I have a vague recollection of this being discussed in passing in another thread some time back but can't seem to find it now. In any case, there may be a little more certainty on projections now.
I'm wondering if the Plan Z folk are able to better guesstimate when their plans might see reality. My recollection is that someone mentioned a year ago that we should 'hope' for 7 years, but I noticed that the City of Titans people are now scheduling their kickstarter rewards for July - November 2015, which appears to assume an earlier start than previously guessed at.
I assume there are many, many variables in all of this so no-one could reasonably hold any of our Plan Z folk to a specific timetable; but it would be nice to get some updated conjecture on timing.
Kudos to all the Plan Z crowd. Whenever (even if ever) your plans see fruition, you're heroes to us all.
It should take 7 years to reach fully developed. What we did was figure out how much we could trim to deliver sooner. So, we won't be at level cap, have all power suites, or have all zones, but we can be in beta by 2015. Then we have 4 years worth of expansions.
Quote from: downix on November 11, 2013, 03:39:38 PM
It should take 7 years to reach fully developed. What we did was figure out how much we could trim to deliver sooner. So, we won't be at level cap, have all power suites, or have all zones, but we can be in beta by 2015. Then we have 4 years worth of expansions.
that's a good plan.
Then after the release it gives a chance to see in actual numbers and stuff of what you all are working with as far as income, time, player styles and features that are working as intended and those that are not.
Although, I don't think it was very clear. Many people still think you all are aiming for everything in two years, some say it's impossible and say it's even tighter deadline than full scale paid experienced big studios release game in. I think if they know or somehow reinforced that in 2015 it's a game but more to come over the years they may see that it's not as crazy of a deadline as they think.
To be fair, we've said variants on that theme almost every time we've discussed our planned schedule. I suspect we're just going to have to produce what we're planning, and let the chips fall where they may. The success of the game at each stage will be all the convincing that the world will need, in the end.
Quote from: Segev on November 11, 2013, 09:51:35 PM
To be fair, we've said variants on that theme almost every time we've discussed our planned schedule. I suspect we're just going to have to produce what we're planning, and let the chips fall where they may. The success of the game at each stage will be all the convincing that the world will need, in the end.
Yeah that is true but more variants more chances of tangles and list in translations.
Really looking forward to the first release.
Me personally I hope it turn out more than simply a COX clone with new skin to "poke at a certain company" and end up more being that CoT is CoT standing on it's own. ANd even more so, may be pipe dream or too much hope talking that it will finally put super hero games on the map and not just a miniature map that a very small percentage of gamers play and or know about but big enough and successful enough to be mentioned in the same page and same manner on the same level as the big dogs of the mmo world. When it comes out, I hope there is lot of "Hey, you could do that in an MMO?" instead of "Good game, it's like COX in this way, it plays like COX in that way, that map look like COX, that power plays like COX, this is not like COX, that is not like COX, this aint COX, This is COX." and instead be like "this is CoT bringing stuff in an MMO that never been brought before." Kind of like Halo did. FPS shooter and storyline? Prior to Halo that was unheard of and considered not belonging in a FPS. Halo came out, threw out that rule and now FPS can hardly be said without mentioning Halo. I wish CoT to be on that level. Of course that means taking risks, questioning the rules of MMO that been laid down by fantasy game builders that most mmo makers don't question or are a afraid to question. Even COX took the first step and those that played, most loved it. Now I hope CoT take the the next steps that COX couldn't. To me, that is what being a successor means. Not merely being a copy with new skin and new graphics or doing stuff that COX would have done if the engine was up dated. But take their path and where they fell, get keep going up that mountain of "Hey, EQ rules says an MMO is suppose to have this this and that and play like this and people are supposed to team and supposed to have recharge and slow combat and supposed to be nudged into social." and blow that mountain up make your own rules and dare someone to say something. If that happens win or fail, CoT will then be remembered not merely a COX copy but a set of devs that started something. And then people will be trying to copy CoT, and od it how CoT did it and tweak the way CoT did it. Instead of well lets do it this way because the guys from the EQ era said it's supposed to be done this way while ignoring the fact that the reason those games were hits because they made their own rules. And you are not going to beat a 900lb gorilla at it's own rules. That is why they made them and want people to follow them so that they can remain the 900lb gorilla and everyone get what every money is left over. And sadly too many game makers been too content on doing just that instead of aiming for greatness. Even if one fall short of greatness they are still good. But if they merely aim to be good enough, if they fall short then they end up not good.
Never know how high one can reach until they aim for it and break the bonds of the rulers. Look over at the internet, gamers are itching for something new and not merely an update of the same old stuff for the past 20 years. It's a whole market gold mine that mmo makers been ignoring mostly thus far. One man trash is another man's treasure. Eventually someone will scoop them up. Will it be CoT? Or will they pass? Will they say years down the road could of should would of and try to play the impossible catch up later on when another set of game makers take that risk and run with it and hit it big when that could have been CoT? Or will CoT take their opportunity to get it first strike and make everyone else catch up to them and really start a revolution. Like I said, it may be too much hope, but one day it will happen. I hope that it is a super hero game and not another fantasy crew that take the opportunity again like they did in the 90s and again in the 2004 to keep their stronghold on the market.
The reality of it is that MWM isn't the first small company to try and create a game. Most of the big wigs started off like that. And they probably wont be the last. The difference is with things like kickstarter and the vast internet, it's easier than ever for small companies to come up. They just have to stop playing by rules of what is a MMO game or RPG or even super hero game must be and make CoT and then say CoT is a super hero game and reach great success and rewrite the rules. All the games that are in power went through this without kickstarter and crowd funding. They grew so powerful that they have people scared to buck their trend. That is what they want. They don't want anyone bucking the trend until they decide to buck the trend and make even more money and everyone still have to follow their lead. As I said COX bucked the trend a little. Super hero MMO? prio to 2003, the idea got laughed at. Now super hero mmos are cropping up and are considered legit MMO. That is COX legacy. What will be CoT legacy? There are hundreds if not thousands of games that simply followed the rules, and end up failing and don't even have a legacy or even remembered. Buck the trend, even if the fish hit shan, CoT at least can go down being remembered for bucking the trend and maybe have others follow suite or even better, leave enough opening in the door to try it again more refined. AKA going through all this trouble all this warm fuzzy all this bucking against the corporate in speech, at go hard. What is the point of an Indie game maker if they are just going to follow the corporate rules of how a mmo is supposed to be? Many indie companies found out the hard way that there isn't a point and they are not remembered and their game ended up being a complete failure by any measure besides another showing out of the thousands showings of a group of people can get together and make a game.
At the same time though I think MWM know what they are doing for better or worse and all I said is probably nothing new or something they didn't know. But now the hard part come. They could take easy street or climb the mountain. Either way could result in a great game. And yeah there probably will be set backs, mysterious bugs, features that looked good on paper that didn't work well in practice, WTF moments, joyous moments, "anyone see this? Hello? Why is no one paying attention to this great accomplishment?" moments, "Why are they paying attention to such a little detail? Get off our backs!" moments, "Just throw it in there and see what happens" moments , fist through computer monitor moments, damned if you do damned if you don't moments and etc that every game maker from WoW, from when Blizzard was some small company when people was saying "Who the hell is Blizzard. They have no experience in making games. They will fail.", to Sony to EA, and Valve all went and go through. But one thing the MMO world is lacking and probably one of the reasons console games are eating MMO games alive all the while encrouaching onto MMO territory without challenge is that many MMO makers get power and forget all about the players, the money, the supporters that got them there. And what I mean by that is not focus merely on the supporters that are "yes people" but all supporter and all the players so when they enter the product they feel like they were kept in mind instead of getting itno the game to find out only one section of the supporters were paid attention to and the rest get "thanks for the money, but no soup for you." That is what lead to so many games downfall, many that had great opening and great fanfare but within a year or two faded into obscurity. They forget all their supporters in favor of focusing on their personal belief of what the game should be and reward only those that agreed with their every move.
Agh! :gonk: Wall of text!
sorry had to make sure I cover everything and make myself clear. Really didn't want anyone to have room for assumptions.
The original version was much longer. I hopefully with it cut down and shortened I didn't leave anything out.
Once the actual game comes out, I see the further potential for crowd funding to expand the game. Costume sets being the best example.
Being oft guilty of walls of text, myself, JaguarX, one technique I've found helps a little is to make a post that just bullet-points the topics/headings of the sentences, and promises to elaborate on them more later. Let people chew on and respond to the big points, and you can elaborate thereafter if their responses indicate they don't follow your meaning. Try to keep each post to one of the topics, if possible.
I'm not the best at following my own advice, mind. But that tends to work better.
Quote from: Segev on November 12, 2013, 02:05:14 PM
Being oft guilty of walls of text, myself, JaguarX, one technique I've found helps a little is to make a post that just bullet-points the topics/headings of the sentences, and promises to elaborate on them more later. Let people chew on and respond to the big points, and you can elaborate thereafter if their responses indicate they don't follow your meaning. Try to keep each post to one of the topics, if possible.
I'm not the best at following my own advice, mind. But that tends to work better.
Yeah tried that in the past, not the bullets, but when stuff is left out, people seem to assume and make their own conclusions and no matter how one may try to explain it, they already have it in their head their version is right and that conversation hardly ever ends well. So I make sure to leave little room for that the first time.
Some subjects, I don't mind a little battle. Other subjects, like this one, I make sure I'm clear, no assumptions can be made and no room for shill, troll, and etc like words to be thrown around because they missed the point or rather filled in the point with their own version and who can blame them if it isn't there. Thus have to make sure it's there. When I see less assuming or more open minded assuming instead of assuming always to the negative view, then I'll feel more comfortable leaving stuff open to interpretation and more people are willing to actually discuss the points instead of telling me what I really meant or inventing conclusions that wasn't made or at least talk about it without attacking, then I'll move to the bullet point method.
But right now I rather simply keep the peace and make my entire point and maybe resay it once again just in case it was missed the first time and no room for people to tell me what I meant to say. Because from the old forum and even here, I seen how far people take things and it just simply ruins the entire conversation when things are left out and room for them to make up their own negative conclusions.
Quote from: SerialBeggar on November 11, 2013, 11:23:06 PM
Agh! :gonk: Wall of text!
It looks more like a few hedgerows of text, to me. But I'm weird, don't take what I say for Granite. :p
Well, after reading some of the "wall of the text", the main gist is that CoT shouldnt try to copy CoH and be its own game, which I agree with to a certain point.
Completely throwing away everything just for the sake of being different - probably not a good idea. CoH had a lot of good features that I hope will be brought forward.
1. It didnt have a FPS feel to the interface that you see in a lot of modern RPGs and MMORPGs. For example, I absolutely loath the reticle interface in games like Skyrim and Neverwinter.
2. Dont like the FPS elements of combat in many newer games. I'm not a young guy. Dont have great reflexes and never will.
The "avoid the red patch of doom" mechanic in Neverwinter, for example, drives me nuts. I just want a straight up fight - not a game of dodge-em.
And CoH delivered just that, with the exception of a few of the newer TFs and iTrials.
3. I like the voice responses of NPCs in newer games. CoH, in many respects, was too silent and it felt kind of old school archaic because of it.
4. I have mixed feelings about adding enemy combat responses. Some are ok, but after hearing the same grunts and threats over and over, it can get old.
5. Do NOT want pay2win stores. That's what Neverwinter is all about. Paying for cosmetic stuff is fine, as long as its not too expensive. I think CoH went a bit overboard with some of the pricing.
6. I loved the way the powersets interacted in CoH and made the whole greater than the individual parts. Every team felt different, and I've never seen that anywhere else.
7. I liked the way that TFs were accessible to people of varying skill levels and "build level". You didnt have to be tweaked out or an expert at your class to have a chance to complete most end-game content. Again, this is unique to CoH.
8. I like 8 man groups. Allowed for great flexibility - instead of the tank, healer, 3 DPS model in everything else out there. Also resulted in less pressure being put on certain members of the group, such as the tank or healer.
9. Loved the CoH costume designer and the divorce between appearance and equipment.
10. The soundtrack, from the beginning, in CoH never felt right to me. Hopefully they can get a professional musician to create sound tracks for the various zones and maps. The break in music as you progressed from neighborhood to neighborhood was jarring. There needs to be one soundtrack for each zone.
11. Didnt like the war-walls. Needs to be a seemless transition from zone to zone.
12. Didnt like the subway system. Needs to have a map teleport system.
13. Loved all the combat animations. Put everything else out there to shame, even to this day.
14. The powerset graphics could sear your eyeballs. I'm REALLY hoping in this new game, there's some way to tone it down or turn off other people's graphic effects.
15. I dont like inventory limits. Period. Dont know why every game insists on it, but it needs to end.
16. There needs to be an easier way to transfer items between characters. Maybe a large global bank or something.
17. Mission Architect and Base Builder were nice, but could have been made much better. Hopefully the new game takes it to the next level.
18. I didnt like the way the CoH Dev team would implement something like MA,then abandon the system. Their focus was always on the next new shiny sub-system, and it felt like older systems that could have been improved were forgotten or ignored.
19. Each zone needs to be regularly updated with new content/story arcs. The CoH team occasionaly updated zones like FaultLine,but it was fairly rare.
Lots of other things I could probably add, but I'll end my own wall of text here. Just my 2 cents.
Quote from: silvers1 on November 13, 2013, 03:23:05 AM
Well, after reading some of the "wall of the text", the main gist is that CoT shouldnt try to copy CoH and be its own game, which I agree with to a certain point.
Completely throwing away everything just for the sake of being different - probably not a good idea. CoH had a lot of good features that I hope will be brought forward.
1. It didnt have a FPS feel to the interface that you see in a lot of modern RPGs and MMORPGs. For example, I absolutely loath the reticle interface in games like Skyrim and Neverwinter.
2. Dont like the FPS elements of combat in many newer games. I'm not a young guy. Dont have great reflexes and never will.
The "avoid the red patch of doom" mechanic in Neverwinter, for example, drives me nuts. I just want a straight up fight - not a game of dodge-em.
And CoH delivered just that, with the exception of a few of the newer TFs and iTrials.
3. I like the voice responses of NPCs in newer games. CoH, in many respects, was too silent and it felt kind of old school archaic because of it.
4. I have mixed feelings about adding enemy combat responses. Some are ok, but after hearing the same grunts and threats over and over, it can get old.
5. Do NOT want pay2win stores. That's what Neverwinter is all about. Paying for cosmetic stuff is fine, as long as its not too expensive. I think CoH went a bit overboard with some of the pricing.
6. I loved the way the powersets interacted in CoH and made the whole greater than the individual parts. Every team felt different, and I've never seen that anywhere else.
7. I liked the way that TFs were accessible to people of varying skill levels and "build level". You didnt have to be tweaked out or an expert at your class to have a chance to complete most end-game content. Again, this is unique to CoH.
8. I like 8 man groups. Allowed for great flexibility - instead of the tank, healer, 3 DPS model in everything else out there. Also resulted in less pressure being put on certain members of the group, such as the tank or healer.
9. Loved the CoH costume designer and the divorce between appearance and equipment.
10. The soundtrack, from the beginning, in CoH never felt right to me. Hopefully they can get a professional musician to create sound tracks for the various zones and maps. The break in music as you progressed from neighborhood to neighborhood was jarring. There needs to be one soundtrack for each zone.
11. Didnt like the war-walls. Needs to be a seemless transition from zone to zone.
12. Didnt like the subway system. Needs to have a map teleport system.
13. Loved all the combat animations. Put everything else out there to shame, even to this day.
14. The powerset graphics could sear your eyeballs. I'm REALLY hoping in this new game, there's some way to tone it down or turn off other people's graphic effects.
15. I dont like inventory limits. Period. Dont know why every game insists on it, but it needs to end.
16. There needs to be an easier way to transfer items between characters. Maybe a large global bank or something.
17. Mission Architect and Base Builder were nice, but could have been made much better. Hopefully the new game takes it to the next level.
18. I didnt like the way the CoH Dev team would implement something like MA,then abandon the system. Their focus was always on the next new shiny sub-system, and it felt like older systems that could have been improved were forgotten or ignored.
19. Each zone needs to be regularly updated with new content/story arcs. The CoH team occasionaly updated zones like FaultLine,but it was fairly rare.
Lots of other things I could probably add, but I'll end my own wall of text here. Just my 2 cents.
yup. and you see, look at that list that COX added. makes many forget the stuff that cox did copy from other games. i'm saying CoT should add it's own and if they will copy some stuff that worked. don't copy it merely because that is what some elf builder said is how supposed to do. Take it, copy it, make it their own because it works fro them not because some elf builder from the mid 90s said so.
i had no issue with Pay to Win.. I liked the ability to just pay for stuff I wanted instead of farming for it over and over and over again.. And the way I figured it.. people pay.. game makes money.. no issue with that.. I definitely dont want a store that only affords me costume pieces..
Quote from: HEATSTROKE on November 16, 2013, 05:47:30 PM
i had no issue with Pay to Win.. I liked the ability to just pay for stuff I wanted instead of farming for it over and over and over again.. And the way I figured it.. people pay.. game makes money.. no issue with that.. I definitely dont want a store that only affords me costume pieces..
That's not Pay to Win. Pay to Win is where the *only* way to get anything of consequence in the end game is to pay for it. Getting salvage through a cash store is not pay to win, it is pay-to-reduce-the-amount-of-time-playing-for-those-with-more-money-than-time.
Quote from: downix on November 16, 2013, 06:48:13 PM
That's not Pay to Win. Pay to Win is where the *only* way to get anything of consequence in the end game is to pay for it. Getting salvage through a cash store is not pay to win, it is pay-to-reduce-the-amount-of-time-playing-for-those-with-more-money-than-time.
This here. Pay to Win or pay to advance is a strategy used by some MMOs and a LOT of cell-phone games, where in the only way to make meaningful progress in the game is to spend real cash in their virtual store. Games where your only choice is "spend seventy five turns farming (X) which is the only way to conquer this objective, or buy it. oh, and you only recieve one or two turns a day, three if you're pimping us on facebook."
Alternately, pay to win is when you can go into the shop and buy an item which gives you a truly massive advantage in game, such as perhaps 25% health regen spiffs. Yes you can complete the game without it, and in a reasonable time, but it so skews the odds and the enjoyment to the people willing to pay that it damages the community.
I'd say if you "don't have a problem" with this sort of player manipulation you should ask why you're playing games in the first place instead of just flushing money down a hole for fun.
Quote from: Eoraptor on November 17, 2013, 05:06:57 PM
This here. Pay to Win or pay to advance is a strategy used by some MMOs and a LOT of cell-phone games, where in the only way to make meaningful progress in the game is to spend real cash in their virtual store. Games where your only choice is "spend seventy five turns farming (X) which is the only way to conquer this objective, or buy it. oh, and you only recieve one or two turns a day, three if you're pimping us on facebook."
Alternately, pay to win is when you can go into the shop and buy an item which gives you a truly massive advantage in game, such as perhaps 25% health regen spiffs. Yes you can complete the game without it, and in a reasonable time, but it so skews the odds and the enjoyment to the people willing to pay that it damages the community.
I'd say if you "don't have a problem" with this sort of player manipulation you should ask why you're playing games in the first place instead of just flushing money down a hole for fun.
Me personally I see it no problem with pay to win. It's no different than someone with 25 billion worth of influence using that influence to buy the good stuff. While those that don't have 25 billion influence cant reach that level that easily. Only difference is currency and both use their currency that the average person may not have available to them to give them the advantage. Yes there are in game market guides that show how to make a bunch of in game. Guess what there are guides to make a lot of money in real life too. Just as people say that "Well they should learn to play the market and make a lot of money." Why cant they learn how to play the real life market and make a lot of money and then they could have money to spend like that too?" Pay to win, in game currency pay to win, farming, forced teaming to win, Luck to win it's all the same. People simply like what benefits them for their situation and hate the ones that is not in their favor and see no point in it or think it's waste. When in reality all of them have their ups and down and have their waste and really are not so much different than one another. I.E People get lucky and those tha tare think the system fair but don't give a damn about those that are not as lucky. People have bunch of friends think teaming system is fair but don't give a damn or think about those that may not have a bunch of friends that play.
Well now, with the pay to win being like flushing money down a hole for fun, well, that depends. I know people who view any game playing as especially sub based game as a total waste of money, pay to win or not. Some people view game playing period as a waste of time and thus waste of money because they could be doing something more productive than sitting around playing a child activity. What is viewed as a total waste by some is viewed as good worth the investment to another as long as they get their enjoyment out of it. Just like some people refuse to go beyond free to play in any game they play while some people will buy up every single time in the game to ensure they do their part that game have income because they enjoy the game. Some people are willing to put up $1000 or a few hundred or so on merely the idea, while others view that as worst than flushing money down the toilet and a slap in the face of every hungry/less fortunate person in America. Thus some people have fun pay to win some dont but neither way is more valid than the other because both ways or merely playing a game is also viewed by people as worse or just as wasteful as flushing money down a hole.
Quote from: downix on November 16, 2013, 06:48:13 PM
That's not Pay to Win. Pay to Win is where the *only* way to get anything of consequence in the end game is to pay for it. Getting salvage through a cash store is not pay to win, it is pay-to-reduce-the-amount-of-time-playing-for-those-with-more-money-than-time.
One of my goals with CoT is to actually translate this into a mechanism for players with more-money-than-time to help those with more-time-than-money to experience the full game, while simultaneously implementing this mechanism for helping those with more-money-than-time to have fun at the pace their time and money will allow.
Specifically, this is why I want to enable players to sell items on the AH not just for in-game currency, but for Stars (our c-store currency).
A player who spends a lot of time and gets a lot of stuff he doesn't need for his own advancement can sell it for in-game currency, of course, but he can also sell it for Stars, and thus gain them without having to spend money on them. Those Stars can then be used to access anything that is "behind a pay wall."
It may even short-circuit gold sellers; why give somebody your credit card to pay them real money when you can go to the AH and spend Stars on it? Players will thus naturally set a conversion rate based on scarcity of each.
Segev, I really like this idea. I am retired and have more time than money. :)
BTW, any idea when the Toon Box (character creater) will be available?
"As soon as we have it working and enough content for it."
Really, we don't have an "official" line on that, yet. We have very rough estimates, but hesitate to make what might sound like promises. We're currently moving on the budget items discussed in the KS and making sure we fulfill our obligations to those who've backed us in it. The former has direct application to getting major progress done on the avatar-builder, so once we have that done and see how fast our people can produce things with the right tools, we should have better estimates.
Quote from: Segev on November 18, 2013, 09:00:02 PM
It may even short-circuit gold sellers; why give somebody your credit card to pay them real money when you can go to the AH and spend Stars on it? Players will thus naturally set a conversion rate based on scarcity of each.
Yeah, the reason would be if it somehow became "cheaper enough" to buy inf for real money but, barring some breakdown in the economy like that, it would be a lot safer for folks who wanted to trade money for time to keep it within this system.
Would the RM price of Stars be considered to be pretty fixed, or would it be expected to vary? I was assuming the former, since I was thinking the price of the stuff in the StarMart wouldn't vary based on some player-managed sense of value. If the inf/Star exchange is the safety valve, in what ways do you see that breaking down? Like, would there come a time when farmy folks may not have anything else in the StarMart they were especially interested in? Would folks be able to use Stars to pay the subscription fee to the game? If so, that would be an ongoing reason to trade inf for them (it's possible it might be so convenient a demand that you might want to leave yourself a way to throttle it, if it drove up the inf price of Stars too much)
Anyway, figuring out how to maintain a stable virtual economy seems like it will be a strange and interesting beast. I like the approach you are taking already, though, since you are working on ways to have it benefit more-time-than-money folks, as well.
My first-order assumption is mostly inline with yours, Second Chances. That is, that the real money value of Stars should be relatively fixed, and the value of items in the StarMart (good working name) remaining pretty constant. I do expect, over time, as real money inflates, those inflationary pressures will force us to raise the price-per-Star in real money, but that should happen in line with how our costs rise (and how good is our ability to offset rising costs with more volume rather than by raising prices).
There might be tweaking of StarMart items' pricings as we decide to put things on sale, or we decide older items should be less expensive. I am a big fan of auctions to help us gauge pricing of some things. If we do things like "costume packs" and the like, where there's an element of randomness to what you get for your Stars, I expect the AH-value in Stars (and in-game currency) for certain items available in those to fluctuate based on their rarity and popularity. We could do some behind-the-scenes tweaking of effective Stars-pricing of those items by adjusting their rarity in random-packs.
I would dearly love to use Stars as the medium for paying for subscriptions. One concept I really liked that I read in my research into others' approaches to modern-day games and monetization is that of the "microsubscription." As I conceive it, this amounts to examining each aspect of a subscription (including the possible "tiers" for different-priced subscriptions) and breaking it down to individual perks. You then let the players "build their own subscription" out of those micro-subscription items. For ease-of-use, I would definitely want a "standard package" of subscription options (basically, what you'd get for the "standard" subscription fee, but leaving out the "premium subscription" services), but selecting that is just getting an easy package. You can customize it by taking out things you don't want and adding in things you do.
The drawback to using Stars for subscriptions is that it means the idea of a "stipend" of Stars to spend as part of the subscription doesn't make a whole lot of sense. "I spend *150/month (if a Star is worth $.10 each, roughly, that'd come out to $15/month), and I get *50 to spend each month in a stipend" will have people eventually engaging in the fridge logic of, "Well, why don't they just charge *50 fewer for the subscription?"
I believe microsubscriptions help answer this question. We empower the players who wish to pay a subscription fee to set up a dollar amount per month, per six months, or per year, and give increasing flat stipends of Stars per month to them. The subscription tool will tell them how many Stars/month they need in order to have the package they choose to put together out of the microsubscriptions. If they want a stipend of Stars for incidentals, they can make sure they have enough. If they want their microsubscriptions "paid for" by their real money subscription, they are; it just comes out of their stipend for which they've paid.
I'm also toying with some ideas for how to make some in-game currency-sinks that will scale better with the amount of wealth a given PC has, making it harder to hold on to increasing amounts of currency while making the sinking of it an enjoyable experience. The massive currency rewards high-level PCs get will not feel like ho-hum amounts that just contribute to inflation if we can pull it off right.
This may or may not serve to provide sufficient safety valve for currency-to-Stars rates on the AH. We will need to see how this goes, because ultimately there's only so much we can predict before we see how it works. We do welcome ideas and suggestions if anybody has them. I think part of it will be that we're not just having currency-for-Stars on the AH; players can put items up for currency, stars, or even post it with minimum prices in both and some mechanism for determining whether the high bidder was in Stars or currency (if both prices were exceeded). Effectively, sell whatever you want to sell on the AH, and sell it for currency or Stars. (Currency will only sell for Stars and vice-versa, for the obvious reason that selling them for themselves is silly and can only lead to people accidentally screwing themselves. But either can buy other items and other items can sell for either.)
The two mistakes that make people feel anger toward a game are: 1) making it too difficult or impossible to succeed without paying real money; or 2) making the purchasable items worthless by making them too easily obtainable in-game.
It sounds like those two are exclusive of each other, but they're not. Think of the real world example of personal property: Some people don't mind driving a tiny Kia, some people have to have a Mercedes. They compromise based on how much money they have and their needs - the person who wants the Mercedes might buy a Volkswagon instead, and the person who doesn't mind the Kia might have kids to transport and buys a slightly larger Toyota instead. But all things considered, they're all just cars. They all get you where you want to go, and the speed limits on most roads pretty much equalize any performance considerations. So why buy a Mercedes? Because you like being surrounded by leather, or you like the sound system, or because you like to show off a bit, whatever. It will still just get you there.
The point is if you make something desirable but *not required*, people will still buy it. Because it's not required, and the game isn't balanced for it, it's not even needed to be obtainable at all in-game, or at least easily. Costume items, small bonuses like endurance or small chances of extra types of damage/buffs that aren't necessary but are kind of cool...those aren't needed, but they're desirable. What you want to avoid is making people either farm heavily or pay in order to get equipment that certain tasks can't be completed without.
I am curious about how you'd be dividing the microsub pieces up, but I imagine that at this point that would be total speculation (likewise, on the currency-sinks that scale by wealth... which they will enjoy paying). I suppose you'll share more about that as the ideas develop, though.
Quote from: Segev on November 19, 2013, 03:25:15 PM
This may or may not serve to provide sufficient safety valve for currency-to-Stars rates on the AH. We will need to see how this goes, because ultimately there's only so much we can predict before we see how it works. We do welcome ideas and suggestions if anybody has them. I think part of it will be that we're not just having currency-for-Stars on the AH; players can put items up for currency, stars, or even post it with minimum prices in both and some mechanism for determining whether the high bidder was in Stars or currency (if both prices were exceeded). Effectively, sell whatever you want to sell on the AH, and sell it for currency or Stars. (Currency will only sell for Stars and vice-versa, for the obvious reason that selling them for themselves is silly and can only lead to people accidentally screwing themselves. But either can buy other items and other items can sell for either.)
hm, having people sell various items for their choice of the currency or Stars feels like it will confuse the relative values of each (since it won't just apply whatever the prevailing currency-to/from-Stars 'exchange rate' is). Assuming we are still doing blind auction, then how do I even know how to buy a MacGuffin when I don't know for sure what unit it is being sold for? Like, I could bid all the currency I wanted and it wouldn't matter if the MacGuffins on sale happened to all be for sale for Stars. And to figure out how many Stars you'd offer for it, you have to keep track of what you might be able to sell it for in currency (and then how much currency it would take to buy 5 Agates, and how many Stars you can get for that, etc.)... familiarity with these interelated exchanges would be part of know the current value of a MacGuffin. Or am I overworrying that?
Hm, you do have a point about the blindness of the buyer to the sellers' prices is an issue there.
The problem I see with trying to set currency/Stars conversions to any sort of automatic system when people use one or the other while the other or the one is what was "asked" for is that it opens things up to market manipulators to do deliberate short-term manipulations that grossly distort the exchange rate just long enough to exploit the automatic parts of the system. A massive sweep of purchases of 1 Star each for enormous sums of currency right before bidding with 1-2 Stars on something and hoping this will catch the distorted exchange rate to sell for a paltry number of Stars would, at BEST, hurt the market overall even as it gave the desired currency to the seller. At worst, it could make sellers look at what they've been paid and wonder why things are selling for so little.
The easiest mechanism would be to simply let people set a price in either Stars OR currency for any given item, and show histories of what items have gone for in each so that buyers who want to buy something can see if it's available for the currency they seek to spend. If not, they can go first trade the currency they have for the one they need and then bid.
I suppose an even easier method, now that I think of it, would be to ONLY allow in-game currency on the "buyer" side, so those who want to buy things with Stars have to first put Stars up for auction and get in-game currency from those. I think that diminishes the feel of directly helping out players who've gotten the rare item you want, though. Mechanically, not all that different, but something about it feels less cool to me in theory.
Quote from: Segev on November 20, 2013, 04:24:17 AM
The problem I see with trying to set currency/Stars conversions to any sort of automatic system when people use one or the other while the other or the one is what was "asked" for is that it opens things up to market manipulators to do deliberate short-term manipulations that grossly distort the exchange rate just long enough to exploit the automatic parts of the system. A massive sweep of purchases of 1 Star each for enormous sums of currency right before bidding with 1-2 Stars on something and hoping this will catch the distorted exchange rate to sell for a paltry number of Stars would, at BEST, hurt the market overall even as it gave the desired currency to the seller. At worst, it could make sellers look at what they've been paid and wonder why things are selling for so little.
Yeah, whatever method you use to blunt the effect of manipulation (averaging values over some period of time, etc.) could eventually be overwhelmed with enough volume. At the very least you'd have to have limiters that would cut in after the rate varied more than some amount.
QuoteThe easiest mechanism would be to simply let people set a price in either Stars OR currency for any given item, and show histories of what items have gone for in each so that buyers who want to buy something can see if it's available for the currency they seek to spend. If not, they can go first trade the currency they have for the one they need and then bid.
One plus, if you could get active trading working using both currencies, is that you can use that as the basis of a probably-harder to manipulate exchange rate (identifying some set of items that see a decent volume with both currencies, and comparing how much of each type it takes to buy the items in that set). Of course, if you have trading working using both currencies, then an automated exchange rate becomes kind of unimportant. :/
QuoteI suppose an even easier method, now that I think of it, would be to ONLY allow in-game currency on the "buyer" side, so those who want to buy things with Stars have to first put Stars up for auction and get in-game currency from those. I think that diminishes the feel of directly helping out players who've gotten the rare item you want, though. Mechanically, not all that different, but something about it feels less cool to me in theory.
Because they would end up holding "gamebacks" rather than Stars? Presumably they would be among the bidders that would be helping the AH buyers convert their Stars to gamebacks, though. Making gamebacks the ingame currency, and treating Stars as more of a commodity, does simplify things.
Regardless of how you choose to implement this Star System... I hope you do keep it to decorative/fluff/costume items only.
If there is even a hint of something that resembles Neverwinter's Zen cash shop, I probably won't be playing.
One important thing that I hope you don't forget is the community that CoH attracted, which tended overal to be more mature and
much less elitest than anything else out there. Any flavor of a PAY2WIN system will attract a completely different crowd than
what made CoH great.
Quote from: silvers1 on November 20, 2013, 12:41:58 PM
Regardless of how you choose to implement this Star System... I hope you do keep it to decorative/fluff/costume items only.
If there is even a hint of something that resembles Neverwinter's Zen cash shop, I probably won't be playing.
One important thing that I hope you don't forget is the community that CoH attracted, which tended overal to be more mature and
much less elitest than anything else out there. Any flavor of a PAY2WIN system will attract a completely different crowd than
what made CoH great.
That is more or less our intent with the StarMart items, though I would not rule out the possibility of things like what CoV did post-Freedom and having some Classifications or Specifications require a microsubscription. We will be striving to ensure that any mechanical effect of StarMart items will be either negligible, or well within the range of other earned-through-play items (and just providing a different variety of approach).
But an important thing to remember is that, if we implement this as I hope, those who want to "pay 2 win" will be able to. They'll take their Stars, purchased with real money, and go to the Auction House to buy the super-cool items they want in order to be more powerful. The thing is, these items will not be created from whole cloth the way a StarMart item is; spending the Stars does not cause code to generate the item. The origination of those items, however, began with somebody playing the game and earning it through game activities (whether as a drop, as a craft product, as a reward for a mission, or something).
So "pay 2 win" is something I am sure will be said, by some, about the game. But ultimately, those who "pay 2 win" are paying fellow players for their surplus stuff, and those other players now can access anything they want behind the pay wall with the Stars so earned. "Pay 2 win" players thus empower those who are not paying real money to access things in the StarMart anyway.
Quote from: Segev on November 20, 2013, 02:39:36 PM
That is more or less our intent with the StarMart items, though I would not rule out the possibility of things like what CoV did post-Freedom and having some Classifications or Specifications require a microsubscription. We will be striving to ensure that any mechanical effect of StarMart items will be either negligible, or well within the range of other earned-through-play items (and just providing a different variety of approach).
But an important thing to remember is that, if we implement this as I hope, those who want to "pay 2 win" will be able to. They'll take their Stars, purchased with real money, and go to the Auction House to buy the super-cool items they want in order to be more powerful. The thing is, these items will not be created from whole cloth the way a StarMart item is; spending the Stars does not cause code to generate the item. The origination of those items, however, began with somebody playing the game and earning it through game activities (whether as a drop, as a craft product, as a reward for a mission, or something).
So "pay 2 win" is something I am sure will be said, by some, about the game. But ultimately, those who "pay 2 win" are paying fellow players for their surplus stuff, and those other players now can access anything they want behind the pay wall with the Stars so earned. "Pay 2 win" players thus empower those who are not paying real money to access things in the StarMart anyway.
This is something that will need very careful monitoring. The people who this screws over are people who don't pay to win, but are net consumers of the top end stuff as the price inflates due to the P2W brigade. Essentially the ability to P2W creates more demand from people who otherwise would set their sights lower, raising prices for all, and raising profits for the farmers. Also I see another category to be added to the decorative/fluff/costume items in the store, convenience, my major CoH purchases were storage inventory slots etc which were not game breaking, but sure as hell helped QoL.
I'm going to try to respond to what I think are Minotaur's three main points:
- The "pay 2 win brigade" will cause inflation of price of high-end products
- This will hurt players who do not "pay 2 win" and instead play the game
- Convenience items.
I'll take the last first, actually: Convenience is hard to separate from power, entirely. Other than "fast transport," what would you suggest as good "convenience items" to sell in the StarMart or as microsubscriptions?
The other two are more closely tied together.
From what I understand about the cycle of a play2win game, they typically exhaust their playerbase after a frenzy of paying for the highest tiers of success and deciding it's hollow with nowhere to go anymore. If we do wind up with that kind of player for a while, the cycle should still be in effect, and they'll eventually move on to elsewhere. This will theoretically cause the prices of high-end items to stabilize.
On the other hand, the mediumcore players who normally go to the AH to pick up the super-rare items that they just can't find for themselves will likely have scads of in-game currency. They can use that to buy Stars from pay2winners who are looking for enough currency to fund their expensive habits without having to spend the time gathering the grist for the economic mill (i.e. currency and other drops). This then puts them back in the range of the pay2winners bidding Stars for rare items on the AH.
Even if they start flooding the market with Stars and drive prices way up (inflating Stars on the market in the process), this will make in-game currency deflate in value relative to Stars: less currency will buy more Stars, because the players who make the mega-sales in Stars to the pay2winners will have Stars to use on their own stuff, but also for use on the AH.
In short, having in-game currency be what it always is in these games will help combat any inflation in Stars because those same inflations will keep the value of people's time spent earning in-game currency rather consistent. So I think this will actually self-regulate. The pay2win crowd can't likely push the Stars price higher than hardcore players pushed in-game currency price for rare items on the AH. The presence of currency, deflating in relation to Stars, will allow the players who push for more currency in-game to buy Stars for the AH. Currency-sinks will guarantee that pay2winners want currency, too, so they'll have reason to buy it with Stars, and again, the players who sell stuff for Stars are likely to still use Stars on the AH, as well, if they find they have more of those to spare than currency.
Segev, when you start talking about conversion rates, you're getting into dangerous and ugly territory. Star Trek Online does that with Dilithium (in-game) vs Zen (real money) conversion. They have an epidemic of people who farm Dilithium by running several hours of daily missions with multiple alts, and then convert it to Zen at a horrible conversion rate because time means nothing to these people, and they want free lockbox keys and ships.
The more those players farm, the worse the Dilithium vs Zen conversion rate becomes. That's how their system works, via supply and demand. That makes it so now, players who want to use Dilithium they earned running missions to buy things in-game are out of luck unless they are willing to farm as well to get a LOT more Dilithium.
Meanwhile, with all of those farmers, the Energy Credit system and market are virtually broken because those farmers are flush with billions of EC and are paying amounts for items that most non-farming players can't remotely afford. And the answer to that problem? We're told to farm more to get more EC.
So I would suggest instead having a forked currency system where all *useful* items are for sale both with in-game currency and with real money; each mode of purchase has its own price set; and they are not convertible, meaning you can't sell a real-money bought item for in-game currency or vice versa. Real-money purchased items sell and convert to "Stars", in-game purchased items convert to in-game credits. No currency conversion means no inflation. If people want to "pay to win", they can do it without breaking the economy. Farming will still exist, but it too will have only limited appeal because the farmers will actually spend what they earn.
A good measure of a sustainable economy is if a player can purchase standard enhancements plus a reasonable number of costume changes just by running regular leveling-up mission content. No requirement to run special task forces or dailies, or crafting, or any of that other stuff just to remain effective at level. Too many games such as SWTOR and WoW fail that test entirely right now.
Quote from: Segev on November 20, 2013, 05:02:11 PM
I'm going to try to respond to what I think are Minotaur's three main points:- The "pay 2 win brigade" will cause inflation of price of high-end products
- This will hurt players who do not "pay 2 win" and instead play the game
- Convenience items.
I'll take the last first, actually: Convenience is hard to separate from power, entirely. Other than "fast transport," what would you suggest as good "convenience items" to sell in the StarMart or as microsubscriptions?
Extra inventory slots for enhancements, salvage etc.
Quote
The other two are more closely tied together.
From what I understand about the cycle of a play2win game, they typically exhaust their playerbase after a frenzy of paying for the highest tiers of success and deciding it's hollow with nowhere to go anymore. If we do wind up with that kind of player for a while, the cycle should still be in effect, and they'll eventually move on to elsewhere. This will theoretically cause the prices of high-end items to stabilize.
On the other hand, the mediumcore players who normally go to the AH to pick up the super-rare items that they just can't find for themselves will likely have scads of in-game currency. They can use that to buy Stars from pay2winners who are looking for enough currency to fund their expensive habits without having to spend the time gathering the grist for the economic mill (i.e. currency and other drops). This then puts them back in the range of the pay2winners bidding Stars for rare items on the AH.
Even if they start flooding the market with Stars and drive prices way up (inflating Stars on the market in the process), this will make in-game currency deflate in value relative to Stars: less currency will buy more Stars, because the players who make the mega-sales in Stars to the pay2winners will have Stars to use on their own stuff, but also for use on the AH.
In short, having in-game currency be what it always is in these games will help combat any inflation in Stars because those same inflations will keep the value of people's time spent earning in-game currency rather consistent. So I think this will actually self-regulate. The pay2win crowd can't likely push the Stars price higher than hardcore players pushed in-game currency price for rare items on the AH. The presence of currency, deflating in relation to Stars, will allow the players who push for more currency in-game to buy Stars for the AH. Currency-sinks will guarantee that pay2winners want currency, too, so they'll have reason to buy it with Stars, and again, the players who sell stuff for Stars are likely to still use Stars on the AH, as well, if they find they have more of those to spare than currency. [/list]
Other games that do this have a different mentality to CoH. In many of them, I have 3 or 4 at most to uber-outfit. CoH was an alting game, meaning that many people wanted to outfit many more characters and per character they didn't have vast amounts of cash. CoH I at least fairly seriously outfitted the best part of 100. Had the prices been inflated by P2W, I'd never have been able to do that. In fact they were deflated by the use of catalysts and the ability to flat out buy some account bound IOs with cash (which I only ever did when they were on a serious sale).
I'm perhaps missing something, but I seem to be hearing that pay to win in a direct sense somehow deflated the cost of items. (The account-bound IOs to which Minotaur refers.)
I can flat-out state that, unless I'm utterly misunderstanding you, TheManga, that your assessment of "no inflation" if there's no conversion between currencies is wrong. Historically, MMOs have in-game currencies. Those with just that currency and an auction house still see mammoth inflation. As more people get into the game, more currency becomes available, and as more people hit highest levels and run out of things on which to spend it (or find ways to exploit existing systems to farm it more efficiently than they can spend it), currency becomes less and less valuable and AHs become more and more a prohibitive part of the game to anybody who isn't a proficient marketeer (or already fabulously wealthy).
Two things will help mitigate the "dilithium mining" problem, I think:
- The Stars are not generated out of nowhere; somebody bought them. There is, ultimately, only so much currency anybody is going to want to spend real money on, and demand will fall to the point that even the hardest-core farmer will find other things to be better uses of their time.
- There will exist ways other than selling currency on the market to get Stars.
- Selling other items will get a better return for the time spent farming them at some point, because demand will be higher for them than for currency in any amount
- This will in turn cause farmers to make those other items more available, which will lower their price relative to currency and Stars both
- There will be methods of winning Stars that are not paid for by players at all, if we can pull it off right. Sponsored activities and using coupons and offer codes when shopping for things they would have bought anyway, for instance.
This isn't to say there aren't challenges and potential problems to overcome. But part of the inflationary problem stems from the Zen being generated from nothing and there being no sufficeint currency sinks. By making it so that Stars or currency can buy anything on the AH, the farmers will be encouraged to spend their time on the most lucrative of items (and, in so doing, reduce the price of those items in both currency and Stars). Having more than one thing they can "mine" to get Stars will ensure that no one thing ceases to be in demand relative to the others based solely on the farming for sale on the AH.
Segev, I suspect you neither played the market much nor mega outfitted a lot of characters.
What happened:
Catalysts meant you could transmute IOs into others. The most expensive IO in the game was at one point the PvP +def, I sold 3 for 4BN each bought with alignment merits. Post catalysts, the prices came down because you could transmute other PvP IOs into that one. I forget what the price dropped to, maybe 500-600M.
Things like kinetic combat triples got very expensive because of a particularly desirable set bonus, being able to buy attuned whole sets or triples when they put them on a half price sale meant the prices came down (or at least stopped inflating) together with being able to transmute the unfavoured proc.
The effect of catalysts was interesting, the prices of purples homogenised, instead of being 20-800M, they became maybe 200-400.
In CoH farming couldn't target particular items other than in VERY broad terms (magic or tech salvage).
Catalysts, and having store-supplied sets for sale, are interesting since they actually increase the supply of the items folks were after (yeah, technically, the enhancement you used the catalyst on had been dropped, but imo the net effect was like adding the desirable enhancement, at the cost of the one you didn't care about, and the catalysts required). So far, it sounds like Segev was talking about buying items that had been dropped in the game.
I was assuming there would also need to be a faster way [than changing the drop rate] to add more items if it turned out that there was a supply/demand ratio that was considered "bad". For some reason I was thinking of that in terms of MWM creating items on the sly that it would put up for auction at some price (as if it was a player) to influence the supply and price but, as you point out, that can also be accomplished in an overt way by purchases using Stars. Unless you had a way to make the availability temporary, though, you wouldn't be able to stop as easily as you could if you were using the "phantom seller" approach.
On a sort of unrelated note, the catalyst approach is nice in another way, since they provide a way for you to spend money to have a chance to get happy about a drop you would otherwise consider disappointing.
Quote from: Segev on November 20, 2013, 11:09:23 PM
I can flat-out state that, unless I'm utterly misunderstanding you, TheManga, that your assessment of "no inflation" if there's no conversion between currencies is wrong. Historically, MMOs have in-game currencies. Those with just that currency and an auction house still see mammoth inflation. As more people get into the game, more currency becomes available, and as more people hit highest levels and run out of things on which to spend it (or find ways to exploit existing systems to farm it more efficiently than they can spend it), currency becomes less and less valuable and AHs become more and more a prohibitive part of the game to anybody who isn't a proficient marketeer (or already fabulously wealthy).
I oversimplified a lot so it wouldn't take up 3 pages of text. :)
My point was that currency conversion drives very rapid inflation. Without it, that inflation isn't there. The in-game currency becoming inflated on its own (due to an auction market presence) takes much, much longer, so you have a lot of time to plan for that and work with it.
Here's a more detailed (and longer) version of what I pointed out above:
All *useful* items for sale in the microtransaction store would also be sold for in-game currency in a separate store. They would not be tradable/convertible for each other. I mentioned that above briefly - the net effect of the presence of all those useful items in both stores will reduce demand. By a lot, especially if they are updated often. And they would provide an in-game currency sink. Useful items would include things that are necessary for gameplay, but not cosmetic stuff. It will also introduce an effective cap for items listed in the auction house, because it establishes a "retail" price for each item, and only a fool would pay more than that.
At any time, the auction house relevance can be re-asserted by making an item limited edition - only selling a certain number, or during a certain time. But be careful with that, because they should not be items considered critical for gameplay.
Additionally, you can use have drops that players dump at vendors sell through the in-game vendor system as "second hand" at a discounted price. That could be an excellent way of having impatient long-time players feed discounts directly to new players.
There's more I could type, but I think I bored everyone enough already...
I will confess to not seeing how currency conversion leads to inflation faster than anything else, but also to not having quite enough experience with it to reject the claim. I would be interested in the theory behind why that is, however. Is it just that, somehow, Stars are so much more desirable than the time one would spend working for real money that in-game currency is all but valueless to those who have it compared to them?
The major problem with approaching it as you suggest, TheManga, is that it defeats a large part of the purpose and immediately steps us back into it being "pay2win." Selling the "useful" items on the StarMart (whether or not they're also available at in-game vendors) directly is, essentially, saying that the work people put into playing the game to "earn" the items is valued only at $X, and diminishes the sense of accomplishment when one earns it through play because that other guy also has it just for shelling out some cash.
While the same might be true if that other guy bought it on the AH for Stars for which he paid real money, the number of Stars he paid is set by players' sense of how much their time and effort was worth, and you know somebody "earned" it. It's not a "cheap" one for any reason related to the fact it was bought with (ultimately) real money; it was generated the same as yours. And even if its owner paid real money to obtain it, somebody got the Stars he spent on it.
Again, the point from my perspective of this whole exercise is to make the game truly free2play if you are willing to play it hard enough, and to do so in a way that allows players to reward each other. To allow a certain amount of pay2win because there are players who just need that leg up due to more money than time or other constraints, but make even that behavior a net positive for the community as a whole.
The idea to put things up on the AH as a clandestine act of spontaneous creation by the company is an interesting one. I hadn't quite thought of it that way. Something similar though that I had thought of was allowing Vendors (the NPCs) to also play the AH, buying and selling items (from a finite inventory of currency, Stars, and goods) as well as selling items retail. This would take very careful design of them to make it not a bigger problem than solution, however.
I think I get what Minotaur and others were saying about catalysts and how they helped, now, though. It's because they made rarer high-end items less rare, but kept real money from simply bypassing all rarity concerns entirely. I'd honestly prefer to manipulate our crafting system to do that job, if we can. Sufficiently awesome crafting stations and tools (and maybe powers?) will (hopefully) enable transformation of one item into another, possibly via breaking-down and re-building processes. Makes building your crafting capabilities up (even if it's not a "skill" on your character, necessarily) rewarding. And allows those who like that part of the game to interact helpfully with the AH by being in a position to produce things that have gotten in way too high a demand.
Quote from: Segev on November 21, 2013, 01:56:19 PM
The idea to put things up on the AH as a clandestine act of spontaneous creation by the company is an interesting one. I hadn't quite thought of it that way. Something similar though that I had thought of was allowing Vendors (the NPCs) to also play the AH, buying and selling items (from a finite inventory of currency, Stars, and goods) as well as selling items retail. This would take very careful design of them to make it not a bigger problem than solution, however.
Yeah, amongst the ways that this will differ from some entity trying to manage a real world economy is that you can just create new items and, if you need to decrease the currency supply, just delete the currency you get for them. I don't think you can initiate it in an automated way without worrying about being gamed, but if you set up monitoring software and establish a set of alerts for various conditions, you could have people examine a given situation to see if it qualifies. The actual performance of the task -could- be automated, if you had a tool that was designed to let you specify complicated criteria, and if it had system-only knowledge of things like standing bids. You'd probably want to be able to tell it things like,
Quote from: an example of criteriaover X period of time, occasionally make and sell the item, until the time expires or the remaining pending bids are lower than Y. If you reached Y, sell five more or until the remaining bids are lower than Z (whichever comes first). Don't sell more than W items, in any case. Report the effect of your progress in this graph.
Which sort of gets into another difference from a realworld would-be economy manager... you can potentially know how much inf exists and where it resides, and how much is in circulation and how many of each item are out there and stuff like that. Of course, it will just be a ginormous mound of useless data w/o massaging (and less than useless if you massage it badly), so it isn't magic, but the point is, you can only guess about totals like that in real life.
The cool part [for me >_>] is what
is similar to realworld, though. Like how the use of the currency or the items is out of your hands once it is awarded to a player. They can decide to hoard or trade or sell or delete or whatever they like, and your hands are about as tied as those of any central bank's. :) It's such an interesting mix of similarities and differences that the stuff involved in managing it would probably make for an interesting economics paper.
BTW, I would suggest having ways to expose some of the public economy info via an API. Like, you may show ingame customers of the AH a vector graph of the price of some item over the last week, but make more info on sale price history available via API for the numbers-obsessed, so that they can have a shot at pointing out problems.
From my own professional standpoint, programming those automated systems to handle similarly complex situations is exactly what interests me. I do computational intelligence by training, and I think having them behave like vendors who want to maximize their profits will serve well. And if we see behaviors that are poisonous to the system out of our NPC vendors, it will help us identify WHAT is motivating these bad acts so we can correct them, because the decision-making process is open to us.
Quote from: Segev on November 21, 2013, 01:56:19 PM
The major problem with approaching it as you suggest, TheManga, is that it defeats a large part of the purpose and immediately steps us back into it being "pay2win." Selling the "useful" items on the StarMart (whether or not they're also available at in-game vendors) directly is, essentially, saying that the work people put into playing the game to "earn" the items is valued only at $X, and diminishes the sense of accomplishment when one earns it through play because that other guy also has it just for shelling out some cash.
Sense of accomplishment is relative. Quite a lot of people get a sense of accomplishment from buying expensive toys and waving them around in public. It doesn't take any effort to do that, does it? While other people get a sense of accomplishment from working a double shift, earning barely enough money to buy a 6-pack of beer, and sit in front of the TV and enjoy it. The only thing those two have in common is each of them believes the other is sad.
So my point is let them both have a sense of accomplishment. People who play through the content and earn all their stuff can be proud of what they built and spent time on. People who bought all their enhancements can be proud of what their money can buy.
The way that affects balance positively though is the people who bought all their stuff will sell anything they get in-game to vendors or the market because they don't need it. And that stuff will be steeply discounted (they won't be able to overprice them because they'll be competing with the "second hand" stuff from vendors) so those working hard in-game can buy more stuff. So in a way, the people with too much money are helping the others!
I agree, people can feel accomplished from either.
But there is a sense that the pay2win method is "cheating" which quickly and easily leads those who feel accomplishment from play2winning to perceive the pay2win method as diminishing their ability to enjoy the game. This is, I hope, diminished by allowing the pay2winners to get what they want only from play2winners who got the stuff and want to sell it.
Besides, this mechanism allows free2players to sell play2win items to the pay2win crowd and gain the ability to buy into parts of the game that are locked in the StarMart. It also ensures that there isn't a plethora of "bought" items that are mechanically advantageous to a dearth of "earned" such items, because the StarMart can't generate them. All were "earned" by somebody.
I don't like the direction this is going.
Any pay2win scheme involving the sale of items that have an impact on character performance
will lead to elitism, player gear requirements to get into TF groups, and alienation between haves/have nots.
The final year of CoH is a good example, I saw quite a few broadcasts like "Fully IOed Scrapper LFG for whatever TF". I'd just shake my head
and think "I really could care less how you are geared". I also remember a prime example ... a Tank in my ITF group bragging how he was fully "Purpled Out". He then proceeded to impress the rest of us by dieing repeatedly - more than the rest of us combined.
The focus needs to be on having fun and working together toward a common goal, not on who has the biggest baddest gear score ... .
A cash shop for gear will not help in this regard.
Please .... limit the cash shop, if such a thing is needed, to costume pieces, and other fluff items. I can do without the constant elitism i've seen in every other game out there.
Quote from: silvers1 on November 22, 2013, 01:31:30 AM
I don't like the direction this is going.
Any pay2win scheme involving the sale of items that have an impact on character performance
will lead to elitism, player gear requirements to get into TF groups, and alienation between haves/have nots.
The final year of CoH is a good example, I saw quite a few broadcasts like "Fully IOed Scrapper LFG for whatever TF". I'd just shake my head
and think "I really could care less how you are geared". I also remember a prime example ... a Tank in my ITF group bragging how he was fully "Purpled Out". He then proceeded to impress the rest of us by dieing repeatedly - more than the rest of us combined.
The focus needs to be on having fun and working together toward a common goal, not on who has the biggest baddest gear score ... .
A cash shop for gear will not help in this regard.
Please .... limit the cash shop, if such a thing is needed, to costume pieces, and other fluff items. I can do without the constant elitism i've seen in every other game out there.
well it was kinf od like that already between people with billion dollar IOed out builds and those that couldn't or didn't have the inf. or didn't enjoy the play marketer portion of the game much (Many knew how to play didn't mean they enjoyed it).
Seen many times people get excluded fro mteams due to not ebing IOed out or team forming messages that said only purpled out 50s allowed or only toons with IOs or regular doms being replaced (kicked from team) with doms with perma domination even though the regular one was performing in an adequate manner.
Real cash or in game cash the end result is usually the same. In game cash when it's player controlled and some people can get billion of inf in a matter of days from a lucky drop to seed their fortune and you have people that put in just as much work but get crappy drops and thus cant get billions fast, there will be elitism that grows. The difference is that some people that was able to make billions in game was able to feel the power they wouldn't have otherwise been able to buy with real cash while in pay to win, people with more cash are able to feel the power that many while good at playing a game market is not so hot at playing the real life "market". And both group tend to tell the outsiders that there is plenty of guides to get to where they are and thus there is no problem. Just do what I did and get more billin (in game) or hundreds of dollars laying around the house (real cash).
If a player controlled market exists, then there shouldn't be any issue with players that are not lucky in game or able to gain billions of in game currency being able to use their real money to get the goods they want. If the issue is about elitism then the player controlled market where players can get elite level loot in a matter of hours through a market should not be in game either because even then people are left out and it creates elitism just as fast as pay to win.
Or another way would simply reign in the luck power. If someone is playing and one person is getting billion worth of drops and another player doing the same thing, get drops that are barely worth 10,000 combined, then that is an issue. They too should get something for their trouble and their game play reward wise. Especially if the focus is supposed to be about fun for everyone instead of fun only for those that either have more in game currency or real cash then they know what to do with. Because having only one, say like only the market, that is leaving a bunch of people out of the fun factor there. Want everyone to have fun then have to give everyone a fair shake and not few people keep getting extremely lucky and making billions and rest left out in the cold. Yes there are guide, but their are also guides of how to make real money to. Thus having guides or not is highly irrelevant.
Quote from: Segev on November 21, 2013, 09:38:09 PMBut there is a sense that the pay2win method is "cheating" which quickly and easily leads those who feel accomplishment from play2winning to perceive the pay2win method as diminishing their ability to enjoy the game. This is, I hope, diminished by allowing the pay2winners to get what they want only from play2winners who got the stuff and want to sell it.
I think there's some misunderstanding here. When I'm talking about purchasable items, I mean things that are available both for in-game currency and real money, concurrently (but not exchangeable one for the other), and also possibly available as gameplay item drops. THREE ways to get it. Anyone could scrape up some in-game currency too, or be really savvy and wait until someone drops the item into the market at a steal. And yes, I know someone snatching one off the market at a steal will make people who grind for drops scream "unfair!", but they had the same chance anyone else did, and they just chose that particular route.
As for players changing teaming requirements because of the availability of those items? Easy to solve by just making them *incrementally* better. A small percentage improvement, a useful but not critical bonus, things like that. It would be a problem if advanced enhancements would make you 50% more damaging, or be the difference between you being able to beat a boss solo or need help (swtor is guilty of that), but the difference should not be so extreme. In CoH, this wasn't really much of a problem until Incarnate content came along, and then suddenly new requirements were set.
Quote from: silvers1 on November 22, 2013, 01:31:30 AM
I don't like the direction this is going.
Any pay2win scheme involving the sale of items that have an impact on character performance
will lead to elitism, player gear requirements to get into TF groups, and alienation between haves/have nots.
I am uncertain, but I think you're seeing something I'm not suggesting.
The scheme I'm suggesting is that we have a player-controlled AH much like WoW or CoH or other games. Players put things that drop for them up on it to sell. The quirk, however, is that we allow players to put things up for sale for in-game currency or for Stars. By allowing them to put them up for Stars, they can choose to seek access to the StarMart (the c-store) and its contents without necessarily spending a dime. By allowing people to buy things on the AH for Stars, we allow those who
would go to the c-store to pay2win to still pay2win...but from other players. The pay2winners are thus subsidizing the players who put their things up on the AH.
As both jaguarX and TheManga have pointed out, there's no way to avoid "elitism" of the "only looking for people kitted out how I think is minimally acceptable in my team" variety. That happens even without AHs; the elite crowd just gets smaller (and the pay2winners just wind up paying more to a smaller number of a few who will power-level characters for other people for money). The goals of this mechanism are to de-incentivize behaviors that are against ToU in most games because they hinder security, maintain the "fairness" of an in-game AH that allows players to trade items amongst themselves, and provide free2players an avenue to get Stars and the items behind the pay wall by just playing the game. All without creating Stars that are not paid for by somebody, and without creating game-useful items just at the wave of a checkbook. Every item bought on the AH was dropped/earned in play.
Quote from: TheManga on November 22, 2013, 02:58:41 AM
I think there's some misunderstanding here. When I'm talking about purchasable items, I mean things that are available both for in-game currency and real money, concurrently (but not exchangeable one for the other), and also possibly available as gameplay item drops. THREE ways to get it. Anyone could scrape up some in-game currency too, or be really savvy and wait until someone drops the item into the market at a steal. And yes, I know someone snatching one off the market at a steal will make people who grind for drops scream "unfair!", but they had the same chance anyone else did, and they just chose that particular route.
No, I get what you're suggesting.
I'm disagreeing.
Three avenues means that the items are rarely worth hunting for; just grind for in-game currency to buy it from the vendor. Or spend real money on it.
Those who actually find it won't feel particularly accomplished; it wasn't a rare item, just an expensive one at the vendor. Those who buy it at the vendor might feel accomplished if it took a lot to grind the currency, but as inflation accelerates, the price at the vendor will seem less and less impressive (or more and more unfairly arbitrary). And then the pay2win crowd just buys it from the StarMart, and both the former two feel cheated, like they had to work for something just handed to Mr. Moneybags.
Even if you have a "you can't sell the dropped/currency-bought versions for Stars and you can't sell the Star-bought version for anything" rule, you just make it annoying because people start demanding "proof" that an item wasn't Star-bought OR they just feel like you're really trying to extort money from them because the non-Star-bought item is too darned hard to get compared to shelling out a few bucks.
For the items we intend to have significant rarity, I don't want to have Vendors provide easy access to them for any amount of in-game currency. If Vendors do sell them, I want it to be through re-selling things that were sold to them by players that got them from other drops. Or, if we get the Vendors tied to factions appropriately, certain high-faction-affiliation Vendors might sell certain items (requiring in-game earning of just the privilege to access that Vendor's special stock). Obviously, some things will just be Vendor supplies. These are not really an issue; everybody eventually gets them in any game, if they want them. I am not sure how much AH market value they have; certainly, they have less market value on the AH than at the Vendor's store.
So, for things that are not "common Vendor-sold items," I want the primary access mechanism to be drops or other in-game awards (e.g. mission complete, possibly for specific missions). Those who don't have the luck, patience, time, or interest to pursue the right in-game content to acquire the specific drops they want can go to the AH to see about buying them from other players. This, so far, should sound similar to most MMOs with an AH: you go to the AH to buy items from other players which you for some reason can't get ahold of directly.
The twist on this, again, is that we
don't sell these items in the StarMart. You can't buy Stars and go behind the pay wall and buy these items without interacting with the players who won the items "the hard way." You
can, however, go to the AH and offer Stars for the item. Those Stars go to the player who sold it. Now, you've effectively paid real money to get the item (assuming that's how you got your Stars to begin with), but you haven't created one that didn't exist before. And, you've now given Stars to a player who may not have been willing to spend real money on the game, himself. But he can use those Stars to go visit the StarMart and buy a microsubscription or other material behind the pay wall.
So, as you suggested, there are three ways to get it:
- Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
- Pay for it in in-game currency (on the AH)
- Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (on the AH)
These are equivalent, player-side, to having the three ways you suggested (as I understood it, anyway):
- Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
- Buy it with in-game currency (from a vendor)
- Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (at the StarMart)
But from a larger perspective, the first way means it's all sourced from the first "win it through play" option, and the other two methods mean you've provided something to your fellow players commensurate with the reward of having that item. While there will always be the criers of "unfair" who moan if you got the item at the AH rather than winning it "the hard way," their voice is diminished in force and justification when
somebody had to earn it. And keeping it out of the StarMart means that nobody can claim that MWM is trying to force people to spend real money to play the game competitively/successfully by having "required" items locked behind a pay wall. (Heck, this mechanism means that even free2players can GET into the StarMart and get real-money items, because they can get Stars without having to spend real money, themselves. Those who buy Stars to use on the AH subsidize the free2players' access to the StarMart!)
I understand what you're saying too, that you want the price of an item to be equivelent to an amount of "work" in order to get it. The trouble is, "work" in a game means time. Which means you have to come up with a time chart where you have items listed, and the estimated in-game time required in order to earn it.
Like I've said before though, players are better at math than you are. They will figure out how to get items faster, usually through farming. And like anyone who has an idea nobody else does yet, they will use the idea to profit. They will sell the item at hugely inflated prices, and then they will create a market for it by bragging "I have one and you don't". Then when other people start farming for it too, it becomes the norm. Anyone who wants one but does't have the in-game money to pay inflated prices is told "go farm for it".
That still matches what you're suggesting though. It's still "fair" because each players has the ability to farm and it still roughly takes an amount of time to earn the item. But it also wastes a lot of well generated content (I hope) and makes the entire game a new paradigm of "you do your boring farming for a few months first, and then you get to have fun". World of Warcraft actually went and built that into the system to avoid adding content that people will ignore anyway in favor of farming. SWTOR too, in a limited sense, because they want you to farm to get crafting components and craft stuff.
So i guess the question that remains is what kind of game system do you want? One that is fair, stringent, but will probably end up boring a lot of people? Or one that looks like unfair, but has a lot more freedom to dive into content and stay there? It's a design choice, really. WoW is the most successful MMO there is, so maybe there is something to the time vs reward system, and maybe boring grinds are just part of MMO's. It's not my thing, but I'm only one person too.
Quote from: Segev on November 22, 2013, 01:47:54 PM
I am uncertain, but I think you're seeing something I'm not suggesting.
The scheme I'm suggesting is that we have a player-controlled AH much like WoW or CoH or other games. Players put things that drop for them up on it to sell. The quirk, however, is that we allow players to put things up for sale for in-game currency or for Stars. By allowing them to put them up for Stars, they can choose to seek access to the StarMart (the c-store) and its contents without necessarily spending a dime. By allowing people to buy things on the AH for Stars, we allow those who would go to the c-store to pay2win to still pay2win...but from other players. The pay2winners are thus subsidizing the players who put their things up on the AH.
As both jaguarX and TheManga have pointed out, there's no way to avoid "elitism" of the "only looking for people kitted out how I think is minimally acceptable in my team" variety. That happens even without AHs; the elite crowd just gets smaller (and the pay2winners just wind up paying more to a smaller number of a few who will power-level characters for other people for money). The goals of this mechanism are to de-incentivize behaviors that are against ToU in most games because they hinder security, maintain the "fairness" of an in-game AH that allows players to trade items amongst themselves, and provide free2players an avenue to get Stars and the items behind the pay wall by just playing the game. All without creating Stars that are not paid for by somebody, and without creating game-useful items just at the wave of a checkbook. Every item bought on the AH was dropped/earned in play.
No, I get what you're suggesting.
I'm disagreeing.
Three avenues means that the items are rarely worth hunting for; just grind for in-game currency to buy it from the vendor. Or spend real money on it.
Those who actually find it won't feel particularly accomplished; it wasn't a rare item, just an expensive one at the vendor. Those who buy it at the vendor might feel accomplished if it took a lot to grind the currency, but as inflation accelerates, the price at the vendor will seem less and less impressive (or more and more unfairly arbitrary). And then the pay2win crowd just buys it from the StarMart, and both the former two feel cheated, like they had to work for something just handed to Mr. Moneybags.
Even if you have a "you can't sell the dropped/currency-bought versions for Stars and you can't sell the Star-bought version for anything" rule, you just make it annoying because people start demanding "proof" that an item wasn't Star-bought OR they just feel like you're really trying to extort money from them because the non-Star-bought item is too darned hard to get compared to shelling out a few bucks.
For the items we intend to have significant rarity, I don't want to have Vendors provide easy access to them for any amount of in-game currency. If Vendors do sell them, I want it to be through re-selling things that were sold to them by players that got them from other drops. Or, if we get the Vendors tied to factions appropriately, certain high-faction-affiliation Vendors might sell certain items (requiring in-game earning of just the privilege to access that Vendor's special stock). Obviously, some things will just be Vendor supplies. These are not really an issue; everybody eventually gets them in any game, if they want them. I am not sure how much AH market value they have; certainly, they have less market value on the AH than at the Vendor's store.
So, for things that are not "common Vendor-sold items," I want the primary access mechanism to be drops or other in-game awards (e.g. mission complete, possibly for specific missions). Those who don't have the luck, patience, time, or interest to pursue the right in-game content to acquire the specific drops they want can go to the AH to see about buying them from other players. This, so far, should sound similar to most MMOs with an AH: you go to the AH to buy items from other players which you for some reason can't get ahold of directly.
The twist on this, again, is that we don't sell these items in the StarMart. You can't buy Stars and go behind the pay wall and buy these items without interacting with the players who won the items "the hard way." You can, however, go to the AH and offer Stars for the item. Those Stars go to the player who sold it. Now, you've effectively paid real money to get the item (assuming that's how you got your Stars to begin with), but you haven't created one that didn't exist before. And, you've now given Stars to a player who may not have been willing to spend real money on the game, himself. But he can use those Stars to go visit the StarMart and buy a microsubscription or other material behind the pay wall.
So, as you suggested, there are three ways to get it:- Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
- Pay for it in in-game currency (on the AH)
- Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (on the AH)
These are equivalent, player-side, to having the three ways you suggested (as I understood it, anyway):- Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
- Buy it with in-game currency (from a vendor)
- Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (at the StarMart)
But from a larger perspective, the first way means it's all sourced from the first "win it through play" option, and the other two methods mean you've provided something to your fellow players commensurate with the reward of having that item. While there will always be the criers of "unfair" who moan if you got the item at the AH rather than winning it "the hard way," their voice is diminished in force and justification when somebody had to earn it. And keeping it out of the StarMart means that nobody can claim that MWM is trying to force people to spend real money to play the game competitively/successfully by having "required" items locked behind a pay wall. (Heck, this mechanism means that even free2players can GET into the StarMart and get real-money items, because they can get Stars without having to spend real money, themselves. Those who buy Stars to use on the AH subsidize the free2players' access to the StarMart!)
I think in a luck based drop game, "earn" is an over statement and the "unfair" thing is under estimated.
Two people can do the same set of mission put in the same time, work the same, do things the hard way but one walk away with pocket full of purples the other walk away with pocket full of junk. And then have to play the market and do extra farming of in game currency just to afford items that their team mate got when both were doign the same thing. The one with the pocket worth of purps may view it as "I earned it the hard way." what about the team mate that walked away with a bunch of proverbial crap for the same trouble? And just to get equal award must spend extra time and in game curreency buying from his lucky team mate? AKA why is one team mate earn that drop but the other that did the same work, same amount of time, same mission, dont deserve the same drop? That is where alot of the unfair stuff stems from.
Many people that get lucky and have vast amount of in game currency say they earned it and peopoel have to put in the time like they did but ignore the fact that many people have put in the time and in many cases more, but didnt get lucky drop. So time and stuff and earning when put in that context dont add up. It could have fitted very well if it was "do this mission beat boss get this drop" Yeah, then time and earning would be highly appropriate because anyone can actually go earn it the hard way of doing that mish, and get that drop. But when it's luck based, earning it and time become near irrelevant to the case.
That is why there shoud be another option besides purely playe controled market taht is controlled by the lucky people that got the seed drop to makea fortune and everyone else must pay up simply because they dont have that same luck even if they put in the same amount of work and time. That is the unfair part. There shouldnt be instances where two players play for two hours and one walk away with near billion dollar worth of stuff and the other walk away with barely 10,000 worth of stuff especially when the good stuff, needed or not, cost 10 million-a few hundred million or more. The COX AH market in a way was a in game currency pay to win and that is where alot of the elitism grew from between the haves (lucky) and the have nots (Not so lucky drops).
The market would have worked better if the dro psystem was actually do x and x and y and get this drop instead of do x and x and y and one person get multiple good drops and the other person gets total crap for their efforts. If luck will be a big part of it, have soemthing for the unlucky as they put in just as much time and in many cases more time, effort, work game play, trying to do it the hard way compared to the so called "I earned my billions" that simply get lucky and make billions in a day or so. That dont sound like hard way of earning billions to me personally. That sounds just as bad if not worse than pay to win. With pay to win, the persona at least have to go out and earn some money to pay for the stuff instead of simply having the RNG continously smile down upon them and give crap to everyoen else.
Quote from: JaguarX on November 22, 2013, 07:04:41 PMTwo people can do the same set of mission put in the same time, work the same, do things the hard way but one walk away with pocket full of purples the other walk away with pocket full of junk.
A thought occurs. CoH and other games have "streak-breaker" code for misses. Games do keep a count of #missions completed, #defeats, #defeated. Games which can "detect" whether a character is "in combat" could also keep track of amount of time "in combat." These could be used to set bands of minimum/maximum #/time whatever to moderate drop rates. In other words, there were TFs which guaranteed certain drops from a table. Drop rates could be stated in terms of minimum and maximum percentages, and adjusted up or down for individual characters depending upon how often items have already dropped for them for certain activities. This may have the effect of causing characters to want different activities when they already receive lucky early drops and incentivizing repeating activities for those who are unlucky at first, as their drop rates would increase.
Quote from: wyldhunt on November 22, 2013, 08:27:14 PM
A thought occurs. CoH and other games have "streak-breaker" code for misses. Games do keep a count of #missions completed, #defeats, #defeated. Games which can "detect" whether a character is "in combat" could also keep track of amount of time "in combat." These could be used to set bands of minimum/maximum #/time whatever to moderate drop rates. In other words, there were TFs which guaranteed certain drops from a table. Drop rates could be stated in terms of minimum and maximum percentages, and adjusted up or down for individual characters depending upon how often items have already dropped for them for certain activities. This may have the effect of causing characters to want different activities when they already receive lucky early drops and incentivizing repeating activities for those who are unlucky at first, as their drop rates would increase.
Having drop rates be informed by more than the immediate random roll is a very interesting idea (especially if that random roll is just going to be on a flat distribution rather than a curve). The actual playervalue of a drop could be recalculated periodically based on how players have been valuing it in the market, for example. Then the odds of a drop along that value range could be massaged as a streakbreaker.
With that recalculated table, the game might also be able to collect some more interesting stats on ongoing drop value for various activities. If possible, it would be worth tracking it per person, so that it could alert on weird results (which might least to discovering some error in the award code).
With drop awards being the primary factor determining the supply of stuff in the game, it is pretty easy to justify paying a lot of attention to it, imo.
I like some of these ideas. Please do keep them coming. ^_^
Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.
I have consistently envisioned vendors who play the market as well as sell retail. One of their functions, due to finite inventory, would be to look at the market for items in their "purview" that are going really hot in price, and, if they don't have enough items of that sort to meet demand, triggering an option to give missions to players who talk to them about the item. The missions would drop either the item directly, or a form of plot coupon that the vendor can transform into the item, possibly giving a "free one" or a discounted one to the player who brings him the plot coupon. The vendor then gets a stockpile of the item in question, which he begins to sell on the market. As long as demand remains high and supply remains low, the vendor will keep striving to send players on missions to increase supply.
Quote from: Segev on November 22, 2013, 10:16:19 PM
I like some of these ideas. Please do keep them coming. ^_^
Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.
I have consistently envisioned vendors who play the market as well as sell retail. One of their functions, due to finite inventory, would be to look at the market for items in their "purview" that are going really hot in price, and, if they don't have enough items of that sort to meet demand, triggering an option to give missions to players who talk to them about the item. The missions would drop either the item directly, or a form of plot coupon that the vendor can transform into the item, possibly giving a "free one" or a discounted one to the player who brings him the plot coupon. The vendor then gets a stockpile of the item in question, which he begins to sell on the market. As long as demand remains high and supply remains low, the vendor will keep striving to send players on missions to increase supply.
I find that vendor idea interesting. Just hope thast the vendor is more resistant to out of control inflation than the AH pure player ran market was.
And hopefully with the dedicated crafter thing will come into play because osme people loved to craft. On the same token but on the flip side, some people hated crafting and if chosen between play the market and or spend significant time crafting because the useful drop for them never drops, then it will lead to frustation and hopefully it wont be another half done tool that is too tedious to try and funnel people into playing the market to get items they need.
In reality, either the market should be more of a harder place to become instant billionaire within a couple of hours off a seed drop, a rate of inf even the best gold farmers barely can do, or have other options that are just as effecient and fast. And if another option woudl be considered game breaking if it was jus tas efficient and fast as teh market that is a red flag that indirectly shows that the market was already game breaking in itself and needs to be reigned in.
One thing about the market that caused alot of trouble and inflation was that it was a pocket in game currency PL tool for those that decent flippable drops. Which isnt bad in itself but COX seriously lacked any way to remove inf or spend inf on. Besides the AH, which merely just transfered inf from one player to another while even more inf got added in circulation each day, especially with increased farming and buying from gold sellers in order to obtain and keep up with the high prices,there wasnt many ways to actually do much with inf. A person that forgoed the market had no where much to spend their earnings. A player with a purp, instant 500 million right there with nothing better to do with it besides turn it into billions. While on the surface, hey people reaching billions and having 25 billion spread across a coupld of dozen toons, sounds good, but that make prices go up beyond the reach of many that either dont play the market or new to the game. 250 million-500 million for one item is nothign for someone with 10 billion. But given that the reward inf from simply playing the game never kept pace, that made it a gold mine for gold sellers, and or people felt they had no choice but to play the market.
Quote from: Segev on November 22, 2013, 10:16:19 PM
Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.
Getting lots of drops that are in straight-to-vendor (or delete-if-I-need-room, whichever comes first) status is kind of depressing, so ways to convert them to something more desirable would be great. I dunno the plans for having "levels" for stuff like that (or how they would work in exemping), but if it is like the CoH approach (which was kind of annoying, since it meant I had to weaken the slotted effect of the enhancements if I wanted the set bonuses when I was exemped) I'd also like ways to modify the levels of things. I used to have target levels I would slot for in exemping builds (like 33, which let me hit a good chunk of the TFs w/o losing more than I could live with) and getting everything at that level was not fun.
QuoteI have consistently envisioned vendors who play the market as well as sell retail. One of their functions, due to finite inventory, would be to look at the market for items in their "purview" that are going really hot in price, and, if they don't have enough items of that sort to meet demand, triggering an option to give missions to players who talk to them about the item. The missions would drop either the item directly, or a form of plot coupon that the vendor can transform into the item, possibly giving a "free one" or a discounted one to the player who brings him the plot coupon. The vendor then gets a stockpile of the item in question, which he begins to sell on the market. As long as demand remains high and supply remains low, the vendor will keep striving to send players on missions to increase supply.
Something about the player involvement in this bugs me, but I am not sure what. Maybe it is just that I am not sure how it is supposed to work.
Say I am at the AH and I am like, "Man, I am tired of waiting for Ideal Bars to go on sale." When you say "give missions to players who talk to them about the item", is the idea that I would have to know what vendor is into Ideal Bars, and then go there and engage in a dialog to see if she has decided she needs more? And if, due to the game logic that I won't be aware of (or a bug, or the fact that I got the vendor wrong, or who knows what), she hasn't triggered, then I go "grr" and wander off, perhaps to return again tomorrow if Ideal Bars are still not moving in the AH? It seems like the game should be more proactive in contacting folks for help in a case like this.
And what mission would they have you doing? Would it be something kind of meaningless and unvarying like the CoH ones for unlocking origin contact stores? I think it should end up being something that feels kind of fun (or at least not so busyworky) since we don't know how often it will be coming up for folks, but fun is relative. Incentivewise, your idea of getting one of the item (or a discounted price on it, if that makes more sense for the item) sounds like a good reward. Depending on how widely you put out the word that help is needed, you could have it award, or work towards, a badge (those can Placate people who would otherwise be like, "ugh, this again?" without making people who don't care about badges jealous).
That all aside, I really like the basic notion of a mechanism to increase supply when there is a shortage, of course. That should help address inflation concerns. Maybe villains can get a mission to destroy items that are in surplus! :)
Woof. This thread became about something else entirely, didn't it? :D
Quote from: corvus1970 on November 30, 2013, 05:21:59 PM
Woof. This thread became about something else entirely, didn't it? :D
That happens a lot around here, I've noticed. :)
Quote from: Second Chances on November 22, 2013, 08:45:42 PM
Having drop rates be informed by more than the immediate random roll is a very interesting idea (especially if that random roll is just going to be on a flat distribution rather than a curve). The actual playervalue of a drop could be recalculated periodically based on how players have been valuing it in the market, for example. Then the odds of a drop along that value range could be massaged as a streakbreaker.
Wasn't that pretty much what the various types of merits in CoX were -- a player-determined streak-breaker?
They provided the players with a controlled number of tokens as a reward-for-time-spent for different types of activities, and the players could exchange them for the drops they wanted if they hadn't got them via play. There was no need for an elaborate system to determine which items are desirable and how many extra should be dropped -- the players did that themselves.
Quote from: grouchybeast on December 03, 2013, 11:05:11 AM
Wasn't that pretty much what the various types of merits in CoX were -- a player-determined streak-breaker?
They provided the players with a controlled number of tokens as a reward-for-time-spent for different types of activities, and the players could exchange them for the drops they wanted if they hadn't got them via play.
I think that adding additional currencies, that had more rigid rules for how they were awarded, was an okay approach given that CoX was a mature game at that point. They went on to add other things (like selling sets in the paragon market, and making converters available) that seemed to have an even bigger impact on market prices (and so, presumably, had a bigger impact on letting players work around the reward system).
I think you have to expect to have workarounds, to let players address problems with your reward system, since you aren't going to get anywhere close to 100% right, but my feeling is that a new game shouldn't start with the assumption that workarounds are a substitute for maintaining their reward tables in the first place.
In any case, if they have reasonable ways to convert undesirable drops into something more desirable, as Segev mentioned, I think they will probably have the workaround part sufficiently covered (and in a less complicated way than adding additional currencies and vendor types to the reward system). If everything falls apart despite that, CoX has shown they can add additional currencies/vendors into the game later, after all.
QuoteThere was no need for an elaborate system to determine which items are desirable and how many extra should be dropped -- the players did that themselves.
Unless you get rid of the AH, we'll already have the elaborate system for determining player value in place, and there will already be reward tables that express the game's notion of value. The question would be whether it would be worth using that existing player information to periodically adjust the existing game notions, so that a drop which is intended to make a player's heart flutter by X beats-per-second will be more likely to succeed in that goal.
Even if they do use a scheme like that to keep the game's notion of coolness more in line with the playerbase's notion of coolness, there will still be unfortunate-but-inevitable times when it doesn't match an -individual- player's ideas of coolness. Those will be the times when the workarounds will provide some consolation. For one thing, the game will still be dropping a market-value-appropriate reward (much like how I was happy to get a respec recipe drop even though I never had a need to craft one myself) and, if that also fails to satisfy, there would still be the conversion workaround. Overall, that seems (to me) like a more satisfying-to-the-player result than just continuing to drop something that never turned out to be as valuable as the original drafter of the reward table happened to guess it might be.
Quote from: grouchybeast on December 03, 2013, 11:05:11 AMWasn't that pretty much what the various types of merits in CoX were -- a player-determined streak-breaker?
My thought goes further than a mere streak-breaker or merits, both of which set a minimum advancement rate. The issue that I was addressing was not a minimum advancement rate, but rather a wildly varying enhancement power advancement rate between players, which breeds resentment in some players. I'm suggesting a streak-moderator, which both speeds up doldrums and slows down gales.
I do wonder about tying individual enhancement drop rate to player-market valuation though. If a +DEF enhancement is more valuable on the player-market precisely because it offers a large ingame advantage compared to +RES, should that mean that +DEF enhancements should be more common just to reduce their value? If so, could that either lead to +DEF nerfs or power creep? It seems that a a drop-rate adjustment system like this would at least have to be carefully balanced around a dev-determined target market value for each item - and even doing that presents issues.
Quote from: wyldhunt on December 03, 2013, 11:48:19 PM
If so, could that either lead to +DEF nerfs or power creep? It seems that a a drop-rate adjustment system like this would at least have to be carefully balanced around a dev-determined target market value for each item - and even doing that presents issues.
I think issues and the need to be careful are givens, regardless of whether reward tables were based on actual value or not... if that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be so many complaints about the balance of existing game economies.
Anyway, if the defense against +DEF nerfs or power creep is that the game only allows the well-heeled players to enjoy the [presumably] unbalanced benefit, then you are in that zone you can see JaguarX complain about in earlier posts. Based on what Segev has discussed already, it sounds like they will try to avoid results like that... it should be a thorny but interesting problem, and I wish them luck at it. :)
Regarding vendors handing out "increase supply of Item Z" missions, exact method is very much up in the air. It wouldn't be triggered by items "not moving," but rather by items moving very fast at high prices. Possibly, there'd even be a tiered trigger: the vendors won't give out the quest if the item's too common and cheap to be worth their time, or their inventory is overflowing with it. At a certain point, they will start to give the quest to those who actually come to them to ask for it, because, hey, sure, they could use more of it (assuming you don't just want to buy it from them and they can't get it off the market easily). And then, at another point, the item's so rare and precious and desirable that they'll actually put a discreet "contact me about Item Z" note on the item in the AH, so those looking for but not finding it have a Clue (either to just unlock talking to that vendor, or to build a mission that includes that item as a drop, or something).
Quote from: Segev on November 22, 2013, 10:16:19 PM
Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.
Crafting aside, I cannot count how many times in CoX I wished that I could take my stacks of some unneeded common salvage to a junkyard vendor and trade them, even at a ratio of 10/2, for some other more useful salvage of equal value. Just the addition of 1 vendor could have made such a huge impact on easing many shortages.
Quote from: 0nehanklap on December 04, 2013, 10:08:54 PM
Crafting aside, I cannot count how many times in CoX I wished that I could take my stacks of some unneeded common salvage to a junkyard vendor and trade them, even at a ratio of 10/2, for some other more useful salvage of equal value. Just the addition of 1 vendor could have made such a huge impact on easing many shortages.
indeed.
I only have one thought right now on the Pay2Win issue..
After 6-7 years of playing CoH you know what.. sometimes I just want to kit out my character the way I want to.. so If I want to spend my money to do so.. and buy whatever enhancement I want to do that.. I should have the ability to do so if I want to.. period.. If I want to spend 5 bucks to get those last two enchancements.. I should be able to do so..
Quote from: HEATSTROKE on December 08, 2013, 05:13:06 PM
I only have one thought right now on the Pay2Win issue..
After 6-7 years of playing CoH you know what.. sometimes I just want to kit out my character the way I want to.. so If I want to spend my money to do so.. and buy whatever enhancement I want to do that.. I should have the ability to do so if I want to.. period.. If I want to spend 5 bucks to get those last two enchancements.. I should be able to do so..
Yup.
AE Babies agree with you.
I say make everything available the way it was.. you want to farm for drops.. do it... You want to do TF's and get merits.. do it.. You want to do that thing with the cards with random rewards.. do it.. Store bought enhancements.. sure why not.. I dont get all the crying over Pay 2 Win.. I always figured it was PvP whiners and in all honest I never PvP'd so it didnt matter to me..
I mean really.. I paid and won WHAT ?? What did I win ?? ooh I paid and won a Positrons Blast IO ?? or a Numina's Regen Recovery IO ??? big whup...
Quote from: HEATSTROKE on December 08, 2013, 07:44:01 PM
I say make everything available the way it was.. you want to farm for drops.. do it... You want to do TF's and get merits.. do it.. You want to do that thing with the cards with random rewards.. do it.. Store bought enhancements.. sure why not.. I dont get all the crying over Pay 2 Win.. I always figured it was PvP whiners and in all honest I never PvP'd so it didnt matter to me..
I mean really.. I paid and won WHAT ?? What did I win ?? ooh I paid and won a Positrons Blast IO ?? or a Numina's Regen Recovery IO ??? big whup...
If we have a system like CoH where enhancements have no huge impact on overall performance, I have no issue. However, if its like my current game, Neverwinter, where almost EVERY lfm request has a gear requirement, then I do have an issue. I dont want to be sitting there kept off teams because I don't have the gear requirements while Mr. Moneybags has no problem. Bottom line, any game where I spend more time spinning my wheels doing nothing will not long have my patronage.
Quote from: silvers1 on December 09, 2013, 02:32:58 AM
If we have a system like CoH where enhancements have no huge impact on overall performance, I have no issue. However, if its like my current game, Neverwinter, where almost EVERY lfm request has a gear requirement, then I do have an issue. I dont want to be sitting there kept off teams because I don't have the gear requirements while Mr. Moneybags has no problem. Bottom line, any game where I spend more time spinning my wheels doing nothing will not long have my patronage.
Honestly, I think that this has nothing to do with "pay2win" being a thing. It sounds like a problem with the game's design, if you're spinning your wheels doing nothing. Pay2win would be an avenue around the particular obstacle you're naming, but the existence of the obstacle in a manner that prevents people from playing the game is...counterproductive.
By making sure the "pay2win" crowd is dependent on the same auction house as everybody else, and thus what drops others have gotten as "surplus" over what they want for themselves, I think the game will still have to be designed such that there are minimal to no such obstacles to play. After all, if the items needed aren't dropping, nobody - pay2win or otherwise - is going to be able to do the "gear requirement" missions. So we'll need to design them such that that doesn't become a problem in the first place.
Quote from: Segev on December 09, 2013, 01:33:59 PM
Honestly, I think that this has nothing to do with "pay2win" being a thing. It sounds like a problem with the game's design, if you're spinning your wheels doing nothing. Pay2win would be an avenue around the particular obstacle you're naming, but the existence of the obstacle in a manner that prevents people from playing the game is...counterproductive.
By making sure the "pay2win" crowd is dependent on the same auction house as everybody else, and thus what drops others have gotten as "surplus" over what they want for themselves, I think the game will still have to be designed such that there are minimal to no such obstacles to play. After all, if the items needed aren't dropping, nobody - pay2win or otherwise - is going to be able to do the "gear requirement" missions. So we'll need to design them such that that doesn't become a problem in the first place.
Thank You. One thing that I think CoH did very well is that your "gear" or " loot " as it were was something effectively behind the scenes.. there was no Helmet of Disintegration visible for everyone to see... so you werent shunned if you didnt have it.. And also I know people who NEVER did IO's more than the basic ones because they either didnt understand the system or didnt have the time and yet they never felt as if they were substandard...
Me I like to get as much out of my toons for my own enjoyment.. and that will vary from toon to toon.. One blaster I built for defense and mega damage.. another was a sapper.. my nrg nrg I built as a superior range fighter with Damage/Range Hami's in every ranged attack.. I farmed for some IO's.. did missions for some.. traded with other players for some.. got merits for some.. bought Superpacks ( which I enjoyed ) for some.. bought some at auction.. paid Paragon Points for some...
Bottom Line.. there were several options available for me to get what I wanted or needed..
Quote from: HEATSTROKE on December 10, 2013, 02:43:39 AM
Thank You. One thing that I think CoH did very well is that your "gear" or " loot " as it were was something effectively behind the scenes.. there was no Helmet of Disintegration visible for everyone to see... so you werent shunned if you didnt have it.. And also I know people who NEVER did IO's more than the basic ones because they either didnt understand the system or didnt have the time and yet they never felt as if they were substandard...
Me I like to get as much out of my toons for my own enjoyment.. and that will vary from toon to toon.. One blaster I built for defense and mega damage.. another was a sapper.. my nrg nrg I built as a superior range fighter with Damage/Range Hami's in every ranged attack.. I farmed for some IO's.. did missions for some.. traded with other players for some.. got merits for some.. bought Superpacks ( which I enjoyed ) for some.. bought some at auction.. paid Paragon Points for some...
Bottom Line.. there were several options available for me to get what I wanted or needed..
Well I seen more than a few people say they were substandard if they didn't have IOs and seen some people say if one is 50 and not playing with IO sets, they are playing gimped. There were plenty of "learn to play the market and get IOs" post on the old forums. Then when people posted builds after IOS came out, just about every last one of them had every IO they could get their hands on. When someone asked how or what builds are good, usually in just about all the cases someone posted an fully IOed set out build. In a way, although realty may have been different overall, between the forum posts alone with build guides after IOs, I can see how some people felt IOS was needed because when they asked for tips, IOs was always somewhere in the equation. No one posted SOed out builds or bragged about SO only builds on the forum after the IOs came about.
And seen some team "interviews" where if a person said they didn't do IOs or didn't have them, they were immediately booted from the team.
Quote from: JaguarX on December 10, 2013, 02:52:35 AM
Well I seen more than a few people say they were substandard if they didn't have IOs and seen some people say if one is 50 and not playing with IO sets, they are playing gimped. There were plenty of "learn to play the market and get IOs" post on the old forums. Then when people posted builds after IOS came out, just about every last one of them had every IO they could get their hands on. When someone asked how or what builds are good, usually in just about all the cases someone posted an fully IOed set out build. In a way, although realty may have been different overall, between the forum posts alone with build guides after IOs, I can see how some people felt IOS was needed because when they asked for tips, IOs was always somewhere in the equation. No one posted SOed out builds or bragged about SO only builds on the forum after the IOs came about.
And seen some team "interviews" where if a person said they didn't do IOs or didn't have them, they were immediately booted from the team.
Yet none of that was required to play the game.. I loved the invention system.. and I loved using IO's in fact my SG used to joke and say that I loved respec'ing as much as playing.. and often times I did.. and I was a forum regular and I posted IO builds.. and yet NONE of that was actually required to play and enjoy the game.
And sure there the elitist crowd who boot people from teams because they dont have this or that.. That exists in every game.. yet that person for me would just be deprived of playing with someone.. I remember we had a kid on our team who had a Willpower Tank who kept dying.. I was like.. why does this kid keep dying.. I talked to him and found out he hadnt taken Mind Over Body. When I explained to him what it did he was like.. OH.. I added him to my friends list and said hey if you ever have a question PM me..
Two days later he was like.. hey I respecd and added that power and it does make a huge difference...
Now I could have said NOOB.. LEARN TO PLAY !!! IDIOT !!!... and kicked him off the team.. but then I wouldnt have made a new friend..
And again I played with many people who said.. I dont get the IO's or I dont care about them I just want to play the way I always have.. and those people had plenty of fun.. one was in my SG.. and I knew others.. As long as there is a way for everyone to enjoy what they play and how they play... thats all that matters..
Quote from: HEATSTROKE on December 10, 2013, 04:13:19 AM
Yet none of that was required to play the game.. I loved the invention system.. and I loved using IO's in fact my SG used to joke and say that I loved respec'ing as much as playing.. and often times I did.. and I was a forum regular and I posted IO builds.. and yet NONE of that was actually required to play and enjoy the game.
And sure there the elitist crowd who boot people from teams because they dont have this or that.. That exists in every game.. yet that person for me would just be deprived of playing with someone.. I remember we had a kid on our team who had a Willpower Tank who kept dying.. I was like.. why does this kid keep dying.. I talked to him and found out he hadnt taken Mind Over Body. When I explained to him what it did he was like.. OH.. I added him to my friends list and said hey if you ever have a question PM me..
Two days later he was like.. hey I respecd and added that power and it does make a huge difference...
Now I could have said NOOB.. LEARN TO PLAY !!! IDIOT !!!... and kicked him off the team.. but then I wouldnt have made a new friend..
And again I played with many people who said.. I dont get the IO's or I dont care about them I just want to play the way I always have.. and those people had plenty of fun.. one was in my SG.. and I knew others.. As long as there is a way for everyone to enjoy what they play and how they play... thats all that matters..
Indeed it wasn't needed to play. But the image that when new players ask for tips and IOs come up, only IO builds seem to be posted did give an image especially to those that didn't play long time, that IOs were integral part of building process at 50. Like if someone that have no clue how to build a house ask in a forum of house builders that have built a few, what materials is needed to build a sturdy house and each plan consist of brick houses. It may look like, one need bricks to build a house when in fact many other materials are just as suitable. They may not know that it's not required. They asked how to build one, and all the "experts" use bricks, so to them it looks like brick it is. It give that image that bricks are needed even though it may not be. And it's easy to say that brick is not needed but then if brick was not in fact needed then why not showing guides with building with wood or adobe.
Or like if someone is wanting to know what engine should they drop and everyone said GM 500 engine. Of course no one needs a GM 500 crate engine and a 350 or even 305 might suffice. Of course GM 500 users may consider it stupid to not go 500 and waste of time going with anything less "leet". Those are in any crowd, games and otherwise for real. But someone not experience may get the idea that it must be GM 500 or else it's a waste of time if one ask how to do or what is good and the GM 500 is at the center of all of it and may not be aware that a 305 might be able to get them to where they want to be and maybe better with proper tuning because no one said so or even thought to mention it as an option.
And glad to hear you didn't join the "IO leet crowd". Little gestures like that instead of jumping on their case for every little mistake, goes a long way in setting the mood for new players. A concept many of those "leet" didn't seem to be able to grasp. There were too many of them as is. One is too many. :p
Hm. I wonder if having some sort of limited resource that made it so you could have only certain "amounts" of "I.O."-equivalents on a given character would help with that. Not completely solve it, but help.
Call it "awesomeness," and you have to have a certain amount of it for every I.O. you want to have equipped. You gain more "awesomeness" as you level, of course, and maybe that's something you continue to gain through "levels" even if everything else about leveling up stops being meaningful. Or maybe it's something you can get through "endgame advancement" in a non-leveling sense. But there's no "you have to be 100% I.O.s or you stink" because that's still further you have to progress beyond max. level to be ABLE to have "all" I.O.s all the time. Maybe we could even use awesomeness as our factor that determines the maximum level of "enhancement"-alike you can use; spread around your awesomeness, and you'll have a bunch of lower-tier ones for your level, but focus it all on one and you might have one bit of "gear" (enhancement-alike or whatever) that's actually beyond what a PC of your level is expected to have, but the rest of your stuff is going to suffer for it.
This might require having the ability to freely unslot your powers, which may have its own pitfalls, though.
That is an awesome idea.
Quote from: Segev on December 10, 2013, 01:30:25 PM
Hm. I wonder if having some sort of limited resource that made it so you could have only certain "amounts" of "I.O."-equivalents on a given character would help with that. Not completely solve it, but help.
Call it "awesomeness," and you have to have a certain amount of it for every I.O. you want to have equipped. You gain more "awesomeness" as you level, of course, and maybe that's something you continue to gain through "levels" even if everything else about leveling up stops being meaningful. Or maybe it's something you can get through "endgame advancement" in a non-leveling sense. But there's no "you have to be 100% I.O.s or you stink" because that's still further you have to progress beyond max. level to be ABLE to have "all" I.O.s all the time. Maybe we could even use awesomeness as our factor that determines the maximum level of "enhancement"-alike you can use; spread around your awesomeness, and you'll have a bunch of lower-tier ones for your level, but focus it all on one and you might have one bit of "gear" (enhancement-alike or whatever) that's actually beyond what a PC of your level is expected to have, but the rest of your stuff is going to suffer for it.
This might require having the ability to freely unslot your powers, which may have its own pitfalls, though.
sounds interesting.
Quote from: JaguarX on December 10, 2013, 11:34:15 PM
sounds interesting.
Actually, sounds like diminishing returns.
Quote from: Segev on December 10, 2013, 01:30:25 PM
Call it "awesomeness,"...
This guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIzL9zDhKpw) might have some ideas about the best way to implement it.
Quote from: 0nehanklap on December 11, 2013, 03:35:54 AM
Actually, sounds like diminishing returns.
Not really.
Diminishing returns said that the more of the same kind of enhancement (broad categories - damage, defense, cooldown reduction, etc.) you slotted into the same power, the less effect each new enhancement of that type had.
This concept would be more like saying you can have only up to a certain amount of "awesomeness" from all of your enhancements combined, across all of your powers. You can, if you have them, spread this "awesomeness" around to whatever enhancements you like, but having a full suite of purple I.O.s won't help you be better than the guy who has only one or two purple I.O.s unless you have enough "awesomeness" to "power" all of them. If you both have the same amount of "awesomeness" and he's got two fully-powered purple I.O.s and is fully spending his awesomeness on his other enhancements of lesser (but still roughly level-appropriate) quality, and you have a full suite of purple I.O.s, all this really gives you is more freedom to choose
which two purple I.O.s you'll use. You still only can fully power two. Or maybe 3, if you use practically nothing of roughly level-appropriate power for your other enhancements.
World of Warcraft has something similar to that. It's called Gear Level or Armor Level or something like that, and it can only be raised by obtaining higher level gear (through raids, grinding through boring content, etc). While the gear level itself does not limit what kind of gear you can use directly, it still kind of does - because there's a minimum gear level for the content you need to get better gear.
And there lies the problem with that. People were just complaining above about the problem of teams restricting who can join by what enhancements they have. If you add a statistic like that, you're making it even easier for them to do so (in WoW it's pretty commom for teams to restrict teammates by gear level - often a higher one than is required).
What you could do instead is make it so the standard enhancements that drop in the game will benefit from "awesomeness" but the crafted or real money purchased ones will not. That's how you balance the game so the advanced enhancements can either be purchased or earned. You can either spend a ton of in-game or real money building/buying the enhancements and get an early jump, or you can do loads of content and missions and get a similar boost for free...eventually. And no one in the game will know which path you took to get there unless you tell them. Of course advanced enhancements can have different boosts than can be earned, but overall you can become just as powerful without the crafting/spending real money.
Quote from: silvers1 on December 09, 2013, 02:32:58 AMIf we have a system like CoH where enhancements have no huge impact on overall performance, I have no issue.
Uh... enhancements certainly, very definitely did. I figure even my cheap Frankenslotted builds doubled character effectiveness relative to SOs, and the top-tier builds were enormously more effective; whatever you did with SOs, blasters were squishies, but IOs could turn them into tank-mages - you'll find people on these very forums talking about how they'd survive teamwipes on 8-hero teams, and advocating strongly that being able to grind out that sort of munchkin build is a good thing.
I think it's a fundamental question for any of the successor projects; will that be possible, or will you get some sort of diminishing-returns effect where the game will always be challenging? Sadly, I suspect the market favours the former.
Quote from: thunderforce on December 11, 2013, 04:31:46 PM
Uh... enhancements certainly, very definitely did. I figure even my cheap Frankenslotted builds doubled character effectiveness relative to SOs, and the top-tier builds were enormously more effective; whatever you did with SOs, blasters were squishies, but IOs could turn them into tank-mages - you'll find people on these very forums talking about how they'd survive teamwipes on 8-hero teams, and advocating strongly that being able to grind out that sort of munchkin build is a good thing.
I think it's a fundamental question for any of the successor projects; will that be possible, or will you get some sort of diminishing-returns effect where the game will always be challenging? Sadly, I suspect the market favours the former.
Indeed.
IO's had the rule of five.. you couldn't get more than five of the same type of buff across enhancements..
I think people forget what this game was like BEFORE ED... I was here.. Tanks herding an entire map and never coming to within an inch of dying.. Blasters wiping out entire mobs because they were five slotted for damage in every attack.. Build up and Aim... my Snipe could kill a boss in ONE shot..
ED changed that.. and they changed it because they knew IOs were coming down the line.. and that would have totally completely broken the game..
Personally I have no issue whatsoever if someone wants to make their toon an uber tank mage..
Is surviving an 8 man team wipe a function of an uber IO tank mage build.. or is it a function of being smart... Its a SUPER Hero game.. There should be a point where I feel SUPER..
If you want the game to be challenging then crank it up to a difficulty level that suits you.. fight +7 foes if you want. Not everyone wants or enjoys that..
Personally speaking for myself I built lots of IO'd out toons.. I made some pretty incredible builds IMO.. as good as others.. no.. but fun for me.. I liked being able to Permadom my Dominators.. or Build a Tank with Perma Dull Pain.. for me that was as much fun as playing the game itself.. I loved tinkering with builds and trying to find ways to make something a little better.. if a game doesnt allow me to do that.. then I simply wont be interested in the long run..
And yes.. I used the market.. i didnt PLAY the market as some said.. I sold what I didnt need.. bought what I wanted.. sometimes I used Merits.. sometimes I used Paragon Points.. sometimes I used real world money to buy the enhancement I wanted..
My point I guess is this.. why does someone else care how someone gets their enhancements or builds their toon. Why is there this thing always in games where there seems to be a faction that wants to make you EARN the right to have what you have?
I played CoH since two months after launch.. I paid my subscription every month for over 8 years and I never gave a crap if some guy who didnt play as long as I did had some uber tank mage build..
That just has always struck me as odd..
Quote from: Segev on November 21, 2013, 09:38:09 PM
But there is a sense that the pay2win method is "cheating" which quickly and easily leads those who feel accomplishment from play2winning to perceive the pay2win method as diminishing their ability to enjoy the game.
This may not be relevant to where the thread is now, but I have to share about pay2win. For me personally, it's not a big deal in PvE. It becomes a big deal in PvP. In Star Trek Online, they foolishly did not separate PvP and PvE powers (for the most part - there was one before I stopped playing that did different damage to players than NPCs). This isn't a huge issue, but it became one when the store opened up.
The PvE players bought things that made them really good in PvE, which isn't an issue - but when they were purchased by PvP players, they became the
must have items. Against NPCs, who cares? But in PvP, which should theoretically be as even a playing field as possible where gear is concerned, you ended up with people who had money buying items that allowed them to dominate. So the resentment against pay2win is
very real in that context.
Additionally, the fact that some items were so overpowered / broken in PvP (because they created an uneven playing field) led to them getting "nerfed". So then the PvE players got the impression that the PvPers were causing nerfs to their fun NPC-killing toys, and it created an artificial divide and dislike between the two groups of players.
Quote from: Felderburg on December 12, 2013, 06:36:00 AM
This may not be relevant to where the thread is now, but I have to share about pay2win. For me personally, it's not a big deal in PvE. It becomes a big deal in PvP. In Star Trek Online, they foolishly did not separate PvP and PvE powers (for the most part - there was one before I stopped playing that did different damage to players than NPCs). This isn't a huge issue, but it became one when the store opened up.
The PvE players bought things that made them really good in PvE, which isn't an issue - but when they were purchased by PvP players, they became the must have items. Against NPCs, who cares? But in PvP, which should theoretically be as even a playing field as possible where gear is concerned, you ended up with people who had money buying items that allowed them to dominate. So the resentment against pay2win is very real in that context.
Additionally, the fact that some items were so overpowered / broken in PvP (because they created an uneven playing field) led to them getting "nerfed". So then the PvE players got the impression that the PvPers were causing nerfs to their fun NPC-killing toys, and it created an artificial divide and dislike between the two groups of players.
yup. unfortunately so for pvp. So then IOs ended up as being viewed as needed to compete in pvp. yeah yeah, a person can beat up a dude that is armed with a machine gun with homing bullets with a sppon, but equal skill, it's undeniable that IOs had upper hand. And to get those IOs one either had to have billions of influence, get lucky or farm a lot even if one used merits and alignment token. Only a certain amount of alignment tokens could be used a day and thus it could take 4-5 days min to get one decent item and longer for better ones compared to market, get one purple and make billions in a day. Or simply buy from gold seller, and say it was hard work and smart market playing so no one gets suspicious of how one went from a few million to 25 billion each toon across 5 servers within 1 day. Either way, given that one either had to use real cash or lot of in game currency, it is still was pay2win in a way or else take the long road or win lottery. The only difference is one is using the success or luck of in game currency or the success or real world currency. If one is allowed the other should be allowed. As they both equally create elitism and a chasm between the has and has nots.
Of course in game currency people say "Play the market and make some money. Then they can buy the items they want guess what, the same can be said with real life currency. "Play the real market and make some money. Then they can buy the items they want."
Neither way is not better than the other it's still pay2win and haves vs have nots. Just different currency. And well the real world in most economies have way better inflation control.
It seems mostly a case of I have no real money but plenty of in game currency so real money purchase shouldn't be used scenario. AKA, they simply want to keep the advantage and down the other way when in reality they are no better nor worse than any other form of pay2win method and have created the same effect that they claim pay2win creates.
Quote from: HEATSTROKE on December 12, 2013, 06:00:37 AMI think people forget what this game was like BEFORE ED...
I started playing shortly after EU release, so no, I haven't. For all the howls of protest, I thought ED and the accompanying nerfs to defences were generally a good thing, and that the balance of the game was best between ED and IOs.
QuoteIs surviving an 8 man team wipe a function of an uber IO tank mage build.. or is it a function of being smart...
Well, it depends. If I had the sense to break for the stairs when it dropped in the pot, maybe the latter. If my blaster is just left standing there when the tanker has dropped, it's just grind.
QuoteIts a SUPER Hero game.. There should be a point where I feel SUPER..
I never bought this argument for rampant munchkinism. Comics heroes, no matter how super they are, face opponents that challenge them.
QuoteIf you want the game to be challenging then crank it up to a difficulty level that suits you..
A marvellous idea for a game in which one never is in a team with other people, or trying to have a fair PVP match against them.
QuoteI loved tinkering with builds and trying to find ways to make something a little better.. if a game doesnt allow me to do that.. then I simply wont be interested in the long run..
Then why did you play the game from before ED until the introduction of IOs?
ED was necessary the way they implemented IOs, but I thought had they rigged the enhancement bonuses a little differently it could have been avoided. If you had to trade off set bonuses against the value of enhancement rather than the sets almost all providing more than the ED cap anyway, it could have been interesting without.
The only things I six slotted prior to ED were stamina and health.
After ED, had to slot lots more endurance reducers just to be able to play at a decent speed.
The upside to having a finite pool of "awesome points" that is "spent" on slotting more "awesome" enhancement-equivalents is that we could avoid needing diminishing returns, because max-slotting the same thing will mean you have less "awesome points" to devote to other considerations.
The downside to this approach is that somebody absolutely could min/max to have all of the - say - increased damage he wanted, fully maxed out, on his one super-duper power. He would be as powerful as any pre-ED character on that one power. He might have crap enhancement-equivalents on everything else, but he'd have that one at potentially game-breaker levels. (The epitome of the glass cannon.)
There might be ways to work trade-offs into even this to make it less of a problem, but it's the first-order issue I can see potentially arising from this mechanic.
Quote from: Segev on December 13, 2013, 04:08:25 PM
The upside to having a finite pool of "awesome points" that is "spent" on slotting more "awesome" enhancement-equivalents is that we could avoid needing diminishing returns, because max-slotting the same thing will mean you have less "awesome points" to devote to other considerations.
The downside to this approach is that somebody absolutely could min/max to have all of the - say - increased damage he wanted, fully maxed out, on his one super-duper power. He would be as powerful as any pre-ED character on that one power. He might have crap enhancement-equivalents on everything else, but he'd have that one at potentially game-breaker levels. (The epitome of the glass cannon.)
There might be ways to work trade-offs into even this to make it less of a problem, but it's the first-order issue I can see potentially arising from this mechanic.
You could just have a very simple mechanism where you have Awesome Points (based on level) and Awesome Load (based on how many rare IOs are slotted), and if your Load > Points, you just lower the effectiveness of the rare IOs (only) by a factor based on the ratio.
Simple example would be that at Level 50 you have 50 APs... a highly-stacked character with lots of Purples and rare IOs (say, a Posi Blast dual is 1/4 AP, but a Posi Blast proc is 3/4, a Purple dual is 1 but a Purple proc is 2) has a loadout with 80 total APs. Then, his rare IOs (the ones with a AP cost >0) have their effectiveness (enhancement level, chance to proc, etc) multiplied by 50/80.
You could insert a similar system where "subpar slots", like empty slots or slots with a level 15 standard IO when the character is level 40, get basic bonuses to all applicable enhancement options, with the bonuses getting larger as the character is more and more "in the red" with his slotting. That shouldn't affect any serious player, but it would give a reasonable boost to a character played by someone who doesn't know how to slot his powers, and noobies certainly could use the help.
I think I should point out that purple sets were not the be-all, end-all of the game in all circumstances. If you were trying to reach the defense softcap, you wanted to stay as far away from them as possible because none of them provided a global defense bonus. In fact, some uncommon sets offered better +def bonuses than rare sets of the same kind/level range.
As we all know, there was never any problem with uncommon and rare recipes dropping.
My first character got to level 50 and T4'd all his incarnate powers save Hybrid-- and that was only because by the time Hybrid rolled around, he was no longer my main-- on plain vanilla IOs. After I learned of the goodness that was the MFing Warshade, I made an effort to purple my Warshade out and succeeded.
Not only wasn't it impossible, it didn't even take long. I tended toward characters that could take down large numbers of minions with minimal risk. With the Alpha Slot level shift, at level 50 that was painfully easy, as even-level mobs were now blue to you.
A character that excelled at single-target damage, however, wouldn't find that easy. That's what alts are for. Nobody said you had to play only one character.
We never really got a chance to see the long-term effects enhancement converters had on the market, especially with regard to purples, but if you were smart, you could buy the entire purple stun set-- Absolute Amazement-- extremely cheaply (relative to other purple prices, of course). Then you could play converter roulette and pocket hefty profits on WW, which you would obviously leverage into buying the sets you actually wanted. I was actually in the process of purpling out a few other characters this way before the shutdown announcement.
But even without converter roulette (which wasn't that costly a proposition given that a level 50 could get them from even level 1 mobs)? Just about any uncommon or rare recipe you didn't need, you could sell to someone else via WW for more than a vendor would buy it. Coupled with level 50 inf drops, staying inf poor and reaching the inf cap of 2 billion were of about equal difficulty.
So in my opinion a lot of the disdain for luck mechanics is only so much bizarre whining. Luck only goes so far if you don't know what the hell you're doing in the first place. A competent player who set goals for a character in CoX could reach them. I wouldn't require much more than that (and worthwhile goals, of course) to enjoy a new game.
(That and flight. Gotta be able to fly.)
Pinnacle Blue, I'm exactly the kind of incompetent player you would hate. :)
But I didn't reply to single you out - you brought up a point that I feel is important, and I'd like to expand a bit.
When you create a game with a high degree of complication, that requires a lot of technical skill and research to succeed; or at the very least requires it to prevent being mocked and shunned by other players; people like me will hate playing it.
I don't really care if some players are better at it than I am. What disturbs me is when those players start purposely restricting what I'm allowed to do because I didn't do something way back at level 5 that only those who read some obscure wiki page know to do, and therefore I don't deserve to play this game (that actually happened to me in SWTOR).
Creating a game that caters strongly to those types of players will eventually drive off all the casual players who don't need a 2nd full tine job. Kind of like EVE Online did.
Quote from: TheManga on December 13, 2013, 08:42:47 PM
Pinnacle Blue, I'm exactly the kind of incompetent player you would hate. :)
I doubt it. :P
QuoteBut I didn't reply to single you out - you brought up a point that I feel is important, and I'd like to expand a bit.
When you create a game with a high degree of complication, that requires a lot of technical skill and research to succeed; or at the very least requires it to prevent being mocked and shunned by other players; people like me will hate playing it.
I don't really care if some players are better at it than I am. What disturbs me is when those players start purposely restricting what I'm allowed to do because I didn't do something way back at level 5 that only those who read some obscure wiki page know to do, and therefore I don't deserve to play this game (that actually happened to me in SWTOR).
Creating a game that caters strongly to those types of players will eventually drive off all the casual players who don't need a 2nd full tine job. Kind of like EVE Online did.
In CoX there were basically two extremes: the min/max-ers, and the people who shunned IOs completely. Between those two extremes, however, was
a whole continuum of players. I hardly considered myself to be anywhere near elite, FWIW, and I never once required anyone to have a certain build or set of bonuses to join anything I ran-- just to know what the hell you were doing with your character. (And even that was a loose requirement, because I never kicked anyone off a team for any reason besides blatant leeching.)
My point is that
you could still be damn good at playing your character without a single purple set or min/maxing. You probably weren't gonna solo an AV but who cares? That's what teams were for. As I understand EVE, if you don't min/max you'll be toast (and you can probably get just as much enjoyment out of opening up Excel and moving numbers around).
Thank you... not every toon I ever made had purples.. in fact some had little to no IO sets at all and played perfectly fine.. but if I wanted to do so I had the ABILITY to do it..
Quote from: TheManga on December 13, 2013, 08:42:47 PM
When you create a game with a high degree of complication, that requires a lot of technical skill and research to succeed; or at the very least requires it to prevent being mocked and shunned by other players; people like me will hate playing it.
I don't really care if some players are better at it than I am. What disturbs me is when those players start purposely restricting what I'm allowed to do because I didn't do something way back at level 5 that only those who read some obscure wiki page know to do, and therefore I don't deserve to play this game (that actually happened to me in SWTOR).
While I'm sure that it happened in CoH, on occasion, I can say that I played since the tail end of Issue 1 until Issue 16... and I don't recall of a single instance where any character was booted or told off for not being properly built or equipped. Now, for playing like an idiot, that happened... but in CoH, the difference between a very well equipped character and a poorly equipped character was a lot less than in basically any other popular game. Yes, it got very complicated at the end, but you did not need to be a major character designer in Mids to be a useful and desirable member of any normal group.
One thing to be cautious of in making declarations about mechanics - hypothetical or otherwise - is to make sure you identify whether the mechanic is actually the source of the problem, or merely the scapegoat. It is true that anything which has a sliding scale of effectiveness is going to mean that those with the highest-tier things in that scale will be better, mechanically, than those without. The degree of this slide will do a lot to determine how "must-have" the highest-tier stuff will be, just as the degree of effectiveness of a given build can determine how essential choosing an optimal one is.
At the same time, however, that is no reason to refuse to have a sliding scale; the whole point behind certain aspects of gameplay is to "get better stuff" so you can have bigger numbers or get cooler tricks. It's the reward system that people expect in MMOs. No matter how much we might want to include attention to other sub-games people play with our product, it would be foolish to ignore this aspect of gameplay, so central to the connotation of "MMO." I'm not advocating making a grind-fest, here, but I am saying that swinging so far away from it that you reject the core formula entirely is foolish.
As long as any "this is subjectively better than that" is present in a game, you WILL have players who settle into a kind of elitism over it. Whether their subjective "best" is accurate objectively or not, they will demand other players who play with them conform to their standards. This can be "only somebody with all purples," or it can be "only ice controllers; any other controller sucks," or any number of other supposed "this is the bare minimum because without it you're just in my way."
We can't prevent people from playing the game this way. We can do our best to provide tools for finding friends and groups with those who do NOT behave this way. But we're certainly not kicking these people out of the game; they're players and customers, too, and while their rudeness is not condoned, attempting to police it gets dangerously close to policing preferences. "Block them and move on," would be my advice.
What we CAN do is attempt to find innovative ways to make pure power-building less feasible and less necessary. The latter is actually hard, because too little reward for "all purple" builds means people who worked for them don't feel it was worth the effort, while making it geared for whatever "normal" builds are expected to be can lead to "all purple" players complaining about how easy the game is. CoX offered the ability to slide the difficulty up and down to accommodate different optimization and skill levels, and that is one potential solution. It still leads to there being those who will take the attitude that if you can't handle a maxxed-out difficulty slider (which, they are certain, is impossible without all purples), you're a detriment.
The former - innovations on how to handle these things - can also only take us so far. The "awesomeness" resource I hypothesized earlier would mean it takes a long time for you to be able to slot "all purples," because having that much "awesomeness" is much harder to get than merely capping out your level. We could prevent it all the way by capping awesomeness, though I am somewhat intrigued by the idea that increasing "awesomeness" goes on even after you hit level cap. It might be something for exp to go into, making it so that exp is still worth getting even after you cap out your level.
In any event, make sure to keep in mind that mechanics may not be to blame for problems you had interacting with other players; it could just be that you and they have distinctly different play styles or preferences. Be polite to them and have a bit of a thick skin if they're not going to reciprocate. We will have "ignore" features to let you handle particularly abusive jerks, and while I won't make any promises (there must be a reason that every MMO ever has people complaining about GMs not doing enough when somebody is reported), genuinely rule-breaking rudeness can also be reported for possible punitive action.
I do think social pressure and holding ourselves to a high standard of cordiality combined with judicious use of the tools we have control over as players will be more productive, but that doesn't mean MWM will tolerate genuine malfeasance. (And, lest we get lost on that subject, I'll close by reitterating: I don't think being elitist rises to this level of bad behavior. Just recognize that there will always be those who will have standards that are ridiculously exacting, and don't deal with them if it causes you problems.)
Do discuss ways mechanics might help mitigate, rather than encourage, player interaction problems, but don't make the mistake of assuming the mechanics are the sole cause of it nor that stripping them down would resolve them. It takes more delicacy than that, or it would be a solved problem by now!
Quote from: Segev on December 17, 2013, 01:45:29 PMAt the same time, however, that is no reason to refuse to have a sliding scale; the whole point behind certain aspects of gameplay is to "get better stuff" so you can have bigger numbers or get cooler tricks. It's the reward system that people expect in MMOs. No matter how much we might want to include attention to other sub-games people play with our product, it would be foolish to ignore this aspect of gameplay, so central to the connotation of "MMO." I'm not advocating making a grind-fest, here, but I am saying that swinging so far away from it that you reject the core formula entirely is foolish.
I can think of a game that at-release very nearly did that. Once you'd got a reasonable amount of the in-game currency, you could buy all the things you wanted easily, with only one late-game raid which gave modest rewards and which a lot of players didn't bother with, preferring to go back to the character creator when they reached the maximum level. The game was popular, although it only much later introduced the stock MMO grind.
It was called "City of Heroes", as I recall.
QuoteCoX offered the ability to slide the difficulty up and down to accommodate different optimization and skill levels, and that is one potential solution.
I don't think it's meaningfully a solution as soon as players team up or desire fair PVP, as mentioned upthread.
And yet people still had issues with other players insisting that lacking "all purples" means you're not fit to party with.
If you liked how CoH did it, you probably won't be overly disappointed with our approach, as we're coming from that tradition. But I think my point still stands: the sliding scale EXISTED. And people DID play for it. Some would go back and build alts instead - great! - while others pursued end-game - also great!
Quote from: Segev on December 17, 2013, 02:51:46 PM
And yet people still had issues with other players insisting that lacking "all purples" means you're not fit to party with.
That IMO (and I played tens of thousands of hours) is a myth, many of the best builds didn't contain purples or not many.
Quote
If you liked how CoH did it, you probably won't be overly disappointed with our approach, as we're coming from that tradition. But I think my point still stands: the sliding scale EXISTED. And people DID play for it. Some would go back and build alts instead - great! - while others pursued end-game - also great!
I did both, the end game was great fun if you were on a server where the raids were run regularly, but it was possible to achieve through the solo DA stuff.
That is was a myth is good; it means the mechanics were not forcing it there. I don't discount that some players encountered problems with other players holding to that myth in frustrating ways, though.
Which, again, reinforces my point: don't confuse players' opinions with facts, and don't expect even the best-designed mechanics to correct problems you might have had with other players.
Quote from: Segev on December 17, 2013, 04:13:12 PM
That is was a myth is good; it means the mechanics were not forcing it there. I don't discount that some players encountered problems with other players holding to that myth in frustrating ways, though.
Which, again, reinforces my point: don't confuse players' opinions with facts, and don't expect even the best-designed mechanics to correct problems you might have had with other players.
People were occasionally kicked for bad builds, but it was usually tanks with no mez protection, force fielders with no bubbles or characters with 12 powers from travel pools and nothing useful, not lack of purples or IOs.
Quote from: Segev on December 17, 2013, 01:45:29 PM
One thing to be cautious of in making declarations about mechanics - hypothetical or otherwise - is to make sure you identify whether the mechanic is actually the source of the problem, or merely the scapegoat. It is true that anything which has a sliding scale of effectiveness is going to mean that those with the highest-tier things in that scale will be better, mechanically, than those without. The degree of this slide will do a lot to determine how "must-have" the highest-tier stuff will be, just as the degree of effectiveness of a given build can determine how essential choosing an optimal one is.
At the same time, however, that is no reason to refuse to have a sliding scale; the whole point behind certain aspects of gameplay is to "get better stuff" so you can have bigger numbers or get cooler tricks. It's the reward system that people expect in MMOs. No matter how much we might want to include attention to other sub-games people play with our product, it would be foolish to ignore this aspect of gameplay, so central to the connotation of "MMO." I'm not advocating making a grind-fest, here, but I am saying that swinging so far away from it that you reject the core formula entirely is foolish.
As long as any "this is subjectively better than that" is present in a game, you WILL have players who settle into a kind of elitism over it. Whether their subjective "best" is accurate objectively or not, they will demand other players who play with them conform to their standards. This can be "only somebody with all purples," or it can be "only ice controllers; any other controller sucks," or any number of other supposed "this is the bare minimum because without it you're just in my way."
We can't prevent people from playing the game this way. We can do our best to provide tools for finding friends and groups with those who do NOT behave this way. But we're certainly not kicking these people out of the game; they're players and customers, too, and while their rudeness is not condoned, attempting to police it gets dangerously close to policing preferences. "Block them and move on," would be my advice.
What we CAN do is attempt to find innovative ways to make pure power-building less feasible and less necessary. The latter is actually hard, because too little reward for "all purple" builds means people who worked for them don't feel it was worth the effort, while making it geared for whatever "normal" builds are expected to be can lead to "all purple" players complaining about how easy the game is. CoX offered the ability to slide the difficulty up and down to accommodate different optimization and skill levels, and that is one potential solution. It still leads to there being those who will take the attitude that if you can't handle a maxxed-out difficulty slider (which, they are certain, is impossible without all purples), you're a detriment.
The former - innovations on how to handle these things - can also only take us so far. The "awesomeness" resource I hypothesized earlier would mean it takes a long time for you to be able to slot "all purples," because having that much "awesomeness" is much harder to get than merely capping out your level. We could prevent it all the way by capping awesomeness, though I am somewhat intrigued by the idea that increasing "awesomeness" goes on even after you hit level cap. It might be something for exp to go into, making it so that exp is still worth getting even after you cap out your level.
In any event, make sure to keep in mind that mechanics may not be to blame for problems you had interacting with other players; it could just be that you and they have distinctly different play styles or preferences. Be polite to them and have a bit of a thick skin if they're not going to reciprocate. We will have "ignore" features to let you handle particularly abusive jerks, and while I won't make any promises (there must be a reason that every MMO ever has people complaining about GMs not doing enough when somebody is reported), genuinely rule-breaking rudeness can also be reported for possible punitive action.
I do think social pressure and holding ourselves to a high standard of cordiality combined with judicious use of the tools we have control over as players will be more productive, but that doesn't mean MWM will tolerate genuine malfeasance. (And, lest we get lost on that subject, I'll close by reitterating: I don't think being elitist rises to this level of bad behavior. Just recognize that there will always be those who will have standards that are ridiculously exacting, and don't deal with them if it causes you problems.)
Do discuss ways mechanics might help mitigate, rather than encourage, player interaction problems, but don't make the mistake of assuming the mechanics are the sole cause of it nor that stripping them down would resolve them. It takes more delicacy than that, or it would be a solved problem by now!
Yup.
In large population games where one can hop from team to team easy, the "block them and move on" approach probably work decenly adequate for most situation. But in cases where population is low or teams are hard to come by for what ever reason, then it becomes block them and...now where am I moving onto. I just took myself out of the game for a while." Kind of end up like a self mute or back fire ignore. The rest will continue on like nothing happened and in fact they probably was acting a butt hoping that you would leave and make it look like it was your choice and none of their doing when brief look on the surface. Especially if they know too teams are hard to come by and thus they know by you blocking the mand moving on, ya really hurting ya self more than them because they will go on to complete the task while you are still standing around trying to form or join a team to do the task they just completed and would have completed too if ya just sat there and took their abuse.
Now how is this solved? I don't know yet. Maybe if someone is kicked or leave the team, the progress they was there for is still saved so they don't have to start over, due to someone being a jerk and using the block and move on thing. Of course that solution don't solve how they will get another team in the meantime. But hearing that it may be all one server anyways, suppose there was a way to see other teams that are also doing that TF and maybe have a spot open and the person could join?
Then again one server may make it easy to find another team and make the block and move on thing more effective and when people realize that the person that is leaving will not be hurt by leaving they may not be too much a jerk just to be jerks. But of course some will be jerks anyways. For some it seems to be in their nature or that is all they know how to be.
And yeah definitely if someone is breaking the rules, it should be dealt with. Even if the person can ignore them. Of course there is many jerk moves that are within the rules, but if it's one of those cases where it's not in the rules, then it should be dealt with. Because sometime perception is reality. If people see that "well hey, that guy broke at least half the rules and nothing happened to him. Then I can do so too." Then it seems the population of that type rule breaking behavior will grow.
One way to beat the jerks is to have enough non jerks. I don't mean non jerks that are not seen or only stick with their inner circle of friends or only pick up a newbie here and there. I mean be as visible as the jerks just without the jerk part. Because sometimes with jerks allowing them to be loud, even if they are not breaking the rules and in this case I'm talking about jerks that is not breaking the rules, they tend to speak loud and often and be very visible. Yet, if the non jerks stay silent, or simply shrug and accept it, then it will seem, that is how the community is. There is nothing wrong, IMO to tell someone else, hey, stop picking on the new guy or hey stop being a jerk. I don't see nothing wrong with that. It may not and actually more than likely wont stop the jerk but it let the target knows that not everyone is like that or condone that behavior. Instead of hearing about the nice people after when it's too late "Hey I wasn't a jerk, back in I4 I once gave a new guy 4 million inf." That is nice, but did you voice the opinion against jerk like behavior when you seen it as quickly as saying not everyone is a jerk or as quickly as defending other points or as quickly as the guides that are built or as quickly as quipping about Mids? Did you emphasize with people who went though it even if ya never seen it or tel lthe person I didn't see it so it didn't happen. Stop whining and grow thicker skin.
Skin can only grow so thick before it become inflexible and callous. And having hard dry callous skin is neither attractive nor fun to have when it cracks and bleed and get infected. It usually make for a very angry bitter person especialy when they feel like they are alone. Which can result in them either finding a new game when they otherwise would have stayed, becoming a jerk themselves, or generally start becoming anti-social and look upon people with distrust and hard to get along with. And or sometimes start to lack empathy themselves even when it's time when we may actually need each other support like that one time not too long ago.
"It's hard to feel sorry for a group of people that didn't give a damn about me but now expect me to feel sorry for them? How can I? I did what they said and grew thicker skin. And now I feel nothing." -Ex-COX player.
Yeah some people an be over sensitive but what is over sensitive? Someone with thicker skin will always look at someone less thicker skin as over reacting. What don't bother one person, they will look bewildered at the people that it do bother and of course many times, tell them to grow thicker skin. Just like a couple of peole at least I know first hand that played COX, and some that didn't made up of various gamers that didn't see the big deal about the closing and one said that the community should grow thicker skin against how the game business works. Then what is the appropriate reaction. I think the appropriate reaction to things that are negative is what ever the person feel. Different things ticks off different people. Somethings I don't give a crap about is probably down right depressing and make them want to shrink and die. Should I tell them to grow a thicker skin? And somethings that drive me up the wall probably leave people scratching their heads wondering "what the hell is the big deal about that?"
And thus that make jerks a bit more complicated because in their eyes they are usually reacting to something they see as a negative stimulus and react by being what can be viewed as being a jerk in various ways. Of course there are some that do it just for lulz, but that is totally different but similar, animal.
I guess that is the upside and downside of MMOs. People. Get enough people in the room probably one of them is going to be an idiot that do what ever they can to make sure everyone know it and have no doubts about it their role and purpose. As long as the rules are maintained and upheld, I guess the only thing the community can do is do it's best and each person do their part into forming the image that they want the community to be viewed as. Ran by jerks or ran by friendly people. Ran by friendly people that ain't afraid to tell the jerk to knock it off just as they are not afraid to show their expertise in the game mechanics? Or ran by jerks that friendly people hide from in their own little groups letting everyone outside defend for themselves?
If we are heroes, we suppose to defend those that cant defend for themselves.;D
If we are villains, no one pushes the weaklings around unless "I'm" (general terms) doing the pushing. 8)
AKA sometimes the community have to simply look out for one another.
*and I don't me you and like in you personally. I mean You in general.
Quote from: Minotaur on December 17, 2013, 11:45:45 PM
People were occasionally kicked for bad builds, but it was usually tanks with no mez protection, force fielders with no bubbles or characters with 12 powers from travel pools and nothing useful, not lack of purples or IOs.
Rarely ran into this myself, just one occurence. Whatever they design, I hope it discourages this kind of behavior. I do not like other people dictating builds or play styles to me. Had enough of that in GW1. The game design hopefully will not allow people to overly gimp their toons.
Several things I want to see:
1. Builds and enhancements are private and cannot be viewed by other people.
2. DPS meters should not be present in the game. DPS is not the end-all to performance.
3. The time investment to fully slot out a toon shouldnt be overly long. I could usually get a character in CoH slotted to my specifications
within a couple of months. I felt this was reasonable.
4. Don't make TFs so difficult that it takes very tight team builds to accomplish. I liked the flexibiliy inherent in CoH, and absolutely hate the
Tank/Healer/3 DPS requirement in most other games.
Quote from: silvers1 on December 18, 2013, 03:47:11 AM
Rarely ran into this myself, just one occurence. Whatever they design, I hope it discourages this kind of behavior. I do not like other people dictating builds or play styles to me. Had enough of that in GW1. The game design hopefully will not allow people to overly gimp their toons.
Several things I want to see:
1. Builds and enhancements are private and cannot be viewed by other people.
2. DPS meters should not be present in the game. DPS is not the end-all to performance.
3. The time investment to fully slot out a toon shouldnt be overly long. I could usually get a character in CoH slotted to my specifications
within a couple of months. I felt this was reasonable.
4. Don't make TFs so difficult that it takes very tight team builds to accomplish. I liked the flexibiliy inherent in CoH, and absolutely hate the
Tank/Healer/3 DPS requirement in most other games.
1. Things like I outlined become very obvious fast, there is no point in concealing the build.
2. Agreed, and I would suggest not showing other peoples' damage in combat spam either
3. This is a difficult balancing act, shouldn't be too easy either
4. I have no problem making raid size instances require certain things although not a tight team build, but TFs should IMO be doable on basic difficulty with a wide variety
Quote from: Minotaur on December 18, 2013, 07:42:50 AM
1. Things like I outlined become very obvious fast, there is no point in concealing the build.
I think concealing the build is extremely important.
Case in point:
While playing GW1, it became very obvious that certain cookie cutter builds were required. When joining a dungeon group, you were usually
required to ping your build. I had a healer that didnt follow the cookie cutter mold of either pure healer or pure damage mitigator, and was kicked
off a number of teams. The hybrid build worked fine for me, but didnt meet the criteria of other "expert" players. The ability to see other players
builds gives the power to control other players builds ( i.e. you follow the cookie cutter build or else get /kicked as the "nub" )
Technically, regarding thick skin... if somebody is bitter and distant, they're just demonstrating chronically-bruised thin skin. Thick skin means letting it wash off your back without bothering you, not dismissing it bitterly.
It also doesn't mean failure to report rule-breaking.
It does mean not taking things personally, as much as is possible. It means being willing to move on from irritations.
It's not about shutting out the world's jerks; it's about getting revenge in the best way possible: by living well and not letting them have the satisfaction of getting to you.
What about both? :)
The trouble I found with trying to have a "thick skin" is that quite a lot of jerks will realize they aren't getting through to you with words, and will move into direct harassment. For instance accusing you of things that turn your teammates and/or SG-mates against you and possibly getting you kicked out. No matter what you do, the real die-hard jerks will find a way to make your life miserable enough so you'll lose your temper. In SWTOR, I've run into two of them that went as far as to manipulate the system - they had their guild-mates file multiple complaints with customer service so I would get a 3-day ban with no chance of appeal. I guess they figured that would make me frustrated enough to quit (it didn't).
Those are a more extreme example, but all of the jerks/trolls have one thing in common: The mindset that if you are not as tough as they are, you deserve to be abused until you're driven out. Because nobody weaker than they are should be allowed to play their game. It's a mindset that's prevalent in every single MMO...now. CoH was for the most part the exception - it had a lot of helpful people - but it's gone now.
Where that applies to any new game like City of Titans is, there are certain factors which encourage that sort of behavior. The "if you're not as tough as I am, quit" mindset. The biggest factor encouraging that is making the build/enhancement system either very complicated/difficult, very expensive, or very grind-y. Then you have people with lots of in-game money, or a hoard of equipment they spent weeks farming, or a guild/SG that did the same. And if you aren't a member of their group, or you can't build as perfectly as they can, you are too weak and deserve to be harassed until you leave. They start checking your build to see if you deserve to accompany them on a mission. Take away some of those factors, and...it won't eliminate it, but there is less opportunity for that kind of behavior.
"No chance of appeal" on just the word of other players sounds like bad design of their punitive system. There should be sufficient logs for them to actually judge the validity of complaints, and when they get THAT many of them, it should trigger an actual investigation.
Well. I suppose we'll find out what the problems with that are when we get to that point of running it from the company side. Here's hoping we can do justice to our players!
I cannot, personally, understand the mindset that says "you should be harassed until you leave," particularly over being "too weak" compared to other players in PvE. Just don't team with such people if you feel they're not helping you enough. I don't think making the enhancement system too complex or what-have-you will encourage such mindsets, though; those kinds of jerks will make up reasons to victimize people out of whatever they can. Even if it's "they are playing a character who isn't at the maximum height allowed."
Quote from: Segev on December 18, 2013, 03:03:33 PM
Technically, regarding thick skin... if somebody is bitter and distant, they're just demonstrating chronically-bruised thin skin. Thick skin means letting it wash off your back without bothering you, not dismissing it bitterly.
It also doesn't mean failure to report rule-breaking.
It does mean not taking things personally, as much as is possible. It means being willing to move on from irritations.
It's not about shutting out the world's jerks; it's about getting revenge in the best way possible: by living well and not letting them have the satisfaction of getting to you.
yup.
But remember in a social setting where people can become friends that go beyond the game in real life, and from what I understand in some cases even leading to marriage and love, more than likely the opposite feelings can be touched too even though that effect is usually ignored or expectation for people to not feel those. But how can one feel one and not the other? How can one feel connection with the people they play with but not feel the effects of the jerks? Because by definitions even the connections that people feel with one another even if positive is taking the feeling personally.
And don't forget sometimes jerks cause indirect irritation. In COX, A person is on a TF team. Someone is being a jerk. They leave the team to get away from the irritation of the jerk. But now, they have to deal with the irritation of having to start the TF over, meaning the time on the team just went down the tube and that alone can be varying irritation especially if one have limited game play time. Then the irritation of having to find another team to do said task they started out to do with the prior team. And the irritation of sometimes not being able to find another team for that task and thus another irritation of not being able to complete the task that they set out to do in that game set out to do all stemming from someone being a jerk.
Thick skin or not in that situation it looks like the jerk won and the target lost. Because the jerk, still complete the task they set out to do, two to rid of the target and three cause the target an inconvenience, and possibly four cause either direct or indirect irritation to the target and optional five, depending on view, punish the target for what ever perceived grievance they make up with loss of time.
Like I said, how is this solved completely, I'm not sure yet. But over all, it seems maybe the very nature of MMOs especially when teams are required coupled with teams being hard to come by for certain tasks gives the jerk a very good advantage while the target is basically expected to take it, "let it flow off the back" and do nothing. Then again, maybe that is why there is no solution to the problem. No interest in finding a solution as the solution is expected tha the target pay it no mind in the first place. Which can be good and bad. But remember closing the eyes to an issue or problem is a pretty certain way to make sure it doesn't go away and possibly feed it and cause it to grow. Because even if a jerk think they are not getting no reaction, they usually just don't simply give up, they keep going and going, and using sometimes, faults in the rule enforcement procedures to their advantage and getting innocent people banned that end up banned seemingly out of the blue simply because they never stated their case and let it roll off the back when they had the chance. Thus leaving nothing for the moderators to go off of especially in a setting where they are not keen on trying to hunt down chat logs unless there is a two way dispute, where they have the word of the jerk and maybe a few of their buddies and... no word from the target. Well then, the target end up getting banned simply for inaction. Of course that could be nullified in that case with a bit more strenuous moderation that is more interested in getting to the bottom of the issue instead of looking to simply taking the word for it regardless of how popular it is. Also I think a few thinks that could make it less powerful for jerks to cause direct or indirect irritation and make it easier for the person to have thick skin without suffering for it is don't have too much team gated stuff, pay attention to population fluctuations especially if there is team gated stuff, if something requires 8 man to do and it goes well with 200,000 people and many people are doing it, be ready to make adjustments when not as many people are interested in doing that tf or team gated task and or when population falls. Maybe an adjustment is needed to make it only require 4 people instead of 8. That way a person can have thick skin walk away and truly find another team and do the task they set out to do without having to go through extra hassle due to the jerk. Make the rules clear and stick to them in the moderation .Meaning Rules are this and this and such and such may not be tolerated. without forgetting the second part. Mean it and show it isn't tolerated. Investigate thoroughly tickets that show up. If a person gets through a TF especially a team gated TF to a certain point even if they are kicked, they don't lose progress or they still get the reward when the original group finishes it. Thought about a Jerk Board. But I think that may be too open to abuse and may do more harm than good. Maybe make kicking from the team not be a one man dictator ship. Maybe make it be voting based although, this too may not work too well for "popular jerks" and may be abused and used against people who not jerks but not popular. And there are probably more ideas that may give jerks less power over people while leaving the only power to the target is to grow thicker skin and ignore it.
Plus in a ideal world sure nothing would be taken personally. But just as it's expected that people should grow thicker skin because they should expect jerks, there should be an expectation that some people don't grow thick skin very easily and or have thick skin pertaining to many or most situations but not all situations. Why should people have to grow thicker skin? Why should people expect jerks to not be around? It's an immovable object (thick skin) meets the unstoppable force (jerks) but it seems the immovable object is expected to yield to the unstoppable force. And quite frankly, I'm not sure of any other way that it can be done. I guess with the very nature of MMO, it's a jerk's world where they hold the power, and only defense from them is growing thicker skin and running away from them. I mean what else can a person do especially if the jerk isn't breaking the rules?
Quote from: Segev on December 18, 2013, 06:22:16 PMI don't think making the enhancement system too complex or what-have-you will encourage such mindsets, though; those kinds of jerks will make up reasons to victimize people out of whatever they can. Even if it's "they are playing a character who isn't at the maximum height allowed."
That's true, but making the enhancement/equipping system complicated gives them the tools they need to make it stick. In CoH, nobody could see how your character was equipped - they could see the powers you selected, but that's all. There are other games where other players can see in detail what powers you have, how many points you allocated to them, and the armor and armor levels you carry. They can much more easily make a decision about you in those games than they could in CoH, so they have more tools to use to judge you and treat you badly.
There will always be jerks and trolls, the object (in part) in making a game is to cause them to become no more than a verbal annoyance.
Quote from: TheManga on December 19, 2013, 12:51:54 AM
There will always be jerks and trolls, the object (in part) in making a game is to cause them to become no more than a verbal annoyance.
indeed.
Quote from: JaguarX on December 19, 2013, 12:47:33 AM
But remember in a social setting where people can become friends that go beyond the game in real life, and from what I understand in some cases even leading to marriage and love, more than likely the opposite feelings can be touched too even though that effect is usually ignored or expectation for people to not feel those. But how can one feel one and not the other? How can one feel connection with the people they play with but not feel the effects of the jerks?
Well, it takes two to tango, both for the positive and negative cases. The immediate reaction or impulse you feel is not something you have a lot of control over, but what you do with it is.
In the positive case you are describing, there's no mystery about why folks would happily pursue growing connections with the other people. It is a little more mysterious why people would continue to expose themselves to a clearly negative relationship in a game, when they have the means to avoid it. We probably all know cases of it happening, but the mystery is why.
Quote from: Second Chances on December 19, 2013, 04:28:12 AM
Well, it takes two to tango, both for the positive and negative cases. The immediate reaction or impulse you feel is not something you have a lot of control over, but what you do with it is.
In the positive case you are describing, there's no mystery about why folks would happily pursue growing connections with the other people. It is a little more mysterious why people would continue to expose themselves to a clearly negative relationship in a game, when they have the means to avoid it. We probably all know cases of it happening, but the mystery is why.
You are correct in hitting the nail.
but in a way, the only way to actually avoid it, the negative aspects is to simply not play the game, which stills come at the expense of enjoyment and the positive side. Basically, usually people don't go out seeking jerks like they seek out friends online and other positive relationship. Usually the jerks come to them. And usually a jerk is and will continue to be a jerk regardless of what the other party do. A person can tango by themselves http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43QWyKAlXI4
Except in the case of jerks, instead of tangoing they are bumping and grinding on unwilling person with the expectation it's the target that is expected to leave the establishment.
But I know what you mean by avoid.
The mystery of why they do is a bit too common of a question for me. Because eventually, there is no where else to run besides out of the game, which is still a win and maybe the goal of the jerk.
I can think of a potential reason why-
Some people eventually get tired of running. Because no matter where they run they eventually will either run into another jerk or the same jerk again and sometimes worse than before. Especially if the jerk know that person will simply flee. Then they know they can use it, the knowing the person will flee, to their advantage. Now when they don't want someone around, they simply act a fool, and no one will hold them accountable. It's the target's fault and should run...again. A jerk only want IO people to team with and join a team with some one without IOs. Now all they have to do is make a fuss and the non-IO person is expected to leave. And thus, the goal of the jerk is fulfilled. They don't want someone in the same zone with them, they repeat, act a fool with the person, and it's up to the target to leave the zone. In reality the jerk have more control over the people they want around in certain areas than the target does because it's not expected in the norms for the jerk to leave. No one seem to say, "Hey buddy, if you are going to be a jerk about it, why not find another team or another zone." It's to the target, "Don't like him being a jerk, leave the zone or find another team." Even when the target say they should have to put up with that to be in the zone or team, they get no backing because it's expected that they should be the one to leave. While the jerk's presence is unquestioned and undisputed but the targets; presence is automatically disputed when someone wants to be a jerk towards them for what ever reason.
But the million dollar question to me is Why is it expected for the target to run? Some partial theories I have is that being a jerk is an expected normal behavior in MMO games. It's just as normal as say friendly people in the game. Both cases not much can be nor willingly be done about it. Both people kind of look upon it with more of apathy and look towards to target to move either towards or away from it with the perceived cause and fault of the outcome resting on the target's shoulder's. Both seem to be perceived as merely an environmental factor of being an MMO instead of behavior from a person with the only behavior that matters is the behavior of the target in whether or not they move towards or away from the friendliness or the jerk. And both seemed to be viewed as something that wont or cant be changed. And neither one can be totally avoided as a friendly person or a jerk can walk up to a person and act accordingly but when something is spoken about it the focus is still on the target as if they are talking about the day or night. But still the question remains is why? Which I suspect is a question without an answer in the virtual world. In person to person in real life, it's more simple answered that no, it's the jerk that should leave if they don't want to behave. "When they feel like acting civil they can return." Like the bumping and grinding guy/gal I mentioned above. In real life, they probably would catch the attention of the bouncers and thrown out. In the virtual world, bring that behavior up to the bouncers they will tell you to beat it if you don't like it. In the virtual world it's flipped around and it's the social norm although.
Not saying the way it works in the virtual world is a bad thing, I just find it interesting. And surprised no one (that I know up) did a deep study in the lines of sociology and psychology on this.
Quote from: TheManga on December 19, 2013, 12:51:54 AM
That's true, but making the enhancement/equipping system complicated gives them the tools they need to make it stick. In CoH, nobody could see how your character was equipped - they could see the powers you selected, but that's all.
This is not true at all, you could also see the IO set bonuses, which if you knew the game well would tell you what sets were being used.
Quote from: silvers1 on December 18, 2013, 03:47:11 AM
Rarely ran into this myself, just one occurence. Whatever they design, I hope it discourages this kind of behavior. I do not like other people dictating builds or play styles to me. Had enough of that in GW1. The game design hopefully will not allow people to overly gimp their toons.
Several things I want to see:
1. Builds and enhancements are private and cannot be viewed by other people.
2. DPS meters should not be present in the game. DPS is not the end-all to performance.
3. The time investment to fully slot out a toon shouldnt be overly long. I could usually get a character in CoH slotted to my specifications
within a couple of months. I felt this was reasonable.
4. Don't make TFs so difficult that it takes very tight team builds to accomplish. I liked the flexibiliy inherent in CoH, and absolutely hate the
Tank/Healer/3 DPS requirement in most other games.
Agree with #1, as I heard many people often had catch-22 requirements in world of warcraft. I actually saw catch-22 requirements first-hand in guild wars, and it made some gametypes in pvp 100% unjoinable for people wanting to join.
#2 is also true, dps is not the only thing and it should not be the only thing determining a victory. The smash alerts in CO are a definition of what not to do, it's a dps race and teams with less then X DPS per minute will always automatically lose with zero chance of success, it's not fun, and the random team nature made it fake difficulty untill they changed smash to provide resources(so lowbies wouldn't enter and make everyone automatically lose).
#3 is true as well, I hate that many mmorpgs make it all about how much time you spend playing rather than actual accomplishment. Given I felt even CoH made you take a lot of time but it went faster and it was more efficient when you were better at the game. Even the incarnate system rewarded skill and accomplishment more(the harder the trial, the better your odds of a better reward). Most MMORPGs it's flat amount of time spent, with a very very very small % drop reward, and they wonder why they fail.
#4 though is so true of MMORPGs it's sickening how many fail that. The holy trinity requirement most mmorpgs fall into is 90% of the time, a result of a lack of alternatives because they simply do not provide anything meaningfully powerful enough to provide an alternative to healing a tank all the time. There is no depth or flexibility because they are designed so tanks have ALL the damage mitigation, while no other class has it nore can provide it to allies. This means the tank has to take all the agro, and since he cannot heal himself, the healer has to babysit him and the rest of the team. And I actually get deeply angry when someone praises the healer, especially if they say "Special nod to the healers who kept our health high and everyone alive", even more-so when I saw people dying alot. It just, angers me the healer gets ALL THE CREDIT while the rest of the team gets none at all in every encounter.
Quote from: LaughingAlex on December 19, 2013, 06:11:07 PM#3 is true as well, I hate that many mmorpgs make it all about how much time you spend playing rather than actual accomplishment. Given I felt even CoH made you take a lot of time
It didn't always. I know I keep going on about this, but; City of Heroes didn't always reward grind. It doesn't have to be this way.
Given how many "speed" events there were in the game, I agree with you.
Quote from: saipaman on December 20, 2013, 02:52:46 AM
Given how many "speed" events there were in the game, I agree with you.
yup.
Quote from: JaguarX on December 19, 2013, 05:20:25 AM
The mystery of why they do is a bit too common of a question for me. Because eventually, there is no where else to run besides out of the game, which is still a win and maybe the goal of the jerk.
I can think of a potential reason why-
Some people eventually get tired of running. Because no matter where they run they eventually will either run into another jerk or the same jerk again and sometimes worse than before. Especially if the jerk know that person will simply flee.
I avoided people who took an unpleasant interest (people who were pleasant didn't bug me, and sometimes gave pointers I might be able to use) in the details of my build in CoX, whenever the opportunity presented itself, and yet about the only activities that closed off for me were things I had no interest in, anyway (like speed ITFs and srs bsns farms). For anything else, the most I had to do was leave an individual team. If the person who was judging me had the star, I had no problem with them setting requirements, even if I thought they were incorrect (I'd state my case, but if they still wanted X or Y, then so be it). If they didn't have the star and persisted, I'd ask the team if they wanted me to go. Usually they would say, "no, don't listen to ____... he is a <bleep!>" and that was pretty much that. Sometimes they agreed with _____, in which case I was happy to leave.
Why was I happy to do so? From my perspective, jerks are so eager to identify themselves that it is almost like they are required by law to do so (sort like how medieval stories will feature lepers having to shout warnings to people to stay away... "Outcast! Unclean!"). Since they are nice enough to clearly warn me they are jerks, I will take advantage of that warning.
If I was to stay on a team where I wasn't wanted, I would only exacerbate a bad situation (I'd become part of the problem). Plus, why should I stick with a team that doesn't want me when there is bound to be one that does? Or, better yet, I can start a team myself so I know the star will be willing to put up with me. :3 In any case, I get to avoid hanging out with a jerk, so win.
Now, if we are talking about something more serious than having different opinions than I do about builds, IOW something I'd think they should be reported for, I do that as well. If I feel obligated to put my $0.02 in about something they are saying, I do that. But, once those obligations are done, so am I. If it is a forum, I stop replying (if all I would be doing is repeating myself); if it is ingame, I stop paying attention to them (and if that is not enough, I'll /ignore them).
I definitely don't pursue a deeper relationship with them, since they are jerks, and they have done their part by giving me notice that they are jerks. I loved when CoX added the ability to add stars and a comment to players, since it let me easily identify them in the future, as well (As a side benefit, if I had taken the time to produce a properly snarky note, I got to enjoy it again ^_^7 ).
QuoteBut the million dollar question to me is Why is it expected for the target to run?
To me, that is an easy one. I realize you are talking about why other folks expect it, but since I don't think in those terms my answer will be why I expect it of myself. It is because, while I have no control over other people to make them do what I think people should do, I do have control over whether I do what I think people should do. How can I have any expectation about the behavior of others if I won't do it myself? If I don't behave like a jerk, and they do, there will be people who can tell the difference.
The side benefit of that control realization is that it comes with the realization that they have no control over me, either. If I end up bowing out of something for the reasons I gave up above, a jerk might consider that "running" but, given that they have already given me ample evidence that their opinions are not mine, why should I care what they think? They will go on being jerks, of course, but there was never anything I could do about that (and, frankly, I think they end up paying for it over and over again in their lives).
Now,
if CoT ends up having srs bsns raiding, that may be another activity that I would have to avoid. imo, the thing that inspires interest in others gear isn't so much the availability of the info as it is the belief that they are doing something hardcore enough that they are justified in being picky. In CoX that belief was often misguided (and therefore was not common, at least on the five or so servers I played), but for fancy raid games I could see how they would care.
Quote from: Second Chances on December 20, 2013, 02:05:50 PM
I avoided people who took an unpleasant interest (people who were pleasant didn't bug me, and sometimes gave pointers I might be able to use) in the details of my build in CoX, whenever the opportunity presented itself, and yet about the only activities that closed off for me were things I had no interest in, anyway (like speed ITFs and srs bsns farms). For anything else, the most I had to do was leave an individual team. If the person who was judging me had the star, I had no problem with them setting requirements, even if I thought they were incorrect (I'd state my case, but if they still wanted X or Y, then so be it). If they didn't have the star and persisted, I'd ask the team if they wanted me to go. Usually they would say, "no, don't listen to ____... he is a <bleep!>" and that was pretty much that. Sometimes they agreed with _____, in which case I was happy to leave.
Why was I happy to do so? From my perspective, jerks are so eager to identify themselves that it is almost like they are required by law to do so (sort like how medieval stories will feature lepers having to shout warnings to people to stay away... "Outcast! Unclean!"). Since they are nice enough to clearly warn me they are jerks, I will take advantage of that warning.
If I was to stay on a team where I wasn't wanted, I would only exacerbate a bad situation (I'd become part of the problem). Plus, why should I stick with a team that doesn't want me when there is bound to be one that does? Or, better yet, I can start a team myself so I know the star will be willing to put up with me. :3 In any case, I get to avoid hanging out with a jerk, so win.
Now, if we are talking about something more serious than having different opinions than I do about builds, IOW something I'd think they should be reported for, I do that as well. If I feel obligated to put my $0.02 in about something they are saying, I do that. But, once those obligations are done, so am I. If it is a forum, I stop replying (if all I would be doing is repeating myself); if it is ingame, I stop paying attention to them (and if that is not enough, I'll /ignore them).
I definitely don't pursue a deeper relationship with them, since they are jerks, and they have done their part by giving me notice that they are jerks. I loved when CoX added the ability to add stars and a comment to players, since it let me easily identify them in the future, as well (As a side benefit, if I had taken the time to produce a properly snarky note, I got to enjoy it again ^_^7 ).
To me, that is an easy one. I realize you are talking about why other folks expect it, but since I don't think in those terms my answer will be why I expect it of myself. It is because, while I have no control over other people to make them do what I think people should do, I do have control over whether I do what I think people should do. How can I have any expectation about the behavior of others if I won't do it myself? If I don't behave like a jerk, and they do, there will be people who can tell the difference.
The side benefit of that control realization is that it comes with the realization that they have no control over me, either. If I end up bowing out of something for the reasons I gave up above, a jerk might consider that "running" but, given that they have already given me ample evidence that their opinions are not mine, why should I care what they think? They will go on being jerks, of course, but there was never anything I could do about that (and, frankly, I think they end up paying for it over and over again in their lives).
Now, if CoT ends up having srs bsns raiding, that may be another activity that I would have to avoid. imo, the thing that inspires interest in others gear isn't so much the availability of the info as it is the belief that they are doing something hardcore enough that they are justified in being picky. In CoX that belief was often misguided (and therefore was not common, at least on the five or so servers I played), but for fancy raid games I could see how they would care.
Very good answer there.
But how common these things, like how picky people are, is pretty relative. Some people that never go beyond teaming with people they know and only team with other SG members and or other people like them, may never see the picky people or the others and think in their mind it's not common or never happened because they never seen it since they been playing since beta on all servers. Yet someone else may see them and may have been playing just as long or in some cases even shorter, the picky people, constantly and it seems more like a common behavior in their eyes and those that say it never happened or it wasn't common or in many cases, "well no one ever seen a problem with it." may come off as dismissive to those that actually went through that while those that say it common may seem like they are exaggerating to the people that never come across that stuff from people.
But eventually, playing ostrich will stop working. Because just because one doesn't see the predator doesn't mean the predator doesn't see the prey. Which is one the reasons why I think the ignore function definitely should be revamped and upgraded from the usual, now the target cant see the offender. BUT the offender can still see the target and keep it up like nothing happened. Usually because the offender have no idea they been placed on ignore, don't care if the person reply or not and if the target don't reply it make it even easier because then they can say what ever they want knowing the target wont fire back and still attack what ever the target writes. The only one with the blindfold on is the target with the current ignore feature. It should be if the person places a person ignored, the offender cannot see them either. The offender cant attack a person's words that they cant see or interact with. Eventually, the offender may find out, "hey this conversation don't make sense, and why do there seem to be people missing? They may get a hint that they are losing power and less targets. Because when they can do stuff without anything happening to them. Even in the example on the team where the team mates asked should you go, the reply was, nah don't listen to him. Yet, no one made a move against the person? Yet, you had to leave if they said yes they agree? AKA the question is how is the ignore function hurting those types of people? I remember back in the day with the old fashioned one dimensional trolls, yes ignore worked wonders but most of them evolved and a bit more sophisticated yet the tools of the trolls evolved from club to fire arms while the tools given to defend against them is still in the club phase. It's about time to take stuff away from the offenders. If they choose a target and be a jerk, well fine then, it should be they cant see them, cant talk to them, cant see what they write, and cant even contact them in any manner if they get placed on ignore. Instead of the current way. Someone pick a fight, and the target simply places a blind fold and ear plugs in. That do not stop the punches. It just make you blind and deaf to them but it don't stop. And since the only defense is head in the sand as it stand with the ignore, that kind of encourage the offender. Because there is no risk to them. They can lay it on thick with no risk of someone firing back and in the end they getting angry instead of the target. Playing dead do not work for most animals. Most will still simply eat ya, even if a person close their eyes. I think ignore should be a more powerful weapon against those people. Press ignore, boom they cant see ya cant touch you, cant buff ya cant debuff ya, cant speak to you, cant see what you write, cant even friend ya, nor invite ya, challenge you to a duel. And what would be icing on the cake would be if they cant even see your avatar at all as if you don't even exist anymore to them and still at the same time, they are invisible to the person that have them on the ignore list. AKA making it two way instead of just one way.
Because even the negative social events have and effect it seems. Not sure why yet, but how many times have someone even within these forums said they couldnt get into CO because the community didn't seem as friendly. Or in other games, because it was full of trolls (usually said about WoW). and other games due to negative people behavior. Behavior that is said to be easily ignored, yet it was enough to completely drive them away from the game. So it seem to have some sort of effect that ignore just doesn't solve.
Quote from: saipaman on December 20, 2013, 02:52:46 AM
Given how many "speed" events there were in the game, I agree with you.
Speed events, nothing. I'm talking about the game before Issue 9.