Goals

[FoulVileTerror]

We're probably all pretty familiar with the rhetoric many of us espouse around here that goes along the lines of:  "As long as you're enjoying yourself, and not ruining it for anyone else, then you're not playing the game 'wrong.'"

 

So, here's a little video that I came across today.   I'm still mulling it over in my head, but at the very least I think it has some interesting things to say on the subject of player goals in games, and how that affects motivation and (ultimately) retention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypOUn6rThM

 

I figure that if we, as fans of this game, can develop a more robust language to describe what we find valuable and meaningful in our play experiences, then we can help inform the developers more clearly and concisely when it comes to our feedback.

[roleki]

Nerf regen.

[Marine X]

Good Find, interesting. CoH has many different reward systems, between Influence, Salvage, Uber Builds, Badge Count, Costumes, and Player notoriety, and population that pursues each of them or all. Many different Carrots, lol.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I'm intrinsically motivated to play CoH for the soothing and meditative properties of seeing hordes of my enemies driven before me and hearing the lamentations of their women.

[Lines]

Funny - I was playing a lot of Satisfactory with a friend recently. Satisfactory, a game about automation, gives you milestones to meet. My friend was completely goal-oriented and was happy to manually craft each and every individual piece needed to reach that goal rather than build a factory to make them. I, meanwhile, would be happy getting the tier 1 machines working and looking juuuuust right. We were playing the game at far too different a pace to be sustainable.

 

I think that carries across into CoH and other games I play. I watched my Dad play through a bit of Bioshock, and he just bull-in-china-shop hopped it as quick as he could to the end of each zone. I'd try and take in every detail of that amazing world design.

 

It's why I get frustrated on speedrunning/ghosting sort of teams. I'm in no rush.

[Luminara]

19 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I'm intrinsically motivated to play CoH for the soothing and meditative properties of seeing hordes of my enemies driven before me and hearing the lamentations of their women.

 

That is good.

[Twisted Toon]

45 minutes ago, Lines said:

Funny - I was playing a lot of Satisfactory with a friend recently. Satisfactory, a game about automation, gives you milestones to meet. My friend was completely goal-oriented and was happy to manually craft each and every individual piece needed to reach that goal rather than build a factory to make them. I, meanwhile, would be happy getting the tier 1 machines working and looking juuuuust right. We were playing the game at far too different a pace to be sustainable.

 

I think that carries across into CoH and other games I play. I watched my Dad play through a bit of Bioshock, and he just bull-in-china-shop hopped it as quick as he could to the end of each zone. I'd try and take in every detail of that amazing world design.

 

It's why I get frustrated on speedrunning/ghosting sort of teams. I'm in no rush.

Have you seen Let's play it out videos for Satifactory on Youtube? Hilarious!

Of course, most all of the videos done there by Let's play it out are hilarious.

[Luminara]

CoH was my first experience with achievement rewards.  Specifically, badges.  And initially, I considered them a fantastic idea, but I have to admit that it was only because I misunderstood the purpose of badges.  When I looked at the badges available for me to try to obtain, I had the impression that they were giving me a direction.  Defeat X of these, but make certain that Y of the X are bosses.  In other words, I thought the badges were teaching me what to look out for in the game.  Which critters should be focused on, which enemies were of particular note, things of that nature.

 

I realized later that I was wrong.  Badges don't actually teach anyone anything, they simply provide another "get" motivation, or, as the narrator of the video stated, extrinsic reward.  But... I really believe badges could be redesigned as teaching tools, in exactly the way I thought they worked fifteen years ago.  Obviously, people would still collect badges, still pursue that extrinsic reward, but newer players could learn from them, develop a broader and more applicable experience throughout the leveling process and become better prepared for each increase in level or shift to different zones.

 

But what do we do when newer players have collected their "L2P" badges?  They're no longer teaching tools, they've returned to being extrinsic rewards.  One possibility is a series of dynamically assigned badges, based on the player's progress, which foes he/she tends to fight more, which powers he/she prefers to use and other criteria could be implemented, creating a more fulfilling and longer lasting educational system for the game.  These badges could unlock progress on other badges, nudging players toward other goals by suggesting where they might want go for missions, which enemy groups they might try next, perhaps even badges for using certain powers in certain sequences or combinations (especially applicable to power sets with combos and forms), to help these players learn how different mechanics function and can be used to their advantage.

 

By shifting the focus of badges away from mindless accumulation and toward education and enabling the player to grow and become more proficient, we can remove one of the extrinsic reward factors which leads to players feeling that they've completed the game and decide to move on.

 

-

 

Another thought is that, for many of us who are old hands at Co*, playing the game really is the only reward we need.  Take away all of the XP, drops, badges, everything, and many of us would still be here.  Why?  That answer will vary from person to person, but at the heart of it, it's simply because the game is most rewarding to us when it allows us to express ourselves creatively.

 

I play almost exclusively without travel powers.  I don't do it because I'm tight on power selections, or because I don't have enough slots to spread around, or even to be the quirky weirdo on the forums.  I do it because it's rewarding to poke and prod the mechanics until the game is giving me what I want.  I do it because, despite having to work harder to achieve the goal of being comparable to a character without a self-imposed restriction, the end result feels rewarding.  And it's not only rewarding to achieve, it's rewarding to continue playing after reaching "the end".

 

The same applies to my latest build, which I talk about in the thread I started a couple of days ago.  I have specific goals with this character.  Some of those goals could be achieved one way or another, but to achieve them all, I have one path.  I've built and rebuilt it in Mids' until every power, every slot, every enhancement, is so perfectly balanced that any change, no matter how seemingly innocuous, has a drastic impact.  It's perfect... for me.  And that's exactly what keeps me playing.  I don't care about what I can do with it later.  I don't care about soloing AVs or TFs or pylons.  I care about achieving my goal of making exactly the character I envisioned, having that character work exactly as I imagine she will.  This is an intrinsic goal, one we all share, and I believe it's the one that keeps all of us here.  But can we improve that, so more people share that feeling and experience and discover that they're also still here years later?

One way we might accomplish that is to change the *PP selection process, by making it partially free-form.  Not completely, but enough to enable players to devise personal goals and be capable of achieving them.  We can't redesign the entire engine for free-form power selection, that's simply too big to accomplish.  But *PPs are a much more limited scenario, and, in fact, almost all of the code necessary to make this possible already exists.  Players can choose from up to 4 standard pools.  The newer pools, Experimentation, Sorcery, etc., have a special restriction on them locking out the other newer pools when one is selected.  We can take these standard and newer pool options and apply them to *PPs, thereby granting access to more than one *PP for players to choose from when they reach level 35.  It will enable players to select two or three *PPs based on how they fulfill their personal goals, rather than limiting them to one *PP and forcing them to accept that there are going to be some powers they don't want, couldn't use or simply can't take because they don't fit the character they've created.

 

Instead of taking a *PP based on one power, or settling on a *PP simply because it has the fewest objectionable options, players could mix and match to better meet their own goals.  It becomes an intrinsic reward, rather than an end goal, by making the game better at fulfilling players' expectations and personal goals.  Some limits would still need to exist, obviously.  We don't want to completely throw the concept of balance out of the window by allowing players to take 5 high damage AoEs, 5 AoE controls, or what have you.  But simply having the option to choose from more than one *PP would open up worlds of personal goals by providing a better character creation and completion process, thus potentially increasing retention and satisfaction.

[Frostbiter]

I dunno, setting goals for my relaxation time seems a little too much like work.

[FoulVileTerror]

Badges as a teaching tool is exactly what I'd like to see too, @Luminara.  The potential is there, and it even looks like the Legacy Devs were slowly leaning in that direction close to the end.

 

And then somebody went and upped the requirements for the Inf Badges.

[roleki]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

Another thought is that, for many of us who are old hands at Co*, playing the game really is the only reward we need.  Take away all of the XP, drops, badges, everything, and many of us would still be here.  Why?  That answer will vary from person to person, but at the heart of it, it's simply because the game is most rewarding to us when it allows us to express ourselves creatively.

This right here.  I understand people's obsession with games about Wizards and Trolls and all that crap, but I was a comic book kid first and foremost, and no game before or since CoX has even come close to scratching that itch.  Not CO, not DCUO, not the Arkham series, not even the PS4 Spider-Man game. 

 

I'm especially thankful that HC has been here amidst all the 2020 that's going on out there.  If I weren't able to log into my En/En blaster, hop over to AP and punch a minion halfway across the map, I don't know what I'd do.  

[Coyotedancer]

6 minutes ago, roleki said:

I'm especially thankful that HC has been here amidst all the 2020 that's going on out there.  If I weren't able to log into my En/En blaster, hop over to AP and punch a minion halfway across the map, I don't know what I'd do.  

 

Slowly lose our minds, I suspect... 

 

Fire-farming fulfills that same role for me. Just hop on to Harry or Suni (Especially Suni, since she was intentionally designed to be very low-stress "zen mode"-), click on one of my favorite play-lists and plow through a thousand-some goons. It's relaxing and without it? I'd have turned into a total ball of stress by now. 

[CFIndustries]

Definitely would have lost my mind…

 

Finding HC in the midst of the mess the world is—COVID, fires, smoke from said fires, earthquakes; all just in California where I live—has been my therapy. It was therapy during an emotionally brutal divorce back before the snap.

 

It's cathartic to get to play a good guy and make a difference beating-up evil goons. It's equally cathartic to play a villain because "why not, the real world seems like that, F'em!" It's therapeutic to play a robot or an animal instead of a human being, to remove yourself from yourself.

 

Cheap. Therapy.

 

Something more positive to concentrate on for a while. Someplace to escape to for just a couple of hours.

 

Escape.

[MTeague]

19 minutes ago, CFIndustries said:

It's cathartic to get to play a good guy and make a difference beating-up evil goons.

 

[CFIndustries]

Love the B5 reference…one of my favorite shows!

 

And so true!

Edited September 15, 2020 by CFIndustries

[Skyhawke]

15 hours ago, roleki said:

Nerf regen.

 

16 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

<snip>

 

I figure that if we, as fans of this game, can develop a more robust language to describe what we find valuable and meaningful in our play experiences, then we can help inform the developers more clearly and concisely when it comes to our feedback.

 

Enervate Corporeal Proselytization

[plainguy]

9 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

We're probably all pretty familiar with the rhetoric many of us espouse around here that goes along the lines of:  "As long as you're enjoying yourself, and not ruining it for anyone else, then you're not playing the game 'wrong.'"

 

So, here's a little video that I came across today.   I'm still mulling it over in my head, but at the very least I think it has some interesting things to say on the subject of player goals in games, and how that affects motivation and (ultimately) retention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypOUn6rThM

 

I figure that if we, as fans of this game, can develop a more robust language to describe what we find valuable and meaningful in our play experiences, then we can help inform the developers more clearly and concisely when it comes to our feedback.

Took the time  and looked at that video.. 

 

Very interesting..

 

I don't want to derail this thread here is the TL;DR

I can only speak from my own person experience and my issues related to what that video was talking about.

 

FOR ME AE farming did me in.

Regular play does not give you the money to make the build you want at 50. I don't have the grasp or mindset to play the market.. I tried a few times and lost money.. 

Personally I think Masterminds could be much more.  I believe that Masterminds should NOT Be all or nothing when it comes to pets.. 

I do believe that with Cryptic hands in here, this is nothing more than a testing ground and a new COH MMO will come out.  

 

############ The Long Story ######################

I think AE farming ruined a lot of the game leveling experience to get to 50. 

I can say this because beyond a few level 50s I first started with, ALL of my builds are PL to 50.

8 builds out of about 25 level 50s ( which are full IOed ) are Semi-petless or Petless masterminds that I knew could NOT level without pets due to endurance issues or even with buffers on a team I could not join because I was petless.   

 

With 20+ IO level 50 builds I can tell you from personal experience I get burnt out, which is pretty much falls in line with the video. After a while I say so I got the build.. I am soloing 3/8.. What more.. 

My current off and on goal is to do an ITF on a petless mastermind ( minus the incarnate pet, which many solo ITF players use )  on a 0/8 or 1/8 setting without dying..  Current issue is having a stalemate on the mission with the computer and fighting the 2 AV's at the end.. Some builds I can't kill Rom and Rom can't kill me  and other builds I just don't have enough inspirations and Healing is an issue.   

 

My goal personal goal with this as per the video, to show it can be done.  To show that masterminds maybe don't have or maybe shouldn't have been an all or nothing Arch Type. Maybe the original devs weren't thinking it through. Maybe the Original devs just had too much on their plate and couldn't waste their time. Not saying the current devs do either..  

 

Maybe NCSoft is looking, maybe someone at NCSoft happens to also be a player with some smarts and on the side says I figured this issue out. 

 

But of course this doesn't fix my problem of Power Leveling every toon to 50. 

Mind you I have tried to "Regular Play" with many of my regular builds and other Arch Types but I get one off night of not many teams around and after a few hours of Soloing I jump on to power level the toon. But once I am at that route I couldn't tell you what is a good level SO build for a level 33 Arch Type of a certain power set.. IF I was leveling up the "Regular Play" Style I would know as I was leveling what was lacking.. Maybe I needed more endurance ? More Health ? More Accuracy in a few key attacks ? I would be tweaking the build here and there as I go.. 

 

Again mind you I am probably not the best PL either.. I clearly read players doing it TONS more faster. 

 

But the advantage of Power Leveling also comes with the ability to build that level 50 IO build because you have enough fund or almost enough funds to get it going.

Which does not happen if your leveling up during "Regular Play" . Of course some of the responses would be LRN2PLAY  the market.. But what if I don't to play the market and just don't understand it that well to learn to make the amount of profits needed for a IO build. 

 

I think that at some time after obtaining 50 there should be a way to get a realistic IO build. Meaning NOT all purple rare winter IO build..  Some how the "Regular Play" has to incorporate the benefit of AE farming / Power Leveling in a financial sense.  

 

So what is my recourse.. I get burnt out and play Fallout 4 Horizon mod with no settlements for a challenge or Guild Wars 2 or even maybe reactivate my Wow account for a bit until I see something new come down the pipe for Endurance wise for Masterminds. 

 

I came on about 2 months into the opening. I Donated I think 200 or 250 and played for about 5 or 6 months solid before dropping off. Then I came back for a few more months..  My mindset This free MMO got more out of me than I would pay Yearly for a wow account and the COH people deserve it.. 

 

But again I will keep saying this.. I don't have any inside scoop. But I truly believe that COH is going to come back.. Just a more a more modern engine with all the ideas everyone has posted..  Again there is NO Superhero game out there to compete with.. They all died..