Atlas Parked: Lack of Content?

...or The Game Is What You Make Of It...

Something Mino said, while he was trying to persuade me not to quit RoD, has been bugging me like a low level annoyance for a while now. It's the old timeless complaint, "The game lacks content."

It's been said of RoD. It's been said of CoH. And no doubt, said of many other countless games.

When all is said and done, is it really -content- that matters?

I spent literally years in RoD. Seen everything, done everything I wanted to, and could derive joy from. Yes, I exhausted the content in that game, as did many others. What was left was repetitive motions and the same faces every day - towards the same goal of amassing LOOT LEWT PHAT LOOT and MORE LOOT.

And suddenly, the game stopped being fun. Especially with an elitist, competitive attitude to the people in the mud around me, except for my little clique of friends.

I know the content in CoH is not going to last forever. Hence why I'm taking my time with it. I don't particularly care that I haven't even gotten to the SO stage yet, haven't got one high level so I can cheat and transfer millions of influence to my alts, though it is tempting at times. Perhaps too tempting.

Because if I've seen it all and have it too easy, then maybe the game -will- stop being fun.

Thankfully there are couple things in CoH's favor:

1) Devs that are on the ball - and paid to be. Nothing like a team that's paid to create more content for you. I'm looking forward to Issue 4, Issue 5 and CoV.

2) A ton of level tiers with replayability, especially since a lot of the ATs play so differently. The style completely changes with the AT you're playing. Best of all, you can purposefully craft your AT be different, and provide a challenge to play.

I look forward to playing a MAN build when I'm totally bored of the game. (Power Pools only.) I look forward to making some "clones" of mobs in game, especially the Tsoo guys, flying SS and phase-shifting tanks, anyone?

3) Remort possibilities - epic ATs. For now, only the Kheldians, but (damn your cunning cryptic PR, Statesman!) more are in the works. God I so want WINGED ATs, and who can resist making an Incarnate which is supposedly the AT of Statesman? And if that underwater-themed AT is on its way...*twitch twitch* I am a sea-elf at heart, aren't I?

4) Lots of people - that equals constantly changing situations. When I'm not out to finish story arcs and missions that -must- be complete, I actually like to nose in on PuGs. They're so unpredictable, as I said before. Completely wild tactics sometimes.

In a way, this last factor is what kept me going on Natural Selection for so long. The game was the same. The maps were the same, I had them memorized by now. The people were different and so the game was interesting.

In Beta 5 though, the tactics for winning became too set and clear cut, you HAD to have a few good fades and so many resource towers up in that amount of time or marines who knew what they were doing (ie, pressuring resource nodes AND the hive(s))would kill you. With the good fades, aliens won. Without them, marines won.

Then everyone started playing Combat because Classic mode was too boring. And then there was massive uncontrollable lag on every other server but local servers, thus limiting the variety of people I could play with.

And the game became boring.

So maybe...just maybe...it isn't just the holy grail of CONTENT we're all looking for:

Maybe NEW content is just a subset of the bigger goal, which is change, novelty and variety. The spice of life.

I'm glad I play games that offer deep possibilities for variety. Without stressing importance on phat loot in order to accomplish anything.

And in the end, we can all do our part to add variety to any game we play with player-organized events and stuff:

For example, I listen to Justice Radio when I play CoH. The variety in music makes it a whole lot more fun to play the same old maps again. The DJ chatter is live and different. That's player-created.

Contests, costume and trivia abound. And there's something to be said for making a resource that's valuable to a beginning lowbie but thrown away easily by a higher level. (I'd like to see people in RoD giving sizeable amounts of gold away. OMGWTFBBQ, if I save up 300 of those millions, I could buy a piece of seth. No way!)

Once Supergroup bases come in, I fear we'll see this part of the game disappear a little more from CoH, if additions will cost a lot of influence to buy.

And player organized gatherings are always a blast.

I attended Tanker Night on Test today. Being a level 20, I was like the third or fourth lowest tank there. (Thank goodness for that level 6 ice tank that made me feel better.)

But everyone was cool and nice and death wasn't important on test.

There was a little snowball fight while meeting at the train station (so miffed my own snowballs rotted), then we CHARGED Atlas Park and took pics under the statue of the greatest tank of all, Atlas.

Little while later, we got sidekicked up and went to Monster Island. Which is apparently an interesting dinky lil island NE of Peregrine Island, assessible via ferry from Talos Island. With giant monsters. Giant Devouring Earth monsters.

Those AOEs hurt. Even as a level 49 sidekick, I died many many times. Stomped for 800+ hp and tremored for 900+hp, and toxic spores that ate away 174 damage per tick repeatedly. Even with 1878hp + 872 from Earth's Embrace, that meant I could only soak 3 lucky hits. Never been so squishy as a tank. But the hospital was only a few short hops away, and the battles were WILD.

I actually did 100+ hp damage with my mallets, when I dared to run in. *cackles* That was fun.

Thank the devs for a test server where stuff like this could happen. A meeting of tanks across ALL servers for a quick social outing where there were no lasting negative consequences.

Good times.