battlewraith

There was a time when KM was amazing in zone pvp. It had two ranged attacks that were useful and then that big whirling jazz hands attack did massive damage because that ridiculous animation time factored into how hard it hit. There was a reason to bring a scrapper rather than a blaster, stalker or some other damage toon. Pixels were crushed, kills were stolen, and there was crying. Lots of crying. It flew too close to the sun. It's current level of mediocrity is spiritual penance for that time of high performance. And that COH development follows the Japanese maxim "the nail that sticks out will be hammered flat." It's not good enough or bad enough to merit attention.

So there is no reason to pick a brute over a tank? I would've thought that farming at least was the one area where brute would shine over other ATs.

Thanks peeps!

Anyone here use the incarnate hybrid control? The description talks about a chance for applying effects/damage to controlled enemies. My question is what does "controlled" mean in this context. Is it just related to holds or does it include other effects like disorients, fear, confusion, etc.?

This is a game. In order to keep people paying $15 a month, there was a variety of gameplay options added to grind for things. I don't know in what context Matt said "players are always going to find a way to get as much as they can with as little time investment as possible" but to see someone quote that and then start talking about people acting badly is hilarious. What Matt is describing there is a good capitalist. Or simply anyone who values their time. If you're a developer for an MMO and that is some sort of major revelation--maybe you should be working on a more linear, story driven sort of game? Maybe after all these years the solution to the concerns about things like leaching is for a portion of the Homecoming budget to be spent on mailing Xanax to the people who can't seem to let things go.

Bullshit. The biggest moment for me in terms of people leaving happened in the first year (2004). I had two mid sized sgs just basically get bored and quit because the content wasn't rolling out fast enough. Half of them went to WoW. I think that early period was the starkest decline for the population and there wasn't even AE yet. I don't know what "countless" means, but I played Age of Warhammer, WoW, Guild Wars 2, and SWTOR--and didn't see people leaving in droves because of pling in any of them. Pling was frowned on during the duration of the subscription years--because they wanted people to have to grind slowly to keep them paying. The fact that it was there kept certain demographics (min/maxers, farmers, pvpers) from going to other games. If you completely got rid of it right now, I'm pretty sure it would take a sizeable chunk out of the around 11k daily players you have right now. There are tons of great single player games out there. There are tons of great multiplayer games out there as well. Games that are not based on design decisions and graphics engines that are 20 years old. So it's really bizarre to have people argue that there is a proper "mmorpg concept" that should be followed here. It's a sandbox as much as anything else and that's why it still works.

That was satire, not making shit up. I was mocking the judgmental tone of it. Is your perspective on people taking your advice unreasonable? Not really. What is? 1. Insisting on lumping all players into one box to fit how you feel people should learn the game. ["I disagree that it depends all that much on the player."] 2. Ignoring that these discussions about how people should learn or experience the game are centered on baseless platitudes that have been around since PLing became a thing (ie from the beginning). I've never seen any evidence that it causes people to get bored and leave the game faster or there is some sort of epidemic of bad teaming from people who pled to 50 and don't know how to play. Neither of which is a problem now that the game is f2p. Now maybe you think I'm strawmanning you. You said people should spend "some" time playing. Ok, how much time should they spend traditionally leveling. And how are you arriving at this amount?

Yes, the consequences. The utter ruin that will befall someone if they stray from the honored path. The fact that people like you will turn their back on them... Oh well? If someone asks me a question, I just answer it. If a newly pled 50 asked me what to do, I'd probably ask them what they wanted to do and give them some tips. If someone on a pickup team dies, i rezz them. If they keep getting killed, I maybe keep an eye on them and try to stop that from happening. Probably the worst case scenario is that they would friend me and then later I would forget who they were or something.

It's not an argument, just an impression based on the assumptions you seemed to be feeding into that post. The simple answer to your question-- "is it in the best interests of new players to do X" -- is that it depends on the player. You want to picture people that need your wisdom--knock yourself out.

I suspect you can't relate some of the perspectives in this thread because you assume some kind of blank slate player that somehow hears about this game and just picks it up with no preconceptions. I don't. I think people like that do start the game but are brought in by friends or family--so they have some sort of mentorship/help. My image of somebody seeking out and starting a 20 year old MMO on their own is that this person is a gamer, has played a variety of games, and most likely understand what drives MMOs-- grinding resources. That person might know, before they even roll a character, they they want a maxed out character that will be able to efficiently grind resources for other characters/objectives/etc. It's in that person's best interests to cut out the grind and let them go straight to what they actually want to do. I think the "learn after you're 50" part would be pretty trivial. At that point, they may or may not be interested in the 1-50 leveling content.

It just came in the mail a few days ago. We have Orthanc and my wife has been waiting like 10 years to get a Barad-Dur (wtf Lego?), so she's going to have the building be a deliberately slow process. The only thing assembled so far is the fell beast.

Yeah the rationale behind it doesn't matter. I don't care about downvotes in a discussion. So to hear someone say "I spared you" a downvote, like it's the scarlet letter or something, is just funny. Also, HAIL SATAN!

Looks like you did not get spared a second time, lol.

It's more about a boomer state of mind. I expect that most of the routine posters here are GenX or millenials, but a lot of the nostalgia-driven discussions here remind me of those "don't become your parents" Geico ads. For a lot of people that are still playing this game, it is something of a masterpiece. I'm not here to dispute that. But I think there is a problem when those people insist that the things that they adore about it are THE defining features the new players should be coached to recognize. Citizen Kane was remarkable for it's artful use of a bunch of, for the time, non standard storytelling and cinematic techniques. Those techniques are now commonplace in media. It's entirely possible that contemporary viewers would simply find it boring and want their time back. Likewise, new gamers might have an interest in some aspect of the superhero gamplay but not care about the lowbie grind, or the lore.

Typical Chat you see in this game: AE farm: "Thanks for the invite!" "Reset" PI +4 radios: "Thanks for the invite" Mission ends. Waits for next waypoint. BAF "PUSH THE BUTTON!" "Boobs!" "team 1 go N" etc. "Watch the health!" "Stay on team if you want to go again." Granted the BAF comments are truly Shakespearian compared to a farm. A so-called AE baby needs to understand how teams work. How entering a mission or trial works. How to qualify for participating in certain things (e.g having an alpha slot unlocked). And they need to be able to read chat and follow simple instructions (something traditional players are often bad at). If they can do these things, it really does not matter if they don't understand their powers or how the combat mechanics work. The farmer kills everything. The radio team nukes stuff before you can even get a hit in. The roided out BAF participants are in danger of, at most, failing to get a badge. The game is not hard. The learning curve is deep because the layers of ad hoc noodley game from different eras of development. Aesthetics and writing that hit hard in the early 2000s probably doesn't have the same effect on a contemporary audience 20 years later. The (dare I say it) boomer take on this is the same as it was at the beginning--people that want to skip content are lazy kids that will just wander in and get bored and cause irritations and then leave. I'm going to say the opposite--people come in and see a quaint game that is obviously a grindfest at the core. And they quite reasonably want to see where it all leads before committing a serious chunk of their leisure time to engaging with it.

I remember the first time I encountered a rikti in a mission. "wtf is that?" I didn't know what I was doing, didn't understand defense mechanics, damage types, took the power descriptions seriously, etc. So I fought this alien and lost. I then made a solemn vow: I would learn to play better. I would get more experience, powers, enhancements. I would improve, and then I would come back and have the satisfaction of.... --nope. I just got a bunch of inspirations, popped them and kicked it's ass. But I'll be damned if I sit here idly in the year of our lord 2024 watching these damned filthy farmers and their "gimme gimme gimme culture" rob new people of the experience of using standard game mechanics to cheese encounters. The long winding, tab-targetting road of vicarious heroism should not be sullied in this way!

I call bullshit on the whole "farmers ruining the enjoyment of a new player's game" thing. You roll a character, and start playing the normal way. If that was really an enjoyable progression, then people wouldn't be tempted to get pled on a farm right? Except that has always been the case--ever since the beginning there have always been people looking to skip the grind of killing X number of skulls, thousands of clockwork in a tf, or whatever. It was not at all uncommon to just grind xp by street sweeping. But what happens if I get a 50 right away? My enjoyment of the game is ruined because lvl 50 content is boring? lol. I could always just roll a new lowbie character and have that wonderful slow-grind experience any time I want right? Or exemplar down? If getting experience of the late game destroys the enjoyment of the early game--that doesn't speak well of the quality of the experience of the early game.

Lol maybe I'm on the wrong server. All they seem to talk about on excelsior lately is some Boss Baby movie and references to pandas.

Or maybe the problem doesn't have anything to do with learning the game. It's pretty straightforward to roll a character, pop into Atlas, run up to some purse snatcher, maybe defeat a few of them, and then gas out. You have to take a knee to get end and health back. And this state of affairs will pretty much continue until you can grind enough resources to make a build that will permit continual activity. Imagine a version of Mario Kart where you had to stop and gas up the cart every 40 seconds. And what do you do in the meantime? Defeat thousands of mobs in extremely repetitive encounters in order to follow some narrative threads. Can't imagine why anyone would want to skip any of that. This game is loaded with early 2000s game design-isms. It could be that new players recognize that MMOs are basically about communal grinding and don't want to go through a tedious asthma-attack simulator to get to what are actually the core activities for most players. The failure, if anything, is the inability to see that.

I just hope something is done...um...immediately. After 20 years of absolute ruthless negligence it really feels like the hammer could fall any second now. And this fragile dreamworld-- this poetic house of cards if you will -- could all come tumbling down. And for what? The lack of a sign.

This thread reads like a bunch of retirees having a debate at their condo association meeting. 1. Someone let their dog poop on my lawn, it's clearly against the bylaws! 2. What do you want us to do about it? 3. PUT A SIGN THERE SO THAT THEY KNOW IT'S WRONG!

“Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.” — William S. Burroughs Moderation in all things people.

I watched a video titled "Maximus has the Idiot Savant perk" and it made a lot of sense. Viewing his character in light of that playstyle really him click with me a lot more lol.

"At some point, eventually, in the fullness of time"-- expressed on the forums of a 2 decades old MMO. lol.

Yeah in theory. In practice it doesn't necessarily work out that way. Especially with different types of media.