Did Events Kill the Game?

[CoeruleumBlue]

Did events like the Halloween event kill the game? Honestly it made me want to play the game less, people aren't playing the content because they just levelled during Trick-or-Treat, and someone got onto me for being "obsessed with psionics" when I just like the concept of psionics, not because of getting annoyed at "enemy groups" (see also: my forum signature from a book about telepaths.) People don't even seem to get that the City of Heroes world isn't just Second Life/real life with metas because they don't play the game, and it seems the main culprit behind people not playing the game is the ability to level during events like ToT. Maybe we should just get rid of those events if they might be why the game ended in the first place? Those are just my thoughts. Thanks for your consideration! 

[Rudra]

That won't change anything. People will power level past all the content either in events or AE farms or saved mission farms.

 

Edit: City of Heroes/Villains does something I am not aware of other MMORPGs doing. Giving players reason to actually experience the lower levels while leveling up. A lot of players I've met hail from the World of Warcraft school where the game doesn't start until you are at max level. And it is difficult to change that mindset.

 

Edited yesterday at 05:05 AM by Rudra

[CoeruleumBlue]

9 minutes ago, Rudra said:

That won't change anything. People will power level past all the content either in events or AE farms or saved mission farms.

 

Edit: City of heroes/Villains does something I am not aware of other MMORPGs doing. Giving players reason to actually experience the lower levels while leveling up. A lot of players I've met hail from the World of Warcraft school where the game doesn't start until you are at max level. And it is difficult to change that mindset.

 

 

Maybe many people will, but I think events make it worse, because it makes people want all the titles and salvage from them. I heard farming used to be against the rules anyway, maybe they should go back to that, or else just make it impossible to do. I heard you literally can't even use the Fiery Aura armor set except for on fire farms for example because the powers on it are just not well-balanced at all, so if that's true that's a starting point as well. 

 

So maybe they just need to get rid of events and the fact there's a power set that's literally only used for farming, and you can't farm with any other power set, so that's how farming is built into the game, and not the existence of AE itself. I just read on Reddit that people think there's super toxic RP in this game and I would probably also agree. All that would stop if people just played the game to actually play the game, you can still play the same content over and over or skip past content, but the point of the game is the inherent reward to playing it and there's no way to level past it, then people would stop just going to RP in it and having no idea what the setting and lore is because they don't actually play the game. I agree farming is also a problem but it also seems that the character build for farming literally doesn't work for anything else and it's not because people combined things that don't work, it's literally just the existence of the Fiery Aura armor set. So make Fiery Aura into a normal armor set instead of a farming armor set and get rid of events and the game will probably be fixed is my new revised opinion. 

Edited yesterday at 05:13 AM by CoeruleumBlue

[Rudra]

9 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I heard farming used to be against the rules anyway, maybe they should go back to that, or else just make it impossible to do.

Farming was against the rules back on Live. Initially. However, the fight to stop/prevent farming was a hopeless battle. Like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon by yourself. So even back on Live farming got to a point of (disgruntled) acceptance. There is no way I am aware of to stop farming. Players say 'take away AE because it is only used for farming', except it isn't only used for farming and players were farming regular content missions long before AE was ever added to the game. Taking away events would just be taking away game content and be no better an option than taking away AE. It won't even slow down power leveling or farming.

 

9 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I heard you literally can't even use the Fiery Aura armor set except for on fire farms for example because the powers on it are just not well-balanced at all, so if that's true that's a starting point as well. 

Where did you hear that? While it isn't one of my favorite sets, Fiery Aura is still definitely not so poorly balanced that it can only be used in fire farms. (Edit: I'll let someone who ranks Fiery Aura as one of their favorites sing its praises. I don't use it often enough to be able to, though I do have Fiery Aura characters.) Fire farming was a relative late addition to farming anyway. If I remember correctly, fire farming came about because fire mobs give the most xp, and Fiery Aura became a farming favorite because of fire farms and its ability to almost ignore the fire mobs. (Edit again: Smash/Lethal farms used to be the mainstay of farming. And 5th Column/Council maps.)

 

Edited yesterday at 05:17 AM by Rudra

[CoeruleumBlue]

8 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Farming was against the rules back on Live. Initially. However, the fight to stop/prevent farming was a hopeless battle. Like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon by yourself. So even back on Live farming got to a point of (disgruntled) acceptance. There is no way I am aware of to stop farming. Players say 'take away AE because it is only used for farming', except it isn't only used for farming and players were farming regular content missions long before AE was ever added to the game. Taking away events would just be taking away game content and be no better an option than taking away AE. It won't even slow down power leveling or farming.

 

Where did you hear that? While it isn't one of my favorite sets, Fiery Aura is still definitely not so poorly balanced that it can only be used in fire farms. Fire farming was a relative late addition to farming anyway. If I remember correctly, fire farming came about because fire mobs give the most xp, and Fiery Aura became a farming favorite because of fire farms and its ability to almost ignore the fire mobs.

 

There's no way that I'm aware of to stop stealing, lying, murdering, etc. but those are still against the law, so I'd still make farming against the rules, and try to make it harder rather than easier. I also never said to get rid of AE because as you said people farm regular missions too. It might not even be that dramatic to compare farming to real-life crimes because farming seems to enable the toxic RP community that according to other places on the Internet encourages people to engage in way too much predatory behavior like grooming minors and the like, so farming is probably actually worse than shoplifting from Wal-Mart even if it isn't murder. Bad things will probably always happen, but people should probably still try to discourage them as much as possible rather than giving up. 

 

The events just give people a bunch of FOMO and are also really silly and break immersion. Really, a bunch of superheroes sitting outside a motel for an hour and punching werewolves and becoming god-tier powerful? That's so ridiculous. Other events like opening boxes in Christmas are equally silly. If the events were things that made sense plot-wise like the Rikti invasions that would probably be acceptable, but it seems like they don't do those anymore, just knock on doors for levels, open Christmas presents for levels, and other things that don't make any sense plot-wise. 

Edited yesterday at 05:23 AM by CoeruleumBlue

[Rudra]

8 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I also never said to get rid of AE because as you said people farm regular missions too.

I know you didn't. And I never said you did. What I said was "Players say". (Edit: Not "A lot of players say" or "Most players say", just that some "Players say".)

 

Edited yesterday at 05:32 AM by Rudra

[kelika2]

The events just go on too long

I can see a week before and a week after said holiday but over a month is just too long

even ingame fatigue settles in around week 3 or so when tot leagues dont get anywhere close to full

[tidge]

Strictly my perspective: I feel like the monthly, open-world events amplify the sort of behavior a player favors anyway, no matter if it is:

• Easy XP
• Easy Rewards
• Badges

FOMO seems to drive players (myself included!) to focus on certain things that aren't available most of the rest of the time.

 

The only thing about (some) common player behavior during Halloween is that I commonly encounter that leaves me with a sour taste is the weird defeatist attitude towards the Banner events... There isn't a reason IMO for a smallish (even 8 players should be plenty) ToT league of 50s to NOT tackle the banners. I don't know if the players think their characters are simply crap, or if they think it is too much work but I'm feel embarrassment for Peregrine Island's heroes who would rather just grab loot from doors.

Edited 17 hours ago by tidge

[mistagoat]

I feel like the HW event really overstays its welcome and dramatically alters the way that a significant portion of the population plays the game such that it has a (slightly) negative impact on the rest of population. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming the sky was falling or that you couldn't fill teams to do non-HW stuff but everything was slow to fill for the duration of the event. It also doesn't help that the event has become synonymous with afk leeches. 

 

The Map Server event has a similar effect on the population but doesn't last as long so it's more palatable (imo). I loved the Vday event and had no issue with the Xmas event and I think Xmas goes for the whole month too. I think 2 weeks for HW would be the sweet spot.

[ShardWarrior]

7 hours ago, kelika2 said:

The events just go on too long

I can see a week before and a week after said holiday but over a month is just too long

 

I agree with this.  I would be all for shortening the length of events to a week or two instead of a month or more.

[Jiro Ito]

Some people like the events, and some people only have a couple hours a week to play, so having the event run for a month allows those people to participate too.

[srmalloy]

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

City of Heroes/Villains does something I am not aware of other MMORPGs doing. Giving players reason to actually experience the lower levels while leveling up.

And this, I think, is one of the reasons why there were so many "AE babies" back on Live, and why we still see so much "LF farm" traffic in the LFG channel -- people who come to the game from other MMOs who don't have experience with CoH are conditioned by their experience in other MMOs to treat leveling as something you do until you reach level cap and start the real content, and miss completely that, in CoH, the leveling is the content, and they're skipping it all. (The other part are the players who've made their sixtieth character and don't want to bother having to level it because they're tired of doing, say, the Wheel of Destruction arc for the twenty-third time)

[lemming]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

is the weird defeatist attitude towards the Banner events.

Yea, I think people got annoyed with them before the "just hit banner once for badge" got implemented.   Banners are pretty easy now to get the full badges, but I only did them a few times this year.  (More to do with my life schedule though)

[Troo]

11 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Did events like the Halloween event kill the game?

 

Likely the opposite. The HC team deserves accolades for the amount of work involved with supporting the event.

 

That said, I can agree that maybe a month is too long. I'd be okay with dialing it back 1 week and seeing how it goes. (3-week length).

 

-or-

 

More of a ramping up of activities (which sort of happens already if someone is unaware).

It's a big event and I doubt many participate in the whole thing with each of their characters. Did everyone do the Tips missions?

• Collecting Classic Costumes and associated Badges
• Trick or Treat Enemy XP and Defeat Badges (and associated Prismatic Aether Particle Salvage)

• Giant Monster Defeat and associated Badges

• Whispered Rumors and associated Badges

• Zombie Apocalypse and associated Badges

• Deadly Apocalypse and associated Badges

• Everlasting Night

Maybe shuffling what starts when to tone down any Trick-or-Treat grief or Giant Monster farming behavior.

If I was in charge I might take a look at how to ramp it up differently and maybe even remove the cliff at the end of the event.

 

The goldilocks length of an annual event might vary event to event.

 

 

NOTE

Regarding Giant Monster farming behavior... Another perspective:

My crafting characters very much enjoy stocking up on the 50k Convertors -vs- the normal ~60-65k average as well as the associated enhancement buying spree.

[Uun]

12 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I heard you literally can't even use the Fiery Aura armor set except for on fire farms for example because the powers on it are just not well-balanced at all, so if that's true that's a starting point as well. 

Objectively false. I've got a Fire/Fire tank that sits at the resist cap for S/L/F/E/N (not including the MotT proc) and can heal 925 hp every 20s. I tanked MoKahn over the weekend and have soloed AVs.

[mistagoat]

13 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

 

Maybe many people will, but I think events make it worse, because it makes people want all the titles and salvage from them. I heard farming used to be against the rules anyway, maybe they should go back to that, or else just make it impossible to do. I heard you literally can't even use the Fiery Aura armor set except for on fire farms for example because the powers on it are just not well-balanced at all, so if that's true that's a starting point as well. 

 

So maybe they just need to get rid of events and the fact there's a power set that's literally only used for farming, and you can't farm with any other power set, so that's how farming is built into the game, and not the existence of AE itself. I just read on Reddit that people think there's super toxic RP in this game and I would probably also agree. All that would stop if people just played the game to actually play the game, you can still play the same content over and over or skip past content, but the point of the game is the inherent reward to playing it and there's no way to level past it, then people would stop just going to RP in it and having no idea what the setting and lore is because they don't actually play the game. I agree farming is also a problem but it also seems that the character build for farming literally doesn't work for anything else and it's not because people combined things that don't work, it's literally just the existence of the Fiery Aura armor set. So make Fiery Aura into a normal armor set instead of a farming armor set and get rid of events and the game will probably be fixed is my new revised opinion. 

[golstat2003]

14 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Did events like the Halloween event kill the game? Honestly it made me want to play the game less, people aren't playing the content because they just levelled during Trick-or-Treat, and someone got onto me for being "obsessed with psionics" when I just like the concept of psionics, not because of getting annoyed at "enemy groups" (see also: my forum signature from a book about telepaths.) People don't even seem to get that the City of Heroes world isn't just Second Life/real life with metas because they don't play the game, and it seems the main culprit behind people not playing the game is the ability to level during events like ToT. Maybe we should just get rid of those events if they might be why the game ended in the first place? Those are just my thoughts. Thanks for your consideration! 

 

No. they didn't kill the game. And no it's not why the game ended in the first place. Thanks for your time.

[MTeague]

I ignore most events, and have for years. I'm not against events existing even for a month-long period, but I very much play CoH on my terms. An event being live, or not, won't convince me to change the goals I already had in my mind when I logged in.

 

If by "Kill the game", you mean that people aren't joining you in the content you prefer, and that certain city zones "feel dead" to you because of it, well, the best way to get a group is  usually to start one. There tends to be plenty of people waiting for someone else to start a group and provide a direction. So be the change you want to see.  "Starting mission team! All levels welcome, but will be doing story content lvls 30-38!" isn't that hard to spam into LFG channel a few times. 

 

If by "Kill the game", you mean something else, I'm all ears, but I haven't noticed any real fluctuation in server population numbers. Just fluctuations in where people spend their time in game.

 

 

[mechahamham]

As I've mentioned in other threads, I don't powerlevel or farm at all. I usually avoid the PI ToT league unless I'm on a character over 25 that simply can't solo the EBs, which isn't really a problem after last year's changes.

 

I love door-to-door ToT and did it for most of the month entirely solo, with frequent breaks to run Dr. Kane's House of Horrors with the requisite team of 4. On the teams that I form, I make a point of fighting through the entire house rather than skipping ahead to only the boss fights. If my character can manage it, I stay behind on other teams that did skip to clear the mansion of monsters and zombies. I occasionally broke off to help fight Eochai and Jack in Atlas Park. If someone advertised for a Banner/Deadly Apocalypse event, I tried to join even if the character I was on already had those badges.

 

I love the 'Whispered Rumors' tip mission. I love visiting player-created Haunted Houses. I love seeing characters in Halloween-themed costumes. I love changing my own costumes for the holiday.

 

I had EXP turned OFF for my characters for most of the month.

 

Now, a few days out of the event, I'm looking forward to next October. I love it that much.

 

If you reduce or remove the event, you're stripping that much enjoyment away from *me* that has zero to do with powerlevelling characters.

 

Don't take that away from me.

[Glacier Peak]

Nope

[UltraAlt]

20 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Did events like the Halloween event kill the game?

 

No.

 

20 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Honestly it made me want to play the game less, people aren't playing the content because they just levelled during Trick-or-Treat, and someone got onto me for being "obsessed with psionics" when I just like the concept of psionics, not because of getting annoyed at "enemy groups" (see also: my forum signature from a book about telepaths.)

 

Okay. A bunch going on in that sentence.

 

I don't do a lot of Trick or Treating. I do some. I mainly do it on a static team when someone else on the team has created a character that they want to get the Halloween badges on. Similarly, if I make a character that is supernatural in character conception, I'll trick-or-treat to get the badges.

I'm not there to power-level. I usually only get a level or 2 before level-locking (turning off xp gain) or switching to another character.

 

It is hard to get 8-player teams during the (when it comes down to it "power-leveling" and/or "quick merit gain") events.

That does not mean that you can't recruit for other content. If people want to join, they will.

 

Many are scared of the star. You don't have to be.

People join or they don't.

You get to pick the missions. You get to run your arcs in order to explore the game the way that you want with others to assist you.

If a player is a jerk, you have the boot.

If a player sends you tells that you don't want to interact with, then use the /ignore command.

 

I'm not clear someone would consider you to be "obsessed with psionics". Was this from some RPer conflict?

But I will go back to ... if someone is ruining your gaming experience through tells, use /ignore. 

 

 

20 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

they might be why the game ended in the first place?

 

That is definitely not the case.

CoH was making profits until the Sunset. It just wasn't making a huge enough profit for NCsoft, and the fact the City of Heroes was never well received in South Korea.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

it seems the main culprit behind people not playing the game is the ability to level during events like ToT.

 

It is used for power-leveling. Other power-leveling tools are accepted at this point as well (and where on live), such as door-sitting on farms and joining level 50 police scanner missions in Peregrine Island.

 

Some players power-level because they think that the "best way" (for them) to play the CoH is only to play the end-game as level 50.

It does seem that this makes up at least 50% of the Homecoming population at this point.

 

I, myself, I don't like the end-game content. I like creating characters and playing the game.

I'm not the only one.

 

I can say that the static team that I'm on - generally - does not try to recruit others to join when we are running together.

I think the same goes for many SGs. They aren't looking for those outside of their SG's to game with. They might recruit for their SG, but they aren't generally using /lfg to recruit.

I can't blame anyone for wanting to play with friend.

 

When I'm not running with my static team (a 2-3 hours two nights a week), then I'm PuG'ing, looking for a PuG, or soloing (for one reason or another).

 

I will agree with you that PuG'ing in general slows down during Events, but that doesn't mean that it stopped.

I saw a good bit of people looking to run other content on the /lfg channel on the servers that I game on. Also - on the servers I game on - there was very little talk about the event on /lfg. People that talked about it in /lfg were generally looking for where it was going on and told to go to that zone and use /broadcast to get an invite.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I think events make it worse, because it makes people want all the titles and salvage from them. I heard farming used to be against the rules anyway, maybe they should go back to that, or else just make it impossible to do.

 

Originally, it was going to be a bannable offense to use the AE for farming. That didn't last very long and the DEVs ended up deleting the posts about banning players for using the AE for farming.

 

Farming itself was never against the rules. Instead of banning it, the DEVs altered game mechanics to try to stop or to reduce farming. Popular game missions that were used for farms by not completing them and then repeating them were changed to timed missions so that could not be done more than once. The number of enemies that tanks could taunt was also part of this.

 

I'm against farming. I believe it is an exploit, but I think power-leveling is an exploit as well.

The DEVs are not against farming nor power-leveling. 

 

When it comes down to it, banning farming and power-leveling would ruin the experience of some players.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I heard you literally can't even use the Fiery Aura armor set except for on fire farms for example because the powers on it are just not well-balanced at all, so if that's true that's a starting point as well. 

 

This is not the case.

I have Fire/? tanks and ?/Fire Sentinels and, as I noted, I'm against farming and power-leveling.

Do those sets work differently than other sets, sure. The differences and appearance are important for me when creating characters based on character conception.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I just read on Reddit that people think there's super toxic RP in this game and I would probably also agree.

 

I have no idea if there is "super toxic RP" here or not.

My general experience in gaming is:

1) A group of RPr's has a leader that tries intentional to sow drama/discord in order to prompt RPG'ing.

2) There is going to tend to be a pecking order and newer players in an established group will feel the brunt of that pecking order.

3) Just because you don't fit in with one RPG group doesn't mean that there isn't a RPG group in the game that might fit you better.

 

Honestly, I try to RP while playing the game - at the very basic level by making my characters based on a character conception and trying to use the character in-game based on that character conception.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

but the point of the game is the inherent reward to playing it and there's no way to level past it

 

I'm not sure where you are going with this.

With the Ouoboros, you can go back and play content that you out leveled.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

farming seems to enable the toxic RP community that according to other places on the Internet encourages people to engage in way too much predatory behavior like grooming minors and the like, so farming is probably actually worse than shoplifting from Wal-Mart even if it isn't murder.

 

er, what?

 

Farming in-gaming encourages predatory conduct according to who exactly?

If you know of "grooming of minors" (I'm not sure "and the like" is supposed to imply) going on in Farms or RPg, then you should report it to the DEVs. 
If you have no proof of it going on, then you are spreading malicious rumors.

 

I'm confused at how farming enables "the toxic RP community".

There are players that RP with level 1s. 

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

The events just give people a bunch of FOMO and are also really silly and break immersion. Really, a bunch of superheroes sitting outside a motel for an hour and punching werewolves and becoming god-tier powerful? That's so ridiculous.

 

You don't have to be a part of it if you don't want to.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Other events like opening boxes in Christmas are equally silly.

 

You don't have to take part in it if you don't want to.

 

21 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

If the events were things that made sense plot-wise like the Rikti invasions that would probably be acceptable, but it seems like they don't do those anymore

 

These still happen. 

These short "events" happen randomly and are sometimes set off by some missions or task forces being completed. 

If you stay on for several hours, it is likely that there is going to be an apartment fire in Steel Canyon.

[AlwaysAPrice]

I do wish events would go back to the two-week period they generally ran for on live. Yes, the full month makes it more likely everyone gets a crack at the goodies while the event is on, and I usually enjoy the easing off of pressure so I can keep doing other things I like in the game without feeling like I'm missing my one chance at the event, but every year it seems like after the first two weeks burn-out sets in for most and the numbers of people around PuG-ing the event in the later weeks dwindles anyway, so good luck if you're interested in banners or invasions or Winter Lord or what-have-you in the back half of month. While I've never actually bothered trying to compete with it in my groups to say for sure, it's also always struck me that month long events probably aren't great for RPSGs? Everyone being unavailable for group events for a couple weeks while they capitalize on a rare event with special rewards seems understandable and a good duration to plan a break from SG stuff around, but a whole month of it has always just seemed disheartening/disruptive to me. But then again I've just spun up a spooky-themed VG so I'm poised to capitalize on the entire month next year, so whichever way future events shake out I'm good.

[biostem]

I think they should do something like maybe have seasonal events only on the weekends, then fully for the last week, of the month for the holiday in question.  Even fatigue kind of sets in after the first week, IMO...