[MUD-Dev] CoH

[Scott Macmillan]

Michael Hartman wrote:

> Honestly, what meaningful choices? I'll take your three examples
> in order.

My initial thought for why we are looking at the game so differently
is that you've taken it apart to a much higher degree than I have.

It seems that you have rendered your choices meaningless to yourself
because you've done all the math, and excluded any choice that is
not the absolute maximum for making your character as powerful as
possible.  Please note that I have -no- issue with that
approach... since CoH is so finely focused on combat, it's
completely valid to min/max it into the ground, and if I had more
time and energy to focus into it, I might do so as well.

But my experience with CoH has not led me to take the math apart in
that fashion - I experiment as I go, and purposefully ignore most of
the board posts regarding the exact numbers.  This means that I'm
still having fun with choices, as illusory as they might be once you
have figured out all the optimal paths.

This begs a whole separate question - is shallow gameplay in the eye
of the beholder?  I've often found the same sort of thing with many
video games... most of the fun is in NOT knowing exactly the right
thing to do, the right equipment to have.  Once you have gotten all
that info, the game is old hat before you even play.

> Tactical Combat: Ok, you've got to tell us how far you've gotten
> into the game. CoH has fast paced combat, but it is definitely not
> tactical. CoH has to be the easiest, least tactical MMORPG I've
> played- and I've played tons. Getting dragons stuck on terrain in
> AC2 required more skill and strategy.

To answer your one question on how much I've played, I've played to
level 20 so far, and have a number of alts into their low and mid
teens.

The more rewarding tactical situation I experienced occurred during
a 5th Column mission where we had 8 people, and some of the team was
underpowered vs. the level of the mobs.  Through pulling and using
my storm defender's hurricane power to try to block off sections of
the hall, we managed to not get slaughtered, and to slowly win the
module.  It took very good teamwork.

On the other hand, I've seen our group get slaughtered out of hand
because we weren't smart.  After getting all rez'd, the same group
in the same fight kick ass.  The difference is that we had our
tactics together.  In that particular case, it came down to my crowd
control and debuffs.  *shrug*

I've certainly experienced some very tactical fights on my group's
part - possibly we were forced to be this way because we didn't
bring the right tools for the job, in which case you are correct, it
isn't anything Cryptic can take credit for.

My main question at this point in our discussion is, if you are
doing everything right, and have done all your homework on a game,
as you obviously have, how hard should it be?

I'm interested in what sorts of things you would change in the CoH
system to make it playable to the 9 year old (not a bad goal for a
game that wants to draw in casual players), but also fun for the
expert.

IMO my group and I are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and
we're having fun.

Take care,

Scott
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