Going forward, can we have more things that mean something?

[Rigged]

To put this in perspective, every time I make a new character, I spend twenty minutes a day for two to four days earning a billion inf by playing the market. Then I load up my rad/fire brute on my alternate account and level the new character to 50 in about 3 or 4 hours. Total playtime, less than 8 hours. To get full incarnates I spend a day doing Heather Townsend and then another day getting the accolades. And this is only if I like the result at 50. Very few characters of line have more than about a day or so playtime.

 

I would skip all of it if I could. This is how little I care for the grind or the "sense of accomplishment". Accomplishment is for real life.

[Hero_of_Light]

21 minutes ago, Rigged said:

 

 

I am completely in support of this.

Then you don't want coh

[Rigged]

1 minute ago, Hero_of_Light said:

Then you don't want coh

You're right. I don't.

 

I want Homecoming, which is way better. Skipping grinds would make it even better.

[Indystruck]

I like having goals that take some time to get to and have a clear and noticeable reward for which I am working towards obtaining in games. That's my input.

[Omega-202]

14 minutes ago, Hero_of_Light said:

Then you don't want coh

You're the one asking for change.  YOU don't want CoH.  You don't like what we have. 

 

You seem to want something more hardcore that isn't this game.

 

 

[Razor Cure]

26 minutes ago, Rigged said:

And this is only if I like the result at 50

You know a good way to find out if you like the toon? Don't PL it.

 

26 minutes ago, Rigged said:

 

I would skip all of it if I could. This is how little I care for the grind or the "sense of accomplishment". Accomplishment is for real life.

Why are you on this server? Seriously. Aren't there ones that give you like 8 slots per power and let you auto jump to 50?

Not trying to be rude here in any way..honestly curious.

26 minutes ago, Rigged said:

This is how little I care for the grind

Yeah cause farming every toon..isn't a grind right? Doing the exact same map on the same toon..over and over. That sounds super interesting.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Razor Cure

[Rigged]

57 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

You know a good way to find out if you like the toon? Don't PL it.

You know what is a much, much better way than not PLing a toon to find out whether I like them? PLing them.

 

Seriously, levelling the slow way to 32 or 38 to get build-defining powers - or better yet, to 50 and then grinding out an IO build - only to finally discover that you do not fundamentally like the character: that would really suck. My method only wastes about 4 hours of my time, 8 including the IOs. 

 

If I were to level a toon to 22 by running missions and then going on the appropriate archetype forums to complain how not-fun it is, literally the first thing they would say would be to the effect of "GET TO MAX LEVEL FIRST BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU  *********ING *********ED ****"

 

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

Why are you on this server? Seriously. Aren't there ones that give you like 8 slots per power and let you auto jump to 50?

Not trying to be rude here in any way..honestly curious.

I should ask you that question. There are tons of servers that do retain the i23 style of earning costume pieces. Not gatekeeping costumes is a part of Homecoming, our server.

 

Note: I didn't suggest removing the level grind, you did - as a facetious extrapolation of my point that grinding sucks. My reply was to the effect of, "Okie dokes". All I did after that is to explain how little I care for it.

 

To answer your question more directly (and less antagonisticly?), my objection to the existing grind for levels is significantly lower than my objection to adding gatekeeping for costumes. I play this server because it has the least amount of nonsense grinding while still having a decent-sized community (what I actually am here for - I do TFs and itrials for fun, not rewards), specifically the RP community (and no, I don't do the ERP thing, either.)

 

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

Yeah cause farming every toon..isn't a grind right? Doing the exact same map on the same toon..over and over. That sounds super interesting.

 

You know what is even less interesting? Running maps that I did dozens of times almost fifteen years ago, especially blue caves and council hideouts, searching for single stragglers to finish a clear all mission.

 

I did that once already when I came back to homecoming. No more, and if I had my way not ever. They're still there, you know. No one is stopping you from doing them.

[Hero_of_Light]

I wish for just a little more similarity towards the coh we love for one of the reasons I loved it then. 

 

I want an mmorpg, not an avatar chat box since that already exists in Icon. 

[Rigged]

27 minutes ago, Hero_of_Light said:

I wish for just a little more similarity towards the coh we love for one of the reasons I loved it then. 

 

I want an mmorpg, not an avatar chat box since that already exists in Icon. 

I have already given what I feel is the best of both worlds: I said I have no objection to adding in systems to earn costume parts as long as there is a button that let's you skip it and get the costume part anyway.

 

Tell ya what, let's flesh it out a little. We can put back all of the silly grinding, earning the witch hat from Katie Hannon, having to grind a pile of Vanguard merits to get your lightsaber, etc. And we can add new challenges with new costume rewards.

 

At the start if the game you automatically get a badge called "Pride and Accomplishment". It has a button, like the old buttons on badges to claim rewards. Click the button and you lose the badge, forever - but you get all of the costume pieces for free. Now you have a shiny badge that you can show off to let people know you did it "the hard way".

 

Heck, let's go further. If you have the badge you can activate a special mode that changes your nameplate color to say, gold or something (the way RP mode turns your nameplate pink). This way everyone can see this.

 

Now you can have your prestige, you can have your grind and challenge and it won't affect the rest of us who think that is flaming stupid.

[Hero_of_Light]

37 minutes ago, Rigged said:

I have already given what I feel is the best of both worlds: I said I have no objection to adding in systems to earn costume parts as long as there is a button that let's you skip it and get the costume part anyway.

 

Tell ya what, let's flesh it out a little. We can put back all of the silly grinding, earning the witch hat from Katie Hannon, having to grind a pile of Vanguard merits to get your lightsaber, etc. And we can add new challenges with new costume rewards.

 

At the start if the game you automatically get a badge called "Pride and Accomplishment". It has a button, like the old buttons on badges to claim rewards. Click the button and you lose the badge, forever - but you get all of the costume pieces for free. Now you have a shiny badge that you can show off to let people know you did it "the hard way".

 

Heck, let's go further. If you have the badge you can activate a special mode that changes your nameplate color to say, gold or something (the way RP mode turns your nameplate pink). This way everyone can see this.

 

Now you can have your prestige, you can have your grind and challenge and it won't affect the rest of us who think that is flaming stupid.

I would almost be okay with that actually, Or maybe im really tired right now. Either way us discussing it now doesn't really matter.

 

The dev's have their plans, and If things go well more volunteers will join the team and new content will be added, almost like a live game.

I'm sure unlockables will be a part of that because it's normal accomplishment/progression that many people enjoy and most people don't go by the 'all or nothing' I've seen today. 

[Hero_of_Light]

The game population will fade away into what icon costume has unless content is added and challenges along with it.

 

Unlockable costumes are one of those challenges. Im sorry,  but your ideal 'game' isn't one that will hold most people's attention and we want more people playing, not less. 

[_Kai_]

Honestly the game's population is 90% people who are older with less free time on their hands then when the game was new, it really can't do anything *but* fade, and will absolutely never operate like a live game because the goal isn't really to get new players. Sure, there will be a few, younger siblings who heard stories, etc, but all of this has been a negative growth proposition from the start, its one big long nostalgia trip.  Most of us look back at the things we did on live and go 'ugh, I would never have the time to do that now', and don't forget that the 'Devs' of Homecoming are not faceless programmers paid a salary to make stuff, they are just players with extra influence on what to do with the game working on a several year old codebase divergent from Live.  Their aim is making the most people to be happy with the game with what they have to work with, and like it or not, the majority of people are going to be happiest pretending that the game never shut down and they are just as 'cool' as they were back then.

 

Assuming they could even put locks back in at all, which, given the time separation, I find highly unlikely without breaking things all over, the only way it could be done without losing a significant chunk of the playerbase would be some sort of 'hardcore mode' toggle that you would have to set for your account/character if you wanted the locks to be in place. Putting anything 100% behind an unlock mechanism will only have people screaming money grab, elitism, favoritism, etc depending on method of unlock, and deeply erode the trust the players have in the Devs, which, given the entire secret server disaster that started this, is very fragile already for a number of people.

[Lines]

6 hours ago, Rigged said:

To answer your question more directly (and less antagonisticly?), my objection to the existing grind for levels is significantly lower than my objection to adding gatekeeping for costumes. I play this server because it has the least amount of nonsense grinding while still having a decent-sized community (what I actually am here for - I do TFs and itrials for fun, not rewards), specifically the RP community (and no, I don't do the ERP thing, either.)

 

You know what is even less interesting? Running maps that I did dozens of times almost fifteen years ago, especially blue caves and council hideouts, searching for single stragglers to finish a clear all mission.

 

 

This is what I think isn’t being understood; we’re not asking for more grind, we’re asking for less. We’re not roleplayers, a sandbox is just sand to us, we don’t want to take the single most efficient way to 50, because that sounds like a grind. Eight hours of AE? Forget it, sounds like hell and I’ve not got that sort of time. That’s more than a day’s work of pressing buttons, I want to have fun and do a lot of things. You guys who want the sandbox have been catered for. HC is easy. Yay you. 

 

We want incentive to take a different path: do one arc once, get the hat reward for it, never do it again. That gets us the levels to the next point. If you’re PLing over 8 hours, what’s 20 more minutes for that one hat that’s so freakin essential for your character concept? Or do you need to be immersed while you PL as well?

 

At the moment, the rewards system heavily incentivises doing the same few things repeatedly, especially AE. The same few taskforces, the same MSR. That’s grinding, even if you do it quicker.

 

Many of us take the slow and steady way because we want variety and to not grind, but there’s only so many months of kneecapping ourselves we can take. I have a rule not to run the same TF twice on any one character (with the sole exception of Mo badges on my badger) because I don’t want to grind. I want it to matter that I’ve chosen to do The Hollows or to street sweep Perez Park rather than do my fourth or fifth run of DfB, but the game doesn’t encourage it. It encourages DfB. It encourages the grind. All I want is a hat. I’m not trying to show off here.

 

”Hey, I’m missing the vahzilok hat, does anyone know where I get it?”

”Sure, that’s John Doe’s arc.”

”Sweet, thanks. Anyone else need it?”

”Yeah, I’m missing that one. Can I come?”

 

Or, y’know, that eighth ITF.

 

To me, this server has more nonsense grinding than live did, because rewards are so unvaried and heavily concentrated in certain areas. Live had a variety of rewards for a variety of content. We’re asking for some of that back so that the way we play can have some meaning.

 

This is me compromising. If it were up to me, I’d be sticking costume sets behind arcs, but I’m happy to meet you at literally hats.

”But my RP requires the hat!”

Alright, then spend the half hour it takes to unlock the hat.

”No! I haven’t time for that! I shall farm AE for eight hours and press my ‘instant-all-hats button’!”

It just doesn’t hold water.

 

But yeah, if HC is gonna be a sandbox then I’ll be out. I don’t want to grind either.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Lines

[Lost Ninja]

15 hours ago, Hero_of_Light said:

And? So they have to finish a story arc once to get particular costume peice...

 

Is that to much of a cost? If that's so, why are not just playing in Icon?

I find it interesting that you suggest that people who only want all the costume pieces play on Icon yet don't take your own specific play style to a server that supports it.

[Rigged]

4 hours ago, Lines said:

 

This is what I think isn’t being understood; we’re not asking for more grind, we’re asking for less. We’re not roleplayers, a sandbox is just sand to us, we don’t want to take the single most efficient way to 50, because that sounds like a grind. Eight hours of AE? Forget it, sounds like hell and I’ve not got that sort of time. That’s more than a day’s work of pressing buttons, I want to have fun and do a lot of things. You guys who want the sandbox have been catered for. HC is easy. Yay you. 

 

We want incentive to take a different path: do one arc once, get the hat reward for it, never do it again. That gets us the levels to the next point. If you’re PLing over 8 hours, what’s 20 more minutes for that one hat that’s so freakin essential for your character concept? Or do you need to be immersed while you PL as well?

 

At the moment, the rewards system heavily incentivises doing the same few things repeatedly, especially AE. The same few taskforces, the same MSR. That’s grinding, even if you do it quicker.

 

Many of us take the slow and steady way because we want variety and to not grind, but there’s only so many months of kneecapping ourselves we can take. I have a rule not to run the same TF twice on any one character (with the sole exception of Mo badges on my badger) because I don’t want to grind. I want it to matter that I’ve chosen to do The Hollows or to street sweep Perez Park rather than do my fourth or fifth run of DfB, but the game doesn’t encourage it. It encourages DfB. It encourages the grind. All I want is a hat. I’m not trying to show off here.

 

”Hey, I’m missing the vahzilok hat, does anyone know where I get it?”

”Sure, that’s John Doe’s arc.”

”Sweet, thanks. Anyone else need it?”

”Yeah, I’m missing that one. Can I come?”

 

Or, y’know, that eighth ITF.

 

To me, this server has more nonsense grinding than live did, because rewards are so unvaried and heavily concentrated in certain areas. Live had a variety of rewards for a variety of content. We’re asking for some of that back so that the way we play can have some meaning.

 

This is me compromising. If it were up to me, I’d be sticking costume sets behind arcs, but I’m happy to meet you at literally hats.

”But my RP requires the hat!”

Alright, then spend the half hour it takes to unlock the hat.

”No! I haven’t time for that! I shall farm AE for eight hours and press my ‘instant-all-hats button’!”

It just doesn’t hold water.

 

But yeah, if HC is gonna be a sandbox then I’ll be out. I don’t want to grind either.

First of all, it's three hours of AE, maybe four. Basically less time than soloing a Dr Q TF. The rest of the time is me playing the market on my lunch break over the week. 4-5 hours is a very high estimate, assuming I have more competition than average in my usual niche. That's to get the billion inf for the IOs. And yes, I already said, I would very much prefer to just skip it all with a click of a button, but I didn't suggest it, I was merely saying "Okay!" to someone else who did. That's my point: I don't want to do the grind at all, but since I have to for now, I do, because the alternative suuuuuucks.

 

Look, I already offered an awesome compromise right above. You can have all the tasks and the challenge and whatever to unlock your hat or costume or gloves or whatever as long as there is a button to unlock it without that stupid requirement. If the challenge or grind or whatever is entirely opt-in, then I am all for it. You can have your content to earn your costume piece, and I can enjoy the new costume piece while doing that content. Win-win!

Edited November 2, 2019 by Rigged

[Omega-202]

41 minutes ago, Rigged said:

First of all, it's three hours of AE, maybe four. Basically less time than soloing a Dr Q TF. The rest of the time is me playing the market on my lunch break over the week. 4-5 hours is a very high estimate, assuming I have more competition than average in my usual niche. That's to get the billion inf for the IOs. And yes, I already said, I would very much prefer to just skip it all with a click of a button, but I didn't suggest it, I was merely saying "Okay!" to someone else who did. That's my point: I don't want to do the grind at all, but since I have to for now, I do, because the alternative suuuuuucks.

 

Look, I already offered an awesome compromise right above. You can have all the tasks and the challenge and whatever to unlock your hat or costume or gloves or whatever as long as there is a button to unlock it without that stupid requirement. If the challenge or grind or whatever is entirely opt-in, then I am all for it. You can have your content to earn your costume piece, and I can enjoy the new costume piece while doing that content. Win-win!

That's kind of already a thing because most of the costume unlocks come with a badge.  So essentially, everyone has clicked that "button" by default, but someone who wants to grind for something can just go get the matching badge that used to unlock it.  

 

But they dont want that, because part of their fun is that they want something you dont have.  

[Shazbotacus]

It’s true. In the fifteen years since this game launched on live, I have changed substantially and so has my available time and concept of fun. I’m not much for grind anymore. Heck, I remember before when we had all these IO sets and Incarnate god powers. City of Heroes at that time wasn’t about building up epic gear with billions of the game currency and getting these Incarnate perks until the game became trivial when the best we had was Hamidon enhancements.

[Rigged]

5 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

That's kind of already a thing because most of the costume unlocks come with a badge.  So essentially, everyone has clicked that "button" by default, but someone who wants to grind for something can just go get the matching badge that used to unlock it.  

 

But they dont want that, because part of their fun is that they want something you dont have.  

I am going to give a benefit of a doubt and assume that everyone here is being as nice as poss and that they aren't just trying to deprive other people of things.

 

Which is why I put forward my suggestion above: Have a special badge and a special nameplate color for those who decline to get all the free costumes in favor of earning them via challenges, and let the rest of us just make the costumes we want. This is imho a superb best-of-both-worlds-have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too solution, which is effectively making a new "hardcore" setting and yet letting everyone play together anyway. In fact, I myself would probably choose this option for my main character, the one I play most often! That way I can just make the costumes for my alts the way I like, and do the silly challenges just once on my main character and then strut around Atlas Park in my shiny nameplate.

[Itikar]

5 hours ago, Lines said:

”Hey, I’m missing the vahzilok hat, does anyone know where I get it?”

”Sure, that’s John Doe’s arc.”

”Sweet, thanks. Anyone else need it?”

”Yeah, I’m missing that one. Can I come?”

I see people doing this all the time in game, actually. Except they do it with badges.

 

Even setting aside all the opposition among the playerbase to have unlockable costume parts that do the same, badges are in comparison a more efficient way to achieve what you want.

 

Badges are easier to implement, they need simply a 2d icon, whereas a costume part requires a 3d model, sometimes even a dynamic one, for 3 body types. Otherwise it would not be very nice to unlock a hat which you cannot use because your character has body type huge and the hat is available only for male and female. On top of that badges can be seen by anybody who checks your character's profile, instead of only by those who see you wearing the part. If you want people to notice your achievement immediately you can set the badge as your title too, and as a bonus you do not have to change your costume in any way, you only need to make a click. And in fact we have already seen several new badges being implemented while we have received much fewer costume parts, in comparison. So it is safe to assume that badges are a more efficient way to provide achievements and that these achievements have a more long-lasting potential than costume part unlocks.

 

The real question here, a question you should ask yourself really, is why you can find drive primarily with costume part unlocks and not with badges or with the other unlockables already provided by the server. Both of these have plenty of content that does not really require grind, but rather encourages quantitatively much more variety than costume parts unlocks will ever be able to achieve. What do unlockable costume parts have that badges cannot do? Even the "I have a hat they do not have" here falls apart, since there is formally very little difference between that and "I have a badge they do not have".

Edited November 2, 2019 by Itikar

[skoryy]

Around and around and around we go.

Has anyone changed any minds, no.

[Hero_of_Light]

9 hours ago, _Kai_ said:

 

 

to be in place. Putting anything 100% behind an unlock mechanism will only have people screaming money grab, elitism, favoritism, etc depending on method of unlock, and deeply erode the trust the players have in the Devs, which, given the entire secret server disaster that started this, is very fragile already for a number of people.

Consider my least extreme suggestion was a %30 drop chance and my most extreme was just completing a story arc and only for 10 items out of 1000... they must hate the idea of playing the game. 

 

If someone dosent have the free time or drive to spend 10 minutes to 40 minutes to earn something they want... I just... wow.

 

Are you really just playing the game expecting it to be gone tomorrow and that you don't have time to not have things instantly? Is the common view that negative?

 

Is this game so inferior to DAoC or EQ that you can't imagine it continuing similar to how those do even though they don't get new players except maybe those that heard stories?

 

If the dev's are as negatively close minded as the people I've seen here this whole thing is doomed to fail,  and not just because of the points you brought up.

 

 

If you expect to fail, then you'll fail.

 

[Hero_of_Light]

5 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Around and around and around we go.

Has anyone changed any minds, no.

I have.  I used to think this community had hope and wanted to see the game grow as best it could,  not regress into a free hero based IMVU wannabe for chatting and costume contests.

 

Consider my mind changed. 

[Hero_of_Light]

2 hours ago, Itikar said:

 

 

The real question here, a question you should ask yourself really, is why you can find drive primarily with costume part unlocks and not with badges or with the other unlockables already provided by the server. Both of these have plenty of content that does not really require grind, but rather encourages quantitatively much more variety than costume parts unlocks will ever be able to achieve. 

Because a costume part gains significance when is ab unlockable, and that makes you stand out as someone who shown commitment to, good example,  helping the vanguard. 

 

Not everyone role plays the same. Some role play in the confines of the game and when they help a faction,  getting the costume peices means something because now they can use that item and without putting it in the bio, Everyone that sees them with the item automatically Knows what they achieved 

 

Just like how some one in thier role play says that they got thier sword from doing blank, except in the confines of the game, I actually did was awarded the sword from helping the vanguard push back against the rikti.

[MetaVileTerror]

There is a fundamental disparity in the answer to the question of "why do we play this game."  I will not explicitly state that any reason for playing a game is purely wrong, but I will say that in the context of a social game, billed as a roleplaying game, which encourages cooperative gameplay by design and community inclusivity to a degree, there will always be a profoundly sharp kick back against elements which run contrary to that.  
 
City of Heroes is not a loot grind game compared to most every other MMO in existence.  Homecoming is not a loot grind server.
Yes, we could certainly use more content, and we could use incentives to pull people away from AE.  Unlockable costume pieces is not it, though.  Not on Homecoming anyway.
There are compromises, though.  There are other content incentives that are not costume pieces.  There are Badges with displayable titles.  There are Temp Powers and Accolades.  There was the proposal for Gold Titles for weekly (or other time interval) Leaderboard Challenges.
 
If you want to stay on Homecoming, please; let's find a compromise that doesn't alienate the majority of players.

[Hero_of_Light]

3 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

If you want to stay on Homecoming, please; let's find a compromise that doesn't alienate the majority of players.

Im speechless that the idea of needing to finish a story arc to get a costume set alienates people instead of bringing them together.

 

Must they only be able to role play what they want in thier minds and the idea of any in game boundary is crossing a line?

 

In that case, they don't want a coh to be a mmorpg...