It's A Short Walk To Burnout

[geldonyetich]

My altaholicism has run its course. I spent most of the day wracking my brain on a character concept that goes something like, "regeneration, and..." tried out just about every single option in the game, and found nothing would particularly satisfy.

So I'm done. I'm burned out. I'm not quitting - I do have a 6 month subscription, after all - but I probably won't play for a bit. But I'm not here to whine. I'm hoping they'll turn things around. So lets talk feedback.

I think that the main trouble is that, despite all the different power combinations, there's not that many different effective ways to play this game.

• Moving - Move. Line up those cones, or cylinders, or whatever you've got. Remember to shut down all those beacons.
  • Range (Fire/Ice/Energy/Force/Munitions/Archery/Telepathy/Celestial/Darkness) - You all have a flavor of damage you do, along with a nice mixture of charge or maintained damage, and a fairly inconsequential extra mechanic (e.g. Fire gaining energy via Thermal Reverberation).
    
  • Melee (Claws, Dual Blade, Single Blade, Hand-To-Hand, Might) - Read what I said about range, now tack on that you have to get closer to your target - which is really annoying because targets only need to walk away from you to prevent you from doing damage - but you might have a slightly better energy:damage conversion ratio (that is so small that I might just be imagining it).
    
  • Hybrids (Gadgeteering, Telekinesis, Power Armor, Supernatural) - Though possessing attacks that work at range or close up, chances are you'll just choose one or another and stick with it because it's not like that attack is going to be recharging.
• Stationary (Sorcery) - Put down that Circle of Primal Dominion, and now you can actually use your passive slot for something else. Now you're completely stationary. It can be troublesome but, more importantly, you've found a significantly different way to play.

Generally speaking, sticking to a single template is not viable. Given a lack of recharge on most attacks, they're all loaded down with way more attacks than we need, because you only really need one good single target and AOE attack. (If you run across an attack that does have a recharge, in nearly all cases it won't do significantly more damage to justify it anyway.) Besides, you usually can't stick to only one template because you'll run out of powers to take before you hit 40. There's no real advantage to doing so anyway - any power that says it scales with an attribute generally won't scale enough for it to mater.

So, if you're a power gamer, every one of your templates (except sorcery) should end up looking something like:

Level 1: Mandatory Power Builder: Not just a good idea: the law.
Level 1: Your Easy-To-Use Single Target Attack
Level 5: Mandatory Block Power: Because you'll not live long trying to stop bullets with your forearm.
Level 5: Teleport - E.G. Get Out Of Battle Free Card
Level 8: Defensive Passive - Assuming You Like Living
Level 11: Active Defense - Again, Assuming You Like Living
Level 14: Active Damage Booster - Because Bonus Damage Is Good
Level 17: Really Effective AOE Attack - It probably won't be a tier 3.
Level 20: Really Effective Single Target Attack - Assuming your first single target attack isn't getting the job done for you.
Level 29: Gadgeteering Damage Additive - Sonic Device/Toxic Nanites - Because lots of bonus damage = win.
Level 26: Orbital Cannon - Anvil of dawn advantaged, of course
Level 29: Mindful Reinforcement / Other Heals - Instant energy to hitpoint conversion is a good idea, not to mention it makes escorting easier to do.
Level 32: Munitions Bots - Their AI isn't great, but hey, you've got everything else you could use
Level 35: Field Drones - Their AI is much worse than Munitions Bots, but they do provide free healing to the NPCs
Level 35: Flight - For the parts of the game where flight may prove mandatory.
Level 38: Nanobot Swarm - Recharge it all faster

Taken in any order you like. There's certain powers a good build probably won't include. They won't include crowd control because, generally speaking, crowd control is balanced to be very, very weak to the point where it's less significant mitigation than mere knockdown. Neither will you need to take a resurrection power, since death is largely inconsequential. Even a self-rez might not be necessary, although that damage buff is nice. Of course, the biggest category is all powers which are underpowered in comparison to an available alternative (which could be any other power in the game).

(Of course, this is a PvE build. If you're a PvP player, your options are even more limited, but suffice to say you will be taking a block remover and a travel power remover if you plan to make any progress. You'll also take certain overpowered and soon-to-be-nerfed/fixed powers if you expect to win consistently.)

So, at the end of the day, I'm still burned out, and it's largely because there's no way out. I'm not sure what the developers can do about it. Maybe nothing. Back in the old days of EverQuest, it eventually came down to the line where Brad McQuaid flat out said that burnout is inevitable, after all. However, I can't help but think maybe the balance doesn't encourage diversity at all, too many powers are nerfed to an ineffectual point (most of the attack passives and all of the support passives, for example) and the stats don't really matter enough in overall power balance to justify doing much else but generalize.

P.S. Of course, I largely played solo - it'd be nice if I actually had teams more often. (FYI, thanks to the way Windows Vista handles permissions, my XFire profile reflects less than half of the time I actually spent in the game - so, hey, I guess I got some fairly good mileage out.)

[RoboRope]

Thanks and cya in 3 months (if I'm still around).

[geldonyetich]

I don't know about 3 months. I'd probably pop in to at least check out the Bloodmoon event when it hits live servers. I just wouldn't play much seeing how I can't seem to enjoy myself playing any character right now.

[RoboRope]

Originally Posted by geldonyetich

I don't know about 3 months. I'd probably pop in to at least check out the Bloodmoon event when it hits live servers. I just wouldn't play much seeing how I can't seem to enjoy myself playing any character right now.

Yea I'll be playing BM. But I'm gonna have to take about 3 months off after that and give the game some time to heal. They drove a lot of people away putting the game out when they did.

They have my LTS, so lets just hope things get better.

[Zae]

I have a normal sub. I have 7 chars made, all ranged. I really, really, REALLY want to make a melee char, but the game just doesn't really support melee like it does ranged. The only GOOD melee tree seems to be TK blades. People say might is good, but it's still not near TK blades good.

[Sundance]

Yeah agreed. I am a little disappointed at how little diversity is encouraged in the game right now.

I'm hoping the devs realize their current course is creating the situation and change it.

[Magnitude8]

Hiya,

My suggestion is designing a character that is fun to be. I'm talking about adding some kind of roleplay element to your game. I think that creating a good concept alt goes beyond trying to arrange A + B powerset in a cool way, which, as you pointed out, is limited. For example I am particularly satisfied playing an uppity/cranky 82 year old hunchback geezer that smacks enemies with beatdown and uppercuts (might). The game is a tool, an instrument: a bunch of people playing the same instrument in different (or similar) ways.

[geldonyetich]

Originally Posted by Magnitude8

Hiya,

My suggestion is designing a character that is fun to be. I'm talking about adding some kind of roleplay element to your game.

I know all about this, but to go completely in-character is just as unsatisfactory as going completely power-gamer. To not associate with one's character by playing one that I wouldn't want to be is alienating. To have a character with gaping power holes makes me feel inferior. So I go for a bit of both.

To a great extent, a lot of my roelplay concepts can't really be met because the in-game balance is off right now. It knocks out a great deal of potential powers to realize my concepts when they're so clearly gimped.

[Oriax2]

I figure in the roleplay factor too. It really helps make the character interesting. I just made an Egyptian Telepath-looks just like ancient Egypt. Too bad the UI and Play environment is borked, because she was kicking some butt before the last Emergency Maintenance patch. So far, my Force toon is the only one playable.

[xpages]

Originally Posted by geldonyetich

I think that the main trouble is that, despite all the different power combinations, there's not that many different effective ways to play this game.

Amen. I'm pretty much a alt-aholic. I filled every slot available in CoX and even purchased some more. I still feel I've got several combinations I would like to try out there.

But CO is damn too repetitive. I've tried several alts here too (around 16 or so). Apart from the limited number of slots which annoys me, I came to pretty much the same conclusions.

There's not that much diversity between my alts gameplays. And each of them has a terribly repetitive gameplay, mostly DPS everything.

The sad thing is that the devs set up a large number of powers, adding all sort of side efffects and supposed synergies. So they DID a lot of work.

But I feel they've never considered things from the players' side. I.E : What kind of experience would that translate to.