A video that represents well the pitfalls of feature creep.

[Sanguinesun]

Discussions on changes / additions this cycle (and past in some cases) to the game really reminded me of the video below.

 

It's an old vid but I think both devs and players who have never seen this take something from this.   Sometimes just because we want to change, add, or even remove etc something to the game doesn't mean that it actually benefits the game.

 

 

I

 

Edited October 7, 2022 by Sanguinesun

[MoonSheep]

interesting perspective. i noted a list of the power creep / ease of challenge changes made over the years below to aid discussion. is there anything missing? (other than old school things from early issues on live)

 

- auto stamina

- powerful purple IOs which work when exemped

- ability to use powers 5 levels above your exemped level

- ability to convert IOs leading to all enhancements being nearly free to use or require very little time to achieve

- travel powers at much lower levels with no prerequisite 

- an abundance of free respecs, very little challenge to complete a respec TF, available on the market for pennies

- ability to buy things from the market by typing /ah anywhere, stock up on huge insps before events

- DFBs which catapult people to lvl 20

- permanent double XP available

- AE farms allowing people to distill powerlevelling further to its purist form

- most powerful powers now available at lvl 26 and 30, usable when exemped down to 21/25

 

edit: a point of discussion which was held during the Great Page 4 Riots was whether CoH is still an MMORPG or whether it has now transitioned to being a pick up and play sandbox activity. lots of discussion on which retains a playerbase most effectively

Edited October 7, 2022 by MoonSheep

[Six-Six]

As someone who used to work in the advertising industry, this sure brings back some horrible memories. Make no mistake, though. The video is not a parody or satire, nor is it an exaggeration. That stuff really happens. You'd be surprised (yes, from the know-it-all attitude of the clients to the creepy smiles).

Past mental trauma aside, I don't think it's a fair representation of what is going on in HC. Yes the devs have been busy with changes, some minor and some major. The thing with change however, is most humans are not so good at dealing with it. There will always be controversy whenever something disrupts the "way things are." The bottom line, however is technically, they're (running copy of an otherwise dead) game and we're just lucky to be allowed to play with them. We all have wants and wish lists that we often convince others that they're needs; or we may feel entitled to go so far as to demand certain things, but it all boils down to the small group of volunteers and what they choose to do with it. Now, they have been so gracious as to ask for feedback from the community. But in the end, they can do whatever floats their goat. And if we don't like it, we don't have to play it.

Are all the changes good? There is no way to quantify it nor predict each success or failure. But the specific changes can later be amended, rolled back, improved, whatever. The good in all of this is not the specific change itself, but the fact that the game is still changing after being dead for so many years. Change, believe or not, is a good thing.

Back to the video... just a bit of unsolicited professional advice: If it's an ad, it's lying to you in one way or another.

[Edit]
This serendipitously popped in my youtube suggestions. An over simplification of things, but I feel that it helps shed light (albeit little) on some aspects:
 

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Six-Six

[Seed22]

3 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

interesting perspective. i noted a list of the power creep / ease of challenge changes made over the years below to aid discussion. is there anything missing? (other than old school things from early issues on live)

 

- auto stamina

- powerful purple IOs which work when exemped

- ability to use powers 5 levels above your exemped level

- ability to convert IOs leading to all enhancements being nearly free to use or require very little time to achieve

- travel powers at much lower levels with no prerequisite 

- an abundance of free respecs, very little challenge to complete a respec TF, available on the market for pennies

- ability to buy things from the market by typing /ah anywhere, stock up on huge insps before events

- DFBs which catapult people to lvl 20

- permanent double XP available

- AE farms allowing people to distill powerlevelling further to its purist form

- most powerful powers now available at lvl 26 and 30, usable when exemped down to 21/25

 

edit: a point of discussion which was held during the Great Page 4 Riots was whether CoH is still an MMORPG or whether it has now transitioned to being a pick up and play sandbox activity. lots of discussion on which retains a playerbase most effectively

I mean, CoH aint an MMO anymore, least in my eyes. I can agree on powercreep but what I disagree on is it being bad: I will say this until folks get it. People have lives now, jobs, families, ya know, normal stuff like that. It being a sandbox is a GOOD thing imo. In fact, if it is one, maybe it’ll draw more casual players( the kind this game wants AND was made for by the way).

 

Having dedicated folks is nice, but then it becomes the same people and, to me, makes the game stale.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Seed22

[MoonSheep]

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

I mean, CoH aint an MMO anymore, least in my eyes. I can agree on powercreep but what I disagree on is it being bad: I will say this until folks get it. People have lives now, jobs, families, ya know, normal stuff like that. It being a sandbox is a GOOD thing imo. In fact, if it is one, maybe it’ll draw more casual players( the kind this game wants AND was made for by the way).

 

Having dedicated folks is nice, but then it becomes the same people and, to me, makes the game stale.

 

i think people do get it, i’m a parent thesedays myself and work full time etc. i recognise the development team do also

 

as a hobby server, the development is naturally influenced by these circumstances, whereas if you work for a professional game house you target a specific playerbase and play style

 

the conflict arises where some people still wish CoH to be a long paced MMORPG and others want a pick up and play game

 

what if an issue 1 or issue 3 shard was created and one of the ailing shards combined into the other 3?

[roleki]

Myself, I would prefer feature creep over stagnation, but stagnation will always have its dogmatic adherents. 

 

The great thing about HC is, it IS small, and while the work the devs do is not trivial, if they somehow break the game, it's not like there's accountants telling them they can't afford to scrap all that work.  HC can change course if it comes to it.

 

And as has always been the case, if people don't like the direction HC is going with their beloved CoH, they have the option of going to any number of alternate servers or can even roll their own. 

[Black Zot]

14 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

what if an issue 1 or issue 3 shard was created and one of the ailing shards combined into the other 3?

 

You'd have to rebuild the game from scratch; the pre-issue 24 code no longer exists so far as I know.

[Astralock]

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

I mean, CoH aint an MMO anymore, least in my eyes. I can agree on powercreep but what I disagree on is it being bad: I will say this until folks get it. People have lives now, jobs, families, ya know, normal stuff like that. It being a sandbox is a GOOD thing imo. In fact, if it is one, maybe it’ll draw more casual players( the kind this game wants AND was made for by the way).

 

Having dedicated folks is nice, but then it becomes the same people and, to me, makes the game stale.

 

There is already a sandbox server, for people that want that.  New Dawn is ——> that way.  Homecoming isn’t it.

[Ruin Mage]

7 minutes ago, Black Zot said:

You'd have to rebuild the game from scratch; the pre-issue 24 code no longer exists so far as I know.

Correct. SEGS is trying to build something akin to this. Sort of? I don't quite understand it myself.

 

[Seed22]

55 minutes ago, Astralock said:

 

There is already a sandbox server, for people that want that.  New Dawn is ——> that way.  Homecoming isn’t it.

Did I strike a nerve here? Which part made you feel this response was appropriate?

 

I never wanted ALL of CoH to be a sandbox but now I have to ask: What’s your angle? Do you want more “earned”(It’s a videogame, what are you earning? Do folks think having imaginary trinkets will earn the adoration of others?) content and thusly thats why you hate the sandboxy nature of CoH?

 

Remember, this game was ALWAYS meant to stay and be casual for the reason I mentioned( RL) to keep the game fun and accessible. Are you upset people want to maintain this, and are extrapolating this anger to a fear of the whole game becoming this?

Edited October 7, 2022 by Seed22

[Indystruck]

CoX is still explicitly an MMORPG.

 

It did not turn into an FPS or Metroidvania or Bulletheaven game.

[Ruin Mage]

33 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

this game was ALWAYS meant to stay and be casua

Do you have a source for this?

Edited October 7, 2022 by Shadeknight

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I will say this until folks get it. People have lives now, jobs, families, ya know, normal stuff like that.

People had lives then too.  Your argument is nonsense and will always be nonsense.

 

22 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Remember, this game was ALWAYS meant to stay and be casual

"Casual" means "can play without complex prerequisites".  I.E. you don't need raids, or groups of specific character types, or specific equipment, or specific builds, or max levels/skills, or any of the other crap that infests other games.  At it's heart, CoX was built around the PUG - "every archetype can contribute, no archetype is required".

It very emphatically does not mean "ever decreasing levels of effort for ever increasing levels of reward".
 

[Seed22]

35 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

People had lives then too.  Your argument is nonsense and will always be nonsense.

 

"Casual" means "can play without complex prerequisites".  I.E. you don't need raids, or groups of specific character types, or specific equipment, or specific builds, or max levels/skills, or any of the other crap that infests other games.  At it's heart, CoX was built around the PUG - "every archetype can contribute, no archetype is required".

It very emphatically does not mean "ever decreasing levels of effort for ever increasing levels of reward

If that’s your takeaway from this, alrighty. 
 

 

I’m moving past this. All I get is a headache and all you get is to keep replying. 

Edited October 7, 2022 by Seed22

[Ruin Mage]

The casual nature came more so from HC's QOL, not Live/Retail's length. Live was far from a casual MMO towards the end.

[Xiddo]

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

 

There is already a sandbox server, for people that want that.  New Dawn is ——> that way.  Homecoming isn’t it.

I know this isn't the point of your post but I've always been curious about their server, not for a full time play but just to having a look about, however I just find their website quite hard to navigate and I would like to easily read about the in-depth changes they've made without having to go through lots of different reddit posts.

[El D]

18 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

It very emphatically does not mean "ever decreasing levels of effort for ever increasing levels of reward".
 

 

That's the thing though - progression in MMOs isn't about effort. It's about time.

 

It never took 'effort' to advance in CoH. There is no factor of 'you play better than someone else and thereby advance faster than them' - outside of double XP shenanigans, everyone on a team gets the same XP for the same mobs, regardless of what AT they are, how often or efficiently they hit their power buttons, or if they're even contributing at all. Someone who doorsits gets just as much XP as someone who rushes into every room, spamming their entire power tray. It's not an FPS or an RTS or a MOBA, where 'effort' is an actual factor to increased success or produces any serious performance metric outside of PvP and, arguably, base building. The core measure of MMO progression is how much time one player puts into the game compared to another player, and whether or not said amount of time is appropriate to what is gained is the core disagreement at the heart of feature/power creep threads like this one.

 

It's not 'I don't think you put in enough effort to earn X' because X was always going to be earnable. It's 'I don't think earning X in Y amount of time is fair,' usually with the unspoken reasoning of 'it's not fair because I had to spend Z amount of time doing it the old way.' The common complaint that it 'removes a sense of achievement' is proof that the MMO time-sink nature took hold in some folks and never let go. 'These other players didn't spend as long as I did trudging up this mountain, so they don't deserve what's at the top' ignores the fact that the Live devs purposefully designed said mountain as an escalator that's going down the entire time the players try to go up. It's still the exact same distance, just with the time gates of 'if it takes longer to do, they'll stay longer and spend more money' removed - and CoH is all the better for it.

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, roleki said:

Myself, I would prefer feature creep over stagnation, but stagnation will always have its dogmatic adherents.

 

 

There's also "thoughtful adjustment" versus "Sledgehammer it in."  We have both on beta right now. Pointing out the issues is not being a "dogmatic adherent" to "stagnation." We have people here who have been playing the game since launch or near launch. We're *well* aware of change. Our interest generally isn't "keep the game the way it was."  (Yes, I said generally. I know there are some who just want it as it was at shutdown.) We *like* seeing change. But we'll tend to like it in the sense of "Well, we can put a nice fireplace over here" versus "START A BONFIRE IN THE KITCHEN IT'LL BE FINE!"

[roleki]

1 minute ago, Greycat said:

 

There's also "thoughtful adjustment" versus "Sledgehammer it in."  We have both on beta right now. Pointing out the issues is not being a "dogmatic adherent" to "stagnation." We have people here who have been playing the game since launch or near launch. We're *well* aware of change. Our interest generally isn't "keep the game the way it was."  (Yes, I said generally. I know there are some who just want it as it was at shutdown.) We *like* seeing change. But we'll tend to like it in the sense of "Well, we can put a nice fireplace over here" versus "START A BONFIRE IN THE KITCHEN IT'LL BE FINE!"

 

Understand completely; I think one of the things that compounds (causes?) consternation amongst the various camps is that nobody actually SAYS "Well, we can put a nice fireplace over here" but rather we all walk in one day to find there's a hobo warming his hands around a trash fire contained in a 55 gallon drum smack in the center of the kitchen.  

 

One group will start howling how they never wanted a hobo in the kitchen, another group will tell them to shut up because we have a small team of volunteers who worked hard to grace us with a hobo in the kitchen, and another group will lament that the hobos on Live were in The Hollows and you had to crawl naked across shards of glass and lava to get a glimpse of them, and now the hobos are in our kitchen.

[Seed22]

1 hour ago, El D said:

 

That's the thing though - progression in MMOs isn't about effort. It's about time.

 

It never took 'effort' to advance in CoH. There is no factor of 'you play better than someone else and thereby advance faster than them' - outside of double XP shenanigans, everyone on a team gets the same XP for the same mobs, regardless of what AT they are, how often or efficiently they hit their power buttons, or if they're even contributing at all. Someone who doorsits gets just as much XP as someone who rushes into every room, spamming their entire power tray. It's not an FPS or an RTS or a MOBA, where 'effort' is an actual factor to increased success or produces any serious performance metric outside of PvP and, arguably, base building. The core measure of MMO progression is how much time one player puts into the game compared to another player, and whether or not said amount of time is appropriate to what is gained is the core disagreement at the heart of feature/power creep threads like this one.

 

It's not 'I don't think you put in enough effort to earn X' because X was always going to be earnable. It's 'I don't think earning X in Y amount of time is fair,' usually with the unspoken reasoning of 'it's not fair because I had to spend Z amount of time doing it the old way.' The common complaint that it 'removes a sense of achievement' is proof that the MMO time-sink nature took hold in some folks and never let go. 'These other players didn't spend as long as I did trudging up this mountain, so they don't deserve what's at the top' ignores the fact that the Live devs purposefully designed said mountain as an escalator that's going down the entire time the players try to go up. It's still the exact same distance, just with the time gates of 'if it takes longer to do, they'll stay longer and spend more money' removed - and CoH is all the better for it.

This. Good god so much this. But like I said, if I think im right and they think they’re right, all thats lost is the time spent arguing.

[shatterpoint]

8 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

edit: a point of discussion which was held during the Great Page 4 Riots was whether CoH is still an MMORPG or whether it has now transitioned to being a pick up and play sandbox activity. lots of discussion on which retains a playerbase most effectively

 

This is a factory. Plain and simple.

[biostem]

17 hours ago, Sanguinesun said:

Sometimes just because we want to change, add, or even remove etc something to the game doesn't mean that it actually benefits the game.

The inverse is also true - just because you don't want change doesn't mean that stagnation is good for the game, either.  What is bad is implementing changes willy-nilly and without care.  While I may not agree with every change that is proposed or has been implemented, I think that locking the game down to any changes at all is a bad thing.

[Peacemoon]

On 10/7/2022 at 11:00 AM, MoonSheep said:

interesting perspective. i noted a list of the power creep / ease of challenge changes made over the years below to aid discussion. is there anything missing? (other than old school things from early issues on live)

 

- auto stamina

- powerful purple IOs which work when exemped

- ability to use powers 5 levels above your exemped level

- ability to convert IOs leading to all enhancements being nearly free to use or require very little time to achieve

- travel powers at much lower levels with no prerequisite 

- an abundance of free respecs, very little challenge to complete a respec TF, available on the market for pennies

- ability to buy things from the market by typing /ah anywhere, stock up on huge insps before events

- DFBs which catapult people to lvl 20

- permanent double XP available

- AE farms allowing people to distill powerlevelling further to its purist form

- most powerful powers now available at lvl 26 and 30, usable when exemped down to 21/25

 

edit: a point of discussion which was held during the Great Page 4 Riots was whether CoH is still an MMORPG or whether it has now transitioned to being a pick up and play sandbox activity. lots of discussion on which retains a playerbase most effectively

When you were sidekicked you were always a level below your mentor, not equal level.

Task force enemies were always the max level for the range and not based on leader’s level.

Each sidekick needed a mentor, so if you had too many low levels you might not be able to sidekick them up.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Peacemoon

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

When you were sidekicked you were always a level below your mentor, not equal level.

Task force enemies were always the max level for the range and not based on leader’s level.

Each sidekick needed a mentor, so if you had too many low levels you might not be able to sidekick them up.

I saw an Admiral Sutter advertise for looooong time on Excelsior today.  I almost felt bad and joined it.  But I am finally writing again so I do not want to break rhythm. Can you imagine if the level restriction were even more severe like in old days.  Sheesh.  

[Doc_Scorpion]

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

Can you imagine if the level restriction were even more severe like in old days. 

I do NOT miss Mentor Tetris.  Auto-sidekicking to the star holder's level or the TF level was a godsend.