Dalantia

Under your system as listed in the OP, my highest Blaster would effectively become a tank, because Lethal damage is the most common type, and he tends to, you know, stay at range thanks to Boost Range.

20% is also not a "small" bonus.

I'd say the disconnect is the notion that risk is not part of the equation - people breaking encounters to minimize or negate the risk of defeat (as opposed to the risk inherent in completing the encounter as designed; doing things like getting out of the way of whats-his-name's AE is not an exploit, because that's an intentional part of the encounter) is often considered an exploit, as well.

Cities players just aren't used to that half of the equation because most characters snap the game in two far enough that "risk of defeat" is a dirty word. (This probably comes off a lot harsher than I intend, but I don't quite know how to put it so that it's clear without seeming like an insult. My apologies.)

That's what the vast majority of developers consider the definition of exploit, actually; what players here consider clever tricks (like pulling Trapdoor out of clone range) would be considered exploits and quickly squashed in other games.

Those two can be filed under Stalker due to the crits they grant, if I recall correctly.

To YOU.

To me, it'd be considerably more fun, because I'd be designing my nemeses (assuming decent customization options, etc) around my characters' stories, instead of a script attempting to cobble something together by trial and error.

I, player/writer, am designing it, not the character.

It was, for an MMO, in my opinion. Open beta, lot of word of mouth, there was a decent amount of positive curiosity, then.. release.

The problem is less that one other game had a bigger marketing engine mostly fueled by players, and more that a lot of people played Cities and either found it grindy or pathetically easy to break. And that's what they say whenever it's brought up.

Every time I see Cities come up in forums that are not this one, the thread has a few people saying "Yeah, I played that. If you can stand the multi-character grind because there's a distinct lack of endgame, it's all right." (yes, yes, alts are the end game for us, the die-hard fans, but that's not relevant to the people in question because that's what they aren't), and a few stories about how they managed to build a character that nothing posed a challenge to, became bored, and put it up.

And then you have people bringing in the old saws about the GDN and ED, because they're still bitter, and MMO players are notoriously gun-shy of anything that might theoretically reduce their power, which gets the players envisioning a dev team that will cripple anything that gets on their bad side.

A particularly memorable incident I saw was one person, about a week after launch (I0), saying "I ground to 40 in a couple days. Easy game, not much to do except the grind."

*shrug* Yes, they hadn't done any story arcs, any indoor missions, fought any AVs but.. story wasn't particularly important to that person anyway.

From where I sit, it seems less marketing and more word of mouth.