How do you circle that square?

[TheZag]

 

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

I honestly think that the OPs initial premise is borked.

 

I don't think too much needs to be offered for "new" players that they don't have in the game already. Sure, it's not graphically as lovely as the latest blockbuster, but that isn't the point. The lore, the richness of the game play, the character creator offer a brand new player a whole range of great experiences.

 

It's important to note that many modern games deliberately aim for a retro look, mimicking the old school days of Amigas and Ataris, of Commodore 64s and Spectrum 48s. Do we need to update it just to please new players? Is that going to benefit the game and community? I would argue that the game still stands as is, and doesn't need much tweaking to help it thrive. A new player who is worried solely by the look of the game is unlikely to be satisfied by anything other than the latest photorealistic gameplay (but was quite happy with less realistic games previously) so we gain almost nothing but may cause grave pains generally.

 

If it ain't broke, as the saying goes. My square has perfectly rounded corners.

[ZemX]

3 hours ago, Herotu said:

Who knows what the numbers are? Certainly not me.

 

Or you.

 

Yeah, that's why I used the word "seem".  I am making an observation. You said "so many" people were complaining. Maybe you just meant that the few people in this thread seems like a lot to you.  I am saying it's not so many when you consider the playerbase as a whole.   If there were any significant number of people unhappy about convenient travel they wouldn't so eagerly use it in game.  

 

I don't need exact numbers to not believe in some mythical silent majority of people who would rather jog their way to 14 like the "good old days."   People are more than happy to share their feelings about ANY aspect of this game.  We'd have heard from them by now if they existed.  If it was a popular way to play, people would be advertising in LFG for mission teams that are "defeat all AND street sweep between mission doors! Yay!"   

 

Instead, the only thing I hear when I toss out a Team Teleporter in game... is "Thank you!"

[Glacier Peak]

6 hours ago, ZemX said:

But sure, if you make a thread on the forums asking whose not happy with all the changes since the good old days... I am hardly surprised to see some folks chime in.

That's not this thread though. I'm assuming your speaking hypothetically. 

[Glacier Peak]

3 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I honestly think that the OPs initial premise is borked.

 

I don't think too much needs to be offered for "new" players that they don't have in the game already. Sure, it's not graphically as lovely as the latest blockbuster, but that isn't the point. The lore, the richness of the game play, the character creator offer a brand new player a whole range of great experiences.

 

It's important to note that many modern games deliberately aim for a retro look, mimicking the old school days of Amigas and Ataris, of Commodore 64s and Spectrum 48s. Do we need to update it just to please new players? Is that going to benefit the game and community? I would argue that the game still stands as is, and doesn't need much tweaking to help it thrive. A new player who is worried solely by the look of the game is unlikely to be satisfied by anything other than the latest photorealistic gameplay (but was quite happy with less realistic games previously) so we gain almost nothing but may cause grave pains generally.

 

If it ain't broke, as the saying goes. My square has perfectly rounded corners.

I'm happy to take on this response. I've continued to play this game since Homecoming made it available. I've enjoyed it and I've made that clear in the original post. I'm asking other players what they would say are ways to please an audience who has diverging view points. I appreciate you bringing up graphical fidelity, as I mentioned that being the connection I made with another game I've been playing over the past twenty years. I also like that proverb, in fact I'm constantly espousing to not reinventing the wheel in my day job. 

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, Herotu said:

Do we realise now that the journey was part of the fun?

For me, it always was enjoying the trip, not getting to the destination; we're all going to wind up as level 50 incarnates with T4 boosts in every sslot — but it's the path we take getting there that's the enjoyment. And I think that readily-available double XP boosters have aided that — back on Live, you would grind through all the contacts you got to get the XP to put you up to the next tier of contacts, and sometimes street swept to get the last bar or so, so when you started another character, you were often slogging through mission chains you'd already done to death. Double XP skips you through that, so that you need to pick and choose which contacts you work through, and your next character can have a different trail of contacts as they level. Over the course of a number of alts, you'll wind up going through most of the contacts, but not all of them again and again, so the game feels fresher.

[ZemX]

29 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

That's not this thread though. I'm assuming your speaking hypothetically. 

 

That's fair.  You didn't start the thread that way, but you set the table a bit with the comment, even a positive one, about Long Range Teleport.  It got picked up and then eventually at least one person thought they were seeing a lot of fast travel complaints.  I'm saying that's a bit of self-selection bias at work, is all.   You don't see widespread complaints about it in game  nor even any great movement towards playing the game "the old way" outside of a few nutters doing personal challenge runs.   But it doesn't surprise me at all if you bring up the topic, even in a very neutral way, in the context of what people think is good OR bad about the game now, you'll get some people waxing poetic about the good old days when we had to climb to each mission door uphill both ways in the snow. 🤪

 

I get it, but I also don't think it's possible to recapture that sense of wonder.  A lot of it was just that it was new.  Familiarity breeds contempt and it didn't take long for people to start hating all the running around.  What amazes me is how long it took the Live devs to relent.   It really did take the release of two competing superhero MMOs with more convenient fast travel to get them to change.

 

Turns my mind back to the comment about devs knowing better than players.  There's filtering your player feedback... and then there's just being arrogant.   I am happy to say, I don't think the HC devs suffer from this the way the Live devs did.  Back on Live, we had players who flat out DID know the mechanics better than the devs and could SHOW them that.   And it still didn't move them sometimes.   They could see how few players were playing certain powersets or ATs. They had the exact numbers.  And still it took them YEARS to respond.  A paid and staffed development team.   But.. water under the bridge, I suppose.  What might have been...

[Spaghetti Betty]

29 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

That's fair.  You didn't start the thread that way, but you set the table a bit with the comment, even a positive one, about Long Range Teleport.  It got picked up and then eventually at least one person thought they were seeing a lot of fast travel complaints.  I'm saying that's a bit of self-selection bias at work, is all.   You don't see widespread complaints about it in game  nor even any great movement towards playing the game "the old way" outside of a few nutters doing personal challenge runs.   But it doesn't surprise me at all if you bring up the topic, even in a very neutral way, in the context of what people think is good OR bad about the game now, you'll get some people waxing poetic about the good old days when we had to climb to each mission door uphill both ways in the snow. 🤪

I'll add more comments as someone who definitely did pipe up about this.

 

I'm in no way talking smack about all of the travel options we have now. Of course I use all of them, even shilling out the 20 mil or so on every new toon in order to have them all.

 

But the "forced" interaction with the environment we had to deal with back then did season us up a bit better than the steam train we see now. I say "forced", because there were still fast tracks to the top level even then that required you to go to maybe 3 zones. Does that mean I think everyone should have to do a Dr. Q with no TT? Heck no! But this is definitely not the game where new players should feel pushed to race to the end as quickly as possible, and sometimes the fast travel options do lend the inexperienced to feeling confused about where they should be going.

 

It's definitely a problem of time. Just like trying to pick up an old fighting game, I can imagine completely new players having a "falling down the stairs" moment trying to keep up with seasoned vets.

 

And I'm guilty of that too! But I embrace chaos always.

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Do we need to update it just to please new players? Is that going to benefit the game and community?

 

I say no to both, but what do I know?

I still call these chips.

 

 

😉

 

5 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I would argue that the game still stands as is, and doesn't need much tweaking to help it thrive

 

👍

 

5 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

If it ain't broke, as the saying goes.

 

Don't hit it with a sledge hammer?

 

 

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

we're all going to wind up as level 50 incarnates with T4 boosts in every sslot

 

Not me.

I have a couple of 50's, but none with T4 boosts ... at all.

And I won't be taking any more characters to level 50. I'll be XP locking them at level 49 or lower. 

Having my characters become "incarnates" is outside of any of my character conceptions.

 

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

For me, it always was enjoying the trip

 

The trip is the hero's journey.

 

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

not getting to the destination

 

The destination to me is limited to the "end of mission". 

I enjoy getting to the end of a mission!

 

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Double XP

 

I get 8 hours of it when I start a character.

After that, I just use it if the other players in a sub-sg-group (a supergroup within a supergroup that is made up of characters that were "rolled" together and are artificially "level pact"ed so that they stay at roughly the same level) are using it.

 

I like running arcs with different powers. I will xp-lock characters so that they don't outlevel arcs. I don't do this on every character all the time, but I think I'm going to do it ore and more. There are some characters that feel like I should have level locked for Striga for example (based on character conception) that I let outlevel the zone without thinking about it for example.

 

32 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

But this is definitely not the game where new players should feel pushed to race to the end as quickly as possible, and sometimes the fast travel options do lend the inexperienced to feeling confused about where they should be going.

 

Very much so, thanks.

 

 

[Herotu]

13 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I say no to both, but what do I know?

I still call these chips.

 

 

😉

 

 

 

Such a heathen, they're clearly crisps. They come in crisp packets.

  

14 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

sometimes the fast travel options do lend the inexperienced to feeling confused about where they should be going.

I don't get it. Could you elucidate please? 

 

 

15 hours ago, ZemX said:

nutters doing personal challenge runs.  

 

The player-base always justifies OP stuff with, "you can turn it off if you don't want it", or "you don't HAVE to run a full team", etc.

Then we get comments like, "Nutters doing personal challenge runs".

 

I leave it to the rest of you to judge that comment and reflect on what it says about people who suggest that options are better than actual limits.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Herotu

[ZemX]

44 minutes ago, Herotu said:

The player-base always justifies OP stuff with, "you can turn it off if you don't want it", or "you don't HAVE to run a full team", etc.

 

You're way over-complicating this.   It's not about power at all, let alone "over-powered".   I am saying there's nothing interesting going on between mission doors.  It's like pointing to any other piece of content that nobody does anymore.   Why isn't the Shadow Shard chock full of people having a good time?   Nothing stopping them!   But they aren't... because it's boring and the reward is often not worth the time.  You can drag people out there sometimes with double-merit rewards and that's about it.   Why aren't people gleefully sweeping the streets anymore?  Similar reason.  It's not because they have travel powers.  It's because there's nothing worth doing there.  At least not worth as much as getting to the next mission.  If there was, they'd do it, travel powers or no travel powers.

 

49 minutes ago, Herotu said:

Then we get comments like, "Nutters doing personal challenge runs".

 

*sigh* .. I do them myself.  That wasn't meant as a serious insult.  But I'll allow that isn't easy to know just reading text.  Mea culpa.   I have done old-timey SO challenges or "try to survive only on drops" or "just don't use the auction house" etc. etc.  But I've not done "no travel powers" as a challenge exactly because I don't view that as a challenge.  It is pointless time-wasting tedium.   One of my pet-peeves about game design actually is when I catch myself doing some activity that appears to exist solely for the purpose of consuming time.  i.e. Padding gameplay hours.  I hate that shit.  It's lazy game design.  Gone and good riddance.

 

For what it's worth, I AM a fan of that "It's the journey, not the destination" sentiment, I just don't define it as quite literally the journey between two mission doors.  For me it is leveling up my toons without farming and (mostly) without grinding radios if I can help it.   Learning powersets one power at a time on random teams of people whose actions I can't always predict.  

 

It is for sure not saving some NPC from another purse-snatching by pummeling a gray Outcast on my way to the next mission.  And that is maybe all I am going to say about this.  We could continue arguing, but I feel, at least with respect to the convenience of travel powers, this matter was settled about 12 years ago when CoH finally admitted that its two competitors got it right by allowing players earlier access to superhero themed travel powers.

[Spaghetti Betty]

2 hours ago, Herotu said:

I don't get it. Could you elucidate please? 

I can't think of perfect examples at the moment, but there are posts peppered throughout the forums of players lamenting that they can't actually learn any of the content because of overall speed and zipping between missions. I even have players in my endgame raid group that just don't know where certain zones are because they're used to TT, Cosmic Transport, etc.

[starro]

I like all the ways to get to 50… the only one I would not repeat is that time i was a mind/healer controller solo and all AE content 1-50 and tried hard not to repeat a story.
 

I think it was about 3 years one off and on.  Loved the AE stories some people write but some days I could not win.

[gamingglen]

This isn't about the cars on the streets turning in circles in the square intersections?   I'm so disappointed...  😄  

[Scarlet Shocker]

19 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I say no to both, but what do I know?

I still call these chips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's get something absolutely straight here.

 

These... abominations to the tastebuds are not chips.

 

Nor are they crisps.

 

Chips and Crisps have a common ancestor in the venerated potato.

 

These things are insane. Made from bits of deviant corn that shouldn't ever exist in any universe. They are the invention of mad people and hence they are simply known as crackers.

[Seed22]

21 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Do we realise now that the journey was part of the fun?

The journey is fun all of 3 times. Once for hero, once for villain, and once for GR.

 

Then it's boring and repetitious. Hence why lots of vets speed their way to 50 on alt accounts. I personally hate the journey and view it as a waste of time and an outdated slog through utter garbage. But then again I've done it a LOT preshutdown and a decent amount post relaunch when the nostalgia goggles were on tight. Now that they're off, I can't even stomach the thought of attempting another "natural" 50. I just PL, IO, maybe incarnate and move on.

 

All this to say the journey was fun back in '08-'09. Not anymore

[Without_Pause]

3 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I can't think of perfect examples at the moment, but there are posts peppered throughout the forums of players lamenting that they can't actually learn any of the content because of overall speed and zipping between missions. I even have players in my endgame raid group that just don't know where certain zones are because they're used to TT, Cosmic Transport, etc.

I was on a Posi 2 TF a few weeks ago and a player couldn't find Faultline. I do mean after instructions, and then I came back and gave even more detailed instructions until they figured it out. They literally went to a wrong zone even after being told where to go.

 

I do remember doing a SF for the first time about a year ago, it was such a blitzkrieg I always felt behind. and what we did was a blur. I think it lasted all of 15 minutes due to the speed run nature. It finished, and I went, 'Well, that happened.' I get speed running various things, but I don't think I enjoyed that SF even 1% and again, that was my first time running it.

[Herotu]

53 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

 

Let's get something absolutely straight here.

 

These... abominations to the tastebuds are not chips.

 

Nor are they crisps.

 

Chips and Crisps have a common ancestor in the venerated potato.

 

These things are insane. Made from bits of deviant corn that shouldn't ever exist in any universe. They are the invention of mad people and hence they are simply known as crackers.

Er... nnnno. Crackers are these: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/264902491 Ignore the disgusting price. That's just 13 years of.. oops, nearly got me! Haha! 

[Scarlet Shocker]

49 minutes ago, Herotu said:

Er... nnnno. Crackers are these: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/264902491 Ignore the disgusting price. That's just 13 years of.. oops, nearly got me! Haha! 

 

Fuck Tescos! 😇

[Herotu]

1 hour ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

Fuck Tescos! 😇

Aww, what did our corporate profiteers ever do to you? 

 

 

 

Oh.

[UltraAlt]

14 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Let's get something absolutely straight here.

 

These... abominations to the tastebuds are not chips.

 

Nor are they crisps.

 

Chips and Crisps have a common ancestor in the venerated potato.

 

These things are insane. Made from bits of deviant corn that shouldn't ever exist in any universe. They are the invention of mad people and hence they are simply known as crackers.

 

lol. They do have potato in them!

 

 

I'm not sure how ground corn is "deviant corn".

I can follow the "chips versus crisps" controversy, but you got me lost on the "deviant corn".

[lemming]

5 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

lol. They do have potato in them!

 

I'm not sure how ground corn is "deviant corn".

I can follow the "chips versus crisps" controversy, but you got me lost on the "deviant corn".

Possibly some of that GMO corn that makes bees explode or something.

 

The only Ghost Pepper chip I've gone for is the Trader Joe brand ones which are corn free: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/ghost-pepper-potato-chips-055294

 

I buy these more often: Olete Corn Chips: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/organic-elote-corn-chip-dippers-060564

 

On crisp, chip, cookie, biscuit differentiation, depends on what country we're in.

 

[Bionic_Flea]

On 8/15/2023 at 7:46 PM, ZemX said:

a few nutters doing personal challenge runs

 

I am a nutter and proud!

 

Come at me bro!

 

 

 

[UltraAlt]

50 minutes ago, lemming said:

Possibly some of that GMO corn that makes bees explode or something.

 

"DO PAQUI TORTILLA CHIPS CONTAIN GMOS?

We use non-GMO corn for all our chips and all our flavors are certified by the Non-GMO Project. So, no on the GMOs." - https://paqui.com/frequently-asked-questions/

 

51 minutes ago, lemming said:

The only Ghost Pepper chip I've gone for is the Trader Joe brand ones which are corn free: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/ghost-pepper-potato-chips-055294

 

Oh, those are those waffle-cut ones, correct?

Much tamer than the Paqui chips.

 

52 minutes ago, lemming said:

On crisp, chip, cookie, biscuit differentiation, depends on what country we're in.

 

Yeah it's all good. @Scarlet Shocker brought that up a while back as a conversation/conflict point to joust about.