New efforts!

[Surelle]

TBH, to NOT realise that was going to happen takes an impressive amount of short sightedness.

That, or they were as dumb as a rock.

Hilariously, this is immediately what I thought as I read these AE posts.    When the AE was still in beta, a game journalist asked a Turbine dev why they didn't implement a similar idea into their games, and the dev immediately responded that it would be too exploitable.  So apparently this has been a passing idea that has never left the drawing board in other games.

[Zerohour]

I think yet again we are reminiscing about a piece of the magic that was this game. There were so many things you could do, and with the introduction of the mission architect, there was even more ways that we could explore our characters and try new things.  The problem I think, was that the developers kind of forgot that this game is all about trying different combinations and different power sets, and when they tried to nerf the ability to do that quickly it made things a lot worse for some people.

I've honestly never understood the point of trying to slow down people's level progression, because by the point they really started trying to slow people down, the game was so well established as a game where you could create all different types of heroes and villains and try out different power sets, which encourages alternate characters. there was really no need to worry about people quitting from boredom.

[Surelle]

I think yet again we are reminiscing about a piece of the magic that was this game. There were so many things you could do, and with the introduction of the mission architect, there was even more ways that we could explore our characters and try new things.  The problem I think, was that the developers kind of forgot that this game is all about trying different combinations and different power sets, and when they tried to nerf the ability to do that quickly it made things a lot worse for some people.

I've honestly never understood the point of trying to slow down people's level progression, because by the point they really started trying to slow people down, the game was so well established as a game where you could create all different types of heroes and villains and try out different power sets, which encourages alternate characters. there was really no need to worry about people quitting from boredom.

That's how I used to feel too, quite frankly!  I had "pared down to" 38 characters on our main server, Virtue, in CoX's final year, and only 6 of those were 50s.  Most were in the 30s or 40s, but some were still in the teens or 20s, and I was still buying new powersets after the August shutdown announcement was made because I felt I still had so much new ground to cover in CoX.

I'd guess that most people probably tried a "bubble mission" or other exploitable farming mission in the AE at some point or other, but they get boring fast.  Probably less than 1% of my total game time was spent doing that.

The other thing I think Posi missed the boat on was the possibility that CoX's leveling curve was just too steep and could have used ratcheting downward.  There was so much end-game content that more people would have subscribed to get...if they could more reasonably gotten there to experience it.  Other MMOs like Aion, EQ2, WoW, etc. have all lessened their leveling curves quite dramatically in an effort to get people to end-game for just that reason:  to pay a sub and also to buy the newest expansion in the F2P games, or to buy the newest expansion if it's a sub game.

[darkgob]

The other thing I think Posi missed the boat on was the possibility that CoX's leveling curve was just too steep and could have used ratcheting downward.

This happened several times during the game's lifetime.

[umber]

But, to be honest, the story in the game didn't interest me all that much.  Sometimes I paid more attention to it, but on the whole I didn't devote much energy to following it.  When I'm looking for a good story, I simply look elsewhere.

It was the act of playing the game that hooked me.

Same, I was more interested in making CoH my own sandbox and not someone else's.  Part of the reason playing a HEAT or VEAT didn't do much for me, they at least partially forced me to stop playing my character concept and start playing someone else's.  That's the very reason no other MMO has managed to hook me where I always feel like I'm playing generic fighter #5587.  In CoH, the (non-EAT) characters felt completely mine even if playing a FoTM, other folks might be playing an Arch/Mental blaster but I strongly doubt they're playing an undead french vengeance spirit of jilted love or a malfunctioning roman-era clockwork soldier. 

And lets face it, the CoH mythos was... disjointed.  Nature of the beast when you have people coming and going, a storyline that was previously being explored becomes abandoned in favor of a new writer's preferred avenue of exploration.  And its not like comic fans are unfamiliar with this situation.  Lets just say I casually paid attention to the CoH storylines but didn't dwell on them much, I had my own stories to follow.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

In CoH, the (non-EAT) characters felt completely mine even if playing a FoTM, other folks might be playing an Arch/Mental blaster but I strongly doubt they're playing an undead french vengeance spirit of jilted love or a malfunctioning roman-era clockwork soldier. 

Ballyhoo (who I thought was a Dom) and Antikythera, right?

[Zerohour]

Same, I was more interested in making CoH my own sandbox and not someone else's...That's the very reason no other MMO has managed to hook me where I always feel like I'm playing generic fighter #5587.  In CoH, the (non-EAT) characters felt completely mine even if playing a FoTM, other folks might be playing an Arch/Mental blaster but I strongly doubt they're playing an undead french vengeance spirit of jilted love or a malfunctioning roman-era clockwork soldier. 

...I had my own stories to follow.

You said it. A huge part of the fun for me was not only coming up with a new creation in the costume creator, but writing a backstory for the new hero or villain as well.  And then trying to fit it all into the painfully minimal amount of space they gave us for their backstory, which I feel should've been increased at some point but never was.

[umber]

Ballyhoo (who I thought was a Dom) and Antikythera, right?

Close, it was:

Phantomime = "undead french vengeance spirit of jilted love"
Antikythera = "malfunctioning roman-era clockwork soldier"

Ballyhoo was a two-bit thug with minor tp/tk powers who elected to take on a Joker-esque persona to further his "career".

CC knows me better than I do

[Codewalker]

And then trying to fit it all into the painfully minimal amount of space they gave us for their backstory, which I feel should've been increased at some point but never was.

Probably, though I have a feeling that it would have been more painful if they had expanded it without fixing what was quite possibly the buggiest and most temperamental text editor I've ever seen.

[MWRuger]

[MM3squints]

Short, sweet and the essence of the character. Also, most players who read bios probably would balk if they had to read a page of text.

For some reason this came to mind

Player 1: Why weren't you stacking CM? The team wiped...
Player 2: Oh I was reading your Bio. Don't blame me because you wrote a novel...

[MWRuger]

Probably, though I have a feeling that it would have been more painful if they had expanded it without fixing what was quite possibly the buggiest and most temperamental text editor I've ever seen.

It was pretty awful. I usually wrote in word and then pasted it in. Then had to go back and restore any blank lines. If you could figure out where the cursor was.

[Inc42]

For some reason this came to mind

Player 1: Why weren't you stacking CM? The team wiped...
Player 2: Oh I was reading your Bio. Don't blame me because you wrote a novel...

I actually got this kind of comment on occasion, mostly with my joke characters. 

[ivanhedgehog]

I could not in any way be described as a casual CoH player, but I also was not playing content with the most rewards for the least amount of time.  Certainly not on the whole.  This is purely a matter of perspective, but I felt that there was an "expected" pace of earning experience and other rewards.  If I deviated too far from that then I felt as though I hadn't really earned that character's level or other assets, and lost any sense of investment in the character as a result.

A case in point, that I actually posted about in another thread recently: I was interested in levelling a fire/stone tank at one point, back when mobs ran out of burn patches, to see how much I could leverage stone melee's controls.  I had a go at it over a double xp weekend and got the character into the late 30s.  I abandoned the character soon afterwards, not because I didn't like it, but because I felt it had just been too easy to level it.  From then on, I played 50s over double xp weekends rather than levelling characters. 

I have little doubt that there is a tendency towards taking greater rewards, all things being equal, but it isn't always the number one priority for people.  There is also the question of how you measure tangible rewards against intangible rewards.

Perhaps this was always true, though I certainly found that by the end of the game there was so much variance in reward-earning rates that statements such as "I have x 50s" given as a measure of expertise or veteran status were ludicrous.  I'm sure we can all think of examples of people "keeping score" by a tally of their 50s.  A 50 could represent a serious investment of time and effort, or it could represent practically none.

I have to say that I would not play anything that gave no rewards given the choice. not necessarily xp, merits, ho's etc counted. but if a mob type gave nothing, I did my best to avoid it and ignore it. we heard the "risk vs rewards" BS all the time. yet they had no problem removing the reward and leaving the risk. not much of a rule when you  only want to follow it when its convenient.

[ivanhedgehog]

The AE exploit system happened because -WE- as a player base failed.

anyone who looked at it for more than five minutes knew it would be exploitable to high heaven and we still demanded rewards from it, and then proceeded to exploit the holy hell out of it. It is a hard truth to take but the AE should never have had rewards beyond costume parts and it is our fault that it as a concept failed.

I would have loved to do more with the AE than I did, but there simply was no point in attempting to put out interesting Arcs with effort put into them, when they would be ignored for "CustomNPCfarm85".

were you writing arcs to tell your story or were you writing them for lots of people to tell you how awesome you are? The storytellers complained about farms but could easily have set up channels, blogs etc to discuss each others stories and promote them. people looking for farm were looking for farms, you werent going to trick them into playing your story masterpiece.

[JanessaVR]

Short, sweet and the essence of the character. Also, most players who read bios probably would balk if they had to read a page of text.

Actually, I constantly balked at the limited text space available to me for my character bios.  My central CoH file (in MS Word) has a section of neatly organized character bios by name, which include the full version, and then an abridged version, which always took me forever to craft as it was hard to get it down to the incredibly small size allotted to me for that purpose.  [grumbles]

That being said, for tabletop games, I am very likely to hand the GM a 2-to-3-dozen page backstory for my characters, noting their entire life history, the names of all their friends and family, a complete physical description (including typical clothing choices), a detailed listing of all of their possessions and where they're stored, all real estate owned, and all financial accounts by institution (for modern or future era games).  I also note that I'm willing to supply further detail upon request. 

[TonyV]

I have to say that I would not play anything that gave no rewards given the choice. not necessarily xp, merits, ho's etc counted. but if a mob type gave nothing, I did my best to avoid it and ignore it. we heard the "risk vs rewards" BS all the time. yet they had no problem removing the reward and leaving the risk. not much of a rule when you  only want to follow it when its convenient.

Then the AE probably wasn't made for players like you, and to be blunt, I surely do wish you had just left it alone.

That's what personally irritated me, this notion that every single part of the game had to appeal to a player, or else the game was broken.  I would have loved it if AE gave no rewards, or if it gave rewards that were only worth something inside of AE.  Would the farmers and powerlevelers have played AE then? No. GOOD! AE was never intended to be a farming or powerleveling tool, it was meant for players to create and publish their own stories.

To me, AE was one of the most exciting announcements around the game that I was genuinely stoked about, and it broke my heart to see it so mercilessly exploited.  I went from "I'm going to spend practically all of my time in here!" to "I never want to see this cesspool again" in pretty short order.

Personally, I wish that there had been a lot more very visible, very public nerfs to people's accounts. Character rollbacks, locking AE slots, etc. would have been friggin' fantastic, and based on early comments during testing and development that the devs absolutely, positively weren't going to tolerate farming arcs, I really expected it.

Oh well, I guess it's all water under the bridge now, but yeah, I agree with the poster above that basically said that it's not the devs' fault that AE was broken, it was the players.

[ivanhedgehog]

Then the AE probably wasn't made for players like you, and to be blunt, I surely do wish you had just left it alone.

That's what personally irritated me, this notion that every single part of the game had to appeal to a player, or else the game was broken.  I would have loved it if AE gave no rewards, or if it gave rewards that were only worth something inside of AE.  Would the farmers and powerlevelers have played AE then? No. GOOD! AE was never intended to be a farming or powerleveling tool, it was meant for players to create and publish their own stories.

To me, AE was one of the most exciting announcements around the game that I was genuinely stoked about, and it broke my heart to see it so mercilessly exploited.  I went from "I'm going to spend practically all of my time in here!" to "I never want to see this cesspool again" in pretty short order.

Personally, I wish that there had been a lot more very visible, very public nerfs to people's accounts. Character rollbacks, locking AE slots, etc. would have been friggin' fantastic, and based on early comments during testing and development that the devs absolutely, positively weren't going to tolerate farming arcs, I really expected it.

Oh well, I guess it's all water under the bridge now, but yeah, I agree with the poster above that basically said that it's not the devs' fault that AE was broken, it was the players.

I did AE long enough to get the badges....about 2 hours worth I believe. if the devs thought that they werent going to get farming arcs they should have instituted drug tests because you have to be smoking illegal substances to think it wasnt going to happen. I spent hours every night doing tf's, that was my favorite thing.

[MWRuger]

Actually, I constantly balked at the limited text space available to me for my character bios.  My central CoH file (in MS Word) has a section of neatly organized character bios by name, which include the full version, and then an abridged version, which always took me forever to craft as it was hard to get it down to the incredibly small size allotted to me for that purpose.  [grumbles]

That being said, for tabletop games, I am very likely to hand the GM a 2-to-3-dozen page backstory for my characters, noting their entire life history, the names of all their friends and family, a complete physical description (including typical clothing choices), a detailed listing of all of their possessions and where they're stored, all real estate owned, and all financial accounts by institution (for modern or future era games).  I also note that I'm willing to supply further detail upon request. 

I had roughly the same system. I appreciate the longer back story, but I actually think the limit help focus the core traits of th character that helped when playing. Especially true since all those stories really only mattered to us. With no GM to build our stories out or take advantage of them we were the only ones who benefited.

That was one nice thing about AE. You could actually expand  your character's backstory into CoH storyline.

I REALLY miss this game. Please bring it back as quick as you can!

[Ironwolf]

Then the AE probably wasn't made for players like you, and to be blunt, I surely do wish you had just left it alone.

That's what personally irritated me, this notion that every single part of the game had to appeal to a player, or else the game was broken.  I would have loved it if AE gave no rewards, or if it gave rewards that were only worth something inside of AE.  Would the farmers and powerlevelers have played AE then? No. GOOD! AE was never intended to be a farming or powerleveling tool, it was meant for players to create and publish their own stories.

To me, AE was one of the most exciting announcements around the game that I was genuinely stoked about, and it broke my heart to see it so mercilessly exploited.  I went from "I'm going to spend practically all of my time in here!" to "I never want to see this cesspool again" in pretty short order.

Personally, I wish that there had been a lot more very visible, very public nerfs to people's accounts. Character rollbacks, locking AE slots, etc. would have been friggin' fantastic, and based on early comments during testing and development that the devs absolutely, positively weren't going to tolerate farming arcs, I really expected it.

Oh well, I guess it's all water under the bridge now, but yeah, I agree with the poster above that basically said that it's not the devs' fault that AE was broken, it was the players.

You see I thought AE at first was for PVP!

To be able to create missions and either helpers or foes to inhabit a PvP based scenario. When I saw what is was - I just thought oh, it's a farming system.