't done a million times already."
I completely agree with this idea and think that it'd be better if all the enemies were Skull and instead of XP you got skill points to place into your abilities. The classic level-up-new-power system is what it is, but I think it's a holdover from an older style of gaming and there are better ways to advance a character. But the level of changes needed are such that it'd be easier for them to simply start again from scratch.
We're stuck with what we have.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
I love it when games let you get a travel power right from level one. I find it painful to jog from area to area when I could be flying or riding my horsey.
Having enemies be Skull instead would be great as long as you gained XP and drops at your level even if you're 39 in Westside. And once you reach 40, either get globals instead of XP or they could put that XP gifting thing in.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I know what you mean, I usually grab a whole set of missions and do them in one loop.
yes please. I find I out level areas/groups too fast. If they were skulls, they would always be my level.
and while everyone is complaining, has anyone read the posts AFTER the initial STO in the OP. ITs got some great complaints about THEIR lack of updates
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And then CoH, that was level 14?
Champs blew me away when they were like HERE YOU GO YOU CAN FLY AT LEVEL 5!
Its the freaking super jump that made me go..
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY !!! \o/
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!
Well yeah same here. I said flight for the effect!
I didn't like jump at first but now I need to think of a good reason to not use it with a new toon.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Sory for this belated reaction, but...
POGO STIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKS!!!
Why the heck don't we have them? :biggrin:
Tim Russ! Good for him. I liked Voyager and Tukok. Did you know he was making his own Star Trek movie?
I want one or a unicycle or a flying unicycle with bat wings
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City of. was the exception to the rule, when you hit l14 and got that travel power you had a since of accomplishment
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I would have skill at various levels or something to use a mount _effectively_ and get more speed.
Neverwinter, for example, has a thing where a mount's quality determines how fast it goes and how easy it is for enemies to knock you off the mount. Which is handy in a mount's ability to get you through stupid pointless mobs, rather than taking an extra 15 minutes fighting random stuff.
IMO, it'd be more accurate to have some sort of combination effect -- player abilities/skill/whatever x mount's quality ~= bonus speed/durability/whatever.
And possibly some mounted attacks and whatnot.
This could be extended to vehicles and the like.
Now. Somebody give me a billion dollars to develop a MMO!
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
In my eyes it was just bad design. Walking around all the time when you're supposed to have super powers, and then magically out of nowhere you can just fly... For me it was more of a "Finally, that was such crap walking around," rather than a sense of accomplishment.
Was there an in-game reason why we couldn't use travel powers in City?
By that line of reasoning we should start at full powered.
I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with either approach. From dcuo of having tp at lvl 2 to CoH having it at 14.
Not having travel powers introduces small time sink which gives at the same time opportunity of checking the beginner zones more in detail.
CoH travel powers were seen as the equivalent to mounts in fantasy MMOs, so you had to earn your way up to them because That's The Way It Had Always Been Done. I don't remember ever seeing an in-lore reason like the "unlock capes at 20 as a tribute to Hero One" thing, though.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Flying and superspeed and so on are integral parts of a lot of moderate to high level supers, and the idea of being essentially a street level vigilante just... doesn't mesh well.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
There wasn't an in-game reason that I recall, however, from what I understand, contrary to popular hate mongering, when CoH was in development, orders came from on high from NCSoft that CoH original vision wasn't meshing (aka NCSoft didn't believe it would do well without following standard MMO tropes). So, the basic order was to make CoH more like its fantasy contemporaries, so standard ideas like delayed travel powers to "earn" and other such trappings you could find scattered throughout the game were implemented.
I do feel that heroes should earn their capes, as it were (not literally but figuratively) but I do agree the travel power delay was just old ideas being forced into the medium for no reason than because everyone else was doing it.
There are a few people who actually believe their hero should start at full power, and were a few that thought this in CoH to.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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There should have been a new adventure pack every 2 months. Alternate ones that silver could play, and ones that only gold could play.
The story, greater detail, varied combat, any variety really is a good thing. the utter lack of useful rewards or any reason to run them more than once or twice is a big downfall. And the significantly lower XP/time spent in them is a huge drawback as well.
Add in alternate missions/leveling paths in the same zone - so my god you dont have to do the same West Side Story on EVERYONE - that is until Alerts then people just camp them being mostly gimpy until level 40.
Customization and the awesome powers and effects and flying and running and jumping are huge - the game suffers because every single mission is either "Go into a set of about 5 rooms, kill 3-4 groups of 3-4 enemies casually standing around in each room, until you get to a slightly harder enemy in the last room" or "do all that, AND click on the 5 glowing boxes after beating up the same sets of enemies in scenario one" - that is like 80% of the content in CO.
Lairs, final missions in chains, and adventure packs are at least different experiences.
Millennium city could be a wealth of adventures. Heck you could have 'lairs' in single buildings where you had to fight your way up floor by floor. You could add 100 of that kind of mission and barely make a dent in the real estate. Make lairs drop better than average gear and Questionite and have a higher XP/time than random grunt missions and poof, plently of reasons to run them.
More variety = more fun.
The point of contention for many though is that over on the STO boards we've already been told that Season 9 (the next update) will be launching in April, and that we'll be getting the second part to the episode "A Step Between Stars" probably shortly before that. When this was announced by the devs it was well over two months away from when we could expect this content, despite it still being deep in development. Compare that to what we consistenly hear over here about upcoming content, and you can see why some are losing their patience, the STO team at least keeps their customers interested and abreast of when roughly their next major updates are scheduled to release.
Actually, we should be given a choice on this. Some heroes come out in their first comic with all the powers they're ever going to have. Other heroes pick up more powers over time. So how does this translate into gameplay mechanics?
Combine Power Points and Advantage Points; for the purpose of clarity we'll call these new points Champion Points.
- Champion Points can either be spent to acquire powers, or on advantages.
- You would start getting Champion Points right away at level 1, and by the time you hit level 6 you would have enough of them to buy all 14 of your powers; skipping the tutorial would mean you start at that point.
This would leave it up to the player. They can either start with all their powers right from the start, or play the type of character that acquires more powers over time, or that learns new ways to use their given power (i.e. acquiring more Force powers as the character learns to use their force-based powers in new ways).
Players who opted for less powers would have more advantage points in them, leading to a specialized characters with a few well developed powers. Players who opted for more powers would be more versatile, but with each individual power being less powerful.
I would even want to extend this by adding additional Advantage ranks to powers, making it so that even at level 40 you could choose to have less than the maximum number of power, and instead have only a few powers that are highly powerful (this might put a bit of oomph back into specialized characters).
i.e. Choose Your Own Progression
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Not at all. Say I'm making a Might character, I start the game punching things. Or a fire-themed character, I start the game burning things. As you progress you find new and better ways to do the things you had already been doing. Sure, conceptually it doesn't always make total sense, but it's an easier pill to swallow than "I've fought 145 crimes! Now I can fly!"
There are some choices that need to be made considering that it's a game. Power progression fits okay in there. You generally don't want to give players too many powers, especially early in the game (looking at you, Old Republic).
But limiting the way you travel, by level, in most games is pretty stupid. Like, in WoW, I've been solving crimes and ridding the area of monsters, and no one wants to give me a horse? Even a slow one? Gimme a break, that's dumb. And even in Champs, I think it's unnecessary for the tutorial to not have travel powers. It'd be much easier for people to be like "Oh neat I can fly!" and spend 20 minutes flying around then realize they don't know where to go or what to do because they have ADD, but I'd bet that it wouldn't happen too much.
City was painful for me, especially since I'm an altoholic. I spent a lot of time on my Chevrolegs.
Well I do think that to a new player technically CO doesn't show it's full capability off in any way. They start with a costume creator with hardly anything in and cant' exactly see how much more customization there will be as they collect things. Also most will start as an AT and the game will feel like any other which isn't really what you want. It sort of underwhelms the new player.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Right, and like I said, that mostly makes sense in the game terms, but like, Spider-Man swung from his webs from the beginning. Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound (then he reached level 35 and could fly, haha). Batman had his batwing/batmobile/batwhatever. Flash... I can't remember what Flash had.
Thing is superheroes always had some way of getting around, and if it's part of their superpowers, well, I'm sure it may have happened, but I can't think of any who developed that power in issue 76.
In the beginning, even Superman couldn't fly, just "leap tall buildings in a single bound".
You're a lunatic with a mad man's dream of a milk proof robot!
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