Elite vs Egalitarian

Egalitarian vs Elite

I12 has come and gone, but the issue seemed like a non-issue. After playing
with MIDs to create 'dream builds' of the proliferated powersets, I found that
I simply could not be bothered to level those builds. It felt like more of the
same thing despite the change in powersets -- newspaper, level, new power...
repeat ad nauseam. Even the VEATs seem rather prosaic, with clones of powers
from other powersets, rather than the unique play mechanics of, say, a
warshade.

(This, plus the fact that internet costs 40 baht/hour in Thailand, has rapidly
killed my interest in the game.)

It isn't "devs suck" or "Dooom!". The game will probably be fun again after a
hiatus. The fact is that firstly, developers can only come up with so much
content so fast, and secondly, they are essentially limited in the type of
content they can come up with.

The first problem is the fact-of-"game" every gamer has to face. Players will
go through content faster than it is being developed.

The second problem is more limiting. Is it a case of a lack of developer
imagination, a limitation in code technology, or a more fundamental barrier
of game principle? The fact that we see new mission objectives every update
suggest that the developers are neither lacking in imagination (too severely,
anyway) nor reached a glass ceiling the limitations of code.

One thing to be said for the developers is that they are sneaky. Teams of
controllers steamrolling STF? Make the ITF mobs difficult to control (makes
it worse for dominators though, because controllers actually lean more on their
secondaries during 'epic' content.) /rads run wild? Make the ITF boss mobs
immune to debuffs (nevermind that /TAs and /Storms were never wanted for STF.)
Big bag of hps destroyed by throwing everything at said bag? Romulus and his
triumvirate of Nictus. An easy fight once I got the unofficial role of keeping
Rommy asleep while everyone beat up the Nictus -- it should be interesting to
see if the Nictus themselves can be slept.

Still, something falls short. At first, I wondered if it is because the
developers aren't getting how certain powersets actually play. Then, I start
to wonder if they do get it, but they are simply entrapped by game principle.

How does one may content that is both challenging and egalitarian? I find that
game content that is challenging often demands specialisation and coordination.
Specialisation and coordination flies in the face of egalitarianism.

Let's take RoD. When you fight Seth, you take a bunch of thieves, each
specialised to be Seth-killers (high hp, good saves, etc.) Now and then some
people throw in another class for fun, but if five clerics can't kill Seth,
people don't scream "it's not fair". Of course, RoD fights tend to be rather
homogeneous, so RoD hasn't got it right either (one tank and seven hitters
isn't right). Hamidon sounds like it demands both specialisation and
coordination, but I don't really like 50-man events, and Hamidon is an anomaly,
where people did not complain about "all my scrapper does is stand around while
the controllers hold", or whatever the current situation is.

Now, the CoX motto is "no AT or powerset is needed". If you have AVs that cannot
be debuffed, very soon you have some extremely loud and whiny debuffers (such
as a certain cold/ice corrupter) spamming feedback with how broken and unfair
the encounter is. Of course, the reverse situation of certain ATs/powersets
being marginalised in various game encounters has been the norm since time
immemorial, but those encounters were placed under the aegis of "epic content".

How do you divide epic content from normal content? Why even have epic content
in a game that doesn't support it? Right now the most epic thing you can do is
farm behemoths with a spines/fire for magic salvage and purple recipes. Let's
just ditch this "epic content" excuse and focus on the game principle.

The game principle of CoX, "no AT or powerset is needed" fundamentally makes it
difficult to create challenging content. Now, not only must the encounter be
resolvable in a certain way, but it must be resolvable in every other way, as
many ways as a cat can look at it. If every player in the team is replaceable,
how can individual players feel that their specialised actions or play skills
are being stretched and tested?

This is the fundamental barrier to CoX content.

On the other hand, if we ditch this principle, then the game might well become
a City of Clones, as if the population of ill/rads and fire/kins isn't skyhigh
now. And the game would become a bore if it ever reached the state of WoW
high-end raiding, where everyone of a certain role has a certain build and
certain macros to run powers in cycles that are mathematically proven to be the
most effective.

Perhaps player-designed content will bring new challenging encounters, if the
designer is flexible enough. The problem will be sifting out the interesting
missions from the mass of spectacularly bad ones.