Another_Fan
-
Posts
3571 -
Joined
-
Quote:Actually for that to be true CoH sales would have had to be going into the basement without the AE. (Not an unreasonable proposition with the introduction of merits in I13). We know this because just after AE they did go into a serious decline.Originally Posted by Starsman
The Architect Edition did a LOT of good for the game. Would have been indeed much better if every big issue somehow managed to sell boxed editions.
One of the reasons WoW is where it is, are the silly basic game CDs you can find in almost every store that sells games. Think they sell them for $1.99. For that price, people just p ick them up. It's like the drug dealer that gives you the first sample for free or extremely cheap.
No download to do, just go home and install this thingy in that computer gadgety of yours. -
Quote:So if I use your work without payment, permission or attribution I wouldn't be robbing you ?Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Robbing implies a financial loss.
-
Quote:In their world you are.Originally Posted by JayboH
That's because I'm not. I am very negative about Plan Z and any further attempts by Titan to save the game. I don't deserve that label on account of that.
This is the only attempt I am aware of. -
Quote:Originally Posted by TonyV
I used your friggin' numbers. That was my point: they're pure unadulterated BS. So if you want to complain about them being completely unrealistic, you'll get nothing but a hell yeah from me, and I'm glad we agree that the numbers you put forward came from whence the sun don't shine.
This is reality.
I doubt you would recognize reality if it bit you.
You want reality ? This is reality.
"The game was health"
The game wasn't making enough to be viewed as a worthwhile investment by its owner.
"Things are going very well"
The game will go dark nov 30 it will not be live after that.
Plan Z is on a path to take money from people for vapor ware. This is treated seriously despite Plan Zs first move was to start a process to steal NCsofts property.
Save CoH's motto "This is what heroes do"
Apparently what heroes do is ignore any law they don't like and rob people if its convenient for them. -
Quote:Sad but true. If you recall just after I13 Arcanaville would go around following positron's postings to take his foot out of his mouth for him. I always wondered what it took to get someone to do that for you now I know.Originally Posted by JayboH
[IMG]LOL Anchorman ftw[/IMG]
-
Quote:Ok this is a different argument. Lets look at pure revenueOriginally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Considering there are some games that rely ENTIRELY on micro-transactions and are doing well enough, how can you use low subs to justify claims that CoH was performing poorly?
Is it just because subbing was an OPTION and many chose not to go that route?
In its first year CoH had roughly 33 million in sales this year it might have been lucky and gotten up to 10. Overall that is bad but liveable the problem is the game staffed up to support microtransactions the cost of achieving those sales was higher, how much I don't know but I can be 100% certain it wasn't cheaper.
This means CoH's profit margin and RoI was in the toilet compared to earlier years. -
Quote:75K cost to employer in the bay area is an absurdly low estimate. As an average it's even worse.Originally Posted by Starsman
CoH up to the announcement was a freemium game. "Subscriber" base is meaningless. Quarterly reports showed about 8 million dollars a year. We never get to know but quarter to quarter things where getting better than the previous year.
The devs were still learning what were the most profitable things to add to the game. Super Packs and new power sets proved the previous year to be huge, and these 3 months, plus the next 2, would have seen a barrage of new power sets and a new super pack. You can call this "hope", but I call it an informed estimate. There is reason to believe this may had ended as a 10 million year.
That is more than enough money to sustain 80 developers and pay the rent, while being profitable. This is not about faith.
Positron has already stated as much as he can: the studio as was profitable.
We KNOW that a lot of that team was there for Secret Project. We also know, though, that some of the staff meant for Secret Project was working on CoH's issues (Positron, I think, mentioned some stuff would slow down once we lost art team to Secret Project.) I seriously doubt it was only in the paper/board stages. The comments of such a system came from some one that has not worked at Paragon for a few years, If I recall correctly.
You can do an educated guess. Arcanaville has posted some solid estimates about in these forums. If we assume everyone got paid, tops, 75k a year (after benefits.) That's an absurdly high salary. I recall inquiring about average salary rates when they were recruiting and was told between 30k and 50k is more of a standard, with perhaps 60-80k only for senior management staff. So I'm certain the average salary (with benefits) in Paragon Studios was nowhere near 75k. BUT if it was, it would have added to 6 million a year, leaving 2 million in profits or about 33% returns (assuming 8 million a year, not 10.)
Have the studio, and the game, seen better days? Yes. Does not mean the current days were bad.
As to arcanavilles estimates you are talking about a poster that was bought and paid for. -
Quote:No I just didn't break it out or include it. I am aware of microtransaction it's just they make the games health look even worse than it was. If you take a number of rougly 18$/month average for the paying subs. They spent for new powersets as they came out and the you are down into the 40k range or the upper range of my estimate. In general I like to form these arguments making assumptions as much against my position as possible.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
In your first estimate a couple of posts up, you ignored microtransactions completely and judged the game's success solely on subscriptions. That doesn't justify you dictating to anyone what is unreasonable.
The strange thing is the people I debate with here, take every opportunity to make unreasonable assumptions that favor their cause.
You start factoring that f2p people were spending money the number of subs goes down further. Given how few people I saw participating in incarnates (there were dedicated groups who participated often but they were it. You saw the same faces advertising Itrials and participating in them over and over again.) it wouldn't surprise me if the number of paying subs was far far lower maybe as low as 10% -
Quote:Unh HunhOriginally Posted by TonyV
No, but let's do the math. $800k divided by 10 is 80k subscriptions. For mathematical purposes of putting an absolute upper limit on subscriptions, your claim that that is "15% of your peak subs" means that the peak number of subscriptions would be somewhere around 533,000. The actual peak number of subscribers was around 194,000 just after the launch of City of Villains in October 2006, unless you believe that it's been higher since 3Q 2008 when NCsoft stopped reporting subscription numbers, which I think it's safe to say it hasn't.
So... You're lying. Or at the very least, you're grossly exaggerating. More realistically, the subscriber numbers are probably somewhere in the 80k - 100k range, which is, using the conservative estimate, around 41% of its peak subscriber rate. (Using the optimistic estimate, it's more like 51.5%. Realistically, it's probably somewhere in between those extremes.) Given that a lot of sales are coming off of microtransactions, that there are a lot more players than subscribers now, and that it is now six and a half years after that peak, that's actually a very good retention rate, the kind that would make most gaming companies extremely jealous.
Yes indeed
You take the absolute maximum number of subscriptions assume everyone was buying at the absolute cheapest rate and never buying anything from the store, take the lowest number in my range estimate of 15%-20%. You get an unreasonable result.
How would you characterize someone who made such unreasonable assumptions ? -
Quote:It's pretty accurate in this case. People often self organize into groups recognizing the fact hardly discredits the value of an argument. The same way recognizing that another group on these boards could be called the Doomers doesn't discredit the argument.Originally Posted by Starsman
Calling anyone in any argument a "Fanboy" is not a loss "because you are wrong" it's a loss because you just admitted you are not willing to continue the conversation down an intelligent path. You are forfeiting the discussion so you lost.
It is just a way of not dealing with the same points over and over again.
This is a matter of faith. The best you can say is that the current subscriber base was at most 20% of the peak number and likely in the 10-15% range. We have no idea how the cost of the dev teams was divided and we know at least 1 project hadnt gotten much further than paper/board testing.Quote:
This game is not dying due to its "choices". This game was doing very well, well enough to cover the cost of two dev teams (CoH + Project X) without taking the whole studio into the red.
-
Quote:ROFL. By starman's rules of argument you have just conceded defeat.Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
Ah yes. The A_F we've come to know, always the victim of everyone else disagreeing with him.
Where oh where will this child find the attention he so desperately craves beyond November 30th?
Enjoy playing CoH on Dec 1 when it rises from ashes. -
Quote:Originally Posted by TonyV
...And this is where we get to the part here you're just making stuff up out of your butt. The truth is threefold: 1) You have no clue how many VIP subscribers City of Heroes had because neither Paragon Studios nor NCsoft release those numbers. You are making assumptions based on one line item in an investor report that has little to do with subscriptions, peak or otherwise. And 2) you are completely ignoring that a lot of revenue came from sources other than VIP subscriptions. Or maybe you haven't been paying attention since before June 2011. Last, but not least, 3) dropoffs in subscriptions are actually par for the course for an 8.5-year-old game. This in no way implies that the game isn't profitable or still very successful. It only means that the game had an exceptionally good launch, which City of Heroes (or more specifically, City of Villains, which was when the game hit its peak subscription rate) in fact did.
So... yeah. Whatever deception you keep claiming incorrectly is being propagated on the community, not only are you wrong, but you're "doubleplus" guilty of much worse.
Yeah thats because I can't divide 800k by 10 and come up with the absolute maximum number of vip subs they had.
Don't worry I am sure at this point you will find plenty of people who if you say "Day is night" will not only agree with you but shout down anyone who disagrees. -
Quote:How would you characterize people who feel they are the arbiters of what constitutes winning and losing an argument ?Originally Posted by Starsman
The use of the word "Fanboy" is an automatic acknowledge that you just lost the argument. Of course, it's something the name-caller will never admit.
Anyway the argument about how well the game was doing wasn't won or lost on these boards. It was won and lost on the sales chart and NCsoft's boardroom. So yes it is amusing in the extreme to see people argue that a game which is terminal is healthy and doing well. -
Quote:Yes it's doubleplusgood they are restructuring the game NOV 30Originally Posted by TonyV
As someone who has been accused several times of spreading "false hope", I can tell you that what is really being spread is false pessimism. I have had one-on-one conversations with several former Paragon Staffers, and I can't tell you how many times I have seen posts from the trolls here that have conveyed nothing but doom and gloom when, in fact, things were going pretty well.
Having less than 15% of your peak subs is once again doubleplusgood.Quote:They've been talking about how miserably the game was doing when I've gotten firsthand accounts from people who actually know the numbers telling me that the game was doing exceptionally well, much better than most people think. They've been telling me how NCsoft would never negotiate even as I was hearing from people who were involved in the negotiations. They've been stating with no justification whatsoever that things I've been saying are outright false based only on how they feel about the situation.
-
Quote:Well seeing as most people who didn't like what the devs were doing didn't make an effort to change things but simply left, you might be right.Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
What you have to realize, however, is if you look over Another Fan's posting history, his definition of "people on these boards who always would agree with the devs no matter how preposterous the action or position" is everyone who disagrees with him.
I am sorry you are so upset you needed to take a personal shot.Quote:He is the highlight of this thread, though. I do thank him for his comments because I had a rough day at work, and coming home and being able to laugh my *** off at him really helped. -
Quote:I need a picture of someone face palming here.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Two examples - and both have been discussed ad nauseum by the Devs - but the general consensus seems to be that the issues with both would have taken a lot more time to fix than any game benefit.
I seem to recall that being openly admitted by the Devs and so it's hard to call constant BS.
We also know that PVP was due to get some love in the not too distant but that's rather changed now I suspect - so I stand by my assertion.
1. Devs: We will do X stick around it's coming soon.
2. Devs: Well X is just too much trouble and it's not worth it.
Pick your X.
What I always find surprising isn't that people left the game but that they stayed. -
Quote:Originally Posted by JohnRobey
I don't think simple disagreement constitutes being a troll. I think you'd agree that some have gone way beyond "I disagree with you/your point because... " to personal attacks and name-calling. (If what you're saying is "fanboys" (read as "immature people") feel that those who disagree with them are inherently trolls merely for having a different opinion, well, what does one expect from Immaturity? This doesn't negate your point, however.)
Yeah, Fansy is being cruel if perpetrating a hoax, or giving hope and renewed encouragement along with information if legit. We've each assessed and made up our own minds about Fansy.
Signing off as a 50-something year old Fanboy aka John (ha, ha, only 1/2 kidding, since the term "fan" still resonates for me as something positive, and if I'm labeled as "immature" I can live with that. As the adage goes, there's no fool but an old fool, and having mastered foolishness, I'm now working on old!)
Fanboy the way it is used on these boards has taken on it's own baggage. The way I using the term perhaps zealot would be better if less culturally relevant. There are people on these boards who always would agree with the devs no matter how preposterous the action or position. These are the Fanboys/Zealots.
Just being an aficionado does not make you a fanboy in my book. -
Quote:Oh I have ?Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
That's interesting. You've insisted on a higher standard of proof for the assertion of others than you've provided here.
Cite your sources. (Bold for emphasis.)
You know every case where I have asked for them to back up their claims they haven't. Not once.
Anytime somebody asks me for things I don't attribute because I believe they should be common knowledge I manage it.
"Now: Positron: we would have liked to fix PvP but it was too big an effort"
"I13: Positron: We will be updating pvp regularly and as needed"
Just one example heres another.
base building. "Well we didn't lie to you. We just never told you that we were never going to address your issues." -
Quote:Originally Posted by Fansy
My Grandpa told me a story once about the cruel ways of the upper staff in the Military. I think they had ranks but I'm not sure how many. I'm not militarized. Anyway! He used to say how he loved his M&M capsules, and buttered grits, he would eat them constantly even if they were under an attack with explosions tearing up roots and trees all around them. He said there no important more a thing than making sure you fight on a full stomach, he said the M&M's gave him an adrenaline rush that would help him assault the enemy on a sugar rush of epic proportions. The grits he said would warm up the body enough to keep the blood pumping mean, and pure. Pretty cool huh? I never liked grits, too mushy for me but even to this day Grandpa mushes it up with his lips like it's mashed potatoes. He loves mashed potatoes. OH right. Okay so, the Military people with high ranks would come by and take his M&Ms and eat then then throw his grits into the enemy lines at times and this made Grandpa very sad, said that is why called them cruel. Told me never be cruel and steal anyone's M&Ms' and Grits. Said that it's inhumane.
Well thats one way to be cruel and inhumane.
Here's another
No Money Down Real Estate Riches
Taking advantage of the proven gullible and foolish is very cruel. Selling them false hope is as about as inhumane as it gets, and supporting the effort just so you can laugh at its failure is the epitome of trolling. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Fansy
Hail!
See Heroes & Villains, Neuts and Civilians!
Your pressure was felt, and as Brian himself as said, along with the Korean contacts; everything is coming full circle to possible bring some light on this situation.
Keep it up!
Singing merrily,
Fansy the Famous Bard
And the fanboys feel the people that disagree with them are the trolls. You are a very cruel person Fansy. -
Quote:Psst. Just because we would like them to sell hardly means they see it in their best interests.Originally Posted by GadgetDon
And if you aren't sentimental about those parts, you dispose of them to the highest bidder.
-
Quote:Some of us liked CoH the game. Not the "How hard can you kiss dev ***" game that was played on the forums.Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
PSSST Not everyone is boycotting NCSoft. Not everyone thinks they are in the wrong for closing CoH. Need proof...go to GW2 and join one of the MANY guilds started by CoHers after 8/31
Need more proof... How many people ARE involved over at Titan...200? Out of 50,000.... hmmm. The ANTI NCSoft group is not nearly as big as some would have you think
\ -
Quote:No, the closest thing said to that is what I said.Originally Posted by GadgetDon
Um, weren't you saying that a 500K offer was insulting because the customer base would mean they'd make it back instantly? But there's not enough players to make it financially viable. If you're right here, 500K seems like an overly generous offer.
Which is that 500k is a gift of an offer because all you would need is a few thousand players willing to buy a 1 year sub or lifetime sub at a low price.
That is just the most obvious failure to value the property. Just what is the value of the right to use the cryptic engine ? The unreal engine licenses for a ridiculous amount of money ?
What is the customer list and buying history worth on it's own ? -
Quote:They will have the community they always wanted.
Originally Posted by That_Ninja 
How about the Final Solution?
Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
That's the code-name of the anti-troll plan we're putting together.
Quote:Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Then I guess COHTitan will be pretty empty once that plan go into effect. -
Quote:Zero follow through. The really sad story of this game.Originally Posted by blackjak
When did F2P start? Wasn't it the 4th quarter of 2011? If so there is a half mil jump in revenue on the chart that was kindly posted earlier.