Originally posted by Manchine

/ignore troll  

Back to the Subject.

I am not a big DC fan, DC online has its own share of problems (FPS type and Real money equalling items in game) but it definately gone up in stock because you can start off with Villains.  For that reason alone I will try it and it will have a shot in taking my money instead of Champions Online.

Yes Brian ignore the troll just don't pass any mirrors!

On topic: SOE worry me more than cryptic, DC is out the window for now unless theres some genius gameplay trick to it that will attract me in. At least it has villains though.

I will be trying out CO, and am anxiously waiting on it. As for DC, I played EQ1, then SOE ruined it; so tried EQ2, SOE failed again; but since I am a sucker for a shiny new MMO, I tried Vanguard, EPIC FAIL. Also both Vanguard and EQ2 continue to have issues and SOE just keeps pumping out content as opposed to bug fixes. So I will stay far away from DC, sadly not even sure I will try it out.

Played City of Heroes through most of beta and for 3 and half years following. I pretty much let my subscription drop when Cryptic sold off to NCSoft. So, I've seen the ins and outs of all that they did as they did it.

Frankly, I'm perfectly happy with the direction Champions is headed. Too much time and effort was spent in City of.. balancing classes for a pvp that perhaps 20% of the population ever engaged in, and only a fraction of that stuck with regularly. The City of Villains, City of Heroes enmity is not a major component of the game, but is limited to small conflict zones where very few people go to battle it out.

You see, it turns out, that just like most level-based games with player choice in powers, or in most cases these days Feats, certain combinations tend to beat out all others. This takes a game that is supposed to be all about choice, and reduces it to a scant handful of choices.  To try and fix the fact that one class with one build can beat any other, changes must be made, changes that will earn the cry of "Nerf!". Yet, it's a whack-a-mole game that never ends. Until you either reduce every class to a Quake space marine, with zero difference between them and every other player, or simplify the power system down to a set of identical powers and defenses with different effects, a truly mind-numbing prospect, you will NEVER have"balance".

I think Cryptic realizes that the effort required for pvp on the part of developers, along with the serious impact the needs of pvp has on the characters in the game whether they want to pvp or not, does not deliver a proportionate return in terms of subscribers who make their decisions purely on the presence of pvp play.

In a pve-only world, the developers are freed up to be much more creative without worrrying that adding a smokey induced coughing effect at the end of a smouldering fire attack might give a flame-based hero too much of an advantage in pvp.

Or to put it another way, if everyone who played CIty of Heroes playes Champions... except for the 8 people per server who lived for pvp... I think Cryptic will be perfectly happy.

The reason I quit CoX was the lack of good open PvP. I was waiting for this game to come out cause I thought that Cryptic would learn from its mistakes. and now what' Again Arena??? Again a launch with only a faction?? SHAME ON YOU CRYPTIC!!!!

Just glad this got some reading :)

And huge thanks to Draccan for the kind words!

Its a very dissapointing descsion, on the one hand they claim to want to give players the ultimate in customisable super avatars and on the other they decide to limit choices as to the characters nature/motivation.....

Most people concede CoV didnt do villians quite right, but it offered the choice, for those that wanted, a different take on the core game which was cool and greatly increased the games overall replaybility. Equally because the villians weren't implemented at launch CoH and CoV never integrated properly to really develop the contentious menchanics that could have transformed the experience, but again at least you had a choice to make the best you could of the situation (balancing has nothing to do with the presence of villians...you have pvp of any kind and you will have balancing issues...in fact even without pvp you have issues.)

No player villains means the game will only ever have dodgy NPC AI to provide its long term challenge and consequently have little to no real variety. The idea of hero Vs Hero arena's is actually pretty poor in the long run because regular hero vs hero battles will simply and progressively undermine the rules of the core theme (making what actually goes on even less like what you would expect to see going on etc). PvP should be an integral part of the game world and that needs player villians to function properly. 

The problem also goes way beyond pvp imo because it denys the game the ability to implement a proper choice/consequence system which I am sure progressive mmo's will expand on in the future along with deeper mechanics to realise faction vs faction objectives and storylines to supplement that vital end game hook. 

A bizzare and shortsighted descsion by the devs sadly.

This is one of the best written articles that I've seen here.  Well Done!

While I personally don't care to PvP, the author makes many valid points about how inclusion of villians for PvP as it is in CoX would enhance the game.  Perhaps there is still time for Cryptic to change this decision, perhaps not.

Anybody see anything wrong with villians having the exact same abilities as heroes, just flagged differently?  It would eliminate all the balancing of PvP.  Perhaps there would be no PvE for villian characters; they could gain all their xp and gear from PvP.  Easier yet for the design team would be to have each hero character saved twice - once with a hero flag and once as a PvP villian.  If the inventories were kept separate, there could even be PvP looting [by the villians only - true heroes wouldn't steal, even from villians].

I really don't think adding villains would expand the game play very much. Especially because games like this appeal more to PvEers and Role-Players than PvPers, anyway. This is just NOT meant to be a PvP game. It seems to me that they are putting in the arena simply to keep the PvP whining to a minimum. Of course, I'm aggravated that there's PvP at all. And the reason is simple, PvP is a cause for "balance". And in mmos Balance = Nerf. I hate that. And I'm not one of those people who was beaten in PvP and cried "nerf". Nor was I in the "one class nerfed" camp. In every mmo I play, I play anything and everything. Alts are what it's about, for me. So I don't want anything nerfed, especially not for pvp! They need to leave PvP by the side of the road, because PvPers are just looking for the latest game. That means, be it 6 months or 9 months after launch, they'll move on to a new game and a new PvP experience, no matter how solid the game might be. It's time developers start actually making these games for the people who are actually going to play them the whole time, not just for the folks who'll show up and play for a month at a time maybe twice a year in between "1337" Darkfall new PvP mmos.

Sadly I think cryptic are going to repeat what they did with COX...wait a while and then release a villians boxed set.

Your actions should determine if you are a villain or a hero, not your powers.  It seems to me they could add all kinds of pvp later by letting the players decide for themselves.  I always thought making city of villains a seperate game was a mistake and making villain have seperate archtypes an even bigger mistake.

A well written article indeed, but the simple fact that we'll have City of Heroes 2, with better graphics, a different IP but with no villains to interact directly with the heroes saddens me.

The Nemesis System will certainly bring something special to the game but that will never substitute open PVP possibilities - chasing an enemy throughout the city/world, nothing beats the thrill of player versus player (fair) combat!

What else are they going to push on us? City walls again?

Originally posted by JackFetch

Played City of Heroes through most of beta and for 3 and half years following. I pretty much let my subscription drop when Cryptic sold off to NCSoft. So, I've seen the ins and outs of all that they did as they did it.

Frankly, I'm perfectly happy with the direction Champions is headed. Too much time and effort was spent in City of.. balancing classes for a pvp that perhaps 20% of the population ever engaged in, and only a fraction of that stuck with regularly. The City of Villains, City of Heroes enmity is not a major component of the game, but is limited to small conflict zones where very few people go to battle it out.

You see, it turns out, that just like most level-based games with player choice in powers, or in most cases these days Feats, certain combinations tend to beat out all others. This takes a game that is supposed to be all about choice, and reduces it to a scant handful of choices.  To try and fix the fact that one class with one build can beat any other, changes must be made, changes that will earn the cry of "Nerf!". Yet, it's a whack-a-mole game that never ends. Until you either reduce every class to a Quake space marine, with zero difference between them and every other player, or simplify the power system down to a set of identical powers and defenses with different effects, a truly mind-numbing prospect, you will NEVER have"balance".

I think Cryptic realizes that the effort required for pvp on the part of developers, along with the serious impact the needs of pvp has on the characters in the game whether they want to pvp or not, does not deliver a proportionate return in terms of subscribers who make their decisions purely on the presence of pvp play.

In a pve-only world, the developers are freed up to be much more creative without worrrying that adding a smokey induced coughing effect at the end of a smouldering fire attack might give a flame-based hero too much of an advantage in pvp.

Or to put it another way, if everyone who played CIty of Heroes playes Champions... except for the 8 people per server who lived for pvp... I think Cryptic will be perfectly happy.

 -I agree with most of this post I beta'd both CoH and CoV in my opinion they both suffered from PVP being added into the game as far as character powers being nerfed. Anytime you have PVP content you have to take great care with balance issues. Very often PVE builds are awesome but when applied to PVP are simply "OP" (Over Powered) which require Nerf's to re-balance.

- I also think PVE is only boring because companies take the easy way out. In CoX they could randomly spawn AV's and EB's into missions and change their AI and attack patterns they could make the random mobs based on a set of parameters that exploit that teams AT weakness (ie.. mostly blasters = AV tank/scrapper  mostly melee = ranged AV with repel or tornado or hurricane). For regular missions add those boss, lt , and or minions with those same abilities as adds.  They could also use a set of variables that would see how long it takes for a team to kill a group or what types did most damage to the group. They could then adjust the mob ambush or patrol or AV/EB add in accordingly.  Hero stats already does some of that i don't see why NCSoft and Cryptic couldn't do the same in both of their games. (In CoH that kinda happens on a weaker level when Khelds spawn Voids and Quantums)

 - In my opinion PVE can be done 100x better in any game that could greatly increase fun AND replay value. And random spawns , patrols, even appeances by Recluse's / Statesman's minions in plain old Radio/Newspaper missions would add a ton to the 2 existing games.  And i think it would greatly help CO as well even with the Nemesis Sytem.

-I also agree that in comparison to the number of PVE players those who mostly pvp are a very small number.

- On a side note i wonder what the difference in population is on CoH vs CoV my guess would be lots more hero's than villains.

- I think those are some of the factors that Cryptic has taken a look at. It would seem they have decided Villains and PVP are secondary to PVE gamming experience and i think they are probably correct in the long run....

  - thats my 2 cents..... just hope i don't find a nickel

/carry on