Originally posted by jaxsundane

Originally posted by mrguy123

Originally posted by roundhead

As a former player (who has re-subbed 2x for short periods of time before quitting again, so I was TRYING to like the game) there are 5 major reasons I think the game didn't do better:

1) WoW came along not long after and stole much of the current and potential playerbase.  WoW just does everything better except player customization.  WoW graphic performance is also pretty good with very modest hardware.

2) Game is FAR too repetitive, and there is just too much grinding.  Other games are full of grinding too, but CoX went way, way too far.

3) Not solo-friendly enough even with difficulty sliders, particularly for the little actual variety there is (fighting AV's and monsters).  This is a compounded problem with relatively low population numbers (hard to find groups), and the solo "I am the hero" mentality this game probably attracts.

4) Way, way , WAY too many status effects like stuns, etc.  Really freaking annoying, especially since some builds rely so heavily on toggles.  You feel like you're fighting the RNG, not bad guys/good guys.

5) No real loot.  Let's face it, players behave much like Pavlovian dogs, and the random dropping of desireable loot keeps them salivating for more (and heavily addicted).  CoX largely removed one of those addicting elements.  They have tried to add it back with the invention system, but once a game gets a bit old, it has no buzz and the opportunity to get large number s of people tryjing it out is long gone.

 

1) WoW does not do everything better. Here is my 4 month playing experience in WoW.

"I've got to do these quests. Does anyone want to group up and do quests?....anyone?

*Solos for 25 levels*

"Nobody wants to group up? It's very boring to be in an MMO and not actually play with people."

*Continues to solo*

*quits*

WoW has a TERRIBLE grouping system. CoH has the best grouping system of any game. I don't know how people can stand the solo in WoW. Not that I never solo, but I group up about 95% of my MMO time. Why? Because that's the entire point of an MMO. To play and interact with others, which CoH executes beatifully.

2) CoH grind is not much worse than WoW grind. And I bet the people that complain about grind and lack of content NEVER read the story arcs from the contacts. There are plenty of things to do when you are level 50. There are contacts, the shadow shard, Cimerora, Rikti War Zone, TFs, SG base, etc.

The game is implimenting a Mission Creator that will basically destroy the grind in some aspects. Players will be creating their own story arcs from scratch. They will write the text, design the map, create the boss, etc. Players will be able to share these missions with each other and rate them. This will keep me and many only players interested for a LONG TIME.

3) The game does have servers will relatively low populations. The solution: Don't play on those servers. Play on Freedom. Or Virtue if you like roleplaying. Problem solved. The game isn't built specifically for soloing. You are meant to team. Soloing is doable though, for the occasions when you want to.

4) Status effects are not that bad. They are supposed to be there. If they annoy you to that degree, than you should do something about it. Either play an armor set toon, carry around many break frees, or get some IO sets that negate status effects. There are several options available to you.

5) No real loot is one of the reason's I play this game. Having to buy all the chestplates and leggings and shoulderpads and gloves and boots is really fucking annoying. With CoH, you can just kill and continue. No waiting every every single mob to loot every damn enemy. Looting is automatic. You will get salvage and then you can sell it or use it. The "armor" in this game are the enhancements.

Anyway, I hope I cleared up some issues you have seen or others have seen and I urge you to give the game another chance. Thanks!

 

This post reminded me of something else I considered about why coh lags behind other games a bit you can solo in coh but it is in that case a truly boring game all the missions take forever after level 25 and what's the point when it's the same darn mission you just ran 25 minutes ago but if you are in a group those missions are fun to fly throguh with all the exp and influence you gather WoW is no where near the grind soloing but that's just my opinion when I played wow I could literally play all day solo if I don't find a group in coh within say 30 minutes I'm usually out of there

I loved CoH, it was pretty much my first MMO.  But after a while it does get boring.  The mission creator is a good idea, but there is virtually no economy even with all the new parts you can "craft" now, and the only thing to do really is run missions.   The PVP isn't great at all, I mean you can jump in with a group, but it gets very monotonous very fast.  The archetypes are great, but there really isn't enough variety... everyone in the end, ends up being cookie cutter except for minor enhancements that don't do nearly enough to make it really worth it. 

I love that game though, it's a great idea, I just think its a little outdated now, and needs a critical content update to keep things moving forward.  Maybe even a combat update of some sort, that would be nice.  It just doesn't have enough to keep me entertained for more then a month at a time now. I've played over a year altogether with all the times I quit and came back though.

Originally posted by mrguy123

5) No real loot is one of the reason's I play this game. Having to buy all the chestplates and leggings and shoulderpads and gloves and boots is really fucking annoying. With CoH, you can just kill and continue. No waiting every every single mob to loot every damn enemy. Looting is automatic. You will get salvage and then you can sell it or use it. The "armor" in this game are the enhancements.

Amen, brother!

I hate crafting! I really appreciate that in CoX, the inventions are nice, but not necessary. And if I die, my corpse won't be robbed. That's one of the main things that pulled me into CoX when I first started playing MMOs. I'd heard so much about crafting--people groaining about collecting enough gold, or that rare drop, and getting looted when they got killed--totally turned me off any of the fantasy genre MMOs.

My reasons for not sticking with CoH/CoV:

Cookie cutter dungeons.

Was too much of a care-bear game, imho. 

Dumb criminals with limited aggro range or poor eye-site all over the place.

XP was the only reason to run instances... that and to finish up a questline that leads you to another area (that will end in the exact same instance, more or less = cookie cutter dungeons).

The lore didn't pull me in and make me feel like part of the gaming world.

The Villains should've been able to raid and vice versa.

Most of the world was just art.  I wanted to be able to fly up the side of a building and see people inside... or bust through a window and go inside.  If I wanted to be a villain that way, so be it.

Character creation is great in the game.  I don't think anyone disagree's there.  But overall, I got tired of the game pretty quickly. I tried it 4 different times and each time, I just lost interest fairly early on into my effort to get hooked by this game.  It just never happened for me. 

Originally posted by roundhead

As a former player (who has re-subbed 2x for short periods of time before quitting again, so I was TRYING to like the game) there are 5 major reasons I think the game didn't do better:

1) WoW came along not long after and stole much of the current and potential playerbase.  WoW just does everything better except player customization.  WoW graphic performance is also pretty good with very modest hardware.   wow-new raid content added pretty much every patch, much to the thrill of the less than 1% of the playerbase that raids.

2) Game is FAR too repetitive, and there is just too much grinding.  Other games are full of grinding too, but CoX went way, way too far.  better than kill 50 orcs, followed by kill 50 ogres, followed by kill 50 XYZ type of pig.

3) Not solo-friendly enough even with difficulty sliders, particularly for the little actual variety there is (fighting AV's and monsters).  This is a compounded problem with relatively low population numbers (hard to find groups), and the solo "I am the hero" mentality this game probably attracts.  there are different events (hellion fires, supa-troll raves), different holiday events (valentine/halloween/christmas events/missions), every issue there are more map types introduced.  new zones get added, old zones get remade.  this game is incredibly solo friendly.  there are some AT combinations that can solo elite bosses and AV/Hero types.  if you've picked one that can't; then, that's why the difficulty slider exists.

4) Way, way , WAY too many status effects like stuns, etc.  Really freaking annoying, especially since some builds rely so heavily on toggles.  You feel like you're fighting the RNG, not bad guys/good guys.   wow, i'm sorry, on this one -- lame. zomg, they stunned me because i have absolutely no stun protection for some reason...

5) No real loot.  Let's face it, players behave much like Pavlovian dogs, and the random dropping of desireable loot keeps them salivating for more (and heavily addicted).  CoX largely removed one of those addicting elements.  They have tried to add it back with the invention system, but once a game gets a bit old, it has no buzz and the opportunity to get large number s of people tryjing it out is long gone.  so, we go from weirdness in 4, to this in 5?  odd, for no loot, there seem to be a lot of sets you can collect and lots of items you can craft (base items, temp powers, temp powers from base items).  where fact and/or  opinion ends and silliness begins is where you can expect to get flamed.  you hit that around 4.

Originally posted by damian7

Originally posted by roundhead

As a former player (who has re-subbed 2x for short periods of time before quitting again, so I was TRYING to like the game) there are 5 major reasons I think the game didn't do better:

1) WoW came along not long after and stole much of the current and potential playerbase.  WoW just does everything better except player customization.  WoW graphic performance is also pretty good with very modest hardware.   wow-new raid content added pretty much every patch, much to the thrill of the less than 1% of the playerbase that raids.

2) Game is FAR too repetitive, and there is just too much grinding.  Other games are full of grinding too, but CoX went way, way too far.  better than kill 50 orcs, followed by kill 50 ogres, followed by kill 50 XYZ type of pig.

I'm no WoW fan, especially of the godawful raids, but what I remember is them releasing WoW not long after CoH's first major nerf patch. Not great timing for CoH, especially with WoW being such a quality product.

Ignoring WoW's end-game raid-grind (which I found monumentally repetitive) CoH really is more repetitive. It is largely a surface (visual) thing but it's an important factor. In WoW and other mmos there are vastly different landscapes, mobs etc. In CoH the whole game experience looks much the same from beginning to end.

I did not like the way they conviently split the population with the introduction of CoV as a "new" game.. Which basically all but killed the population in CoH and all of a sudden everyone was a villian JUST to try out the "new" game (which wasn't really new at all..)

I hated the fact that they gave the villains certain things with no hero equivalent for so long like those matron powers and new power sets even costume sets..

I thought the PvP zones were fun and at least had a point to them and I also liked the super group head quarters thing, but once CoV came out, basically my whole SG left for villain side and PvP maps became villain zerg fests that just seen heroes getting masterminded and assasinated over and over again by many many many of them..

Basically, they should have finished CoV before CoH and intergrated it into one game giving folks a choice between the two (as warhammer will do), but they basically destroyed one half of the game while promoting the other half.. Was a very fun game though.. The physics were very cool.. Ice blasting people into walls and stuff..

i think Cryptics Studios never intended to make a Villains game when CoH was released... it was after some time tat they decided having a Villains themed game will bring more players in.

I only played it for 2 weeks but what turned me away was not the genre. I felt like everything looked the same, the gameplay felt very, very repetitive. I was really let down by the overall feel.

A lot of people really enjoy it, I wanted to get into it but it just didn't resonate with me. I'm not against the genre but the whole layout and approach felt whacked.

The character customization was cool, tho.

Originally posted by ipod80gb

i think Cryptics Studios never intended to make a Villains game when CoH was released... it was after some time tat they decided having a Villains themed game will bring more players in.

True - and in fact they never intended to have any kind of pvp in the game.

This was another major problem back in the early days. The original game was a hell of a lot more fun to play than the one we have today.

But they introduced arena pvp and all of a sudden the CoH forums were flooded with "that build is too powerful - nerf, nerf, nerf!!!" And it's never stopped.

And the nerfs, along with the rise of WoW, drove away a sizeable chunk of the playerbase.

CoH was a well designed whole that has suffered a lot of compromises:

• pvp
• the introduction of an opposing faction
• loot
• crafting

It was designed as one thing, and then twisted repeatedly to accommodate these extras.

maps they use get boring after awhile, they use the same ones

plus people like loot, thrill of discovery, crafting  and im sure a few more things that ive missed..

For me, CoX only gets exciting from lvl 10 onwards where theres a death penalty. In lvl 20-ish to 30-ish the missions are mush more fun to play honestly