galaxgal

Making a question about a community issue (retention) into a personal issue isn't constructive. You can design a game in ways that retain or diffuse players over time. That said, this is more of a philosophy around incentives, and not something that there is a single "solution" for. The fact of the matter remains that for huge swathes of content, the incentive design isn't very good because it was inherited from the awkward free-to-play mechanics of the live days. Never mind that the Incarnate system was left unfinished... Players will pursue incentives, and the variety shown by that "bucketloads of content" will be better shown by thinking more about incentives and improving the signalling of what comes from where. Obviously, no, we can't expect huge retail-level content drops, and the game shouldn't be designed like WoW, but we can still have a constructive discussion about what can be done, especially from the perspective of the low programming manpower of the current HC team.

Letting people have the freedom to do whichever bank maps they want -and- giving people who do them the 'regular' way a better incentive aren't mutually exclusive.

I admit that I forgot that we have contacts who give out bank missions for free; my idea revolved around the 'normal' path of doing them as a capstone to a set of radios or papers, which can be about as long as a shorter story arc. Those contacts could simply not reward any merits or reward them at a reduced rate. (Assuming that's possible and not a huge burden to code.) My 'dream' idea would be for the total reward would be split between the bank and the key missions, encouraging players to run around the map and look for keys, but it might be more difficult to balance. I forget what we get from alignment missions but I think that would be a good baseline overall.

Right now all the bank mission-only rewards are one-time only. This means once you have your badges or speedrun them for temp powers they're only really worth doing as a novelty, reducing interest in teams for them. Could we add a small handful of Merits or some similar recurrent reward to Mayhem and Safeguard missions to help keep them relevant vs. story arcs, tips, and TF's? Something for the side missions would be nice too.

There is an overabundance of focus on costumes in this thread, probably because it was the first suggestion. There are plenty of other things to put in that are not costumes and not badges. (Sorry, they are boring, I don't care about proto-achievements. Accolades are the most I bother with.) Incarnate toys or sidegrades, content that requires higher Incarnate levels to do, more stuff to buy with Merits, etc. Costume parts are too situationally useful for people to bother doing things for them often anyway. I do miss when capes and auras were special, but that was years and years ago, well before the game even shut down.

The recurring theme of these discussions is basically a recurring conflict between two groups: One group wants Homecoming to be a sandbox, total freedom, effects of game design on player behavior be damned. One group wants Homecoming to be something akin to the best compromise for a 'live game' with its limited dev effort. Gating things is essential for the latter's vision and anathema to the former's. You can see this same conflict play out elsewhere, like discussions of Incarnate powers, or the recent travel changes. A vocal group of players is deeply concerned with their individualistic wants in a game that is dependent on communal motivation.

I, for one, am thrilled to see a totally unscientific straw poll brigaded by two vocal and partisan factions on a forum that's a tiny slice of the minimum 4,000 people who log in regularly. This post is sarcasm.

Arguing majorities is pointless. Blind democracy is a hideously poor way to manage a game, and one forum thread isn't a meaningful sample to determine a plurality much less a majority. I agree that existing content shouldn't be suddenly re-locked and re-walled behind their grinds. It exists today and should continue to exist and doing a costume unlock chore on your 50th character isn't fun. However, right now we have people sitting around at level 50, doped up on Incarnate powers, idling around going "what next?" until they eventually log off. Incentives motivate play. How many people are doing teams for radios or even contact missions? Few, because AE farming gives better XP. How many people are doing non-50 TF's? Few, unless it is the weekly, because there are better ways to get merits. How many people are going to do the new story arcs more than two or three times? Not many, because it gives little reward. Having long-term meaningful rewards (not badges, because many don't find them meaningful) is vital to the long-term health of the server.

I was proselytized at that 'everyone' should share their feedback on this change, so here's mine! I like this change because I already don't like the negative effects these teleport-anywhere-from-anywhere-instantly commands have on the visibility of the game population and liveliness of the world. If this is a side-effect of some other problems the developers were going to fix, so be it, but either way I'm in favor and I hope that element for some of us in the silent group of mostly-unconcerned or in-favor is acknowledged. Please keep up the good work on this project; it's clear you have a coherent vision of what you hope CoX can be and aren't just relying on design-by-committee, even where I disagree with those decisions or ideas.