possible good news?

[srmalloy]

indeed a huge thing CoH fixed, it says you can do so in SB, but apparently you need to have aquired the clothing you want to make yours look like, kinda hard to ahve an inventory full of costume types and still play the game.

Aion did something like that a while before I gave up on it -- you could go to a particular vendor in your capitol (paying the obligatory teleport fees both ways) with an armor item you wanted to wear and another armor item whose appearance you liked, and for a fee the vendor would destroy the second piece to give its model to the piece you wanted to wear. Given that everything except the lowest grade of armor was already bind-on-equip at a minimum, it was essentially just a money sink for people who'd outleveled armor they liked the apparance of (or discovered the armor gave them the wrong stats, etc.). I much preferred CoH's take on the process, but that would eliminate one of the time-and-money sinks in an MMO -- learning and crafting the various grades of gear that differ minisculely in the stats they convey.

[Keyne]

PSO2 took a lesson in "appearance detached", but the costumes are basically a static item with the only differences being colors. Casts (the android race) can mix and match arm/leg/torso slots. It also has a robust character creation system, kind of halfway between CoH's and everyone else's.

But yeah a lot of other MMOs are using the "apply this look to this armor for a fee" system.

[Joshex]

Aion did something like that a while before I gave up on it -- you could go to a particular vendor in your capitol (paying the obligatory teleport fees both ways) with an armor item you wanted to wear and another armor item whose appearance you liked, and for a fee the vendor would destroy the second piece to give its model to the piece you wanted to wear. Given that everything except the lowest grade of armor was already bind-on-equip at a minimum, it was essentially just a money sink for people who'd outleveled armor they liked the apparance of (or discovered the armor gave them the wrong stats, etc.). I much preferred CoH's take on the process, but that would eliminate one of the time-and-money sinks in an MMO -- learning and crafting the various grades of gear that differ minisculely in the stats they convey.

MMO's need money sinks to survive, it might be one reason NCSoft thought CoH needed killing. CoH could be fixed, I have come up with several non-game-breaking Money sinks that I'm sure people wont be appauled with.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Speaking from an old-school MMO player from Ultima Online up to the just released neverwinter and all in between.  And MMO's are a world better.  Money use to weigh you down, in Everquest you would have to never carry copper because it was too heavy.  Your bags were always full and you were lucky to get an item that you could use let alone looked cool.  The games were always broken because of a lack of money.  Banks?  Sure if you could live long enough to get back to town and actually put your stuff in it.  No recall scroll/back to town button/leave instance it was a walk.  Some that took you weeks to get back to a town you can use.  I bring this up because MMO's have gotten a lot lot LOT better.  The fact they or the player can even worry about customization goes to show they no longer have bigger fish to fry. You use to be lucky to even have armor, and really lucky if looked cool.  These money sinks have allowed the games to be expanded, especially in a F2P world.  WoW doesn't need money sinks (not refereing to ingame) because they have so many subs they never have to worry about funding.  But other games need some kind of source of income.  Personally I have never had to spend real cash(not including subs of course)on any MMO to ever compete with anyone else, they do make it so you don't have too.  And if you can survive the old MMO's you can do the new ones without money sinks just fine.  However customization has never been important to me(looks wise not character build wise) so it has never been a make a or break.  But for people it is an issue for I do feel their pain in the sense as many games lack customization.

Sorry not real point just rambling.

[blacksly]

Heh, I agree... if I could handle the PK and dry looting and such from ancient UO times, worrying about money sinks to look better or get a bit more efficiency in MMOs nowadays is peanuts as far as problems go.

Though I do beg to differ about the lack of Recall scrolls, at least in UO. Between the spell, scrolls that you could cast with relatively low Magery, and party members casting Gate back to Britain, travel back to town wasn't much of an issue.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Heh, I agree... if I could handle the PK and dry looting and such from ancient UO times, worrying about money sinks to look better or get a bit more efficiency in MMOs nowadays is peanuts as far as problems go.

Though I do beg to differ about the lack of Recall scrolls, at least in UO. Between the spell, scrolls that you could cast with relatively low Magery, and party members casting Gate back to Britain, travel back to town wasn't much of an issue.

Ya good point:)  I was thinking of EQ at that time, but ya in UO I think it was like 40-50 magic to recall

[Joshex]

some day, we will know we have truely advanced beyond all expectations when "that dumb adventure game" (the old text based one with nothing more than a black screen and a white box with white letters explainign the situation and asking you what you want todo) anyways we'll know we are sper advanced when that dumb adventure game becomes the world's most popular MMO.

why? cause it's incredibly individualized, it has the best graphics you can immagine and the costume designer really has some thought put into it lol.

my first computer had Windows 3.1...

[houtex]

Which dumb Adventure game?  The original Colossal Cave?  Or Zork?  Or...?

Colossal Cave is *awesome*.  You had to create the rooms and such with your mind.  The words were all you had, and with that... I had the entire cave in my head.  I really REALLY wanted to see the volcano, the Plover room... man.  Good times, good times.  This was way way before the Internet, I don't mind telling you, so there wasn't any looking up very easily any solutions to problems.  Such as the giant green snake.  It took literally *forever* for my *family* to figure out how to get rid of that dang snake.  And I did it, then told the others.  It was a big dang thing.  I'm grinning remembering it.

It also helped me learn to type.  Since all the commands were text, and I started a new adventure each time I got frustrated or something with the old one, and the computer had a mistake-ahead buffer, I would fling the important commands I always used, something like 16 of them, and then wait for it to catch up.

Now, MY first computer was a H/Z-89 with HDos (Heathkit Dos, and Hard Sector 5.25" floppies), then we moved up to a Z-90 with CP/M, Soft Sector 5.25" floppies, and then later, a 6MB Corvus Hard Drive.  Good GRIEF it was huge.  I mean, it was worth a LOT of floppies on it for storage!  And there was a 20MB model, but it was just too much.

Anyway, those adventure games were anything but dumb, Josh.   They were interactive books, and while I'm glad to have the 3d realish time stuff we have now... they were really really good sometimes to play.

[Joshex]

Which dumb Adventure game?  The original Colossal Cave?  Or Zork?  Or...?

Colossal Cave is *awesome*.  You had to create the rooms and such with your mind.  The words were all you had, and with that... I had the entire cave in my head.  I really REALLY wanted to see the volcano, the Plover room... man.  Good times, good times.  This was way way before the Internet, I don't mind telling you, so there wasn't any looking up very easily any solutions to problems.  Such as the giant green snake.  It took literally *forever* for my *family* to figure out how to get rid of that dang snake.  And I did it, then told the others.  It was a big dang thing.  I'm grinning remembering it.

It also helped me learn to type.  Since all the commands were text, and I started a new adventure each time I got frustrated or something with the old one, and the computer had a mistake-ahead buffer, I would fling the important commands I always used, something like 16 of them, and then wait for it to catch up.

Now, MY first computer was a H/Z-89 with HDos (Heathkit Dos, and Hard Sector 5.25" floppies), then we moved up to a Z-90 with CP/M, Soft Sector 5.25" floppies, and then later, a 6MB Corvus Hard Drive.  Good GRIEF it was huge.  I mean, it was worth a LOT of floppies on it for storage!  And there was a 20MB model, but it was just too much.

Anyway, those adventure games were anything but dumb, Josh.   They were interactive books, and while I'm glad to have the 3d realish time stuff we have now... they were really really good sometimes to play.

lol that what 'we' refer to it as weather or not it really is dumb or not we call it 'that dumb adventure game' after Kat in Red dwarf accuses a rather shocked Lyster of playing it when he types "I have a tarrantula in my boxers, dear god man get it out" to which the Kat replies "buy a potion from gandalf the magic wizard thats what I always do"

I grew up watching the old D&D cartoon and playing magic the gathering, yes indeed I have played the above mentioned game but forget which one. yes it was awesome. thats why I jjokingly said it would show just how advanced our technology is when someone develops an MMO like that.

[Aggelakis]

lol that what 'we' refer to it as weather or not it really is dumb or not we call it 'that dumb adventure game' after Kat in Red dwarf accuses a rather shocked Lyster of playing it when he types "I have a tarrantula in my boxers, dear god man get it out" to which the Kat replies "buy a potion from gandalf the magic wizard thats what I always do"

I grew up watching the old D&D cartoon and playing magic the gathering, yes indeed I have played the above mentioned game but forget which one. yes it was awesome. thats why I jjokingly said it would show just how advanced our technology is when someone develops an MMO like that.

Their names are Cat and Lister.

Amusingly enough, I am rewatching the series right now with my husband. An episode (or two!) a night over dinner. Love that show.

[Joshex]

Their names are Cat and Lister.

Amusingly enough, I am rewatching the series right now with my husband. An episode (or two!) a night over dinner. Love that show.

yeah, I typed that late at night, my subconscios had turned off for the night a few hours earlier, can you tell the difference in my post quality lol.

[Joshex]

in the future I strongly suggest we avoid contacting aeriagames inregards to picking-up city of heroes. even in the event that all other options have been used.

Aeria's MMO's seem to have a fad going. in this fad we would be able to look forwards to Tankers who can't hold thier own weight in PVP or PVE and blasters and trollers that are gods both in PVP and PVE.

yep. they have no concept of the whole 'balenced archetype' methodology. and it's present in each and every one of thier MMOs, Tankmages are present and there are melee tanks that can be killed swiftly in a single second assault.

then they claim that your armor wasn't good enough and you should buy items to enhance, then if you show proof of doing that they claim you should have better strategy, when you tell them how your tank can be killed in 1 second without even seeing your opponent (cause they are ranged) they still insist it's your fault. uncounterable sleep, stun and hold (no breakies) and no inherent defense or resistence to Sleep, hold or stun avaialble to tank classes.

over all they have broken PvP systems and a failure to admit it. but thats not all, in each and every one of thier games the market spirals out of control, thats right they would remove the Inf cap in city of heroes and place it at around 999 billion inf maybe even 1 trillion 999 billion that way the market can hopelessly inflate so that no-one can buy anything of use unless they first buy items from the item shop and sell them (OR) spend months saving inf to buy one small thing. they would also remove most Very rare drops from the drop pools and make them purchase only.

they also supply NO game moderation so if you're stuck you might need to wait a week or longer to get unstuck. also the game mods will argue with you if you try to report someone for cheating. "no that wasn't a UFO you saw. it was the light of the moon igniting swamp gasses"

not to mention all thier games are filled with spammers and hackers. spammers are needed because the inflated markets require so much gold that the only way to get it is to have an army of melee bots grinding gold all day. so the spammers do that and sell it.

yeah they may be a free to play company in america but they don't know the first thing about making games work, they only know how to make money, I mean why even have melee tank classes if they are trumped by ranged tanks?

PVP is mandatory in Aeria's games, though they'll tell you it's optional and technically it is, the grinding rate of XP is so slow that if you don't PVP it will take you months upon months to get to 30 and you will never grind enough money to buy the important stuff in the shops unless you PVP (cause PVP has better more worthful rewards than the rest of the games)

lastly, they keep upping the pluses, yep City of heroes got enhancement boosters to +5, in aeria's games it starts at +9 to +10 and wont stop there, eventually they will raise it to +15 then +20.

yep a scheme to keep people buying more enhancement items and taking higher risks of failure.

I used to suggest we give them a chance, but now I suggest we ignore them even if they made an offer. because they would hoplessly break our game and it would never be the same.

Also Aeria likes to disable regeneration and recovery especially during battle, in thier newest MMO's HP and such wont recover if you are fighting.

the reason for that is so they can sell 'pots' in the item mall, aka consumable HP regen and end recovery potions.

[MakoMako]

Before CoH, I played a good deal of Shaiya (one of Aeria's games). I played a Tank, and not only did the game not feel broken at all, I never had to PVP even once to progress through the game.

Are these recent developments?

Also, I'd ignore the playerbase complaining about unbalanced archetypes. While we love to talk about how balanced CoH was now, in the years I played the game the community -never- shut up about bad components to the system. Going so far as claiming one powerset was gamebreaking compared to others (Super Strength + Rage, anyone?) or that others were broken completely (I can count on one hand the number of people that claimed Kheldians were an effective class). Do -not- take community complaints on these matters seriously. The vast majority of the time it genuinely is a problem with players being elitist or bitchy about a system in place not being quite what they want. (I recall reading pages upon pages of complaints regarding the drop system for incarnate salvage, and how many -many- players accused Paragon Studios of lying about their rates.)

People complain. They always have and always will, regarding a "broken" number system. Furthermore, CoH already has a defined system in place that won't require Aeriagames interfering with it. I think they're still worth a try.

Also, if you're really going to bring up awful mods... You apparently didn't deal with NCSoft mods very often, when having troubles in CoH. I'd have to consult my E-mail logs, but I still might have a copy of a GM verbally insulting me back in 2009. I know GM Lloyd was renown for that sort of thing.

Really, I think you're splitting hairs on a few bad aspects of Aeriagames' retinue. I'd still support an initiative for them, should google fail.

[Joshex]

Before CoH, I played a good deal of Shaiya (one of Aeria's games). I played a Tank, and not only did the game not feel broken at all, I never had to PVP even once to progress through the game.

Are these recent developments?

Also, I'd ignore the playerbase complaining about unbalanced archetypes. While we love to talk about how balanced CoH was now, in the years I played the game the community -never- shut up about bad components to the system. Going so far as claiming one powerset was gamebreaking compared to others (Super Strength + Rage, anyone?) or that others were broken completely (I can count on one hand the number of people that claimed Kheldians were an effective class). Do -not- take community complaints on these matters seriously. The vast majority of the time it genuinely is a problem with players being elitist or bitchy about a system in place not being quite what they want. (I recall reading pages upon pages of complaints regarding the drop system for incarnate salvage, and how many -many- players accused Paragon Studios of lying about their rates.)

People complain. They always have and always will, regarding a "broken" number system. Furthermore, CoH already has a defined system in place that won't require Aeriagames interfering with it. I think they're still worth a try.

Also, if you're really going to bring up awful mods... You apparently didn't deal with NCSoft mods very often, when having troubles in CoH. I'd have to consult my E-mail logs, but I still might have a copy of a GM verbally insulting me back in 2009. I know GM Lloyd was renown for that sort of thing.

Really, I think you're splitting hairs on a few bad aspects of Aeriagames' retinue. I'd still support an initiative for them, should google fail.

I played shayia too a good deal, word is it's successors are a bit different and follow the new fad posted above. yeah it is a new thing, I think it's more a slow development due to player abuse and demands of paying players for more focus on thier particular preferences.

aeria's newest games all follow this fad, Ranged ATs are the kings and queens of PVP and tanks are expensive and can't hold thier own. it's all marketing cause aeria knows that once players make a character that works really well they wont want to make more.

so they have taken the tank out of tank and made thier games about damage, distance, speed and first hits. naturally ranged players have the upper hand and in many knew games have incredible armor.

I'm absolutely certain Aeria would hire a studio to maipulate the classes so blasters pawn all, they will support thier choice by saying "the majority of our paying customers are ranged players so we wish to cater to thier choices.

it's not just about that though the markets are screwed lol the caps are set so high it's crazy, seems the prices for stuff goes up 100g a day.

meanwhile tanks and other melee ATs will get nerfed heavily. I really suggest leaving aeria for much later if at all.

[JaguarX]

The vast majority of the time it genuinely is a problem with players being elitist or bitchy about a system in place not being quite what they want. (I recall reading pages upon pages of complaints regarding the drop system for incarnate salvage, and how many -many- players accused Paragon Studios of lying about their rates.)


People complain. They always have and always will, regarding a "broken" number system. Furthermore, CoH already has a defined system in place that won't require Aeriagames interfering with it. I think they're still worth a try.

Yeah. I at one point in time thought the drop rate looked suspect but thinking on it after while and seeing how some get multiple drops (not uncommon three per mish and a few as high as four per mish), it seemed to even out to the stated rate. Just not evenly. Some people got none while some got more than they knew what to do with, which made it some people in one mish could make more than a billion inf, while some got stuck with Pacing the turtle which was barely worth the trip (maybe 1,000-2,000 inf iirc.).

But that is how it goes. The ones that dont have it or dont benefit see it as a problem, those that do benefit think the ones that have a problem with it is over reacting. Of course they wont see a a problem they make billions as the system stand so why would they see a problem with that? Human nature

[Joshex]

Yeah. I at one point in time thought the drop rate looked suspect but thinking on it after while and seeing how some get multiple drops (not uncommon three per mish and a few as high as four per mish), it seemed to even out to the stated rate. Just not evenly. Some people got none while some got more than they knew what to do with, which made it some people in one mish could make more than a billion inf, while some got stuck with Pacing the turtle which was barely worth the trip (maybe 1,000-2,000 inf iirc.).

But that is how it goes. The ones that dont have it or dont benefit see it as a problem, those that do benefit think the ones that have a problem with it is over reacting. Of course they wont see a a problem they make billions as the system stand so why would they see a problem with that? Human nature

for about the first year I played CoH no one told me that purple enhancements don't drop in the enhancement tray they had to be crafted from a recipe and no one told me my recipe folder needed to have room in it for the purple to drop in.

after I learned that I got about 1 purple a week, then when I finished my tank and was farmin the new DA I would get 1 purple recipe and 1 enhancment catalyst per day. talk about rolling in it. I could easily amass 700mil in a day if I played all day.

[hejtmane]

Ya good point:)  I was thinking of EQ at that time, but ya in UO I think it was like 40-50 magic to recall

Unless you used a scroll you still need magic skill but not as high and you recalled back to a bank and never your property only port to your property from the bank. Also if you spelled cast you had to carry reagents it would suck when you die and your body would get looted and you have to run all the ay back because you could no longer recall back to town. I had a toon with  a 100 magic in UO. I was also the one that figured out you could steal loot from a monster while other people where fighting it and my thief had  95% hiding. Then the copycats started and like a month later they patched that feature.

[Joshex]

Unless you used a scroll you still need magic skill but not as high and you recalled back to a bank and never your property only port to your property from the bank. Also if you spelled cast you had to carry reagents it would suck when you die and your body would get looted and you have to run all the ay back because you could no longer recall back to town. I had a toon with  a 100 magic in UO. I was also the one that figured out you could steal loot from a monster while other people where fighting it and my thief had  95% hiding. Then the copycats started and like a month later they patched that feature.

lol thats nothing, in scarlet blade the have 'Item Seals' for players who want to keep thier items safe, see, they know the game is so very hacked that any hacker can easily hack into anyone's account at random and steal all thier items. so they made Item locks so players have some protection of thier rare items.

but I digress, in another year or less scarlet blade will not exist to be compared to. the 3 servers it started with have been merged into 1 server because of a lack of players to fill 3 servers., I said it before, this game was broken in record time., it sarted with gold spammers and hacking in it's beta, and then the market went out of control and players realized there were exploits to the system and exploits to allignment. it's.. it's a broken broken game and a very fastly killed broken game at that. I think it's a record, an MMO down to 1 server after less than a year.

I hope aeria learned a marketing lesson from this.