New efforts!

[Teikiatsu]

Could be no news to report on.

I seem to recall something from around the beginning of september...

[Felderburg]

Guys, have you seen the released version of the Story Bible? http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Story_Bible A guy who worked on the table top game decided the NDA was lifted when the game shut down, and released a version from 2004 of the story bible. It has TONS of really cool lore stuff. Some of it has been contradicted by what was put in game since, but a lot is still valid (albeit non-canon, given that it didn't appear in game and is an old version). And even what is contradicted gives insight as to where the in game lore came from.

That page has a link to the zip file, but you can find the pdfs on my Google Drive here: https://drive.google.com/#folders/0BzbPxewaK5DgUjNkNnBKTHFnOGc

Totally missed that.
All my thanks are belong to you.

You're welcome! I don't think enough people know about it. And apparently not everyone knows about the Lore AMAs (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA) which are also super important for lore fans.

thanks for the clarification, Felderburg.

You're welcome! Not sure what you're talking about though.

Edit: also, there's the "Canon Fodder" threads (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Canon_Fodder) that were a sort of Lore AMA precursor on the official forums, by the developer Manticore, who was in charge of story at that point.

[BadWolf]

Wow.  I never cared for Matt Miller's work ethic for several reasons but I had no idea he was anti-alt as well.  Dunno, guess i assumed the devs found alt-aholism to be the *saving grace* of CoH, the game lacked any real endgame content for so long, it was so alt-friendly, how in the world could they look down on the very reason people stayed with their game for so long?  This is like... a Prince fan telling me they don't much care for Sign O The Times. 

And his reasons... there was never any significant number of people complaining about needing to get all new badges on every single alt.  Badgers did indeed have mains and they for the largest part only sought badges on those mains.  Posi was living in some imagined world that conveniently strawmanned into his personal preferences.

In fairness, when I talked to other gamers about CoH while the game was still live, they always said that the reason they quit (or never bothered picking up the game) was that there was "nothing to do" once you hit the level cap. The people who played loved making alts (including me--I had 80 or so), but Positron had a point when he said that lack of endgame content was limiting their audience.

I don't think you'd want to go too far the other direction...WoW always feels to me like a never-ending treadmill of power creep...but I think that giving people things to do with their max-level characters was a good decision.

[SemanticAntics]

"illogical"

Suddenly I had a thought: Vulcan MMOs would be drearily boring.  There would only be one costume, one class/archetype, one path, etc: the most efficient.  And, none would ever involve time travel (which to me is a good thing  ).

Not necessarily. Vulcan philosophy is based on the idea of "infinite diversity in infinite combinations." I think they'd be the last to limit a broad spectrum of individuals to a single path. For that, you'd probably want the Klingons. Count how many Klingon doctors, scientists, or engineers appear in the various series.

And as far as time travel goes, that is simply a question of "when."

[pinballdave]

There have been some criticisms of the end game and factors of play in I23. To me one of the biggest BUFFs to the support buff and debuff teammates was when certain powersets affected the team or the raid in one cast: speed boost, ID, forcefield buff, sonic buffs. It was a glorious day when a sonic mastermind and a forcefield mastermind could buff their pets and teammates in one swoop.

[Arcana]

Why seek to emulate World of Warcraft? Only a hopeless optimist would suppose the market has room for two Worlds of Warcraft and their game is going to be the other one; surely it's better to have a game that appeals to players who want something _other_ than WoW, so WoW won't eventually suck in all your players, and you might actually be looking at a customer base with unmet desires?

I don't think Matt was saying CoH was trying to emulate WoW, so much as they were originally trying to promote a gameplay style that WoW eventually popularized.  WoW launched over six months after City of Heroes and certainly long after CoH's design was finalized, so the gameplay CoH was trying to "emulate" wasn't WoWs, it was a style that predated both - really, EQ's style, and going back even further, fantasy PnP combat style.  The trinity was part of that style, but another part of that style was the notion of mains: you made characters you got attached to and tried to use as the primary lens through which to play the game.  You might make alts, but they tended to be secondary characters for most players.

When CoH was being written and then launched, it was probably the case that far more people had experience with PnP games like Dungeons and Dragons than MMOs: the conceptual library for online games was still dominated by the sense they were computerized versions of PnP games and the default thinking tended to reflect that.  That was and is very wrong, but for reasons I don't think most game designers really appreciated (the mathematical requirements are completely different, and the gameplay mechanics are incompatible in a number of key areas) and for that matter most players didn't really see either.

[Shadowe]

In fairness, when I talked to other gamers about CoH while the game was still live, they always said that the reason they quit (or never bothered picking up the game) was that there was "nothing to do" once you hit the level cap. The people who played loved making alts (including me--I had 80 or so), but Positron had a point when he said that lack of endgame content was limiting their audience.

I don't think you'd want to go too far the other direction...WoW always feels to me like a never-ending treadmill of power creep...but I think that giving people things to do with their max-level characters was a good decision.

It's an interesting problem of design, really.

Assuming you've settled on a level-based advancement, with a level cap, your players have seen increases in power as they've progressed. Once they hit the level cap, you have two options (which are not exclusive):

1) Increase the level cap. This allows players to see their numbers climb higher, as they have come,to expect.

2) Broaden capability at the cap. This means giving more options for what an individual character can choose to do, but keeping those options at or around the power level of the level cap.

CoH chose (rightly, IMO) to go the second route. WoW (and most other MMOs) took the first.

Each option has its downside, though. Option 1 means lots and lots of new content, with bigger numbers, and has the effect of invalidating "gear" at the previous cap. Option 2 likely also means lots and lots of new content, but also means that the difficulty of said new content can't be hugely varied.

I believe that CoH was on the cusp of hitting a nice sweet spot: enough new powers that it took time to earn them all, and enough varied new content to use those powers in without getting bored of the same grindy content.

It wasn't there, yet (Praetorincarnate focus saw to that). But it was happening.

I personally think that finding the balance between new incarnate powers and new content needed more work - we had lots of powers, and relatively few places to use them.

But I do think it was happening.

[darkgob]

"illogical"

Suddenly I had a thought: Vulcan MMOs would be drearily boring.  There would only be one costume, one class/archetype, one path, etc: the most efficient.  And, none would ever involve time travel (which to me is a good thing  ).

Only if it took place in the 22nd century.  Remember who invented the slingshot maneuver  .

[FloatingFatMan]

I believe that CoH was on the cusp of hitting a nice sweet spot: enough new powers that it took time to earn them all, and enough varied new content to use those powers in without getting bored of the same grindy content.

It wasn't there, yet (Praetorincarnate focus saw to that). But it was happening.

I personally think that finding the balance between new incarnate powers and new content needed more work - we had lots of powers, and relatively few places to use them.

But I do think it was happening.

I think they missed a trick there.  As well as the incarnate powers, it would have been nice to be able to "complete the set", as it were. That is, go back to your primaries and secondaries and add in any that you didn't take in the run up to 50, and maybe even add additional slots.

God knows, some characters (especially Khelds), -really- needed a few more slots!

[Shadowe]

That's a very fair point, Floaty. Not that I'd have wanted a full set on my main (one more, though, would have been awesome...), and I can also see a case for archetype-specific powers that shore up each ATs shortcomings (protection for blasters, for example), but I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of balancing something like that.

[FloatingFatMan]

That's a very fair point, Floaty. Not that I'd have wanted a full set on my main (one more, though, would have been awesome...), and I can also see a case for archetype-specific powers that shore up each ATs shortcomings (protection for blasters, for example), but I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of balancing something like that.

Most AT's probably didn't need it so much, but a triform Kheld is a tricky beastie and really did need a few more slots!

[Sinistar]

Most AT's probably didn't need it so much, but a triform Kheld is a tricky beastie and really did need a few more slots!

Amen to that, if any changes ever get to be done to Khelds, more power slots would be welcomed.

[Baja]

Er, well, the latter is much more potentially interesting?

Well, there's a concrete example here; CoX did perfectly well for many years with zero end-game grind other than occasional Hami raids, but with facilities for rampant altoholism.

On the face of it, it seems to me that if one must repeat the same content - and given that content can only be written so fast, one must if one is to stay with the game - repeating it with radically different powers is much more interesting than repeating it with the same powers for the chance of a purple drop. But, all the evidence says I'm the exception there. :-/

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I actually was agreeing with you. I loved having lots of alts and found it much more entertaining do switch than to grind incarnate trials. Personally my belief is some people just want the pat on the back with some sort of way to express "I've achieved all there is to achieve." I know this is certainly not the case 100% of the time as there are most definitely those that really do love their one character, usually this comes with a small in game amount of "fame". People grow attached to something they are good with and people come to recognize them as said character which gives the ego a nice stroke, I'm guilty of this as well so please don't take that out of context as me talking down to those that enjoy this. Also to clarify the complexities of the situation I'm discussing are far greater than I'm willing to go into, this is simply me offering my personal broad insights.

I'm sure many people agree and disagree with my opinions on this, however it's really a trivial subject compared to some of the more major issues being hashed here on the forums. My big things are names, alts, and having the original game run as long as possible. Honestly if someone said "CoH will be running for the next 20 years." Like ultima I could care less about the previous two. However I think that's about as likely as me retiring tomorrow

[Mistress Urd]

Wow.  I never cared for Matt Miller's work ethic for several reasons but I had no idea he was anti-alt as well.  Dunno, guess i assumed the devs found alt-aholism to be the *saving grace* of CoH, the game lacked any real endgame content for so long, it was so alt-friendly, how in the world could they look down on the very reason people stayed with their game for so long?  This is like... a Prince fan telling me they don't much care for Sign O The Times. 

And his reasons... there was never any significant number of people complaining about needing to get all new badges on every single alt.  Badgers did indeed have mains and they for the largest part only sought badges on those mains.  Posi was living in some imagined world that conveniently strawmanned into his personal preferences.

I find I like Alts. It is what kept me playing the game. I play another MMO (Eve Online) where you play the same character. While they have done things there to make Alts easier, it still feels like its 1 character per account. The most enjoyable time I have with Eve Online is early on when every time I login I have completed a new skill and I can see the difference. After a few months, I just sigh because I have to wait 2 weeks for the next skill to complete.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Most AT's probably didn't need it so much, but a triform Kheld is a tricky beastie and really did need a few more slots!

They did try adding more slots at one point and it sort of broke things. A possible compromise for Khelds would've been adding an additional base slot to each of the form powers.

[dwturducken]

"illogical"

Suddenly I had a thought: Vulcan MMOs would be drearily boring.  There would only be one costume, one class/archetype, one path, etc: the most efficient.  And, none would ever involve time travel (which to me is a good thing  ).

I think "boring" is entirely relative, in this case. For instance, given Vulcans' heightened visual acuity, compared to humans, their costume creator would actually be more diverse than ours, while all we would be able to see was what appears to be 25 options for grey and 50 for beige. It's all about nuance.

[Power Gamer]

I find I like Alts. It is what kept me playing the game. I play another MMO (Eve Online) where you play the same character. While they have done things there to make Alts easier, it still feels like its 1 character per account. The most enjoyable time I have with Eve Online is early on when every time I login I have completed a new skill and I can see the difference. After a few months, I just sigh because I have to wait 2 weeks for the next skill to complete.

Alts are awesome.

Although it might be a stretch to say Posi was anti-alt. He simply stated a conclusion that alts may have had a negative effect.
Whatever the truth, it was the ability to make nearly limitless costumes that intrigued so many.

[Pherdnut]

Alts are awesome.

Although it might be a stretch to say Posi was anti-alt. He simply stated a conclusion that alts may have had a negative effect.
Whatever the truth, it was the ability to make nearly limitless costumes that intrigued so many.

I just don't understand why anyone would think that. Nothing more boring than a server full of maxed out characters all hanging out by the pre-ordained watercooler area. Alts keep the game fresh for new players. COH lasted a long time and was still making a decent buck when it was shuttered for a reason, IMO. I rarely felt totally alone in COH until I started doing the Praetorian storylines. Not sure why those areas were so quiet but I really enjoyed soloing them.

[Power Gamer]

I just don't understand why anyone would think that. Nothing more boring than a server full of maxed out characters all hanging out by the pre-ordained watercooler area. Alts keep the game fresh for new players. COH lasted a long time and was still making a decent buck when it was shuttered for a reason, IMO. I rarely felt totally alone in COH until I started doing the Praetorian storylines. Not sure why those areas were so quiet but I really enjoyed soloing them.

Just spit-balling here, but I imagine he made his statement based on metrics that would tend to lead him to believe peeps were playing paper dolls longer than expected.

I know I spent loads of time getting costume slots and then messing around with the creator till I got exactly what I wanted.

Even then I wanted more choices.

To me the costume creator was a game in itself.

[Angel Phoenix77]

I seem to recall something from around the beginning of september...

I was not referring to that announcement, I was referring to any new news.