Do you think the game got TOO user friendly at the end?

[doc7924]

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?

[srmalloy]

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.

[silvers1]

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.

[Triplash]

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.

[dwturducken]

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.

[JaguarX]

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

[Aggelakis]

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.

[Lucretia MacEvil]

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.

[saipaman]

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.

[Electric-Knight]

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 

[doc7924]

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 

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.

 

[dwturducken]

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.

[houtex]

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.

[Kyriani]

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.

[mrultimate]

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.

[Brightfires]

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.

[srmalloy]

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 PvP Online strip (from partway through a series of strips Scott Kurtz did about City of Heroes -- the sequence begins here if you've never read them).

[goodtime]

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.

[goodtime]

This PvP Online strip (from partway through a series of strips Scott Kurtz did about City of Heroes -- the sequence begins here 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. 

[batqueen]

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.