Ghostcrawler Calls Streamlined Leveling in MMORPGs a Mistake

[Lunar Ronin]

Former World of Warcraft developer Greg 'Ghostcrawler' Street stated in a X/Twitter thread recently that quick leveling in MMORPGs was a mistake, one he won't repeat in his new MMORPG in development.

 

"Someone asked me if it’s a mistake to streamline the levelling experience and let players get to the endgame asap because that’s what they love. My answer is yes," Street writes. "I think it’s the levelling experience that we all fell in love with and invested in MMOs. I think getting to level cap should be an accomplishment, not a blip."

 

This is all in the context of talking about Ghost, the designer's new MMO project, which is being made by Netease's Fantastic Pixel Castle. While he maintains that nailing a good endgame cadence is vital, "I also think the levelling should be challenging and a bit of effort and not something you cruise through so you can start raiding. Even when I was on WoW I held this opinion."

 

Good on him.  I happen to concur.  Raph Koster (lead developer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and the upcoming Stars Reach), said recently that the concept of endgame is a relatively new phenomenon.  It simply didn't exist in the MUDs and MUSHes of the 1990s, nor even the MMORPGs of the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Before, it took you a few to several months to level your character and experience the game, and that was it.  When you reached maximum level, you either started a new character, or in some of the MUDs and MUSHes of old players would become developers.  The concept of endgame didn't really take hold until the 2000s, and didn't become the focus until the late 2000s/early 2010s.

 

As someone who played MUDs and MUSHes back in the 1990s, and played MMORPGs starting in 2002, Raph Koster is correct.  Endgame didn't become the focus of an online game until sometime after World of Warcraft became mainstream.  Perhaps with Raph Koster's Stars Reach and Greg Street's Ghost, the trend will start reversing.

[UltraAlt]

40 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

As someone who played MUDs and MUSHes back in the 1990s, and played MMORPGs starting in 2002, Raph Koster is correct.  Endgame didn't become the focus of an online game until sometime after World of Warcraft became mainstream.  Perhaps with Raph Koster's Stars Reach and Greg Street's Ghost, the trend will start reversing.

 

The End-game becomes a focus in MMORPGs to keep players that only want to play one character (or perhaps a few).

They get to the end of the game, and there is nothing new for them to do. They get bored and drop their subscriptions/stop paying for micro-transactions and find some other game to play.

 

The End-game is there to keep those people busy.

 

As games get older, those people that just play the end-game start telling everyone else that they aren't having any fun if they aren't playing the End-game.

 

If population is thinning out, the DEVs have to consider some things.

The people playing the End-game need an incentive to play with new players or new players are likely not going to have anyone to team with (which I think is the whole point of an MMORPG) as the end-gamers want to be playing end-game stuff.

End-gamers need players to game with in order to keep them interested in playing and having new players show up in end-game play mixes the dynamics up to change the play experience.

A game might have divergent ways to level up characters. As the population decreases, they start trying to figure out ways to funnel the player-base so that they are trying to run the same content (increasing the chances for form teams).

 

So, basically, what I'm saying is - that this DEV is going to create a game where players can't level quickly to catch up with friends, they are going to have to figure out some way that friends/groups can team together regardless of level or the profits are going to drop as the game ages and players leave.

I can see this as good intent, but if the money is good - they will - as they say - "sell out" and start producing end-game content for the highest level players and add ways for new players to quickly level up (if they want to) in order play with the players that are already playing the end-game.

 

Sometimes the option of getting to the end-game quickly becomes a money making project all its own by allowing players to pay real world money in order to automatically advance characters to current max level/content.

 

Edited September 12 by UltraAlt

[TygerDarkstorm]

As a former WoW player, I find it odd to find myself agreeing with Ghostcrawler, lol. But I do agree with him on this. At least for me, personally. I am definitely more of a person who enjoys the leveling process of an MMO. I'm an ADHD altoholic. I did the raiding scene for a while in my WoW days; but I have a hard time spending so much time and focus on only one character.

 

And the fact that CoH practically encourages being an altoholic is a lot of the fun for someone like me. There's enough variety in the leveling path to keep things interesting, and I have very little interest in the "end game" stuff, though I am glad it's there for those who do like that sort of thing. That's one area I found superbly lacking with SWTOR when my friends and I tried that on its release; the leveling path was all the same & extremely linear.

[Lunar Ronin]

22 minutes ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

That's one area I found superbly lacking with SWTOR when my friends and I tried that on its release; the leveling path was all the same & extremely linear.

 

I played Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch.  I made a serious mistake of both playing on the wrong server and with the wrong crowd, so after about a year I left.  I gave it another go around 2016, but I was completely on my own and had no friends with me.  I found the leveling satisfying and made it to the level cap, but I made no friends during my leveling and I'm not one for joining a big guild/clan/supergroup/what have you, so I left.  I tried it again around 2019... and the leveling has been so watered down.  Leveling was both ridiculously easy and ridiculously quick compared to both 2012 and 2016.  It's obvious you're being funneled to the maximum level.  I got so bored while leveling that I left.  I tried it again last year.  Leveling felt even more ridiculously easy and ridiculously quick.  I got bored again and left.

[Techwright]

17 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

So, basically, what I'm saying is - that this DEV is going to create a game where players can't level quickly to catch up with friends, they are going to have to figure out some way that friends/groups can team together regardless of level or the profits are going to drop as the game ages and players leave.

 

 

It may be my opinion only, but I feel CoH has done a reasonably good job with this by allowing higher level characters to team with lower level characters at a security rank comparable to that lower character's one.  I say "reasonably good", not "completely good", because I'm not overly fond of having my abilities earned at higher levels blocked.  This marginalizes them, which is especially frustrating because many of them can only be acquired at higher levels.  I'd much prefer that they be present but at a proportional fraction of their power. 

 

In regards to the main topic,  I loved playing WoW without rushing up the ladder of rank.  There was so much to see and do in an open world.  (CoH has always been somewhat different due to most of the action being instanced, and lacking a PvP flag and a few other details. ) However,  I have to wonder how a game with an ever-increasing number of levels deals with a new player trying to catch up.  At some point I'd think it would take so long to reach the final rank (at least for the latest expansion) that the player with a full-time job would be hammering away for two or more years to reach cap level, and woe to the alt-holic who must do the same for each new character.

 

There's one other thing an MMO with no sidesteps to leveling should address:  those zones, events, and rewards which were endgame material for previous caps to leveling on earlier expansions.  WoW has traditionally been terrible about these, more or less abandoning them.  Ahn'Qiraj is a good example of this.  I came to the game before the first expansion, Burning Crusade, but too late to level to a point to experience Ahn'Qiraj before it was completely outdated by the expansion, including all of its rewards.  As a result, I never did more then peek into the entry area, which is sad because I'd heard it and other end game areas were a lot of fun.    A game with the full leveling experience on the mind should make a best effort to adapt and incorporate the former endgame into the expansion's heirarchy, including making the rewards matter.

 

 

Edited September 12 by Techwright
Spelling. Oops.

[Seed22]

Fast or slow is completely irrelevant. If your content is boring,  leveling is abysmal. Trying to force me to take several months to get a max level toon via boring content will absolutely result in me quitting the game or more likely not even wasting my time playing it. There are two things I don't want out of any game, a girlfriend of a game(having to log in daily, do a bunch of chores, and be inundated with a bunch of ads and nonsense marketing aspects of the game im not interested in) and a slog of a game. I will NOT waste 40+ hours playing through literal shit. I will play a 40+ hour experience if it is amazingly well crafted and enjoyable with a satisfying gameplay loop.

 

With how limited game time is, if there was a choice between what will most likely be a boring as hell shitty leveling experience in a MMO or an actually fun game on Xbox with ~25 hrs of content, I would choose the Xbox every single time. Or playstation. Either one.

Edited September 13 by Seed22

[UltraAlt]

15 hours ago, Techwright said:

However,  I have to wonder how a game with an ever-increasing number of levels deals with a new player trying to catch up.

 

Several games, Everquest 1 and 2 and DCUO offer you the option to pay to get to the highest level.

Of course, CoH has the AE  for that 😞 that it it was intended to be for that, but ...

 

15 hours ago, Techwright said:

I have to wonder how a game with an ever-increasing number of levels deals with a new player trying to catch up.  At some point I'd think it would take so long to reach the final rank (at least for the latest expansion) that the player with a full-time job would be hammering away for two or more years to reach cap level

 

How do they catch up if it is ever increasing?

By the time they catch up to where the end-gamers were another several levels have been added.

 

15 hours ago, Techwright said:

There's one other thing an MMO with no sidesteps to leveling should address:  those zones, events, and rewards which were endgame material for previous caps to leveling on earlier expansions. 

 

DCUO covers this by opening up the newest level content to all characters that have reached level 10 (level 30 is the base game cap).

All of the "open" content (newest level and events) all have a fixed CR (combat rating - which is essentially levels past 30 that are based on gear level) so that all of the characters with lower CR's are essentially leveled up to the newest level content/event base level (with all all the extra bonus that you could potentially add to a character with extra stuff that you need to farm/grind or level up with gear gained through farm/grind).

 

This essentially funnels a large number of players into the newest content that everyone over level 10 has access to.

Basically, 3 daily hunts, 2 or 3  open world content (zone mass defeats or - basically - a monster and then later - as the new content reaches a certain point - what is basically a Giant Monster is added), and a 3 queued team content - duo, alert, and raid.

The duo (2 player), alerts (4 player), and raids (8 player) have "event" (only open on newest content open to all levels 10+), normal (you have to have at least the base CR to play the content), and - I can't remember what they call the other one - Elite? (which is a higher difficulty for those end-game basically)

 

15 hours ago, Techwright said:

A game with the full leveling experience on the mind should make a best effort to adapt and incorporate the former endgame into the expansion's heirarchy, including making the rewards matter.

 

Agreed.

[Lunar Ronin]

A couple of fairly popular YouTubers have released videos this week stating that we need to slow down MMORPGs and value leveling.

 

I wonder if the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way...

 

 

 

[Seed22]

Also remember, the companies want you in game longer to peddle more microtransactions at you or boost their numbers for the bottom line. Which makes sense.

 

That does NOT mean they will provide an actually enjoyable leveling experience. They'll probably just put a bunch of busy work lukewarm quest or missions that are some of the worst aspects of gaming personified(fetch quest, kill 100 boars in a forest, more fetch quest...). So if that's what y'all want go for it. It worked for WoW apparently, all those fetch quest and boar killing.

[Triumphant]

Most people enjoy long, boring, grinds?  I'm an outlier, I guess.  I don't enjoy grinding at all.  I'd like to see an RPG with tons of options for creating a character, which you can use to make hundreds of diverse combinations of interesting and effective characters, and then a game developer that puts out challenging, fun, regular content to play, without any levelling mechanic at all.

 

This will likely not happen, because traditionalists are locked into the mindset that levels and grinding is the way that it's always been done.  But plenty of tabletop RPG's don't have levelling and plenty of non-rpg computer games don't have levelling, and both are still considered very fun to play.  No one want's to try an innovative approach with MMOrpg's, for some reason, though.  I guess it's not just D&D that has it's grognards.  🤷‍♂️

[lemming]

This seems more "Play this way".    I like CoX in that I can either do a slowish grind, or just power level up and a lot of in between.   There are days I'll go thru a bunch of grindy tasks such as some of accolades or certain arcs, and sometimes just play a few things, and sometimes just doing some boring non-thinking things in a farm fit the bill for the day.    I'm a fan of "There's more than one way to do it" which explains my like of Linux, Perl, Lego...

[seebs]

I don't think "levelling" has to imply "grinding". If levelling is all quests and adventures and plots, it's great. If I'm spending a ton of time grinding, it's boring.

[Triumphant]

1 minute ago, seebs said:

I don't think "levelling" has to imply "grinding". If levelling is all quests and adventures and plots, it's great. If I'm spending a ton of time grinding, it's boring.

 

I will concede your point, but I have to say that I haven't ever played an RPG that involved levelling slowly that did not involve boring grinds.  If you can provide enough interesting material to make it fun and engaging all the way from lvl 1 to lvl *insert lvl cap here*, then swell.  I'm all for it. 

 

I've never seen that game, though.  🤷‍♂️

[seebs]

I think I never felt like I was grinding in rift, if I just went through doing stories and following loose ends I ended up at level cap.

[JKCarrier]

To me, levelling up is the fun part. I enjoy trying out new power combos, gradually unlocking the abilities, and seeing how the character grows and develops. Especially the early levels, when you're levelling up every few minutes, is like constant little jolts of serotonin. While it's true that eventually you've seen all the major story arcs, there's enough of them (especially factoring in redside and goldside) that I can mix them up and not feel like I'm travelling the exact same path each time. It doesn't feel like grinding, unless I'm going for badges (which I do occasionally when the mood strikes me).

The "Endgame" is a complete bust, IMHO. I played a bunch of the Incarnate Trials back on live, and they were uniformly awful. The idea of running a "hardmode" TF makes the veins in my forehead start throbbing.  Now, if you actually enjoy the Endgame the most (you weirdo), I can understand why you'd want to fast-forward to it. But to me, hitting level 50 pretty much means "time to start a new alt". Which is cool, because I like starting new alts.

[PresidentDSG]

This kind of feels like one of those things that was only ever designed to be slow to squeeze more subscription money out of you, and that players have conditioned themselves into thinking was a good thing all along.

 

The rush to end game is often because endgame has the best or most interesting content, and because it's something to use that powerful character you spent time building on instead of just dumping them the moment they reach the Apex of their abilities. A game with a poor end game almost punishes you for caring about getting up there at all.

 

I also feel like a quick leveling process is just more friendly to new players in general. If you've picked up the game 6 years late you no longer have an insurmountable wall to catch up to all those new people who have been playing it since open beta.

 

Leveling can still be important to learn a character, but it shouldn't really be a slow agonizing grind to get to max level.

Edited October 16 by PresidentDSG

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 9/11/2024 at 6:38 PM, Lunar Ronin said:

I played Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch.

My friends and I did as well. We were subscribers until a month or two after it went F2P. I still go back, every six or eight months or so, make a new character, do the core storyline (about level 50) and then quit again. I played SWTOR back when getting to max level was a slog that took months and could only be done if you took every side quest on every planet and played a bunch of flashpoints, and I've played it recently were I could barely do anything and level up constantly. The stories are fun, but the gameplay is garbage.

 

I've also played Black Desert Online. Every class really plays different and you almost have to learn to play the game all over again. Whenever a new class comes out I make a new character, play it until they're at their peak (about level 50) and then quit again. I played it when it first came out and leveling was slow, and I've played more recently on season servers where leveling is very fast. The gameplay is phenomenal, but the story is uninteresting garbage.

 

All of this being said, I'm not sure if I really agree with Ghostcrawler as I don't think leveling matters that much. Sure that dopamine hit when the lights and sounds go off when you level is neat, but what really matters is fun and replayability. If the game mechanics and the story are both great then people will be hooked and you won't have to go out of your way to create all kinds of artificial psychological hooks to keep people addicted to dopamine hits triggered by your game. Think BDO but with the story telling of SWTOR, think SWTOR but with the game mechanics of The Division.

 

And Endgame is one reason why I was so happy about the AE, and later the Foundry in STO. It was my hope that player created content, instead of raiding, would become the model that the industry followed for Endgame. Unfortunately, both the Foundry and the Forge (Neverwinter) were unceremoniously shut down because Cryptic couldn't figure out how to monetize them or how to curb the incredible farming. As if selling the ability to create Foundry missions as a DLC wouldn't have solved both problems (plus their financial issues) with one stone, but I guess no one at Cryptic thought of that.

 

And the industry keeps creating these open world PvP survival MMOs because the devs know that crowd sourcing the content, in the form of PvP, creates far more content than a small dev team could ever make. But somehow the idea of crowdsourcing the content by making a PvE MMO with a robust AE never occurs to anyone. It's almost like game devs now days have never heard of Skyrim.

[Crystal Dragon]

On 9/11/2024 at 9:02 PM, Lunar Ronin said:

Former World of Warcraft developer Greg 'Ghostcrawler' Street stated in a X/Twitter thread recently that quick leveling in MMORPGs was a mistake, one he won't repeat in his new MMORPG in development.

 

 

 

 

Good on him.  I happen to concur.  Raph Koster (lead developer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and the upcoming Stars Reach), said recently that the concept of endgame is a relatively new phenomenon.  It simply didn't exist in the MUDs and MUSHes of the 1990s, nor even the MMORPGs of the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Before, it took you a few to several months to level your character and experience the game, and that was it.  When you reached maximum level, you either started a new character, or in some of the MUDs and MUSHes of old players would become developers.  The concept of endgame didn't really take hold until the 2000s, and didn't become the focus until the late 2000s/early 2010s.

 

As someone who played MUDs and MUSHes back in the 1990s, and played MMORPGs starting in 2002, Raph Koster is correct.  Endgame didn't become the focus of an online game until sometime after World of Warcraft became mainstream.  Perhaps with Raph Koster's Stars Reach and Greg Street's Ghost, the trend will start reversing.

Honestly Ghostcrawler was one of the devs that I enjoyed interacting with from time to time back when he wasn't squeezed by Blizz's relentless push for more and more content changes. Forum dweller. I do agree with him about the streamlining being the worst possible push for MMO's, leveling is intended to be a learning curve, an experience and should not have been condensed the way it was on WoW. Hell I left the game about a year maybe two after that was pushed on WoW and never looked back.

[Seed22]

24 minutes ago, Crystal Dragon said:

Honestly Ghostcrawler was one of the devs that I enjoyed interacting with from time to time back when he wasn't squeezed by Blizz's relentless push for more and more content changes. Forum dweller. I do agree with him about the streamlining being the worst possible push for MMO's, leveling is intended to be a learning curve, an experience and should not have been condensed the way it was on WoW. Hell I left the game about a year maybe two after that was pushed on WoW and never looked back.

Leveling in WoW helped you learn the class but I think a happy medium needs to be attained that respects your time as modern day gamers have a plethora of options to pick from that do, that also usually have more engaging progression/stories.  

Also players are always criticized for rushing through things, which I can understand. But also what’s not considered, especially here, is just how much busier we’ve gotten as people. People aren’t rushing(usually?) for the sake of just rapid consumption(though that definitely is a thing/problem), but for the sake of their time. They only get a few hours on the weekend to game. I doubt they want to spend it slogging through antiquated game practices like killing 100 boars or doing generic bland leveling contact missions from 2004.
 

Taking half a year to get a max level character(if you were as busy as folks are today back in that time period) was acceptable as patience was higher, and also there really weren’t too many options as gaming was in its’ infancy. 
 

Now?  Not so much for the reason I listed above, but placing the biggest emphasis on respecting players’ time. 
 

 

*Also see my earlier post in this thread about why such a thing occurred originally and why it’s not really going to pan out in the player’s favor.

Edited October 16 by Seed22

[Crystal Dragon]

2 hours ago, Seed22 said:

Leveling in WoW helped you learn the class but I think a happy medium needs to be attained that respects your time as modern day gamers have a plethora of options to pick from that do, that also usually have more engaging progression/stories.  

Also players are always criticized for rushing through things, which I can understand. But also what’s not considered, especially here, is just how much busier we’ve gotten as people. People aren’t rushing(usually?) for the sake of just rapid consumption(though that definitely is a thing/problem), but for the sake of their time. They only get a few hours on the weekend to game. I doubt they want to spend it slogging through antiquated game practices like killing 100 boars or doing generic bland leveling contact missions from 2004.
 

Taking half a year to get a max level character(if you were as busy as folks are today back in that time period) was acceptable as patience was higher, and also there really weren’t too many options as gaming was in its’ infancy. 
 

Now?  Not so much for the reason I listed above, but placing the biggest emphasis on respecting players’ time. 
 

 

*Also see my earlier post in this thread about why such a thing occurred originally and why it’s not really going to pan out in the player’s favor.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I do understand the middle ground being a better spot to consider for the level grind in time scales of players other obligations and lives. Most of the issues I ran into with the rushed players on that game was the lack of knowledge of their own class and capabilities, to the point that running random dungeon queues, and raid queues was a nightmare to put up with as a healer or a tank. Even with some of the mitigation abilities some classes had, it still made the whole thing a serious drag of my own time and efforts to just gear up characters I vested close to four or five years with at a time prior to the changes.

It wasn't so much jealousy of the changes that made me quite jaded about the game however, it was the fact that they made paid options to "boost" characters in the game store and ended up with an entire population of new players that were completely clueless on gearing, gemming, enchanting, and setting up their characters for optimal play in the hardest end of the game content - leaving the rest of us older players trying to weed out the ones that were not even making the cut of contributing to a raid or dungeon party's efforts rather difficult to deal with. Most of them were so self absorbed thinking they were hot shit for buying their levels, that well, entire parties would ditch them to avoid them the minute they even mentioned boosting a character to the groups. I do think that MMO development should focus on better options of leveling that won't make people shell out cash for a faster option, in and out of game (There were SO MANY scamming leveling services at the time I played, not sure if they are still around, but yeah, fast way to lose your account on there was to hire one of them and hand over access to your account for that.).

 

I do think the learning curve could be made a bit easier with more tutorials with options as they open up, instead of foisted off as click through guides when you first log in on a brand spanking new character though, at least so players that are brand new to it, have something to help them along. Not sure if they did anything with the newer tooltip designs, but I do know that Ghostcrawler had a lot of involvement with some of the class guides back then.

[UltraAlt]

On 9/16/2024 at 12:34 PM, Triumphant said:

Most people enjoy long, boring, grinds?  I'm an outlier, I guess.  I don't enjoy grinding at all.

 

How exactly do you play CoH?

 

Do you just power-level to 50 and grind the end-game and say that isn't grinding?

Or do you play through the game and run different content to level and consider that not grinding because you are exploring content as you level? (because you seem to indicate that leveling-up is "grinding" - and I certainly don't see leveling up to be "grinding".)

Or maybe you just stand around in the Pocket D (or where ever and RP)?

Seriously, I'm curious.

 

Grinding to me is doing the same content receptively to seek some reward over-and-over-and-over again. The reward could be xp toward leveling, unlocking incarnate salvage, getting loot boxes, merits, monstrous aether, etc.

 

On 10/12/2024 at 2:34 PM, Triumphant said:

I will concede your point, but I have to say that I haven't ever played an RPG that involved levelling slowly that did not involve boring grinds.  If you can provide enough interesting material to make it fun and engaging all the way from lvl 1 to lvl *insert lvl cap here*, then swell.  I'm all for it. 

 

I've never seen that game, though.  🤷‍♂️

 

You are playing it, but maybe you find City of Heroes to be boring in general.

 

I would suggest making a new hero character, going to the Origin contact for that character's origin and only pick missions from contacts that have that origin.

I haven't made it all the way through any of the origins since I have been back, but I have 5 characters trying to make it all the way back through with their origin contacts just to see how much of it is still in the game.

 

The Origin contact lines are different and send you fighting different foes based on your origin so each one has a different story line. There are a lot of hunts - and you might find hunts boring or grinding - but there is a good bit of story going on related to each origin.

 

I know that often times I have had to turn off XP to stop from outleveling contacts as I go.

 

But playing the origin arcs - especially solo - can be a challenge ... but I don't find them to be boring.

 

Maybe you are easily bored. I don't know.

 

Would it be boring to design your own adventures in the AE and then play through them?

 

I find teaming up a great way to make practically anything more interesting in gaming.

[Triumphant]

44 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

How exactly do you play CoH?

 

Do you just power-level to 50 and grind the end-game and say that isn't grinding?

Or do you play through the game and run different content to level and consider that not grinding because you are exploring content as you level? (because you seem to indicate that leveling-up is "grinding" - and I certainly don't see leveling up to be "grinding".)

Or maybe you just stand around in the Pocket D (or where ever and RP)?

Seriously, I'm curious.

 

Grinding to me is doing the same content receptively to seek some reward over-and-over-and-over again. The reward could be xp toward leveling, unlocking incarnate salvage, getting loot boxes, merits, monstrous aether, etc.

 

 

You are playing it, but maybe you find City of Heroes to be boring in general.

 

I would suggest making a new hero character, going to the Origin contact for that character's origin and only pick missions from contacts that have that origin.

I haven't made it all the way through any of the origins since I have been back, but I have 5 characters trying to make it all the way back through with their origin contacts just to see how much of it is still in the game.

 

The Origin contact lines are different and send you fighting different foes based on your origin so each one has a different story line. There are a lot of hunts - and you might find hunts boring or grinding - but there is a good bit of story going on related to each origin.

 

I know that often times I have had to turn off XP to stop from outleveling contacts as I go.

 

But playing the origin arcs - especially solo - can be a challenge ... but I don't find them to be boring.

 

Maybe you are easily bored. I don't know.

 

Would it be boring to design your own adventures in the AE and then play through them?

 

I find teaming up a great way to make practically anything more interesting in gaming.

 

Not at all.  I've been playing CoH since 2019 and I find the game to be endlessly diverting: But not playing in the way that you describe.  I enjoy interacting IC'ly with other player characters in RP and I enjoy playing fully fleshed out lvl 50 characters with all the bells and whistles in high level content.  Some of the mission and/or story arcs in CoH are pretty good.  On the other hand, many of them are not, and the cut-scenes are often downright painful.

 

These days, I'm running with The Orbweavers, an Arachnos-themed group of baddies and we do awesome RP's (sometimes with coalitioned villain and/or hero groups) and do paper missions, SF's, etc. as a group, rp'ing as we do so.  It's a total blast.  But I didn't have to slowly grind my way up to level 50 in the process of that.  And thank goodness for that, because to me, it's a total bore.

[UltraAlt]

9 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

Not at all.  I've been playing CoH since 2019 and I find the game to be endlessly diverting: But not playing in the way that you describe.  I enjoy interacting IC'ly with other player characters in RP and I enjoy playing fully fleshed out lvl 50 characters with all the bells and whistles in high level content.

 

You have pointed out two of the playstyles I suggested.

 

There is a very limited amount of "high level content" as opposed to the rest of the content in the game.

How much for the "high level content" do you play repeatedly?

 

10 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

Some of the mission and/or story arcs in CoH are pretty good.  On the other hand, many of them are not, and the cut-scenes are often downright painful.

 

Most of the door mission content that has cut-scene was added later in game development.

The DEVs created more collaborative missions later in game development on the hero side to funnel characters away from Origin content into content that was not origin related and dissuaded player from going to the Origin content both by sending them to TwinShot and Habersy (or whoever - I hate both those arcs) and by having the DFB easily outlevel the starting Origin contacts so that it is hard to get back into the Origin contact system.

 

The funneling was done to make teaming easier - or at least more rewarding for everyone on the team as they could - potentially - have the same contact and be working toward the progression of the same arcs.

 

Notice that CoV has no origin related content at all.

 

15 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

These days, I'm running with The Orbweavers, an Arachnos-themed group of baddies and we do awesome RP's (sometimes with coalitioned villain and/or hero groups) and do paper missions, SF's, etc. as a group, rp'ing as we do so.  It's a total blast.

 

And is all of that end-game with end-game characters?

 

What would the difference be if it as rp'ing with people while running leveling content?

[Crystal Dragon]

7 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

You have pointed out two of the playstyles I suggested.

 

There is a very limited amount of "high level content" as opposed to the rest of the content in the game.

How much for the "high level content" do you play repeatedly?

 

 

Most of the door mission content that has cut-scene was added later in game development.

The DEVs created more collaborative missions later in game development on the hero side to funnel characters away from Origin content into content that was not origin related and dissuaded player from going to the Origin content both by sending them to TwinShot and Habersy (or whoever - I hate both those arcs) and by having the DFB easily outlevel the starting Origin contacts so that it is hard to get back into the Origin contact system.

 

The funneling was done to make teaming easier - or at least more rewarding for everyone on the team as they could - potentially - have the same contact and be working toward the progression of the same arcs.

 

Notice that CoV has no origin related content at all.

 

 

And is all of that end-game with end-game characters?

 

What would the difference be if it as rp'ing with people while running leveling content?

You and I might not always see eye to eye, but I concur.

[Triumphant]

8 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

You have pointed out two of the playstyles I suggested.

 

There is a very limited amount of "high level content" as opposed to the rest of the content in the game.

How much for the "high level content" do you play repeatedly?

 

 

Most of the door mission content that has cut-scene was added later in game development.

The DEVs created more collaborative missions later in game development on the hero side to funnel characters away from Origin content into content that was not origin related and dissuaded player from going to the Origin content both by sending them to TwinShot and Habersy (or whoever - I hate both those arcs) and by having the DFB easily outlevel the starting Origin contacts so that it is hard to get back into the Origin contact system.

 

The funneling was done to make teaming easier - or at least more rewarding for everyone on the team as they could - potentially - have the same contact and be working toward the progression of the same arcs.

 

Notice that CoV has no origin related content at all.

 

 

And is all of that end-game with end-game characters?

 

What would the difference be if it as rp'ing with people while running leveling content?

 

I play a lot of it repeatedly, sure.  But the fun of the game mechanics aspect of CoH. for me personally, is when I have all of the powers, IO's and slots with which to customize my character, so that I can make precisely the character that I enjoy and imagine.  When I just have a handful of powers, I don't enjoy the mechanical aspects as much.  Customization of what the character can do is a big part of what makes it fun for me.  Also, there are plenty of powersets where the coolest looking (and most fun) abilities don't become available until the higher levels and don't perform in a satisfactory way until all of the slots are available to distribute to them.  

 

Also, because I am an RP'er, I don't want to go from zero to hero every time, because that doesn't (with the exception of a few tech-based heroes, perhaps) model the way it happens in comics.  Sure, sometimes a characters looks change, more rarely they will get new powers and abilities, but basically, Captain America, Spider Man, Superman, and Green Lantern (as a few examples) have always had the same sort of powers and abilities.  They didn't "grind" to get there.  Grinding feels like D&D to me, and I want to play a comic book game.

 

Maybe I'm an outlier, and most people enjoy the slow, levelling grind of traditional MMO's, but I don't.  That's one of the things about them (though there are a lot of other things that I DO like) that I don't like at all, and never have.  Crafting systems are another thing that I dislike.  They often follow a grindy, formulaic method to making gear that is tedious and not at all a very creative and engaging sort of activity.  Thankfully, CoH allows me to sidestep that, for the most part, and get on with playing the parts of the game that I enjoy.

 

I don't want to convince you that you would (or should) enjoy the game the same way that I do, though.  Why can't you just like what you like and allow me the same courtesy?  We don't have to agree on this topic, and in our particular case, we are lucky enough to have a game that allows us both to pursue enjoyment of it according to each of our preferences.