Another_Fan
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Posts
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Quote:Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
With the dopey, tongue-in-cheek Champions universe. Yay.
I'll respectfully disagree.
Except for this one...
I can see the store-bought stuff being bind-on to prevent abuse. But the Incarnate stuff bind-on was Just Bad.
How many forms of currency does Champions have right now?
Three tiers of "currency"
Questionite
Two (IIRC) forms of merits
And now Zen
Not to mention the absolutely recockulous prices of things
Which you don't get away from in CO. Plus the boring sameness of all the instanced content. They're all, more or less the same few maps with a different skin slapped on them.
I didn't mind the raid content. It's just that they couldn't follow up with enough of it fast enough for it to stop being an utter, soul-reaving grind.
The fact is, the league management tools, while meaning well, completely ignored how most people ACTUALLY form raids in this game, which is a leftover from the pre-league teaming paradigm.
Had some of these league management tools been made available MUCH earlier (as in several years ago), it probably would have been tweaked and become a much more integral part of large-scale raiding.
You miss the point. It's one thing to bolt on add hoc bits and pieces it's another to have them designed in. The trials from CoP on were all force fits. Endless incarnate currencies were all annoyingly obvious in their design to make you grind god forbid anyone got clever. Even merits were broken on arrival, without being able to roll the level you wanted. Bolting a jet engine onto an el camino doesn't make it an f15.
Really post I12 it was the devs saying make them grind and players saying F.T.N. Even the things that were great ideas never got perfected. AE ? Great idea release it broken let it wreak destruction then keep breaking it more. Incarnates ? Why not find all the really bad features of other games, players having to do gear checks, encourage ridiculously elitism, ultra uber bosses that take you out with a glance and bring them here.
People complained, they were dismissed usually derisively and then just left.
Strangely enough the closure brings with it an enormous upside. The wife isn't attached to the games we are playing now, when their devs have their heads rectally inserted we just switch to something new instead of trying to make it work, or arguing for fixes. -
Quote:Champions actually shines in comparison. It still has a fair amount of integrity and lives up to its silver age vision. The last few years had our game get all kinds of features that had no business being in CoH. You had bind on drop, endless currency proliferation, ridiculously long fights that you'd fire up a macro and walk away from, stupidly formed raid type content that all looked like it had been lifted from Game X for no other reason than game X is doing well.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
And yeah. Unfortunately, it's always going to suffer by comparison to CoH. It's just a testament to how great the Paragon staff actually was. -
Quote:But they were doing so wellOriginally Posted by Zombie Man
These numbers mean that NCSoft will surely kill off City of Heroes... it doesn't have long to live!
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Quote:I have to agree. If CoH was about wonderful story telling it would never have lasted the first 6 years of really awful stories.Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
No, I'm saying that it doesn't entertain me in this format. I love literature, I read quite a bit. It's sort of hard to go from Infinite Jest to "Defeat the super villain on screen bad guys" and still presume to take the latter seriously.
So when Bad BaB chugs a beer and flexes his muscles, you actually take it seriously? :|
When Captain States-'Merica gets killed by that level 20 contact in the purple jumpsuit, you actually think it carries emotional weight?
When Sister Psyche takes an arrow to the knee.. er, chest, you're actually more concerned about her dying than you are about how in the HELL she managed to "threaten the lives" of everyone in Paragon city when:
A.) You can't even target citizens!
But even if you could...
B.) She was WAY past the target cap!
COH thinks its stories matter. I like that CO knows better.
Well then maybe you should start reading books. I'm sure you'll be able to appreciate video games more when you need a break from literature.
This just in: The sky is also blue! But for the record, it's more like comparing the most pristine fruit in the world to something that anyone could make a strong case for being inedible.
I never got into comics myself. I did grow up on super hero cartoons though, and I've always thought it was a neat environment. I'm sure that Freud would have an explanation for this.
Or lets look at some of the great story telling.
Original Positron: per war witch "We changed it so it doesn't suck anymore
Synapse a TF people have described as painful.
Citadel: Lets fight not quite Nazis in a cave.
Manticore: Well we put in all these bosses that when you are about to kill them they make you wait.
Numina: Pray there isn't an event happening during the hunt phase.
ITF: Well for some reason the real Nazis decided giant robots were needed to conquer a time period where the most advanced material was wood and high tech weapons were powered by animal sinew. You might thing Panzer of Tiger tanks would have worked. Oh why we are at it lets commit wholesale slaughter along the way.
Just how many Romans has this game consigned to perdition ? -
Quote:Well it couldn't very well be City of Heroes when everyone playing would be breaking federal statutes.Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
Honestly? I wouldn't go near an emulator. I want to let COH rest in peace rather than be party to copyright infringing necromancy. It would be more depressing than the live servers currently are to me.
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GW2 doesn't give out a monthly stipend of points. This makes it much easier for them. In our case more would have had to been done. At the very least our point cards couldn't be purchasable with points.
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Quote:Welcome CoH the monkey's paw edition.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Adding these two statements together, the current City of Heroes is a game only vaguely like the original City of Heroes. If the current City of Heroes is a legitimate continuous extension of the original game, an emulated successor does not need to replicate the current game any more precisely than the game itself originally did as it was developed.
But that's mostly a tangent. The question was whether a game built upon an emulator could have a successful market implementation. That success rests primarily upon participation not implementation. I did not say that an emulated game wouldn't have a market implementation; that's a weird thing to claim one way or the other. I was responding to the assertion that without a viable market the logical conclusion is that the entire invention system becomes untenable. That's obviously false on its face, because the use of the markets is not mandatory to make the rest of the invention system function.
In no way does stating that "write off an entire section of the game and the community." -
Quote:You are correct in regard to lack of participants will reduce any market to rubble. You are wrong about building your characters. The emulator can have its drop and conversion tables easily adjusted to compensate. It's not a very good fix but it is doable.Originally Posted by CyberGlitch
Back when COXEmu was first released (before it was shut down), there wasn't a Marketplace aspect to the game. Just SO's and Inspirations, which were effectively unlimited from vendors. I'm pretty sure emulators will totally bork the marketplace model, if it can exist at all. And without market economics in place, IO'ing out your character is going to be tough unless (wait for it) someone jerk-hacks the marketplace code to address this.
You miss the point. After how many adjustments and changes when does the emulator cease to be a CoH emulator and becomes a game vaguely like CoH ?Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Of all the possible reasons why a hypothetical server-side emulator would not work, some of which are genuine challenges, this has to be one of the strangest, if not ludicrous, ones I've heard. If people could figure out how to equip villains on the red side prior to the market merge, this is an effectively impossible problem to create even deliberately, much less accidentally.
And it can be made completely moot by simply switching focus from the market metagame to the content-driven merit systems. The market was always an optional system in City of Heroes moreso than a core system, and it was always well within the ability of the developers to make everything players could want accessible through the in-game rewards systems. To put it bluntly, ignoring the social elements of the game, City of Heroes could have functioned perfectly well with limited reward system modifications as a single player game. There is no system that requires participation by more than one player that is actually essential to the core gameplay beyond the obvious desire to allow for multiplayer teaming itself literally.
The market was an important part of the game and while it may not be a core system for you it was for many of us. While I personally think the worst decisions the devs made about the game were market related ,Not merging the markets until I18, making merits, hero merits, tickets all character bound, not providing better search tools, not making remote auction much easier to obtain, were all horrible. None of them compare to writing off an entire section of the game and the community. -
Quote:Nearly 67K posts all like that* and you expect change ?Originally Posted by Cag
What is it with you? Every subject similar to this, involving the continuement, legal or illegal you reply with some mysteriously coy statement.
Know something? Stop acting like a secret agent and tell us.
*This determination is made by random sample. I.E. every post I have ever seen has been like that with a few exceptions about boobs. -
That really looks appealing.
@OP: Do you have any suggestions re: Guides/sites for the game ? -
Quote:Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
sounds about right. As many games we mocked games usually inside gameplay here and did nothing when other games died except shrug as someone once said, "meh they wasnt that big of a game anyways" without any regards of the community and how they felt about their game closing. Now it's our turn and I didnt expect all of them to rally to our support with open arms as bad as many here talked about them and didnt nothing to help when other games went down hill.We didn't care about other games ? LOL We didn't give a rats rear when people playing this game got the axe.Quote:Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
I might of cared except for when i went to DDos forums to try and rally some fellow gamer allies to try and support us here most mocked our game and laughed at its impending demise sooo....frell turbine and all its games.
PvP LOL they got what was coming to them.
Nerf HA HA exploiter.
BASE Builder LOL sure they are going to get that done.
Architect problem. Stop them damn people complaining about my farms
AE farms. Get those damn farmers out of MY architect.
CoH closing ? 50 threads about how nice GW2 is.
Edit: And thinking about it the devs did a great job of fostering that. I mean how much trouble would it have been to add a "Farm" tag to the AE searches ? -
Quote:The logical thing to do would have been to milk the subscribers, well more than the cash shop had been doing already while the base declined.Originally Posted by UnSub
True, but in that alternate universe the news that NCsoft was cutting 80% of Paragon Studios' staff would have been seen as the death of the game as well, with a lot of the same comments made. F2P / MA / dev treatment of PvP would all have been blamed for being partly responsible for the firings.
It would have been more typical for NCsoft to let people go and let the title drift off into maintenance mode, but I'll assume some numbers were crunched and that didn't look particularly attractive. And while CoH/V was possibly seeing Paragon Studios as profitable now, how long was that going to last? Over the next 3 - 4 years as their second title developed? -
Quote:The finances we really have no idea about. What we have is a big loss in NCInteractive, and Gross Revenues for Paragon that corresponds to roughly 50k subs. The actual number of subs you would expect to be less because of the cash shop contributes into that. NCsoft presumably has a much better idea what the subscriber numbers would have been come January.Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Umm... didn't M59 finally shut down?
Granted, your point is correct. Many MANY mmo's do hang on and "sunset" differently. When costs of development or hosting start to exceed the revenue from subscribers, you consolidate resources and reduce the dev team, continuing to remain profitable. You might get down to "the game is run on the server under the basement stairs. The dev team is the intern that sits beside it" and STILL make some trickle of profit while you wait for the last member of the dwindling population to turn out the lights.
Here, we had Paragon Studios effectively sustaining itself. From what we've heard, CoH's revenue was pretty much funding Paragon Studios- so it was not only paying for its own development, but the development of the mystery project. Rather than drawing down, Paragon had 'hiring notices' being put up even in the weeks leading up to the shut-down.
If money had been a factor, NCSoft could have terminated the second project, kept the same people working on CoH as before, and gained revenue. They could have told the development team to wrap up their current project and put things in place for a "diminished release cycle" with fewer people involved. They could have done many things to keep meeting the community's needs while realizing more revenue. -
Quote:Nice try, but what you said is pretty definitive.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Yes oh. This is where the reading comprehension is needed.
The "partial quotes" are being taken from a "different" thread MA-COH Killer. The theme of "that" thread was declining sales due solely to MA being introduced as the sole reason NC SOFT decided to go another way, which is patently false as NC SOFT AND PARAGON have already commented on.
Nice try to muddle up the "separate" topics, but still a fail on the pick a fight meter. Pfft. -
Quote:If you are using Yahoo for email and contact information better make sure you have some way to get that stuff out of there.Originally Posted by gec72
Not serious. I think it's somewhat silly to think that if it was that evident that Paragon was sinking, you didn't have many more [Tunnel] rats leaving the ship. If you think that your job is in jeopardy of going away, you start looking. They don't seem to have been.
I think it's also silly to expect that folks playing an online game are supposed to obsess over stockholder meetings and earnings reports. If someone buys the new Assassin's Creed, do you think they do a full background check on the financials of the company developing it? Heck no. People don't sign up for fantasy football leagues but think Hmm, I don't know about using Yahoo again - their new CEO is untested!. Players (by-and-large) are interested in what is in or what is being added to a game. And Paragon had been adding a buttload to City. -
Quote:You actually don't need it.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Hey guys. Just wondering if anyone has a toon in the old PDP map and would be willing to grab me a demorecord of it?
Trying to put together a comprehensive list of demorecords so I can video each zone.
At the head of the demo record file the map is specified. All you need is to go through the map lists. -
Quote:Oh ?Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
"Revenues didn't matter" is what you said.
"So while it is clear that COH was not a huge money maker (reports have it at 10 million per year), it was NOT closed due to a decline in sales because of AE or ANY other feature/issue.
That claim is personal axe grinding crapola with no real factual support from the parties involved."
Does not mean "Revenues didn't matter" as you made up. Reading comprehension FTL. You need to stop trying so hard to pick a fight where there is none to be had man.
Quote:Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
If Z or NC SOFT had mentioned sales as a contributing factor then you would have specific support for the specific claim about sales, but you don't because that had nothing to do with it.
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Quote:How nice, that way when you fail, it's not really your fault. I can't even blame P.S. for this. It would be like blaming mice for failing to properly manage the cheese.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Nope more like "Everything ends, so choose how you will go out. Whimpering, complaining about what everyone knows would happen eventually, drink the pain away, have a good time while there is time, enjoy the ride to south of heaven, another day in the land of death, or just watch it all burn to ashes."
Basically there are two givens, the beginning and the end, what we do control is how we react in the middle and what we do in the end. -
Quote:O'rly ?Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
I mean I know you have issues, but you really need to stop making things up and attributing them to me. I did not say "Revenues didn't matter". You making that up and then going on some rant is ridiculous and low brow. Stop it.
Let the equivocating begin.Quote:Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
So while it is clear that COH was not a huge money maker (reports have it at 10 million per year), it was NOT closed due to a decline in sales because of AE or ANY other feature/issue.
That claim is personal axe grinding crapola with no real factual support from the parties involved. -
Quote:This. We can't win but we can kick em in the nuts.Originally Posted by shadow35
Sorry, but I think all our fight is really about now is "going down fighting." We're flipping NCSoft the bird one last time, and educating players about any new releases like Blade & Soul and Wildstar that NCSoft tries to foister off onto an unsuspecting public, so they know what a mess they'll be getting into and will instead just avoid NC products.
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Quote:The horrible consequences of adopting fatalism as a personal philosophy. "Everything ends so why bother ?"Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
basically. And this time, it just so happen to be our time.
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Quote:Complete tripe. Is this your new line ? The "Revenues didn't matter" started sounding ridiculous even in your own ears ? All games close ? Tell it to Everquest, Ultima Online, Meridian 59 all still going.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Aside for the couple of people that have been predicting the end of the game "for years", there were not people around here predicting the game would end Nov 2012, that just did not happen for whatever reason.
People coming here now saying that they predicted this are full of bullcrap. Repeatedly saying a game is going to be close for 2-5 years does not qualify as a prediction in my book since all games are going to close at some time.
The people predicting the games decline from bad developer decisions and policies were 100% correct. The examples are there and unmistakeable. I remember the ultra mode beta when people were complaining right and left the new warehouse maps were killing their graphics cards. Devs response, silence and put them in anyway. How do you expect people to continue to play when you put in features that make it completely unplayable for them ? -
Quote:I think that is covered by the various plans to steal NCsoft's property and the people who think a successor game will take 5 man years.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
If you'd like, I could go on an inane posting spree to liven things up!
No? -
What is left to talk about ?
The autopsy ? Pointing at the one issue someone thought killed the game ? The replies the game is perfectly healthy ? ?
There were the people talking about their plans to "Save"* the game but they have gone to forums that won't disappear shortly. -
Quote:The political discussion got nuked.Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen
No one, pretty much. Only the most absolutely egregious threads get deleted. We had a full-blown religious discussion go for about 400 posts, and a political discussion that never got nuked.