Chase_Arcanum

Forum Sig Police.

Grammar Gurus (avoiding evoking Godwin here)

Anyone who has EVER implied any entitlement is due to them for their $15/mo.

Rian_Frostdrake's costume advice. (trust me... even he'd agree.)

Anyone that didn't like my comic guides.

Anyone that wastes time doing comic guides.

Anyone that should be working on his comic guide rather than forum trolling.



... what was the topic again?

Is it REALLY that bad? Not kill-per-kill but compared to a NORMAL dev-created story arc. When you play for 3 hours, how much less XP/hour difference is there really?

Most of what I'm seeing either compares
- kill-for-kill, ignoring that MA arcs offer faster kill rates due to the lack of elements in dev-created content like in-zone travel, inter-zone travel, delivery missions, stops to make inventory space, etc.
OR
- Pre-Nerf MA XP to post-nerf MA XP... ignoring how either of these relate to the other content in the game.

Yes, the reward-centric people will leave MA and never come back if there's a significant disadvantage compared to other parts of the game... so how bad is that difference?

Our viewpoints don't seem THAT opposing. Neither of us want something so underrewarding that it becomes irrelevant.

-If you look at per-kill levels, yes, a substantial reduction in XP reward in Mission Architect would appear underperforming and drive off players.
-If you calculate in the whole experience of one evening, people testify time and again that Mission Architect is capable of rewards that are substantially over and above the rest of the game. That's one of the reasons that it's so central to so many players.

As you noted in another thread, MA has no low-xp delivery missions, no insane cross-zone travelling, and no in-zone traveling for that matter. With "ticket" rewards, players don't have to worry about taking a moment to sell to make room in inventory when full either. There's no 'return to contact' wait either.

There advantages keep the reward/hour significantly high, even with the steps the devs have already taken.

I really am "casual" on the XP metric. I never really looked to optimize and only casually use MA to follow arcs of people I know. I never "bridged" and the closest I've had to a farm was doing nothing but RWZ missions to get enough Vanguard tokens for a full costume without doing a mothership raid (still don't have the damn helmet). I'm not saying this out of a sense of moral superiority, I'm saying this to stress that I'm NOT a good judge of how great MA rewards actually are right now because I don't really care. I'm relying on the testimony of others- people that USE and LOVE the MA's rate of reward and rave about them.

The way they talk, it seems that your typical farm-friendly arc would be better (overall) than the typical dev-created content even if it dropped 25% less XP per kill. The way most of them talk, even a 50% drop would appear to take things just a little under norm, but people are prone to exaggeration so I know 50% would be too much.

The trick is, without SOME adjustment that focuses on the overall experience, then you'll keep having the dev's content be just as irrelevant as you seem to fear MA becoming.

A point I do agree with, but claiming that EVERYONE will just abandon mission architect if it didn't give as good reward as it does neglects the fact that it also can have its own reward quite different from the XPPS

Here's a few:

Badging.

Time-consuming, occasionally influence-draining (market/crafting badges) and relatively unrewarding aside from an "i did it" marker.

Giant Monster Hunting
Yes, we've lamented that the rewards are weak, but many monsters are still hunted, despite this.

Rikti Dropship Takedowns
Only reward is the "I did it" pride.

Positron's Task Force
No reward is sufficient for that pain

Zone Events
I'm looking at Steel Canyon's Fire Alarms. Many of the participants I encounter there would see all the hellions conning grey, yet they continue to participate.

PvP
Even games with no PvP "rewards" have PvP participants. Many of the best PvP turnouts we have are in tiered competitions where very few of the participants get any reward at all.

Costume Creation
Hours upon hours often spent experimenting and trying new looks, even when there isn't a costume contest reward... for nothing other than looking "good*"

I believe you're significantly underestimating the number of people that wouldn't care if the XP per minute from Architect Entertainment wasn't quite on par with other forms of gameplay.

1) A great deal of people did things other than farm the previous Max-XP farm available. They chose not to chase after the fastest available XP but play other parts of the game. A great deal of people would continue to do just that, sampling AE as one part of the wider game, when something else takes the FOTM farm.

2) Yes, MMOGamers, in particular, may be achievement-focused, but don't forget that for the past few years, the one PC game title that dominated the top-10-sellers with WoW was "The Sims."

I honestly think your own attitude is more "fringe" than you believe if you think that 99% of the playerbase gravitate toward your way of thinking. You think the concerns of "only finding AE farms" and "AE ruining the game" are just 1%? Those are only the vocal ones, and I still see them holding good numbers against any "AE is fine as it is" defenders.

I have no doubt that the "NO XP" crowd is a substantial minority, but a "Half of the current farmable XP" group would probably be much more sizable (particularly if it had been done that way at launch). Heck, half of current farm rates might be better reward-per-hour than 90% of the dev content, when you figure in travel, delivery missions, and whatnot.

I'd even go so far as to speculate that quite a few of the XP-maximizers would have PREFERRED such a reduced-reward system, as it would've made AE exploits far less extreme, possibly allowing for more moderate Dev remedial action than we've seen...

I don't claim the total would be 99% on my side.... but I'd bet it'd be close to a majority. From the numbers I see in AE, if 50% of the people gave up on AE to chase after the next great farm in-game... AE would still be doing phenomenally with the remaining 50% just visiting occasionally as they meandered around all the different content the game offers.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not using "farm" in a condescending way here. I'm just saying that if the people focused on farming AE for rewards will gravitate to the next hot-spot, if max-XPPS is so critical to them. They did before AE, and they'll do again.

If you think that kind of play is the majority of the playerbase, do you really think the devs want all those people just farming the same few missions in AE when then new (dev created) content in Going Rogue is available? They WANT the rest of the game to be a viable option, if not slightly preferred.

I don't know.

Before it was launched, there was a lot of speculation that MA wouldn't give XP or would give XP at a diminished capacity... primarily to curtail the rampant abuse that would be inherent in any other kind of system.

While many people did say it NEEDED regular XP to be viable, many also said that they didn't care.

Personally, I'd be fine if ALL MA missions averaged about 1/2 to 3/4 of what "dev" missions did... (dev's choice missions could bump up to full XP). It'd offset some of the reward limitations of dev-created content (travel, delivery quests, etc) and remind people that there's gameplay opportunities outside those doors.

Would it mean fewer people playing MA? Yes, but the ones interested in a good story would still be there... and that's what the devs have been on record saying MA was really for.

The goal isn't to make them all identical... it's to make them all fit within acceptable margins.

At some point, the fact that I get X% more XP/hour chasing down carnies is offset by the sheer boredom of fighting the same foe so I start taking on a wider variety of adversaries.

Damn, Bill. That was a remarkably harsh, heavy handed, and - might I add - spot-on assessment. I'm jealous.


perfect

As others have stated, this itself wasn't the core argument...

And the people that are saying "they are down significantly" are so misapplying the data (and don't seem to care) that there is really no point in continuing it...

but in an effort that you DO care, I'll try:

-The Business model that CoH worked into its base is a kind of "surge and decline" model where large bursts of numbers come with expansions & then trickles down. There are fluctuations with the seasons and similar economic factors as well that are easily weighed against the raw numbers, much like we don't compare December's and June's temperatures when trying to determine year-over-year trends.

-What's notable about the numbers that we have available isn't whether there's a decline or not, but that the slope of the decline defies industry numbers. Thus, a decline in numbers is expected, so a "significant" decline would have to be a relatively large decline.

-What's also notable about the numbers is that there is no steep decline that can be associated with nerfs. That also fits most industry standards. At conference panels, MMM designers rarely saw an increase in subscriber loss after a nerf- particularly not at the levels player anecdotes usually attribute. (things as dramatic as SWG's NGE might be an exception. SOE says otherwise, but that may be because people that quit playing, but used the station pass, were still considered subscribers) Since many people interested in this tangent are trying to make the case that we're down due to nerfs, the evidence doesn't support this.


What the evidence does support is that the biggest surge in subscribers comes from the launch of a new expansion. Given that, it is in the devs' best interest to get everything clearly in place for the cleanest Going Rogue launch possible. Part of that involves getting as much imbalanced gameplay under control as possible before that time.

That supports the idea of getting the hard adjustments out of the way NOW.

IIRC, the guy buying the rights was of the attitude "throw special effects, superheroes, and aliens on the screen, and who'd care about STORY?" Honestly, though... I agree. I can't see the merit in a live-action movie centering on the Rikti war, as the original press releases indicated.

If I had room in my sig...

Actually, if you compare it to other games, you find that the "surge and decline" values are the industry norm.

Compared to most other games, CoH's decline is remarkably flat post-nerf.

Agreed, Prof_Backfire appeared to be overgeneralizing. As you describe it, people could casually enjoy and pursue the purples while pursuing their own gameplay. Many- most- probably DO.

There IS, though, this vocal minority that object to these "nerfs" because they were "forced into" using such pursuits. Their insatiable demand for the loot drove them to the "only workable solution" of abandoning whatever gameplay they enjoyed to take advantage of the most extreme reward system to fuel their appetite.

Yes, those few are free to make themselves miserable in their pursuit of "fun."

We're free to point out the absurdity of their situation...

...and when the devs determine that such obsessive behavior starts affecting others' gameplay (gross inflation in market items), they're free to adjust gameplay accordingly.

All that's been done. Now what we have is the rather un-civil debate between parties on whether the devs' change really was necessary.

Agreed.

I know the devs wanted to introduce something that would give players something for their level 50's to work for over a long time, but the problem is that for MANY of the people interested in such a thing don't seem to think that way. Rather than see each new purple as another incremental improvement on the way to that "ultimate build" that's an achievement by itself, they're rabidly chasing after that final stage.

Perhaps that's the same way many "race to 50" while others just enjoy a steady leveling process that gets them there.

That's unnatural.



Unnatural axe...

get it...?

Yeah, another old joke. Those are all I've got...

Right, along with the value someone puts on the inconvenience of rolling that many salvage attempts and managing the excess resources. That's why I was thinking THAT might be a "softer cap" than a direct price comparison.

Selling the salvage at the stores would put a hard cap on market prices that would be too dramatic, in my opinion. Sell brainstorm tokens (already in the game... base salvage converts to it) which can be cashed in for a "roll" (which it already does) would provide more of a soft-cap. You aren't guaranteed you'll get what you want, but if the item you want costs 100,000, and tokens cost 5,000, you can "roll" twenty times and even if you don't get the item you want, you'll probably make up much if not all of your losses selling what you got.

When prices drop, motivation to take the chance drops.

Thus, it increases market supply when its most need, provides an influence sink, and puts a softish cap on extreme prices


I say sell "brainstorm tokens." It's not a guarante

To be fair to Jack, that was a pretty BIG developer trend back in the day. Conferences and UI designers spoke about how "natural" feedback like visual representation of injuries would be better than health meters for the general market. Where "low" "medium" and "high" damage were more player-friendly than games that made people feel like they needed a spreadsheet to play it.

Heck, it sure was easier to explain things to new players... particulary when you factor in how ED muddles things up-- 32%+32%+32% doesn't equal 96%? How about a 100% recharge reduction that only really gives a 50% reduction because its 100% of the *modifiable value* off. Something wrong there (they could have avoided that by giving "point" values to enhancements, then mapping those points to a percentage boost. It'd have eliminated the need to explain the different "classes" of enhancements too...) Don't get me started on accuracy calculations!

It's much more newb-friendly to just say "slotting a generic recharge reduction makes the power come back faster. Slotting these different types makes the power come back even faster."

I agree with the decisions to make the power values available, but I'm concerned that making them TOO visible leads to unnecessary confusion or unwarranted spreadsheet-play fears. That's why not everyone considers 'real numbers' a good thing- and many of those people just aren't playing this game.

Exactly. Business relationships are a complex thing.

Well, if you look at how MUO *would have* been, Microsoft was the publisher, Cryptic the studio. Microsoft funded the project, so it was probably 100% owner of it. Cryptic got paid for making it... and probably had some contract incentives to get a little bonus if it was a runaway success. If Microsoft wanted more MUO goodness, it'd pay Cryptic (or another studio) more money to do it.

That's a more traditional publisher-studio relationship.

Cryptic-NCSoft was more complex because BOTH parties co-owned the property (exact proportions are unknown, but that much IS). There was definately some agreement in the distribution of revenue and an agreement on maintenance costs and responsibilities, but there was likely some vagueness (there always is) on how additional investments are handled. When push came to shove, one party expected more from the other. Maybe NCSoft expected more ownership of the product if it funded more of the development. Maybe Cryptic expected to be able to eventually "buy out" NCSoft and be sole owner... we don't know... but it's easy to see how that could complicate the business relationship.

Heh... yeah, that was more of a devil's advocate post... but we know that the first 2 weeks of a release are hard on devs, so you want as few of them on vacation as possible. The devs here have shown that too. Also, IIRC, even with the "breaks" many MMO's show a lower population trend in Nov-Dec, IIRC.

CLOSED betas are supposed to be borked, but betas in MMO's have become more and more "preview" moments for the players... and players have proven to be... temperamental... so there's increased sensitivity by devs to appear responsive. It's a stretch to say they'd delay a closed beta because of it, but not much of one.

and acknowledge people that disagree
-Funny thing with regen, even when people considered it was nerfed to hell and back, the people that actually ADAPTED play to accommodate the change were still more powerful. It was the people that kept trying to make a regenner play like he used to play that sucked.

-"Can't be done" was frequently qualified. He explained time and again that many MANY changes were back-burner because the resources could just better be spent on stuff that affected more of the player base.

And because I did find and send this stuff to Stellar, here are a few of the references showing that Jack wasn't the one in absolute control of the budgeted resources:

MY bottom line: Those posts were the year before the break... when CoH was down to under 20 developers. For whatever reason, the funder of the game's continued development was paying for only that many people. There are plenty of legitimate issues that can crop up between co-owners, so I'm not fixing blame on NCSoft either. I'm just saying that people that ARE fixing the blame on Jack are ignoring quite a lot that shows that this was a much more complex issue than what they want to believe.

Yes, these are all in Statesman's own words, so if you already think he's a liar, you're unlikely to be swayed. Sorry. His posts stop around the time of the split, so he's much easier to search for (Statesman_NA).