Sins of the Devs are visited upon the players

[Tachstar]

36 minutes ago, Trike said:

We could’ve had missions on the moon, or in a desert, or undersea.

 

Underwater moon base! It could still happen! It could! I still believe!

[Glacier Peak]

5 minutes ago, Tachstar said:

Underwater moon base! It could still happen! It could! I still believe!

Moon base!

[Trike]

Yeah, PvP was hot for a minute, but then it just fizzled because it was broken. I don’t mean non-functional the way the arenas were bugged, but just fundamentally flawed from the get-go.

 

In order to be fair and fun, PvP requires that every character have the exact same stats. PvE MMOs are never going to have that. If they do flatten out the characters so that a Blaster and Tanker have the same hit points and do the same damage, players will complain that their characters aren’t the same as they are in the rest of the game.
 

CoH’s early PvP required crazy swings in ability as powers were altered once the rubber hit the road and we saw how everything worked. Like being perma-held by Ice powers in those early days, or chain-stunned so you couldn’t fight back, which is why Blasters ended up being able to fire off their starting powers even while immobilized/stunned/asleep. It’s dumb but necessary, but it was also too late. The PvP population, already a small subset of the playerbase, basically evaporated within 6 months.

 

Over the past few years I have seen only one in-game PvP challenge being issued, and no one took the guy up on it. The fact I could take a level 12 character into several PvP zones and not even get attacked by the NPCs underscores that. Meanwhile, every night there are calls for Hami raids and SBB missions, as well as pretty much everything else.

 

I maintain PvP was a bad idea that hardly anyone ever used, nor do they today. I’d bet real money that 99.9% of players would much rather have an Atlantis underwater zone than any form of PvP.

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, Trike said:

In order to be fair and fun, PvP requires that every character have the exact same stats.

No. It doesn't. Even something like PUBG, where the avatar has the same hp and whatnot, features players using different guns and armor with different stats. There are a ton of MMOs and other games that have pvp and don't feature some generic character. 

 

I stuck with coh because of pvp, from I4 to close. It wasn't a "hot minute." I didn't get back into it with Homecoming, but the fact that you don't encounter any pvpers doesn't mean there's no interest. Redside and Goldside are pretty dead as well from what I hear--that doesn't make them mistakes or bad ideas either.

 

[Ukase]

3 hours ago, Number Six said:

But you're buying converters. Or, alternatively, you're not selling converters and missing out on the inf that you would otherwise have -- the opportunity cost is roughly the same. Since converters can be bought for inf, out of control inflation driving up converter costs would affect you either directly or indirectly.

This will be true...sometime later. But not for awhile. Historically, I was using the ol' emp ->reward merit --> converter  method at the ol' merit vendor. But you little scamps took that away. But, I've a healthy supply of reward merits in the global email and still hundreds, if not thousands of winter and hero packs to open. And, since I'm not farming anymore, my need for converters will go way down. It may well be a year before I need to buy any. Just depends. I've been saving for that rainy day. When HC seeded the salvage, I learned pretty quickly that you guys could change things pretty quickly. So, I've tried to use several methods to store wealth - purples, pvp IOs, winters, reward merits, super packs, winter packs, and standard inf. 

I believe selling converters is the lazy player's way to wealth. Actually using them, turning trash into gold is what they were made for, and what makes the most influence. Converters as a store of value...nah. I can't buy anything with converters, and if I did use them as such, the value of my portfolio would be roughly 75% of what it was before page 4 dropped. Converters used to go for 70K instantly; and the amount for sale would vary from about 6k to 45K. Now, it seems to be staying well above 50k. This is probably due to a number of folks who exchanged emps for reward merits prior to page 4 hitting. And, over time, I suspect it will return to normal. But for now, buying converters does seem like a good idea, as they're so cheap, and in about 4-5 months, the price should be creeping up. Maybe sooner. Depends on how other marketers are taking advantage of the situation. 

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, MoonSheep said:

a core premise and selling point of CoX were the archetypes, their unique traits and their ability to combine and form something greater. IOs and now the over-availability of discount high end enhancements have removed the flavour of individual archetypes and substituted it with a grey one size fits all mush

 

IOs didn't alter archetype roles.  Powers did that.  Powers in primaries, secondaries and pools.  The base game itself created the potential for players to cast aside archetype distinctions and play any way they wanted.

 

And bland, flavorless mush is what we had before IOs.  Standardized slotting, standardized power selections, standardized play, the only distinction between anyone was costumes.  You complain about homogeny, and simultaneously complain because you're not being homogenized, and blame IOs for everything when IOs didn't do anything but give players the courage to explore the potential inherent in the game.

 

If you want to be shoved into a box, labeled and expected to perform one function, like a printing press or a grain thresher, you picked the wrong game.  Co* never forced that on players.  The only reason we even have archetypes is because Cryptic didn't want to give players ways to completely gimp themselves, do something inane like take all Defense/Resistance powers and travel powers and no attacks.  The original version of CoH had no archetypes, and the development team realized it wasn't going to work, so they took the free-form power selection and re-organized it into archetypes so players would have an assured way to progress.  What you consider inviolable rules, they were never anything but suggestions.

[Luminara]

41 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Moon base!

 

Moon base, soldier shoot butt.

[MoonSheep]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

You complain about homogeny, and simultaneously complain because you're not being homogenized

 

not really sure what you’re trying to convey here

Edited September 7, 2022 by MoonSheep

[MoonSheep]

15 minutes ago, Luminara said:

.  The only reason we even have archetypes is because Cryptic didn't want to give players ways to completely gimp themselves, do something inane like take all Defense/Resistance powers and travel powers and no attacks. 

 

this is exactly what has happened though - people purposely ruin their builds for the sake of everyone having “softcap S/L”

 

for example, almost all builds on the defender forum are people feeding All The Gear No Idea type players the same build where it focuses entirely on defense and nothing on the primary ability of a defender: support

 

people aren’t incentivised to take pride in their AT and build for it, as many ATs have been made redundant by IOs and their over-supply

[The_Warpact]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Back in one of the threads where we were complaining about the addition of that weird sort-of combo gimmick to Energy Melee, someone referred to the developers as "The Council of Thirteen."

 

I use it now and then just because I like the sound of it.

Well if you disappear, car accident, accidently fall out a window, etc then we know that you knew too much.

 

 

[Coyotedancer]

2 hours ago, Tachstar said:

 

Underwater moon base! It could still happen! It could! I still believe!

 

*sings something about Wailers on the moon*

[Songseven]

@Ukase

 

i'm actually just legitimately impressed how literally every post you make, you manage to exclaim how much influ, merits, convertors, winter packs you have 🤪

 

 

[Ironblade]

25 minutes ago, Songseven said:

i'm actually just legitimately impressed how literally every post you make, you manage to exclaim how much influ, merits, convertors, winter packs you have 🤪

It's the foremost thing on his mind.  😉

[The_Warpact]

1 hour ago, Songseven said:

@Ukase

 

i'm actually just legitimately impressed how literally every post you make, you manage to exclaim how much influ, merits, convertors, winter packs you have 🤪

 

 

That's just him waving his epeen in everyone's face. Ooo look at my inf! Ooo look at the size of my convertor! Ooo how do you my winter package!

 

Some people just gotta compensate....

[Sakura Tenshi]

I don't know if I'd count this as a sin per-say so much as a bit of oversight and/or side effect of a necessary limitation: the organization of powers for custom AE critters. Two powersets which are often heavily abbreviated due to AIs lacking comprehension of how to do certain things (like place traps) or because reasons unknown (removal of snipes from blast sets. Notice SCORE didn't seem to have trouble with this, why did paid professionals go 'dur!'?) it might have been better if powersets had not been confined by AT and analogous player set, but rather based on theming. Why can't I make the pyromaster have a power from every fire related set, Paragon Studios?  I'll even trim to avoid the AI from derping too hard with attack chains. But, no, a master of flames must accept being stuck with a limited variety of powers. The team has certainly mitigated this with the ability to hard write in new powers, but it'd be nice if in the future we got broad themed powersets including things like Assault rifle getting SoA attacks tossed in.

[BurtHutt]

6 hours ago, Trike said:

Yeah, PvP was hot for a minute, but then it just fizzled because it was broken. I don’t mean non-functional the way the arenas were bugged, but just fundamentally flawed from the get-go.

 

In order to be fair and fun, PvP requires that every character have the exact same stats. PvE MMOs are never going to have that. If they do flatten out the characters so that a Blaster and Tanker have the same hit points and do the same damage, players will complain that their characters aren’t the same as they are in the rest of the game.
 

CoH’s early PvP required crazy swings in ability as powers were altered once the rubber hit the road and we saw how everything worked. Like being perma-held by Ice powers in those early days, or chain-stunned so you couldn’t fight back, which is why Blasters ended up being able to fire off their starting powers even while immobilized/stunned/asleep. It’s dumb but necessary, but it was also too late. The PvP population, already a small subset of the playerbase, basically evaporated within 6 months.

 

Over the past few years I have seen only one in-game PvP challenge being issued, and no one took the guy up on it. The fact I could take a level 12 character into several PvP zones and not even get attacked by the NPCs underscores that. Meanwhile, every night there are calls for Hami raids and SBB missions, as well as pretty much everything else.

 

I maintain PvP was a bad idea that hardly anyone ever used, nor do they today. I’d bet real money that 99.9% of players would much rather have an Atlantis underwater zone than any form of PvP.

Interesting take. Most of it I don't agree with as my VG was huge into PvP on Virtue. I was never a big fan but the rest of the fellas loved it so I heard all about it. 

 

I don't want an Atlantis zone. I don't want any new zones. There are too many zones. The one thing I'd like to see is my AE idea implemented into the game so we can have a steady flow of missions added to the game on a regular basis. The Devs can't do it all and this would be awesome. Oh, and yes, I do not want a moonbase, zone or whatever the hell some players keep going on about. 

[UltraAlt]

7 hours ago, Trike said:

In order to be fair and fun, PvP requires that every character have the exact same stats. PvE MMOs are never going to have that. If they do flatten out the characters so that a Blaster and Tanker have the same hit points and do the same damage, players will complain that their characters aren’t the same as they are in the rest of the game.

 

I don't think the characters have to have the same hit point, but the need to be balanced out like a fighting game (not a FPS as there is tab targeting in CoH) ... and I'll say Street Fighter that is an obvious one.

 

I don't think that has to be restricted to Arena/Ring/Octagon fighting, but a standard build for each archetype and then grow from there.

That would require work on the DEVs end and balance testing by players.

 

The main problem is that CoV was created to be PvE and the rules aren't the same for the Player as they are for the NPCs.

If you look at DCUO, they had the same problem over there and build entirely different gear sets for PvP.

The "arena" type NPC versus NPC combat over there isn't balanced either. It is obvious by the levels of characters you can purchase to use in the iconic matches.

 

Plus what is fun for one archetype in CoH isn't fun for ather archetype in CoH. Melee like to run up and hit things. Blasters are going to try to strike from a distance. Control characters are going to try to hold, immobilize and slow down other characters and slowly drain their hp. Stalkers are going to want to sneak up on enemies and assassin strike them --- and sneak away quickly to be able to return and assassin strike again when it is powered up. Healers/protectors are going want to be able to heal/deflect/absorb enough damage to be able to debuff and damage to defeat opponents <--- this is probably the hardest of the lot to balance. 

 

I'm not posting this in the PVP thread as they are trying to resurge things in PVP. I hope they have luck doing that. I never PVPd much, but had the most fun in the PVP open world zones - especially Recluse's Victory. And some of the times that I did do it, I had to put players on ignore because of their vile behavior. I'm hoping that kind of behavior doesn't happen in CoH PvP these days on Homecoming.

I just think CoH wasn't built for PVP. DCUO definitely wasn't built for PVP. Jack was/is involved with both, so that might be a clue about it from a very basic level.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, The_Warpact said:

That's just him waving his epeen in everyone's face. Ooo look at my inf! Ooo look at the size of my convertor! Ooo how do you my winter package!

 

Some people just gotta compensate....

This is so true! I think Howard Stern said it best. "I'm 6 foot 5, and hung like a pimple." 
And I'm not even 6'5"! 

[GM Impervium]

1 hour ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

 Why can't I make the pyromaster have a power from every fire related set, Paragon Studios?  I'll even trim to avoid the AI from derping too hard with attack chains. But, no, a master of flames must accept being stuck with a limited variety of powers. The team has certainly mitigated this with the ability to hard write in new powers, but it'd be nice if in the future we got broad themed powersets including things like Assault rifle getting SoA attacks tossed in.

I mean, you CAN do that now, but, it involves editing the critter in notepad, and they won't be worth any XP.
 

A bit past the halfway point.

...of all the preview images, why did it select a 30x30 icon and blow it up? *sigh*

Edited September 8, 2022 by GM Impervium

[Ukase]

3 hours ago, Songseven said:

@Ukase

 

i'm actually just legitimately impressed how literally every post you make, you manage to exclaim how much influ, merits, convertors, winter packs you have 🤪

 

 

You know, I was asked once by Yomo how much inf I had. I told him it would cost me too much inf to take the time to count it. 😇

[InvaderStych]

38 minutes ago, Ukase said:

You know, I was asked once by Yomo how much inf I had. I told him it would cost me too much inf to take the time to count it. 😇

 

But do you know how many pounds of Inf you have?

[Sakura Tenshi]

@GM Impervium
oh, yeah, I know that. First thing I did was build an unkillable AV just because I could, and it is nice, don't get me wrong, but I hope I'm not being too greedy that I'll always hope for future improvements to the custom critter power system.

 

Especially adding EAT powersets, preferrably wolf spider weaponry to assault rifle so we can have enemies that just spray lead everywhere instead of dumb frankengun stuff.

[Trike]

21 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

And some of the times that I did do it, I had to put players on ignore because of their vile behavior. I'm hoping that kind of behavior doesn't happen in CoH PvP these days on Homecoming.

I just think CoH wasn't built for PVP. DCUO definitely wasn't built for PVP. Jack was/is involved with both, so that might be a clue about it from a very basic level.

That vile behavior is why I mentioned that PvP dragged the community down. PvP brings out the worst in people, and back when it was proposed many of us warned the devs that would happen. No surprise that it brought tons of toxic people to the game, who then proceeded to trash everything before leaving for CoD or whatever.

 

I still play PvP games all the time. I’m not terribly good any more, but I’m still plugging away. Mostly on Halo Infinite these days, but I’ve played all of them from Doom to Unreal Tournament to Quake and back. So it’s not like I’m anti-PvP; I’m just anti-PvP in games like CoH where it doesn’t make sense.

 

The unbalanced nature of PUBG and Fortnite make them equally unattractive. For me, the original Call of Duty and CoD2 are the exemplars for PvP: everyone has the same stats, everyone has access to the same weapons, and there aren’t any power-ups to fundamentally alter your play. It comes down to skill. In my younger days I was regularly atop the leaderboards there, but there aren’t any shooters I’ve seen which don’t have gimmicks.

 

In a superhero game everyone has to be the same, and that’s dumb, given the history of the genre. Superman versus Captain Marvel is fine, as is Daredevil versus Catwoman, but you can’t have Superman versus Daredevil. That’s why Injustice holds no appeal - it changes the characters too much in order to make it competitive. Without author fiat, there’s no way Batman could beat Superman, not when Superman could just take him out from orbit using a pebble.

[Astralock]

13 minutes ago, Trike said:

That vile behavior is why I mentioned that PvP dragged the community down. PvP brings out the worst in people, and back when it was proposed many of us warned the devs that would happen. No surprise that it brought tons of toxic people to the game, who then proceeded to trash everything before leaving for CoD or whatever.

 

I've seen some pretty toxic behavior in PvE over the years, no PvP required.  At the same time, even though I don't PvP myself, I've seen a lot of quality behavior and gamesmanship in some PvPers.  It isn't PvEers.  It isn't PvPers.  It's human beings.  Unfortunately, you'll find some rotten apples in every bunch, but you also find some gems in every bunch as well.

[Trike]

5 minutes ago, Astralock said:

 

I've seen some pretty toxic behavior in PvE over the years, no PvP required.  At the same time, even though I don't PvP myself, I've seen a lot of quality behavior and gamesmanship in some PvPers.  It isn't PvEers.  It isn't PvPers.  It's human beings.  Unfortunately, you'll find some rotten apples in every bunch, but you also find some gems in every bunch as well.

True as far as it goes, but they really seem to gravitate to PvP.

 

In Halo Infinite you can’t shoot your teammates, but you can kill them with vehicles. Every few matches I see someone who starts griefing their own team by running them over with a vehicle or pushing them off a cliff resulting in a -100 “self destruction” penalty. No idea what’s going on in these people’s heads, if it’s because they’re children or just losers who simply can’t compete. I’ve never encountered a community as toxic as the one in League of Legends; it’s unbelievably racist, sexist, and just plain mean. It’s so awful that I don’t know why anyone plays that game.

 

Compare that to any co-op game or PvE game, where by and large people are friendly and nice. Earlier today I was watching exchanges on Excelsior as people helped out a couple new players. You never get that in League of Legends.

 

I’ve been playing video games since 1974 and online since the 90s; PvP is almost universally brimming with bad apples.