[MUD-Dev2] genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard]

[cruise]

Thus spake Jeffrey Kesselman...
> To be fair, CoH also reduced the "lewt" issue.  There is a certain min
> imum amoutn of wealth needed to be effective but its relatively easy
> to come by.  The "special lewt" like Hami-Os really arent necessary.
> I hate the raid, don't have a single HO, and dont think my level 50 is
> notably less effective then anyone elses.

Agreed. Hopefully the Invention system won't destroy balance...

> The big issues I have with CoH are reliance  on combat and leveling as
> the only "game supported" form of gameplay and the boredom of the
> level treadmill.

Criticisms of CoH's treadmill gameplay always confused me. Yes, combat 
is all there is to do - but most mainstream MMOG's up until that point 
had relied heavily on combat anyway. All CoH did was strip out many of 
the "downtime" elements and concentrate on making the combat as good as 
possible. I still feel it's the dynamic and fun combat in any of the 
current MMOG's (yes, including Auto Assualt).

Secondly, the sidekick/exemplar system takes a lot of the reason for 
fast levelling away. I've been playing since beta, and only got my first 
50 a month ago - but I do have about 30+ other characters scattered 
about the servers. I find I can just hook up with friends or supergroup 
no matter what I'm playing, and level doesn't matter.

Whether you see treadmill or not I think depends on your reasons for 
playing the game. Arguably, CoH does a lot to remove in game reasons for 
treadmill levelling.