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Community => Other Games => Champions Online => Topic started by: Xev on October 20, 2016, 03:20:16 PM

Title: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 20, 2016, 03:20:16 PM
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Castegyre on October 20, 2016, 11:41:52 PM
I just realized I haven't received an email either. Well, other than the one you mentioned. That seems weird.

Unfortunately I already have two different Halloween/holiday events I'm caught up in between two different games, and one of those is a game I play with my wife. So I don't see myself straining to add a third.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 21, 2016, 04:01:23 AM
So there I was... Filled with new optimism over all the new stuff in the game since I played last and hey, it's Blood Moon!

I run directly to Nimbus without a problem. Not bad, considering I'm notorious for getting lost and haven't logged on for more than an hour in months. Nimbus is UP! No one is around... Nothing new there. I plow through my 50 zombies to get to the main fight and I notice...hey, am I that rusty or is Nimbus tougher.. Then I faceplant. Then I load another toon who runs over and faceplants.

Wtg guys. Thanks for killing that tradition for me. Heading from one Empty spawnpoint to another and trying to get one of the only decent droppable/tradable items in the game that only drops once a year. Oh hey and those spawnpoints are extra empty now because you can't solo them.

Logged off in disgust, once again. Only took ~ 15 minutes this time.

I used to love this game, ya know... Blood Moon was my favorite event.

Ah well, anyway. I'll check back at Christmas.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on October 21, 2016, 07:03:06 PM
The CO Devs seem bound and determined to turn CO into a more team-oriented game than it has been in the past. Why this is so I have no idea. You can't deny that CO is getting a lot more attention than it has in the past, but the changes we're getting are for things that seem oriented towards making the game  more grindy than it has been. 

Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 21, 2016, 10:30:17 PM
It's not difficult to become less powerful. It's not fun, exciting, fresh, or challenging. It can happen an infinite number of ways. And, it can happen as fast as a login.

I personally have had my fill of rugs being pulled out from under me in this life. CO used to be my be more powerful place. Now it's my art imitates life place. So, it's personal, as well as generally annoying, what they have been doing. I have hundreds or more Passionate hours in my builds (so, I'm slow! and I only have 3.75 main alts) and now they feel broken.

Anyway, that's My problem.

Can be, these changes will ultimately be positive. I may even be soloing Blood Moon bosses again as things progress. I can mayyyyybe do it now, it just would take too much damn time and effort to be worth it.. currently. Kaos makes a good point that there is more Attention being put into the game than (my) ever. I don't have any great arguments against what's going on in general and there even appears to be some kind of plan. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a level cap raise before tooooo long. This seems where we're headed.

I miss my game! I thought I could at least enjoy some good ol' Blood Moon farming.. It was a favorite tradition here. Blood Moon goodies and then that creepy, awful Christmas music at the Two Big Toy Soldiers Fight. What could screw that up..

Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 21, 2016, 10:31:04 PM
The CO Devs seem bound and determined to turn CO into a more team-oriented game than it has been in the past. Why this is so I have no idea. You can't deny that CO is getting a lot more attention than it has in the past, but the changes we're getting are for things that seem oriented towards making the game  more grindy than it has been. 



Thats because you have Kaizerin(a known troll/jerk with clear shfg views) running things, so she's been trying to make things to pander to her try-hard/shfg/scrub friends at the expense of everyone else.  From raid bosses requiring 40+ people to events requiring lots of people it left me unwilling to really bother, since CO's population has been severely diminished.  The thing is, Kaizerin from what I saw believes that the only way mmorpgs should be played is with huge 40+ people raids like in World of Warcraft, unfortunately that combined with her becoming a dev, means CO is becoming a World of Warcraft clone(the main reason I don't play it anymore).

CO today is what happens when stop having fun guys and trolls take over the development team, sadly.

Edit: Forgive my rant, it just infuriates me how CO's developers under Kaizerin have abandoned most of the player base in favor of features which the game doesn't have enough people for.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on October 21, 2016, 11:50:17 PM
It's not difficult to become less powerful. It's not fun, exciting, fresh, or challenging. It can happen an infinite number of ways. And, it can happen as fast as a login.

I personally have had my fill of rugs being pulled out from under me in this life. CO used to be my be more powerful place. Now it's my art imitates life place. So, it's personal, as well as generally annoying, what they have been doing. I have hundreds or more Passionate hours in my builds (so, I'm slow! and I only have 3.75 main alts) and now they feel broken.

Anyway, that's My problem.

Can be, these changes will ultimately be positive. I may even be soloing Blood Moon bosses again as things progress. I can mayyyyybe do it now, it just would take too much damn time and effort to be worth it.. currently. Kaos makes a good point that there is more Attention being put into the game than (my) ever. I don't have any great arguments against what's going on in general and there even appears to be some kind of plan. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a level cap raise before tooooo long. This seems where we're headed.

I miss my game! I thought I could at least enjoy some good ol' Blood Moon farming.. It was a favorite tradition here. Blood Moon goodies and then that creepy, awful Christmas music at the Two Big Toy Soldiers Fight. What could screw that up..


The undead heroes now have 2.5 million hitpoints. (The first night they were up they had 3.5 million and their passives were essentially making them invincible. They changed THAT in a hurry-- removing passives from at least SOME of the heroes.) I have a few toons who could probably still solo at least SOME of the Undead Heroes but the time sink that it would require is simply not worth the time. They did add in a 100 plus Coin reward mission for saving all the heroes and that got people running in mass to defeat the Undead Heroes. The inside bosses are also more difficult than they were, but not impossible to solo.

My own theory at this point is that eventually everything except normal leveling missions will require a team to complete.


Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Castegyre on October 22, 2016, 03:15:07 AM
If people are doing more grindy and group oriented content then they are having to interact more with other players. Players interacting often has more to do with a single player sticking with a game than the actual game does in regards to MMORPGs. A dev who wants to foster a healthy community and keep the $ rolling in may play on that to get the players as a whole more involved in the community and the game. If devs do this poorly or misjudges the player base and how to manipulate them then instead of engaging the players and encouraging them to stay, they might just drive some of the players off.

Just a thought.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on October 22, 2016, 04:21:09 AM
If people are doing more grindy and group oriented content then they are having to interact more with other players. Players interacting often has more to do with a single player sticking with a game than the actual game does in regards to MMORPGs. A dev who wants to foster a healthy community and keep the $ rolling in may play on that to get the players as a whole more involved in the community and the game. If devs do this poorly or misjudges the player base and how to manipulate them then instead of engaging the players and encouraging them to stay, they might just drive some of the players off.

Just a thought.

I don't disagree with that being a viable strategy, but it's a bit late in the lifespan of CO for that. Personally I don't think the Devs are trying to deliberately hack off a portion of their player base, but they ARE making major changes to a 7 year old game which some people are going to be displeased by. Offhand, I can think of several reasons as to why these changes are occurring:

1. Cryptic has been given notice by its Parent Company that CO is not performing well enough and is in danger of being shut down. In this case, these changes are a last ditch effort by Cryptic to keep the game around. (And I think that-- given that Cryptic made its name on a super hero game-- the people running it have a vested/emotional interest in keeping it alive beyond the profits it does make.)

2. CO is such a small part of Cryptic's business that its Devs have given cart blanche to do whatever they want. It's pretty obvious that CO is not the moneymaker that STO or NW are, so perhaps the mucky mucks are willing to let the CO Devs experiment in hopes of improving its performance.

3. Cryptic is planning on adding a console version of CO to their lineup and are making changes to bring it line with what they expect a console audience would expect from a MMO. In that case, even if they were to drive off a sizable portion of the PC crowd they expect to make it up on a larger console audience. (And given the guestimates I've read of CO's current population-- a reasonable one seeming to be 7000-15000 players-- I think that they might consider that an acceptable tradeoff.)

Obviously I don't know why the Devs are making changes to CO, but there has to be SOME reason. Adding a new zone-- revamping the events-- changing/nerfing powers and adding new ones-- is costing Cryptic money and time. They wouldn't be doing these things without a reason.



Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 22, 2016, 12:33:04 PM
I don't disagree with that being a viable strategy, but it's a bit late in the lifespan of CO for that. Personally I don't think the Devs are trying to deliberately hack off a portion of their player base, but they ARE making major changes to a 7 year old game which some people are going to be displeased by. Offhand, I can think of several reasons as to why these changes are occurring:

1. Cryptic has been given notice by its Parent Company that CO is not performing well enough and is in danger of being shut down. In this case, these changes are a last ditch effort by Cryptic to keep the game around. (And I think that-- given that Cryptic made its name on a super hero game-- the people running it have a vested/emotional interest in keeping it alive beyond the profits it does make.)

2. CO is such a small part of Cryptic's business that its Devs have given cart blanche to do whatever they want. It's pretty obvious that CO is not the moneymaker that STO or NW are, so perhaps the mucky mucks are willing to let the CO Devs experiment in hopes of improving its performance.

3. Cryptic is planning on adding a console version of CO to their lineup and are making changes to bring it line with what they expect a console audience would expect from a MMO. In that case, even if they were to drive off a sizable portion of the PC crowd they expect to make it up on a larger console audience. (And given the guestimates I've read of CO's current population-- a reasonable one seeming to be 7000-15000 players-- I think that they might consider that an acceptable tradeoff.)

Obviously I don't know why the Devs are making changes to CO, but there has to be SOME reason. Adding a new zone-- revamping the events-- changing/nerfing powers and adding new ones-- is costing Cryptic money and time. They wouldn't be doing these things without a reason.

It's most likely the first.  When I left the game was doing very, very badly(at most 3 instances at peak times in Millenium city), and it's server quality was bad to, as lag was a major problem in events.  This lead them to cut zone maximums down to 50 and with that maximum even during events they only had 5-6 instances, indicating no one extra is showing up anymore during events.  When events are failing to draw extra people on and it's population has been so severely diminished you know it cannot be doing well.  Most of it's players are probably lifers who aren't spending another dime on the game.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 23, 2016, 02:58:15 PM
The thing with gaming accounts like this is that, to many players, they are Virtual Real Estate. People live here. It's our home away from home. We moved here because we liked the neighborhood enough to stay.

Now, without a whisper, the whole block is being leveled and who knows what will go up next or WHY.

Change is a whole lot easier to swallow when you are included. Who knows what they are doing, though, Big Picturewise. Who EVER knows.

This would be my problem with what is going on with the game ever since I first played and they were Hard nerfing things I never had a chance to even use yet (chained Eruptions.... *sigh*).

Even though I didn't feel the pain, yet, I felt other people's. And I had a feeling the clock just started ticking on when Mine would start.. You just don't take people's toys and/or hard nerf powers & abilities that they've come to rely on and not Replace them with anything AND for no reason. Back when that Eruption/dodge/crit nerf hit (man am I glad I was still a newb...) there was next to nothing happening in the game. The only changes, were, things being taken Away.


At least now there is a new high level zone.... Sorcery appears to have been, if not fixed, very nicely repaired, and there seeeeeeems to be some thought being put into the direction of the game and the tweaking of powers/powersets. This, along with all the device and power nerfs make me Optimistically think they are preparing for a level cap raise. Which, should just be the start to....more.

But WHO KNOWS... Not the average CO player. Who knows what the neighborhood will look like the next time we come home or WHY.

Not us....  : ) Lol look at us guessing. Year after year. And HOPING change will be for the better or that we can, at least, stomach it.

---

Raising the difficulty of Blood Moon bosses falls within the realm of things to do while preparing for a level cap raise, too. Or major gear upgrades. Or both! Blood Moon bosses feel like they are about 5 levels too tough, right now. As does Warzone. They Don't feel like Team material - not any more than they were before, and, neither does Warzone.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Brou on October 24, 2016, 03:57:16 PM
I'm really liking what Blood Moon has become. Amazing Grace is a lesson in blocking or getting out of the way of her maintains. Crusher's FCs are pretty good, too.
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 24, 2016, 04:23:44 PM
I'm really liking what Blood Moon has become. Amazing Grace is a lesson in blocking or getting out of the way of her maintains. Crusher's FCs are pretty good, too.

Nimbus is a lesson in how long a fight can be when you turn a mob into a big bag of hitpoints. And, how to make even more empty spawn points. Spawn points that used to be plucked annually by ex-Nimbus soloists such as myself.

I didn't stick around to learn any other lessons. That was enough for me.


Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on October 24, 2016, 10:04:38 PM
That's sort of a sign of the difficulty in balancing content in a MMO, especially content that has been out for years.

I have maybe two toons that could possiby solo a few of the Undead Heroes now. Thing is, even if they can, it's not worth my time as the reward isn't worth the time it'd take. They increased the difficulty, but not really the rewards. In fact, they decreased the possibility of getting Q from the bosses in the tomb itself.

I did participate in a train to make sure all the tombs were opened up on one of my characters, and I did enough damage on him to be far from the last on each Undead Hero, but I don't feel like it's particularly a fun thing I'll be repeating on any of my other toons. As a working stiff, I only have so many hours of play during the week and I'm not going to spend them all looking for a team to do content I was easily able to solo in the past ... particularly when the rewards aren't higher than they used to be.

I do understand the Devs desire to increase team participation, but I'm balancing that against my own fun from their attempts. If there are things I do not find fun, I don't participate ... a reason I haven't been back in the new Q Zone since the 2nd time I went into it.



Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 24, 2016, 11:13:34 PM
That's the thing. The loot wasn't all thaaat great to begin with and only sells for ~ 200g at best. Now it takes forever to whittle down those boss hps solo and you have to be on your toes the whole time if you're playing an offense passive.

More importantly it ruined the tradition! I had. My smile went right upside down like 5 minutes after I logged on and found out what happened. It's not a Real big deal, and it wasn't allll that thrilling of a tradition, but, *I was* looking forward to it! And it was my favorite annual event in CO. And now I have completely lost my interest in it.

So yeah, they took one of Blood Mooooon's biggest fans (I posted gleeeefully about it every year!) and turned him into "I really don't care about this anymore".

For what it's worth.

In nod to Brou I did think the fight with Nimbus I had felt smarter than normal. Like an AI improvement. But now, I've lost my interest IN the fight, sooooooo. Hmmm.

Maybe this all turns out great for new players but this not new player's first reaction is "this sucks".

Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on October 25, 2016, 02:13:38 AM
So...

I got a private tell tonight from someone playing a female toon: "I just want to be punished."

"Try soloing an Undead Hero?" I suggested. "That's pretty punishing."

They put me on ignore.

 :)
Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Xev on October 25, 2016, 03:04:08 PM
So...

I got a private tell tonight from someone playing a female toon: "I just want to be punished."

"Try soloing an Undead Hero?" I suggested. "That's pretty punishing."

They put me on ignore.

 :)

I lol'd.


Lost interest in Blood Moon. Lost interest in Sorcery when I saw I was being forced to stack up on Int, which, gives me eye twitches post-Int nerf.

I'm still logging in, though...

Honesty I haven't felt the old magic up to this point. But. There was a small spark today when cleaning up some inventories. I have 3 Justice geared toons with very different DPS builds that I am pretty proud of that reminded me how much effort I put into this game. I have a very CO friendly mouse scheduled to show up today, too, which has been a lonnnng time coming, and that seemed to have shot off another spark..

*shrug*

Maybe..... I just want to be... PUNISHED!

hehe

Title: Re: Blood Mooooon
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 26, 2016, 12:30:58 AM
I don't disagree with that being a viable strategy, but it's a bit late in the lifespan of CO for that. Personally I don't think the Devs are trying to deliberately hack off a portion of their player base, but they ARE making major changes to a 7 year old game which some people are going to be displeased by. Offhand, I can think of several reasons as to why these changes are occurring:

1. Cryptic has been given notice by its Parent Company that CO is not performing well enough and is in danger of being shut down. In this case, these changes are a last ditch effort by Cryptic to keep the game around. (And I think that-- given that Cryptic made its name on a super hero game-- the people running it have a vested/emotional interest in keeping it alive beyond the profits it does make.)

2. CO is such a small part of Cryptic's business that its Devs have given cart blanche to do whatever they want. It's pretty obvious that CO is not the moneymaker that STO or NW are, so perhaps the mucky mucks are willing to let the CO Devs experiment in hopes of improving its performance.

3. Cryptic is planning on adding a console version of CO to their lineup and are making changes to bring it line with what they expect a console audience would expect from a MMO. In that case, even if they were to drive off a sizable portion of the PC crowd they expect to make it up on a larger console audience. (And given the guestimates I've read of CO's current population-- a reasonable one seeming to be 7000-15000 players-- I think that they might consider that an acceptable tradeoff.)

Obviously I don't know why the Devs are making changes to CO, but there has to be SOME reason. Adding a new zone-- revamping the events-- changing/nerfing powers and adding new ones-- is costing Cryptic money and time. They wouldn't be doing these things without a reason.
These changes should have been implemented 4 years ago, now making team only content, is showing that they have no direction for this game. This game could have been better then City of. but they have neglected it for so many years. To appoint where I do not think anything could save it. By now it should have an end game, a full l1-50 or higher, a real story instead of a mishmash of missions; in the vail of a story arc.
I think the number one reason you posted could be very well the reason. Just chugging along, and just making the payment to pay the electricity bill, is not what a company wants. If we look for example, City of Heroes/Villains it was making a profit, just not as much as Nc wanted. I have to smile a bit thinking that if Nc was in charge of co, I wonder how long it would have lasted in its current form.