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Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: doc7924 on June 18, 2013, 08:12:27 PM

Title: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 18, 2013, 08:12:27 PM
When I started there wasn't even an Icon. Then by the end almost every npc character seemed to be a tailor.

Personally I loved when the only way to get to Founders was to go thru Talos or to get to DA you had to go thru Talos.

Or when the Green and Yellow lines where actually not connected. Same thing for traveling in the villain zones.

I just thought it was silly that a trainer was also a tailor. Did people just get to lazy or did the devs just want to make it so easy to do the travelling and other things so people could just spend more time on missions?
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: srmalloy on June 18, 2013, 08:59:20 PM
When I started there wasn't even an Icon. Then by the end almost every npc character seemed to be a tailor.

Personally I loved when the only way to get to Founders was to go thru Talos or to get to DA you had to go thru Talos.

Or when the Green and Yellow lines where actually not connected. Same thing for traveling in the villain zones.

I just thought it was silly that a trainer was also a tailor. Did people just get to lazy or did the devs just want to make it so easy to do the travelling and other things so people could just spend more time on missions?

I think keeping the Icon stores as the only tailors would have been better, but to address the issue of people having to run a gauntlet to change their costume at low level you could put an Icon store in Atlas Park, where the tailor contact in the store would give you a mission that, on completion, awarded you a tailor token. That way you'd have another little piece of the game explained to new players.

Being able to get to any tram stop from any other certainly improved travel times, but it handwaved making a transfer between the two lines. There have been times when I've wondered whether it wouldn't have been better to keep the two lines separate, but remodel Skyway to bring the two tram stations together as a single junction station, where you could get off one tram and immediately get on the other, sort of like two facing tram stations.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: silvers1 on June 18, 2013, 09:13:04 PM
I liked the merging of the two train lines, especially in the larger zones.  To be honest, I like the option in newer MMORPGs of
having clickable teleport icons on zone maps.  The train depots always felt awkward to me and un-superhero like.

I didnt agree with having tailor options available from trainers,  it kind of made having the tailor shops pointless.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Triplash on June 18, 2013, 09:52:43 PM
When I started there wasn't even an Icon. Then by the end almost every npc character seemed to be a tailor.

Only trainers, really.        (oh right, and tailors..... durrr...  >.> )

I think the point of that was to make things quick and easy for the busloads of new and returning players that they were hoping would show up for Freedom.

For one, some folks don't have the attention span needed to travel three whole blocks to the Icon they added across the street from the Atlas hospital. Going that far out of the way is worthy of a ragequit to some players, and those kinds of people would happily exaggerate the crap out of the story. Before long they'd have had people in other games believing that the travel time required to change your costume in City of Heroes was roughly on par with taking a canoe to the moon. And when the majority of your advertising comes from word of mouth, you don't want those words to be negative.

For two, not every zone had tailors close by. Certain places were a severe fork in the rump roast to try and reach a tailor from, especially if you only wanted to do a little touchup. To help costume pieces be the biggest revenue stream they could be, they decided to make it quick and convenient to change your costume just about anywhere. Got ten minutes to kill arrest until a teammate comes back? Why not get that new piece from the market and see if it works with your outfit? Two dollars and five minutes later, you're sporting a rocket pack and a bubble dome and you're giddy about how cool this game is, all over again.

Quick and easy are fantastic ways to get people coming back for more. Especially in a game that claims to cater to casual play; mind-numbing travel slogs eat up serious chunks of game time, which causes casual players to log out and not come back. If you only have a half hour to play that day, and it takes twenty minutes just to reach the mission door (meaning another twenty to return to the contact)... that right there means you're not playing today. But reduce that travel time to a two minute round trip, and that leaves most of your time for the good stuff. That's how you design a casual game... the parts that don't affect gameplay itself should be simple to understand and convenient to navigate. And the parts that do affect gameplay should come in short and sweet bite-sized pieces, so you can enjoy as much or as little as you feel like that day.

It's a standard promotional tool: you're not selling the merchandise, you're selling the happiness you get from using it. ;)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 18, 2013, 10:00:38 PM
I have to add my voice to the side who missed the Green Line and Yellow Line as separate trains. Yes, the trains were un-heroic, in the first place, but the separation made you feel like you had accomplished something by getting to the Green Line. Ditto for making it to the Icon store at the north end of Steel, or, better, the one in IP by trying to sneak past the mobs between the King's Row tunnel and the tailor. That was almost as much a rite of passage as crossing the Hollows.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on June 18, 2013, 10:09:37 PM
When I started there wasn't even an Icon. Then by the end almost every npc character seemed to be a tailor.

Personally I loved when the only way to get to Founders was to go thru Talos or to get to DA you had to go thru Talos.

Or when the Green and Yellow lines where actually not connected. Same thing for traveling in the villain zones.

I just thought it was silly that a trainer was also a tailor. Did people just get to lazy or did the devs just want to make it so easy to do the travelling and other things so people could just spend more time on missions?
Well yes and no.

Yes on the fact that many couldnt wasnt around or forgot the way it used to be and took many of the new features for granted but that's natural. No ding for that.


No. The way many of the zones, with loading times (Dependign on connection) and the size of maps to tranfer from green to yellow didnt make much sense in a city planner point of view. Not to mention it was already silly as is that heroes that could fly, leap tall buildings, run faster than a bullet and teleport had to take the train like a normal bloke.

Although villain side seemed to always been a bit more streamlined as far as travel and missions. Very rarely did the contacts in villain send you to a mission across a few maps to do a mission that took less time to do than it did to get there. Hero contacts were all over the place. It wasnt uncommon to have to go to perz park then to Talos then Atlas then to the Steel canyon and then back to the contact in Skyway. All that needless traveling seemed a bit annoying and not to mention made the contacts seemed scatter brained. Hero side many times pre i10 especially I was wishign that the contact just get to the freakign point and stop fooling around with these filler missions.


Although I didnt get the trainer also being used as a tailor thing. It was convient but couldnt make sense of it. "so now, they want me to train up in powers and get dressed in front of the likes of Ms. Liberty?" Although on the other hand I guess that is how it was already done anyways since gear affected looks and thus you visited the trainer/gear shop and appearance changed with how you trained. 


But overall, the changes did add to the casual feel to the game. Spent less time traveling and more time doing missions and other things and it was needed as traveling across some of those over sized maps in COH was already a time drain on top of the usual CoT oversized defeat all maps
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 18, 2013, 11:15:26 PM
I think keeping the Icon stores as the only tailors would have been better, but to address the issue of people having to run a gauntlet to change their costume at low level you could put an Icon store in Atlas Park, where the tailor contact in the store would give you a mission that, on completion, awarded you a tailor token. That way you'd have another little piece of the game explained to new players.
Well, um, the same time that they made all trainers into tailors, they also put an Icon in Atlas Park and Mercy Island. >.> <.<

Yeah, I have no idea why they did both.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Lucretia MacEvil on June 18, 2013, 11:37:52 PM
Yeah, the trainers-as-tailors improvement didn't really make much sense to me.  There was already enough of a mob around the trainers beforehand.

As for the travel line mergers (trains, ferries, black helicopter), I actually liked that feature, especially after they added more stops.  Having two stations in a zone was a great way to take a shortcut, if I was so inclined.  It was practically instantaneous transport; no loading screen required.  In particular, this upgrade made Nerva Archipelago playable for me, since I could take the Black Helicopter from the bottom of the zone to the upper middle area of the zone, which really cut down on travel time.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: saipaman on June 19, 2013, 12:51:53 AM
IMO, the joining of the tram lines was important to the progression of the story of Paragon City.  It was one symbol of the recovery from devastation of the war.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Electric-Knight on June 19, 2013, 04:12:37 AM
I don't think that it got too user friendly... but it did get too much Meta-Gaming friendly, in my opinion. (and maybe that's splitting hairs and/or the same thing you meant)

Meaning, there were things added in that took away from the game being a world. I'm not sure what really started it (or if every game is always in a progression towards that and it just grows as it goes).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not down about how the game was. I just felt like a lot of things were taking away from the virtual reality and contributed to the community standard becoming more and more accustomed to faster missions, faster/more xp, less pause and wait in-between... less casual fun and more stream-lined efficiency for gain/profit.

Maybe it was IOs. Maybe it was the leveling curve. Maybe it was some of AE's influence. Maybe it was a number of things, all combining.
The playerbase (the general average, of course... not a true blanket statement as all the variables exist, no question). It just seemed to get more and more of a stream-lined racing and/or efficient-potency than a game where people would bump into each other on the street and have fun, funny and/or entertaining interactions.

/end ramble  ;D
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 19, 2013, 04:54:32 AM
I don't think that it got too user friendly... but it did get too much Meta-Gaming friendly, in my opinion. (and maybe that's splitting hairs and/or the same thing you meant)

Meaning, there were things added in that took away from the game being a world. I'm not sure what really started it (or if every game is always in a progression towards that and it just grows as it goes).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not down about how the game was. I just felt like a lot of things were taking away from the virtual reality and contributed to the community standard becoming more and more accustomed to faster missions, faster/more xp, less pause and wait in-between... less casual fun and more stream-lined efficiency for gain/profit.

Maybe it was IOs. Maybe it was the leveling curve. Maybe it was some of AE's influence. Maybe it was a number of things, all combining.
The playerbase (the general average, of course... not a true blanket statement as all the variables exist, no question). It just seemed to get more and more of a stream-lined racing and/or efficient-potency than a game where people would bump into each other on the street and have fun, funny and/or entertaining interactions.

/end ramble  ;D


Don't get me wrong here - I adored this game since day one.

However once they started catering to the 'fast' crowds it kind of annoyed me.

It took me over a year of playing back in 2004-5 to get my first 50 and unlock my Peacebringer. And maybe 6 to 8 month to unlock the villain special AT.

By the last two years or so with AE people were getting to 50 in one afternoon and unlocking the Kheldians at 20.

Then to add insult to us long time players - you could BUY a Kheldian or the villain equivalent from he store.

At this point I felt new players were not experiencing the game properly - just the mad rush to get to 50 in one day.

IMO I felt they should have locked people out of AE until at least lvl 10 so they would at least get out and do stuff.

Honest to God I met a lvl 50 in AE in Atlas that NEVER LEFT the building except to go train at MS Liberty.

And I met a few 50's who didn't even know how to get to Steel Canyon.

People could play and level up how they want - and that's fine -but I found teaming with those 50's to be terrible because they had no idea how to actually play their hero, only ever playing in AE.

 
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 19, 2013, 05:08:01 AM
IMO, the joining of the tram lines was important to the progression of the story of Paragon City.  It was one symbol of the recovery from devastation of the war.

This kind of was what bothered me the most about the merger. Real cities have multiple lines. Maybe as a narrative device, it's OK, and they didn't set up the original tram system so that you had to get on the train that opened when your desired zone was on the scrolling sign above the doors, but the merger took away from the feeling, like EK was saying, of it being a world. More insulting was the instantaneous 'port from one end of a zone to another, like from the former Yellow Line terminal to the former Green Line terminal in Steel or Skyway to "shortcut" traveling all the way across the zone to your destination. I used it, sure, but it annoyed the hell out of me, all the same.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: houtex on June 19, 2013, 06:27:31 AM
Train lines merged?  Yes please.

TUNNEL?  Well.... ok... I guess... seems as if the new First Ward, Night Ward, and DA you'd need to earn to get to, not just pop in from level 1... Although I did like that FF was the new hub central for just about *any* zone Blueside, and Cap was in Red, made things easy.

Trainers as Icons... not so much.  But it's not a deal breaker either, just... coulda done without it.

I don't think it was too user friendly.  How can that possibly be?  You want happy users.  Not "HOW DO I GET A NEW COSTUME PART!?"

Besides, it's not like they put Null's powers in all the trainers too. :)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Kyriani on June 19, 2013, 12:41:17 PM
I dont think trainers should have had tailoring capabilities... I DO however think the Icon added to atlas park was a great idea. Even at 1st level you could fix a mistake you missed and there were other icons sprinkled throughout the game zones as well so you really didnt need the trainers to provide tailoring options.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: mrultimate on June 19, 2013, 01:38:40 PM
I have to add my voice to the side who missed the Green Line and Yellow Line as separate trains. Yes, the trains were un-heroic, in the first place, but the separation made you feel like you had accomplished something by getting to the Green Line. Ditto for making it to the Icon store at the north end of Steel, or, better, the one in IP by trying to sneak past the mobs between the King's Row tunnel and the tailor. That was almost as much a rite of passage as crossing the Hollows.

I feel the same way.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Brightfires on June 19, 2013, 03:55:33 PM
Add me to the list of people who just didn't see the need for making the trainers tailors... although I did love having an Icon in Atlas, and really felt like merging the trains and ferry lines was a Very Good Thing. Especially blue-side, where mission contacts might randomly send you to the far side of nowhere.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: srmalloy on June 19, 2013, 04:04:35 PM
No. The way many of the zones, with loading times (Dependign on connection) and the size of maps to tranfer from green to yellow didnt make much sense in a city planner point of view. Not to mention it was already silly as is that heroes that could fly, leap tall buildings, run faster than a bullet and teleport had to take the train like a normal bloke.

This (http://pvponline.com/comic/2004/06/08/june-8-2004) PvP Online strip (from partway through a series of strips Scott Kurtz did about City of Heroes -- the sequence begins here (http://pvponline.com/comic/2004/06/01/tue-jun-01) if you've never read them).
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: goodtime on June 19, 2013, 04:46:42 PM
I'M STILL MAD THEY ADDED THE METRO TO FOUNDER'S FALLS!  ZOMG, IT WRECKED THE WHOLE ZONE, TRAIN TRACKS EVERYWHERE!

Just kidding.  :)  I liked the new single metro line, even in FF, but I would have prefered the Tunnel system to have been more than just some floaty graphics sitting out and about.    Put'em in a building like vanguard, or a semi-trailer like the black market (only a portal corp branded trailer), or something that would fit into the world a little better.   Also, the base portals should have been the red Dr. Who phone booths.

But you know what, i loved - loved, loved, loved - taking my newb toons right out of the tutorial, grabbing some dough from my email stash, then running off to Firebase Zulu and buying a jetpack.  Even if I know I'd use it like, twice before getting my travel power, because next was four or five straight Death From Below runs.    It was weird, but I loved the fact that I could take this baby hero, then have to run, not SJ, not fly, not teleport, up to the Tunnel, then run across part of a level 45+ zone (okay, the utterly safe part, but still) to get the jetpack, then MY FIRST FLIGHT back to the tunnel and Atlas Park.     It was even fun when I'd get to the jetpack guy and realize I didn't have any INF stashed in my email at that moment, and no one was online.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: goodtime on June 19, 2013, 04:58:50 PM
This (http://pvponline.com/comic/2004/06/08/june-8-2004) PvP Online strip (from partway through a series of strips Scott Kurtz did about City of Heroes -- the sequence begins here (http://pvponline.com/comic/2004/06/01/tue-jun-01) if you've never read them).
The original game came with those in a little book, I'm sure I have it around here somewhere. 

Also, I recognize most of the costume parts, except for some of the extendy bits on Pummel Granite. 
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: batqueen on June 19, 2013, 05:11:09 PM
Yeah, there were several things that I wondered why they 'did that'. The train lines I did think was easier for me- but tailors at trainers? noooo. The tailor at pocket D I was oddly grateful for. The rest of the time, I would go find an Icon somewhere. I think it was from vet rewards, I also seem to remember being able to call up an interface for the consignment house where ever I was - but I didn't like that either, and would make a trip to the black market or woolworth's for the full experience. At least I had the choice on these things, and I chose not to break up  the experience by using too many "cheats". One exception was the Architect interface I had access to- I liked to park on top of a tall building, or on top of the trees in a wooded area, and quietly write stories.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pengy on June 19, 2013, 05:24:44 PM
Also, the base portals should have been the red Dr. Who phone booths.
Behind a series of security doors that would shut on your nose if you weren't careful.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 19, 2013, 06:25:02 PM
The Wentworth's remote access was a vet reward. One of the guys in my Friday night group got it about a month ahead of any of the rest of us, and he would mock the rest of us for having to go in person while he parked someplace out of the way and pulled it up. It was all in good fun, but, yeah, it was annoying. :)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Thunder Glove on June 19, 2013, 07:27:28 PM
Wow, this is an illuminating topic.  I thoroughly enjoyed the various tweaks to user-friendliness, including merging of the rail lines and the trainers-as-tailors.  (That goes double for Redside, where the ferries were ridiculous before the merging, and there were only two Facemakers total - and I could never remember where the second one was, so I wound up in Cap Au Diable every time I had a new costume idea).

Part of me did miss the immersion of having to actually go to Icon/The Facemaker, but it was far outweighed by just how convenient it was.  And I never, not even for a minute, missed the separate rail and ferry lines and all the running back and forth I had to do just to get to the zone I wanted to get to.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: primeknight on June 19, 2013, 07:55:08 PM
As someone who has recently started playing star trek online, and as someone that has little more than an hour max every few days to play games.  I've noticed how much of a time sink the game can be: I can spend a good 10 - 15 minutes just going back to the main Space Dock and sell stuff or <insert activity of choice>.  City of Heroes helped to rectify this over the years and I applaud all the steps they took to lessen travel times or help the player speed up their various activities. 

The example of making contacts double as tailors was brilliant, in that it allowed the player, from any level, to access one of the most wonderful aspects of the game quickly and easily from any part of the city.  I hope the Plan Z projects are going to make their games just as user friendly :)

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Phaetan on June 19, 2013, 08:38:45 PM
As someone who came aboard with Freedom, this is an entertaining and interesting read.
I'm glad that it didn't take two years to reach lvl 50, for example, because I didn't get that long before the game shut down.  Really, TUNNEL sees a little too easy and not well-integrated into the gmaeworld itself, but otherwise I was very happy for the user-friendly adaptations.  And don't forget that while any trainer could adjust a costume, for the big changes, you still needed to see a specialist.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 19, 2013, 09:00:56 PM
I thought STO had a Transwarp feature that allowed you to zip instantly back to Earth. You still had to go the long way back, but it still would save time.

(I haven't played STO in some time, but I will be going back to it in a couple of weeks. Must try out the new content!)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 19, 2013, 11:11:57 PM
I thought STO had a Transwarp feature that allowed you to zip instantly back to Earth. You still had to go the long way back, but it still would save time.

(I haven't played STO in some time, but I will be going back to it in a couple of weeks. Must try out the new content!)
Transwarp has a 15 minute -spacetime- cooldown (meaning it only counts down while you are logged in, in space). Additionally, Transwarp is only accessible from Sector space (so not just puttering around space within a sector, but the meta-game 'warp speed space').
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 20, 2013, 12:24:27 AM
As someone who came aboard with Freedom, this is an entertaining and interesting read.
I'm glad that it didn't take two years to reach lvl 50, for example, because I didn't get that long before the game shut down.  Really, TUNNEL sees a little too easy and not well-integrated into the gmaeworld itself, but otherwise I was very happy for the user-friendly adaptations.  And don't forget that while any trainer could adjust a costume, for the big changes, you still needed to see a specialist.

I can understand that coming late into the game.

But I always felt that newer players after AE and the easy leveling really had no idea how hard it was to get a 50 seeing as a lot of them got a 50 in about 6 hours.

Also lets forget there was no debt cap early on. Many toons took a long time to get to 50 simply because working off debt was huge. After they put the cap and half debt in missions and patrol xp - debt became a joke.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Rust on June 20, 2013, 01:08:53 AM
In regards to the original post: I don't think the game was too user friendly at the point of shut down. City of Heroes had evolved to keep pace with the needs and demands of the players. Let's face it - City was a big place. And it when it was developed was a far different time, development wise. City of Heroes was a bit anachronistic in that regard - the game design and level progression (that progression that was in the game at the start, not those story arcs added later) is very much a product of its time. While the final months of the game saw a lot of old content sidestepped for more "punch".

What I adored about the City was it never invalidated older content - it just made new content available. But the old methods were still just as viable. When Galaxy City collapsed, I cannot tell you how thankful I was that was the case. The Hollows became an escape rather then a requirement.

I think the game put a lot more emphasis on the more "User Friendly" aspects - the Travel Power at Level 6 and the modern content - but unlike other MMOs I could mention (World of WarCraft, specifically) the City never negated content. As a player with no interest in the Incarnate Trials (My main was a Batman-esque character - a vigilante. It made zero sense to make him some kind of avatar of divine might), when my altaholism subsided enough to let me play my main I was extremely grateful the Shadow Shard was still available. It was a ghost town, but it was still available.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Phaetan on June 20, 2013, 02:02:11 AM
I can understand that coming late into the game.

But I always felt that newer players after AE and the easy leveling really had no idea how hard it was to get a 50 seeing as a lot of them got a 50 in about 6 hours.

Also lets forget there was no debt cap early on. Many toons took a long time to get to 50 simply because working off debt was huge. After they put the cap and half debt in missions and patrol xp - debt became a joke.
Well, to each their own.  Maybe things were just different in Pinnacle, but there were not many AE babies there and almost all of those were actually alts on accounts with 5+ year vet badges...

My first 50, my namesake here, was an elec/devices blaster.  She rarely teamed, and tried AE twice before Incarnate levels and fled in terror after accidentally entering two Fire Farms while looking for, you know, story.  One of my happiest moments was when I managed to finally take down Frostfire with her solo.  Then I found out that I probably shouldn't have been able to pull that off (this was before I had subbed, so only small insps, no IOs or funky temp powers.)  She spent a fair amount of time at the debt cap and more than once I was told that she was worthless and I should delete the character by the aforementioned "old guard" AE farmers.  You can probably guess how well that went over, and I did feel the sting of debt, but just used it as a gauge of how much I needed to learn to play better.

Thankfully the vast majority of veteran players on Pinn were good people who didn't hold my newness against me and happily explained mechanics to me when I was confused.  They also let me stubbornly work my way through things when I didn't want advice, and generally just treated me as another regular almost immediately.  Hell, they happily let me in teams and leagues despite ping times that rarely dipped below 700 and slow zoning, thanks to the satellite internet.

Long story short, I suppose, is that for myself and the friends I brought into the game, we didn't see the things you seem to feel all new players did.  I guess we were just very lucky in our badge and booze-happy home.  My apologies for the long ramble and enjoy your reminiscing.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Lucretia MacEvil on June 20, 2013, 03:39:49 AM
Besides, it's not like they put Null's powers in all the trainers

IMO, they really should have.  I would sometimes wish to change those settings temporarily (and check up on my Praetorian AV kill list) and going to and from Pocket D to do so was a hassle.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Twi on June 20, 2013, 05:03:52 AM
This game has gone to the americans and jerk hackers with all this ease of access.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Kistulot on June 20, 2013, 05:17:36 AM
Icon has terrible lighting. having it be the only tailor is pretty awful when the second you step outside your costume looks worse.

Having two trainlines only made things take longer. The city gave you plenty of reasons to fly around. Nothing stopped you from artificially continuing to play the same way. That is true for almost everything here.

Just... this hurts me, really. The game was being made better, enhanced to be more fun, cutting out the crap that was old and not enjoyable to make the game a more fun experience. Wanting it to go back to before that just makes me wonder why not just play CO, it hasn't received any updated to make it a more fun game in years and that's going great.

The newer content had less kill alls, too...

Frankly, I'm sorry, but complaining the game was made "easier" and "more accessible" when the actual gameplay was just as hard, and the accessibility made it so more people were able to have fun doing more things screams of "back in my day... up hill both ways... young whipper snappers..."

No one forced anyone to take advantage of the AE for quicker leveling, or ITFs for that matter. No one forced people to use Miss Liberty to fix their costume instead of creating a brand new character because of no icon, or having to run all the way over there to tweak what could be done in two seconds. You're all free to your opinions obviously, and I'm only trying to express my own to boot, but with the obvious, glaring exception of PvP which was broken and then ignored... this thread just reminds me of reasons I avoided the official forums :(
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on June 20, 2013, 06:51:25 AM
This (http://pvponline.com/comic/2004/06/08/june-8-2004) PvP Online strip (from partway through a series of strips Scott Kurtz did about City of Heroes -- the sequence begins here (http://pvponline.com/comic/2004/06/01/tue-jun-01) if you've never read them).
lol. never heard of these guys or knew of their existance until now but their comic strips are pretty, well very very accurate about COH, in a good way, especially in the early days. People take their role play seriously.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on June 20, 2013, 06:53:08 AM
I can understand that coming late into the game.

But I always felt that newer players after AE and the easy leveling really had no idea how hard it was to get a 50 seeing as a lot of them got a 50 in about 6 hours.

Also lets forget there was no debt cap early on. Many toons took a long time to get to 50 simply because working off debt was huge. After they put the cap and half debt in missions and patrol xp - debt became a joke.

yep and it made it indiretly harder to find a team for some stuff because people was too busy getting as many 1-50s in AE as fast as they or focus on farming once they do hit 50 if not before.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 20, 2013, 02:12:54 PM
yep and it made it indiretly harder to find a team for some stuff because people was too busy getting as many 1-50s in AE as fast as they or focus on farming once they do hit 50 if not before.

That was a big peeve of mine. They put a lot of work into the game creating mission arcs, Task Forces, backstories for the villians,  etc.

Most of the big enjoyment for me was following the 'story' of Paragon City, not just "OMGZZZZZZZZZZZ I NEEDZ TEH 50!"

I felt that a good number of people missed out on the game by basically camping their ass in AE and making 50's all day long.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: adarict on June 20, 2013, 05:29:03 PM
I don't think I would say it was TOO user friendly near the end.  And I think a lot of the reactions depend on how long you had been playing.  I started right before I3.  I have a TON of fond memories of trying to get to Steel Canyon Icon without getting pummeled.  I took it as a challenge, and made it into a minigame.  Same with the train lines not being connected.  After a while though, I had created so many alts that all I really wanted was a quick way to accomplish the things I wanted to do.  Not the levelling up part.  I was fine with how long it took, even in the obnoxiously slow level ranges.

The problem was, with the new people.  OK, poor wording choice.  What I mean is, new people never had to deal with any of those things.  For them, these benefits simply made everything easier for them, and was normal.  There are always going to be those who want everything now, without having to do any real work for them, but at least on Guardian, those people seemed to be in the minority.  The changes making things easier just made the game that much easier to enjoy, for newbies as well as old timers.  For some of the old timers, it engenders feelings of "When I was a kid, we walked to school, uphill!  Both ways!"

I don't think they made the game too easy.  I think they made it more enjoyable for more people.  i do sometimes feel a bit sad that newer people didn't get to have some of the fun the earlier players had.  How many stories have we all read about hovering all the way across the Hollows, or the long trips back from the hospital after getting smacked down yards away from your mission entrance?
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 20, 2013, 05:35:07 PM
I probably would have stopped playing if they hadn't started "dumbing it down" (which I honestly don't think they started doing until after Freedom - a couple of their most recent changes seemed to be straight out of 'casual gaming', TUNNEL e.g.)

I have no interest in the run around/fiddling part. I want to get to the dings and the story. Making it easier for that to happen means I'm way more likely to stick around.

An example is Neverwinter. You can get real XP from crafting, and since you can craft from a smartphone, I can progress even when I'm at work. I have probably gotten two or three full levels worth of XP from all the crafting pancake I've done. You also get a big pile of XP from "invocation" which you can do once an hour (though only the first three or four invocations a day grant XP). With all this extra XP, I am repeatedly at the top end of my questing area's level range, which means I can enjoy the STORY without fearing for my LIFE. Granted, I do die occasionally but that's usually because I'm being cocky. :p

I play games to enjoy myself. I don't play games to challenge myself unless *I* put those challenges on *myself*. Flashbacks with challenge modes were perfect examples.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: AltaholicX on June 20, 2013, 11:31:30 PM
I'm enough of an old curmudgeon to think that it might have been a good idea to keep the more convenient tailor/hospital/travel/AE experience assets locked until you at least had one character at level 30 or possibly higher. Half the fun with you first toon was trying to get across the Hollows or Steel Canyon without getting killed.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: saipaman on June 20, 2013, 11:36:15 PM
This kind of was what bothered me the most about the merger. Real cities have multiple lines. Maybe as a narrative device, it's OK, and they didn't set up the original tram system so that you had to get on the train that opened when your desired zone was on the scrolling sign above the doors, but the merger took away from the feeling, like EK was saying, of it being a world. More insulting was the instantaneous 'port from one end of a zone to another, like from the former Yellow Line terminal to the former Green Line terminal in Steel or Skyway to "shortcut" traveling all the way across the zone to your destination. I used it, sure, but it annoyed the hell out of me, all the same.

Myself, I would have preferred something more realistic (which is what I think you wanted).  Perhaps double decked stations in which you would exit from the tram, change levels and board a short line to the other station in the zone.  Come out there and then switch back to the mainline.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Rust on June 20, 2013, 11:45:53 PM
I don't think they made the game too easy.  I think they made it more enjoyable for more people.  i do sometimes feel a bit sad that newer people didn't get to have some of the fun the earlier players had.  How many stories have we all read about hovering all the way across the Hollows, or the long trips back from the hospital after getting smacked down yards away from your mission entrance?

I have fond memories of sitting in the Help or Zone General chat of Pinnacle and Virtue and waxing on about the "Way Things Were" to the new folks. Not in a cankerous way, but just sharing the stories of days gone by with the newer generation.

I remember the one that always got the biggest reaction from the "new blood" was reminiscing about Perez Park back in the days when you didn't get a legitimate Travel Power until Level 14.

Go.
Hunt.
Kill Skuls.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 21, 2013, 12:34:25 AM
I have fond memories of sitting in the Help or Zone General chat of Pinnacle and Virtue and waxing on about the "Way Things Were" to the new folks. Not in a cankerous way, but just sharing the stories of days gone by with the newer generation.

I remember the one that always got the biggest reaction from the "new blood" was reminiscing about Perez Park back in the days when you didn't get a legitimate Travel Power until Level 14.

Go.
Hunt.
Kill Skuls.

I have very found memories of Perez Park. Before Hollows was added it was THE place to level up around level 6-14 by either street sweeping Skulls and Hellions or the fun team Hydra hunting.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Rust on June 21, 2013, 12:37:39 AM
I remember Perez Park was the place that was suicide to go into alone - especially crazy to dare the interior by yourself.

I also remember spending a insanely long period of time in my lower 30s scouring the tunnels of the Hollows looking for the Trolls Archvillain leader.

Good times. Good times.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 21, 2013, 03:57:47 AM
I remember Perez Park was the place that was suicide to go into alone - especially crazy to dare the interior by yourself.

I also remember spending a insanely long period of time in my lower 30s scouring the tunnels of the Hollows looking for the Trolls Archvillain leader.

Good times. Good times.

When I unlocked my Peacebringer (and this was the long way - had to get your first 50, not 20 or just buying the damn thing in the market)- Once I hit lvl 6 and got Nova I went to Perez and hover low enough to blast the mobs on the street, but high enough that they couldn't shoot at me back. Killing large groups of lvl 7 and 8's got me to level 10 pretty quick.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Sailboat on June 21, 2013, 03:53:51 PM
The game was being made better, enhanced to be more fun, cutting out the crap that was old and not enjoyable to make the game a more fun experience.

This is one of the things I most resent about the "sunset."  The game was mature and well-developed, with lots of conveniences and lots experience balancing ATs and cleaning up bugs (although some certainly remained).  Issue 24 was going to do even more of that.  And then, boom.

People have suggested going to "newer" games.  Games that still have a lot of things to work out.  But new games often fail or fold before ever reaching the level of development (and the immense labor of love behind that development) that eight-year-old COH had.  I don't want to be floundering around again watching developers blunder through the process of finding out what does and does not work, system-wide nerfs/buffs, and so on -- I liked the "mostly completed" COH, with its many quality-of-life improvements, (mostly) well-thought-out AT balance, and huge trove of missions, activities, and minigames.

And what are the odds a new game will outlive teething troubles and get to be eight years old?  Not many games get to 8 and still make money.  (And, dammit, COH still made money!)

I'm trying The Secret World these days.  It's good, but it's no COH.  TSW is facing a large-scale rebalancing of items and abilities in the next patch/issue; it's not yet two years old, and already there are threads in its forums on "reviving this dead game," "I've come back after a long time, what's changed?" and "game is losing players/old/defunct/whatever."  I see those and think, "But you're just starting!"  If people consider a less-than-two-year-old game defunct, how will we ever GET one to eight?

Gah.

Half the fun with you first toon was trying to get across the Hollows or Steel Canyon without getting killed.

The Hollows in those days was fear, and effort, and sudden death; the Hollows was hard missions, far from help, hospitals, or resupply; the Hollows was running, running until you could almost feel the stitch in your side, almost hear your own labored breath catch as those purple-conning Trolls turned -- had they spotted you?  I hated it and loved it.  I was all-too-often dead, but I felt alive.

On that last night, at "sunset," I was alone, far across the Hollows, atop Eastgate Heights, my first 50 sitting in the lotus position, at the moment the world ended.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 21, 2013, 04:29:18 PM
I'm trying The Secret World these days.  It's good, but it's no COH.  TSW is facing a large-scale rebalancing of items and abilities in the next patch/issue; it's not yet two years old, and already there are threads in its forums on "reviving this dead game," "I've come back after a long time, what's changed?" and "game is losing players/old/defunct/whatever."  I see those and think, "But you're just starting!"  If people consider a less-than-two-year-old game defunct, how will we ever GET one to eight?
This made me laugh so hard. Neverwinter - which went live YESTERDAY - already has those posts on the forums. The day open beta went through, there were those posts on the forums. People are stupid, that's all.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: blacksly on June 21, 2013, 05:39:11 PM
Go.
Hunt.
Kill Skuls.

Heh, is that a UniqueDragon reference?
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 21, 2013, 07:58:20 PM
Heh, is that a UniqueDragon reference?
No, UniqueDragon's reference is noting the game well be gone to the Americans after rares dupin and jerk hackin. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/UniqueDragon

Kill Skuls was another dude, who recruited people to do his Skulls hunt in Perez Park for him. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Kill_Skuls
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Stone Daemon on June 21, 2013, 08:53:19 PM

I also remember spending a insanely long period of time in my lower 30s scouring the tunnels of the Hollows looking for the Trolls Archvillain leader.

Good times. Good times.

Wait, wait--what? There was a troll AV down there?

I never saw one!  :o
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Rust on June 22, 2013, 03:20:35 AM
Wait, wait--what? There was a troll AV down there?

I never saw one!  :o

That was the point. There wasn't one down there. But I remember the official website's dossier on the Trolls stated their leader was in the Tunnels of the Hollows...and I kept trying to find him as opposed to running the low 30s Contact Missions...which were either Paragon Protector Missions or Devouring Earth.

Coincidentally, those missions taught me to really hate the Devouring Earth. Also dang near stalled out my progress in the game and further encouraged my Altaholism to the point it took another six years just to get one toon to Level 50.

The game is stellar fun, don't get me wrong, but the Low 30s really saw things draaaaaaaag. It wasn't until the AE opened that I finally busted through that glass ceiling - giving me something to fight beyond Devouring Earth.

EDIT: That's one of the biggest failings of the game, I fell. There were a ton of villain groups and organizations out there, but you always ended up fighting a handful at a time. It wasn't until the 40s that it felt like there were plenty of groups to fight.

Oddly enough, I think the group my lone Level 50 loved to knock around was Malta. For a Batman-esque Vigilante, Malta was a perfect fit, adversary wise. And being Dark Melee, it became a game of who hit first - the Sapper or me.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Cinnder on June 22, 2013, 05:18:05 AM
I don't think that it got too user friendly... but it did get too much Meta-Gaming friendly, in my opinion. (and maybe that's splitting hairs and/or the same thing you meant)

Meaning, there were things added in that took away from the game being a world. I'm not sure what really started it (or if every game is always in a progression towards that and it just grows as it goes).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not down about how the game was. I just felt like a lot of things were taking away from the virtual reality and contributed to the community standard becoming more and more accustomed to faster missions, faster/more xp, less pause and wait in-between... less casual fun and more stream-lined efficiency for gain/profit.

Maybe it was IOs. Maybe it was the leveling curve. Maybe it was some of AE's influence. Maybe it was a number of things, all combining.
The playerbase (the general average, of course... not a true blanket statement as all the variables exist, no question). It just seemed to get more and more of a stream-lined racing and/or efficient-potency than a game where people would bump into each other on the street and have fun, funny and/or entertaining interactions.

/end ramble  ;D

I'm with EK here.  While I understand that some players wanted quicker access to the action, I felt it was the "world" part of the game that suffered.  Sometimes in my most curmudgeonly moods I'd say the game was heading towards becoming just a menu of missions you'd get right after the login screen.  Since characters spent less time in the world between missions, it made the game feel emptier.  In the old days, I'd bump into folks on the street and chat or join up.  Towards the end it was more the global channels where this would happen, which made the world itself seem less realistic. 
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: LaughingAlex on June 22, 2013, 05:22:54 AM
If it hasn't already been mentioned but http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DemonicSpiders quotes alot of City of heroes in there.  Thing is, I find when I play CO, it's to easy cause, well, theres nothing that requires any kind of effective counters.  CO has no malta organization equivilent and theres nothing in the game that has any kind of real deadly killer for freeforms.  The games to easy.  CoX however, it still punished those who were not doing anything to counter some mobs.  You couldn't just ignore the sappers on most characters and not having breakfrees or some anti-mezz like clarion was asking for certain disaster against both the Malta operative and the Knives of Artemis.  In CO however you can pretty much ignore everything, the game is the exact opposite....I feel it holds your hand even at level FORTY even, ugh.

If your wondering, I'd solo many Malta missions on 8x on quite a few chars.  Not +4 as it just made the mobs living tanks to me....and I remember the dark armor sucks video someone posted, where a guy took on 8x malta at +4 mode pre-incarnate.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Tenzhi on June 22, 2013, 05:23:26 AM
I always thought that instead of adding the Tailor feature to Trainers they should have allowed you to click on phone booths to access it. ;)

Mind you, I hate the notion of Trainers more than the notion of Superspeedsters riding trains.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Megajoule on June 22, 2013, 04:04:17 PM
Let's be honest:  a lot of vanilla CoH followed the MMO design assumptions of the time, one of which was that padding out playtime with travel was the same as actual content.  (If it keeps them logged in and subscribed, what's the difference?)  Thus, all of those quests missions that send you from one side of Kalimdor the city to the other and back again...  As I've said elsewhere, it's a wonder to me sometimes that the game lasted long enough to become as awesome as it eventually did.  (Lack of competition in that subgenre surely helped, as did the passionate committment that uniqueness fostered in many players.)

A group I was very proud to be a part of, the Taxibots, was founded in large part to do away with some of those artificial barriers and inconveniences - a de facto joining of the Yellow and Green Lines in Steel, for example, and easy access to the iCon in that zone when it was a lowbie's only real option for changing their costume.  (Also, badge tours and rescuing hapless heroes from the deadly obstacle course that was the original Hollows.)  As time went on, many of these things were changed in such a way as to make the Taxibots less necessary; however, I don't resent being made "obsolete."  We performed a valuable and helpful service when it was needed, and if the game itself was later patched to do some of the same things, that shows that we had the right idea(s).  We were just ahead of the curve.

True, some of the changes were a little much and/or damaging to "sense of world"; I believe I raised that concern when the TUNNEL links went in.  But I must admit I used them, and my vet reward Wentworth's-from-anywhere, and the mission teleporter, and all those other little conveniences that, after eight years of pushing against CoH's original design 'features' - sometimes uphill - I came to appreciate.  I no longer had to worry about crossing five zones (with a train transfer in the middle) to get to the mission door, or stop the team's momentum cold to rush off to the auction house and empty my inventory, or juggle mentors and sidekicks and try to remember who was allowed in what hazard zones.  I could just play with my friends - something CoH always did better than the others, and only improved at.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: saipaman on June 22, 2013, 10:43:44 PM
Powers that you could only get as veteran's rewards didn't hurt the game.  For example, those bonus teleport powers greatly improved your chances of getting a Shadow Shard Task Force.

On the other hand, I was enraged by the idea that "20 was the new "50" Kheldians.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Turjan on June 23, 2013, 12:06:47 AM
When my missus first started playing CoH she was always surprised to arrive at a mission door and find me already there.

"How do you always get to the gigs so fast?" she'd say.
And I'd reply, "It's like 'The Knowledge' that London cabbies have - I've flown round this city so many times now I know all the short cuts by heart."

That's something that had faded in CoH by Issue 23. At that point it seemed you were never more than 2 jumps at most from where you needed to get to. Gone were the days of "Well, the Yellow line doesn't go there, so I'll have to take the road to here, then hop the green line, then access the hazard door from that zone..."

Which was good...I suppose. But it did sometimes feel too easy sometimes, stepping into that portal next to Atlas tram station. Having 'The Knowledge' was more fun :)

And then there's The Hollows of course.
Back before its makeover, with no shops, or hospital, and no travel powers til 14...that was most players' first exposure to real challenges in the game. It's also where I learned the fine - and forever useful - art of judging aggro zones. I zoomed out the view with the mouse wheel, and could see in my mind's eye the circles around the gangs, and knew that to cross them was a Bad Thing.

And no travel or hospital or trainers meant that the easiest way to get out of the Hollows and back to Ms Liberty was to "Take the waaahmbulance" by just running into one of those huge gangs of mobs and waking up in Atlas A&E :D

All in all, I'd not say the game got too user friendly exactly - I think it was more like comparing a supermarket to high street shops: everything in a supermarket is conveniently to hand, but somehow it's missing the intimacy and personal touch of those small high street business.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on June 23, 2013, 03:13:35 AM
To add to my post - its like what happened with Saints Row 3.

In Saints Row 2 you had to actually drive (or fly) around the city to get to mission points. In your cribs you had rooms and maybe one room had clothes and your safe and another had your weapons. And each crib had a unique design.

For Saints Row 3 they made your cell phone your mission point so all you had to do to get a new mission was press a button no matter where you were. And for the cribs they were more or less were the same if it was the same type of building and instead of rooms where you had to go for various things they made a simple menu that you press with one button to get whatever you want.

Now the system in SR3 made the game go faster since you could get missions and access your crib stash quicker, but most players of SR2 missed the immersion of having to navigate the city to points to start missions.

In a way this is what COH did and I am not complaining or say I hated it, I just felt it took away the immersion of this big city when you could basically get to any zone from almost anywhere. Or have tailors everywhere for the sake of a quick makeover.

Plus the devs obviously put a lot of time and talent into the city design of the streets, buildings, traffic, those great billboards, etc and its a shame that many new players towards the end may have not gotten to appreciate the city like us old time vets did.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: srmalloy on June 24, 2013, 03:53:10 PM
And then there's The Hollows of course.
Back before its makeover, with no shops, or hospital, and no travel powers til 14...that was most players' first exposure to real challenges in the game. It's also where I learned the fine - and forever useful - art of judging aggro zones. I zoomed out the view with the mouse wheel, and could see in my mind's eye the circles around the gangs, and knew that to cross them was a Bad Thing.

...the skill that I referred to as 'BlasterStealth' -- a nuanced familiarity with the aggro radius of mobs to be able to skate around spawns without drawing attention to yourself, and even getting Stealth didn't change what you did; it just gave you the ability to (mostly) get away with it inside the confines of a mission map.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: ag88t88 on June 28, 2013, 06:28:32 PM
Yeah, from the start I felt like making the trainers do costumes was just completely redundant.  It made no sense for one (I'm Miss Liberty and I'll train you, or change your clothes for you)  And two, once they put an Icon in AP, it was like, why bother with the trainers? You got a shop right there.

Honestly I didn't mind some of the stream-lined, more user friendly bits especially since they were doing it with the re-launch of freedom, but the trainer\costume maker thing was silly IMO. 

I liked the merging of the two train lines, especially in the larger zones.  To be honest, I like the option in newer MMORPGs of
having clickable teleport icons on zone maps.  The train depots always felt awkward to me and un-superhero like.

I didnt agree with having tailor options available from trainers,  it kind of made having the tailor shops pointless.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 28, 2013, 06:54:30 PM
So, evidently, this is a topic being discussed all over the Internetisphere.

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/7540/Mark-Kern-Have-MMOs-Become-Too-Easy.html
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Codewalker on June 28, 2013, 06:55:19 PM
Yeah, from the start I felt like making the trainers do costumes was just completely redundant.  It made no sense for one (I'm Miss Liberty and I'll train you, or change your clothes for you)  And two, once they put an Icon in AP, it was like, why bother with the trainers? You got a shop right there.

What didn't make any sense to me was that the Icon was added to AP in the same update that made all trainers into tailors.

Though, because of that change we did get some hilarious fan art (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Coh-Comish-Color-345300374).
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Electric-Knight on June 28, 2013, 11:09:31 PM
While I can understand the confusion some people have with trainers giving access to the costume creator, since there are Icon buildings for that...

This change didn't bother me at all.
Sure, the addition of Icon within Atlas Park coming at the same time was a little weird... but, to be fair, trainers don't work as Super Tailors. So, you'd still need Icon (or Pocket D or Vanguard) to change your height and/or body type.

Here's the thing though... I never once viewed any of this as anything more than Meta-Game, User Interfaces for game mechanics and such.

I never thought of the trainers as characters that actually trained my characters.
So, I never thought of them as being my tailors either.

I'd have been just as happy to use a slash command, or a quickchat click, to access any of that.

Really, what sense did it make to go to Trina in the Tiki Lounge?
Or changing in front of an NPC in the middle of the Vanguard Base?

It was just an additional convenience... but not a break in immersion, at all, for me.


It's not like your character necessarily had to visit a tailor to grow larger horns or wings.
So, I don't entirely understand why people take hard stances on things like this sometimes, hehe.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Rust on June 28, 2013, 11:21:16 PM
So, evidently, this is a topic being discussed all over the Internetisphere.

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/7540/Mark-Kern-Have-MMOs-Become-Too-Easy.html

Not a bad article until the blatant plug for his own MMO at the end.

Much of the reason I left World of WarCraft was the streamlining of content. I think that's the biggest difference between what CoH did and what WoW is doing. Yes, CoH streamlined things as well, but outside Galaxy City, it never removed anything. WoW now has less depth to it in terms of talent trees and gear customization then it did at launch.

It'd be like in CoH decided to "streamline" the archtypes by removing the secondary power sets all together. "Blasters are ranged fighters - they have no need for melee combat skills." Much like how Hunters have been stripped of anything beyond their bow now that there is no longer a ranged weapon "dead zone" in the game.

I also agree that the focus of a MMO shouldn't be solely on End Game. Part of the reasons I really like Star Trek Online and The Secret World is the End Game isn't the sole focus. STO just added a lot of lower to mid-range content, and The Secret World has "Investigation" Missions that invoke strong memories of Myst and involve you actually paying attention to the game world around you.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on June 28, 2013, 11:27:54 PM
Not a bad article until the blatant plug for his own MMO at the end.

Much of the reason I left World of WarCraft was the streamlining of content. I think that's the biggest difference between what CoH did and what WoW is doing. Yes, CoH streamlined things as well, but outside Galaxy City, it never removed anything. WoW now has less depth to it in terms of talent trees and gear customization then it did at launch.

It'd be like in CoH decided to "streamline" the archtypes by removing the secondary power sets all together. "Blasters are ranged fighters - they have no need for melee combat skills." Much like how Hunters have been stripped of anything beyond their bow now that there is no longer a ranged weapon "dead zone" in the game.

I also agree that the focus of a MMO shouldn't be solely on End Game. Part of the reasons I really like Star Trek Online and The Secret World is the End Game isn't the sole focus. STO just added a lot of lower to mid-range content, and The Secret World has "Investigation" Missions that invoke strong memories of Myst and involve you actually paying attention to the game world around you.

Cant blame him for the plug. It's only natural. If one of us did an article there would be COX plug in there somewhere if not the main focus of the article. But that small potatoes.


Yeah, the end game, I think so many games get caught p in end game end game end game and all the great stuff you can do at level cap, they forget the other 39-79 levels you have to do to get there.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 28, 2013, 11:59:13 PM
//sidetrack//
Not a bad article until the blatant plug for his own MMO at the end.
He's a game developer talking about user friendliness. He's going to talk about his game. And to be fair, Firefall is pretty "odd-man-out" in the MMO field right now. It's closer to a massive-scale, persistent-world shooter [MMOFPS?] than an RPG, although the base game is certainly built on an RPG model and heavily tweaked from there. And the guys and gals at Red5 really do care about community feedback. The beta process has been amazing. It always kind of felt like what it would be if Paragon had done an FPS.
//sidetrack//
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 29, 2013, 12:21:44 AM
Yeah. Posi still uses CoH as a frame of reference in his articles.

And, CoH did remove stuff, but only at low levels, and it was replaced with equivalent stuff. I, personally, was pissed about them dropping the origin-based contacts and missions at the low levels. Also, I could have taken or left the "new" super group that they threw in around level 5 or 6. It was kinda creative, but just felt "extra."

But, CoH also didn't make the new material only available at higher levels, which was smarter, because they never had to make it easy-peasy to level to 50. There was the Incarnate stuff, but there was so much stuff just out there in the City and the Isles that I never really felt like I was missing anything by not doing much with the Incarnate stuff. In fact, I still feel like I missed stuff (and likely did) out there in the City and the Isles.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on June 29, 2013, 02:41:15 AM
Although I didnt get the trainer also being used as a tailor thing. It was convient but couldnt make sense of it. "so now, they want me to train up in powers and get dressed in front of the likes of Ms. Liberty?" Although on the other hand I guess that is how it was already done anyways since gear affected looks and thus you visited the trainer/gear shop and appearance changed with how you trained.
This statement confuses me since the only equivalent to the gear of other MMOs in CoH was enhancements or temp powers, and neither one had a direct effect on character appearance.
In any event i thought making trainers also function as tailors was unnecessary and somewhat silly, especially in Atlas Park since there was an Icon a short distance away. (i don't recall a Facemaker in the revamped Mercy Island.)

That said, while there were a number of additions in the last year that increased convenience i found most of them to be either very handy/reasonable or easily ignored. Except the TUNNEL system. For whatever irrational reason i found it to be highly annoying and superfluous.

And now i suddenly miss the game a lot again. Especially since every MMO i've tried since the closing hasn't come close to equaling it for me. At this point i'm mostly pinning my hopes on TPP since i have my doubts about CoH having much more than a largely static revival even if the buyout or server emulation projects come to fruition. The Paragon Studios team has moved on and without seasoned hands on the codebase i suspect it would be a long time before effective development could move forward even if the game was revived.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on June 29, 2013, 02:55:53 AM
This statement confuses me since the only equivalent to the gear of other MMOs in CoH was enhancements or temp powers, and neither one had a direct effect on character appearance.
In any event i thought making trainers also function as tailors was unnecessary and somewhat silly, especially in Atlas Park since there was an Icon a short distance away. (i don't recall a Facemaker in the revamped Mercy Island.)

That said, while there were a number of additions in the last year that increased convenience i found most of them to be either very handy/reasonable or easily ignored. Except the TUNNEL system. For whatever irrational reason i found it to be highly annoying and superfluous.

And now i suddenly miss the game a lot again. Especially since every MMO i've tried since the closing hasn't come close to equaling it for me. At this point i'm mostly pinning my hopes on TPP since i have my doubts about CoH having much more than a largely static revival even if the buyout or server emulation projects come to fruition. The Paragon Studios team has moved on and without seasoned hands on the codebase i suspect it would be a long time before effective development could move forward even if the game was revived.

Talking about I couldnt understand the point of going to a trainer to change appearances aka, why is atrainer doubling asa tailer. Then I realize in many games techincally the trainer also double as "tailor" as in many game you go to the trainer to get gear, and depending on gear chosen your look is tailored at that one contact.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on June 29, 2013, 02:58:17 AM
I can't think of a single game that gives you new gear when you level up. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on June 29, 2013, 03:30:19 AM
Also lets forget there was no debt cap early on.

The debt cap was halved in i6 with in-mission debt halved in i5, but I'm not aware that there was ever no debt cap. Certainly in i3 I remember a disastrous Circle of Thorns mission ("Invincible is just a title, right?" says the leader) in the Hollows which had a "prison room" - because this meant we didn't have to slug back from hosp, I eventually decided I didn't care; respawn, kill one or two enemies, die, rinse and repeat. I must have died two or three dozen times, but that toon was still out of debt in a level's time or so.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: FatherXmas on June 29, 2013, 04:31:39 AM
The one big thing in my opinion that hastened the end of the game, not counting corporate in Seoul, was emphasizing instanced missions over zone events and miscellaneous street sweeping.

I understand, seeing the long queues in games like Everquest when a quest is within the world and it ends in a boss fight that spawns 5 minutes after it last got killed, how innovative the notion that everyone gets their own boss fight and don't have to wait for it to return was, combined with large mission bonuses and reduced debt from missions emptied the streets in a very short period of time. 

Now I started playing at the end of August 2004 and the streets and skies were full of heroes, and suddenly, they weren't.  You still saw them going between missions, around the trainers, around the tram stations, in the stores and Icon but it wasn't the same.  Then they started to add QoL features that made it easier to travel to your missions, no longer needing to wait for a tram or transfer in Sky and Steel between the two.  When they added the universities, The Vault and Wentworth's it was three more places you could find gatherings of heroes but eventually they too got QoL rewards and methods to let them do those activities elsewhere.  Icon was the last local until trainers became tailors as well.

Some of this happened after the introduction of AE sort of as a way to provide some of the same convenience but in the normal game but the end result is you didn't have to transverse the city anymore.  Travel powers at a low level makes some sense from a RPing PoV but it primarily meant the the city was fly, jump, port over or speed by country.  At least back when we had to hoof it for 14 levels on the ground we felt like we were in a city full of people wandering the streets.

The end result was what looked to be an abandoned city, empty of heroes, instead of the city I first entered nearly 9 years ago.  If you were a new player you would wonder if anybody else was playing.  With private channels being the normal way to communicate, with hide being the default condition of players who played during the RMT invasion post market and maybe a third of the player population at peak, a new player would wonder how you can play an MMO without other players.

Notice I'm not really talking about difficulty in playing, just environmental changes over the years.

I've been playing GW2 for a while now (letting the boos die down) and one of the aspects I enjoy about it is every zone is full of what's called dynamic events.  Think of the troll rave or apartment fire except multiply that by 20 in every zone.  And with their philosophy that encouraging player cooperation being paramount, players can join in or leave without the need to join teams just so they get better rewards.  There is no tagging of critters so they count toward your total and not someone else.  Everyone gets the same XP and number of drops of loot as long as you do some minimum amount of damage.  But most important is as these events occur, it causes players nearby to rush over and join in which means you see and meet other players all the time in the open world.  And as they join in (well get within an range of the event) the event scales up and as they leave it scales down.  It also helps that they have a daily reward if you do 5 of 9 variable goals for the day and event participation is almost guarantee to be one or more of those goals.

My point is it's not that the game got too easy from making the critters easier to defeat, it got easier for your character to not be a involved with the game world and that leads to a world where to an outsider, a new player, empty of other players and that's death to an MMO, the appearance that it's already dead.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on June 29, 2013, 06:32:01 AM
This is just my opinion but in terms of actual game play I always found CoH to very very user friendly borderline easy.  The other parts like having to go all the way across Talos for DA or waiting for the tram, no ouro portal.  Those don't really interfere with my concept of the game, short walk or long walk it didn't matter to me because the real challenge was inside the mission or the combat.  I felt at the end the game they actually started making the game play slightly less user friendly at least in some of the newest content.  Fights started requiring more teamwork and new mechanics and people would need to have some experience with the mechanics at hand.  CoH was nice because they added it across several different level ranges.  It wasn't only level 50 content that had mechanics or cool boss fights.  Kind of blapper but for the OP, I think the game was always very user friendly from day one.  The just made travel times shorter as the game went on.  I still think the game was great and loved playing it, but I never really played it because it was challenging.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on June 29, 2013, 02:04:19 PM
I can't think of a single game that gives you new gear when you level up. I have no idea what you're talking about.

CO has those little boxes every five levels. You get one or two random green items and the next box. It's silly, but it's a nice little perk, especially on a level where you don't get a new power. I don't know of any others, though.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on June 29, 2013, 05:57:17 PM
(And everything before)

My point is it's not that the game got too easy from making the critters easier to defeat, it got easier for your character to not be a involved with the game world and that leads to a world where to an outsider, a new player, empty of other players and that's death to an MMO, the appearance that it's already dead.

Yeah.

It did start to look like a ghost town. And only time people piped up to let you know they were there is when someone said it looked like a ghost town. Otherwise they were invisible, on prtivate chat channeles, and might get a glimpse of them in passing every now and then. To new players it, looked dead. That what many people I finally got to try the game over the years said. "Dang dude, you got me in this dead game. I might as well go back and play Madden, at least it's guranteed I'll see 11 other players." Only one stayed.

Now I aint too keen on force teaming and stuff, hell I found having to have a team for the TF/SF was a great bore to me as if it wasnt farming ITF, AE, or farming the first three Incarnate Trials, the rest of them got pushed on the back burner and hard to find and form team for those especially like the shard. Of course as usual, after the fact someone piped up, saying their group keyword their group ran shard tf often. Well hello, then, if ya didnt publicize it then how is one to know they even exist?
I kind of wish COX population wasnt so clique oriented. Ya have to know someone that know someone that know someone to get in. Otherwise it's looks like a ghost town and no one speaks until ya say the magic words, "it looks like a ghost town." Then a few pop up and then go back quiet.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Optimus Dex on June 30, 2013, 04:02:22 AM
I think the private channels led to some problems. Made the City look less inhabited. Trainers as costume shops were not helpful especially when they put an Icon in Atlas. Streetsweeping- one of my favorite activities was nerfed in favor of instanced missions.  Personally I loved getting travel powers earlier than lvl14.  If you make a superspeedster but he can't  Speed Or a Hawkman homage that can't fly that was immersion breaking.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Turjan on June 30, 2013, 12:04:12 PM
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on July 01, 2013, 12:06:01 AM
Weirdly, Champions Online takes the Signature characters to the other extreme. Defender is really to poster child for useless, unless he's in the mission to"penetrate from the rear," which he seems pretty good at. There was another mission with Witchcraft that I kind of blame on the AI, because she would have actually been a help.

The signature characters should be there for a reason, and it shouldn't be to stand there while you follow their instructions (like, "Open this door to the Warroom of Earth's mightiest super team!) or follow you around like Fusionette or Lady Grey. It's interesting that the two non-comic IP spandex games could be created by the same studio and still be so far apart in quality of writing, particularly in their handling of their signature characters.

The major fantasy MMO that shall not be named, or WoMFMMOTSNBN, kind of can get away with the bossiness because of the implied feudal nature of the setting, but I do get where you're coming from.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: silvers1 on July 01, 2013, 12:56:54 PM
Quote
It did start to look like a ghost town. And only time people piped up to let you know they were there is when someone said it looked like a ghost town. Otherwise they were invisible, on prtivate chat channeles,

Not sure which servers you guys played on,but at least on Freedom the help and broadcast channels were always full of spam and chit-chat.
The private channels I joined were used primarily for setting up raids - such as Hamidon.
Never felt dead to me, at least from a channel perspective.

The zones, on the other hand, did look pretty empty.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mysterious J on July 01, 2013, 02:04:18 PM
I actually liked it visually less crowded.  It's hard to feel like you're Batman breaking into an abandoned building in a deserted section of the city to confront Frostfire when there's a crowd of costumed heroes outside the place like it was a Neil Gaiman signing.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on July 01, 2013, 03:54:36 PM
Now I started playing at the end of August 2004 and the streets and skies were full of heroes, and suddenly, they weren't.

I know this is a deeply unpopular opinion, but in my view what really did it was the introduction of grinding at the level cap via Inventions and Incarnates. Before then, what were you going to do at 50? Go back to the character creator; and early on, the low-level game had a significant fraction of veteran players (not in the literal sense of veteran badges, obviously) with the obvious result that Atlas, Galaxy, Kings Row, even the Hollows were full of people. That gives a good impression to a new player - regularly teaming with people who obviously know their way around the game and enjoy it.

Later on, if you wanted to team you basically had to want to see an awful lot of the Imperious Task Force (or the Croatoa one when that was the most rewarding.)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: srmalloy on July 01, 2013, 05:29:46 PM
I can't think of a single game that gives you new gear when you level up. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Other than the one specific case from SWTOR when you finish your class mission series on your starting planet and travel from to your faction's fleet, get a mission to talk to the advanced trainer for your class, and pick your advanced class (i.e., a Smuggler picking either Gunslinger or Scoundrel), and you get a bag with a weapon appropriate to your class (Gunslingers, for example, get an offhand pistol, Scoundrels get an offhand generator/shield, etc.), I can't think of another; you either buy gear from a vendor or purchase it off the game's equivalent of Wentworth's.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on July 01, 2013, 06:27:52 PM
I can't think of a single game that gives you new gear when you level up. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Gear that affect appearance-outfit changes when you gear up.

Go to vendor or trainer- Grab gear, and even though they are seller of items, you appearance change in a one stop shop.

Thus since the appearance change with what gear you choose in a way the vendor/trainer sort of doubles as a tailor in that case.

In COX gear no affect on appearance thus, separate, at first, place for costumes. Trainer/tailor. Still since gear/ability dont affect appearance, you can now change appearance/train up in one stop.


Point being appearance change at places other than tailor happens in many games(usually due to gear) thus the concept is not so outlandish as it seems on the surface.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Botzo on July 02, 2013, 05:58:07 AM
I kind of didn't like the side switching. I mean I did at the time, but looking back at the way Heroes and Villains was set up I feel the fact that ATs could swap sides lessened the whole point of some of the Coop zones, and how the AT setup for each side was. I liked the fact that things got faster but it became a solo team fest with everyone jumping off in 8 different directions. There wasn't anymore resting, there wasn't anymore *use the back elevators so you don't aggro too much*. And I liked the traveling in City. It was much more interactive than most mmos of fly to zone x, just point and press autofly. And 14 really wasn't that long of a wait for a travel power. You could hit 11-12 just doing one good sewer run, clearing Lost and Hellions on the way down.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on July 02, 2013, 11:40:39 AM
I kind of didn't like the side switching. I mean I did at the time, but looking back at the way Heroes and Villains was set up I feel the fact that ATs could swap sides lessened the whole point of some of the Coop zones, and how the AT setup for each side was.

Well, quite. I'm not sure there's a good answer to that one; originally blueside and redside teaming had a very different feel with the more aggressive redside ATs - I tended to feel blueside was "weather the storm and grind them down" where redside was "take them down before they get us" - and it would have been nice to keep that with opposite-side ATs an exciting rarity - but every player will want to Go Rogue.

Quote
I liked the fact that things got faster but it became a solo team fest with everyone jumping off in 8 different directions. There wasn't anymore resting, there wasn't anymore *use the back elevators so you don't aggro too much*.

My perception was very much that earlier, especially after the Defense nerf, teaming was a matter of thinking about what you were doing; later, just a matter of doing your job. There are no prizes for guessing what I blame that on.

Quote
And I liked the traveling in City. It was much more interactive than most mmos of fly to zone x, just point and press autofly. And 14 really wasn't that long of a wait for a travel power. You could hit 11-12 just doing one good sewer run, clearing Lost and Hellions on the way down.

Yes, I didn't really see a problem there after the issue when contacts became a bit less coy about their cellphone numbers, especially later with everyone getting Swift/Hurdle by default.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: doc7924 on July 02, 2013, 08:26:13 PM
I kind of didn't like the side switching. I mean I did at the time, but looking back at the way Heroes and Villains was set up I feel the fact that ATs could swap sides lessened the whole point of some of the Coop zones, and how the AT setup for each side was. I liked the fact that things got faster but it became a solo team fest with everyone jumping off in 8 different directions. There wasn't anymore resting, there wasn't anymore *use the back elevators so you don't aggro too much*. And I liked the traveling in City. It was much more interactive than most mmos of fly to zone x, just point and press autofly. And 14 really wasn't that long of a wait for a travel power. You could hit 11-12 just doing one good sewer run, clearing Lost and Hellions on the way down.

Yes it was cool but to me it ruined the whole dynamic when you could be any AT in either red or blue side.

The whole point of COV was to have heroes and villains and at the end it was all one big mish-mash.

It was one thing if you had to earn the right to change sides, that at least gave a sort of RPG aspect to it: a villain gone good or a hero gone bad.

But when you could just make a villain AT in Atlas - to me they all stopped being villain and hero AT's.
 
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mantic on July 04, 2013, 09:24:14 PM
Yeah, well... on most servers redside was a desert. On all servers it was a desert outside primetime. As someone who first showed up with a collector's copy of City of Villains and whose first level 50 character after two years playing was a SR Stalker that soloed 95% or more of the way, I would never complain about any convenience that mitigated reliance on the inclinations of other players. Arachnos still had to start in that desert, and there was arguably no AT in the game more suited to a support role. Good thing the early game got streamlined, too...

Basically, I can't say I had any complaints at all about where the game was going for the last two or three years before the shutdown.

If the game hadn't been moving in the direction it was, starting with the NCSoft buyout, and particularly in the wake if i14, I would probably not have been around, blowing scads of real money on multiple accounts and ready to pitch a fit about NCSoft's new Asia-focused management blowing us all off last year.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on July 04, 2013, 09:51:38 PM
Yeah, well... on most servers redside was a desert. On all servers it was a desert outside primetime. .
Basically.

utside a very small window when some supergroup just happen to be passing through, rarely seen anyone else. Or heard about anyone else redside.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: saipaman on July 05, 2013, 05:54:19 AM
I played a lot red side on Freedom.  Teaming was extremely rare.

I was fortunate enough to do an all stalker Strike Force.   Definitely different.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Reiraku on July 05, 2013, 06:26:26 AM
I was part of the first all Stalker LRSF, before they nerfed down the Phalanx. It was awesome
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: CheerGunbunny on July 06, 2013, 02:20:11 PM
Long ago, did an all-blaster Bastion TF.    Yes, when it was still Bastion.  I was one of I think 3 AR blasters, so we did have enough AE & Knockback to keep the hordes off of us (full 8-hero team).  about every 3 or 4 spawns on a map, we'd have a faceplant.

Vandal necessitated much use of purple and red insps.  :)

Not sure, but I think I recall 2 names who were on it...Bioly, and maybe Friggin' Taser.

I haz a sad now....miss my City.  :(
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: goodtime on July 06, 2013, 08:34:20 PM
Long ago, did an all-blaster Bastion TF.
I'm jealous.   I always wanted to do one of the all-[archetype] TF runs, but only ever came close once.  Just missed an all-troller Manticore, I think it was.  :(   

I loved the fact that you can do stuff like that in CoH.   
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: CheerGunbunny on July 06, 2013, 09:26:24 PM
Tried an all-melee ITF near the end....failed.  Rommie was just too much, could not throw enough damage on him fast enough to make up for lack of heals/debuffs/buffs.  Did an all blaster/corruptor LGTF, too.  :)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on July 07, 2013, 10:09:42 PM
I never had the pleasure of an all-stalker SF, but some friends and I made an all-stalker team (then villain group) that was pretty vicious before we got Assassin <power>! There was more than one mission where we liked the arc, but the particular mission was boring enough to Hide to the glowy at the end. It did make the kidnap missions a bit more challenging, though. :)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Aggelakis on July 08, 2013, 01:17:07 AM
Tried an all-melee ITF near the end....failed.  Rommie was just too much, could not throw enough damage on him fast enough to make up for lack of heals/debuffs/buffs.  Did an all blaster/corruptor LGTF, too.  :)
I did an all-scrapper ITF...bleeping amazing.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Eoraptor on July 08, 2013, 04:03:04 AM
I ran a couple of low-level all-blaster TFs.... personally I never enjoyed them. I can understand why some would enjoy the challenge, but to me it was always an unbearable slog which left me thinking "for want of one tank that would have gone ten times smoother"

In general, I liked the changes made to the game over the years. my biggest complaint with the issue 2 era was that it took FOREVER to get anywhere since you had to wait till level 10+ for your travel powers and you couldn't usually achieve those levels without trapsing through the hollows, which was also a slog. So when the bumped travel down to level four, and when they got rid of the mandentory team missions, and yes, when they merged the train system, it made things so much more enjoyable to me for not having to bust hump fr several minutes just to accomplish some minor goal like a costume change.

Some other changes I did not care for. I think everyone can agree with me that making chat a pay-feature in Freedom was the stupidest move concievable, and I never really cared for the big tank-nerfing that happened around issue 4-6.

but in general, I thought all the changes they made were a great way to balance the ever-growing content of the game (I mean ome on, there was still stuff in atlas park that referenced all the way back to issue one right up till D day) with features which were easy for folks who werre not comic book geeks, or mmo fiends, to understand and enjoy.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Blue Pulsar on July 08, 2013, 05:46:47 AM

Don't get me wrong here - I adored this game since day one.

However once they started catering to the 'fast' crowds it kind of annoyed me.

It took me over a year of playing back in 2004-5 to get my first 50 and unlock my Peacebringer. And maybe 6 to 8 month to unlock the villain special AT.

By the last two years or so with AE people were getting to 50 in one afternoon and unlocking the Kheldians at 20.

Then to add insult to us long time players - you could BUY a Kheldian or the villain equivalent from he store.

At this point I felt new players were not experiencing the game properly - just the mad rush to get to 50 in one day.

IMO I felt they should have locked people out of AE until at least lvl 10 so they would at least get out and do stuff.

Honest to God I met a lvl 50 in AE in Atlas that NEVER LEFT the building except to go train at MS Liberty.

And I met a few 50's who didn't even know how to get to Steel Canyon.

People could play and level up how they want - and that's fine -but I found teaming with those 50's to be terrible because they had no idea how to actually play their hero, only ever playing in AE.

 

QFT x Ten. Literally.

I felt this way a lot. Especially the AE thing. I have to admit, I had two accounts and thoroughly enjoyed the ability to ramp my toon to a nice playable level when I knew it was going to be a rough go of it for the first 20 or so. But the fact that there were numerous 50s that had no clue how to get to a mission, let alone how to even slot their toons with SOs. It was disgusting.

I never got too into the HEATs and VEATs, but having access to them made hitting 50 that much sweeter. Getting them at 20 (which you could do without PLing in an afternoon towards the end) and even being able to buy them was a little insulting.

And like others here, even though I had remote access to the market and AE, I still liked to go there to use the facilities.

I'm kinda glad they combined the lines for Heroside, but they had no need to do such a thing for redside. I mean, we had, what? Seven main vill zones? Mercy, PO, Cap, Shark, Nerva, St. Mart, and Grand? I remember being able to get to the arbiter in Grand with relative ease as a level 1. I remember dying several times trying to get to PI as a level 12. Redside didn't need the help.

The tailors was a bit silly and I agree that having all the extra Icons and Facemakers was pointless, especially when trainers could change your clothes for you too. I can't say it effected me much, but then again, I didn't often change my outfit on toons. When I made it, it pretty much stayed the same. If I got a new idea for a new look, it often came with a new character.

To be honest, I was kinda sad that travel powers were able to be obtained so early. I liked having that level 14 milestone. I think when they lowered it to, what was it, 6? I think that was when I noticed that the game was getting quite easy.

But in all fairness, the end game was also getting a lot more intense. RSF and STF. Maxing a character out with IOs, then pumping them up with boosters. Purple IOs. All the way up to iTrials. So, I guess it balanced out.

So, yeah. I don't think the game got so much "too user friendly" as it did, "too noob friendly." I got to the point where, if I was looking for members for a decent pug, I'd look at their vet badges and set bonuses. I'd pick a level 35 4 year vet over a level 50 with no badges any day. Hell, even incarnate powers got easy to get. Newer players could ride a team for hours doing BAF and get +2 fairly easy. The plus side to incarnates was that at least they had to pay for the game, so you knew they were going to take it a bit more seriously.

I did, however, like the idea of giving the perks to the vets. But then again, I played since 2005.

Bah, look at my long rambling post. I'm starting to feel like Jaguar... I'll quit here.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Blue Pulsar on July 08, 2013, 05:49:55 AM
Though, I will say this. I think the worst part about making the beginning easier, and making the end game harder/more in-depth, was that they ended up splitting the player base. The new players never got the guidance from the older players because the two ends got so far from each other. We rocked the iTrials and high level TFs and they floundered in KR and PO.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mythic13 on July 08, 2013, 06:04:11 AM
The one big thing in my opinion that hastened the end of the game, not counting corporate in Seoul, was emphasizing instanced missions over zone events and miscellaneous street sweeping.

I understand, seeing the long queues in games like Everquest when a quest is within the world and it ends in a boss fight that spawns 5 minutes after it last got killed, how innovative the notion that everyone gets their own boss fight and don't have to wait for it to return was, combined with large mission bonuses and reduced debt from missions emptied the streets in a very short period of time. 

Now I started playing at the end of August 2004 and the streets and skies were full of heroes, and suddenly, they weren't.  You still saw them going between missions, around the trainers, around the tram stations, in the stores and Icon but it wasn't the same.  Then they started to add QoL features that made it easier to travel to your missions, no longer needing to wait for a tram or transfer in Sky and Steel between the two.  When they added the universities, The Vault and Wentworth's it was three more places you could find gatherings of heroes but eventually they too got QoL rewards and methods to let them do those activities elsewhere.  Icon was the last local until trainers became tailors as well.

Some of this happened after the introduction of AE sort of as a way to provide some of the same convenience but in the normal game but the end result is you didn't have to transverse the city anymore.  Travel powers at a low level makes some sense from a RPing PoV but it primarily meant the the city was fly, jump, port over or speed by country.  At least back when we had to hoof it for 14 levels on the ground we felt like we were in a city full of people wandering the streets.

The end result was what looked to be an abandoned city, empty of heroes, instead of the city I first entered nearly 9 years ago.  If you were a new player you would wonder if anybody else was playing.  With private channels being the normal way to communicate, with hide being the default condition of players who played during the RMT invasion post market and maybe a third of the player population at peak, a new player would wonder how you can play an MMO without other players.

Notice I'm not really talking about difficulty in playing, just environmental changes over the years.

I've been playing GW2 for a while now (letting the boos die down) and one of the aspects I enjoy about it is every zone is full of what's called dynamic events.  Think of the troll rave or apartment fire except multiply that by 20 in every zone.  And with their philosophy that encouraging player cooperation being paramount, players can join in or leave without the need to join teams just so they get better rewards.  There is no tagging of critters so they count toward your total and not someone else.  Everyone gets the same XP and number of drops of loot as long as you do some minimum amount of damage.  But most important is as these events occur, it causes players nearby to rush over and join in which means you see and meet other players all the time in the open world.  And as they join in (well get within an range of the event) the event scales up and as they leave it scales down.  It also helps that they have a daily reward if you do 5 of 9 variable goals for the day and event participation is almost guarantee to be one or more of those goals.

My point is it's not that the game got too easy from making the critters easier to defeat, it got easier for your character to not be a involved with the game world and that leads to a world where to an outsider, a new player, empty of other players and that's death to an MMO, the appearance that it's already dead.

Finally made an account on here (COH Vet) (Played off and on) and I must say this post hits the nail on the head for me. This is exactly what I saw from begining (Played about a year after launch) to end.

Great post.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on July 08, 2013, 01:55:04 PM
In general, I liked the changes made to the game over the years. my biggest complaint with the issue 2 era was that it took FOREVER to get anywhere since you had to wait till level 10+ for your travel powers and you couldn't usually achieve those levels without trapsing through the hollows, which was also a slog. So when the bumped travel down to level four, and when they got rid of the mandentory team missions, and yes, when they merged the train system, it made things so much more enjoyable to me for not having to bust hump fr several minutes just to accomplish some minor goal like a costume change.

But before then, contacts starting giving out their numbers more easily, the Hollows stopped putting your level 6 mission door on the other side of a million angry Igneous, and you got Swift/Hurdle as inherents. I think there's a middle ground; the city needed some sense of structure - indeed, it's because it had that sense of structure it feels like a real place.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: ag88t88 on July 09, 2013, 11:01:35 AM
And, CoH did remove stuff, but only at low levels, and it was replaced with equivalent stuff. I, personally, was pissed about them dropping the origin-based contacts and missions at the low levels. Also, I could have taken or left the "new" super group that they threw in around level 5 or 6. It was kinda creative, but just felt "extra."


Yeah, but when they did remove things, lower level missions and the original positron TF, galaxy City etc, they put those thing on Ooroborus so that people could revisit that content if they wanted to. You could still go to the "echo" of galaxy city, Do the original Positron TF, do the original low level missions etc.  Hell even the CoP got put back in and the Calvin Scott Trial got put in Ooroborus.  So yeah, they changed or replaced or removed some lower level content here and there for the sake of "Streamlining" or what ever, but they had a system in place that people could still do that content, so it's not like it was wholly removed. 
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: General Idiot on July 09, 2013, 04:43:10 PM
Ouroboros was one of the better ideas they ever had, and I don't know why more games don't have a similar setup. ESPECIALLY games that like to release lots of temporary content, looking at you Guild Wars 2.

Off the top of my head the only other game that lets you replay content is STO, but they don't offer any in world explanation for it there. Though they could easily pass it off as you running simulations of your old missions in the holodeck or some such. They don't have old removed content in there either, though I dunno if there even IS any removed content in that game.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Eoraptor on July 11, 2013, 02:44:55 PM
Yeah, it blew my mind the first time I portled into Oroboruus and realized "holy schnikies, this is the old Infected tutorial!" I thought it was one of the best innovations out there for going back and catching old content, because the game had an epic amount of content available over the span of 23 issues.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 03:37:30 PM
That said, while there were a number of additions in the last year that increased convenience i found most of them to be either very handy/reasonable or easily ignored. Except the TUNNEL system. For whatever irrational reason i found it to be highly annoying and superfluous.

Butbutbut you could get to Night Ward from AP!  Heck, you could get to PI from AP without visiting your base or TI.  And you could get to FF from PI without having to first visit Talos or your base.

Of course, on my Warshade, hardly any of this was an issue, as I could Shadow Slip into any non-hazard zone in Paragon.  :P
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 03:53:16 PM
Powers that you could only get as veteran's rewards didn't hurt the game.  For example, those bonus teleport powers greatly improved your chances of getting a Shadow Shard Task Force.

On the other hand, I was enraged by the idea that "20 was the new "50" Kheldians.
I actually waited until I had a 50 before rolling a Peacebringer.  It's an epic AT, fer chrissakes.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: CheerGunbunny on July 11, 2013, 04:38:20 PM
*shrug* I made one when 50 was required to unlock the squids.  And promptly made one...and as underwhelmed.  I think I pushed one to level 28....yuk. 

I know some folks loved them some Kheldians....I ain't one of em.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Triplash on July 11, 2013, 04:43:46 PM
I managed to get my seafood before the unlock level was moved to 20, too. They changed it shortly after that but I gotta say, I was always happy I got mine "the hard way". I didn't much like them at first either, but they were on my list of things to explore more one day. Not high on the list mind you... but on there.

Kinda like how I got my first full set of Vanguard costume pieces by turning in Vanguard Merits. I still bought the set when they put it on the market, because 30+ alts so forget that noise, but again I'm glad I did it "the hard way" at least that first time.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 08:15:20 PM
*shrug* I made one when 50 was required to unlock the squids.  And promptly made one...and as underwhelmed.  I think I pushed one to level 28....yuk. 

I know some folks loved them some Kheldians....I ain't one of em.

As you can tell from my sig, I was. :P  Dechs Kaison's MFing Warshade guide changed my life.

I viewed my Warshade(s) as being their own thing but to me my PB was just another blaster (albeit one who could also tank and heal).
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Turjan on July 11, 2013, 08:25:24 PM
I know some folks loved them some Kheldians....I ain't one of em.

All a matter of what you wanted out of 'em I suppose. For my part, I thought it would be fun to play up to the squid/lobster jokiness thing, so I made a PB called Prawn Crackers.

Before he became Prawn Crackers, the human side of him had been married to a Peacebringer. But that Peacebringer fell during a fight with supervillains in Independence Port. Quite literally fell in fact - into the bay. Her body was never recovered. The husband was devastated and drifted into madness. Eventually, in a fit of suicidal depression, he jumped off a bridge into the sea. As he sank into the depths, he felt something calling to him...it was the same Kheldian who had been merged with his wife. Its mind had been scrambled during that fatal battle and it had remained on the sea bed, alive but crippled and insane, surviving only by erratically merging with passing sea creatures. The broken Kheldian and the drowning human recognised eachother, and so the lost souls merged to become Prawn Crackers.

I played him mostly because I liked the concept :)
It was a tough class to master, but that was part of the fun for me - the PB (and WS) were like a Swiss Army Knife class : they could do just about anything if you knew which tool to use for what job!

Here's Prawn Crackers posing with a friend...

(https://i.imgur.com/IzWEmEQ.jpg)

(/end thread derail) ;)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: batqueen on July 11, 2013, 08:55:53 PM
Love that suit, man you really could build anything in Coh!  :)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 10:20:58 PM
Love that suit, man you really could build anything in Coh!  :)
Yes.  Yes you could.

(https://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/m584/shmoopymac/screenshot_120123-03-22-35.jpg)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 10:57:33 PM
*shrug* I made one when 50 was required to unlock the squids.  And promptly made one...and as underwhelmed.  I think I pushed one to level 28....yuk. 

I know some folks loved them some Kheldians....I ain't one of em.
Not to belabor the point, but I just found this-- and if I'd known we could make videos this well-done I would've promptly upgraded my video card and learned how:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vlYmf_supU

Note what happens at 1:36, then note the level of enemies he takes down in the vid.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: saipaman on July 12, 2013, 12:18:47 AM
It's possible that I missed it, but I would have preferred to have seen access to the Tunnel System as a reward granted for a particular story arc.  Something similar to the Midnighter arc to get into Cim.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Tahliah on July 12, 2013, 02:47:21 AM
No.  You could still go to the original Icons, and you could still take the trains as before . . . if you wanted.  They weren't removed, so if you wanted to keep to the former ways of traveling, getting new costumes, etc. you could do so.   I'm with others on the heroes taking the subway, T, metro, whatever thing.  It was always a bit weird to me; I could fly!  Why would I take public transportation to fight evil?  :p

Personally, I liked that everything was easier to get to near the end, but I did keep going to the original Icons for costume changes.  I also wasn't into trainers as tailors, so I simply ignored this change completely.   
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mantic on July 12, 2013, 06:33:17 AM
I did not like Kheldians for two reasons: (1) the concept took creativity out of my hands, forcing specific models and the assumption that I ever wanted to play characters that were part of Paragon's lore, and (2) they were twitchy, by which I mean that effective use meant having low latency and nimble fingers. I finally decided to respec my warshade "StarBeast" into a "human only" build, and "real" Kheldian players considered it a gimp.

But the Arachnos ATs were awesome. I had several of them and they were each very different from the others. Sure, you had to start with the Arachnos outfit, but it was an extra costume, and you could get a second costume early (about level ten) because of it. The characters were all great for support roles even with high latency (particularly the dual-leadership Widow builds), and aside from the crab spider with it's backpack, you could dress them up as all sorts of concepts. Soldiers of all stripes, particularly, but not just. There were even some odd sub-concepts you could get out of them, such as a kind of Psionic Tank widow, or a mace-only blaster/corrupter type bane with mace mastery.

(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v684/ManticMan/CoH/Isfet.png)

The only thing about Isfet here that obviously linked him to Arachnos were the spider-bot pets, but pets were a weak point of customization for any AT. Going off the standard build plan didn't gimp him, either:

Spoiler for Hidden:
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.96
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build! (http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1504&c=714&a=1428&f=HEX&dc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

Isfet: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Mace Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Mace Beam -- Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg(5), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(9), ExStrk-Acc/KB(19), ExStrk-Dam%(21)
Level 1: Bane Spider Armor Upgrade -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), S'fstPrt-ResKB(33)
Level 2: Mace Beam Blast -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(5), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(9), ExStrk-Acc/KB(21), ExStrk-Dam%(23)
Level 4: Wolf Spider Armor -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(43)
Level 6: Hover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(7), Srng-Fly(34), Srng-EndRdx(36)
Level 8: Build Up -- GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(A), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(36), AdjTgt-Rchg(36), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(37)
Level 10: Mace Beam Volley -- Posi-Dmg/Rng(A), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), FrcFbk-Rchg/EndRdx(11), FrcFbk-Rechg%(13), Range-I(13), Range-I(15)
Level 12: Poisonous Ray -- Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg(15), ShldBrk-DefDeb(17), ShldBrk-Acc/DefDeb(17), ShldBrk-DefDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(19)
Level 14: Combat Training: Offensive -- Acc-I(A)
Level 16: Tactical Training: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 20: Tactical Training: Leadership -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(23), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(25), AdjTgt-ToHit(27), GSFC-Build%(33)
Level 22: Mental Training -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(34)
Level 24: Cloaking Device -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(25)
Level 26: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(27), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(31), AdjTgt-ToHit(31)
Level 28: Combat Training: Defensive -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(29), GftotA-Def(29), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(31)
Level 30: Surveillance -- DefDeb-I(A)
Level 32: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(33)
Level 35: Mace Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(37), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(37), ExStrk-Acc/KB(40), ExStrk-Dam%(40)
Level 38: Maneuvers -- Ksmt-Def/EndRdx(A), Ksmt-ToHit+(39), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(39), GftotA-Def(39)
Level 41: Disruptor Blast -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(42), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 44: Call Reinforcements -- CmdPres-Acc/Dmg(A), CmdPres-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), BldM'dt-Dmg(45), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(45), C'Arms-Acc/Rchg(46), C'Arms-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46)
Level 47: Summon Blaster -- ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(48), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(48), C'Arms-Acc/Rchg(50), C'Arms-+Def(Pets)(50)
Level 49: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(50)
Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(34)
Level 2: Health -- Mrcl-Heal(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(40), Numna-Heal(42), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(42)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- Adrenal-EndMod(A), Adrenal-EndMod/Rchg(3), EnManip-EndMod(3), EnManip-EndMod/Rchg(7), P'Shift-EndMod(43), P'Shift-End%(46)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
------------
------------



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Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Eoraptor on July 12, 2013, 03:30:26 PM
No.  You could still go to the original Icons, and you could still take the trains as before . . . if you wanted.  They weren't removed, so if you wanted to keep to the former ways of traveling, getting new costumes, etc. you could do so.   I'm with others on the heroes taking the subway, T, metro, whatever thing.  It was always a bit weird to me; I could fly!  Why would I take public transportation to fight evil?  :p

Personally, I liked that everything was easier to get to near the end, but I did keep going to the original Icons for costume changes.  I also wasn't into trainers as tailors, so I simply ignored this change completely.   
That was the great thing about the game. when new content was bought in, with a few exceptions, it didn't affect existing content. if you didn't want to mask-up at a trainer you could still haul ass throughout the city to an icon shop. If you didn't like Portals, you could still haul your ass around the city zone by zone through the street system or the trains. when the game added a new feature, you could more or less take it or leave it.

the only thing I think that was well and truly scrapped by an update was the tutorial and level one system that replaced the origin specific contacts with the universal habashy and twinshot arcs on blue side. (that kind of bummed me because it took a lot of thought out of the early game and reduced the importance of origins since everyone played the same early game form then forward)

(I thought the firewalls that you couldn't fly over were enough of an explanation, but later players often didn't learn about those and why they were there)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 12, 2013, 04:35:23 PM
No.  You could still go to the original Icons, and you could still take the trains as before . . . if you wanted.  They weren't removed, so if you wanted to keep to the former ways of traveling, getting new costumes, etc. you could do so.   I'm with others on the heroes taking the subway, T, metro, whatever thing.  It was always a bit weird to me; I could fly!  Why would I take public transportation to fight evil?  :p

They should've added a long-range flight power to the flight pool like they did with the teleport pool, and given it a name like Up, Up And Away or something.  Although I was glad they merged the Yellow and Green Lines, I never really understood the "wait for the monorail" part of superheroics.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: FatherXmas on July 12, 2013, 05:50:06 PM
They should've added a long-range flight power to the flight pool like they did with the teleport pool, and given it a name like Up, Up And Away or something.  Although I was glad they merged the Yellow and Green Lines, I never really understood the "wait for the monorail" part of superheroics.

Standard travel time sink component for a subscription based MMO.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mantic on July 12, 2013, 07:32:12 PM
Standard travel time sink component for a subscription based MMO.


Well, you say that, but standing in the bus-station waiting for a train to arrive is markedly different from actually traveling by normal means between point A & B on the map or hopping through a portal shortcut at will in Asheron's Call.

I believe it was really just a thematic way of managing the zone-map divisions of the game that were necessary to balancing performance with urban geometry density back in '03. Now, all the travel-inducing missions, sure, those were a time sink.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on July 12, 2013, 09:46:13 PM
They should've added a long-range flight power to the flight pool like they did with the teleport pool, and given it a name like Up, Up And Away or something.  Although I was glad they merged the Yellow and Green Lines, I never really understood the "wait for the monorail" part of superheroics.

Afterburner at least made flight faster than ninja run. I never used it around speedsters to see if it leveled the playing field, there. Teleport was always the fastest way to travel, anyway, so I never faulted them giving it the more epic boost. I only had a handful of characters whose concept called for teleport as a travel power, so I never ended up getting much use out of the zone teleport.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 13, 2013, 05:17:49 AM
Afterburner at least made flight faster than ninja run. I never used it around speedsters to see if it leveled the playing field, there. Teleport was always the fastest way to travel, anyway, so I never faulted them giving it the more epic boost. I only had a handful of characters whose concept called for teleport as a travel power, so I never ended up getting much use out of the zone teleport.

Teleport may have been the fastest power but fine-tuning where you arrived was a bit iffy at times.  I absolutely adored the Jingle Jet for my Warshade but as it wasn't always around, I took Super Speed too.  If I recall correctly, Afterburner was fast, but just a hair slower than Super Speed.  Combined with Nebulous Form and Combat Jumping, I could get to most mission doors/objectives faster than my teammates, especially in Striga.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: silvers1 on July 13, 2013, 11:33:58 AM
*shrug* I made one when 50 was required to unlock the squids.  And promptly made one...and as underwhelmed.  I think I pushed one to level 28....yuk. 

I know some folks loved them some Kheldians....I ain't one of em.

I'd have to agree with this sentiment.  An archtype where you could essentially swap between being a toned down blaster or a toned down
tank didnt appeal to me at all.  I'll play my blaster or my tank....   The only VEAT that I played to 50 was my Fortunata, an interesting combination
of DPS and survivability.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Rust on July 13, 2013, 12:51:17 PM
Yeah, i was never overly thrilled with any of the Epic Archtypes, to be honest.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 13, 2013, 06:20:41 PM
Yeah, i was never overly thrilled with any of the Epic Archtypes, to be honest.

*shrug* To each their own.  To be honest, you really had to read a guide to make effective use of the HEATs.  Mine languished until I did.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: MaidMercury on July 14, 2013, 11:51:51 PM
Mmmm....I didn't care for an Arrow pointing to  just about every person of interest in a zone.
Made things, well...retarded.

I think just having the glowing circle around Trainers was sufficient.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: FatherXmas on July 15, 2013, 12:06:18 AM
Mmmm....I didn't care for an Arrow pointing to  just about every person of interest in a zone.
Made things, well...retarded WoW like.

Fixed
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Lucky666 on July 15, 2013, 02:04:13 AM
Afterburner at least made flight faster than ninja run. I never used it around speedsters to see if it leveled the playing field, there. Teleport was always the fastest way to travel, anyway, so I never faulted them giving it the more epic boost. I only had a handful of characters whose concept called for teleport as a travel power, so I never ended up getting much use out of the zone teleport.

Afterburner was great. With it you reached 75mph I remember it was like 1 mph faster then superjump top speed. Also it let you go higher then that if someone gave you speed boost I'm pretty sure it topped out at 88mph only a few less then Super speed. That's if you could get SB that is.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Phaetan on July 15, 2013, 03:36:20 AM
Add a Delorean and you have the super-secret [Time Travel] power pool!
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: General Idiot on July 15, 2013, 03:10:06 PM
My several Time Manipulation characters would like to inform you that those powers weren't actually very secret at all. :p
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Phaetan on July 15, 2013, 03:29:53 PM
No, not [Time Manipulation], but the [Time Travel] from the auxiliary power pools.  You know, the one that would let you go back and play those WW II and Civil War missions in the pigg files...

(And yes, Time Manipulation was an incredible set.  I had to force myself to not make more with it, because it was just that useful and fun...)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Pinnacle Blue on July 15, 2013, 07:03:04 PM
No, not [Time Manipulation], but the [Time Travel] from the auxiliary power pools.  You know, the one that would let you go back and play those WW II and Civil War missions in the pigg files...

(And yes, Time Manipulation was an incredible set.  I had to force myself to not make more with it, because it was just that useful and fun...)

I had only just gotten into it.  I was leveling a Bots/Time MM when the announcement hit.  Probably wouldn't have bought the set if I'd known that was coming.

Bitter?  ...Yeah.  Just a TAD.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mantic on July 15, 2013, 07:19:47 PM
I maybe shouldn't admit it but in just the last year before the closure I spent over $1K on CoX. Not only was I maintaining multiple accounts and a sucker for anything costume-related, I was often buying items off the market with a mind to future prospects. Picking up enhancement boosters and AE slots in bulk when they went on sale. I justified that splurging in my mind as showing support for the flood of development the game was getting, as well as getting goodies for myself in the bargain.

So, yeah, I'm pretty bitter that NCSoft ultimately showed no appreciation for that kind of devotion (surely I was just one of many throwing significant money at CoX, even if the subscriber population was only a couple few thousand strong), and that most of that stuff wound up unused. When was that last sale on AE slots? Like a week before the announcement...?
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: saipaman on July 16, 2013, 01:38:26 AM
I believe I bought the water blast power set just a week before the closure announcement.

It was a great set too.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: General Idiot on July 16, 2013, 03:30:11 AM
I'm still sad I never managed to get a water blast character high enough to actually use the really awesome looking nuke it had.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Ice Trix on July 16, 2013, 10:33:51 AM
I'm still sad I never managed to get a water blast character high enough to actually use the really awesome looking nuke it had.
My storm/water (called storm water) quickly became one of my all time fav characters. Sigh.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Phaetan on July 16, 2013, 11:59:13 AM
Likewise, I finally got enough points off of my sub to grab Water Blast near the end.  Didn't get too far with it, but I was really enjoying the set.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Candie Firestar on August 23, 2013, 08:37:41 PM
I have to add my voice to the side who missed the Green Line and Yellow Line as separate trains. Yes, the trains were un-heroic, in the first place, but the separation made you feel like you had accomplished something by getting to the Green Line. Ditto for making it to the Icon store at the north end of Steel, or, better, the one in IP by trying to sneak past the mobs between the King's Row tunnel and the tailor. That was almost as much a rite of passage as crossing the Hollows.

Plus one.  I think the merging of the train lines did make it easier to get around the city, but I think it did reduce the value of the teleporters in SG bases.  After the trains merged, I think the only teleporters worth keeping were the ones that went to remote zones that didn't have train stations (Perez Park, Boomtown, The Hive, Striga, Peregrine Island etc.,)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: PunkusJR on August 23, 2013, 10:13:21 PM
I kinda refused to use the trainers as costume contacts. I liked going into icon. Especially when I imagine someone like Edna from the Incredibles being in the back room . . .
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Nealix on August 23, 2013, 11:53:16 PM
I actually liked the game more and more as it grew.  After it went Freedom I probably spent more on it in that year than I have in any other game before or since.  I had to have all the costumes and powers that were put in the store that didn't come with the subscription.  It was total OCD for me.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Eoraptor on August 24, 2013, 12:10:42 AM
I kinda refused to use the trainers as costume contacts. I liked going into icon. Especially when I imagine someone like Edna from the Incredibles being in the back room . . .
you have no idea how much I would have loved to ding dong into an Icon and hear Edna screaming from the back room "No Capes! (until level 20)"
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: PunkusJR on August 24, 2013, 05:45:29 AM
you have no idea how much I would have loved to ding dong into an Icon and hear Edna screaming from the back room "No Capes! (until level 20)"

hahaha. xD just amazing. Thik about some of the tests she would have had to run for some of the powersets. :o
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: DBadger on August 24, 2013, 08:07:50 AM
Biggest plus for me was when the map started actually showing enhancement stores, rather than having to memorise where they were. (and needing to find the right one to maximise inf due to it being in fairly short supply on my 1st alt, I couldn't even afford a full set of SOs at 27)

A lot of what was added would have made more sense if it were implemented from the start, ie, having a travel power to cross the Hollows would have been great when everyone actually did the Hollows storyline (which I loved)

The game evolved in a mostly positive way, which makes it sadder that we can't play it, all that work by the devs just nuked in favour of half assed games with so little content.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Nealix on August 26, 2013, 03:47:33 AM
I liked that I felt powerful at standard difficulty level but if I really wanted a challenge I could ramp up the difficulty.  Being on one of those PUGs that just tore through top level stuff at the highest foe ratio was always a blast.  I also loved being able to really improve those level 50s with incarnate powers.  It gave me a reason to play those toons again.  Before incarnate content I pretty much used to abandon characters after they got to 50 since the goal in my head was still to get experience and grow the character.  I wanted more incarnate trials in the game and more incarnate powers.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Mistress Urd on August 26, 2013, 03:57:08 AM
Nope, those were nice improvements which may have possibly came too late.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on August 27, 2013, 12:44:33 AM
When I started there wasn't even an Icon. Then by the end almost every npc character seemed to be a tailor.

Personally I loved when the only way to get to Founders was to go thru Talos or to get to DA you had to go thru Talos.

Or when the Green and Yellow lines where actually not connected. Same thing for traveling in the villain zones.

I just thought it was silly that a trainer was also a tailor. Did people just get to lazy or did the devs just want to make it so easy to do the travelling and other things so people could just spend more time on missions?
I thought it got too complicated. there were to many systems in place.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: General Idiot on August 27, 2013, 03:14:17 AM
I never really understood the trainers as tailors thing. The only real reason for it was so low level characters wouldn't have to run across Steel Canyon to get to one, but then in the same patch they added an Icon in Atlas Park and a Facemaker in Mercy Island. So even that wasn't a problem anymore.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: healix on August 27, 2013, 07:55:27 AM
I thought it was great. It was less time running/flying around and meant more actual playing time. For me, that was more of a grind than doing the same missions over and over.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Kaiser Tarantula on August 27, 2013, 10:06:31 AM
Too user-friendly?  Honestly, I don't think so.  I can accept some plausible loss of verisimilitude in favor of convenience.  Placing new Icon/Facemaker branches in Atlas Park and Mercy Isle?  Sure.  Merging the tram lines into one?  Please.  More Wentworth's/Black Market Branches in starter zones?  Absolutely.

I will say that having every trainer be a tailor was a bit irksome, mostly because it encouraged people to hang around the trainers more than they already did.  Icon was just a short run from Atlas park, too, with any mobs being easily avoidable, so IMO there was no need for it.

I don't mind the Fitness pool being made inherent.  Just about everyone took it anyway, so why not?  It made characters not only more convenient, but also helped you feel more powerful.  How often do you see a superhero character that isn't in prime physical fitness, after all?  Aside from its usefulness, it served as a nod to comic-book tradition, IMO.

I loved the 5th powers in power pools, unlockable by having several powers already from the set.  It made a lot of sense - someone with a lot of talen in a particular skill will be able to do things most folks can't.  Take the Fighting pool for example.  Basic punches and kicks are something anyone can learn how to do well, but delivering a perfect cross-body blow requires a bit of skill.

By and large, I didn't mind the changes a bit.  They were subtle but pervasive, excepting the one example I noted.  They were well-thought out, didn't harm the verisimilitude of the game, and were on the whole, a breath of fresh air in mechanics that would otherwise be a bit stifling.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: adarict on August 27, 2013, 02:03:01 PM
I never knew that trainers could be used as tailors.  :)  When I went to a trainer, it was specifically to level up, and I didn't even look at the other options.  :)  I was just used to tailors being at Icon, or in RWZ.  Never even looked anywhere else.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Dr. Gemini on August 27, 2013, 06:52:17 PM
Trainers as Tailors made no sense on an aesthetic level. So my gut reaction when the news came out was "that's just silly, it should stay at Icon". However, I had to remind myself that, as a costume junkie, who would often end up at the tailors making minor tweaks, I never entered an Icon except to do the missions to get new costume slots. The rest of the time I ported to the Pocket D VIP room, because it was so much quicker to get there. Kind of hard to criticize that change when you're doing that.

As to the merging of the lines, I loved that change. I used to loathe getting a mission in Talos that would ask me to go back to Atlas or one of the other zones that would require me switching lines. It would have been fun (for me) if I were running through zones that had threats in them, but having to run across an entire zone of greys to change trams was not.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: corvus1970 on August 27, 2013, 06:59:32 PM
The merging of the tram lines was a stroke of brilliance that made everything SO much easier, particularly during various Task-Forces, or during Team-play in general. It didn't make things "too easy", but rather made it the way it should always have been, and was a significant upgrade to QOL.

Same with the fitness pool being made inherent. That too was something that really should have been that way from launch, although I can understand why it wasn't. And while you no longer needed to sacrifice a power-pool for it, you still had to decide whether or not to devote slots to the various fitness abilities. So again, not "too easy" at all.

There's an argument to be made that trainers becoming tailors was a bit much, but it really didn't bug me at all.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Kederren on August 28, 2013, 10:11:51 PM
Trainers as tailors seemed silly to me as well on a story level, but I understand that they were trying to add the QoL functionality without spending time on art assets that they otherwise were able to put into more important activites(Powersets, story arcs, etc).

Maybe they could have handled it with a menu option of "Oh, you're not happy with your outfit? Well, I can't help you, but I know someone over at Icon that can. Here, let me hail you a cab." Teleport to Icon.

I loved all of the travel QoL that they did. If they gave me a 0 End, 0 cooldown, instant Goto____   button/menu, I would have been one happy gamer. Travel is the biggest waste of my time, I can't stand it. I get exploration and I appreciate the effort of the artists to create a visually appealing environment, but don't force it on me when all I want to do is get to the next mission/quest. Ther are times when I have 15 minutes before work and all I want to do is one quick mission. Then, later that evening, after work, I'll slow down and enjoy the view.

I'll admit, I was probably The Guy that said, "Inherent Fitness?!?, We need this ?!?"  I LIKED to have to make choices in my build, to find that balance of recharge, endurance reduction, damage and accuracy that I could sustain. I didn't mind having top slow down a little between mobs to catch my breath. Yeah, we were all SUPERheroes/villains and all of us could out perform any standard human being, but we weren't all at the same level of physical perfection. I had built my main with a slightly lower damage output per second, but his damage per endurance was sustainable virtually for ever. He couldn't take down GM's solo, and there were quite a few AV's that he trouble with, but that's what teams were for.

I was also surprised by the AoE buffs. I didn't know that we neede those either. I thought that feature was all a bout a few whiny defenders/controllers who were having trouble keeping up. I'll admit that I wasn't much of a buffer at the time, so I didn't realise the dificulties that they were having. But, I was never one of those rude consumers of buffing services that made demands on my teammates. I went into any fight expecting to do my part on my own, so buffs were an added bonus that made things easier, not a requirement to get the job done. I was always more of a DPS or debuffer. After trying out a few alts, I have to admit that the AoE feature was useful for me to buff up my teammates then get back to DPSing.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: corvus1970 on August 28, 2013, 10:51:21 PM
Yeah, there was always a certain contingent who approached team-buffing as an absolute entitlement. And would get huffy if the buffs didn't come on cue.

Fortunately, those folks were a minority.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Nealix on August 28, 2013, 11:37:01 PM
I remember getting booted from a team because I wasn't buffing the way the team leader wanted me too.  It wasn't malicious, I was just so busy buffing I wasn't paying attention to team chat and he didn't bother to send a tell, which would have made a sound notification, but I figured I was better off without that team anyway.  Actually there were 2 of us booted off the team.  We were both time manipulators and it was right after that set launched so we were still learning it.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on August 29, 2013, 02:41:20 AM
I was also surprised by the AoE buffs. I didn't know that we neede those either. I thought that feature was all a bout a few whiny defenders/controllers who were having trouble keeping up. I'll admit that I wasn't much of a buffer at the time, so I didn't realise the dificulties that they were having. But, I was never one of those rude consumers of buffing services that made demands on my teammates. I went into any fight expecting to do my part on my own, so buffs were an added bonus that made things easier, not a requirement to get the job done.

That might be a reflection of the game being... too easy. In my view, if you're on a team with a significant buffing component and you aren't getting buffed, you might well expect to be in trouble.

But, pick an extreme example; forcefields. I remember the two guides on the EU forums with names something like "you are not a bubble-bot" and "you are a bubble-bot". I fell comfortably on the latter end of the spectrum; if you don't have two bubbles on you, either I'm lying on the floor, you've run off to the other side of the level, or I am at fault; you should feel free to make demands and I should rectify the situation forthwith. There's other good stuff in the set, but to keep bubbles on everyone is my job.

However, put me in a team of 8. 14 bubbles without significant End Redux (eg, at low levels) is more blue than I've got. Now put a mastermind on the team with minions desiring bubbles as well. Now, suppose I'm not a defender but a controller, and if I'm gasping for blue when we get to the first group, that's not ideal.

None of this really showed up after Inventions, because the game was then so easy you could be incredibly sloppy and get away with it; but before then, I wrote a Perl script that used voice synthesis to say "one... two... three" (etc) at evenly spaced intervals around a four-minute cycle, with keystrokes to know how many were on the team and what my position was. This meant after the very first round of bubbling, the endurance drain was as spread out as possible - even after between-mission travel, you'd only have missed some teammates' bubbles, and in-mission it worked beautifully.

Point is, for a buffer who really tries to get maximum effectiveness, the sheer amount of busywork could be quite significant, and the endurance effects made it impractical to do everyone at once. On the other hand, this change rendered End Redux and endurance management for buffers more generally a bit irrelevant.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Metal Mountain on August 30, 2013, 08:47:51 PM
I think the game did become too user friendly.. The sewer trial thing essentially negated the game from 1 - 15; so long Perez Park and the Hollows - teaming in Atlas or doing the old Sewers.  Some people like this but this was taking parts of the game that I enjoyed away (really if there was noone to team with, it was taken away).

The game was getting hella easy - when the Terra Volta reactor trial was first out - it was hard.  Before the game shut down the change was very noticeable, it had become much easier. 

And finally with all the automatic travel powers and tp's to missions you were no longer travelling the zones to get to missions; sure it was repetitive but it was still part of the enjoyment of the game.

It felt to me the game was being watered down for a crowd that struggles with challenges in games/ get discouraged easily/ and find it difficult to enjoy the aesthetic experience of the game.

Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: JaguarX on August 30, 2013, 09:43:06 PM
I think the game did become too user friendly.. The sewer trial thing essentially negated the game from 1 - 15; so long Perez Park and the Hollows - teaming in Atlas or doing the old Sewers.  Some people like this but this was taking parts of the game that I enjoyed away (really if there was noone to team with, it was taken away).

The game was getting hella easy - when the Terra Volta reactor trial was first out - it was hard.  Before the game shut down the change was very noticeable, it had become much easier. 

And finally with all the automatic travel powers and tp's to missions you were no longer travelling the zones to get to missions; sure it was repetitive but it was still part of the enjoyment of the game.

It felt to me the game was being watered down for a crowd that struggles with challenges in games/ get discouraged easily/ and find it difficult to enjoy the aesthetic experience of the game.
yeah. It seemed like a last ditch effort to attract more general gamers.

You know, I thought about this for a few days now. I wondered what is better, a challenging game or a fun game? After asking a few people I realize sometimes they can be the same thing and sometimes different things depending on the person. One brought up the logic of cheat codes. You have some that refuse to use cheat codes at all no matter how hard the challenge is. That is what fun to them. While others, will buy a game, immediately look up cheat codes and that is fun to them.

Like some people love the grind, they love having to spend months and countless hours just to get to level two and to them anyone that doesn't love that style of grind is a gamer that don't enjoy challenge and working hard for the rewards and gets discouraged easily. While others, they don't give a crap about leveling and if they could they would build a top level toon right off the bat and sometimes don't understand how grinding and that other challenging stuff can even be fun or enjoyable. Then there are those in between where they think the game is challenging enough but not too challenging and any attempt to water it down means it's catering to gamers that don't like challenge and give up easy while hardcore grinders look at them in that same light, while casual ones look at it as those players are part of the grind group. Out of the three groups, the ones in the middle are in the largest pickle due to the wide range of what is considered challenging and too easy and while those in the middle category usually claim casual gamers they look down on the ones that more casual just as the hardcore grinders look down on them as ones that don't like challenge/get discouraged easily and both group think they (the middle group) are luke warm gamers. Neither hot (grinders) nor cold (casual) but have the worse side of the attitude of both worlds by looking down upon those that don't like their level of challenge as people that get discouraged easily and looking at grinders as people as game nutcases that don't know how to have fun. In the end middle ground ones lose out. You have grind fests that have millions upon millions of players then you have dead simple games like Farmville and candy crush that also have millions upon millions while the middle, struggle to maintain 100,000
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: healix on August 30, 2013, 10:17:13 PM
CoH had something for everyone, and you could play the way you wanted. Personally, I don't find it fun to continually die because a game is too hard...if it's too easy, it's no fun either. If you have to team in order to play, it's not for me. I liked to solo a lot, but loved teaming with good friends/sg mates. Never did like PVP but was glad it was in the game for folks who did. CoH might not have been a perfect game, but it was perfect for me. I want the hole in my heart filled.....I want my City back, and that feeling has not changed since Black Friday.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Blackshear on August 31, 2013, 02:43:18 AM
Quote
Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?

No.  Next question.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Richpur on August 31, 2013, 04:18:20 AM
Trainers as tailors made sense once we got power customisation; having to run to the facemaker because my new power was tinted differently in daylight would suck.

There are travel shortcuts everywhere, but they're all optional. Some days I'll use every vet reward and portal to avoid travelling, others I'll run between missions around Grandville rather than fly.

AE did give us more level 50s that don't know their way around the city/islands; but even that's easy enough to pass off IC. Why should every hero learn their skills in Paragon? We've got an interdimensional invasion going on here; of course we've got new people turning up to help out! You don't lose all your job experience when you move to a new town but you probably can't find the post office without directions.

... I just realised I wrote all of that present tense.  :'(
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: General Idiot on August 31, 2013, 09:22:04 AM
That's probably the best in-universe explanation I ever heard for the existence of AE babies.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Kaiser Tarantula on August 31, 2013, 12:17:38 PM
AE did give us more level 50s that don't know their way around the city/islands; but even that's easy enough to pass off IC. Why should every hero learn their skills in Paragon? We've got an interdimensional invasion going on here; of course we've got new people turning up to help out! You don't lose all your job experience when you move to a new town but you probably can't find the post office without directions.
That's probably the best in-universe explanation I ever heard for the existence of AE babies.

I gotta agree.  Kudos to you, G.I., I honestly never thought about it that way.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: General Idiot on September 01, 2013, 03:19:01 AM
Don't give me the kudos, I wasn't the one who came up with it.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Nealix on September 10, 2013, 12:43:28 AM
I actually liked the sewer trials.  After all those years struggling to level those lowbies created by my alt-it is, being able to run new characters through a fun, quick trial for exp was a relief.  There are still so many power sets I didn't get to fully explore even though I started playing the game in beta and kept playing until the servers shut down.  I never did reach my goal of having at least 1 level 40 from each of the 10 base archetypes but I came a lot closer with the addition of the fun new power sets and faster low level experience.

I thought the trainers as tailors was a little silly.  It was nice to be able to access the market remotely though.  Using Wentworths was a mini-game in itself.  I haven't really been involved in the CO market much.  Its just not the same.

I loved that the fitness pool went inherent.  For years I griped about it to myself, as I played just about any melee character and a few others as well, that it should be inherent and they went and did it!  Most of the changes were all the things I wanted and my love for the game deepened more and more.  Just reading these posts makes me home sick for CoH even though its been more than a year since the closure announcement was made.

The worst part is that even if we could get the game back, I had so many heroes and villains I'd have to recreate the task is daunting.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on September 10, 2013, 05:00:27 AM
I actually liked the sewer trials.

I've seen this expression come up a few times in this thread and just got around to looking at the Wiki. Whoah, that was going on?

.. come to think of it, given the way the level 1-4 contacts got eaten, what did you do if you didn't want to go sewer trialling?
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Eoraptor on September 10, 2013, 01:06:33 PM
I've seen this expression come up a few times in this thread and just got around to looking at the Wiki. Whoah, that was going on?

.. come to think of it, given the way the level 1-4 contacts got eaten, what did you do if you didn't want to go sewer trialling?
there was still a one-four story arc for newbies. and if you missed it, the game was set up so that any contact you talked to anywhere in the game would tell you the contact you were supposed to talk to appropriate to your level and alignment.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: thunderforce on September 10, 2013, 01:16:16 PM
there was still a one-four story arc for newbies.

Save me a little Googling and tell me what it was called, please?

Quote
and if you missed it, the game was set up so that any contact you talked to anywhere in the game would tell you the contact you were supposed to talk to appropriate to your level and alignment.

Er, yeah. I did _play_ the game, now and again. :-)
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: adarict on September 10, 2013, 02:04:03 PM
I've seen this expression come up a few times in this thread and just got around to looking at the Wiki. Whoah, that was going on?

.. come to think of it, given the way the level 1-4 contacts got eaten, what did you do if you didn't want to go sewer trialling?

I never did the sewer trials. Well, not true.  I ran it a couple of times early when it was so popular.  It bored me to tears after the first couple of times.  I mean, it is fun to just go in and annihilate everything and watch your XP bar just keep rising non-stop, but it gets old pretty fast.  Unless the only thing you care about is leveling up, then I suppose it might be fun.  Pretty much I just ran whatever missions came up.  Those first 10 levels went by pretty fast, even in the old days.  The only time it was a little slow was if I was soloing my way.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Triplash on September 10, 2013, 04:37:34 PM
Save me a little Googling and tell me what it was called, please?

Blueside it started with Matthew Habashy, then went on to a choice of either Sandra Costel or some cop I never picked, and finally ended with Aaron Thiery. Three separate arcs actually. I forget the name of the arcs though, but through the magic of the Wiki it's like I remembered it instantly! Habashy's was called What Was Lost (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Matthew_Habashy#What_Was_Lost), and the others link from there.

Redside... I dunno. I wasn't a redsider. I think Operative Kuzmin (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Operative_Kuzmin) kicked things off there.
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: LydiaFrost on September 10, 2013, 06:03:36 PM
Redside had an arc of double betrayal, to take back the Arachnos Base on Mercy Island from Longbow. It was very vilainous, to tell the deserter from longbow after we got the base back, that we just used him and his little revenge on his superiors :)

I really liked the Game with all the Changes :-)

Lydia Frost MM
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: dwturducken on September 11, 2013, 01:22:00 AM
Nine times out of ten, I was playing a newbie character with a team of friends. We'd just street sweep until we were high enough to go to Kings Row to get the radio. I know I played the Habashy arc once or twice, but I couldn't tell you how it went without checking the wiki (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Matthew_Habashy).
Title: Re: Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?
Post by: Eoraptor on September 11, 2013, 01:33:25 AM
Matt can be fun, particularly if you run in in an RP ind frame about the over-worked bureaucrat whose wife got fed up and left him and is totally too hot for him anyway 8)