Venture

If they allow you to have 12 on the same character, then you're not not supposed to have them, either.

Irrelevant.

Any badge that's attainable is fair game, and it's not a good idea to push away collectors (who are some of the most hardcore customers you'll ever meet) by saying that you have to choose whether to get a badge exactly every thirty days or wait an extra 5 days because you're playing 4 hours a day.

It's not a good idea to cater to an extreme minority, either.

If you're a die-hard collector of ANYTHING, and you have a 90% complete collection and are working out the extra difficult and time-consuming 10%, and are suddenly told that you can choose to get a brand new doohickey for every thirty days that you don't spend collecting, it's going to kill the joy of collecting.

If every second I spend eating, sleeping, working, reading, walking in the park across the street, etc. counts towards that thirty days I'd have to say it's a sweet deal.

Mr. Syndrome Icon Birthday Boy, I know you keep saying that "blah blah blah, you're not supposed to be able to get them all." But the fact of the matter is that it is possible, and several of us are trying to get a complete collection.

Don't do that, then.


Those of us who are shooting for the stars

You're not shooting for the stars. It's a gorram video game. If you want a "sense of accomplishment" I suggest scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro, or perhaps just volunteering for community service.

And for those of us with legitimate mental disorders (obsessive-compulsive collecting habits)?

OCD patients playing MMOs and then complaining that said products obsess them is like alcoholics going to bars and complaining when served alcohol.

If you reduce the number of days to 10 it would only take 120 days to earn 12 badges, which is a bit more reasonable but still quite a bit.

It doesn't matter one stinking bit how long it's going to take to get 12 day job badges because you're not supposed to have 12 on the same character.

I'm curious...what MMOs put your xp on a cooldown to encourage alts? I've seen that bandied about in this thread, and can't think of any that I've tried that do it.

WoW gives a bonus to experience for being "rested". Of course, this is interpreted by most as a penalty for not being rested.

You apparently missed the part where I said I had OCD.

No, I missed the part where the game has to be designed around that.

With all due respect, people with that kind of disorder need to not play MMOs at all.

I don't even understand what that means.

"Dog in the manger" refers to taking something away from someone else just so they can't have it, even when doing so is of no benefit to yourself. My favorite example pertaining to CoX is the claim that Empath can't be fixed because it would upset people who already have it. Anyone who that is true of needs to have a high-velocity meeting with the business end of a baseball bat.

I still think my idea is best: Make "Day Jobs" a single badge like the Patron badge redside, with each "earning" as a title adjustment. My big post that explains it is up above somewhere.

I read it. It's wrong. Or more properly, it agrees with me: you shouldn't be able to have all badges on all characters.

If the obsessive-compulsives are willing to accept that, they're playing dog in the manger and need to be smacked.

It's another entirely to say, "I'd rather play Super Buffalo Man, but he's gotta work on that badge (or whatever reward you're going for), so to maximize his earnings, I'll play a different character that I'm really not as much in the mood to play."

"Doc, it hurts when I do <this>!"

"Don't do that, then. $15 copay!"

If you insist on torturing yourself, you have only yourself to blame.

And again: how much are you not "maximizing your earnings" by logging in a character for a few hours? No sympathy if you're keeping a character logged in on heal farms or whatnot. In that case you're choosing which badge you want to work on. It might take you 35 days instead of 30 to get a badge? Build a bridge and get over it.

That comment is so outdated, and has already been proven to be a false comment by quite a few people.

My comment is 100% true because there are badges that aren't available any more. Anniversary badges and Passport for examples. At least one (Bug Hunter) is problematic. We also have to consider the entire discussion as being qualified to "all badges available for a given side" since we don't have side-switching yet. Oh, and we have to make an exception for the "Ten Times the Victor" series, don't we now? And Patron badges? Even with these qualifications, does there exist a single character who does, in fact, have every single badge a hero or villain could acquire?

While the developers didn't really design the badge system to actually prohibit a character from having all of his side's badges -- something I would have done on Day One to pre-empt this entire debate -- they've also made it pretty clear that such is not a design goal. Badges are as easy or difficulty to acquire as the devs feel is appropriate, particularly for badges that provide actual benefits. If you insist that you've "gotta catch 'em all", it's your problem.

Then again we arent you so our opinions are obviously dont mean anything

It's amazing how many people don't realise that.

"Why do you always make such a big deal out of things...haven't you learned, if it's not happening to me it's not important?" -- Murphy Brown

A lot more than that. It will now take you 1 year and 2 months to get all the badges.

...on the same character.

Which brings us back to: consider the possibility that you actually aren't supposed to have every badge in the game on one character.

If I'd designed the system you'd only be able to get one accolade out of it, period. (You could "quit" and start on a new one, but you'd only ever have one at a time.)

Consider this, if my main toon is my fav toon i would like to play him so earning any one of these badges is going to take a long long long time.

Assuming you do things like work, eat and sleep, you are probably spending upwards of 12 hours a day not playing CoH. At least, hopefully. I'm probably averaging around four hours a day in game, not nearly all on the same character, and I work out of the house with a lot of down time.

Exactly how many hours a day do you expect to play your "fav toon"?

Congrats on killing badging for me. I am still working on the pillbox badges now i have to log out to earn those for a year, how is my badge toon supposed to get played?


Consider the possibility that you actually aren't supposed to have every badge in the game on one character.

No matter what they change, or even if they changed nothing, they'd still piss off a lot of people. The only difference is who would be posting the angry letters.


You're right, they shouldn't honor complaints based on popularity. They should honor complaints on their merits.

The fact in this case is that Web Grenade is probably the best power in Weapons Mastery. The only other power that could even compete is Caltrops, and of the two Web Grenade is much more useful. Those are the two powers that will let a Scrapper do something he couldn't ordinarily do. The two attacks are at best conveniences and at worst little more than toys. Scrappers already have plenty of attacks and don't really need more.

3) Web Grenade is the power that is being replaced in Weapon Mastery

That's the only power in the set worth keeping. It grounds fliers, stops or slows runners and slows recharge.

ALX-7/Freedom -- Cyborg and Enforcer, will probably incorporate some Vanguard pieces later in life

Venture/Freedom -- Cyborg/Enforcer helm design in one costume, Cyborg chest and legs in the third with HUD

Ion Lash/Protector -- Cyborg and Enforcer elements

Venture/Virtue -- Cyborg helm, Tech Sleek, Vanguard and Roman elements, HUD

I have to say that I'm not terribly happy with in-game rewards, even inconsequential ones, being given out at real-life events. I'm not going to rant against it or lose any sleep over it, but the availability of these things is being constrained in an extreme fashion. If the NCNC crew wants to show appreciation for fan turnout at conventions and such, they should hand out T-shirts, bumper stickers or such.

New players are herded by their first level-5 contact to go visit the Hollows. And if they went through the tutorial, they are "indoctrinated" to pick up the missions every time they are offered one. It's not obvious that you can skip Hollows content.


People who can't read probably aren't going to do well in this game no matter what you do.

[ QUOTE ]
Ever since the Trolls kidnapped my son, Sam, four years ago, I've been dedicated to rooting them out of the Hollows. But, let's face it: I need ever bit of help I can get. If you would like to help me, I'd be grateful.

Otherwise, you can keep pursuing leads with your current contacts. I'll still be here if you decide the fight for the Hollows is something you want to be a part of.


[/ QUOTE ]

Note the second paragraph, which has been there since the Contact went live.

For the record, I would delete every mission of the form "go talk to X about zone Y" and replace them with emails from signature heroes or Detectives sent when the character trains the appropriate level. That said, anyone who seriously believes the Hollows is problematic because new players are too stupid to see they don't have to do it has a patronizingly low opinion.

<QR>

I'm saddened but not surprised to see the Hollows get further emasculated. The zone was great in its first incarnation, before the Outcasts and Trolls had their superpowers yanked. There should be places people complain are too hard. They separate the players from the poseurs.

The arrival of the Coralax in Paragon was foreshadowed way back in i3 and the Striga arc.

Power proliferation and/or the villain epic fail ATs will be the last things "previewed". As a previous poster mentioned, those features will likely be tweaked right up until the producers taser the live team and push i12 onto Test for closed beta.

1. The gameplay is challenging, awkward, and frustrating for new players

Funny, few people from my inter-game guild stayed because CoX was too easy.

2. Veteran Rewards and optional expansions alienate new players

The "wedding pacK" was a ripoff, not in dispute. No one I game with could possible care less about vet rewards.

I can outlevel the TF just by running it.

Task Forces in CoX are never outlevelled. If a new Positron TF was created, it would be new content for every player with a level 10-50 character.

Oh, and the Katie TF is not "fast and exciting". It is a joke in bad taste. To be fair, it wasn't that bad before C drops, but under the current system it's way too easy....

Snaptooth: Activate the unnecessarily-slow soul-draining monoliths!
Scottooth: Wait, we're not going to just kill her?
Snaptooth: No, I have planned an elaborate and easily-escaped exotic demise for her. Now let's go.
Scottooth: You're not even going to stay and watch?!
Snaptooth: No, I will assume she dies according to plan...what?
Scottooth: Look, I've got all kinds of magic weapons back at my place. Give me a few seconds, I'll grab one, BANG, we'll kill her together. It'll be fun!
Snaptooth: You just don't get it, do you?
Scottooth: She's gonna get rescued!
Snaptooth: Shush!
Scottooth: But...
Snaptooth: Shush!
Scottooth: We could...
Snaptooth: Shush! Shush! That was a preemptive shush! I've got a Bag of Holding full of shush! with your name on it!

Katie doesn't need to be proliferated to the villain side. It needs to go. It should be turned off, or have its C drop removed until it can be revamped. And please don't try to play the "you have to kill Mary 10 times" card. Killing Mary Macomber 10 times is easier than killing Ghost Widow or Mako once.

So, would you rather have the Lady Gray TF or a revamped Positron?

I'd rather have a revamped Positron.

Old, broken content should be fixed or removed, not left out to fester where everyone can see it, no matter how much shiny new stuff is propped up next to it.

Outliers don't count. Anything the average player can solo probably shouldn't be worth a C drop.

The average player is irrelevant. The average player isn't responsible for the volume of C drops entering the market. Farmers are.

Ideally a way can be found to stop the farmers without impacting the average players, but if not, well, sometimes collateral damage is unavoidable.

Liked the current system better, actually. Anything you can do solo shouldn't be worth a C drop.

As to $9.99 being steep . . . you should try doing SEXY JAY'S job. He put's a lot of hard work into programming these items. $10. is more than reasonable. programming these things is a <bleep>.

$10 is not only not reasonable, it is outrageous. CoV was released with a MSRP of $50. It contained more than five times as much costume content alone than this "pack".

$5 would not be more reasonable. It would be overpriced at $1. How much people are willing to pay is irrelevant, except when computing the sucker ratio of CoX's subscriber base, which unfortunately appears to be entirely too high.

How quaint that you can say on one hand that WoW offers more "free stuff" in between expansions, and then claim it's not relevant that they have both more revenue and manpower to make just that happen.


That's right, it's not relevant. NCNC doesn't get a break because they're smaller. They are competing for the same MMO dollars WoW is competing for. You wanna swim with the sharks, you grow teeth.

Right. Because trying to move people around instead of sitting in one spot and grinding for hours on end for XP, reputation and/or drops counts for nothing.

That was always a choice made by the players. EQ's designers (e.g.) intended for players to move through areas, not sit in one spot and pull respawns.

Giving people access to fast modes of travel very early in their career is meaningless, and trying to break out of the holy trinity (Tank, Mage, Healer such is seen in CoV and most Defender primaries other than Empathy) is equally passable as the rest.

Travel speed is neither here nor there, and early CoX was intended to be just as oriented around "holy trinity" tactics as EQ.

I'd agree that underneath it all, it's still an RPG. As such, there's not a whole hell of alot that can be done to change the fundamentals that make the genre what it is.

Oh, I think an awful lot could be done differently, though probably not in CoX's current architecture.

You missed the point, which was to elaborate on the fact that while Blizzard might release more "free" content than NC/Cryptic most of it still cater's to a couple of very focused modes of play.

Blizzard releases the content its players want to see more of. If they did an "issue" of nothing but frilly pink dresses, unicorns and kittens the vast majority of their costumers would be going "what the.....?"

In the multiple years I played EQ, we got exactly 2 zones for free.

I played EQ for five years, from its inception. In that time we got the three planes, the Warrens, Stonebrunt and Jaggedpine, plus revamps to Grobb (Gukta), Cazic, Splitpaw, Veeshan's Peak and probably others I'm forgetting. There were always new quests, items and such being added.

Marketing hype notwithstanding, CoX is perhaps slightly above average in terms of free content supplied as part of the subscription fee. In any case, what does this have to do with the issue? The wedding pack has to be evaluated on its own merits. The simple fact is they took something that used to be part of the service and put a separate price tag on it. If this is the way things are going to be then the value of a CoX subscription will go down.