Shades of Diablo 2.....

[Verfall]

I was just browsing through the inventions forum over at the main COH boards (backs killing me) and I'm really getting bad vibes from it all. I played Diablo 2 for a good couple of years, I'm sure many of you have played it, and anyone who has played it on Battle-net knows what a cesspool of humanity that place can be. Sure COH lacks the "Korean Element" that caused many headaches for english speakers, but Freedom server has just as many bastiches who speak english, they fortunately just can't kill you at a moments notice. Not to say Korean players were all bad, but their reputation in Diablo 2 was legendary.

But looking at these "enhances" I'm getting shades of "Stones of Jordan" and "uber builds" and all that crap that I left behind when this game came out. How long till people are duping these enhances? How long till people are ripping off others with trickery and deception? How many people are gonna be disheartened to find out their character is "crap" without the perfect collection of these things? Nevermind the whole "story arc reward" idea. Nothing like finding out my level 50's have again been screwed out of rewards because I just happened to like playing the character before the devs got certain ideas.

Then there's the fact that entire powers could become utterly useless. Reading up on a knockback protection invention, it seems that just a couple of these gives compareable resistance to grounded from the electric set. Now acrobatics becomes useless for all but PVP. Heck, if a person gets enough of em, it can be on par with standard KB protection. Why not just wipe out the power pools and be done with it.

I hate loot. I hate playing online games with loot. Diablo 2 left such a sour taste in my mouth that any "loot based" online game I try to get into, from El Kardian to EVE Online, I end up getting sick of the people and the items fairly quickly. Loot just ends up leading to online experiences that I'm certain many of us here would choose to avoid if we had the choice. And yet here is the game many of us have spent almost 3 years, some of us even more going back into beta, enjoying, only to see one of the key game mechanics that kept us here changing into something that, to me anyway, is looking more and more to be a car wreck  that'll make Arenas look like a great idea.

At this point our population is getting low. People that many of us played with regularly as little as 3 months ago are now barely on. We went from an average of 2 full 8 mean teams a night to maybe a sixer if we're lucky. Getting a toon to 50 has become much more difficult, whereas a few months ago people were lining up to haul each other to that magic number. The game is getting on in years of course, and one can't expect everyone to stay around, but I get this nagging feeling that Inventions could be the nail that starts the coffin for this game amongst us.

And of course, here's the obligatory DOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!11!!!!!111!!

[Ephemeris]

Couldn't of said it better.  I'll probably just avoid crafting except for badges accompanying it and some specific costume options.

It also means PvP will be less inticing because I'll be going in with a PvE/PvP hybrid, no HO's and no IO's.  So....I've lost before I've started.

[RTTingle]

Yeah...

... lots of issues with inventions.

Like I said elsewhere, I work 60-80 hours a week in an E.R.  I play COH to escape from work.  Between the rate of drops for salvage, recipes, etc ---- the choice for me to ignore inventions has pretty much been made for me.  As always, if you have a supergroup --- I'm sure things would be better for you.  Or worse, depending.  Being able to buy stuff will help, alot... but that will be after the initial start --- when prices and such come under somenormal standards.

I'm sure inventions will play hell with PVP.  I consider PVP a lost cause anyways.  This will just make it more so.  Getting whacked in 2, 3 shots if I'm lucky just doesn't seem fun to me.  I like the idea of a battle lasting just a little bit longer, you know?

As for PVE, well... I imagine teaming will have its normal issues.  Now not only will there be looking for specific ats, with specific powers, but now for the same with certain slots.  Wasn't ED supposed to help us avoid this?  Now, it looks like its going to be the same mistake.

'Course... I'm sure there will be some balance, some nerfs --- maybe to bring things back around.

I was really excited about the idea of adding secondary affects to my powers, have yet to see enough info on it though.

Some cool stuff to inventions.  The costume parts, the temp. powers, the inspirations & enhancements.  We have to work a little/a lot now to get features, instead of just having them included. Not sure how I like that.  If I want some costume parts that fit my character concept, like a rocket pack, I have to get the salvage, the recipe, etc.  If I want pistols for my hero, I have to get the salvage, the recipe... and when it expires after x amount of charges --- do it again.

I'm so on the fence about that.  I'm happy to finally be getting some things that I always wanted... just not about how they're being offered to me.

I see the potential inventions has and it really excites me --- yet frightens me at the the same time.

And its almost time for some news on Veterans rewards... I wonder what the next batch will be?

[MyndVizion]

I have to admit I haven't followed anything regarding the new invention process.  I'm simply enjoying the game too much to even "think" about reading up on it.

I do agree with you on the loot thing.  I just finished playing World of Warcraft - and I was what you would've considered a "hardcore raider". I was the main tank in a top raiding guild and the loot I had was incredible in the game.  All of a sudden I hit the wall came over to City of Heroes and I have zero desire to go back to the grind fest where loot is the all encompassing drive of a game.  I prefer story and exploration over all else.

My main concern with CoH is the, already, lack of players.  Seeing all the servers at low pop is a bit disheartening. Sure there are times in which Freedom and Virtue are at medium population, but it's not constant.  Last night I logged into my 33 empathy defender and for 2 hours couldn't get into a team.  I've seriously wondered if City of Heroes has another 3 years of life in it.  Of course I hope so, but with projects such as the Marvel Online MMO - I've wondered just how much can City of Heroes sustain and still be considered a successful endeavor worth continuing.  Why can't somebody make a Freedom Force MMO?

Well. Here's to hoping that the new invention system keeps and attracts new players without turning away the old players.  And here's to hoping that a new expansion is in the works - like a new city to explore (I can dream right?) is on the horizon.

[Alaric]

My main concern with CoH is the, already, lack of players.  Seeing all the servers at low pop is a bit disheartening. Sure there are times in which Freedom and Virtue are at medium population, but it's not constant.  Last night I logged into my 33 empathy defender and for 2 hours couldn't get into a team.  I've seriously wondered if City of Heroes has another 3 years of life in it.  Of course I hope so, but with projects such as the Marvel Online MMO - I've wondered just how much can City of Heroes sustain and still be considered a successful endeavor worth continuing.  Why can't somebody make a Freedom Force MMO?

Just want to point out, while I have no idea what the actual numbers currently are in terms of how many players CoH has, the servers they use currently have a higher capacity than they did when the game started, so even if they had the same sunbers, it would show up as less.

[MyndVizion]

"higher capacity"

Does this mean there are more players logged in at any given time then there were when the game launched (yay), or does this mean the servers could potentially hold more players then at luanch - if only more players would log in?

[Alaric]

"higher capacity"

Does this mean there are more players logged in at any given time then there were when the game launched (yay), or does this mean the servers could potentially hold more players then at luanch - if only more players would log in?

It means they could potentially hold more players, but that wasn't my point (as I said, I don't know how many there actually are, and I doubt that there as as many players in general now as there were around the time the game launched- or when CoV launched, either- since there was more hype surrounding the two launches). My point was that because there is a higher capacity, the green dots that show you how populated the various servers are will generally indicate larger numbers than the same dots would have originally. For example, if you see two dots, there might be enough players that there would perviously have been three.

[Verfall]

From various forum threads what I understand is they increased the servers so that what would normally make freedom and virtue go red and the rest go yellow now leads to the current 2 yellows and the rest greens scenario. Some people said they doubled the size, some said they just added a 1/4.

The game is sitting at around 170k subscribers, which is down from late 2005, but still far from a dying game. The big problem is perhaps the fact that they're are a few too many servers. Two or 3 could go away and we'd probably see 2 more servers reach yellow more often. Of course server merging would be damn near impossible due to names and sgs being shared. They probably over-estimated the playerbase size a little.

There are plenty of MMOG's that run on less than 100k subscribers, and success like WoW is extremely rare. I think only the 2 Lineages and Guild Wars break the 1 million mark with WoW. The only things that can kill COH in the next 3 years are developer stupidity and MUO.

[Midnight]

Loot sucks. It ruined Guild Wars for me, because my character was dependant on drops. I only made token efforts to trade goods and usually was just freeing up inventory, so the money to aquire/craft good armor and weapons just wasn't there. Black Claw's still languishing somewhere in Droknar's Forge.

[El Condor]

I wish for one of two things to happen with Inventions:

1) The devs get the balance they claim to be seeking just right, and Inventions form the perfect loot system.  The UB3R-twinkers get just what they need to be satisfied, and the rest of us who care less or not at all can dabble in it or not and still chug along happily without penalty (in reference to Middy's problem with GW, no player should feel "dependent" on drops to succeed).  Population stabilizes or ticks up, and the game enjoys a late Renaissance. 

"Dorothy, wake up, wake up...."

*OR*

2) If Inventions fails and ends up being just another wretched MMO economy, I really hope the devs FEEL it.  I mean, they hear it from their loyal base (including peeps like us) and see the negative results it would surely have on their numbers.  The reason this is critical is that Cryptic has to be paying attention to what goes on in CoX as they are developing Marvel Universe Online, all the while (hopefully) building on what works and changing or dropping that which doesn't.  As one who is cautiously optimistic about what this next game could be, I surely hope they don't include a loot system that ruins the unique appeal CoH/V has had for so many of us. 

EC

[rain]

While I pretty much agree with most of the fears I think we're all feeling about loot and economy introduced in the game I'm just going to pipe in with this.

Whenever a major change has been introduced to this game, (ED, changes to Inv Tanks, PvP) we've all been pretty sceptical and worried.

Just about every time these things have come into actual play we've seen that these things have done alot to increase the "fun factor" of CoX.

My account is currently dormant until i9 hits but I have a spare time card just waiting for that day. I have ultimate faith in the devs at Cryptic. They haven't gone wrong with many of the improvements and alterations that have been put into place over the past couple of years.

Do I like uber-loot?
Hell no.

I have a pretty busy schedule with work that keeps me from devoting the time to this game that someone who really wants these things will need to invest to get them. But I'm no longer the hard core that I was.

I guess I'll just wait and see how it plays out. But if I am forced into "Pindleskin runs" just to make the game truly enjoyable to me, I'm outta here for good.
I just have faith that won't happen.

-rain