A peak into the hive mind, what are your thoughts? Community Insight Poll Request

[Sir Myshkin]

6 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

It's peek, not peak.

 

Ah, are you sure it's an accident? 😉

[Astralock]

I know that this will never happen, but personally, I'd like to see a server reverted to Issue 17, or at least as close to Issue 17 as the Issue 24 beta allows.

 

• No gold side.
• Blue side ATs would be restricted to blue side again.  Red side ATs would be restricted to red side again.
• No Incarnate abilities nor Incarnate content.  Incarnate trials and the revamped Dark Astoria would be removed.
• In fact, almost all content added after Issue 17 would be removed.  No Admiral Sutter TF.  No Mortimer Kal SF.  No Penelope Yin TF.  No new Tina MacIntyre nor Maria Jenkins story arcs.
• The proc system reverted to the old proc system.
• Galaxy City restored.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Astralock

[Gemini2099]

18 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

i’d be interested in an early issue shard, e.g one that’s held at issue 3. i imagine it would be a lot of work to roll back so many changes though

Pre ED server would be awesome.  Not sure how realistic though. 

[Snarky]

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

It's peek, not peak.

Pika Pika?

[Snarky]

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

It's peek, not peak.

Pika Pika?

[Snarky]

Weird glitch, but now tempted to keep  posting Pika…

Edited December 23, 2022 by Snarky

[Ruin Mage]

No, no, and extra bits of no.

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug, but Old CoH was horrible game design.

[Shred Monkey]

Maybe instead of changing a server, we give players an option during character creation that turns off access to certain things and then  changes their name color to show they're playing on hard mode.   We would need to decide what those things should be... P2W seems obvious.  AE xp maybe?  Null the Gull probably?  Receiving gifts in email certainly.  Possibly trading.... access to supergroup storage if it wasn't placed their by the same character?  

[Ironblade]

Hard pass. No.

For one simple reason.  As a 100% volunteer team, the devs already have very limited resources.  Maintaining two sets of code is right out.

[Sir Myshkin]

I appreciate everyone's input so far on the topic. So far the dynamic isn't far off what I personally anticipated, but hopefully this brings some expression of insight for others. Right now there's obviously only a small sampling of the overall dynamic of players that play the game (I'd guess an estimate of maybe 7% currently), I don't have any intention of ever closing the poll itself so it can continue collecting others' insights as time passes.

[Greycat]

On 12/22/2022 at 2:03 AM, MoonSheep said:

i’d be interested in an early issue shard, e.g one that’s held at issue 3. i imagine it would be a lot of work to roll back so many changes though

 

On 12/22/2022 at 9:26 AM, TerroirNoir2 said:

Would that involve rebuilding Galaxy City and unwinding all the migrations of its contacts and so on into Atlas Park?  The return of Sister Psyche and Statesman to IP to run their TFs?  Old Calvin Scott TF back in place? Whatever about the last three, that first one is a big ask if the code that allowed that isn't there. How do you roll back to an issue you probably don't have?

 

 

Adding the second quote because it kind of touches on the problem of the first -

 

We have the codebase we have *now* because someone essentially smuggled the code that was going to be the next issue out of Paragon. (Technically, we *already* have a split because we have the "Paragon code" and "SCoRE modified" code, that has tweaks and things like the Sentinel in it with all the changes made there.) We *don't* have allllll the backups going back to (*pick issue here*) to pick and choose from. I don't believe it'd be possible (or reasonable) to actually MAKE an "Issue 3" server, for instance. Yes, you can rip out stuff like P2W, make the market non functional (just don't stock it, I guess) and start getting "Not quite current issue" functionality, but ... well, just the laundry list of things you'd have to figure out (how do you replace the Atlas shard with Echo:Atlas? How do you make Echo:Galaxy active as a starting zone? How do you reopen the gates to it? How do you stop bases from being created? - remember, we had SGs, but not base building, at the time. You'd have to remove all Villain ATs and zones, remove the Kheld story arcs and do a *lot* of power tweaking.  You'd have to backtrack *all* the changes made to power values to what they were then...

 

... I mean, depending on just how accurate of an "issue 3" you want.

[starro]

I don’t use those things but my way to play should not impact others way to play. Other players may  want to use those things. 
 

I like my game play a little grindy but others want to get to their destinations a little faster and hop to the next character and do something different.   
HC is nice and flexible and if I want to join a fire farm once every 6 months I like that too and then back to missions or street sweeping.   I like solo over teams lately and happy I am not mandated either way. I will pick up the raid badges when I feel more social. 

I hope HC never goes back to issue the 24, issue 1 or issue 0.  Too much other bugs and yuck will come with the fuzzy memories of COH yesteryear. 
 

I clicked hard pass but the pole never appeared with results. 

[Yoru-hime]

Even the more positive responses here reflect much of the problem with these wishes. There's the initial poster who would just remove a few things, one who wants Issue 17, one who wants Issue 3 and so on and so on. Everyone with this "roll it back" mindset will find that their rose-colored glasses are going to focus on a different point in time when they consider the game to have been "perfect". Which content is pivotal to the game being what it is to them, which bugs and game design flaws they have either forgotten or are willing to overlook. It's always going to be a different answer. That's just how our memories work. It'd be impossible to satisfy this desire at a meaningful scale with just one throwback server. Anything that isn't that one person's "perfect" game is going to just inspire continued grumbling and demands that they have a way back to those ideal days.

 

As for me, I'm not a big fan of living in the past. Homecoming CoH feels different than Original CoH to me not just because it's different but because I'M different. I'm older, hopefully a little wiser and I've already seen everything this game has to offer. Even if someone gave me an old server, I'll still never be able do Hamidon or STF for the first time again. That's just not how life works. I'm grateful for what we have and hopeful for what tomorrow* might bring. For this and all the various reasons described by others in this thread, this is a hard pass for me.

 

*Not literally tomorrow. I hope the devs are all enjoying a nice relaxing holiday.

[Monty Haull]

All those restrictions can be self imposed by the player.  No need to change anything.  You could even go gladiator style.  You die you erase and start over.

[Ukase]

If you want to play a version of CoH without Null the Gull (to switch alignments), without P2W, and "mostly" without AE, head to Thunderspy. 

They do things differently there. You don't use AE there to farm. Why? because the missions there, except for the very few that are ranked Developer's Choice, only award tickets. No XP. None. Powerleveling/farming is done in PI and Dark Astoria, depending on the mission. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but your condition was No AE - but I really think you meant no farming. 

The key difference is most people don't want to play that way. The journey to 50 there is ...well, superior than it is on HC. But the journey after 50 is much worse. Worse is probably subjective, so I'll shed some light. 
There - they don't have the population that HC does, as most of you are aware. On a Tuesday morning, I did a /search and there were only 4 people logged in (but there may have been a few hiding, I don't know). You can likely find more than 4 on Reunion at it's lowest. 

There is practically no marketing on Thunderspy. If there is, I can't see it. If you want loot, you just create a new account - no email required. You can get 60 hero packs, so you start with a slew of reward merits from those packs, and possibly all the ATOs you might need (but only the first series. And they won't convert to the other type - you have to spend hero merits or reward merits for those - or maybe you can get lucky like I did and buy three of them on the AH for 100 inf each. 

I used to think it most foul to suggest people play on other servers. I've changed my view on that, depending on context. 
I played on Rebirth in the Summer of 2021. It convinced me HC was superior to Rebirth, simply because of the grindy feel of it, which I suffered through on live with the company of a few folks here and there. The people were interesting - the game was always a bit grindy on live. 

But, I kind of like Thunderspy and plan to play there more than here. Until I hit 50. Then, ick. I'll probably return.