CoH community is divided between 5 basic groups that see things differently

[DougGraves]

The endless arguing on the boards may be fun for some but is generally pointless.  Debating whether defenses are too high assumes that the players have the same goals and interests.  In reality the playerbase is largely divided into 4 groups.

 

1. Solo players who just want to do their thing.  This is probably the largest group.  They spend time on IO sets or other godmode abilities if they want to, and if they don't want to they don't.  The pick and choose option works great for them.  More options is better because it lets them get what they want.

 

2. Team players who are just happy to be there.  They just play.  They consider defeating the villains to be good, and being defeated to be bad.  They assume that there is a challenge and do not think about it.  They assume they will get a reward and do not think about it.  They do not try to game the system.  They are blissfully unaware that there are more efficient or effective ways of doing things.  Their game play is affected by the godmode power level of other players but they are not aware of it.  If they get through a TF faster they think that is great.  They are happy in their ignorance.

 

3. Players who want godmode.  These are the farmers as well as others who have the opinion "I'm supposed to be a superhero so defeating everyone should be trivially easy".  They revel in power.  They cannot have too much power as long as there is the thinnest veneer that this is still a game.  Pressing a button to have all enemies die would not be fun, they want to feel like they are beating their foes, but they want it to be easy.

 

4. Players who want to be as powerful as possible but want to be challenged.  This is a tiny portion of the population.  They want to design builds and then see how good they are.  They do not want to just copy someone else's build and turn on godmode.  The fun for them is creating and testing the builds.

 

5. Team players who want to play the game and be challenged.  They want to play with others.  They are not interested in making builds.  They just want to play the game in a team and be challenged.  Taking damage is good.  Occasional defeats are good - they mean that there is a real challenge.  They differ from #2 in that they are aware of the difficulty.  If it is too easy they get bored.  I suspect that this is a small group in CoH, because the game is driving them away.

 

I cannot speak for how solo players play.  I have played enough teams to know that at least those who put teams together are rarely interested in a challenge.  Radio teams just doing council missions is definitely a thing, and the higher level you get the more likely it is that they only do council missions. 

 

Arguments about "it should be more challenging" or "we should get more influence for X" are just personal opinions masquerading as game design principles.

 

The playerbase has self selected down to the players who want to be powerful and they want the game to be easy.  Or they want to play by themselves.

Edited May 22, 2020 by DougGraves

[Apparition]

6. Players who played City of Heroes before sunset, but largely stopped playing before IO enhancements, purple IO enhancements, archetype enhancements, or at least the Incarnate system.  They don't recognize the game as it is now, and see it as too easy thanks to those IO enhancements, purple IO enhancements, ATOs, and Incarnate abilities.  But instead of realizing that their era of playing CoH is well and truly dead and gone, and either learn to accept what CoH is today or move on, they stay and keep trying to push ways to make the game more closely align with how they remember the game, which just honks off the players who played through Issue 23 and like the game for what it is now.

[Vulpoid]

You know you could be playing right now, right?

[Blastit]

4 minutes ago, Apparition said:

6. Players who played City of Heroes before sunset, but largely stopped playing before IO enhancements, purple IO enhancements, archetype enhancements, or at least the Incarnate system.  They don't recognize the game as it is now, and see it as too easy thanks to those IO enhancements, purple IO enhancements, ATOs, and Incarnate abilities.  But instead of realizing that their era of playing CoH is well and truly dead and gone, and either learn to accept what CoH is today or move on, they stay and keep trying to push ways to make the game more closely align with how they remember the game, which just honks off the players who played through Issue 23 and like the game for what it is now.

Why would this group necessarily be less correct? Perhaps the IO system is poorly designed and balanced, perhaps the relatively greater ease with which one can access the strongest sets is bad. I mean, people keep saying that the vast majority of the game was designed for SO builds and that the incarnate trials were only ramping up to challenge strong IO builds.

[Mr. Vee]

You forgot suckling pigs and those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Veelectric Boogaloo

[Blastit]

46 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

5. Team players who want to play the game and be challenged.  They want to play with others.  They are not interested in making builds.  They just want to play the game in a team and be challenged.  Taking damage is good.  Occasional defeats are good - they mean that there is a real challenge.  They differ from #2 in that they are aware of the difficulty.  If it is too easy they get bored.  I suspect that this is a small group in CoH, because the game is driving them away.

I'm most in this group, I think. I like being in teams where it feels like what I did actually matters, where I have to consider what the enemies can do. None of this really happens in 8-man TA Council missions. The chaos is funny once in a while but a dozen spawns of effectively nothing but minigunners gets old. The thing that originally hooked me was how many different powers the enemy groups had and how the mix of assholes thrown your way interacted with the strengths and weaknessess of the AT and power set combos on your team.

 

To some degree, what you actually play not mattering a lot can be a strength. Knowing that the TF failed just because you brought a corrupter instead of a defender with identical powers would be awful. But not having to care about synergy whatsoever except at a build level is just as bad. I don't want teams to need a specific composition but I do want individual players on a team to at least glance at their team members and think "oh yeah they're playing X and we're up against Y so I should look out for how I use Z".

 

 

But IDK, maybe this is all because I started playing as a blaster in issue 3 and situational awareness plus target priorisation was critical. Guess the debt badges left deeper scars than I thought.

[Darkneblade]

I'm torn between 4 and 5... So I'm technically 4.5 ?

And 7: Players who don't have purpose in the game but still play anyway. They don't have any idea why they are playing either,  they are just playing because there is no other game that handles their fried potato computer. (and enjoy playing for some reason) = and this is still me.

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Darkneblade

[Heraclea]

I was not terribly active in the game in the months before closure was announced.  I had invested enough time in the game to have more than 30 level 50 characters.  Getting all their incarnates unlocked and built sounded like a terrible grind to me, and it engaged a lot of the active player base, so I never really took to it.  I also did not like and continue to dislike the design of many incarnate oriented encounters, which seemed to me to be designed specifically to sideline melee characters, make tankers irrelevant, and sidestep defenses.  I saw the writing on the wall when the Trapdoor encounter was made unplayable for tankers (but trivial for any character with hard controls); the one strategy that worked was taken away.  Since I did not want to play that stuff, and many of the active players did, the game and I had parted ways.  

 

I appreciate the major QoL improvements to the incarnate system made on HC.  I can gear up incarnates while exemping down to run a Citadel the way I liked to in the content I liked best. 

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Vulpoid said:

You know you could be playing right now, right?

[Greycat]

15 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

I saw the writing on the wall when the Trapdoor encounter was made unplayable for tankers (but trivial for any character with hard controls); the one strategy that worked was taken away.

... This has... never been the case. No, you can't drop him into the lava and do anything, but he's still cheesily easy for anyone. Yes, even a tanker.

 

I mean, the encounter is "Get to Trapdoor. Punch Trapdoor repeatedly until he's at 20-25% health and gives up." It's doable with any character. Even on SOs.

[Troo]

22 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

I had invested enough time in the game to have more than 30 level 50 characters.  Getting all their incarnates unlocked and built sounded like a terrible grind to me

Hercalea you are/were not alone in this assessment/feeling.

 

Going from a single origin or Hami build to a whole new 'equipment' system was a lot for many.

[Troo]

@DougGraves While specifics could be debated this general idea makes sense. Lots of peeps playing their own way with their own desires.

[seresibyl2]

Play any moba/etc and realize that the amount of people that enjoy challenge/gameplay are trumped by the amount that want to roflstomp things.

 

I'd argue most team players want to roflstomp on a team, but much more complacent when its not done. This game is much less roflstomp-only than other games though (like mythic+ wow dungeons, where if you don't roflstomp people literally leave and end a run).

 

[Coyotedancer]

I think it's a fool's errand to try to put any of us in neat little boxes. Gamers are human and humans are difficult to classify that way in almost anything we do... The City's no exception.

 

I'm a mostly-solo. Who also roleplays. And loves running her well-kitted, level 50+ support characters with mid-level teams. And on ship raids. And who also enjoys tearing apart farm maps with a tricked-out, you-don't-even-WANT-to-know-how-expensive, proc-monster bad-ass of a Brute. Sometimes I run with friends who are uberbuilder maniacs. Sometimes I run with friends who barely know what set bonuses are, and wouldn't have a proc to their name if I hadn't gifted them a Perf Shifter or a Panacea or a Kismet somewhere along the way. 

 

It's all fun. 

 

So, how about instead of trying to make silly distinctions and divide us all up into tidy little classification schemes we just step back and consider that what we actually have are just differences in opinion, born of different experiences and expectations that are the result of playing one hell of an adaptable, flexible game. It may not be "perfect" for everyone, but the fact that such a huge range of players STILL have enough interest to argue about it? That's an accomplishment in and of itself. 

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[Kismette]

20 minutes ago, Greycat said:

... This has... never been the case. No, you can't drop him into the lava and do anything, but he's still cheesily easy for anyone. Yes, even a tanker.

 

I mean, the encounter is "Get to Trapdoor. Punch Trapdoor repeatedly until he's at 20-25% health and gives up." It's doable with any character. Even on SOs.

'Hit and Run' works well on him too and also against Protean.

 

From far away click your high damage melee attack, jump next to him and quickly jump away before the animation starts and roots you.  Your attack will hit while you're jumping safely away from melee range.  Repeat when 'safe'.

[Skyhawke]

Speaking as someone that used perma Unstoppable before ED, I did enjoy just being...well, super.  Afterwards, I still had fun and when I figured out a build using Willpower on a Brute that was just plain fun and pretty beefy, I felt super again.  I've never felt the need for Godmode, but being super as a superhero feels like a must.  I also love the challenge of playing support characters, especially on teams that can be less than perfect.  Keep me on my toes and I'm happy.  I also like to solo and tinker with different power sets.  I also enjoy playing a controller and just going along for the ride, slinging holds and buffs and just having fun.  Do I really need to be categorized? Or do I just need to play COH? Hmmm....

[reib]

8: PvPers.

[macskull]

7 minutes ago, reib said:

8: PvPers.

PvPers aren't their own separate group and have never been.

[Coyotedancer]

Roleplayers didn't get an entry of their own either... I suspect our OP either didn't remember they exit or assumed they would all be in Box #2 by default. 

[Frunobulax]

15 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

I think it's a fool's errand to try to put any of us in neat little boxes.

 

 

 

[Peacemoon]

Unfortunately I don't see any supporting evidence for the original post's assertions. Might it be just the original poster's views masquerading as hard data? 

 

If you have an opinion you are free to express it, but trying to express other people's opinions for them through your own prejudices, and also trying to quantify how prevelant that opinion is (based on...?) is not going to achieve much.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I'm Bill Z Bubba. I'm in a box that doesn't fit any of the definitions put forth so far in this thread because I'm a bit of all of them. I suspect, as Coyotedancer stated, that this is probably true of many of us.

[EmmySky]

The HC community IS divided into 5 groups.  Torchbearer, Excelsior, Everlasting, Indomitable, Reunion.

[Heraclea]

52 minutes ago, Greycat said:

... This has... never been the case. No, you can't drop him into the lava and do anything, but he's still cheesily easy for anyone. Yes, even a tanker.

 

I mean, the encounter is "Get to Trapdoor. Punch Trapdoor repeatedly until he's at 20-25% health and gives up." It's doable with any character. Even on SOs.

When the encounter first went live, it was possible to pull Trapdoor out of the room where his healing clones spawned and defeat him straight up.  At some point, this was changed and it became impossible to pull him out of range of them. so he always ended up getting healed back to full.  I was fortunate enough to get past it on most of the characters that I cared about before this change.  Afterwards it always required a teammate with spammable holds to get past it. 

[Greycat]

10 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I'm Bill Z Bubba. I'm in a box