Aggressively reduce price of basic enhancements

[PeregrineFalcon]

Here we go!

 

So first of all TOs do still exist in game. They just don't drop from enemies but you can purchase them from vendors in supergroup bases.

 

Secondly, the very first character in an MMO struggling because the player doesn't have any money and/or resources, and doesn't yet know how to get them, happens in every MMO. Or at least every MMO that I've ever played. Players know that this will be the case, they will expect it and, if they were smart enough to find City of Heroes and download it, they're smart enough to deal with it.

 

Third, "enhancements aren't explained anywhere in game!!" Neither is Enhancement Diversification or The Rule of Five. Nothing is really explained in game. But, every player knows that this forum exists and they also know that Google exists. We're well past the point where people online can complain "I can't figure out what's going on. Oh, if only there was a source of info about this game." Every person online knows that if they don't know how to handle something in a game they can google it, check the forums, or... *gasp* actually ask a live person a question in game. If someone can't find out info about a 20 year old video game then they're just making excuses.

 

So, no. The developers don't need to reduce the prices of SOs. The economy is this game is already garbage to begin with. People in this game have billions and nothing to spend it on and reducing the price of SOs won't actually help anyone.

[Pleonast]

2 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

People in this game have billions and nothing to spend it on and reducing the price of SOs won't actually help anyone.

Everyone who has a level-50 character. We’re not talking about those players and this suggestion will have almost no impact on them. 
 

3 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Secondly, the very first character in an MMO struggling because the player doesn't have any money and/or resources, and doesn't yet know how to get them, happens in every MMO.

And I’m suggesting that the price of vendor trash be low enough that starting players can afford it.

[Super Atom]

16 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Here we go!

 

So first of all TOs do still exist in game. They just don't drop from enemies but you can purchase them from vendors in supergroup bases.

 

Secondly, the very first character in an MMO struggling because the player doesn't have any money and/or resources, and doesn't yet know how to get them, happens in every MMO. Or at least every MMO that I've ever played. Players know that this will be the case, they will expect it and, if they were smart enough to find City of Heroes and download it, they're smart enough to deal with it.

 

Third, "enhancements aren't explained anywhere in game!!" Neither is Enhancement Diversification or The Rule of Five. Nothing is really explained in game. But, every player knows that this forum exists and they also know that Google exists. We're well past the point where people online can complain "I can't figure out what's going on. Oh, if only there was a source of info about this game." Every person online knows that if they don't know how to handle something in a game they can google it, check the forums, or... *gasp* actually ask a live person a question in game. If someone can't find out info about a 20 year old video game then they're just making excuses.

 

So, no. The developers don't need to reduce the prices of SOs. The economy is this game is already garbage to begin with. People in this game have billions and nothing to spend it on and reducing the price of SOs won't actually help anyone.

 

Very first characters in MMO's get most of their gear needed to enhance themselves through quests/dungeons. They don't need to randomly have a bunch of money to buy 30 pieces of gear by level 15. If you want to mirror that for CoH, it's time to start making it only drop SO's for your origin from enemies/missions.

 

Most MMO players actively avoid the forums for their game because it is a known fact the forums are full of people who live on the boards and shit them up, CoH is no different. It is fairly difficult to find current updated information about City of Heroes due to outdated or badly designed wikis, alternate servers, and wikis from the dead game still active, even this forum links to two different wikis with no real indication on difference for someone who is new. Asking in game will for sure help, but generally most people ask how the fuck they're suppose to afford anything in my experience. I see people gifting millions to help new players DAILY because of the dumb cost of SO's.

 

Reducing the price of SO's will have no effect on the ecnomy at large, if anything it'll lower how much level 50 billionaires make by dumping their 7 trays of 50+ SO's every couple of missions, but aside from that, this isn't about the billionaires it's about new players.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

19 minutes ago, Pleonast said:

And I’m suggesting that the price of vendor trash be low enough that starting players can afford it.

I am aware. In the past I've suggested that TOs be repurposed to be level-less SOs that only work for characters below level 22, much like those special enhancements the START vendor gives out. I still believe that would be the better solution to this problem.

 

4 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

It is fairly difficult to find current updated information about City of Heroes due to outdated or badly designed wikis, alternate servers, and wikis from the dead game still active, even this forum links to two different wikis with no real indication on difference for someone who is new.

It's in no way difficult. This is just an excuse and a poor one at that.

 

There's a link to the Homecoming Wiki at the top of this website. And, regardless of whether people want to post on this forum or not, they know that it exists and that it's a source of information. "We should lower the price of SOs because people can't find the wiki and are too scared to read the forums for info" is a ridiculous argument, and you know it.

 

This game doesn't have much in the way of challenge, but removing all challenge kills both community and interest. Having to struggle a bit to be able to afford SOs is a good thing. It's basic human psychology.

[Super Atom]

2 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I am aware. In the past I've suggested that TOs be repurposed to be level-less SOs that only work for characters below level 22, much like those special enhancements the START vendor gives out. I still believe that would be the better solution to this problem.

 

It's in no way difficult. This is just an excuse and a poor one at that.

 

There's a link to the Homecoming Wiki at the top of this website. And, regardless of whether people want to post on this forum or not, they know that it exists and that it's a source of information. "We should lower the price of SOs because people can't find the wiki and are too scared to read the forums for info" is a ridiculous argument, and you know it.

 

This game doesn't have much in the way of challenge, but removing all challenge kills both community and interest. Having to struggle a bit to be able to afford SOs is a good thing. It's basic human psychology.

 

That wasn't why i think they should lower it, That was just a comment on how most people don't instantly go read the whole wiki and forums before trying to enjoy a game, it's usually the opposite as just playing a game blind is a better experience and -should- usually be tooled to give you everything you need in the game itself. If a game requires you to study it on a wiki, it's badly designed.

 

Struggling to affording SO's is not a challenge or a difficulty setting. If lower level players want a challenge, they can simply raise the difficulty of the missions. Withholding gear that most power sets don't function right without as a "difficulty" is just being out of touch. I don't think anyone is asking for them to be free, just reasonable. They are currently unreasonable in cost as you cannot keep up with upgrading them/buying new ones at the same time with how quickly you level, even without double xp.

 

As for your top suggestion, This does not fix anything as the problem only really starts to show around level 15-20.

[Sunsette]

46 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

the very first character in an MMO struggling because the player doesn't have any money and/or resources, and doesn't yet know how to get them, happens in every MMO. Or at least every MMO that I've ever played. Players know that this will be the case, they will expect it and, if they were smart enough to find City of Heroes and download it, they're smart enough to deal with it.

 

This might be a good time to point out that the MMO genre suddenly stalled out and stopped growing very suddenly and instead its userbase began graying dramatically, with the most popular holdouts being the games that have done quite a lot on a continuing basis to facilitate new player entry.

 

49 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

If someone can't find out info about a 20 year old video game then they're just making excuses.

 

Or... they just stop playing. 

[nzer]

20 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

This game doesn't have much in the way of challenge, but removing all challenge kills both community and interest.

 

This is a slippery slope fallacy, no one is suggesting removing all challenge from the game. In fact I don't see anyone talking about challenge at all, except the people trying to dismiss the suggestion.

 

Again, the root of the issue here is the expectation among new players that they'll be able to fill the slots the game keeps giving them. It has nothing to do with difficulty.

[Pleonast]

31 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

As for your top suggestion, This does not fix anything as the problem only really starts to show around level 15-20.

This. It’s the grind of the upper levels, where the game is balanced around characters having SOs and there’s not enough influence to buy them, that is the problem for players without a max-level to fund them. 

[Super Atom]

Yeah and we have enough mindless time consuming grinds in Aether particles, Incarnate, and IO's for new players to look forward to, vendor trash gear doesn't need to be one of them.

[Pleonast]

25 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

This might be a good time to point out that the MMO genre suddenly stalled out and stopped growing very suddenly and instead its userbase began graying dramatically, with the most popular holdouts being the games that have done quite a lot on a continuing basis to facilitate new player entry.

And this is my fear for the long-term of this game. We all know how MMOs used to be, but the gaming community has moved past that paradigm. Having a friction point on first-time levelers that almost all players skip after their first max-level is counter-productive to retaining new players. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, Pleonast said:

And this is my fear for the long-term of this game. We all know how MMOs used to be, but the gaming community has moved past that paradigm. Having a friction point on first-time levelers that almost all players skip after their first max-level is counter-productive to retaining new players. 

The Homecoming developers have already said that they intend to make small changes and improvements to the game in keeping with what they believe the original developers could have or should have done. Or words to that effect.

 

That being said, it seems highly unlikely that they're going to substantially change the paradigm just to keep up with the current way of game play.

[Lockely]

18 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The Homecoming developers have already said that they intend to make small changes and improvements to the game in keeping with what they believe the original developers could have or should have done. Or words to that effect.

 

That being said, it seems highly unlikely that they're going to substantially change the paradigm just to keep up with the current way of game play.

 

Making DOs and SOs cheaper isn't going to "substantially change the paradigm." You know what does? Making an entire market that converts IOs to whatever level the buyer needs them at versus what they're being sold at, ensuring there is no reasonably priced lower set IOs for people to buy as they're all priced at Attuned levels. This locks out anyone who doesn't learn how to game the market out of buying them. As the game doesn't explain the converter based economy to anyone, this means this knowledge is located outside of the game, and thus new players are being left out.

Making it so first timers can afford the bare minimum of filling and updating their slots as they level up with non-set Enhancements is a QoL change for new players. Nothing more.

[UltraAlt]

5 hours ago, Pleonast said:

In this thread, by “established player” I mean a player who has at least one max-level character. Once a player has that, they almost always completely skip the “buy enhancements with inf earned from their contacts’ missions” advancement loop by just send inf to each alt as needed. 

 

I'm assuming by "max-level character" that you mean level 50 and not veteran levels.

 

Personally, I didn't have a "max-level character" before I was at the the point to "just sent inf to each alt as needed".

 

I will admit that I have three 50's but I don't play them. I certainly don't farm with them. I only have those 3 level 50's because a friend was very insistent that they ding 50 (really to give them a sense of accomplishment) and check out the changes to the incarnate system.

I have no plans for reaching 50 with any other characters. I have already xp-locked several at 49.

 

That being said, many players - it does appear - use level 50 to generate influence for use by other characters.

I'm on the other side. All my characters generate influence for themselves and other characters. I don't think I have any characters that aren't in the /AH one way or another. The only limit that the /AH puts on the amount of wealth you can generate is the number of slots they have on the market and the capital the character has to keep those slots full.

 

5 hours ago, Pleonast said:

Decreasing the prices of DOs and SOs has almost no effect on players with level 50s, because those enhancements are vendor trash. 

 

As I indicated in my post, I expressed my position in regards to the cost of TOs, DOs, and SOs.

Honestly, I'm not even sure if DOs drop for level 50s.

But I do not market all the SOs that drop on my characters. I use a good bit of them to slot or level-up a slotted enhancement.

The DOs I do completely trash. I honestly don't want to promote other players slotting them.

 

All this being said, I do think that most players that ask for help with infl while playing a lower level character get some kind of help from other players, especially those on their team.

I don't know how many of us there are, but there are a secret number of us that do what we can to help because we are playing a superhero game, and there are others that will simply do it because they want the characters that they are teaming with to succeed in order to help the team.

 

But again, I will go back to ... I think that having a challenge to reach a goal, struggling for it a bit, and, then overcoming it, yields a greater reward/feeling of achievement.

This goes for a character getting their butt kicked by the Tsoo and then leveling up enough to have some powers that you couldn't get at lower levels that enable you to defeat them -or- having a character struggle to have enough influence to even by TOs and then finding a way for that character to generate enough influence to slot fully with SO's, IOs, and some set IOs.

 

Obviously, I'm not against the premise of your idea.

I'm just suggesting to implement it differently.

 

[Sunsette]

6 minutes ago, Lockely said:

 

Making an entire market that converts IOs to whatever level the buyer needs them at versus what they're being sold at, ensuring there is no reasonably priced lower set IOs for people to buy as they're all priced at Attuned levels. This locks out anyone who doesn't learn how to game the market out of buying them. As the game doesn't explain the converter based economy to anyone, this means this knowledge is located outside of the game, and thus new players are being left out.

 

FTR, invention origin enhancements are across the board FAR cheaper than they were in live. The attuned and salvage market changes have only been positive in the overwhelming majority of ways.

 

But I still fail to see what meaningful negatives would occur from a significant cost reduction in SOs, while the benefits are apparent.

Edited March 6 by Sunsette

[Lockely]

Just now, Sunsette said:

 

FTR, enhancements are across the board FAR cheaper than they were in live. The attuned and salvage market changes have only been positive in the overwhelming majority of ways.

 

But I still fail to see what meaningful negatives would occur from a significant cost reduction in SOs, while the benefits are apparent.

 

To be fair though, that's only because they keep the market stocked with goods by system and not by player so you don't have to rely on players farming drops to keep the economy stable. It's stable because stabilizing measures have been taken. But it does mean that prices stabilize at a level 50 price point and no lower. Even the low-level sets that cap out at 30 meant for players to use before transitioning into big boy sets go for 1-3mm Inf per slot.

Is that cheaper than Live, certainly, but we really can't compare Live's market to today's market because the changes made by HC have fundamentally altered the entire landscape of it.

Still, if you can't afford SOs, good luck touching IOs and Sets.

[UltraAlt]

3 minutes ago, Lockely said:

This locks out anyone who doesn't learn how to game the market out of buying them. As the game doesn't explain the converter based economy to anyone, this means this knowledge is located outside of the game, and thus new players are being left out.

 

This game doesn't explain a lot of things.

This gives the player much more to explore and figure out versus it being handed to them.

 

The idea of allowing lower level characters access to enough influence/enhancements to make sure that they are fully slotted isn't a bad thing.

But it is better to try to allow players to figure out how to play the game in general before piling too much information on them.

 

You don't have to know about the invention system at all in order to play the game. You don't even need to use the market for that matter. You can get away with not having a supergroup base. You can get away with not using empowerment buffs. All these things simply make the game easier.

The invention system - and other systems and tasks - are just things to make the game more complicated in order to retain player interest.

 

I have no idea how many converters I have. I don't use them. I don't use the tailor tokens I get out of card packs either.

 

So, I don't think that new players are "left out". They simply have more to explore and goals to achieve as they play the game - which to me, is the reason to be playing the game in the first place.

 

[Lockely]

1 minute ago, UltraAlt said:

 

This game doesn't explain a lot of things.

This gives the player much more to explore and figure out versus it being handed to them.

 

The idea of allowing lower level characters access to enough influence/enhancements to make sure that they are fully slotted isn't a bad thing.

But it is better to try to allow players to figure out how to play the game in general before piling too much information on them.

 

You don't have to know about the invention system at all in order to play the game. You don't even need to use the market for that matter. You can get away with not having a supergroup base. You can get away with not using empowerment buffs. All these things simply make the game easier.

The invention system - and other systems and tasks - are just things to make the game more complicated in order to retain player interest.

 

I have no idea how many converters I have. I don't use them. I don't use the tailor tokens I get out of card packs either.

 

So, I don't think that new players are "left out". They simply have more to explore and goals to achieve as they play the game - which to me, is the reason to be playing the game in the first place.

 

 

As pointed out by @Pleonast earlier, this ignores the entirety of today's MMO landscape. There's a reason why games with much faster dopamine loops are growing and traditional MMOs like this are no longer even being developed.

Not only are attention spans shorter across the board for all of us, but the people this game would attract are a tiny niche compared to the overall market. It's a dated game, with dated gameplay mechanics, and a dozen confusing systems that don't explain anything.

Put yourself in the shoes of a new player. You're riding that new game high, you get to the 15-25 range and thats when most of your unslotted attacks start whiffing. It keeps happening, over and over, and you keep racking up this thing called XP debt, which means you're making literal negative progress (they won't know about debt badges and the unlocks) and you haven't gotten enough of your origin slots w/ accuracy to drop.

Most new players, even back in the day, ended their game there. They went, "this game sucks dude." and logged out for the last time. A small minority of them will go, "Hey, /help, I keep missing my attacks, what am I doing wrong?" to which point Help is going to reply "Oh you need to slot accuracy enhancements, you can buy them at vendors when if they haven't dropped." So, they trudge over to a store, slot up on DOs because they're at the top of the list, and everything is hunky dorey for-- a handful of levels. Then suddenly they start missing over and over again, their attacks hit for less damage, and they look at their slots. Red numbers.

Now, they have to replace all of them and, oops, they don't have enough Inf to do so because the rent is too damn high.

On my level 27, which I have just been throwing into MSRs to level, I have 13 total enhancements slotted outside of the 5 free ones you get from S.T.A.R.T.

It costs me 404,927 to upgrade a mix of 13 DOs and SOs to level 30. I have 22 slots sitting open without anything because it's a money sink to upgrade those and I'm just going to start dumping IOs in soon, but that's because I *know better* from having maxed out a character.

 

New players will not. New players will hit this brick wall head first and nine times out of ten, they'll just quit to go play something more rewarding.

Nostalgia alone will not drive further interest in this game and these servers. As grim as it sounds, those of us who played this game as kids are getting old. Life, responsibilities, and even death will eventually pull us away from it, and if we want HC to continue paying its bills we need a steady stream of new players who want to continue beyond level 25. There is no reason to withhold QoL changes just because it's always been difficult. Things that worked 20 years ago don't work now (and arguably didn't work then, else NCSoft wouldn't have transitioned the game to a freemium model and then shut it down), and we need to stop living in a vat of 'back in my day' and realize the game's industry has changed and so has its audience.

 

We either adapt or fade away into irrelevance.

[Sunsette]

And just to pre-empt:

No one's asking to remove the things about City of Heroes that make it City of Heroes. It wouldn't be feasible, it wouldn't be smart. This game's charm derives heavily from a lot of its quirks compared to the rest of the market.

 

But I do not think "cannot afford the standard equipment unless you learn several secondary systems well enough to get a windfall or someone sends you money" is one of those driving quirks.

Edited March 6 by Sunsette

[Lunar Ronin]

26 minutes ago, Lockely said:

 

As pointed out by @Pleonast earlier, this ignores the entirety of today's MMO landscape. There's a reason why games with much faster dopamine loops are growing and traditional MMOs like this are no longer even being developed.

 

To be fair, a large part of that is because of WoW.  So many companies decided that any MMORPG they develop must have similar player numbers to WoW (EA, Microsoft, Funcom, Trion, to name a few), and they all failed with the exception of Final Fantasy XIV.  As a result, large companies just stopped bothering.  MMORPGs just aren't a popular phenomenon, especially non-fantasy ones.  There's also a bit of a generational divide.  None of the newer games interest me at all, partly because most of them are fantasy, a genre I strongly dislike.  But also because they do have faster dopamine loops, so there's less attachment to characters.

 

Making City of Heroes more new player friendly is an admirable goal.  It will help some, but I'm not sure that it will help a lot.  Older generations like what they like, younger generations like what they like.  As far as gaming is concerned, there doesn't seem to be much overlap.

Edited March 6 by Lunar Ronin

[Lockely]

6 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

To be fair, a large part of that is because of WoW.  So many companies decided that any MMORPG they develop must have similar player numbers to WoW (EA, Microsoft, Funcom, Trion, to name a few), and they all failed with the exception of Final Fantasy XIV.  As a result, large companies just stopped bothering.  MMORPGs just aren't a popular phenomenon, especially non-fantasy ones.  There's also a bit of a generational divide.  None of the newer games interest me at all, partly because most of them are fantasy, a genre I strongly dislike.  But also because they do have faster dopamine loops, so there's less attachment to characters.

 

Making City of Heroes more new player friendly is an admirable goal.  It will help some, but I'm not sure that it will help a lot.  Older generations like what they like, younger generations like what they like.  As far as gaming is concerned, there doesn't seem to be much overlap.

 

You'd be surprised. Among a lot of Gen Z is a longing for more long-form content as Tiktok is burning them out. What they don't have any patience for is things that intentionally waste their time or stunt their progress just to do shit like stretch out your subscription to another month. Not like we did. Having a goal to work towards and accomplishing it is still very much in vogue, but basic gearing in an MMO shouldn't resemble the housing crisis for a new player, ya know?

Edited March 6 by Lockely
spelling

[Wavicle]

I will run a test later, I’ll play up a character using Only drops. No 2xp, no sugar daddy, no AH. We’ll see how it goes.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Lockely said:

 

To be fair though, that's only because they keep the market stocked with goods by system and not by player so you don't have to rely on players farming drops to keep the economy stable. It's stable because stabilizing measures have been taken. But it does mean that prices stabilize at a level 50 price point and no lower. Even the low-level sets that cap out at 30 meant for players to use before transitioning into big boy sets go for 1-3mm Inf per slot.

Is that cheaper than Live, certainly, but we really can't compare Live's market to today's market because the changes made by HC have fundamentally altered the entire landscape of it.

Still, if you can't afford SOs, good luck touching IOs and Sets.

 

There are ways to get IOs and sets that you can't use to get TOs, DOs, and SOs. It's actually easier to get IOs IMO, which is why I never bother with SOs as I'm leveling up.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

I will run a test later, I’ll play up a character using Only drops. No 2xp, no sugar daddy, no AH. We’ll see how it goes.

 

I suspect it will be like before the invention system existed. Which for a new player was tough.

 

I still think the easiest change is to make sure all drops match your origin.

[biostem]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

I will run a test later, I’ll play up a character using Only drops. No 2xp, no sugar daddy, no AH. We’ll see how it goes.

Why exclude the AH, though?  It's every bit a part of the game as any other.  Frankly, buying DOs/SOs is a trap - it's a temporary buff at best, and a huge waste of inf at worst.  Maybe a better solution, to alleviate this, would be to give DOs and SOs a sort of "floor", where even if they were way below your level, they'd still provide some buff to the power they're slotted in...

[Lockely]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

Why exclude the AH, though?  It's every bit a part of the game as any other.  Frankly, buying DOs/SOs is a trap - it's a temporary buff at best, and a huge waste of inf at worst.  Maybe a better solution, to alleviate this, would be to give DOs and SOs a sort of "floor", where even if they were way below your level, they'd still provide some buff to the power they're slotted in...

 

Mainly because the test is to see how a new player is going to experience the game. The AH if you don't understand the converter economy is basically a giant brick wall anyway. You open it, look at the enhancements you want, and if you aren't stumped by the interface, you take one look at the prices and click the close button.

The game teaches you it exists, it doesn't teach you about converting reward merits into anything, especially converters, for a quick buck. The players won't know or understand the 1inf listing trick to get starter money to list things higher. They won't know you can farm exploration badge accolades in Atlas to immediately make ~1mil give or take 100k. They won't know or figure out any of this unless they come to the forums and ask, or a kind soul sits them down to explain it.

The whole point is to show how bad it is for new players to try and level up off drops and active mission income alone.