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| 10.31.2006City Of Heroes and Prestige
I read the account of Jack Emmert's Serious Games Summit keynote and wasn’t surprised that many of the observations he had were as far off base as it is possible to be.
He had a successful game in spite of his efforts and not because of them. His understanding of player desires or his NOT understanding them is reflected in the falling sales in spite of the efforts of his team. Player Arenas, Bases that take HUGE amounts of “Prestige” to afford the simplest of items, unbalanced PvP that changed the very game play in PvE.
He shows surprise at the neglected bases and yet the player base told the developers what was wrong and how to fix it. Let me explain the concept if you have not played the game.
Bases are available at level 10 when you create a Super Group (SG). The mistakes that were made were both many and obvious.
First mistake: In an SG you enter SG MODE to apply your Prestige to a group. Now you can’t earn Prestige unless you are in an SG and in SG MODE. After level 25 you will earn less and less Influence (the currency you use to purchase Power Upgrades) until you reach about level 30 when you will receive NO influence at all. Why does this matter? Enhancements to powers are expensive. So what has happened is the SG has not become a center of community. It is all about making Prestige grinding machines.
Most SGs will randomly invite anyone at all with no discernment or concern with whether this person is a good teammate. They enforce a policy of be in SG mode at all times or be kicked from the group. Now you have the top level players buying all of the Enhancements for everyone else. It becomes a master/slave relationship. You make Prestige for us and we buy you new stuff. You stop helping us and we either kick you or don’t buy you anything.
So all the Prestige you earned is gone if kicked from a group or if you resign. This mess of a system added to the fact there is no benefit to having a base if you don’t PvP. Players have given him and his team ideas and they are ignored.
His idea on Sidekicks is also flawed and prone to abuse. A better idea would have been to have the level of the bad guys scaled to the owner of the mission. Then you would have people receiving experience and fighting the same level of foe. A sidekick is -1 to the person he joins with. This means an even con minion is +1 to your sidekick and as the game progresses it is common to see +2 foes in your mission making a +3 foe to your sidekick and rendering him of questionable use.-Infernus Hades
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