Give us 'grindy' stuff (like vanguard) and costume unlocks back

[Omega-202]

13 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Grind doesn't equal fun.

 

Goals equals fun.

 

Grind is how you reach your goal.

 

You don't walk into a mission in CoH, then throw up your hands that you've got to "Grind" through the enemies to reach the end, even though -that- is a Skinner box, too.

You are making no sense.  There is a difference between grind and "content".  Grind is the reptition of content for no other reason than artificial inflation of play time in the pursuit of a reward.  Playing through a mission is fun for its own sake.  It becomes grind when you're playing said mission for the Xth time and the enjoyment is no longer derived from the activity itself and is instead derived from a carrot on a stick being waved in front of you.  Then its pure operant conditioning and you're just one of those morphine mice hitting the junkie button over and over.

 

19 hours ago, Summerspark said:

God forbid someone find a creative way to explain why their character is different from how they intended. As a casual RPer myself that's kind of a huge part of working around what is actually a pretty restrictive customisation system. A lot of parts, very few of them moving quite how I need them to.

 

18 hours ago, Summerspark said:

Literally breaking your own legs is not fun. There's psychological aspects to it. That doesn't work.

I know you bowed out of the thread, but come on...you have to see the stupendous hypocrisy here.  

 

"I can't accomodate other people's preferences because its breaking my own legs, but everyone else should accomodate me and 'grow an imagination'".

 

There's an amazing lack of social awareness in you arguments.

[Steampunkette]

3 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

You are making no sense.  There is a difference between grind and "content".  Grind is the reptition of content for no other reason than artificial inflation of play time in the pursuit of a reward.  Playing through a mission is fun for its own sake.  It becomes grind when you're playing said mission for the Xth time and the enjoyment is no longer derived from the activity itself and is instead derived from a carrot on a stick being waved in front of you.  Then its pure operant conditioning and you're just one of those morphine mice hitting the junkie button over and over.

The difference between grind and content is a person's perspective.

 

Grind is what happens when you get tired of the content. People don't do radio missions for the content. most people no longer do the ITF or LGTF for content. And certainly not the Freedom Phalanx task forces.

 

People have already experienced all that content has to offer. People have basically experienced everything that the game has to offer. 

 

At this point it's pretty much just grind. But because they don't care about the grind its content! So go get your accolades, run that task force you've played a dozen times before. 

 

I'd like some new content with some new rewards at the end please. And maybe some new goals to reach on the content we already have for new rewards 'cause if we honestly minded the grind we would be playing other games, right now... 

Edited October 28, 2019 by Steampunkette

[quixoteprog]

To me something that would add some more compelling game play is there were some more options on how missions play out. Something with less hand holding where my decisions on something other than which opening attack to use made a difference.

 

Right now, if you get a mission you get a marker that leads you right to the door where the mission starts. If you go inside and kill everything and click all the glowies the mission will complete at some point. Because some require map clearing and some just clearing parts of it. But if you just start killing stuff eventually you will complete the mission.

 

In the one example where it did I blew it because of how rare it is that the information makes any difference. I can't remember the mission name, but playing Redside I had one mission where the briefing mentioned that you were supposed to capture this one particular mob and stop him from fleeing. I did not pay much attention to it because in the other 99% of missions there is ABSOLUTELY not reason to read anything. If you kill everything on the map and click every glowie you will eventually complete the mission. No reading comprehension required. I remember working my way through the map and while killing one spawn I noticed a mob come running by and did not realize until he was past that there WAS something in the briefing about catching someone.

 

I had just assumed that they meant find a stationary guy on the map and kill him. My bad I guess.  But I would actually appreciate MORE missions like that.  Just with a bit of notice to indicate it is one of the very, very rare ones where you have to be watchful.

 

A simple example of a minor change to something like this that might make a significant difference, is if you got several markers instead. Maybe one for the front of the building and one for the back. Inside is a named mob that will start fleeing as soon as anyone initiates combat or aggros one of his named henchmen scattered among the other generic spawns in the map. If he makes it to an entrance (chosen randomly) the mission fails. Maybe have a couple of glowies that he or his henchemen would run to and if they made it they got an extra powerful attack.

 

That is just a rough example. I am not game designer. And I don't know how much the current mission design API would need to be upgraded to allow such content. I just missions where my strategic  decisions matter. And not just the tactical one about which attack to open with. It would also be nice if the information provided in the mission briefing mattered.  Right now it almost never does.

 

Edited October 28, 2019 by quixoteprog

[Lines]

Let me give an example of the sort of content-to-reward I imagine. Keeping in mind that progress towards this could be account-wide (if not at least shard-wide).

 

Let’s say there’s three new hats:

The Rogue’s hat can be unlocked by making all the different choices in the new Rogue arc across multiple playthroughs, whether on the same character or across different characters.

The Vigilante’s hat is unlocked for the same reason, but for the new Vigilante arc.

The Philosopher’s hat is for all possible choices made.

 

It’s something to encourage us to try doing things differently and be uniquely rewarded for certain content, rather than just a counter. It would also encourage light roleplaying with use of alts, which is pretty core to the game. It’s also not hard and doesn’t require a lot of investment. You could do it in less time than it takes to run some taskforces.

 

The original unlock method for the Cabal hat wasn’t far off this. It required the Ten Times the Victor badge, which (once upon a time) took some decent players and team coordination. It wasn’t a grind, it was a challenge.

 

I feel that the game at the moment encourages grinding more than unlockables would, with most rewards being XP, inf and merits. Many players have found the few efficient bits of content for time/reward and run them repeatedly every day. That’s a grind to me. The fact that you have to make the decision to pick less effective ways to gain rewards isn’t great design.

[Crysta Clear]

That sounds much more preferable than what the OP asked for, Lines. Actual challenging things with rewards, rather than a stupid grind of 500 illusionists or whatever.

[Erydanus]

I understand why people want to receive an award for doing some particular threshold of content, but I always felt that too many costume elements were locked away like this.  Example, unlocking the family style tommygun for getting the defeat x family badge; the old devs said that they saw this as your character taking a trophy from them and using it in the future. But COUNTERPOINT: what if your concept is a reformed Family member and you wanted to have that tommygun from day 1? That blocks that concept. What if was even higher level content like Rularuu weapons? You used to have to unlock them. What if your concept is someone who was given the family's cursed sword and you as a new level 1 hero don't know that sword's eyeball is literally letting Rularuu spy on you and start to corrupt you? Concept block. You used to get a witch hat from doing the Katie Hannon TF. What if your concept is a witch from level 1 and you need that hat? If these unlocks had been account wide so once you achieved them all your new alts could use them, it would be a different story. But they're not. Even something like the Vanguard armor where you originally were given the pieces after you joined vanguard in-game, maybe you want to play someone as a vanguard rookie from the get go? That's also completely valid.

 

That's why I, personally, am happy everything is just unlocked. Costume pieces are just not something this game should limit you from accessing. It's just too messy. 

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Erydanus said:

If these unlocks had been account wide so once you achieved them all your new alts could use them, it would be a different story. But they're not.

^This.  Vet rewards for sure should be converted to account unlocks IMO. 

[MetaVileTerror]

And I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion, but I feel very strongly against unlockables (account-wide or character-specific) tied to character level.  People just farm up to 50 (and higher), so it's not exactly anything meaningful to them.  And then there are us few players who do not farm, but enjoy The Journey.  I'm personally okay with Incarnate stuff being level 50+ simply because I know it's content I'm not terribly interested in for a variety of reasons . . . but if something meaningful was locked behind 50, I certainly wouldn't be too thrilled.

 

I think our current reward scheme is good enough.  Players can impose personal restrictions to simulate grindable unlockables, and in the process not negatively impact other players' experiences.

[skoryy]

23 hours ago, Megajoule said:

It's dismaying how easily we humans can be convinced that grind = fun.  But I guess that's why Skinner boxes work, and game companies have put so much money and research into building better ones.

I'll just leave this video clip here on my thoughts regarding MMO players and the Skinner box.  More grind isn't the answer, we know how to meta the heck out of grinding.  We've meta'd the heck out of everything.

 

 

 

[Steampunkette]

31 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

I think our current reward scheme is good enough.  Players can impose personal restrictions to simulate grindable unlockables, and in the process not negatively impact other players' experiences.

... yeah. No one is ever going to do that. It's a ridiculous idea on it's face.

 

People will create goals for themselves, forever. 'Cause that's what people do. There's people out there making "Hardcore" characters who don't use IOs and reroll if they drop even once. There's people out there making Power Pool Builds where the bulk of their powers come from a series of power pools... I'm certain there's someone out there whose goal is to do every mission in the game on a single character, earn every badge, do everything once, except the stuff you -can't- (Like Praetoria and the Tutorial on one character)

 

But there's no reward for it. And saying "Well you can just not let yourself do X and pretend it's a reward for doing all that hard work!" is just flatly insulting.

 

I'd infinitely prefer to have goals to achieve to get some kind of reward (On an account basis) than every single thing just handed to me, forever. 

Edited October 28, 2019 by Steampunkette

[ShardWarrior]

32 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

And I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion, but I feel very strongly against unlockables (account-wide or character-specific) tied to character level.  People just farm up to 50 (and higher), so it's not exactly anything meaningful to them.  

That's ok but it can be very punitive to those with many alts.  Grinding out Vet levels is a huge drag IMO.  I rather like what Cryptic did in STO with the reputation systems.  If you reach Tier V on one character, every other on the account gets a huge discount which cuts the grinding more than in half.

[MetaVileTerror]

Seems I did a poor job of expressing my intent.  I'm not saying that we should not offer players the opportunity to improve their Alts through various means.  I'm saying I feel very strongly that skipping all the content by farming to 50 should not be the most rewarding path.

[Lines]

Gotta back Steampunkette on that one. I impose a lot of challenges, but that’s to avoid my power tray being filled with OP ‘i win’ buttons rather than for any sense of reward.

 

I don’t think you can just pretend to reward yourself.

[Omega-202]

6 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

... yeah. No one is ever going to do that. It's a ridiculous idea on it's face.

 

People will create goals for themselves, forever. 'Cause that's what people do. There's people out there making "Hardcore" characters who don't use IOs and reroll if they drop even once. There's people out there making Power Pool Builds where the bulk of their powers come from a series of power pools... I'm certain there's someone out there whose goal is to do every mission in the game on a single character, earn every badge, do everything once, except the stuff you -can't- (Like Praetoria and the Tutorial on one character)

 

But there's no reward for it. And saying "Well you can just not let yourself do X and pretend it's a reward for doing all that hard work!" is just flatly insulting.

 

I'd infinitely prefer to have goals to achieve to get some kind of reward (On an account basis) than every single thing just handed to me, forever. 

So instead of playing your preferred way by instituting self limitations, you want to take away any option for other people to play their preferred way?  Does that not reek of entitlement and selfishness? 

 

"Play my way because I have no self control!" is all I'm hearing from your arguments

[skoryy]

Welcome to 'The Only Valid Way To Play Is My Way To Play, Part LCMXVII Of A Series.'

 

A little understanding of everyone else can go a longer way.

[Steampunkette]

31 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

So instead of playing your preferred way by instituting self limitations, you want to take away any option for other people to play their preferred way?  Does that not reek of entitlement and selfishness? 

 

"Play my way because I have no self control!" is all I'm hearing from your arguments

Flip it around. "Everything must be freely available to me at all times because I'm selfish and entitled and refuse to spend time to earn my goodies and anyone who isn't good with that should kneecap themselves to create a false sense of challenge so I don't have to be bothered by it!" is what I'm getting from you, here.

 

Now we could dance around that Ad Hominem circuit or debate the finer points of where the goalposts should be, but I'm not interested in that kind of circumlocution.

 

I'd like some rewards gated behind content because it gives me a goal to achieve. It's how CoH was run for years on end. It's how MMOs and Games in General typically work. You have a goal, you have a reward for completing that goal, go get it.

 

It isn't unreasonable to ask that the system that worked so well for so long be continued in a slightly less restrictive manner, I.E. that any locked rewards become unlocked on an account-wide basis. And presenting it as some selfish and unreasonable position is not arguing in good faith on a level field.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Lines]

31 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Welcome to 'The Only Valid Way To Play Is My Way To Play, Part LCMXVII Of A Series.'

 

A little understanding of everyone else can go a longer way.

You’re right, of course. Trouble is that the hopes here are diametrically opposed. As Steampunkette just demonstrated, we can throw the same arguments at each other from different perspectives.

 

I don’t think we need to snipe over it. I’m just concerned that little reward for gameplay isn’t very sustainable.

[EmmySky]

As I said before, I like options.  I think flat out taking away options would be a bad thing but I can understand that some people don't do well with self-imposed limitations.  Maybe they could add a per-character drop down menu for when you create the character do you want to run it old school (live restrictions apply like costume openings, costume parts..capes auras hats) or run it HC style and maybe even a couple options in between to control your toons level of grindiness.  That way noone is telling anyone you have to play it my way or its the wrong way.

[Steampunkette]

3 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

As I said before, I like options.  I think flat out taking away options would be a bad thing but I can understand that some people don't do well with self-imposed limitations.  Maybe they could add a per-character drop down menu for when you create the character do you want to run it old school (live restrictions apply like costume openings, costume parts..capes auras hats) or run it HC style and maybe even a couple options in between to control your toons level of grindiness.  That way noone is telling anyone you have to play it my way or its the wrong way.

No one is suggesting taking away what already exists.

 

We're suggesting that some of the future stuff be put behind gameplay walls or challenges that have to be overcome.

 

Not all of it. Not even most of it.

 

Just some.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Steampunkette

[MunkiLord]

44 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

No one is suggesting taking away what already exists.

 

We're suggesting that some of the future stuff be put behind gameplay walls or challenges that have to be overcome.

 

Not all of it. Not even most of it.

 

Just some.

To me this seems ideal. Everybody gets some content tailored to their preferences.

[Omega-202]

1 hour ago, Steampunkette said:

No one is suggesting taking away what already exists.

 

We're suggesting that some of the future stuff be put behind gameplay walls or challenges that have to be overcome.

 

Not all of it. Not even most of it.

 

Just some.

Yes, all of that new content we have coming...

 

Have fun waiting for all of that.  

 

There's a real disconnect with reality in this thread.  

[Demon Shell]

This is how I'm expecting them to ultimately implement permanent costume/transformation. Not a INF or merit sink, a check list.

 

Get the Freakshow Tank costume by beating Clamor, Bile, and Derek, regardless of how you encounter them.

 

Get the Coralax Red Hybrid by clearing the On the trail of the Leviathan, The Cult of the Shaper. and Old Friends, New Enemies, and New Opportunities.

 

Et cetera.

 

But that's not a grind. That's an unlock.

[Steampunkette]

1 minute ago, Omega-202 said:

Yes, all of that new content we have coming...

 

Have fun waiting for all of that.  

 

There's a real disconnect with reality in this thread.  

Your snarky passive aggressive and sarcastic bullshit, aside, Omega, the entire -suggestion forum- is made up of pipe dreams and "Wouldn't it be nice?"

 

 

As to the future it's going to go one of three ways:

 

1) CoH HC shuts down when NCSoft isn't appeased.

2) CoH HC expands it's current staff when NCSoft is appeased but refuses to allow the HC staff to monetize the game to support development. Development picks up as more people are on hand to do work.

3) CoH HC expands it's current staff when NCSoft is appeased and allows the HC staff to monetize the game to support development. Development picks up rapidly as more people are on hand to do work and are able to quit their day jobs and get paid to do it.

 

I'm hoping for Option 3, but Option 2 is far more likely.

 

2 minutes ago, Demon Shell said:

This is how I'm expecting them to ultimately implement permanent costume/transformation. Not a INF or merit sink, a check list.

 

Get the Freakshow Tank costume by beating Clamor, Bile, and Derek, regardless of how you encounter them.

 

Get the Coralax Red Hybrid by clearing the On the trail of the Leviathan, The Cult of the Shaper. and Old Friends, New Enemies, and New Opportunities.

 

Et cetera.

 

But that's not a grind. That's an unlock.

Grind. Unlock. Whatever. Different people will call it different things. Content and/or Reward gating is most accurate.

[Lines]

26 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Yes, all of that new content we have coming...

 

Have fun waiting for all of that.  

 

There's a real disconnect with reality in this thread.  

There’s still a process of unpacking how models in CoH work. They use a proprietary file type.

 

If OuroDev, HC or even NCSoft manage to reveal how this works, I know I’ll be wanting to contribute 3D assets.

 

I expect a quality check will be involved to keep things graphically consistent and the polys optimised, but that’d really open things up.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Lines

[LordTenma]

On 10/25/2019 at 2:39 AM, Tahliah said:

I'm torn on this.  On the one hand, I vividly remember getting my first cape and unlocking Cim costumes for the first time.  Ditto the witch's hat.  I felt like I had "won" and that I had earned my new costume pieces and "deserved" to don them.

 

That said, I rarely bothered to go out of my way to "earn" these things on more than one or two toons (except capes, since there were always people outside Icon to help with the kills).  If it's a grind, it's not going to attract people.  Rather, they will do it to earn the badge on their badger (and few to no alts) or to get that "must have" item for RP or thematic reasons.  Me?  I don't need (or even now have) every toon in a cape or sporting those oh-so-horrible Cim sandals. 

 

Maybe if HC goes this way, they can make the rewarded item/power/badge/whatever account-wide?  That, at least, would be a decent compromise for those who are happy to get that "i won" rush . . . but will never replicate that initial "rush" on multiple alts (hence the grind part).  Yay! I got capes was a thing, for sure, but the "i won" wears off precipitously.

 

I agree with OP here. I would like something to like work towards other than level 50. Costume unlocks were part of the fun. I know some won't want this. but its not like its some sort of power up or the like, just something nifty to unlock