The simple fact is, and Posi told everyone this in an interview, all the things that players wanted were shelved because they did not fit Jack's "VISION" for the game. With JAck we would have never had weapon customization. Because Jack didn't want it.
When it comes to Jack Emmert, Jack Emmert is the only one that matters.
I am not even going to give Cryptic (or Jack Emmert) the opportunity to swing the "nerf bat" at me again.
Champions Online may end up being a great game, but I'm a little gunshy after the I4-6 game mechanics changes in CoX.
Nerfs are one thing; but when you change multiple game mechanics across the board that affect the way every and all archetypes are played about a year after release, it hurts.
-Decreasing damage across the board (then being forced to lower opponent HP to compensate)
-Decreasing defense across the board (to the point where invulnerable Tanks were a dying breed)
-Travel power suppression (why?)
-Increasing Controller damage (when controllers were established as a support class, not a damage class. Nowadays, a controller is the most fully realized archetype in the game. There is practically nothing they can't do; heal, damage, pets, holds, etc.)
-Failing to make one single beneficial change to the Defender archetype, while they still suffered the overall game mechanic changes (particularly Force Field, whose primary strength was defense).
-Decreasing Blaster damage (while simultaneously doing nothing about how little defense/damage resistance they have, resulting in rapid deaths from the extreme aggro of attacks that failed to kill your opponents.)
They only just recently made actual beneficial changes to Blasters to bring them back to at least useful. (Sorry, I didn't count "Defiance" as useful; no ability that only activates when you are almost dead is useful unless it saves your life, which Defiance rarely did).
-Lowering the effective area/number of opponents affected by Taunt
-Reducing the area of effect (AoE) for Blasters' AoEs
-Capping the effects of Enhancements (after players spent a year developing their character and outfitting them under the existing system) and then failing to make any changes to powers that only use a single enhancement type (like Stamina or Health).
I traded chats with Jack Emmert on many occasions during that period; and even though he conceded that my points about many of the changes coming out were unnecessary, they still proceeded with them.
The worst aspect of many of those changes was that they were made in direct response to the upcoming PvP patch, which a vast majority of CoX players didn't even want and today is probably the most underused portion of the game.
I played CoH from beta through I4 initially. I loved the fact that I could jump into the game and get things accomplished rapidly without investing days trying to form raid groups. I didn't play flavor of the month characters; my only level 50 is a force field/dark defender.
But that wasn't an issue before the changes. Once they lowered defense across the board, it became a major issue. Many classes were affected, but Force Field defenders were probably hit the worst, particularly if you had a dark blast secondary. You just couldn't do enough damage to be effective and you couldn't take as much damage as you used to.
The invention system has somewhat negated the worst effects of "enhancement diversification" (probably one of most poorly conceived and implemented changes they made) but then it forces you to do those things that made many other games tedious; farm task forces and grind mobs for invention drops and salvage.
When I first started playing CoH up through I3, I felt like I was a superhero; I planned out my characters and set them up for success. I stood up to the bad guys and mowed them down. After the game changes, I just felt like it was another game.
I re-subscribed just shortly before Jack Emmert stepped down and Positron took over, mainly because my friends had started playing again. Even today though, with all of the changes, multiple respecs and grinding for enhancement combinations, it's still disappointing to log in my FF/DB level 50. In general, if my friends weren't playing, I wouldn't be playing.
If they had taken all of that effort and put it into creating more content, to include the "SUPER SECRET OUT OF COMBAT SYSTEM (SSOCS)" that still doesn't exist today, CoX would be a much better and more rounded game.
So no; I'll check in on Champions Online every once in a while, but I won't put any money into it. I just can't trust someone who is so out of touch with their customer base.
Abbatoir / Abbatoir Cinq Adnihilo Beorn Judge's Edge Somnulus Perfect Black ---------------------- Asheron's Call / Asheron's Call 2 Everquest / Everquest 2 Anarchy Online Shadowbane Dark Age of Camelot Star Wars Galaxies Matrix Online World of Warcraft Guild Wars City of Heroes
I think he did a good job in catering too the marketed crowd... an exclusively pve game with no gear for most of it's useful life.
That being said, I don't think balance was an initial concern as one player did not directly affect the others... but I feel as though this was a mistaken stance on the issue.
I also feel as though his team was very slow to fix blatent imbalances and bugs... I was by far NOT the first fire/fire or fire/ice tank out there, but I still managed to join the flavor of the month club and get one to 50 before they nerfed burn.... I think it may have taken me 3 days... and like I said I think about 30% of the gaming community at that time had a level 50 fire/fire before they changed burn.
I also agree with the general concensus on this post that their general aim of changes to the game was in a under-powering angle. Granted this game was one of the first games where a DPS class could solo 15+ mobs that were +3 levels just by alpha-striking... but the systems and rewards were in such a manner that I think it fit the context of the game. I don't know if that NEEDED changing, but I imagine so... still we have all seen the stone/stone tanks herd 500 wearwolves and powerlevel a team of 8 for the last 2 years... so progress is still very slow.
Lastly, I remember being promised power customization back in beta... yet it wasn't until just recently that this positive change reached the game... yet magically enhancement diversification came out almost over night, and I feel as though that change added no content and was arguably the turning of the tide on this game.
Anyone who's been playing CoX since launch knows that while initial CoX was very fun (and at this time is also great fun.) Emmert, while he was in control of the game post-release, really messed the game up multiple times with terrible choices and changes that nobody liked, but he thought needed changed because HE didn't like the way some things turned out, no matter how much the players disliked the change. So now that he's clearly trying to make CoX 2, will he screw the pooch this time from the start, or will he learn that players matter.
Ah, totally off topic but... 3305 local?! That's awesome! Presumably the same clan from old school Anarchy Online? I was in the clan Storm, but I remember some of you guys... Ah, memories.
You may now return to on-topic conversation; sorry!
Perhaps JE has learned that copying everything in fantasy MMORPGs isn't necessary, but I'm less than enthused about Cryptic doing Champions Online. Champions was a superb pen-and-paper system, I have to wonder if they'll remember to use those great game mechanics in their version.
Cryptic has already stated flat out in multiple place that they will NOT be using the Hero/Champions mechanics in any way shape or form other than as an inspiration.
Everything that they post makes it clearer that the only resemblence that this game will bear to the PnP version is the names of the NPCs.
Hero Games made a huge mistake in selling them the IP for Champions, and I expect that Jack's "Vision" will destroy any real chance of significant future PnP product sales .
There are more than two options with this (include healers as a dominant class or force people to wait 96 hours to recover 4 hps). Champions, in fact, had a good health point system that wasn't dependent on heals. Also, CoV didn't have a healing focused class if I remember right. Simutronic's Dragonrealms also has a good health/non-PC-healer-over-dependence system. I am waiting cheerfully for MMOs (fantasy ones included) to start dropping healing in its current EQ/WoW form because it is by far the most ridiculous part of those games for me.
CoH Nerfs:
Apart from my scrapper's Elude super-ability cycling from crap to awesome to mediocre every other month (<=slight exaggeration), I didn't care about any of the nerfs. The bit where people could bounce from 1-50 in 3 weekends (<=not exaggerating) fighting ninjas (correction: letting fire tanks fight) had to go. So did the sewer monster ad nauseum. The parts of the game that trivialized the leveling process for those that knew the right spots/builds made me quit the game for awhile. Stalkers in PVP made me quit the game for good. Balance is critical. Devs should get it right the first time but if they don't, they should fix things FAST or they will probably lose more customers than they keep. In my case they should have nerfed more, faster.
Good point. I came back to try out the PVP. I was running around with a group of about 4 or 5 heroes, and this stalker comes along (roughly the same level as we were) and takes us all out 1 by 1. He'd do his alpha strike, finish off the guy, then disappear. It was by far the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in an MMO.
They made a superhero game, which basically means they made a game with insanely overpowered characters. PVP just wasn't in the cards for that game IMO.
I have high hopes for CO though. For all that COX screwed up, they did a lot of things right. If they can change the negatives, and reinforce the positives then this could be an awesome MMO.
~~~ Currently Playing ~~~ LOTRO- Guardian Wrymstrum & Lore-master Stabler on Nimrodel.
Conan- Zoltar <Angels of Death> Guardian on Stormrage.
I have high hopes for CO though. For all that COX screwed up, they did a lot of things right. If they can change the negatives, and reinforce the positives then this could be an awesome MMO.
Yes but Emmert had little to do with things that were gotten right. The core of the game was done by the time he had anything to do with development and Emmert was out of the development process when COH started getting better/balanced.
Most of the things that I dislike about COH was put in by Emmert and most of the failed attempts to balance was at the hands of Emmert as well. Nerphing a game for balance is one thing, but the reason that COH has such a bad reputation for it is the ping pong way they did it.
Anyone who's been playing CoX since launch knows that while initial CoX was very fun (and at this time is also great fun.) Emmert, while he was in control of the game post-release, really messed the game up multiple times with terrible choices and changes that nobody liked, but he thought needed changed because HE didn't like the way some things turned out, no matter how much the players disliked the change. So now that he's clearly trying to make CoX 2, will he screw the pooch this time from the start, or will he learn that players matter.
To begin with, forums aren't an accurate representation of the playerbase. You don't know what most people liked or didn't like. You know what your small circle did, based entirely on anecdotal evidence. In most MMORPG's, only 1/6 of the playerbase even reads the forums, and a much smaller fraction actually posts. That fraction who posts tends to represent a very specific minority with a common outlook. There also tends to be very limited interaction between casual and core gamers inside the game itself. Don't say the sub numbers back you up, either, because they don't.
I'm not really going to go into details of all I've done, but I've played the game quite a bit myself. Prior to I7, the release of which happened just after I quit, I had played for more hours than you want to know, gone through essentially all PvE content, had a few max lvl chars, and I had PvP'd extensively with very high KD ratios. PvP was my favorite activity in the end, aside from hunting down the few remaining badges I needed.
As for the non-ED changes, not all of them were nerfs. If anything, the power levels of certain powersets tended to swing up and down dramatically. Sometimes they'd nerf, buff, nerf, and then buff again for good measure. SR comes to mind for that kind of wild fluctuation. As for ED, it wasn't crippling, either. It did change things quite a bit. It made a few extreme things not possible, but it wasn't nearly as damning as a lot of forumgoers make it out to be.
Most people here have a MMO that they've played to death, and for me, that was CoX. I also didn't play it like most players. Honestly, I think that was the problem with the game and how it was balanced. It was balanced toward people like me. I'm a powergamer. Yeah, I've done just about everything legitimately. Beyond that, I've participated in just about every powerleveling method, including those either borderline or clearly exploits. I wouldn't even touch a powerset unless I knew there was a significant advantage in it. Good = sucks to me. I built characters to win and make things easy for me, not just to fool around. When I PvP'd, it was with chars I had built specifically for that purpose, and I used each respec to adjust my build to take advantage of the latest changes.
See, every nerf that you can think of which you think was stupid or uncalled for, I know exactly why it was done. I was probably the reason it was done. I think that was Jack's mistake. Powergamers will always be more powerful than everybody else. If you nerf to bring down powergamers, your nerfs will only really hurt the regular people. When I say powergamers, I don't mean who somebody who copies a build off a forum or plays around with Hero Builder for a while. Want to see what I'm talking about?
Accuracy debuff cap: Yeah, this is one of the first that hit me. It removed one of the ways in which I could be completely invincible when I needed to be. Sometimes I'd get bored and very slowly kill +5 or higher groups, including bosses, doing this. No damage.
Regen: I used to have a friend who was regen back before it started getting hit by nerfs. I think he was banned. Not really sure why. Anyway, he used to take me around on my lowbies and level with me. He mostly liked to street sweep groups with freak tanks in them. I'll let you guess how many levels higher than him they were. You're probably thinking +4 or something. lol at just +4. This was not even using MoG, by the way. I'd go into what I'd seen done with that, but you'd probably not like it.
Target cap: You guys might not have noticed this change. It was to prevent AoE farming. Some guy mentioned level 50 in three weekends. Try level 1 to 16 in one second if you have a blaster with you. Rikti portal farming, huzzah. I think they eventually fixed this mission, thank God. Not that it stopped or really slowed powerleveling. Anyway, it lowered the target cap. There was one before this nerf, but you could only see it while Rikti portal farming. I'd tell you just how many enemies plvl'ers would get and kill at once while using this technique, but you probably don't want to know. Hint: if you're thinking less than a hundred per group, you're too low. The second objective of this nerf was to prevent permcontrolling. I'll give you an example. For those not in the know, the most powerful control ability in the game was fearsome stare just prior to this nerf, though most DD's were too dumb to slot it. I used to run full party runs on Praetorian AV's. The MM FF mish was my fave. I could pretty easily keep entire groups heavily feared even on a full party spawn. See, when you stacked fear enough, enemies didn't run, and in 95% of cases, didn't even counterattack on hit. If they did, they'd definitely miss with all the other DD acc debuffs. It became essentially as good as hold. The only function of empaths in my party was auras, AB, and CM. I never even saw a bar drop below 95% for nearly every run. Fearsomes stare itself was later nerfed on top of the AoE cap to bring it back into line, for this reason. There are other control methods which involved nearly zero damage all the time on full party spawns, but they become a lot less intuitive to describe, and you'd probably believe me even less if I talked about their use. All of them were made possible by not capping targets. The lower target cap was also put in because of the powerset below.
Invul tanks: Invul was invincible in the hands of a good player. They weren't tough. They weren't hard to kill. They were simply invincible. The only exceptions were very specific AV's or missions which invuls could simply avoid with no penalty. Case in point: you needed an invul tank to handle Rikti portal runs, and they did easily. Even when Rikti portals got out of vogue and wolves in a box became the next big thing, it was still one tank taking nearly zero damage from 20+ +3 mobs in a tiny space.
Stalker stealth: This was a buff, but heroes bitched about it a lot, so I'll talk about it. On Virtue, most stalkers were terrible. I can count on one hand the ones I couldn't spot easily and kill, and I knew them well, since we'd meet a lot. The pool of good PvP'ers in Virtue was super small. Then again, I was spec'd for perception, taking tactics _only_ for that reason on _top_ of my existing perception power, and I would trail the weaker heroes around to use them as stalker bait if I needed to. Stalker stealth was increased specifically because of characters like mine. End result? After the buff, almost nobody else could see them even when they didn't stack stealth that much.
I could seriously go on, but the point is that players like me made the game easy for themselves. Nothing was really a challenge because we knew all the ways to break things. If I knew something would be hard for one character, I'd just take another one. Beyond that, for some reason, Cryptic basically gave plvl'ers a free ride for a long time. Not that we actually plvl'd anything but our umpteenth alts, since you could get XP super fast just doing missions with a PUG if you knew how to. I even used to have a friend who ran his own little plvl'ing franchise, charging money to teach his friends how to do it for cash. Don't think they ever really came down on him.
So I can seriously see why all the nerfs came. Were they done well? No, they were stupid. ED was idiotic. I know the powers that motivated ED, but they could simply have balanced that by nerfing those specific powers. Is ED as bad as you think it was? No. See, Jack never really cared about you. By you, I mean people who whine on forums. You're the minority. ED was based mostly on metrics, as were all the other major buffs/nerfs. You know the weird mishmash of enhancements you ended up with on your powers after ED? That was what the silent majority of chars already had because they didn't build well. ED's real purpose was to even the field between you and them. Was that a mistake? Yeah. But it didn't cause some mass exodus. CoX's numbers didn't go up or down drastically after that or any other nerf. You want to believe they did because that would justify the fact that you can't handle change in a video game, but it's not true.
So is Evil Jack Emmert going to make some mistakes with Champions Online? Yeah, I'm sure. I will probably shake my head at some of the dumbassed things that he'll come up with. Will that kill the game or substantially hurt it? No. It'll probably still be a fun game, even if has its ups and downs.
if no one knows coh was alot differnt then u see . before beta .. it was at with classless at mix ... then changed it .. took 2 more yrs ... but i do like the idea of no at .. with negs to more powers u pick ..
The idea that the forums aren't an accurate representation of the player base is Dev speak. It certainly a good representation of the player base and actually. It's a player base that often knows the game dynamics better then number chrunching developers. And, this is confirmed by the complaints and mass exodus after an unpoppular releese is done.
Going over your list of pass nerphs I generally agree with you about the necessity of them, however you seem to miss the point about the conplaints about Emmerts past mistakes. What i don't agree with is the yo-yo, band aid, over incompasing, amature changes/nerphs that were done for the first 10 issues that Emmert was involved with. I don't agree with Emmerts constent shoving of the game mechanics into familiar patterns that don't suit the genre. I don't agree with the expression of a vision that limits players interaction and desire to play.
I don't think Emmerts evil. I think Emmert is an intellegent, knowledgeable man. He seems to have good management skills and organisation skills (in a management since, I don't know personally). However, Emmert has no business being a game developer. His skill set and ego are to illsuited to accomplish what is ultimatly best for a game.
That being said I am not saying that champions will suck. It will have good things about it, but ultimatly with Emmert in the lead I feel the game will be doomed to never be what it could be and therefore will be a nitch game sharing a nitch genre. Miller has COH making moves towards becoming a better game and towards reaching it's potential. There is already a story arch moving that seems to be leading to a poliferation of origins/ATs/powers and by the time champions hit the market I expect that COH to be more open ended in it's character creation, which is really the only real appeal of champions online.
Anyone who's been playing CoX since launch knows that while initial CoX was very fun (and at this time is also great fun.) Emmert, while he was in control of the game post-release, really messed the game up multiple times with terrible choices and changes that nobody liked, but he thought needed changed because HE didn't like the way some things turned out, no matter how much the players disliked the change. So now that he's clearly trying to make CoX 2, will he screw the pooch this time from the start, or will he learn that players matter.
My dog doesn't like the title of your post and wants you to refer Jack Emmert to PETA for their wrath of doom.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
They decided to make an MMO without any serious MMO experience In spite of their lack of experience they managed to bring many of the tedious timesinks from other MMORPGs into CoX. A game with super-travel powers and yet CoX could bore you to tears with missions that wasted your time traveling between zones. And CoX classes are pulled straight out of fantasy MMORPGs even though those classes have NO place in a superhero genre. How many times do you read the Avengers or Justice League and see someone spamming heals? Perhaps JE has learned that copying everything in fantasy MMORPGs isn't necessary, but I'm less than enthused about Cryptic doing Champions Online. Champions was a superb pen-and-paper system, I have to wonder if they'll remember to use those great game mechanics in their version.
This is for me, the heart of it all. Superheroes are individuals, not cookie cutter classes. Champions has a format that allows you to create a unique character, with strengths and weaknesses and personal vision on a foundation of rules that work! The short of it is, if you're saying you're going to create Champions online, that's what I want to see...Champions...online. If you create a Champions inspired online game (like say...what DDO is to D&D online), then IMO it fails..miserably. There is a reason why Champions has been around for over 20 years, overlook that fact, and the Devs fail right at the design table.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
The idea that the forums aren't an accurate representation of the player base is Dev speak. It certainly a good representation of the player base and actually. It's a player base that often knows the game dynamics better then number chrunching developers. And, this is confirmed by the complaints and mass exodus after an unpoppular releese is done. Going over your list of pass nerphs I generally agree with you about the necessity of them, however you seem to miss the point about the conplaints about Emmerts past mistakes. What i don't agree with is the yo-yo, band aid, over incompasing, amature changes/nerphs that were done for the first 10 issues that Emmert was involved with. I don't agree with Emmerts constent shoving of the game mechanics into familiar patterns that don't suit the genre. I don't agree with the expression of a vision that limits players interaction and desire to play. I don't think Emmerts evil. I think Emmert is an intellegent, knowledgeable man. He seems to have good management skills and organisation skills (in a management since, I don't know personally). However, Emmert has no business being a game developer. His skill set and ego are to illsuited to accomplish what is ultimatly best for a game. That being said I am not saying that champions will suck. It will have good things about it, but ultimatly with Emmert in the lead I feel the game will be doomed to never be what it could be and therefore will be a nitch game sharing a nitch genre. Miller has COH making moves towards becoming a better game and towards reaching it's potential. There is already a story arch moving that seems to be leading to a poliferation of origins/ATs/powers and by the time champions hit the market I expect that COH to be more open ended in it's character creation, which is really the only real appeal of champions online.
Ah, yes. The number-crunching devs and their devspeak. Actually, no. It's a reality that MMORPG forums are typically occupied by a vocal minority who represent only a very specific segment of the player population. They're not even an accurate representation of core gamers, much less casual ones. But it's confirmed by complaints and mass exodus, though! Ah, right. Except that the complaints you know of are again on the forums, and CoX's population numbers have followed a predictable pattern of rise and fall with each new issue. You could claim Emmert has stifled longterm growth with his "vision", but you can't claim there was some tell-all drop in numbers after one change that was any greater than the usual pattern.
I'm not saying forums are useless. The playerbase does know more about game dynamics than the developers. That's no secret. Forums are not always the best pipeline to that wisdom, though. They possess neither a unified opinion nor a body of coherent diverse ones. For the most part, forums are a sea of discordant voices that talk at nothing and are as quick to savage each other as the developers. Yeah, it's a good place to get knowledge, but only if you take everything with a grain of salt.
What i don't agree with is the yo-yo, band aid, over incompasing, amature changes/nerphs that were done for the first 10 issues that Emmert was involved with.
You're saying I'm missing a point about his changes. I don't agree with his changes either, though. I never said the changes were good. I just said there was a reason.
You mentioned the yo-yo. I've seen it. I mentioned it myself. Some powersets got buffed, nerfed, buffed, nerfed, then buffed again with no real stability. Often times, it was the same nerfs and buffs being repeated. You mentioned all-encompassing changes. ED was motivated by many goals, but as Emmert himself has said now, it was too late in the game to really make big changes like that. Band aid answers to shotgun wound problems. Yep, I've seen a few of those too, and I didn't like those either.
My first point was that the changes may have been poorly-done, but some kind of change was needed in those situations, and the motivations behind them were solid. It was a matter of execution, not vision. My second point was that Emmert may do retarded stuff at times, but he's not going to turn Champions Online into bullshit merely with his presence.
Ah, yes. The number-crunching devs and their devspeak. Actually, no. It's a reality that MMORPG forums are typically occupied by a vocal minority who represent only a very specific segment of the player population. They're not even an accurate representation of core gamers, much less casual ones. Hrm...up to a few years ago, I agree that was the way of it, but these days I'd differ with you on that. Most gamers now spend some time reading on forums of a related game before jumping into it, and while they may not post, are exposed to the opinions of that vocal minority, and whether correctly or not, make their decisions based upon that reading to one degree or another. It is also common practice for a Dev Team to present impending changes on their home website and link the forums to the news with more data about the changes, again even if those hitting that board don't post, they read the posts of those who do. Outright dismissing such posts as "inconsequential minority" is short sighted. I'm not suggesting Devs cater to what's posted, but dismissing it outright is the trait of the egotistical or those lacking common business sense. But it's confirmed by complaints and mass exodus, though! Ah, right. Except that the complaints you know of are again on the forums, and CoX's population numbers have followed a predictable pattern of rise and fall with each new issue. You could claim Emmert has stifled longterm growth with his "vision", but you can't claim there was some tell-all drop in numbers after one change that was any greater than the usual pattern. You're right here, mass exodus of lost subs usually only happens when Devs seriously screw the pooch (SWG's combat "upgrade" comes to mind). But in counterpoint, predictable losses of people reacting to change and people reacting to bad changes are two predictions with seriously different numbers. I left after 2 bad changes wherein thoughtful posts and math to back it up with were ignored, this was a predictable reaction, but was it a desired one? My point being, changes done by the Devs was in detriment to the game, it was discussed on the forums by myself and others in a desire to show them with thoughtful and respectful posts why this change was being done in a poor manner, and on the forums, it was dismissed, that dismissal made its way into the game, and it resulted directly in the cancellation of myself and some 60 other people that I knew of personally as we collectively gave up and saw CoH heading in a direction we felt was no longer worth out time. Again, as a result of what happened on the forums, and we were by no means the only ones to do so. So were we part of a exodus? Unlikely, but we were a sign of a trend. I'm not saying forums are useless. The playerbase does know more about game dynamics than the developers. That's no secret. Forums are not always the best pipeline to that wisdom, though. They possess neither a unified opinion nor a body of coherent diverse ones. For the most part, forums are a sea of discordant voices that talk at nothing and are as quick to savage each other as the developers. Yeah, it's a good place to get knowledge, but only if you take everything with a grain of salt. That's true, but such flames are usually the practice of children over-compensating, and any halfway intelligent adult dismisses such flames for what they are. Insightful, articulate, and respectful posts (which admittedly are the minority) are worth paying attention to. Most Devs however, develop ego problems when they encounter such posts and take as a personal insult. They fail to realize that constructive criticism is the single best mechanism for positive growth, a failing of our culture actually as anymore, most people in any profession they are in these days take any sort of criticism as a personal attack, unable to weed out teen like posturing and smack talk from insightful commentary on something that needs improvement. My first point was that the changes may have been poorly-done, but some kind of change was needed in those situations, and the motivations behind them were solid. It was a matter of execution, not vision. My second point was that Emmert may do retarded stuff at times, but he's not going to turn Champions Online into bullshit merely with his presence. The road to hell--good intentions, etc. I'm sure there were the best of intentions behind them, and I agree with you, the execution was the disastor, exacerbated by clamping his hands over his ears and chanting "lalalalala". Will he have learned something from his past mistakes? That requires one of the most difficult things for a person in his position to do, seperation of ego. Until a person lets go of ego, they cannot improve their shortcommings, and expierence is only as good of a teacher as someone's ability to step back and absorb constructive criticism. I agree with you, his mere presence isn't going to spell the failure of CO, but if he learns nothing of his past mistakes, he's doomed to repeat them and that will negatively impact any project he's part of. Time will tell if this is the case, and I'll be taking the pulse of the game based upon what I read on a set of forums, weeding out the childish posts from the more insightful ones.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
Actually Kurush, yes it's dev speak. You have heard it so often you don't even examine the claim for its obvious logical fallacy. While certainly game developers want to make an enjoyable game there are always aspects that contradict with making an enjoyable game and longevity of a game. Because of subscriptions MMO deveopers don't want people playing MMO's like consol games. They want people to play even after they have reach the "end game" or over again.
The idea that the forums isn't a representation of the playerbase is usually used as justification by developers for maintaining/creating unpopular barriars that are meant to protect the longevity of the game. This creates contention between the plaer/forum base and what the devs believe is good for the game. Now while, yes, the people on the forums are not a random pull of the player base they are a representation of the player base just the same. The people on the forums are certainly more likely to care about thespecific mechanics of the game more then casual, but that doesn't mean that majority of players enjoy being nerphed everytime an issue comes out. No one suggests that willing expereinced Beta testers shouldn't be listened to because they aren't an accurate representation of the player base, but once the game goes live when these same people fight to make a game better, they magically turn from informed, useful, and even nessaccery part of the community to "not an accurate representation." Its an absurd justification and makes no sense. These players know the game, know the player base, and know the competetion.
The idea that a new issue should bring a downfall in players is prepostrous. There should be no "predictable pattern of rise and fall with each new issue". Nerw issues should help fight the natural drift of migrating players, not add to it. The European launch and Villain launch have helped COH maintain COH's over all numbers (both of them have large documented upswings in player subscriptions).
I know I personally know more then a thousand ex-or just recently returned players. And, while there are certainly still quite a few vets it doesn't take very long of looking at vetrean badges to realise how many of the current player base are new (within the last year and a half). The fact is that during the time that COH should of been a growing game it continiously lost players that were replaced by 35k euro players on new servers. And your right that was predictable; the players on the forums told the devs they were making poor decisions and that people would leave because of it. But it certainly wasn't predictable in the since that COH should of been loosing thousands of players with each new Issue. Every issue you would see posts stating people were going to leave if something went live; I haven't seen a statement like that ever since Jack was removed from direct control over COH's development and that's not a coincidence.
Certainly some of the changes needed to be done as in all MMO's. Where the break down of Jack's "vision" came into play was the continual depowering of the player base, the limitation of choices, and the further seperation of At's. The vision wanted unfettered predicability at the cost of everything else, except for the diligence on the developers part. Jack's vision lacked any reasonable balance between what makes mmo's fun and the necessity of predicability. That desire for control (the vision) guided the poor decisions (which you also identify) made while Jack was in control. Just because the game needed to grow and stabalize doesn't mean that the descions made on how or why to do so weren't misguided.
The European launch and Villain launch have helped COH maintain COH's over all numbers (both of them have large documented upswings in player subscriptions).
I'm sure COV brought in new players, but I think they would have done better making a real COH expansion. That would have helped a lot more with retaining older players and still would have brought in new players as well.
~~~ Currently Playing ~~~ LOTRO- Guardian Wrymstrum & Lore-master Stabler on Nimrodel.
Conan- Zoltar <Angels of Death> Guardian on Stormrage.
I'll never play a game involving Jack Emmert again. After playing CoX with him, and playing it without him, the difference is tremendous. If he's involved, it's a guaranteed piece of garbage. It might not be originally, but the more interaction he has with a game, the worse it will become, especially over the life of the game.
To anyone looking to play this, I strongly urge you to reconsider. Disregard this warning if you like, but I promise you, he's going to do whatever he wants regardless of how it benefits the game or the players. He is very much the "my vision > your fun" type of developer.
The European launch and Villain launch have helped COH maintain COH's over all numbers (both of them have large documented upswings in player subscriptions).
I'm sure COV brought in new players, but I think they would have done better making a real COH expansion. That would have helped a lot more with retaining older players and still would have brought in new players as well.
CoV brought in 60k new players. It was nowhere near what it was expected to bring in and led to CoH/V getting a skeleton staff for further development while Cryptic looked for other opportunities to obtain growth in.
The idea that the forums isn't a representation of the playerbase is usually used as justification by developers for maintaining/creating unpopular barriars that are meant to protect the longevity of the game. This creates contention between the plaer/forum base and what the devs believe is good for the game. Now while, yes, the people on the forums are not a random pull of the player base they are a representation of the player base just the same. The people on the forums are certainly more likely to care about thespecific mechanics of the game more then casual, but that doesn't mean that majority of players enjoy being nerphed everytime an issue comes out. The players on the forum are a representation of the player base, sure, but they aren't necessarily representative of the majority opinion. At the very least, non-spam posts made on any topic are being made by the self-interested (so bias creeps in) who want to see a change that will benefit (or at least be effect neutral) to their style of play. Very very few posters on forums say, "You know, this really is overpowered on my character - please nerf it", even if that would be the optimal response. No-one wants to be nerfed, but sometimes that is the fairest thing to do. And sometimes a nerf is a result of a bug fix, which may be the correct thing for the devs to do, but still is a massively unpopular move. No one suggests that willing expereinced Beta testers shouldn't be listened to because they aren't an accurate representation of the player base, but once the game goes live when these same people fight to make a game better, they magically turn from informed, useful, and even nessaccery part of the community to "not an accurate representation." Its an absurd justification and makes no sense. These players know the game, know the player base, and know the competetion. Beta testers often aren't listened to either. Nor are the suggestions they make always correct (or even sane). What it comes down to is a player going "In my opinion, I think Power X should do this" and the dev (hopefully) examining that argument in light of what they want Power X to do, what resources it will cost to change it and what it means in the greater scope of things if they make such a change. While their might be more scope for a change during beta, just because someone makes and informed and useful suggestion doesn't mean the dev will immediately (if ever) take it on board. Also, while "the players" know the game, only individuals post on forums and those individuals may not ever agree or even talk about the same things. "The players" rarely ever form consensus about anything... even the nerfs that come through the game. The idea that a new issue should bring a downfall in players is prepostrous. There should be no "predictable pattern of rise and fall with each new issue". Nerw issues should help fight the natural drift of migrating players, not add to it. The European launch and Villain launch have helped COH maintain COH's over all numbers (both of them have large documented upswings in player subscriptions). Of course there is a natural rise and fall - players sub for the new content and then gradually move away once they get bored again. It happens to pretty much every MMO (the exceptions manage to keep rising upwards in active sub numbers). CoH/V tries to keep this minimised by releasing up to 3 new issues a year; some of the greatest sub number declines have come during periods where they weren't getting these updates out. I know I personally know more then a thousand ex-or just recently returned players. And, while there are certainly still quite a few vets it doesn't take very long of looking at vetrean badges to realise how many of the current player base are new (within the last year and a half). The fact is that during the time that COH should of been a growing game it continiously lost players that were replaced by 35k euro players on new servers. And your right that was predictable; the players on the forums told the devs they were making poor decisions and that people would leave because of it. But it certainly wasn't predictable in the since that COH should of been loosing thousands of players with each new Issue. Every issue you would see posts stating people were going to leave if something went live; I haven't seen a statement like that ever since Jack was removed from direct control over COH's development and that's not a coincidence. You obviously haven't been reading the same forums I have, where people have claimed they'll quit over Inventions (i.e. loot), the Consignment House, Villains not getting unique content, changes to Hover, and so on. People claim they'll quit over a number of things. Some do. But it doesn't make the decision to make the change wrong. Also, as I said above, CoH/V's sub numbers have shown the greatest declines during periods of them not releasing new content, not after each issue. CoH/V showed a 20% decline in active sub numbers from Dec-05 (first numbers after CoV launch) and Dec-06 not because of ED - there's some decline in March 06, but that sub number remained of about 170k stable until Dec-06 when it fell to 154k. If the nerfs / ED caused such issues for players, it wasn't felt until about 12 months down the track with regards to sub numbers. Yes, the 60k from CoV would have helped mask the effect, but it appears that CoV didn't sell that well either, so exactly how many players 'quit' over ED / nerfs can't really be stated so easily. Certainly some of the changes needed to be done as in all MMO's. Where the break down of Jack's "vision" came into play was the continual depowering of the player base, the limitation of choices, and the further seperation of At's. The vision wanted unfettered predicability at the cost of everything else, except for the diligence on the developers part. Jack's vision lacked any reasonable balance between what makes mmo's fun and the necessity of predicability. That desire for control (the vision) guided the poor decisions (which you also identify) made while Jack was in control. Just because the game needed to grow and stabalize doesn't mean that the descions made on how or why to do so weren't misguided. As Kurush correctly states, the main aim of ED was to pull back the extreme top-end of character power and reduce the gap between the gimpiest and the most min/maxed. I don't think the change was misguided at all; it probably could have been better thought out and better announced though, but it wasn't wrong. My other problem is that you seem willing to attribute to Jack Emmert every poor decision, but seem unable to credit him with any good decision that made CoH/V fun. As he's said elsewhere, CoH was made by a group of people with no experience who got some things right and some things wrong. The fact that CoH was so fun out of the box and such a breath of fresh air to the MMO genre shouldn't be forgotten, and Emmert's contribution, first as Creative Director, then as Lead Dev shouldn't be re-written because some people get prissy about changes made to a game over 2 years ago. A number of posts made by Emmert indicate he's realised he made a number of mistakes and doesn't want to repeat them - this is good news regardless of how you feel about Emmert, because it suggests he wants to make ChampO even better than CoH/V was / is. On top of all that, Emmert isn't even heading up ChampO - Rand Moz. (can't remember his surname) is the lead dev on it. Emmert is Chief Creative Director at Cryptic, so he's across all of their MMOs under development, but personally looking after the sekrit one they don't talk about. I'm going to wait and see what ChampO is like before rushing to judge it. Having learned a lot on CoH/V, I'm hopeful that Cryptic will craft ChampO into a fantastic game.
Because the last post was sooo long: those are some great posts Kurush. I'd been aware about some of the PL tactics, but hadn't thought about them in a long time.
Actually, CoV didn't bring in any new players, that is to say any more players. Oh, the playerbase shifted a bit, and there was a very short term gain, but if you look at the pre CoV numbers and compare them to current numbers, they're very similar. The playerbase may have shifted a bit, but CoV did diddly and squat to increase population. Population's the same as ever. CoX does have legendary player retention, though. Compared to any other MMO on the market, it's retention is second to none.
As to CO, I see Cryptic repeating some mistakes. Hiding numbers, delaying Villains, screwing PvP. I'm withholding judgement and giving Cryptic the benefit of the doubt, however. I think they're a solid development house and the JE hate is incredible to me, I understand it not one iota.
The games not going to be as good as City of Heroes/Villains (how it is currently with issue 12.) Some of the developers I know from some other projects and their work is crap. Not to say this is what will make the game bad, but from what I've seen, it's very generic compared to the story in CoH/V. Go read on Paragonwiki if you haven't played CoH/V in a few years, it's really a good story. Especially the Villain characters. The real problem with issue 12 is the costume pieces which being tied to grouping in a taskforce. It's not a good idea. If that becomes a trend, the reason a lot of people I've known over the years left other mmos for CoH/V will be lost. People hated looting. CoH didn't have it, now it does. I'm not talking about the recipes, just the costume bits. A lot of people in the 190 member group I have in CoV dropped it when issue 12s roman pieces were taskforce only to go back to WoW. They felt cheated. Anyway I got off topic, Champions won't be good.
The games not going to be as good as City of Heroes/Villains (how it is currently with issue 12.) Some of the developers I know from some other projects and their work is crap. Not to say this is what will make the game bad, but from what I've seen, it's very generic compared to the story in CoH/V. Go read on Paragonwiki if you haven't played CoH/V in a few years, it's really a good story. Especially the Villain characters. The real problem with issue 12 is the costume pieces which being tied to grouping in a taskforce. It's not a good idea. If that becomes a trend, the reason a lot of people I've known over the years left other mmos for CoH/V will be lost. People hated looting. CoH didn't have it, now it does. I'm not talking about the recipes, just the costume bits. A lot of people in the 190 member group I have in CoV dropped it when issue 12s roman pieces were taskforce only to go back to WoW. They felt cheated. Anyway I got off topic, Champions won't be good.
I love your jump 2 conclusions mat.
~~~ Currently Playing ~~~ LOTRO- Guardian Wrymstrum & Lore-master Stabler on Nimrodel.
Conan- Zoltar <Angels of Death> Guardian on Stormrage.
all coh needs to do is add new and fresh content and not in the way of TF's thats the one thing the game LACKS fresh content.
QFE like fresh i don't wanna run the same layout mish 3 times in a row!
Exactly, it's not even so much the mission environments that need changing - it's the goddamn layouts. There are like 3 or 4 office layouts, 3 or 4 cave layouts, mine layouts, etc., etc., and once you know them the game becomes far too easy and feels more repetitive than it is (i.e. CoX is in fact no more repetitive than other MMOs in terms of combat, if anything the fact that players have been addicted even despite what they perceive as repetitiveness is a testament to the strength of the combat system).
If the devs could have done one thing that would have made this game the monster it deserved to be, it would have been to have a bigger variety of mission layouts.
Comments
The simple fact is, and Posi told everyone this in an interview, all the things that players wanted were shelved because they did not fit Jack's "VISION" for the game. With JAck we would have never had weapon customization. Because Jack didn't want it.
When it comes to Jack Emmert, Jack Emmert is the only one that matters.
I am not even going to give Cryptic (or Jack Emmert) the opportunity to swing the "nerf bat" at me again.
Champions Online may end up being a great game, but I'm a little gunshy after the I4-6 game mechanics changes in CoX.
Nerfs are one thing; but when you change multiple game mechanics across the board that affect the way every and all archetypes are played about a year after release, it hurts.
-Decreasing damage across the board (then being forced to lower opponent HP to compensate)
-Decreasing defense across the board (to the point where invulnerable Tanks were a dying breed)
-Travel power suppression (why?)
-Increasing Controller damage (when controllers were established as a support class, not a damage class. Nowadays, a controller is the most fully realized archetype in the game. There is practically nothing they can't do; heal, damage, pets, holds, etc.)
-Failing to make one single beneficial change to the Defender archetype, while they still suffered the overall game mechanic changes (particularly Force Field, whose primary strength was defense).
-Decreasing Blaster damage (while simultaneously doing nothing about how little defense/damage resistance they have, resulting in rapid deaths from the extreme aggro of attacks that failed to kill your opponents.)
They only just recently made actual beneficial changes to Blasters to bring them back to at least useful. (Sorry, I didn't count "Defiance" as useful; no ability that only activates when you are almost dead is useful unless it saves your life, which Defiance rarely did).
-Lowering the effective area/number of opponents affected by Taunt
-Reducing the area of effect (AoE) for Blasters' AoEs
-Capping the effects of Enhancements (after players spent a year developing their character and outfitting them under the existing system) and then failing to make any changes to powers that only use a single enhancement type (like Stamina or Health).
I traded chats with Jack Emmert on many occasions during that period; and even though he conceded that my points about many of the changes coming out were unnecessary, they still proceeded with them.
The worst aspect of many of those changes was that they were made in direct response to the upcoming PvP patch, which a vast majority of CoX players didn't even want and today is probably the most underused portion of the game.
I played CoH from beta through I4 initially. I loved the fact that I could jump into the game and get things accomplished rapidly without investing days trying to form raid groups. I didn't play flavor of the month characters; my only level 50 is a force field/dark defender.
But that wasn't an issue before the changes. Once they lowered defense across the board, it became a major issue. Many classes were affected, but Force Field defenders were probably hit the worst, particularly if you had a dark blast secondary. You just couldn't do enough damage to be effective and you couldn't take as much damage as you used to.
The invention system has somewhat negated the worst effects of "enhancement diversification" (probably one of most poorly conceived and implemented changes they made) but then it forces you to do those things that made many other games tedious; farm task forces and grind mobs for invention drops and salvage.
When I first started playing CoH up through I3, I felt like I was a superhero; I planned out my characters and set them up for success. I stood up to the bad guys and mowed them down. After the game changes, I just felt like it was another game.
I re-subscribed just shortly before Jack Emmert stepped down and Positron took over, mainly because my friends had started playing again. Even today though, with all of the changes, multiple respecs and grinding for enhancement combinations, it's still disappointing to log in my FF/DB level 50. In general, if my friends weren't playing, I wouldn't be playing.
If they had taken all of that effort and put it into creating more content, to include the "SUPER SECRET OUT OF COMBAT SYSTEM (SSOCS)" that still doesn't exist today, CoX would be a much better and more rounded game.
So no; I'll check in on Champions Online every once in a while, but I won't put any money into it. I just can't trust someone who is so out of touch with their customer base.
Abbatoir / Abbatoir Cinq
Adnihilo
Beorn Judge's Edge
Somnulus
Perfect Black
----------------------
Asheron's Call / Asheron's Call 2
Everquest / Everquest 2
Anarchy Online
Shadowbane
Dark Age of Camelot
Star Wars Galaxies
Matrix Online
World of Warcraft
Guild Wars
City of Heroes
I think he did a good job in catering too the marketed crowd... an exclusively pve game with no gear for most of it's useful life.
That being said, I don't think balance was an initial concern as one player did not directly affect the others... but I feel as though this was a mistaken stance on the issue.
I also feel as though his team was very slow to fix blatent imbalances and bugs... I was by far NOT the first fire/fire or fire/ice tank out there, but I still managed to join the flavor of the month club and get one to 50 before they nerfed burn.... I think it may have taken me 3 days... and like I said I think about 30% of the gaming community at that time had a level 50 fire/fire before they changed burn.
I also agree with the general concensus on this post that their general aim of changes to the game was in a under-powering angle. Granted this game was one of the first games where a DPS class could solo 15+ mobs that were +3 levels just by alpha-striking... but the systems and rewards were in such a manner that I think it fit the context of the game. I don't know if that NEEDED changing, but I imagine so... still we have all seen the stone/stone tanks herd 500 wearwolves and powerlevel a team of 8 for the last 2 years... so progress is still very slow.
Lastly, I remember being promised power customization back in beta... yet it wasn't until just recently that this positive change reached the game... yet magically enhancement diversification came out almost over night, and I feel as though that change added no content and was arguably the turning of the tide on this game.
Elite poster by 82
Ah, totally off topic but... 3305 local?! That's awesome! Presumably the same clan from old school Anarchy Online? I was in the clan Storm, but I remember some of you guys... Ah, memories.
You may now return to on-topic conversation; sorry!
Cryptic has already stated flat out in multiple place that they will NOT be using the Hero/Champions mechanics in any way shape or form other than as an inspiration.
Everything that they post makes it clearer that the only resemblence that this game will bear to the PnP version is the names of the NPCs.
Hero Games made a huge mistake in selling them the IP for Champions, and I expect that Jack's "Vision" will destroy any real chance of significant future PnP product sales .
Healers in MMOs:
There are more than two options with this (include healers as a dominant class or force people to wait 96 hours to recover 4 hps). Champions, in fact, had a good health point system that wasn't dependent on heals. Also, CoV didn't have a healing focused class if I remember right. Simutronic's Dragonrealms also has a good health/non-PC-healer-over-dependence system. I am waiting cheerfully for MMOs (fantasy ones included) to start dropping healing in its current EQ/WoW form because it is by far the most ridiculous part of those games for me.
CoH Nerfs:
Apart from my scrapper's Elude super-ability cycling from crap to awesome to mediocre every other month (<=slight exaggeration), I didn't care about any of the nerfs. The bit where people could bounce from 1-50 in 3 weekends (<=not exaggerating) fighting ninjas (correction: letting fire tanks fight) had to go. So did the sewer monster ad nauseum. The parts of the game that trivialized the leveling process for those that knew the right spots/builds made me quit the game for awhile. Stalkers in PVP made me quit the game for good. Balance is critical. Devs should get it right the first time but if they don't, they should fix things FAST or they will probably lose more customers than they keep. In my case they should have nerfed more, faster.
Good point. I came back to try out the PVP. I was running around with a group of about 4 or 5 heroes, and this stalker comes along (roughly the same level as we were) and takes us all out 1 by 1. He'd do his alpha strike, finish off the guy, then disappear. It was by far the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in an MMO.
They made a superhero game, which basically means they made a game with insanely overpowered characters. PVP just wasn't in the cards for that game IMO.
I have high hopes for CO though. For all that COX screwed up, they did a lot of things right. If they can change the negatives, and reinforce the positives then this could be an awesome MMO.
~~~ Currently Playing ~~~
LOTRO- Guardian Wrymstrum & Lore-master Stabler on Nimrodel.
Conan- Zoltar <Angels of Death> Guardian on Stormrage.
I have high hopes for CO though. For all that COX screwed up, they did a lot of things right. If they can change the negatives, and reinforce the positives then this could be an awesome MMO.
Yes but Emmert had little to do with things that were gotten right. The core of the game was done by the time he had anything to do with development and Emmert was out of the development process when COH started getting better/balanced.
Most of the things that I dislike about COH was put in by Emmert and most of the failed attempts to balance was at the hands of Emmert as well. Nerphing a game for balance is one thing, but the reason that COH has such a bad reputation for it is the ping pong way they did it.
To begin with, forums aren't an accurate representation of the playerbase. You don't know what most people liked or didn't like. You know what your small circle did, based entirely on anecdotal evidence. In most MMORPG's, only 1/6 of the playerbase even reads the forums, and a much smaller fraction actually posts. That fraction who posts tends to represent a very specific minority with a common outlook. There also tends to be very limited interaction between casual and core gamers inside the game itself. Don't say the sub numbers back you up, either, because they don't.
I'm not really going to go into details of all I've done, but I've played the game quite a bit myself. Prior to I7, the release of which happened just after I quit, I had played for more hours than you want to know, gone through essentially all PvE content, had a few max lvl chars, and I had PvP'd extensively with very high KD ratios. PvP was my favorite activity in the end, aside from hunting down the few remaining badges I needed.
As for the non-ED changes, not all of them were nerfs. If anything, the power levels of certain powersets tended to swing up and down dramatically. Sometimes they'd nerf, buff, nerf, and then buff again for good measure. SR comes to mind for that kind of wild fluctuation. As for ED, it wasn't crippling, either. It did change things quite a bit. It made a few extreme things not possible, but it wasn't nearly as damning as a lot of forumgoers make it out to be.
Most people here have a MMO that they've played to death, and for me, that was CoX. I also didn't play it like most players. Honestly, I think that was the problem with the game and how it was balanced. It was balanced toward people like me. I'm a powergamer. Yeah, I've done just about everything legitimately. Beyond that, I've participated in just about every powerleveling method, including those either borderline or clearly exploits. I wouldn't even touch a powerset unless I knew there was a significant advantage in it. Good = sucks to me. I built characters to win and make things easy for me, not just to fool around. When I PvP'd, it was with chars I had built specifically for that purpose, and I used each respec to adjust my build to take advantage of the latest changes.
See, every nerf that you can think of which you think was stupid or uncalled for, I know exactly why it was done. I was probably the reason it was done. I think that was Jack's mistake. Powergamers will always be more powerful than everybody else. If you nerf to bring down powergamers, your nerfs will only really hurt the regular people. When I say powergamers, I don't mean who somebody who copies a build off a forum or plays around with Hero Builder for a while. Want to see what I'm talking about?
Accuracy debuff cap: Yeah, this is one of the first that hit me. It removed one of the ways in which I could be completely invincible when I needed to be. Sometimes I'd get bored and very slowly kill +5 or higher groups, including bosses, doing this. No damage.
Regen: I used to have a friend who was regen back before it started getting hit by nerfs. I think he was banned. Not really sure why. Anyway, he used to take me around on my lowbies and level with me. He mostly liked to street sweep groups with freak tanks in them. I'll let you guess how many levels higher than him they were. You're probably thinking +4 or something. lol at just +4. This was not even using MoG, by the way. I'd go into what I'd seen done with that, but you'd probably not like it.
Target cap: You guys might not have noticed this change. It was to prevent AoE farming. Some guy mentioned level 50 in three weekends. Try level 1 to 16 in one second if you have a blaster with you. Rikti portal farming, huzzah. I think they eventually fixed this mission, thank God. Not that it stopped or really slowed powerleveling. Anyway, it lowered the target cap. There was one before this nerf, but you could only see it while Rikti portal farming. I'd tell you just how many enemies plvl'ers would get and kill at once while using this technique, but you probably don't want to know. Hint: if you're thinking less than a hundred per group, you're too low. The second objective of this nerf was to prevent permcontrolling. I'll give you an example. For those not in the know, the most powerful control ability in the game was fearsome stare just prior to this nerf, though most DD's were too dumb to slot it. I used to run full party runs on Praetorian AV's. The MM FF mish was my fave. I could pretty easily keep entire groups heavily feared even on a full party spawn. See, when you stacked fear enough, enemies didn't run, and in 95% of cases, didn't even counterattack on hit. If they did, they'd definitely miss with all the other DD acc debuffs. It became essentially as good as hold. The only function of empaths in my party was auras, AB, and CM. I never even saw a bar drop below 95% for nearly every run. Fearsomes stare itself was later nerfed on top of the AoE cap to bring it back into line, for this reason. There are other control methods which involved nearly zero damage all the time on full party spawns, but they become a lot less intuitive to describe, and you'd probably believe me even less if I talked about their use. All of them were made possible by not capping targets. The lower target cap was also put in because of the powerset below.
Invul tanks: Invul was invincible in the hands of a good player. They weren't tough. They weren't hard to kill. They were simply invincible. The only exceptions were very specific AV's or missions which invuls could simply avoid with no penalty. Case in point: you needed an invul tank to handle Rikti portal runs, and they did easily. Even when Rikti portals got out of vogue and wolves in a box became the next big thing, it was still one tank taking nearly zero damage from 20+ +3 mobs in a tiny space.
Stalker stealth: This was a buff, but heroes bitched about it a lot, so I'll talk about it. On Virtue, most stalkers were terrible. I can count on one hand the ones I couldn't spot easily and kill, and I knew them well, since we'd meet a lot. The pool of good PvP'ers in Virtue was super small. Then again, I was spec'd for perception, taking tactics _only_ for that reason on _top_ of my existing perception power, and I would trail the weaker heroes around to use them as stalker bait if I needed to. Stalker stealth was increased specifically because of characters like mine. End result? After the buff, almost nobody else could see them even when they didn't stack stealth that much.
I could seriously go on, but the point is that players like me made the game easy for themselves. Nothing was really a challenge because we knew all the ways to break things. If I knew something would be hard for one character, I'd just take another one. Beyond that, for some reason, Cryptic basically gave plvl'ers a free ride for a long time. Not that we actually plvl'd anything but our umpteenth alts, since you could get XP super fast just doing missions with a PUG if you knew how to. I even used to have a friend who ran his own little plvl'ing franchise, charging money to teach his friends how to do it for cash. Don't think they ever really came down on him.
So I can seriously see why all the nerfs came. Were they done well? No, they were stupid. ED was idiotic. I know the powers that motivated ED, but they could simply have balanced that by nerfing those specific powers. Is ED as bad as you think it was? No. See, Jack never really cared about you. By you, I mean people who whine on forums. You're the minority. ED was based mostly on metrics, as were all the other major buffs/nerfs. You know the weird mishmash of enhancements you ended up with on your powers after ED? That was what the silent majority of chars already had because they didn't build well. ED's real purpose was to even the field between you and them. Was that a mistake? Yeah. But it didn't cause some mass exodus. CoX's numbers didn't go up or down drastically after that or any other nerf. You want to believe they did because that would justify the fact that you can't handle change in a video game, but it's not true.
So is Evil Jack Emmert going to make some mistakes with Champions Online? Yeah, I'm sure. I will probably shake my head at some of the dumbassed things that he'll come up with. Will that kill the game or substantially hurt it? No. It'll probably still be a fun game, even if has its ups and downs.
if no one knows coh was alot differnt then u see . before beta .. it was at with classless at mix ... then changed it .. took 2 more yrs ... but i do like the idea of no at .. with negs to more powers u pick ..
The idea that the forums aren't an accurate representation of the player base is Dev speak. It certainly a good representation of the player base and actually. It's a player base that often knows the game dynamics better then number chrunching developers. And, this is confirmed by the complaints and mass exodus after an unpoppular releese is done.
Going over your list of pass nerphs I generally agree with you about the necessity of them, however you seem to miss the point about the conplaints about Emmerts past mistakes. What i don't agree with is the yo-yo, band aid, over incompasing, amature changes/nerphs that were done for the first 10 issues that Emmert was involved with. I don't agree with Emmerts constent shoving of the game mechanics into familiar patterns that don't suit the genre. I don't agree with the expression of a vision that limits players interaction and desire to play.
I don't think Emmerts evil. I think Emmert is an intellegent, knowledgeable man. He seems to have good management skills and organisation skills (in a management since, I don't know personally). However, Emmert has no business being a game developer. His skill set and ego are to illsuited to accomplish what is ultimatly best for a game.
That being said I am not saying that champions will suck. It will have good things about it, but ultimatly with Emmert in the lead I feel the game will be doomed to never be what it could be and therefore will be a nitch game sharing a nitch genre. Miller has COH making moves towards becoming a better game and towards reaching it's potential. There is already a story arch moving that seems to be leading to a poliferation of origins/ATs/powers and by the time champions hit the market I expect that COH to be more open ended in it's character creation, which is really the only real appeal of champions online.
My dog doesn't like the title of your post and wants you to refer Jack Emmert to PETA for their wrath of doom.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
This is for me, the heart of it all. Superheroes are individuals, not cookie cutter classes. Champions has a format that allows you to create a unique character, with strengths and weaknesses and personal vision on a foundation of rules that work! The short of it is, if you're saying you're going to create Champions online, that's what I want to see...Champions...online. If you create a Champions inspired online game (like say...what DDO is to D&D online), then IMO it fails..miserably. There is a reason why Champions has been around for over 20 years, overlook that fact, and the Devs fail right at the design table.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
Ah, yes. The number-crunching devs and their devspeak. Actually, no. It's a reality that MMORPG forums are typically occupied by a vocal minority who represent only a very specific segment of the player population. They're not even an accurate representation of core gamers, much less casual ones. But it's confirmed by complaints and mass exodus, though! Ah, right. Except that the complaints you know of are again on the forums, and CoX's population numbers have followed a predictable pattern of rise and fall with each new issue. You could claim Emmert has stifled longterm growth with his "vision", but you can't claim there was some tell-all drop in numbers after one change that was any greater than the usual pattern.
I'm not saying forums are useless. The playerbase does know more about game dynamics than the developers. That's no secret. Forums are not always the best pipeline to that wisdom, though. They possess neither a unified opinion nor a body of coherent diverse ones. For the most part, forums are a sea of discordant voices that talk at nothing and are as quick to savage each other as the developers. Yeah, it's a good place to get knowledge, but only if you take everything with a grain of salt.
What i don't agree with is the yo-yo, band aid, over incompasing, amature changes/nerphs that were done for the first 10 issues that Emmert was involved with.
You're saying I'm missing a point about his changes. I don't agree with his changes either, though. I never said the changes were good. I just said there was a reason.
You mentioned the yo-yo. I've seen it. I mentioned it myself. Some powersets got buffed, nerfed, buffed, nerfed, then buffed again with no real stability. Often times, it was the same nerfs and buffs being repeated. You mentioned all-encompassing changes. ED was motivated by many goals, but as Emmert himself has said now, it was too late in the game to really make big changes like that. Band aid answers to shotgun wound problems. Yep, I've seen a few of those too, and I didn't like those either.
My first point was that the changes may have been poorly-done, but some kind of change was needed in those situations, and the motivations behind them were solid. It was a matter of execution, not vision. My second point was that Emmert may do retarded stuff at times, but he's not going to turn Champions Online into bullshit merely with his presence.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
Actually Kurush, yes it's dev speak. You have heard it so often you don't even examine the claim for its obvious logical fallacy. While certainly game developers want to make an enjoyable game there are always aspects that contradict with making an enjoyable game and longevity of a game. Because of subscriptions MMO deveopers don't want people playing MMO's like consol games. They want people to play even after they have reach the "end game" or over again.
The idea that the forums isn't a representation of the playerbase is usually used as justification by developers for maintaining/creating unpopular barriars that are meant to protect the longevity of the game. This creates contention between the plaer/forum base and what the devs believe is good for the game. Now while, yes, the people on the forums are not a random pull of the player base they are a representation of the player base just the same. The people on the forums are certainly more likely to care about thespecific mechanics of the game more then casual, but that doesn't mean that majority of players enjoy being nerphed everytime an issue comes out. No one suggests that willing expereinced Beta testers shouldn't be listened to because they aren't an accurate representation of the player base, but once the game goes live when these same people fight to make a game better, they magically turn from informed, useful, and even nessaccery part of the community to "not an accurate representation." Its an absurd justification and makes no sense. These players know the game, know the player base, and know the competetion.
The idea that a new issue should bring a downfall in players is prepostrous. There should be no "predictable pattern of rise and fall with each new issue". Nerw issues should help fight the natural drift of migrating players, not add to it. The European launch and Villain launch have helped COH maintain COH's over all numbers (both of them have large documented upswings in player subscriptions).
I know I personally know more then a thousand ex-or just recently returned players. And, while there are certainly still quite a few vets it doesn't take very long of looking at vetrean badges to realise how many of the current player base are new (within the last year and a half). The fact is that during the time that COH should of been a growing game it continiously lost players that were replaced by 35k euro players on new servers. And your right that was predictable; the players on the forums told the devs they were making poor decisions and that people would leave because of it. But it certainly wasn't predictable in the since that COH should of been loosing thousands of players with each new Issue. Every issue you would see posts stating people were going to leave if something went live; I haven't seen a statement like that ever since Jack was removed from direct control over COH's development and that's not a coincidence.
Certainly some of the changes needed to be done as in all MMO's. Where the break down of Jack's "vision" came into play was the continual depowering of the player base, the limitation of choices, and the further seperation of At's. The vision wanted unfettered predicability at the cost of everything else, except for the diligence on the developers part. Jack's vision lacked any reasonable balance between what makes mmo's fun and the necessity of predicability. That desire for control (the vision) guided the poor decisions (which you also identify) made while Jack was in control. Just because the game needed to grow and stabalize doesn't mean that the descions made on how or why to do so weren't misguided.
I'm sure COV brought in new players, but I think they would have done better making a real COH expansion. That would have helped a lot more with retaining older players and still would have brought in new players as well.
~~~ Currently Playing ~~~
LOTRO- Guardian Wrymstrum & Lore-master Stabler on Nimrodel.
Conan- Zoltar <Angels of Death> Guardian on Stormrage.
I'll never play a game involving Jack Emmert again. After playing CoX with him, and playing it without him, the difference is tremendous. If he's involved, it's a guaranteed piece of garbage. It might not be originally, but the more interaction he has with a game, the worse it will become, especially over the life of the game.
To anyone looking to play this, I strongly urge you to reconsider. Disregard this warning if you like, but I promise you, he's going to do whatever he wants regardless of how it benefits the game or the players. He is very much the "my vision > your fun" type of developer.
I'm sure COV brought in new players, but I think they would have done better making a real COH expansion. That would have helped a lot more with retaining older players and still would have brought in new players as well.
CoV brought in 60k new players. It was nowhere near what it was expected to bring in and led to CoH/V getting a skeleton staff for further development while Cryptic looked for other opportunities to obtain growth in.
Because the last post was sooo long: those are some great posts Kurush. I'd been aware about some of the PL tactics, but hadn't thought about them in a long time.
Actually, CoV didn't bring in any new players, that is to say any more players. Oh, the playerbase shifted a bit, and there was a very short term gain, but if you look at the pre CoV numbers and compare them to current numbers, they're very similar. The playerbase may have shifted a bit, but CoV did diddly and squat to increase population. Population's the same as ever. CoX does have legendary player retention, though. Compared to any other MMO on the market, it's retention is second to none.
As to CO, I see Cryptic repeating some mistakes. Hiding numbers, delaying Villains, screwing PvP. I'm withholding judgement and giving Cryptic the benefit of the doubt, however. I think they're a solid development house and the JE hate is incredible to me, I understand it not one iota.
The games not going to be as good as City of Heroes/Villains (how it is currently with issue 12.) Some of the developers I know from some other projects and their work is crap. Not to say this is what will make the game bad, but from what I've seen, it's very generic compared to the story in CoH/V. Go read on Paragonwiki if you haven't played CoH/V in a few years, it's really a good story. Especially the Villain characters. The real problem with issue 12 is the costume pieces which being tied to grouping in a taskforce. It's not a good idea. If that becomes a trend, the reason a lot of people I've known over the years left other mmos for CoH/V will be lost. People hated looting. CoH didn't have it, now it does. I'm not talking about the recipes, just the costume bits. A lot of people in the 190 member group I have in CoV dropped it when issue 12s roman pieces were taskforce only to go back to WoW. They felt cheated. Anyway I got off topic, Champions won't be good.
I love your jump 2 conclusions mat.
~~~ Currently Playing ~~~
LOTRO- Guardian Wrymstrum & Lore-master Stabler on Nimrodel.
Conan- Zoltar <Angels of Death> Guardian on Stormrage.
QFE like fresh i don't wanna run the same layout mish 3 times in a row!
Exactly, it's not even so much the mission environments that need changing - it's the goddamn layouts. There are like 3 or 4 office layouts, 3 or 4 cave layouts, mine layouts, etc., etc., and once you know them the game becomes far too easy and feels more repetitive than it is (i.e. CoX is in fact no more repetitive than other MMOs in terms of combat, if anything the fact that players have been addicted even despite what they perceive as repetitiveness is a testament to the strength of the combat system).
If the devs could have done one thing that would have made this game the monster it deserved to be, it would have been to have a bigger variety of mission layouts.