Trainee Frostbite

And if the player in fact likes or would've liked New Coke, or New Pepsi, or loves Dr. Pepper? Heck, Tab came back. What about RC Cola, one of my favourites; something the friend who showed me the beauty of RPGs in junior high school and I shared by the case while he helped teach me how gaming systems worked beyond the content creation I loved to do starting out? Granted, I'm not quite of a vintage by age or player veterancy as a microcomputer or tabletop RPGer that IRL the choice was in range even when I got started, but the point is that if a choice or configuration that best suits a player or their preference of playstyle is summarily dismissed or excised from the core, agreed rules, mechanics or UI/UX- even if it's something that by practical use or personal druthers bears no poverty of presence if it's kept, even for a fragment of the active playerbase or hypothetically even a single player for whom this could be a breakthrough efficiency or reason to get their skin in the game in renewed enthusiasm and novelty or a healthy reactivant of personal interest- what is actually lost or provided in handicap if it doesn't slow down or otherwise affect the game's operation or anyone else's playstyle or choices within those agreed rules to retain them? Do we embrace a functional democracy wherein the most vulnerable people who come to our hearths with eager but doubtful hearts to our table and are lost in the reduction of frills that to them aren't frills, but their way back home to themselves? I don't think gaming is ever worthy of that conceit, not in a healthy sense or profession of posterity. I don't want to argue about why I need something specific to play, I want to play and not be nitpicked the moment I ask for help- within reason and those agreed rules- or be asked what I want, apparently in honest request, then have my needs and desires shot down because it doesn't fit the mold or might tend to break it. Novelty's great if it comes with the open hand of respect of personal choice and bound personal responsiblity. Take away that choice or deny it to anybody and it stops being fun for them, and it doesn't affect you, right? Until it's your turn to have your choices put through the steamhammer of frill-reduction, and then it's gonna feel really relevant. I mean, I don't want to quote Eric Lensherr, of all people, about why humanity loves its terribly slippery slopes, because even though I think Magneto was as right for him as Charles Xavier was for his purposes in fighting the good fight, the point is that we're capable of so much more. And this is a superhero game, MMORPG and the like. Shouldn't we do the very least, and then try to do better, if the most significant impact is somebody who might've jumped ship stays on board and lends their voice to the game's tapestry? -Junior Frosty, Extremely Heavy Lifter/Physics Brick.

The most important thing I've understood about gaming, and making gaming or a particular game's playing a habit, is having the controls taken out of a gamer's hands, being told they're doing it 'wrong', arbitrarily or otherwise will break their novel interest and decrease their desire to return again. To be fair, sometimes a player does that to themselves, whether unaware of the limits of those controls or what they can and can't do, what's expected of them or simply the breadth of possibility they can push towards or break the boundaries of, all of which may be a part of a game's default mechanics, sandboxing or, in the case of a multiplayer game like CoH, the social environment or expectations of them and everyone else in-game, bearing the agreed rules of said environment and code of conduct. This is even more important when what little someone knows of a game or its world is wholly anecdotal. I can speak for myself in that I've loved superheroes and comic books since I was barely two digits of age, but I've never by habit played a superhero game that wasn't book-and-paper tabletop, and that might've happened once or twice. I'm a writer by trade and a pre-digital animator and pencil & ink traditional artist by post-secondary training, and my creative efforts are what makes me whole, helps define how I interact with others online and gives me purpose as a person moving forth. I strongly believe that getting anyone interested in anything should behoove established participants to ennoble the newly-enlisted to ask, give them the tools to learn how they want to participate within those game worlds, find the skillset(s) or creative meriting that fits them and their druthers. Focus less on on anticipating the questions a new player might want to ask by extremity of specifics, but allow new players to ask what they will- again, within reasonable and respectful bounds, and simply behaving maturely and politely as a set responsibility- and help them to find their own path. Show a new player what they can do, in an environment wherein they can do their best with the creative tools they have and a foundation of humanity and trust securely wedded to their purpose and footpath, and they'll want to step into their costume, skin of steel or stone and dutiful business and want to be part of the group effort. And if they screw up, most of the time they'll not treat it as having been railroaded into a situation beyond their control, rather, to learn from it, and come back to do the deed newly-bettered in a little while, if not immediately afterwards.