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Comment from: Mr Myth posted at March 6, 2006 5:38 PM

Pretty much every multiplayer interactive game system I know of, from D&D to World of Warcraft, is almost constantly updating and fine-tuning the rules system.

And, well... I can't say that most of the changes aren't for the better good. They are fixing legitimate issues in the rules. And if those fixes themselves produce their own troubles? Well, the next patch will deal with those.

To some degree, it is infuriating. It requires constantly having to keep up with the current state of things. It results in time invested in a character, or a plot, or whatever, that may suddenly be worthless and invalidated.

Still, I can't come up with any good solution for it. I know that as far as most of the games I've played, none have been perfect the first time I've played them. Were they good enough to make it reasonable to keep playing without the trauma of updates?

That's a bit harder for me to answer. Some days I find something imbalancing that pisses me the hell off - but there are plenty of other days when I just want to sit down and play the damn game.

Comment from: Cornan posted at March 6, 2006 5:47 PM

Ok, this is speaking as someone who played EQ, DAoC, CoH, and is now obsessed with WoW.

It is true that every multiplayer system gets tweaks. Be they for more excitement, to open up what characters can do, to restrict what characters can do, to "rebalance" etc, there are almost always teaks.

The problem that arose in CoH was that the tweaks were usually unintelligable due to the developer's love of hiding the numbers. Now it makes sense that you don't want the number crunchers to fiend on the game to the point where they are the only ones who can create "uber" characters while standard players are left in the dust. On that rational it makes sense to hide the numbers.

However, the problem is that because of their infernal tweaks and "balancing" patches and so on the game changed every 4-6 months and the only people who were able to adapt to these changes were the number crunchers who fiended on the game. EVERYONE ELSE WAS SCREWED. It was relearning the whole game again from the ground up every stinkin' time.

So problem one is that their lack of data hindered casual players rather than helping them whenever one of thier new balance patches came out. Problem two was that the patches often completely redesigned the characters.

My fire/fire blaster (stop laughing) was extremely powerful when I started playing him after Issue 2. There were more powerful classes, but he did just fine and could contribute to the team. By the time I gave up with CoH in disgust (issue 5 or 6. Forget which one) my blaster was pretty much unplayable. At least, he was unplayable in the way I had designed him, in the way I had BEEN playing him and in the way I WANTED to play him.

The main problem I had with the constant revisions is that they failed in accomplishing anything positive for the game. Rules were not clarified by patches, they were muddied even more. Powersets did not become more intuitive they became even more shrowded in confusion and obtuseness. PvP was the worst blow. Repeatedly players were told "PvP balance won't effect PvE powers EVER." I lost track of how many times they broke THAT particular promise.

In short, (to late, I know) the problem isn't/wasn't just with the tweaks themselves. It was the reasoning behind these tweaks and the utter lack of transparancy to the players once the tweaks went live. I have trouble believing that CoV can be good enough to make up for all that hassle. And I have absolutely NO FAITH in the devs to not do the same thing to CoV that they did to CoH when the account numbers started slipping.

Comment from: larksilver posted at March 6, 2006 5:48 PM

SOE poked so hard at SWG, EQ, and now EQ2 to "balance" things, and to encourage the power-gamers to come and play, that it took a lot of the simple joy out of playing the game. It's as if they're trying to take an existing product and turn it completely inside out.

So often, it seems, MMORPG's fail twice with all these poke-and-prod changes. Not only do they *not* attract the power-gamer l33t fan base they're trying to grab, but they alienate their existing, more stable player base by forcing them to change the way they play characters they've had for months, sometimes years.

It's sad. Sure, sure, some tweaking is always going to be necessary. But shouldn't you pretty much have a view of how the basic rules of the game will work when you launch the darn thing? Isn't that what all the beta testing is for?

Comment from: Cornan posted at March 6, 2006 5:48 PM

Holy crap. Didn't realize how long that was until I saw it posted. Sorry Eric. :(

Comment from: Robotech_Master posted at March 6, 2006 6:02 PM

So, in other words, Larksilver, First-and-Ten Syndrome?

Comment from: larksilver posted at March 6, 2006 6:06 PM

ha! I hadn't thought of that.

Comment from: Prodigal posted at March 6, 2006 7:30 PM

I guess I'm lucky - ever since I finally got the chance to create my Sonic/Sonic Defender, I've been able to solo amazingly well.

Comment from: Cornan posted at March 6, 2006 8:15 PM

Robotech, that's EXACTLY what it is. And you summed up my huge post in one phrase. Now I'm really embarassed.

Comment from: Cliff S. posted at March 7, 2006 2:14 AM

This was a big problem for me too, and why I left CoH. I was a Regen Scrapper, and those who're familiar with CoH are all nodding their heads now.

All I wanted to do was log on, beat some bad guys senseless with a large sharpened steel bar, and log off. I never had one character hit the level limit even though I'd been on for over a year. I just wanted to have some fun. But they just wouldn't leave me ALONE! "Fix" after "tweak" after "fix"...

The last "CoV rollout" issue was the worst. Yet more bizarre, massive changes to my character's power set despite a huge previous retooling that I had just gotten figured out enough not to die in every mission. The last straw was the "enhancement diversity" change that pretty much forced everyone to use cookie cutter enhancement builds (by penalizing you if you *weren't*). "Diversity". Like enhancements were marching down the road singing "We Shall Overcome"...sheesh.

It was explained that "this was how the game was supposed to be all along". Gee, maybe you should have done that way LAST YEAR, then.

It wasn't that it made me *mad*, just...tired. I thought about logging on and messing about with my character build yet again, and I just didn't care anymore. After the second month where I never logged in to play (and didn't miss it), I cancelled. Not with a bang, I guess, but a shrug.

I played the beta of CoV. It seemed fun, but I fully expect more of the same later. So no thanks - even though I loved my Mastermind pirate (ninja-summoning, of course) "Pieces of Hate".

Blogs are my MMORPG now...

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 7, 2006 9:13 AM

Well, I know in the case of video game programmers, they're often perfectionists that always want to fiddle with the game just a bit more. Not so much First And Ten, but more like every game is an unfinished symphony. There's quite a few admitted examples, too (Shigesato Itoi admitted to this habit recently in regards to Mother 3 - which is about to come out literally ten years after it was first announced).

The catch with this habit with MMO games (or really, any game with an online component) is that developers feel they can get away with releasing it and then continuing with the tinkering. Whether or not that's fair is another question entirely.

Comment from: Meagen Image posted at March 7, 2006 9:17 AM

I was quite lucky in this respect. Before ED, my character was horrible to solo with, but a great asset in teams. After ED, she's not any worse to solo with, but still a great asset in teams. And since most other people find it harder to solo these days, my support skills are in greater demand.

Comment from: Doctor Setebos posted at March 7, 2006 6:29 PM

There have been times recently playing CoH where I have honestly thought that CoH was actually a BETA for CoV.

Think about it.

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at March 7, 2006 6:31 PM

For all the cynicism I have about CoH, I don't think it was ever actually just a beta for CoV. The beta of CoH was changed too drastically, and there was too much coherent communication from the developers during that time, for me to believe that.

I don't know what happened from there to here, but they got a lot less coherent.

Comment from: Tina S. posted at March 9, 2006 8:21 AM

Y'know, I keep seeing comments from CoH players who've been around for a while talking about how all these changes essentially ruined the game, or made it lousy to play, or whatever. And yet... here I am, a month into the game, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. (Note: that's a month of unemployment and playing the game incessantly, so I've gotten to see a fair range of stuff already.)

So one of two possibilities here:

a) I'm much more easily amused
b) The changes aren't actually BAD, they're just DIFFERENT

I'm sorta leaning towards 'b'.

Yes, granted, if you get used to playing one way and now it's different, I can see where that might be a little frustrating. But it's not like you can't learn to work around it. And it's not a race; if it takes you twice as long to get your character through a mission, does that really ruin your enjoyment? Or do you actually have added depth because you have to come up with new and more effective strategies?

Again, I have to go with b, for me. One reason I'm an altaholic is I love seeing how all the different powers work and combine together, whether that's with solos, pairs (my fiancé and I play together) or in larger groups. I like seeing how different people have different strategies, or how I have to work with different strategies even for different character types (soloing with things with no range attacks, for instance, takes an entirely different strategy than with a character who actually can pull easily).

I'm sure sooner or later they'll make a change that makes me want to smack them, but I really doubt it will render the game unplayable for me, mostly because, hey, it IS fun having to try new things out rather than doing the same things over and over again. If I wanted to do that, I would just go work tech support again.

So... if you really don't enjoy the game anymore, you don't. But maybe it'd be worth giving it another chance, eh?

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