Arcanaville

Not exactly, although you have to read carefully.

We're just guessing, but Paragon is actually going to know, because they will know what the revenue stream is from the super packs and they will know what the average revenue is from costume bundles, and they will be able to reasonably extrapolate which would have been better.

Rest assured that if they determine you were right, we will see more costume bundles and less super pack-like items. This early in the development of the hybrid model, each new thing the devs sell is an experiment, one that gives them data as to what we collectively will pay for, how much we will pay for it, and under what conditions we'll pay more or less.

They were, in fact, performing the same experiments to a lesser extent with the booster packs before Freedom was announced.

Black Pebble: the only person that has an AoE version of the Experienced power.

Annoying or not, melee may rue the day they asked for, and then got, widespread taunt auras. Taunt auras negate a significant, in my opinion majority of the advantage inherent in range. And not to put too fine a point on it, but that makes me think Blasters should retake that advantage either by gaining an ability which neutralizes it, or gaining an even better advantage than that.

The only reason why things like Scrappers and Brutes overshadow Blasters by such a large margin is because Blasters didn't even show up to the race. No one really champions them anymore, and no one really tries to protect their interests from the "buff not nerf" people who have buffed everything else to the point of marginalizing what Blasters were supposed to be, without buffing Blasters to eliminate their need for everyone else at least concomitantly if not concurrently.

But while I'm soloing my x8 missions on my MA/SR scrapper, who has barely any AoE and no taunt aura, and has about as much problems with runners as she has with remembering to cycle Practiced Brawler, and I'm hearing that Scrappers are being screwed by Brutes I'm thinking its time to level the playing field. My MA/SR scrapper will understand.

The Rule of Five is enforced based on what the set bonus is called in its game definition. That is how you can have five +7.5% recharge set bonuses on top of five Luck of the Gambler Def/+7.5% Rech IOs operate simultaneously. They are called different things.

In general, two bonuses with two different values obviously are defined as two different powers, and thus will have two different names. Unless the devs go way out of their way to link them somehow, they will fall under different pigeonholes under the Rule of Five. Basically, you're safe if the bonus is literally different. If its the same, its usually, but not always, the same - LotG is a notable exception.

So there's no confusion, the Rule of Five is not enforced on *type* of bonus, but on the specific bonus itself. You can have five +7.5% recharge and five +10% recharge if you can somehow fit that into a build, because you are allowed five of each bonus by name.

I'm pretty certain I said the exact opposite. Apparently its confusing when I support something, but oppose certain arguments in favor of it. You'd think people would be used to that by now.

Except that just before your post, he brings up the interesting twist to that statement which itself is potentially worthy of discussion: the exception he explicitly carves out is the case where rewards exclusive to content are only useful within that content. Which is tantamount to saying all of the game relevant to a soloer should be accessible to a solo player. The question is whether that exception is meaningful.

I don't think we're going to get very far with that line of thought, but I'm just pointing it out to illustrate that the discussion references a much more complex problem than I believe you are giving it credit for.

But the question is would you rather get predictable and less rewards, or unpredictable and on average more rewards, with the chance you may get less than average, and more importantly would you sentence all of the rest of the playerbase to the same fate.

There are players that say NCSoft is losing money on the Super Packs because if they simply sold all the elements separately, more people would buy the individual elements. That's possible, but psychologically speaking the smart money is betting that they are making more money on the Super Packs because for every person electing not to spend money on them, another player is more than compensating by spending a lot more on them than they would spend on buying the individual items in a targeted fashion. That's the nature of these things, and its been generally true in most environments where such things are bundled and sold.

Less revenue means less game, for everyone. So the problem with saying that predictable is better is that that is not the whole choice. The choice is really is predictability worth costing everyone less content, and conversely is having more content worth introducing unpredictable rewards. That's the decision the devs face here. Its not a straight forward decision.

So you're saying if someone specifically asks me how I would deal with a situation, you have the right to say I'm being irrelevant if I address that situation directly but you don't find it relevant to what you want to talk about?

You'll have to forgive me if I choose not to incorporate that particular sensitivity into my posting habits, as it would be both impractical to do so, and also completely ridiculous to do so.

I disagree. This is not just a quibble about semantics. There's a distinction between the person who makes a request about a single piece of content ("I want this single piece of content to have a reward unique to it") and the person that attempts to impose their will across all content for all time with an absolute rule ("no content that requires teaming is allowed to contain a reward that isn't offered in non-soloable content").

In fact, it goes beyond someone saying "I want *some* rewards locked behind teamed content" because I believe *that* request to be too vague to accept also. However, if a content designer decides to make a specific mission that specifically requires teaming and whose storyline leads to a reasonable conclusion that it should have a reward explicitly and exclusively tied to its content, I believe that content should be judged on whether the benefit of having it exceeds any negative associated with it, and I do not accept the notion that it automatically fails by definition because the negatives are "obviously" too high. If that's the only justification for not including it, that justification will fail for me, because I don't accept that axiomatically.

But that doesn't mean there aren't good alternate reasons why a particular instance of exclusive content is not justified. For example, if level shift was exclusive to teamed content, or even extremely limited to soloers (which you could argue it was prior to I22 being announced) I could *and did* make the case that the intent of incarnate progress conflicted with having no avenue for such progress to solo players. I did not, and do not, have to resort to the "soloers must have access to all rewards" argument and there is a much better argument that exists besides.

Which is one of the reasons why I said I have no problem with people asking for a solo path. My objection is asking for it on the grounds that everything should be soloable.

And yes, Valerika, I'm addressing it here, before you quote this message. That's deliberate, because in the context of *this* reply its now relevant. It wasn't relevant before, because I was talking about my own hypothetical design philosophy. Here, I'm talking about the distinction between Bill asking for a solo option, and Bill asking for a solo option because he thinks everything should be soloable. If Bill is only asking for a solo option for incarnates, and that's all, as I believe he is claiming, *then* I have no disagreement with that. However, if the reason Bill is asking is because he thinks all rewards of any practical value must have a solo path, then that would be a point of disagreement with him. And its important to make the distinction, because Bill hasn't explicitly stated his fundamental reasons either way, and its difficult to interpret "soloers not getting screwed" with precision.

Which is a response to this message:

Which itself quotes and responds to this message:

I was clarifying that we're not necessarily saying the same thing, because Bill says:

But I wasn't referring to actually *blocking* teaming: what I said earlier was:

The critical part of which is:

That means some people want teamed-only content *and* rewards exclusive to that content. Not that people just want content that *can* be teamed, which is the distinction. And all of this is in response to this question:

My specific answer was:

to which Bill replied:


I could have just let that go, but because I honestly believed there was still the potential for a genuine difference of opinion there, I amplified:

The important words there are:

Which caused Bill to ask the specific question:

That direct question, asked about the hypothetical and not about any specific group of players in this game or the developers of this game, but about what my personal design philosophy is, required me to answer within that context:

Which is the post quoted earlier and that leads us to the post you quoted, whose context you would have a better understanding of, if you read the thread before replying to the middle of a discussion.

No, they are not based on that premise. I addressed the question as posed. If you believe you can prove your assertion, please feel free to link to any post I made in this thread where I made that assumption.

By asking questions about what would, and would not be acceptable to sell in the store. Exclusive items came up during at least some of the discussion (parts of the day the group was separated into different groups discussing different things with different devs: its possible different people heard different things during those discussion periods due to this fact).

I am responding directly to a question originally addressed to me, about the specific topic I'm discussing.

"I do not want any rewards at all, without any exception, gated behind content that requires teaming."

This is an example of someone asking for a game to not include something, as I define it. The specific problem with the statement is not the request to have any particular thing have a non-teamed option of acquiring it, the problem is specifically the phrase "without any exception."

"I want this to have a solo acquisition option" is negotiable. "I want everything to have a solo acquisition option without exception" is not negotiable to me. Any subset other than all is negotiable in theory. All is not. Its a fine distinction, but one I make.

Which is why I said before that asking for a solo incarnate path is not something I object to in principle. But I do object to the argument that the solo incarnate path should exist because everything must have a solo path without exception.

Why do I need to address that, when I never said it. Perhaps you should address it.

Revealed publicly probably when the Super Packs were announced. Technically speaking anything and everything shown to players during the focus group was subject to change without notice or warning, much like things shown in closed betas.

What was revealed at the focus group was that the Super Packs were coming, they were going to have randomly selected "cards" in them, the cards would award certain rewards, and among those rewards would be consumable items. It was highly unlikely any of that would change.

The first and last change I heard about with regard to the Super Packs from the time of the focus group until when they were released was that they were going to be delayed, and therefore all information about them could not be discussed prior to their announcement.

To anticipate a question, it was never specifically stated whether the Super Packs would have rewards exclusive to them, but the devs implied that to be a possibility.

No.

I already stated so: hypothetically speaking to ensure people you don't care about but I do are fairly represented in any game I'd have decision making power over. Its who I am, and what I would want my game to be.

If its still not clear, then I would say its very close to the truth that were I in the position to make the strategic decision, I would care more about players that say "I want X" than those that said "I want to ensure this game does not have Y." You say that would be costly, but I disagree, and if it was my decision to make, my judgment would be operative there.

Even if I cannot convince you of the practicality of that position, there is another independent perspective. There are lots of people who probably *don't* play City of Heroes because they are just not into superheroes or comic books or the genre in general. That decision is guaranteed to have cost this game many potential customers. But that doesn't mean no one should make such a game. If everyone only served the majority, the minority would never get anything. So even though I believe my position would be more successful than yours overall, even if its not its a position that still has every right to be served. I would rather make my game than your game, not because I can prove mine is better, but because it would be mine. There's no other reason why I would take the lead designer position in any venture, except to realize my design values. If I was just going to be hired to realize someone else's design values, I would walk away.

I believe its highly unlikely you would approach the job significantly differently. That's not to say I cannot be persuaded to alter my position. If you could prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that your position would lead to a better game, I could be convinced to adopt it. But in the absence of such proof, I would follow my own judgment, and such proof has yet to be offered.

I would imagine when they announced the contents of the Super Packs.

This is a question with so obvious an answer that I suspect there's some specific reason for asking it which is totally unrelated to the actual answer to the question.

I remember those days also. Yesterday was one of them.

I'm offering it to you now. Information about the Super Packs, and any other unannounced content from the focus group, was explicitly embargoed until it became officially announced content. The moment it did, I did publicly confirm they were originally previewed at that event, although those posts may no longer exist on the forums.

They said words to the effect that the store would give them more options to offer things in an ala carte fashion that the older option packs did not. Mostly because the NCSoft store sucks (which is ironic). However, they also explicitly said that bundles would still exist in Freedom in some form. Knowing in advance that one day super packs would be coming, I paid particular attention to whether they ever contradicted that statement or even implied that everything would always be offered ala carte. To the best of my knowledge, they did not. If someone has something that specifically does so without requiring an implied narrative, I would love to be pointed at it. Because if they did so, that would be an inexcusable error on their part.

In what universe is providing something neither group is asking for a better compromise than offering some of what each is asking for?

The phrase "well-geared" seems to be a problematic definition in this game. Its so easy to make a reasonably well-slotted character that the hurdle is extremely low. Selling anything remotely related to inventions could be construed as paying to win, because you don't even really need the thing you're theoretically buying. I don't think its fair to allow buying things that are otherwise trivial to get as counting as paying to win, because if it doesn't take real effort to earn its too weak of a definition of "win" to be meaningful.

I think you should at least make the hurdle something that otherwise takes significant effort to gain in-game, and that makes drawing the line tricky. You can't buy purples with merits. You can't buy PvPIOs with normal merits.

Another soft part of the definition has to do with what counts as "playing the game." If that's actually running around doing content, then the inventions you can get through merit purchases can also be gotten through marketeering relatively easily (you can also get purples and PvPIOs through marketeering, albeit with significantly more effort in some of those cases). Is it "playing the game" if I'm just logging in a couple times a week and trading the markets, but not playing the game if I buy and open superpacks and then spend my merits at the merit vendor? Depending on whether you allow the game to open them automatically or not, it can actually take *more time* to open super packs than to marketeer your way to an equivalent amount of currency. That makes that distinction very grey to me. Both activities are meta-games within the game. Is one preeminent over the other?