Author Topic: New efforts!  (Read 7212613 times)

Zerohour

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 70
  • Trapped in the Speed Force
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16120 on: March 28, 2015, 05:40:03 PM »
Almost 2 pages of entirely too long posts on who someone USED to be in a dead game is absolutely ridiculous. Is it really that important to prove or disprove someone's shred of importance?

GamingGlen

  • Boss
  • ****
  • Posts: 223
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16121 on: March 28, 2015, 06:31:25 PM »
Almost 2 pages of entirely too long posts on who someone USED to be in a dead game is absolutely ridiculous. Is it really that important to prove or disprove someone's shred of importance?

ZZZzzzz.. huh, what?    Oh.. So name something else for us to talk about, like... old Posi TF or new Posi TF.

Nyx Nought Nothing

  • New Efforts # 11,000!
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 796
  • Ha!
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16122 on: March 28, 2015, 07:43:58 PM »
That's where the confusion is I think. Posting "information about how PvP diminishing returns worked" is posting about cataloging and analyzing the results of diminishing returns. By the very definition if you analyze DR and post the findings about DR, you are posting information how PvP DR works. (Kind of funny that I can use use this line. I guess it's what your definition of "is" is)  I'll stop going on about this subject till Aracna to clarify her original statement. Because to me it dose sound like she is taking credit for DR analysis (not just the formula) due to the wording of her original statement.
That's not how i (or several other people, obviously) read it. It would be nonsensical for Arcana to claim she was the only one who knew what DR was or what it did. What the rest of us took away from it was that she was the one who supplied the actual formula that implemented DR. A formula that was non-trivial to derive from its output. (There are very, very, very many equations that have that characteristic, so this is not a surprise.)


On a related note a bit of congratulations is in order i think. Your comments on this little tangent have given me more headdesk moments in the past day than reading a dozen Ars Technica comment threads. "WHY WHY WHY? Is he being deliberately obtuse?! Is this some sort of sick game he's playing?!" (On a further (vaguely at best) related note i wish more fonts supported the interrobang.)
So far so good. Onward and upward!

Nyx Nought Nothing

  • New Efforts # 11,000!
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 796
  • Ha!
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16123 on: March 28, 2015, 07:56:40 PM »
Moving on... i have yet to find another MMORPG with the variety and flexibility of CoH, so i continue waiting with bated breath for some sort of news. Even CoH's "dated" graphics wouldn't stop me from playing the hell out of it if it returned a year from now. Setting aside that i don't feel that Wildstar and DDO have especially more detailed and realistic graphics while being much newer i would point to Minecraft as being an example of a game where graphics are less important than gameplay and player agency. Then again i also play PnPRPGs without minis or even more than a sketched out map on a piece of paper for graphics for most sessions.


That said, i certainly wouldn't mind another graphical facelift for CoH, so the sooner a deal is made the sooner APR could get fully under way. It's true that most gamers do expect a little more shiny in their games and bringing in new players should be a priority for a resurrected CoH.
So far so good. Onward and upward!

Osborn

  • Boss
  • ****
  • Posts: 188
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16124 on: March 28, 2015, 08:01:15 PM »
Because much to the contrary of what farmers claimed, it does affect the game outside of just what they're doing.

Arguably the most pronounced affect was on the market.  Things that were deemed "desirable" cost billions of influence, more than a non-farmer could ever hope to earn unless they were extraordinarily lucky and happened to get a desirable drop that they could sell.  Unfortunately, that was extremely rare.  I would sometimes go weeks without getting a single purple drop, for example, and then when I did, I'd get something that was generally considered junk, worthless on the market.  There were a few IOs that eventually I just resigned myself to never possessing because I didn't farm.

This is especially brutal to new players, which the game desperately needed to survive.  When you come into the game and a bunch of people are all purpled-out to the point where it seems hopeless that you'll ever meaningfully contribute to a team, it doesn't take long before you leave the game.

Related to that affect is the affect on the tone of the player base.  One anecdote in particular sticks with me.  My roommate Belle used to play for hours at a time helping people out, and she detested farming.  Once, she joined a team advertising for a task force, but before she did, she specifically asked if it were a "speed run" team, and the leader told her no, it was just a normal run.  So she joined, and the team proceeded to speed run the task force.  I was sitting there watching her as they blew through mission after mission, taking every shortcut they could, even doing things like deliberately failing missions just to get to the next mission faster.  They would finish some missions before she could even get inside the instance.  Finally, she nicely told them that she didn't know this was going to be a speed run, apologized, and left the team.

I was already annoyed that this is what had become the de facto standard of what was considered a "normal" run.  But what came next utterly disgusted me.  Some of the people on the team started sending her private /tells cursing her out for leaving the team before they fought whatever big baddie was at the end of the task force.  Being a kinetics defender, they were expecting her to be around at the end so that she could use Fulcrum Shift and whatnot to buff the team and debuff the enemies.  When she left the team, that meant that they were going to have to fight in the final battle for five minutes instead of the two or three they were expecting.  Thus, for the next 15 minutes or so, she received a slew of insults and accusations of griefing the team by leaving.

I tried my best to get her to petition the people cursing at her, but being Belle, she wouldn't do it, and I knew that the GMs didn't respond to petitions sent on behalf of someone else, so they basically got away with it scot free.  But it really pissed me off because again, that was the kind of thing that probably would have caused a relatively new player to abandon the game and move on to something else.

Then, of course, there's AE.  At the time, no mainstream games that I knew of had such a feature that allowed user-generated content in the game.  Being a roleplayer, and being someone who had all sorts of cool ideas for missions and storylines, I was super stoked about the thing.  But after creating a few stories and getting one-starred because it wasn't farmable enough or because someone objected to a mission because it didn't give enough experience, and after looking at the arc list and pretty consistently seeing stupid farming arcs ranked at the top of the list, I was done with it.  A feature that I thought had the real potential to be revolutionary and really set CoH apart from every other grindfest became THE grindfest that I abhorred.

Look, I know that some amount of farming will always happen.  Players will always want to reach that next level, get that next new shiny, and knock out a mission or two specifically to get there.  That's not what I'm complaining about.  I don't even mind if every once in a while I see someone broadcast that they're looking for a team to just do a quick ITF or whatever.  But when speed runs and farming become the norm and people start getting upset at people who aren't playing the "right" way, when I see one of the nicest people I know on the verge of tears because she left a team and had the audacity to negatively affect their precious XP/sec stat, when I basically give up on the market because it's just a cesspool of junk and items that are hopelessly expensive, yeah, I take a dim view of farming.

Of course, part of this is partly because I come from a background of pencil-and-paper roleplaying.  Yeah, it was cool to find a +3 Sword of Whatever, but you rarely had such blatant min-maxing going on, and when it was encountered, it was strongly frowned upon; many a DM I knew would take great pain to specifically pick on your character if you were what we referred to as a "roll player"--that is, a player who cared more about the dice than the story and characters.

The thing about an MMORPG, the thing that is supposed to separate the genre from others such as RTSes, FPSes, etc., is that it's supposed to bring that sort of philosophy to the gaming world, that it's not so much about "winning" as it is to put yourself into the role of the sorcerer, or the steampunk pirate, or the spandex-clad invulnerable behemoth.  At its best, City of Heroes was very good at that, and AE had the potential to really push that idea to a new extreme.  At its worst, though, it was just another grindfest, and to me, the farmers, power-levelers, and min-maxers were directly responsible.

I have to respectfully disagree. I think farming, in general in games, especially MMOs that start to get heavy on the micro-transactions, is a symptom of how the game's economy (both in game currency and out of game currency wise) and what kind of player base they want to court, is set up, not a cause.

The price of super rare purples was so high because they were so rare and good, not because farmers gathered up the money to buy them. If they were junk or common, then there wouldn't need to be farmers and they would stay inexpensive to the game. They were so rare to encourage the players to do a small amount of content numerous times, especially older content that was frankly less interesting. This is precisely why so much stuff started to become character 'bound' when they started to roll out the Incarnate stuff.

You might get mad at people wanting to speed run say, an ITF in 15 seconds, but realistically that's what people are going to do (if they can) when you expect them to run through it 29 thousand times to get some fate threads or what not.

The wider the gap between SO/IO got, the more 'bad behavior' you were going to find. Because people don't have infinite time (or patience) to play a game so you have to ration their time in your design.

Honestly, I loved CoH and I felt like out of all MMOs I've played it did this best. But it wasn't perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, and the worse it got with things, and the bigger divide between the 'haves' and 'have nots' and the more power divide between the 'hard core' and the 'casual' the worse behavior you'll find in any game. (And I find this is multiplied exponentially if the game favors PvP over Co-Op or PvE as well).

Frankly, AE as anything but a grind wheel to power level folks was doomed from the start. AE really as a roleplaying engine was more for you and your friends to experience, rather than random people. There was just too many players involved. Even if all of them worked in good faith to make nothing but RP content, there would be a giant sea of missions to get lost in.

Honestly, I didn't mind AE as a power leveling tool. To me it greatly enhanced the game and allowed me the leisure to pursue arcs at a slower pace. I didn't feel, for instance, that I had to grind arcs at lightning pace to get anywhere. I didn't feel like if I wasn't min-maxing my time to XP ratio that I was wasting both.

And it was great for ALTs that had builds that didn't bloom until level 20-22, especially pre-Fitness being universal.

Nothing kills my enthusiasm for playing a character, no matter how much I love the concept or story, of having to slowly hobble myself along for literally months until the character 'worked' right.

I felt like every second I wasn't basically farming purples bosses side kicked to a character that didn't suck was a waste. I'd get this sort of taste of dread in my mouth every time I'd open up the character select screen and see the character that I wanted to play at level 22 but they're sitting there at 10 or 12 or something, taunting me. Especially way early on, in CoH's history, when just getting to a mission could be a nightmare.

Heck, then I wouldn't even want to play the character even when they got good because I always had that sort of reflexive dread like "Oh, here comes the lame guy that I made that can't accomplish squat". I'd pass them to select the same guy that I had forever that I knew I could get into the game and do something with.

Then it became a sort of self fulfilling spiral, when I would have limited time to play, so I figured I could either further the guy that was already making the big bucks, or try to carry weak mcsucksguy along being miserable, making the latter feel even weaker or slower, making me no want to play them, etc.

When AE came out, it helped alleviate that a lot.

LadyVamp

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 539
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16125 on: March 28, 2015, 09:48:14 PM »
Moving on... i have yet to find another MMORPG with the variety and flexibility of CoH, so i continue waiting with bated breath for some sort of news. Even CoH's "dated" graphics wouldn't stop me from playing the hell out of it if it returned a year from now.

The dated graphics and cheesy sound effects would both quite refreshing and very welcome.  With or without the face lift.  I think I speak for us all on this one.
No Surrender!

LadyVamp

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 539
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16126 on: March 28, 2015, 09:58:01 PM »
Almost 2 pages of entirely too long posts on who someone USED to be in a dead game is absolutely ridiculous. Is it really that important to prove or disprove someone's shred of importance?

I tend to chauk it up to the stress we are feeling for our missing game (and community).
No Surrender!

umber

  • Boss
  • ****
  • Posts: 104
    • My CoH Characters
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16127 on: March 28, 2015, 10:08:16 PM »
The dated graphics and cheesy sound effects would both quite refreshing and very welcome.  With or without the face lift.  I think I speak for us all on this one.

One of the things I've missed the most is the 1953 War of the Worlds-esque pew-pew-pew of the Proton Volley snipe.

Waffles

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 387
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16128 on: March 28, 2015, 10:09:33 PM »

Zombie Hustler

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 264
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16129 on: March 28, 2015, 11:30:20 PM »
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.

Agreed.

I never ended up using AE as much as I'd have liked, and when I did use it to run other adventures, it often seemed like a slog just to find some quality, story driven, well constructed missions out there. I know there were many of the latter, but even with the rating system, sometimes it seemed as if the ratings were out of proportion to the quality of the mission- at least in the sense of what I was looking for. It sometimes seemed as if some of the highest rated missions were only being graded by people who were looking for xp farms.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but I agree that combining actual in-game xp and rewards with AE was kind of a big mistake, and that its rewards should have been more limited to either AE only redeemable rewards, or nothing at all.

Zerohour

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 70
  • Trapped in the Speed Force
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16130 on: March 28, 2015, 11:38:31 PM »
This whole power levelling conversation, the idea that AE should/shouldn't have given rewards or xp, all it does is give the elite snobs a chance to puff up their chests and show off their "superiority" that they NEVER used AE for any gains other than story driven for their toons. If AE hadn't given rewards, it would have largely become a waste of space for 90% of the player base.

MegaWatt

  • Boss
  • ****
  • Posts: 108
  • No i didnt call security bots......uh oh!
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16131 on: March 28, 2015, 11:46:30 PM »
the occasional power level was nice to get through mercy/Port Oakes/Cap that i had done DOZENS of times before and get to stuff that was more fun. Once you get a 50 the normal way i think your alright to go and level any way you please (and to be fair my Inf went into buying Halloween salvage for alts and changing costumes).
If we set it on fire it'll burn....but that'd leave evidence...I KNOW ! COMPLETE ATOMIZATION! WOOOO!

Twisted Toon

  • New Efforts # 13,000!
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 830
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16132 on: March 28, 2015, 11:51:17 PM »
That's where the confusion is I think. Posting "information about how PvP diminishing returns worked" is posting about cataloging and analyzing the results of diminishing returns. By the very definition if you analyze DR and post the findings about DR, you are posting information how PvP DR works. (Kind of funny that I can use use this line. I guess it's what your definition of "is" is)  I'll stop going on about this subject till Aracna to clarify her original statement. Because to me it dose sound like she is taking credit for DR analysis (not just the formula) due to the wording of her original statement.

I can tell you that a cake is made with some eggs flour, and butter. I can't tell you what measurements you need for each of those, and the few other ingredients that I know I'm missing. However, I have a friend that can tell you exactly how much of what you need to bake a cake.

Both deal with "baking" a cake. One tells you exactly what is involved in the baking.

Arcana was the only one telling you what exactly was involved in the baking. Not just what was observed from the finished product. Apples. Applesauce.

I hate to say it, but you might try some reading comprehension. Understanding the difference is not rocket surgery.

And with that, I'm done with this particular conversation. Although, you might see me later with a bloody mouth because i've been biting my tongue so hard.
Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do. - Katherine Paterson

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. - Cynthia Nelms

Zombie Hustler

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 264
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16133 on: March 29, 2015, 12:07:51 AM »
Not that I or anyone else here should really need to provide bona fides for Arcana, but among her other credentials- she was allowed to initiate her Immortal Game storyline on the Beta Server on the final day of CoH's existence- literally taking control over the Rikti War Zone and running dozens (probably even more than that) players through her scripted event.

Not something a casual player would have been given the opportunity to do, and certainly not something anyone with a limited or even simply moderate level of understanding of the game's programming would have been allowed to do.

So there's that.

blacksly

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 513
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16134 on: March 29, 2015, 01:01:11 AM »
That's where the confusion is I think. Posting "information about how PvP diminishing returns worked" is posting about cataloging and analyzing the results of diminishing returns. By the very definition if you analyze DR and post the findings about DR, you are posting information how PvP DR works.

In my opinion, you can run all sorts of tests on a car. Horsepower, weight, acceleration, turning radius, etc. Running all sorts of tests on it and posting the results can, by some definition, be called "how the car works". But it wouldn't be anywhere near the same thing as posting diagrams and mechanical specifications of the engine, or programming for the control modules, etc. And that would be a better definition of "how the car works".

Basically, while there can be multiple definitions of what "how it works" means, it seems to me very reasonable that Arcanaville is using the phrase to describe the programming mechanisms of DR, rather than just test results and theoretical formulas derived from those results.

LaughingAlex

  • Giggling like an
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,019
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16135 on: March 29, 2015, 01:56:56 AM »
This whole power levelling conversation, the idea that AE should/shouldn't have given rewards or xp, all it does is give the elite snobs a chance to puff up their chests and show off their "superiority" that they NEVER used AE for any gains other than story driven for their toons. If AE hadn't given rewards, it would have largely become a waste of space for 90% of the player base.

I am sure many true stop having fun guys had the attitude that if you didn't use it to power level you were a scrub that was ruining "his" game for not playing like him.  In fact I wouldn't be surprised if alot of people like that existed.  In fact they've existed for a long time.  Thing is, the developers themselves did not like that people were using it that way.  While making say, a cheat mod for personal entertainment is one thing the kinds of AE farms were affecting others and the game economy.  It was no different than aimbots affecting official rankings in online shooters, and belittling the efforts of actual talented players.

Thing is, I don't see people really bragging they didn't exploit AE.  But I do see the AE exploiters being very, very defensive here.

Be thankful you weren't there to see what people did to multiplayer cheaters of the game I showed that little mod I made for.  Get caught artificially boosting your ranking online or artificially preventing losses by disconnecting?  You'd be punished in very creative ways including;

Permanent removal of rank or 50% point cut(in other words, your account would lose many of it's points towards your ranking among players.  Many cheaters were ashamed of having the sword/dagger rank, and high rank players generally avoided playing against low-rank players, as you were punished severely merely for losing to a low-rank.  Simply put, crowns(high rank players) tended to only play against other crowns or flag holders(top rank players).

Removal of chat rights.
Banning of CD-key(the big one).

Heck, I also remember the war against cheaters in UT2k4, besides making scrubs so paranoid as to ban anyone who was merely good you also saw alot of piracy occur because of that.

I'm sure no one is here to ban people or cut character levels to be permanently level 1 on the account for life or anything.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Apogee

  • Underling
  • *
  • Posts: 19
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16136 on: March 29, 2015, 01:58:48 AM »
Personally I have always seen Arcana as the Sam Carter of CoH.  I fully accept that she is way smarter than I am and I am just happy she is on our side :)

Codewalker

  • Hero of the City
  • Titan Network Admin
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,740
  • Moar Dots!
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16137 on: March 29, 2015, 02:33:28 AM »
Not that I or anyone else here should really need to provide bona fides for Arcana, but among her other credentials- she was allowed to initiate her Immortal Game storyline on the Beta Server on the final day of CoH's existence- literally taking control over the Rikti War Zone and running dozens (probably even more than that) players through her scripted event.

Well, 0 for 3, though I get what you're trying to say...

Wasn't the last day, it was a week or two before.

She wasn't "allowed" to do anything. Since a couple red names did show up to see what she was up to, not knowing what to expect, I guess you could say that they didn't stop her.

It wasn't scripted like an actual scripted zone event, it was all done on the fly. Arcana might have had a script of sorts she was going by, but things didn't really go completely according to it.

But still, Arcana's a big name in the COH community, and it's not undeserved.

Zombie Hustler

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 264
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16138 on: March 29, 2015, 03:34:45 AM »
Wasn't the last day, it was a week or two before.

Ah. Curse this swiss-cheese brain of mine. I would have sworn it was the last day. :(

Quote
She wasn't "allowed" to do anything. Since a couple red names did show up to see what she was up to, not knowing what to expect, I guess you could say that they didn't stop her.

It wasn't scripted like an actual scripted zone event, it was all done on the fly. Arcana might have had a script of sorts she was going by, but things didn't really go completely according to it.

Gotcha. Misremembering again I guess, but still- just the fact that she was able to do what she did implies a more than casual ability to both access the server that anyone not in with the devs would have been able to do, no?

I mean, aside from creating a mission in AE, I don't think that it would have otherwise been possible to just run a huge event like that, would it?

Aggelakis

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 3,001
Re: New efforts!
« Reply #16139 on: March 29, 2015, 04:41:16 AM »
That's where the confusion is I think. Posting "information about how PvP diminishing returns worked" is posting about cataloging and analyzing the results of diminishing returns. By the very definition if you analyze DR and post the findings about DR, you are posting information how PvP DR works. (Kind of funny that I can use use this line. I guess it's what your definition of "is" is)  I'll stop going on about this subject till Aracna to clarify her original statement. Because to me it dose sound like she is taking credit for DR analysis (not just the formula) due to the wording of her original statement.
Arcana wasn't cataloging and analyzing the results of DR. She didn't have to do that. She had the formula. Herpaderp, therefore, she posted how DR worked (e.g. the formula), not what the results indicated the formula could be (which is what everyone else was doing).
Bob Dole!! Bob Dole. Bob Dole! Bob Dole. Bob Dole. Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob... Dole...... Bob...


ParagonWiki
OuroPortal