battlewraith

FFS tidge it's not that hard to understand. Planning and executing a build, which is a part of the game I enjoy, is not a flex on other people. Particularly in a game full of longtime players like you who are drowning in inf and could do whatever the hell they wanted. Back in the day, I only played for pvp and I would have to do all the same grind as everyone else just so I could do a fun activity I liked that had very little in the way of material reward. Eventually, developers came along that understood the problem and did something about it. But back in the day there were tidge's running around that made the same arguments: the game is fun. Leveling is fun. Why should they be able to skip stuff just so that they can do...whatever that thing is that I can't relate to. Calling me judgemental while speculating that I don't have fun in other aspects of my life because I disagree with you about a game---LOL what?!?!

The people that respond with thumbs down to my posts do so predictably and regularly. So If I post something and they don't respond, I know it's time to send a wellness check to their house.

Grinding, which is something you refuse to acknowledge as a thing, is essential to understand why people would want a proposal like this. Yomo, in the first post mentions that there are players who don't like the game's emphasis on earning inf. He suggests as an example making enhancements available as on beta. So about me derailing anything...***** please. After pages of dragging your feet, you post a list of things the devs did to alleviate grind (you left off patrol xp, a reward for not even playing). You stress that this is optional. Well there you go Tidge. They could provide optional vendors for people who want these enhancements--the same way they have for other anti-grind adjustments. You can just ignore them and go along your merry way however you like.

Somebody here has a business model based on making doomsaying threads? How does that work?

That wall of exposition is an argument, in what's supposed to be a discussion. The reason I wrote it is that there were people denying that grind is a thing. For anybody. So not only did I have to define grind multiple times, I then had to describe a very familiar reality for anyone who actually pays attention to what other people are doing. Now that I've done that, you're shifting the goalposts. You're right, I don't know what those players standing around want because I haven't asked them. But your "people-that-don't-play-like-me-are-lazy" mentality has been overruled time and time again in the evolution of this game. People railed for years against farming and pling, but they became cornerstones of the community anyway. And it did not cause the game to fall into ruin. And you haven't shown any evidence that it would. You haven't shown any evidence of anything tbh, other than the fact that you're flush with merits and can kit out characters whenever you like.

Stay classy.

When you start the game, you can barely handle a few enemies. And it's slow. And you have to rest inbetween. In contrast to an enhanced lvl 50 character that can blast the crap out of groups of enemies and has far less downtime. If you look at how people are actually playing the game--it looks to me like a lot of people, if not the majority, want that lvl 50 experience. To the extent that a lot of people will stand around waiting to get on a farm or lvl 50 radio team rather than work their way up through normal mission content. Not to mention the fact that you can get the xp boosters to help you get past those early levels faster. Why? Because people find them too grindy. And it's clearly the pre-50 game because if these people thought post-50 was just as bad, they wouldn't bother. And yet people are trying to gaslight me that there is no grind when anyone who has played for a reasonable amount of time can see people trying to skip over it. Someone might like that early content and want to play it through. Or not even level to 50. There's nothing wrong with that. The point is not that there is a right way to play. The point is that there are different players with different preferences, priorities, and motivations. What's grind to me might not be grind to you. So I believe, after 20 years of this game's history, it's appropriate to have a conversation about incentives. That conversation is not "I play a certain way, it's not grindy, you're lazy, go look for another game."

I thought it was jarring too. It seems more like an Invincible plotline than Superman.

If you don't like the endless back-in(?)-forth, just stop. Don't complain to me about it. It's uncouth. Everyone chiming in is advocating for some version of laziness that they prefer--which makes sense. This is a game--it's not a damn job, though grinders tend to forget that. The game changes over time and you float along with it. When the waters settle at a certain level, you'll get used to it and then insist that things can't change and it has to be this way. There have been people like this at every stage from the beginning. I always find the "I win button" argument amusing. If I got some free enhancements, I win the game or something? That's all it's about? I pvped almost exclusively from the introduction of the arena until shutdown. There was virtually no reward for doing this. We did it for fun. I won if I defeated another player or my team got more kills in a match. If you tell me that getting free stuff is an I-win button, the only way I can parse that is that you think accumulating a bunch of stuff is "winning." It isn't though. Anyone can do it assuming they want to spend time doing it. And the person sitting on a mountain of unused merits in their vault has no more won the game than some penniless vagabond that has fun roleplaying.

People have been fighting on the coh forums since they were a thing. I think it was worse on live than on Homecoming. Remember that the guy who ran the secret server after shutdown got doxxed and received death threats when word got out -- over a game.

This guy is not you. In fact there are many players that are not like you. That has long been a strength of the game, that it can cater to a diversity of players. And yet here you are fuming and telling people what they should enjoy, while not actually offering any argument why things should be one way and not another.

It's not really my definition. I linked to wikipedia earlier, here is an AI overview: In video games, "grinding" refers to the act of repeatedly performing the same tasks or actions to achieve a specific goal, such as gaining experience points, in-game currency, or unlocking items. It often involves engaging in repetitive gameplay, like defeating enemies or gathering resources, to progress in the game. While grinding can be a necessary part of many games, it can also be perceived as tedious or boring. So a classic example is a lowbie mission where you would need to go out and kill 10 rats (or skulls in this case). That's fine when you're starting a new game. It gets old when you've done that task for years. Another example is having to run around to talk to contacts in order to proceed in a mission. To compensate for this aggravation, the developers made team teleport options readily available and introduced radio missions so that you could skip contacts altogether. The point, imo, is not to make people who don't enjoy certain content to like it. It's to make content that people actually do like, less grindy.

You asked a question. I answered, You apparently didn't like the response and got pissy. Go figure.

Well, back on live there was a time when there was a pvp community was situated on the test server. There were regular pvp nights, there were leagues, and so on. The devs basically killed it off by taking the server down, wiping it, etc. So there is a precedent for that being a bad idea. Not to mention the fact that, as is always pointed out when this comes up, people want to play with friends. If they wanted a single player game they'd probably go elsewhere. Look at the current state of the game. Lots of changes have been made as concessions to people who want to skip grind. They added the temporal warrior option and unlocked accolades at pvp zone vendors precisely so that people could skip meaningless grind. They were not told to go to Brainstorm. So let's say they took away all the xp boosters. And when people complained, they said "hey you wanna get there faster just go to Brainstorm tee-hee-hee!" The game has changed since 2004. Some people here just opining in favor of the current status quo, ignoring the fact that people like them in the past got overruled to arrive at where the game is now.

Last time I checked, you get free stuff on Homecoming. You can pick up some stuff right away from the START vendor. There are also contexts in this this game and others I've player where things are unlocked from the start. Guildwars 2 pvp for instance gave you access to everything that would be available upon entering the arena space.

Well, I guess I could go try it and then talk to some arbiter of fun to see if it qualified. If it did, then I could repeat it daily for the next twenty years.

At 50 you have all your powers unlocked and the greatest variety of build options. If that's something that concerns you, then post-50 is less grindy. TBH, I have no expectation or even really a desire that they make everything free. I do always have an interest in things being less grindy. I think the rewards are pretty ridiculous. You get virtually nothing from something like pvp but can be ridiculously wealthy from playing the market. People can afk-farm, but even something as trivial and innocuous as that flying disc thing has to be bought. It's game design meant to cater to worker bees. So for the sake of argument--which is why I think this thread was started--why not make things free? The answers seem to be: Pro: Cut down on meaningless grind. Cons: There is no such thing as grind. You should try other content. When I play, I like to do this (explains some playstyle). Or just basic incredulity at the prospect. Oh and let's not forget this tired canard: This has already been commented on. Try to keep up. It's a testing server, with no population. If you're going to recommend a single player game, there are far better options available.

And thanks to your myopic vigilance, there will always be a little carrot dangling in front of the noses of players to get them to do stuff. Good lord to think what would happen if people could just get free stuff. It would all come crashing down like a house of cards. There would be no reason to play the game at all. (Shudders)

LOL Beesleywraith? Damn you are bitter.

Just saw it with my wife and older son, we all liked it. Corenswet was a good Superman. The side characters like Mr. Terrific and Guy Gardner were great.

I don't disagree. But again you miss the point. The people who, after 20 years of playing, would leave because they can't skip over repetitive content or played out incentives will be gone sooner than the crowd who is content to do the same things, over and over, while pointlessly filling the vault with stuff that the don't actually need, until the Grim Reaper comes and pries it from their grasp. The latter group will absolutely be the last ones standing. I just think the intransigence of their hoarding ways will hasten the decline of the community. Dang you're right. If I just roll a lowbie and go start killing skulls again...the grind will just go away. LOL. I was picturing more Scrooge McDuck btw, probably because your avatar is yellow. At least try to put some thought into this. Parts of the game bore me. Other parts don't. If I were able to fully the boring parts--the game would be less boring. I've asked this before and I don't think I got a clear answer: how would free rewards destroy the game for you? Is the content and gameplay worth doing or not?

The game I was given didn't have IOs. It didn't have a market. It didn't have travel power available right out of the gate. The game changed because of what people wanted. And after subscriptions ended, it changed even further. "tidge says you don't need something." My guess is that tidge will be happily grinding for as long as the lights stay on. I don't think you are the type of player they need to be worried about retaining. Proposals like this are aimed at maintaining other segments of the playerbase that are less likely to stay. Who knows, if everything is still here in 10 years maybe they'll be content with 500 regular codgers who like to party like it's the early 2000s.

There's no argument here, lol. Basically, this thread is just people repeating the fact that they can't relate to how others play the game. You can't reconcile the idea that someone doesn't want to grind content but also can't just instantly kit out a new 50 (which ironically you can whenever you want because you rich. Maybe as a thought experiment, picture the vault being empty). For a lot of coh players, the game is like that. Because they've been playing it for decades at this point. They can do flashback content and all the tweaking they like post 50. There is no reason to fumble around with the lowbie content before then, which will almost certainly involve taking powers and slottings that you know you're going to respec out of later. I think this is the most common objection to proposals to skip grind and I think it's pretty clearly false. I think things like farming and PLing actually have kept players around that would have left if those options weren't available. People are going to like the gameplay or not. The idea that making them go slow (whether they want to or not) will make them appreciate it more is this weird pipe dream. Particularly in light of how old this game is and how many options there are in terms of games.

That's the video game equivalent of "when I was a kid, I had to walk 2 miles uphill in the snow to get to school." We are now long past the retail subscription days, so the actual justification for time sinks (making a company money) is over. So why is it so important to preserve this annoying experience for future generations of players? Particularly when the people most adamant about keeping the status quo are themselves far beyond concerns about being able to afford things.

Once the character is 50 and slotted out, I'm then doing incarnates. Beyond that, it depends on how much I like the character. If I like it, I'll just play it for a while. It probably depends on how much time I actually have for gaming at the moment, whether or not I get inspired to roll something else, etc. It's not unusual, most of my longterm friends from the game are like this. On the other hand, if i told you that I just logged in every day for a bit to buy and sell thing in the AH--that would be weird to me. Why would you play a superhero MMO in order to do that? But I don't see many people here thinking its weird to skip over the majority of the game content to do so.