Human_Being

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Then there's the general stupidity. I was terribly disappointed (and complained about) the NPCs in the villain Invention tutorial. Aeon University is supposed to be the the knowledge center for the villain capital of the world. This is where budding mad scientists go to learn their craft. I could see them being quirky, but every last one of them is characterized as a venal incompetent! Where are the faculty that could be believably working on a Phased Linear Oscillation Transduction device to "Show Them - SHOW THEM ALL!"?

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*chuckle* ... down in the hidden lab, actually WORKING on the P.L.O.T. device - 'cause they're too smart to get dragged into performing actual teaching duties. Duh! ^_^ The guys up top that we talk to? Rented / purchased Nemesis automata, programmed to get students through teh curricula and back out the door aASAP (and route gullible nonpowered "future test subjects" to a particular door for, er ... "extra credit", yeah ...).

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Speaking as mad scientist in real life myself (No really ^_^), they would leap at the chance to show their superiority and proselytize in class. All onerous teaching responsibilities can be dropped on underling slaves (i.e. grad students).

Heroside you have lots and lots of plaques that can information about the world, it's history, tone, etc. I know that Kings Row used to be a prosperous garment district but is now a slum because of plaques.

I have no idea what Nerva Archipeligo is about even though there are STILL, after six issues, five plaques in Nerva that give blue hands but have no text attached.

I have no idea what St Martial's history is, why Black Mariah has the name it does, or what the ghost tree is about.

It's ironic that the portion of the game with more story arcs is virtually silent on backstory and context.

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-An explanation of Lord Recluse's vision for the Rogue Isles early in the game. I don't think we should have to wait until the video screen at Grandville to learn that his master plan is... screw it, that he has a master plan at all.

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I gotta check that screen out.

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I've always found it lame and hackneyed compared with Arachnos' backstory.

Okay first off on the Rogue Isles Aesthetics: People are right to complain about 'everything being dirty' villain side, but it goes deeper than that. While some places should be filthy (Mercy is half slum abandoned to the snakes after all) those places with lots of money should not. St Martial is the most egregious violator of this. One should be able to look at various places and think 1. "Crime does pay sometimes and what I'm doing will pan out" and 2. "darn I want that".

While a whole zone overhaul may be far down the road, little details in the sub-maps could, should, and would go a long way to changing the atmosphere. Why are the hospitals in Cap Au Diable, Nerva, and St Martial run down, dirty, and literally so dark I can't see the floor markings pointing to the elevators? These are not poor areas at all (Cap branch of Black Heart Memorial has Haven, but it also needs to service the residents of Aeon City). Clean and brighten them up. This does not at all detract from the villainous nature of the zones. Currently I wouldn't go to any of the Rogue Isles hospitals for my unnecessary surgery, insurance fraud, or non-medically-indicated pharmaceutical needs .

Why on earth are the Rogue Isles Vanguard Offices run down? The Cap one is even in a middle class residence neighborhood! I can't conceive of Vanguard letting their accommodations stay in such a state of disrepair (can you imagine the disapproving look from Lady Grey?? ).

It's almost like Vault Reserve Inc is the only professional organization in the Isles; and even they seem to have trouble paying their lighting bill .

Then there's the general stupidity. I was terribly disappointed (and complained about) the NPCs in the villain Invention tutorial. Aeon University is supposed to be the the knowledge center for the villain capital of the world. This is where budding mad scientists go to learn their craft. I could see them being quirky, but every last one of them is characterized as a venal incompetent! Where are the faculty that could be believably working on a Phased Linear Oscillation Transduction device to "Show Them - SHOW THEM ALL!"?

The stupidity goes all the way to the top too. The four top lieutenants of Lord Recluse were visualized as: a mindless savage, a moron controlled by his girlfriend, an emo ponce, and someone you could actually consider dangerous (yet has a mentally disabled sidekick). Could we add a few more signature villains that aren't the three idiots and their sidekicks?

Which leads into...

The place of Arachnos in the Rogue Isles and their relation to the Player needs to be better explained: I invited an acquaintance to leave WoW and try out CoV. After they had been playing for over a week I showed them around Pocket-D, pointed out the Hospital Porters, and related how they had been so well-used during the first Valentine's Event. I then had to explain to them the Rikti War and Rikti Force Field/Teleporter Technology, the Destined One project, and Arachnos' Survival-Of-The-Fittest creedo. After I got done with all of that she said "Oh, that tutorial and first set of missions makes a bit more sense now".

The whole villain side assumes 1. you have already played and understand the story from Hero side 2. you understand Arachnos inside and out 3. you already know why you were broken out.

For those who don't understand Arachnos: Recluse imprinted the organization with a hard core survival of the fittest ideology. The organization also openly recognizes that if you see your fellow men as potential prey, there's no reason that won't extend to your colleagues and accepts that there will be fractiousness and infighting as a matter of course. That's why there is an Arbiter Corp to keep things from becoming non-productive and why YOU are allowed to be attacked by wolf spiders.

For those who don't understand Project Destiny: Recluse has a list of 'potential destined ones' that *might* turn out to be the ones for told by Kalinda and the Fortunata Corps. They aren't certain, they are just the ones who *might* be and all of them were broken out of prison. Once they were out, Arachnos dumped them down in the Isles to sink or swim on their own. To protect the investment, the new arrivals were tied into the hospital teleport network, but that's as far as they will go in support. This firstly is in line with the survival of the fittest ideology of Arachnos; if you never managed to make it out of Sharkhead or if you got offed by a Crab Spider somewhere then you weren't actually Destined now were you? Secondly it lets Arachnos deny a connection between themselves and the acts of the Players (this is also why Arachnos-contracted Mayhem missions in Paragon come through non-Arachnos island Brokers).

All of it makes sense for Arachnos control of the Islands. They're impressive because they are a successful villain organization with a coherent and internally consistent philosophy taking into account the likely behavior of human beings acting upon it. But none of this is clear in the early villain levels, if it ever becomes so. Hence you get the "I'm just Arachnos' flunky" complaints. Player's aren't Arachnos flunkies (not until Patron Pools anyway); Arachnos doesn't care about you until you've shown you can stand up with the most powerful on the planet. They *are* the Big Dog in the islands though and the organizational force that keeps all the underground and criminal enterprises viable there.

I don't particularly mind the Arbiter Corps being Trainers and Stores; it matches the Corps' purpose. Conceptually it's the exact same thing as in Paragon: instead of Arachnos you are being trained by the Freedom Phalanx and their Junior Auxiliary. The Arbiters are actually something of a relief from the can't-tell-the-players-without-a-program list of trainers hero side (separately: why don't -they- have readable bios? I still don't know who some of these "important" people are).

Speaking of Patron Pools: They really do need to be respeccable. If for no other reason than story-wise you need a way to "betray" your "Patron" for another or to go Independent again. Just giving access to EPPs in addition to a locked-in PPP wouldn't do it. I know some people who actually want a particular Patron Pool other than the one they took. For those who don't want to have anything to do with Arachnos whatsoever, there also needs to be a non-Patron-Patron-Arc where you run your own scheme to construct/steal a self-empowering Phased Linear Oscillation Transduction device that opens up a power-pool.

To sum up:
<ul type="square">[*]Not everything has to be depressing in the Isles; make some conspicuously wealthy and strong for players to covet.[*]Not everyone has to be stupid in the Isles; make some competent and dangerous[*]If zone reworks are far down the line, clean up the Hospital maps in wealthy zones and refurbish the Vanguard offices. Vault Reserve could do with some higher Watt lightbulbs too.[*]Create more Signature Villains and please make them competent threats rather than savage retards.[*]Explain better to new players what Arachnos is about and what it does in the Islands[*]Explain better to new players that they are '*potentially* important to Arachnos' future' and that's why Arachnos broke them out, but that's as far as they go and after getting a quick look in Mercy Arachnos will have nothing more to do with them directly until and unless they become so powerful that they prove they are one of the Destined (Destined for what they don't have to say.) It's up to the player to make something of themself.[*]Explain what the Hospital Porters are and where they came from; this is in the Hero tutorial but shows up nowhere redside.[*]Patrons need to not be locked in and a non-Patron option needs to exist.[/list]

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The way to rememdy this situation is to increase the player pool in PvP zones/arenas, one way to do this is link the zones/arenas across servers so that PvPers from all servers can get a shot at each other and populate the PvP areas, thus enticing more people to join in.

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I agree with this. Also, do this for Pocket D.

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Many people's complaints with PVP in CoX are with the experience itself, not necessarily the population of the zones themselves. Indeed, this might appeal to the currently shrinking PVP population, but is very unlikely to bring in or hold many new players. This would be work by the Devs to no profitable benefit.


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As for the main subject of this thread, I have to say that there's nothing I would love more than to speed into the PvP zones, grab the exploration badges, toy with the mobs for a little bit and laugh at all those fools sending me duel requests as I exit back to the real game.

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That's what many do already. Well maybe not the laughing part, but they don't bother to stop and PVP.

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Not sure if I just mis-understood what you said, but I think if you were to respec your PvP build, then you would be able to retrieve IOs from it, as long as they wern't in use by the PvE build.

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If there's any way to get an Enh out of a switchable "PVP build", then it instantly turns into a duplication mechanism. Can't be dupin' rares now can we .

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the overwhelming consensus

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Noticed that didja .

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We hope to have this implemented and available shortly after Issue 12 Launch.

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Doh! \./ Ah well .

Just to reiterate, it is preferred that these be one-time purchases rather than incremental additions to subscription price.

And before someone else asks about it: No. There will be No powerset respecs .

I miss Archer T Jones.

Tell them to try playing villain side. FAR less running around and "kill X" stuff. They learned their lesson. (Just don't let them start out on a Dominator.)

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I'm just going to suggest that if any of you parents have younger kids playing CoX, specifically CoV, don't let your children play Westin Phipps missions. The guy is truly sick and disturbed. Not something younger kids should be exposed to.

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In that case you should probably also mention Peter Themari in Cap au Diable and Mako's ("I can't wait to rip his heart out and eat it") Patron Arc.

EDIT: and for your own sanity I advise avoiding the Shadow Shard content. "Daddy are we there yet Daddy are we there yet Daddy are we there yet Daddy are we there yet Daddy..."

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Uh... wut?

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He's saying we'll be "Gone To The Americans!!1".

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I hope that NCSoft will continue to find viable revenue streams aside from monthly subscriptions and box purchases (in the case of Guild Wars). I want NCSoft to be around for a long time to come, and have enough resources to be more experimental, a bit more adventurous. They need money for that. I want them to be financially independent and secure, so they won't ever have to start shopping for buyers because they're in dire straits. As a result, I will not only *not* begrudge them for doing this, but I encourage it. As a fan of game companies that have folded or been bought out by large publishers only to be gutted and their franchises left to languish, I'm quite happy to see NCSoft doing things to make sure they'll have money incoming.

Yes, its $10, and I'm still undecided how I feel about the price myself. But to be honest, playing City of Heroes, Guild Wars, etc., is cheap entertainment (how much are movies? sheesh!), and my buying of console games has pretty much gone down to nothing since I started playing two years ago. I'm not even really interested in getting a new console now - I'm quite content enjoying my current games. So, yes, its $10, but I've still come out far ahead in that regard, and since I am both a RP'er and an Icon junkie ( ), its $10 (less than eating at McDonalds twice around here on Maui) that's going to add to my enjoyment of the game.

So, thank you very much to everyone who worked on this; I like the pack very much. I look forward to i12 and seeing what other great stuff is coming up, as well as i13 and beyond.

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And what Psyte said too...

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Personally, I hope very few people buy the Wedding Pack so NCSoft gets the message that this is not a viable income stream for them.

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Oh yes, and a great message it would be:

"Dear NCSoft, don't go out of your way for us. Don't spend extra time or money on developing or designing anything for us unless you are willing to accept no compensation for your efforts. Don't expect us to support you. We don't want anything more then what our subscription fees already cover."



Its one thing to charge for everything left and right, like some other companies have, its another to offer a little something extra here and there for a small price.

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What Mantid said.

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Maybe somebody else has pointed this out, but if the PvP/PvE SwapBuildFlag is properly implemented, a PvE Empath will be unable to target and thus buff either an enemy NPC or a player flagged for PvP.

It's been done many times before in many other games. It's a rudimentary algorithm nowadays.

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This looks like a good point to refer back to my recap post for what zone play-experience should be like under these suggestions from a few pages ago. It's also worth it to read ICF_Zombra's follow-on discussion after that too.

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From a business standpoint, why on earth would I want to do that?

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Because NCSoft understands better than Cryptic ever did the importance of PvP in the MMO market.

Because they can easily see that the overall population of CoX is about as high as it is going to get with the current arrangment, and if they want to see any significant growth they will have to make some changes to the game. PvE content has been added consistantly, but has not generated growth. PvP is the one area of the game that has not recieved any significant developer attention since issue 7, and therefore is worth the effort to improve if it could be used to lure new players in and generate growth.

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You're not selling me so far.

PVE elements are regular subscription holders. Adding new play elements at minimum pay for themselves and with the re-investment stand a good chance of expanding the playerbase through new subscribers and returnees who find something they like (or just the disappearance of something they didn't like).

PVP on the other hand is a subscription loser unless the Community Team is directed to focus on it and then only barely breaks even. It's an open question whether the Community Team might get better results switching the focus of their attention elsewhere in the near future. Nor is "PVP" something that you just add like power windows on a car. CoX is not Lineage or Guild Wars. It has a separate culture and appeals to a different sort of player. Indeed, many of the CoX players came to this particular game to avoid games of those sort. Attempting to continue to 'bolt on' extra PVP elements to create a 'City of Guild Wars' would at minimum expand the schizm in the game between PVP and PVE as things are currently implemented. At worst it could drive bread-winning PVE subscribers away as they experience more of the present ills and fear NCSoft intends to convert the game over to even greater PVP play like their other games (see: "CoX will be abandoned when MUO comes out" fears).

Even if 'The Company' understands PVP very well, it also understands CoX is a unique animal with its own requirments. (Just like all the other games.)

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I'd rather they just implemented an observer mode like in the arena. You can view the battle and learn a lot about tatics in the zone, but can't interact in anyway. Bascially no pressure at all while seeing what pvp is like. Problem solved.

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No pressure....and no appeal either. PVP isn't available for people to casually pick up or not at their whim. It's viewable through a porthole and still screams "stay out of my PVP zone you PVE-loving newb".

This sounds more like a thinly veiled solution for PVPers to not have to deal with PVEers than something that will expand the appeal of PVP to the general population.

Furthermore, this does nothing to change the climate of play in the zones. It would serve as a risk-less window into an area where people are behaving pettily and showing no sportsmanship.

An observer camera would be a PVP repellant, not a PVP draw.

...Granted though that this has more of sugar coating of rationale for 'PVEer Go Home' than "just take the PVE elements out of the zones entirely" does .

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I asked myself, but all I heard in response was muttering about lack of any developer focusing on PvP in the first place.

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I mean a "PvP Developer", as Castle is the "Powers guy". Get what I'm saying?

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Sure, a dedicated person to develope PvP and promote more players to actively participate. I think there's a idea around here that would be perfect for someone like that to start with. Human Being, do you know where it is?

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At this point, circa the Aspirin bottle.

Lets try this: I'm an NCSoft executive working up the resource budget for CoX. Lots of new hires are being brought in to expand the game and its profitability. Someone drops a proposal to hire, salary, train, and provide with benefits a "dedicated PVP guy" for this game on my desk.

From a business standpoint, why on earth would I want to do that?

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I wouldn't have a problem if the rewards were solely for the risk of PvP, but they have the NPCs that must be dealt with as well, so does that make them PvP or PvE rewards?

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The rewards are PvP because PvP is the risk that is taken for getting them. The NPCs are the means by which the devs decided the rewards would be obtained.

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Okay, now ask yourself if this philosophy helps or hurts PVP playerbase-growth.

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I thought of something else that might not have been mentioned yet and that could stand another look at.

/hide in pvp zones.

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It's actually an important point and one I thought of while drafting the Original Post. Stalkers using /hide to effectively say "I'm not playing" instead of "I'm here but you can't see me" has been complained about before. When thinking over coding changes that were necessary though, I came to the conclusion that the effort to change it outweighed the minor benefit that could be had.

If anyone else had a more weighty rationale for preventing that behavior the calculation would be different.

*waits for the full post*

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I never said PVP is fine, "interested in" and "enjoy playing" are different things. You wanted clarification why i think there are many people interested in PVP and i mentioned where i got that impression.

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That's hairsplitting. Either PVP is earning its keep subscription wise and worth reinvesting revenue in or it's not.

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This thread and many others like it, forums added for PVP, the contests/events that keeps getting posted and yes i've peeked once in a while in pvp zones, mostly in the top (or bottom now) 4 servers.

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You've missed the subtext of those things that they are reaction to a failing subcommunity, not attempts to wring more revenue from a thriving one.

Ex Libris has explicitly stated that PVP is a "nonperforming" CoX subcommunity. The reason Community Team attention was lavished on it was to try and rally player support when Developer resources were not available to address the problem (because of the problem itself). In her thread starting here she states that the efforts over the last six months have managed to increase activity, but only to the point where it roughly equals losses. With extreme effort PVP is now merely not-bleeding-to-death. It is far from a success story and an open question how long such efforts will remain before Community Team resources are shifted to another area that shows more promise of growth.

Denial that PVP is just fine in CoX is Whistling In The Dark.

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So long as there's enough people interested in PVP, and from what i've seen there are, it will be on the dev radar.

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Please elaborate and cite your evidence for self-maintaining PVP subscription-draw.

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I still don't understand what the the big deal is about flags. Is it that folks are envisioning people toggling their flag on and off to attack people without being attacked?

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That is only one of the many potential exploits that could occur if it were done incorrectly.

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I had to spend a ridiculous amount of time fighting the "what about PVEers buffing AVs in RV huh?" meme so lets kill this one (again) right now: Can't happen, isn't alowed for in the original post, won't work 'cause it's already been thought of, no, no, no .

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I wonder if all the PvE content were removed from the PvP zones, how many people would still go there for the pure desire to fight a living opponent.

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Probably most of them. That is something that a lot of PvPers have asked for since the zones opened. Getting rid of the NPCs would make most PvPers happy, and would reduce the RMT farmer population thus making PvErs happy. Seems like a win/win.

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If all the PVE content were removed from the PVP zones I wonder how much development attention CoX PVP would ever see again.