It is time for a HARDCORE SERVER!

[Aracknight]

This should go in the Suggestions forum where it can get the attention and evisceration it needs.

 

No thank you.

[Oubliette_Red]

[Troo]

8 hours ago, sshazaam1 said:

One life per character. It would change everything! Carefully selecting teammates, more necessary planning. No more zergers. It would bring more life into your City of Heroes Experience!

 

Why not!

I play Regeneration soooo

and there is also Fiery Armor

both with built in rez powers.

 

 

Seriously though, have seen lots of 

effort put into a number of

pvp servers and hardcore servers

with very popular games.

None worked out.

[Water]

Want and need are two very different things.

[Ruin Mage]

How about no.

[twozerofoxtrot]

13 hours ago, sshazaam1 said:

Dungeon and Dragon's Online, World of Warcraft, Runescape and more

 

None of those game have a system for reaching lvl 50 in a few hours of concentrated grinding with zero risk involved: AE Farms.

 

13 hours ago, sshazaam1 said:

Seeing lvl 50s actually would mean something  

 

No, it would mean the exact same thing as it does now. See above.

 

Even if you went through the ass pain of somehow figuring out how to lock these Hardcore players out of AE (sort of an indication that this isn't the bug idea you think it is), there are still literally dozens of level 50 kill-all missions that are designed the same way in Peregrine Island, and were used to farm ad naseum minus completion, prior to the introduction of AE.

 

You'd basically have to disable sidekicking these hardcore players.

 

And if you remove one of the core aspects of how this game operates, it probably begs considering whether or not this game is enough like those other MMOs to sustain the amount of interest they did with this challenge mode.

[Skyhawke]

I tried it once. I made a character who's story was after each death, he'd resurrect as a random AT with random powers chosen. Ever try to take an Empathy/DP Defender through the Hollows solo? Gets tricky. If I remember correctly, I was on the 6th or 7th rebirth, had made it into Talos and got ganked by Freakshow in a mission and had enough. Never revisited that character again. Neat concept, but can get annoying fast. However, if it's a challenge you're looking for, may I suggest what I did: No START vendor powers, never team, not in a SG so no base portals, when you die you reroll with a random AT and random powersets. It's how I learned how to run the Atlas arcs faster than a DFB and get the badges plus some merit rewards.  

[BZRKR]

No thank you.

 

[laudwic]

15 hours ago, sshazaam1 said:

One life per character. It would change everything! Carefully selecting teammates, more necessary planning. No more zergers. It would bring more life into your City of Heroes Experience!

 

Mediport lore aside, there are numerous powersets that have Self Rez built into them.  What your asking for isn't the design of the game.

 

If you want to do this playstyle, fine.  If your character loses their life, just delete it.  It is very easy to self implement what you want.  

 

I would much prefer the Devs put their time and efforts somewhere else.  

[Rudra]

16 hours ago, sshazaam1 said:

One life per character. It would change everything! Carefully selecting teammates, more necessary planning. No more zergers. It would bring more life into your City of Heroes Experience!

One life per character? Done. Every time your character is defeated, immediately log off the character, not accepting any rezzes, and delete the character. There you go. Problem solved.

[sshazaam1]

I think you guys are missing the point here! Anyone can suggest anything and there are going to be people who agree or disagree. Both sides make good points for their being a hardcore server and for one not existing. I've been reading the your replies and taking in all the info. There's no right or wrong way to play any game. These are just my opinion of course, I don't have all the answers. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would appreciate a dedicated hardcore server where the rules and regulations are implanted by force to everyone on the server. Sure I can create a self rule but that's very different than everyone forced to follow the same rules. And if you don't want to participate, don't play in the server! 

[tidge]

Maybe we need "hardcore mode" for certain suggestions?

[PoptartsNinja]

Requests for "hardcore" servers almost never come from an actual desire to play a hardcore character. It's about imposing a playstyle so that you can feel superior to people who don't follow that playstyle.

OP, whether you're doing it intentionally or not, you are in this boat. We can tell by the language you have choosen to use.

If you want to make a better argument for a hardcore server, you'd use actual data. Like:
There're an estimated 1,500,000 people who play WoW every day. Blizzard's estimate suggests roughly 231,000 people play on Hardcore servers. That is roughly 15.4% of the player base.

Assuming that the number of people exclusively interested in playing hardcore servers is 15.4% in every game (a bad assumption), if we translate that to the 800 players currently online at the moment, you'd have roughly 124 people who'd be interested in playing a Hardcore server. If you look at the current server populations, that would make a hypothetical Hardcore server the 3rd most popular server, after Excelsior and Everlasting (and possibly 4th, as we're past Europe's prime time and I don't know what Reunion's prime time numbers are).

Seems pretty reasonable--except now, our small team of unpaid volunteer developers have to maintain two games, with different code-bases, in which the spagetti and hope that holds the code together could be divergent enough that one patch could cause two different game breaking bugs on two different codebases. At a bare minimum this would double the time between game updates, if not more.

 

 

OP: You claim to want a hardcore server, but your real complaint seems to be joining teams with no communications that "zerg rush" and/or spam incarnates or whatever other tactic it is that you find boring. And I get it, I absolutely hate all the non-Alpha incarnates and wish they were disabled in normal content.

 

And yet I don't see word one about you attempting to lead teams.

So sure, the devs could take on double the workload. Or you could:
1) Lead a team yourself. Advertise it as an "oldschool" or tactical or hardcore or RP or whatever else team. Let the people who join know what you're hoping for (lots of communication, pre-battle tactics talks, pulling, no character faints, etc.) when they join, and people will probably be on board!
2) Limit the number of people who can join your team to keep it fun for you. Take 1-4 people against +2 or +3x8 content.
3) Pit your new team against the tricky enemy groups who will shred you if you're not paying attention.
4) Run task forces and disable whatever it is you think makes the game too easy, like Incarnates or Inspirations. Make sure your team knows what you're planning to disable.
5) Set TF challenges as well, like "faint limit 0," and make sure you communicate those to your team as well.
6) If you join a team, be the change you want to see: ask your team leader if they're willing to do higher tactics or planning. Maybe ask if people would be willing to voluntarily not use Barrier to increase the challenge, etc. Or do some character roleplay to try to get other people into it. I've never been on a quiet roleplay team.

 

There are plenty of things that you could do to improve your experience. And once you're known as a person who leads a certain kind of team, you'll start seeing people looking for your teams because they're having fun. And then eventually you may find yourself with a whole supergroup of like-minded players who enjoy slower, more tactical gameplay, with pre-planning and pulls and all the fun old tools. I'm pretty sure there have even been Hardcore supergroups before. If you form one, and there's an interest, you could maybe use the popularity of your supergroup to prove to the devs that it would be worth their time and all the extra effort they'd have to make to split the codebase.

[Aracknight]

Imo, given gamers and their fascination with pushing boundaries of rules, decorum, and common sense, such a creation would lead to meta-pvp where people would get set up to die, i.e. "accidentally" pulling too many mobs, dissolving teams when teammates are sidekicked and in an area their true level should have no business being in, and god forbid you enter an actual pvp zone.

 

Presumably making 50 mean something again precludes exp boosters and not grouping for fast easy exp to get there, and with everyone slowly, inexorably giving in the paranoia of everything in the game trying to end their career, no more teams form, the alphas at the top start feeding on each other, and there's nothing left to do but dfb and street sweeping in Atlas Park.  

 

Congratulations, youve made love not warcraft.

 

 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, sshazaam1 said:

Both sides make good points

This is a small sample size, but no one has agreed with you.   The two sides are you, and everyone else.

 

Just from the "Hey, let's put together another code base, or write in switches to enforce this" effort on the part of devs makes it a non-starter.

 

And as pointed out, you can do it yourself.  You can do a HC group, SG even, but there's not as much of a call for it as you have imagined.

[Super Atom]

the old people who haunt this forum don't understand Hardcore MMO play is pretty much everywhere and is dominating twitch. It's a reasonable request given its popularity.

 

I wouldn't do it personally, because Coh is ass balance wise, but i also don't give a shit if others want to enjoy something. Given we have 4 low pop servers, i don't think adding a 5th low pop server is gonna change much. You can do it yourself, but i understand the benefit and talking points for it being hard-coded and an official option from every other MMO who had this discussion already.

 

I'll throw some ideas at you since everyone else is being a stick in the mud,  How would you handle character transferring? Would you want that disabled entirely or enabled for transferring off of a hardcore server? Honestly, if they did do it they could make a badge for hitting 50 on the server and then allow you to transfer off once you've hit 50. That could be cool.

 

Similarly would this server just not have an auction house? I'd think it wouldn't right? Most other MMOs disable that on HC servers. Would probably also need the character unable to accept anything from the email system.

[PoptartsNinja]

16 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

the old people who haunt this forum don't understand Hardcore MMO play is pretty much everywhere and is dominating twitch. It's a reasonable request given its popularity.

Sure, could be.

World of Warcraft has 500 full time devs. We have no idea how many of those support the 15.4% of WoW players who play on hardcore servers, but it'd be reasonable to assume it's somewhere between 10% and 20%.

 

City of Heroes Homecoming has a volunteer team of less than 20 people.

 

Unless you show the developers actual hard data that Hardcore would be of major interest to their playerbase, asking 20 people to maintain two games in their free time is probably an impossible ask. Especially since an Ironman / Hardcore server does exist on Thunderspy, and its population is... not large.

[Maelwys]

9 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

the old people who haunt this forum don't understand Hardcore MMO play is pretty much everywhere and is dominating twitch.

Twitch? That's the guys who are trying to compete against Usenet, right?
Fancy-smancy MMX technology. It'll never catch on.

I maintain that games that are hard and/or make it tricky to avoid "dying" aren't exactly a new development....

...it's just not something that the majority of the playerbase here at HC are into.
(( see also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard ))

I very much suspect that you could log onto Reunion at about 4am GMT and divide the number of active players by 10; and the resulting figure would be a reasonable approximation of what the peak population of a Homecoming "Enforced Ironman Mode" server would look like. Maybe. On a double XP weekend.

[Super Atom]

1 minute ago, PoptartsNinja said:

Sure, could be.

World of Warcraft has 500 full time devs. We have no idea how many of those support the 15.4% of WoW players who play on hardcore servers, but it'd be reasonable to assume it's somewhere between 10% and 20%.

 

City of Heroes Homecoming has a volunteer team of less than 20 people.

 

Unless you show the developers actual hard data that Hardcore would be of major interest to their playerbase, asking 20 people to maintain two games in their free time is probably an impossible ask. Especially since an Ironman / Hardcore server does exist on Thunderspy, and its population is... not large.

 

So thunderspy's smaller dev team can make a HC server, but Homecoming's larger dev team... cant? 😕

 

 

Homecoming is capable of doing their own market research to see what additions could  bring new eyes if that was their intention. Players suggesting things, like a common feature Hardcore mode, does not require such effort.

 

[merrypessimist]

5 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

 

So thunderspy's smaller dev team can make a HC server, but Homecoming's larger dev team... cant? 😕

 

 

 

 

I suspect it's less a matter of "can't" and more a matter of "won't."  Which is their right.  As has been repeatedly mentioned, there already is a hardcore CoH server.  There's a reason nobody plays there.

[sshazaam1]

20 minutes ago, PoptartsNinja said:

Sure, could be.

World of Warcraft has 500 full time devs. We have no idea how many of those support the 15.4% of WoW players who play on hardcore servers, but it'd be reasonable to assume it's somewhere between 10% and 20%.

 

City of Heroes Homecoming has a volunteer team of less than 20 people.

 

Unless you show the developers actual hard data that Hardcore would be of major interest to their playerbase, asking 20 people to maintain two games in their free time is probably an impossible ask. Especially since an Ironman / Hardcore server does exist on Thunderspy, and its population is... not large.

Don't you think everyone is being a tad negative about new upcoming ideas? Maybe the "majority" of people on here are right." Lets keep the same game we've had for 20 years at this point, and not try to evolve the game in different ways other than adding a few new power sets here and there, and the occasional new mission thread. That will keep the game alive surely. I wasn't expecting such a negative response like this overall. Keep treating new ideas like this over and over again and it might just eventually kill the game again. 

[Super Atom]

10 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

I maintain that games that are hard and/or make it tricky to avoid "dying" aren't exactly a new development....

 

They aren't no, but your average CoH player tends to be a bit older and likely /literally/ does not watch twitch and likely wouldn't know Hardcore WoW is dominating it atm.

[Super Atom]

3 minutes ago, merrypessimist said:

suspect it's less a matter of "can't" and more a matter of "won't."  Which is their right.  As has been repeatedly mentioned, there already is a hardcore CoH server.  There's a reason nobody plays there.

 

If they won't, that's just the answer to the suggestion! but it would have to come from Homecoming not players.

 

Nobody plays there because HC has the population and official title. Its playerbase is likely not a good reflection on how well a feature would do

 

For example; They have expanded color options for costumes. Does their low player count also mean players here wouldn't enjoy expanded color choices? absolutely not. Now, granted that's an extreme comparison, It's just to show their playerbase is small all the time, not just because of any feature 😛

Edited February 14 by Super Atom

[sshazaam1]

2 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

 

If they won't, that's just the answer to the suggestion! but it would have to come from Homecoming not players.

 

Nobody plays there because HC has the population and official title. Its playerbase is likely not a good reflection on how well a feature would do

Exactly! I agree 100%

[merrypessimist]

Just now, Super Atom said:

 

If they won't, that's just the answer to the suggestion! but it would have to come from Homecoming not players.

 

Nobody plays there because HC has the population and official title. Its playerbase is likely not a good reflection on how well a feature would do

 

YOu clearly don't understand how market research works.  If there is an existing product or service that performs the task you're looking to provide/produce and nobody is paying for it then it's clearly not a viable product/service for that market/demographic.

 

Let's give an example:  I want to sell cel phones to the Amish.  First step is looking to see if anyone else has tried that.  If they have, I look at how well they did with that market.  If they haven't, I look into why.  In this case, the reason they'd be unsuccessful is that the Amish market doesn't buy cel phones for religious reasons.  Thus, my market research shows that a cel phone shop in Amish country would be a bad idea.  

 

So called hardcore mode with the City playerbase, i.e. the target market is a similar nonstarter.