battlewraith

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.

Not convinced about that. I suspect that if you asked people what their favorite time period was from the history of the game, it would've been points where things were pretty broken. The fixation on numbers and balance lends itself to this formulaic, cookie cutter sameness where nothing is really surprising or stands out that much imo.

My main interest is making new characters. I plan the character in mids and then level them. Probably 75% get pled straight to 50 and the others are a mix of standard missions and PLing. To finance a new build, I run weeklies, Tinpex, Market Crash, radios, or whatever random shit seems to be going on. Also Incarnate stuff. During the Valentines Event I ran that blue wedding on 8 different characters every morning. If the goal is to outfit the build the way I planned, then yes it takes piles of inf. I don't know what's hard to grasp about that. I'm not oblivious to the devs removing some timesinks--I already mentioned it to you earlier in the discussion. If money is not necessary to enjoy the game, why would free stuff be a problem?

FFS.... That is not my way, You kept going on about "clever" ways to make money. Those are things that people could do to easily make money. You're correct that free stuff would not improve my interest in the game--it would remove a time sink associated with getting to the content I actually want to do. Conversely, throughout this exchange you've done nothing to explain how free stuff would destroy anyone's interest in the game. In fact, you're sitting on a pile of gold that you can instantly use to enhance whatever you want. This doesn't seem to have ruined your enjoyment of all this wonderful content you keep praising. Why would removing the same hassle for other people be a big deal?

You've repeatedly shown a complete inability to engage with the points I've made. It's pretty simple. Not everyone has the same priorities that you do. You think that if the types of grinding that you, a player sitting on a mound of cash anyways, has a preferred way of grinding resources available to them--then everyone should be content with that. There are easy solutions--I have three accounts I could just run afk farmers on all of them. Or I could do tedious things like making money on the market. Like I said earlier, it breaks immersion. Saps my will to play. And I think it's a bad strategy to just cater to people like you.

So now grind is a thing, eh? What is the right grind oh wise one? How long should it take? I think it typically takes me a couple weeks to go from rolling a character and having it kitted out. Granted I do a lot of stupid stuff like TFs and I don't like playing the market. I'm more interested in why, if the big brained knowledge to insta-50 and insta-slot is out there, it is so important to Daddy Warbucks that people keep paying for things?

No I never said a brand new player. Longterm players that are tired of the grind. I know that's hard for you to imagine (you won't even admit there's grind) but they exist. The Brainstorm argument is a non-starter. People largely continue the game to be around friends and other people in general. If you want a solo game there are far far better options available.

So you're rich. None of that is surprising. And it seems like this largesse stems from the fact that you play this game a lot and don't primarily play it to make new characters. Ok so picture your new character progression. After three weeks of whatever it is you do, you have a new 50. Imagine you don't have a vault full of gold available to just drop enhancements in there. So you're going to have to earn it some way. What's that going to take, another couple weeks to grin...err "play the game" in order to afford the stuff. So maybe a month and a half total effort to get a fully slotted 50. For a casual that wants to play a specific lvl 50 build, that's a month and a half of bullshit just to get to the content they want to do. Why not just make the stuff free? Because the longterm hoarders and addicts, who are drowning in merits and effectively have the experience of free stuff want other people to have to jump through hoops. Granted, requesting free stuff in a video game is bonkers. Why is this case an exception--because the game is over 20 years old.

What is the value of the enhancements that you are dropping into the character?

I thought you were asking about stuff you needed to play. Also Streetfighter and MarioKart have multiple versions, so I can't comment on all of them. But the ones I've played did not not involve upgrades to the carts or boosts that would carry over into matches. There's this thing called fun. Have you heard of it?

Love: Changelings, even though I've never played one or even remember being teamed with one. They are a triumph of human will and creativity. Changelings show us how to rise above. to do more. To be more. When haters point the finger and tell you how you how things should be--the changeling stands there at the pylon. Smiling. Making weird noises. Probably doing less damage than a scrapper. Would change: Pylons. The game should run on vibes. Get rid of the suggestions forum. It's where hope goes to die.

I think that's probably your disconnect, you're fixated on things like trinkets from the START vendor. How much do you usually spend on builds and how long does it typically take you to outfit one?

Video games are the same. Mariokart doesn't require you to fill up the gas tank in order to race. Streetfighter doesn't require you to pay for MMA lessons so that your character can do matches. Videogames are a small subset of all games, and games that feature the sorts of things being discussed here are a small subset of all videogames.