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Trick Question:

Would the Costume Creator feature of this game be anywhere near as "cool" or as big a draw for the game today if (literally) NOTHING had been done for and/or with it Dev-side since Issue 6?



Imagine if the Costume Creator were ... today ... as "old and stale" as the Base Editor is in today's game. You see all that excitement generated every time a new costume set comes out? Now imagine if even a fraction of that excitement happened in the Base Building Community every time the Devs did something (anything...!) for Bases.

Trick Question #2:

How much of a fraction of the excitement we see with additions to Costumes would we "need" to see in the Base Editor in order to "break even" on the investment of Dev Resources?

Trick Answer #2:

No idea. Only the people at Paragon Studios can answer that question, since it impinges on their business model in multiple ways.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

The "trick questions" aren't really helpful comparisons.

The costume creator, and the ability it grants you to create your own specific look and feel for your hero or villain is central to the core CoX game experience. To play the game, you MUST use the costume creator.

The base editor, and the ability it grants you to build a Base for your SuperGroup's use, is secondary to the core CoX game experience -- you can run every piece of content in the game (with the exception of the Cathedral of Pain) and never see the inside of a base.

In addition to the above, this genre of online game is, in many ways, judged by its costume creator.

How amazing, beautiful, lifelike or wild a character you can produce from any given game's costume creator is a major point not only in attracting players to the game, but also keeping them playing it as they make multiple alts with different looks (and powers) and run through the same content time and again.

Hence it makes perfect sense to constantly keep this aspect of the game as current as possible, with as many options as possible. It is the entry portal to the game. If it isn't the best it can be, and falls short in comparison to competing products on the market, prospective users will go elsewhere.

The same cannot be said of Bases, or of the Base Editor.

While this may be true, ANY part of a game that's been around as long as CoH has has parts that get stale. Then the players complain about them. Then they stop using them. Then the Devs see how MANY players complain and stop using them and then they try to fix the problem if they're smart.

The changes to the Positron TF are a good example. As to the CC, yes you have to use it to play the game but how MUCH development really needs to go into it? We get new costume pieces and/or emotes fairly regularly. Now imagine a small fraction of that effort going into Bases.

A recent video on Mmorgue (an on-line game site) included interviews with several game developers from the industry including Second Life, SWG and CoH. The host noted that one thing that many MMORPGs try to include is personal hideouts or Bases. However nobody ever seems to get it right because the wider the player base, the wider the player's desires for their Bases.

It's unfair to say that Bases are unimportant as they are now. Any part of the game that has been untended for that long is unimportant. The question is: If the Devs put time and effort into Bases and SGs like so many other aspects of the game could they make back their investment? Depending on the changes I think the answer is yes. They could easily recoup their investment and improve a whole facet of the game.

Let's not beat about the bush here, Doctor Vivian. Your position (which, by the way, all historical evidence supports) is that Bases are trapped in a vicious circle of Self-fulfilling Apathy. It can essentially be summed up that as long as nothing changes, the reasons to continue to change nothing become ever more and more compelling, simply as a matter of institutional inertia.

Self-fulfilling Apathy.



Please note that while such a position may FEEL extremely satisfying in the great traditions of "I Told You So!" ... it does absolutely nothing to advance *solutions* for how to break out of the vicious circle of Self-fulfilling Apathy. Worse, defending the vicious circle of Self-fulfilling Apathy as a sort of "as it always has been, thus shall it ever be, world without end. Amen." is one in which it is very easy to continually "move the goalposts" such that IT IS ABSOLUTELY *NOT* POSSIBLE to break the vicious circle of Self-fulfilling Apathy.

And as such, all offered solutions to try and break the cycle are needlessly strangled before they can be given a chance ... and the cycle continues, world without end. Amen.



There have been times when I have told people that I would rather NOT be proven right.

Wouldn't you like this to be one of those times, when you are not proven right ... Doctor Vivian?

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

*shrug* Sure, I'd love for things to magically change too.

But, historically it just doesn't work like that. It never has. Invariably, development decisions are driven by financial realities.

That being said, I would like to point out that I am not simply fatalistically accepting that -- I am trying to suggest ways to break out of that cycle.

Perhaps my suggestion of a small, dedicated "Base Team" funded by a VIP Base subscription model is not ideal (and indeed, I said it would not be liked in the Base Building Community in the very same post that I originally suggested it), but I'd like to think it's that kind of outside-the-box thinking that's needed to change things.

Blindly hoping, or posting in the forums (whether ranting or polite), isn't going to change anything, because that does nothing to address the real reasons that bases get no attention. We need concrete solutions that attack the foundation of the problem.

My explanation of the financial realities that drive, govern and limit development in my earlier posts was mainly intended to educate other posters who did not appear to be aware of, or understand them -- for I firmly believe that unless people understand the underlying reasons that bases have almost completely stagnated for the past few years, we will be unable to change it moving forward.

So, suggest away! However, I'm asking that we all try to make meaningful suggestions -- ones that target the root of the problem.

One: You like little dutch boys too much Doc. Try for a different analogy next time please.

Two: I don't see why you insist that a base Dev Team should find a way to earn enough revenue to be self-supporting when no other part of the game does so. This puts an unfair strain on the idea of doing anything with bases. Besides, there wouldn't be enough work to sustain a team of base programmers. One would likely be enough once the changes were made. Therefore the ongoing investment would be small.

Three: Other than your VIP pay model, which I think we can all agree won't work because too few players are willing to pay for it, you got any other ideas?

Over the past few years the Devs have given the players more of what they've asked for. We wanted real combat stats and we got them. We wanted all sorts of QoL features and we've gotten many of them (like merging trains and ferries). We've got endgame content, such as it is.

So now I think they can kill several birds with one stone: Give the players the chance to have private rooms in Bases. Sort of a base within a base.

One of the points brought up to me is that bases aren't accessible enough. Normally only a select few are allowed to use the Editor for whatever reason. Since Inventions many SGs had all sorts of theft problems so new SG members generally can't use Storage either. Many players have asked for private SGs and private Bases over the years. Ok...so let's solve ALL those problems in one swoop AND generate enough revenue to pay for it.

INTRODUCING THE BASE MEGA-PACK!

Included would be the new Editor complete with z-axis function and lots of the decorations already in the game. Also, SG members are able to purchase a private room within the Base which they can decorate as they see fit. Higher levels of rooms (costing more Prestige and Inf) include suites of rooms and can hold Storage and even Crafting components.

The private rooms would ONLY be available to SG members who bought the pack so no worries of the SG Leader buying it and everyone else getting a free ride. Benefits include revenue (from the pack's sale), even from the Prestige F2P people (because they'd gain access to Bases if they bought it) and greatly increased usage for SGs and Bases. If one of the included decorations is a better floor tile then Base designers could remove the hundreds of desks they use for flooring. This reduces server load.

With this idea every who buys the pack can dabble in the Editor. They can have private storage. They can decorate their own private apartment as they see fit. It would serve as an Inf sink which the Devs apparently want right now. It would provide a use for the millions of accumulated prestige being wasted. Would it cost money? Of course it would. Would the Pack sales recoup the losses? Who can say? But it would provide the Base Community with much-awaited luv, bring Bases and SGs back closer to the core game and make them more fun for everyone.

/end rant

the way I see it, its going to start with a trickle, just a few drops, and it won't be immediate but it will happen.

it's going to start with something oh say... transferring your sg to different servers.

not a bad start. Thats the first drop and it will take many to fill this swimming pool we all want. Thing is the water bill hasn't been paid yet because there aren't enough subscriptions running to turn on the hose full blast.

Also, they aren't advertising much. This thing is supposed to sell itself, and it can. It has a very good chance of raking in some dough.

That's where we come in. Their advertising is going to be word-of-mouth. That's us. So I guess since the decision has already been made to go f2p that means... If we want base shiny we sell game.

you want base shiny?

I know I do

=

Another problem with the Base Pack idea is this -- only the SG's Base Designer will buy it. People who are not Base Designers won't. So, the market shrinks further still -- whereas a Costume Pack has every user as a possible customer, a Base Pack would only be bought by a portion of SG Leaders or Base Designers (as not even all of THOSE would buy it) -- which are one in a hundred (or less, since not all would buy it) in the player population.

Again ... Doctor Vivian ... you're "stuck in a rut" of trying to see the Base Editor in isolation, and therefore trying to justify it in isolation, without trying to break out of that assumption to search for possible synergies and draws which could dramatically widen the appeal of Base Editing itself.

Right now, we have "global" settings for who can edit Bases. If you can edit one thing, you can edit everything. There's no "security settings" on base editing priviledges ... so consenquently, only the "inner circle" of an SG can be trusted to not go on a destructive rampage, or rob the SG blind or engage in other griefing behaviors. If you can't secure it, it can't be a widely used feature. But if it were possible to assign Edit Priviledges on a room-by-room basis ... you could have designated "sandbox" rooms in any base which low level SG members would be able to "mess around with" while not risking any of the painstaking work that has gone into building up the rest of the base.

When more players can use a feature without risking the hard work of others, that feature will gain in popularity and use ... which in turn will prompt demand for any expansions of functionality and building blocks that go into that feature.

I for one would love to see the Base Editor updated, expanded and extended so as to make it compatible with Architect Entertainment so that players could create User Generated Locations in additon to Custom Mobs and Custom Story Arcs. Merging an environment editor with AE would offer INCREDIBLE creative potential! I'd love to be able to "define spaces" in my Base and then export all of the database instructions that make it all possible to a text file, like what we can do with Custom Mobs in AE, so as to have a backdoor method to "version" our bases. That way, players can store "backup files" of their bases in the event of loss, damage, or creative impulses gone awry that would take far too much effort to "undo" and revert to original state via file upload/download.



But absolutely NONE of that can even be considered so long as people (such as yourself) lack the vision for WHAT MIGHT BE and remain locked into their (preferred?) vision of WHAT CAN NEVER BE. You spend an awful lot of time, text and energy trying to make sure that you (and everyone else) is completely justified in believing that nothing ever CAN get done, nothing ever WILL get done, and so there's absolutely no point in even discussing how to GROW beyond what we've already got into having something that everyone is going to WANT (and will therefore want to BUY).

We keep trying to make the pie bigger and/or better.
You keep trying to say the pie will always be small, and never have enough slices to justify baking another one.

Guess which attitude is "more helpful" for bringing about changes that we can all benefit from?

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

From another thread discussing ComicCon stuff, including a Q&A session with the devs...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archon Helios ... At the start of the Q&A they also specifically said "No questions about bases". ...

Pretty much says it all, right there.

*washes hands*

.