And the mask comes off.

[Fable]

"oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."

Classic. I'm putting in my sig. It's even better than your "no bloodless MMO design" comment, and I like that a lot.

[Remaugen]

[Lava-Lad]

There are those of us out here in the world that actually prefer to learn by experience than being "throttled" or "forced" into doing something. I'd rather pull an "oops, guess that death means I wasn't supposed to be there yet!" than find out via some kind of message "NO. YOU CANNOT ENTER THIS AREA." On top of this, an open world allows for various challenges ("let's see... I wonder if I enhance with this and choose this and this power, can I go up against an enemy 5 levels higher than me when I'm level 15....") I maintain that more options is better.

If you can't tell, I don't like the "linear story/combat" experience. It suggests there is only "one way to play." And if you make a game that only allows for "one way to play," you really cut down on the amount of people it will appeal to. A truly well-made game (as we all well know since we've all played CoH) is one that allows many personalities and many demographics and many walks of life play it in their own way and have their own experience. Like to travel? Great, we've got it for you. Like to skip the travel? Great, there's options for that as well. Like to do story-based short missions? We've got it. Rather do a longer-term series of missions? We have task forces. You're a PvP person? We've got several zones that are for nothing but that. Interested in just dressing up and RP'ing? You can do that too.
.
.
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However, if you build a TON of options in a game like CoH did, you grab a very wide audience that stays loyal to the game because they're allowed to play it how they want to.
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Fine. So, let's say a huge chunk of people decide to leave because they start to get aggravated that they're not allowed to travel like they want to. Or, they don't have as much of an "open world" as they'd like. Then there are not enough people there to support the game you told them to leave. And....suddenly there isn't a whole lot of people to play with...or, even worse, it gets shut down. Would you be happy with the results of "if you don't like it, leave" in an MMO world?

Maybe I should have been a Producer.

Like those crazy human form WS people !  Tri for WS, human form for PB...it is known

[hopelives]

   Good night to all, I'm off to sleep and have dreams of being in tf's running through my mind, lol. Peace. 

[Power Gamer]

[MM3squints]

The image of Mickey Mouse is a trademark of Disney, not a copyright. And it's still in force. And Disney is willing to sue.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/deadmau5-disney-in-legal-dispute-over-mickey-mouse-ear-trademark-201439

Disney will be picky with who they go after. They will go after Deadmou5, but they won't go after Hamas' Mickey Mouse xD

[AlienOne]

Mmmmm... pie...

That reminded me.... I used to be admin over a few channels on Freedom. One of them was "Freedom TF" which was (obviously) used for organizing TFs. One day, i posted an admin message about pie, and suddenly the channel lit up with "insert pie here" jokes...

Here's a few of the screenshots I took of the submissions (you'll probably have to view the picture's original size to actually read it):

http://s69.photobucket.com/user/ilwzxvn/library/Pie

[Power Gamer]

Disney will be picky with who they go after. They will go after Deadmou5, but they won't go after Hamas' Mickey Mouse xD

Indeed...

[pinballdave]

I remember in the summer of 2004, the idea of an all-defender team was considered a fad, a novelty, but not effective. People who played on the trinity-free team concepts experienced how powerful such teams could be. With corruptors, and masterminds, the variety of 8 buff/debuffers increased. The fulcrum shift was nerfed (bzzzzortch!). Radiation Infection was nerfed. Fluffy was nerfed. Hurricane was nerfed but the all 8 buff/debuffers were undaunted. In the end they threw a bone to the kinetics for team speed boost and also team bubbles and sonic rings.

[hejtmane]

That reminded me.... I used to be admin over a few channels on Freedom. One of them was "Freedom TF" which was (obviously) used for organizing TFs. One day, i posted an admin message about pie, and suddenly the channel lit up with "insert pie here" jokes...

Here's a few of the screenshots I took of the submissions (you'll probably have to view the picture's original size to actually read it):

http://s69.photobucket.com/user/ilwzxvn/library/Pie

The subject or word spork came up one time on the pinnacle channel and a couple of us took it and ran with it filled the channel with the word word spork. I mean everything from have a sporking time; or what the spork. The universal utensil is also a universal word

[Remaugen]

Disney will be picky with who they go after. They will go after Deadmou5, but they won't go after Hamas' Mickey Mouse xD

They recently lost their suit against Deadmou5, in fact he is now counter suing because they used one of his tracks without permission on one of their kids TV shows!

[Harpospoke]

Exactly so. As deep into the game as I4 the devs were still designing around archetypes as if they had far more fixed roles on teams than the players felt they should, and were still thinking in terms that trinity-style gameplay could still  be salvaged.  The "everyone should be able to solo" informal design rule didn't really become a genuine design rule as far as I know until CoV.  Look at CoV archetypes, and notice the shift in design.  CoV is obviously "post-trinity." 

But if the devs actually had a strong grasp of how to make the numbers do what they wanted, we would have never gotten the City of Heroes we ended up with.  To put it in direct terms, the devs did not have enough control over the numbers to fine-tune archetype power between "lame" and "overpowered" so most things ended up overpowered relative to the design.  At launch, powerset combination meant more to your overall power than archetype.  Invuln/SS tanker?  Godzilla.  MA/DA scrapper?  Doormat.  Dark defender?  Awesome.  Electric/Fire Blaster?  Roadkill.  Emp/Electric defender?  Useless except as a sidekick.  By the time they figured out how to fix it, it was too late to fix: City of Heroes became the best MMO in the history of MMOs to solo in, because the devs handed out powerlevels most admins don't have in other MMOs.  They couldn't bring down the overpowered stuff to "correct" levels except in the extreme cases, so they were forced to buff the players upward to balance archetypes out.  Players always complained about nerfs, but the history of City of Heroes is an 80/20 buff to nerf empower-o-rama.

Incidentally, the last vestige of trinity-thinking lasted surprisingly long.  It was the legacy of Blasters having no alternate design ethic once trinity was no longer the law of the land.  In my opinion, it wasn't until Arbiter Hawk started to look at Blasters - literally in I23 - that I think Blasters escaped trinity-thinking; the last archetype to do so.  Also, just a bit too late because I24 would have been the first issue to contain the start of non-trinity Blasters (one of my regrets was that I think in AH I finally had a Blaster ally on the dev team that thought about them somewhat like I did, and was willing to experiment with them outside the glass-cannon trinity model, and I'll never know where we could have eventually gotten Blasters to).

In any case, none of this was even remotely by design.  It was 100% accident.

That's kinda humorous reading.   Sometimes you just get lucky I guess.

[Harpospoke]

Actually, the whole thing went the opposite way of that:  MWM was ONLY asking to buy the IP, so all the successor games could reference CoX without, ya know, getting their arses sued off.  It was reportedly NCSoft themselves who said, "And hey, we've got this backup of the servers the night the game shut down, so do you guys want that too?"  to which Nate and the others said, "Hell yeah!"     We still don't know, NCSoft could back out at any point, but it was actually their idea to get CoX running again.

As others said...this is really really REALLY cool to hear.    I mean...that changes my view of NCSoft 100%.   ...And it buffs my confidence as well.

[Harpospoke]

That reminded me.... I used to be admin over a few channels on Freedom. One of them was "Freedom TF" which was (obviously) used for organizing TFs. One day, i posted an admin message about pie, and suddenly the channel lit up with "insert pie here" jokes...

Here's a few of the screenshots I took of the submissions (you'll probably have to view the picture's original size to actually read it):

http://s69.photobucket.com/user/ilwzxvn/library/Pie

My memory sucks...but now I remember why the name "Alien One" sounds so familiar.   (Probably from the old forums too)   That was an awesome channel.   A lot of people thought you couldn't get any good teams on Freedom but my experience was the exact opposite.    Forming a team was easy as....pie.   

[Harpospoke]

I remember in the summer of 2004, the idea of an all-defender team was considered a fad, a novelty, but not effective. People who played on the trinity-free team concepts experienced how powerful such teams could be. With corruptors, and masterminds, the variety of 8 buff/debuffers increased. The fulcrum shift was nerfed (bzzzzortch!). Radiation Infection was nerfed. Fluffy was nerfed. Hurricane was nerfed but the all 8 buff/debuffers were undaunted. In the end they threw a bone to the kinetics for team speed boost and also team bubbles and sonic rings.

Those were very welcome buffs.   I had a keybind for SB...but it was still a pain until that change.

And one of my favorite things was all Controller teams.   Really had to talk a few people into it at times.   I would send out tells explaining what I was doing and many would come back with, "How can that work?"     I pretty much said, "Trust me...if you don't love it after the first mob, I will understand if you want to quit".

[amrobinson]

I think one thing you (and everyone else) needs to bear in mind is that CoH became a game where travel and convenience were simple and everywhere.

One of the best examples is the Hollows. Pre-travel powers, mission doors at the far end of the zone, and no hospital. I think most of us have stories about the long slog back from Atlas Park. And then War Witch revamped the zone. Cleaned up the mission door assignments and spawn points. Added a hospital.

From the perspective of a fresh character going through the zone, all of these were vast improvements. From my personal perspective as a veteran of the old version, I think it really only needed the hospital.

And that really my point: convenience and travel tweaks are A-OK, because CoH was all about letting you get to the action and back to the action quickly and simply (which is not the same as easily, because a challenging spawn in the right/wrong place could make it more exciting, as long as it wasn't impossible to avoid/defeat).

I always found the original Hollows to be a fun change.

Slinking around the zone to far doors without a travel power, dodging mobs several levels higher than I was, meeting up with random pug teammates for trysts with Frostfire...it was all a hoot!

I have one (min/max) friend who refused to set foot in Hollows...he felt it was a gigantic waste of time not to be killing everything every second he was in there, save 30 seconds for travel time.

Kids these days, they don't know what they're missing!

brought to you by

[FloatingFatMan]

I always found the original Hollows to be a fun change.

Slinking around the zone to far doors without a travel power, dodging mobs several levels higher than I was, meeting up with random pug teammates for trysts with Frostfire...it was all a hoot!

I have one (min/max) friend who refused to set foot in Hollows...he felt it was a gigantic waste of time not to be killing everything every second he was in there, save 30 seconds for travel time.

Kids these days, they don't know what they're missing!

The main purpose of the Hollows was to teach players about the importance of aggro range.  Something you learn VERY quickly when the place is full of mobs of 4, 6, or even 8+ gangers, all hanging around waiting to get biblical on your ass.  The "fix" very much neutered it, I feel.

All the place needed was a hospital, that's it.

[Pep Rally]

 And Tankers and Controllers should be desired on teams (but more than 1-2 usually was not that desirable).

Of course, 1-2 Tanks weren't desirable. You needed 8 for a good team...especially on Tuesdays.

[LaughingAlex]

Of course, 1-2 Tanks weren't desirable. You needed 8 for a good team...especially on Tuesdays.

Hehe, hey tankers are pretty good archtypes, just you want to do more than just soak hits and holding taunt down .  Tanker damage was way underrated.  They weren't brutes or scrappers but they could still hit more than hard enough to destroy mobs quickly enough.  Besides 8 tankers can easily force multiply up with leadership .

[Aggelakis]

I was only ever to attend one Tanker Tuesday in the entire run of the game. It was epic.