Arcanaville

No one seems very anxious, at least in the west, to abandon subscriptions. Subscription players tend to be longer term, more stable players, and they also represent one end of the value proposition that mixed ala carte play can contain. The hybrid models that most western MMOs are executing tend to have the same three basic tiers that City of Heroes Freedom has: completely free players, ala carte players, and subscription players (with ala carte options). It seems to be a psychological necessity in the west as opposed to Asian MMOs to have the subscription offering because it presents the picture that the ala carte option is not simply a way to charge more for the same content. With the subscription option in place, the subscription bundle acts as a psychological anchor for the rest of the game to be valued.

In other words, to put it simply the MMO culture in the west is such that committed players tend to want a fixed price for the base game and do not want to pay ala carte for everything. Less committed casual players tend to want the opposite: pay as you go, walk away at any time. The hybrid model does two things: it addresses both types of players, and it allows one type to switch gracefully to the other type and back without completely leaving the game.

You tend to get more money per player from the subscribers, but generally speaking you tend to get a lot more casual ala carte players which can significantly boost the revenue from them. Even Turbine sees two different things from their two different games: one seems to get more revenue from their ala carte players than their subscribers overall, while the other seems to get more revenue from their subscriber base than their ala carte players overall. It can be difficult to predict which way the ratio will go in different games, although there are generally hints which relate to the way the tiers preserve or dilute subscriber value.

I do.

Your opinion is contradicted by the fact that it actually was effective. Reality trumps opinion.

If that is your excuse I'm going to assume this is a blanket disclaimer.

Oh dear god I've been arguing against someone whose legal education comes from Cracked? That's what I get for falling behind on my reading.

Ok, the Cracked article gives two examples of this "crime." The first one was a prison guard who was arrested not for giving false information on a facebook profile, but for doing so while posing as another person without their permission. That would be fraud, and the Act covers using computer systems without authorization for the purposes of fraud. The underlying crime was the fraud: using a computer made it potentially a specific federal crime different from just simply impersonation.

The second case I'm going to quote the article:

Further:

When I sign in to the City of Heroes forums with an anonymous handle, I do so with the full authorization from NCSoft. Therefore, the Act doesn't apply.

Theoretically speaking, using a false name without authorization could be construed as unauthorized access, but a significant percentage of legal scholars, including Judge George Wu above, believe criminalizing that specific form of breach of contract without any other underlying crime is unlikely to be constitutional. The very case that Cracked links to sets legal precedent that interpreting US18 1030 as criminalizing violations of terms of service to gain access to a computer system without the furtherance of any other crime or fraud is invalid, because Judge George Wu explicitly stated in his opinion, there are really only two possibilities: *some* breaches of contract represent unauthorized access and criminalized under the statute, in which case the statute is unconstitutionally vague, or *all* breaches of contract represent unauthorized access and criminalized under the statute, in which case the statute is unconstitutionally broad.

I really hate it when people just make stuff up and want to push the issue. Ok, here are some numbers. They are not the only numbers out there.

This is pretty easy: you barely even need a calculator or anything.

Subscribers were projected to earn 1.75x the baseline subscriber revenue pre-hybrid over their lifetime
Ala carte players were projected to earn 0.70x the baseline subscriber revenue pre-hybrid over their lifetime.

Therefore, for the subscription players to be generating more revenue than the ala carte players over the long haul, the game would have to acquire no more than 2.5 times the total number of ala carte players as subscribers.

That seems highly unlikely, particularly given the numbers given for new players acquired. Now, perhaps Turbine's projections are wrong. However, I picked these numbers specifically because this is not just a reflection of what is happening, but also what they *believe* is happening. And its what they believe will happen that represents the reasons behind their business decisions. Presumably they made their Hybrid model conversion based on these assumptions or something similar, so they did so specifically because they believed they could extract at least as much if not more revenue from ala carte players as its subscribers.

That sounds like you're saying I would be violating the rule in that case, but you'd be willing to grant me an exception.

I would not honor a game design rule that required me to break it and then hope for an exception to be granted.

The question really isn't whether some people think they deserve access to incarnates in Freedom by virtue of having purchased Going Rogue. The question is why should any game designer honor a rule that binds them in that fashion when it basically reduces to the whim of the person interpreting the rule.

Given your rule, if I was an MMO developer and I decided to sell an expansion X that unlocked access to a zone, and then later decided to sell another expansion Y that unlocked a special feature in that zone, if I then say that expansion X is a prerequisite for the special feature but you still have to buy expansion Y to get it, you're saying I'm not allowed to do that by your rules of how MMOs are supposed to work; because the special feature is gated by and requires expansion X, then its a part of X by definition. I would be charging for the same feature twice. Furthermore if I decided to give away expansion X at a later date, I would be forced to give away the special feature because it was part of expansion X.

I would not consider myself to be bound to that rule myself.

It is perfectly clear cut. The law doesn't say that, period. Anyone who might think there is even a tiny chance that any reasonable person could interpret the law that way can stop worrying.

What happens if something has more than one prerequisite? If "the" prerequisite is the thing that actually purchased the item in question, what happens when there are two prereqs? Hypothetically speaking, how would you decide when you "bought" the thing then?

I should point out that Freedom is *not* the first time this entire subject was debated. It was debated *at the time* when the Alpha slot sneak peak was pulled from Going Rogue and people complained Going Rogue "promised" the incarnate system. The devs said then that incarnates were never officially part of Going Rogue. It cannot therefore be a surprise now that the devs are continuing to have the exact same position on incarnates and Going Rogue that they expressed before Going Rogue launched.

I'm slightly confused. Are you replying to your own post and strongly disagreeing with yourself? Because that's kind of what it looks like.

In any case, these forums are primarily for player discussion. Anyone who posts anything on these forums must expect to see people agree with them, people disagree with them, and people who just don't care. Every post is an invitation to the rest of the forums to comment. There's no such thing as a player dictating expectations for replies to a thread. When that happens, one of two things tends to happen: a ton of backlash posts, and the deafening silence of absolutely no one replying. Personally, I've always thought the latter looked more depressing than the former.

However, no one has the legitimate expectation or the right to demand that only people who agree should reply.

I hate it when people just make up stuff like this. There is no US law that makes it illegal to use pseudonyms, anonymous handles, or even fictional names and identities on the internet. The act in question above deals with unauthorized access to computer systems that lead to unauthorized access to protected government systems, certain classes of protection financial and other information, damage, and the furtherance of acts of fraud. It says nothing about anonymous access to the internet, nor does any other US law have any provision that could be interpreted in that way.

Not if we are getting more value for our money than before, and the value add proposition is equal to or higher than our original subscription value. The one is not tantamount to the other.

My forum handle has been stealth-shortened.


I'm being screwed. This is a slap in the face. This is not the way...

The correct argument against the notion that selling incarnate access would cause people to stop subscribing is that its hyperbole and no one thing is really capable of doing that extreme thing. However, because its irrelevant to the question of whether its a good idea or not, arguing against the point directly takes the bait of transferring the discussion to a point where its impossible to make any logical progress on any reasonable point regardless of the outcome.

Whether its a good idea or not depends less on if, and more on how. But its a true statement that allowing ala carte purchase of the incarnate system is a significant erosion on the exclusive benefits of VIP subscribers. There is no one specific point you can point to and say with any confidence "up to this point its ok and then past this point its bad." The problem is the first sign you'll have that you've gone too far is when you've irreparably damaged the game, and then its too late to say oops.

If you've been here as long as you say, you know that if we lost all the players implied by all the players that said all the players they knew were dropping like flies, we'd currently have negative forty thousand players by now.

Apparently, according to the forums I'm not.


I'm being screwed. This is a slap in the face. This is not the way to retain me as a customer. Other people became VIP through much less effort. The devs don't listen. Don't pee your yellow name down my back and tell me its raining. This should have been included in Going Rogue. This is just a naked attempt to squeeze more money out of me. Other MMOs would have made me a VIP by now. The community team should be ashamed. I deserve a refund. This is like buying a sink and then one day the sink needs a new drain stopper because the peel from the banana split you ate yesterday got stuck in the screen but now your cable company wants to charge you for ESPN 3 and you won't be able to watch Jamaican hockey because you spent all your money on a new drain stopper and its all Home Depot's fault.

They are examples of systems that worked, but given some of the problematic elements of them they are not specifically good examples of model solutions to the explicit conflicts between subscribers and ala carte players, specifically because handwaving away the problems with retaining subscribers as efficiently as possible is incompatible with Paragon Studios' goals for the game, and counter to the best interests of most of the current subscribers of this game along with them.

Task forces can now be run under "challenge conditions" where you are debuffed or you can't use temp powers or you have a time limit of some kind. Some high level task forces offer a badge for running them under a certain set of challenge conditions: specifically no temp power usage (for example, no Warburg nukes and no Bloody Bay Shivans) and no deaths allowed. These badges are called Master of X badges: i.e. Master of Statesman Task Force, Master of Lord Recluse Strike Force, Master of Lady Gray Task Force.

Since the critical issue of a Master Of run is no one can die, the requirements on each player's skill and build are significantly higher. And each task force has its own strategies for the best way to overcome the most challenging part of the task force most likely to cause death. For example, in the Lord Recluse Strike Force at the end you face a bunch of Heroes (AVs) simultaneously. It is virtually impossible to pull them apart consistently and facing multiple ones simultaneously greatly increases the chances of death. So one way to greatly simplify a Master of LRSF run is to have a perma-dom mind control dominator that can keep the entire group of Heroes permanently asleep, while the rest of the team then engages the Heroes one at a time.

That makes perma-dom mind dominators a common requested specific player for those runs. And since part of the requirement for this tactic is perma domination and that requires a substantial amount of global recharge buff, it requires a dominator that is significantly IOed out.

I should mention, in passing, that a perma-dom mind dominator is one of the cheapest "ultra-high performance" builds you can make, because mez IOs tend to be cheaper than offense or defense ones (Basilisk being the exception) and purple mez sets tend to be far cheaper on average than most purple sets. You're still talking about a circa billion inf build, but compared to what it takes to make a maximal brute farming build or a maximum offense/defense scrapper or a range-capped high offense blaster, its not that expensive in the grand scheme of min/maxing.


I should point out that other than that one mind dom, everything else can be just reasonably good, although one really strong tanker or brute (or lots of defensive buffs) is also very helpful. I actually got MoLRSF on a blaster that wasn't range capped or anything stupidly powerful, and given how that run went I could have easily gone in with an SO build without being a detriment to that team.

Its interesting to me how obvious the reason for going hybrid is everything except what Paragon actually stated the reason to be, which was to grow the playerbase and provide options for people to buy the game in increments, some of which would pay less but continue to play at a lower level, and some of which would continue to subscribe and pay more than they did originally for more game enhancements than could originally be supported.

I say its interesting because that would seem to be the only sane reason to switch models to me, and yet that plain, bland, simple reason just doesn't seem to have enough cloak and dagger for many people who think there just has to be a more interesting insider reason.

They were looking for ways to monetize the game, and the hybrid model offered them one. They then set about to create one that would allow them to do the two things all game developers want to do: make more money, and make more game for their players. It is, after all, their job to make game bits. Anything which would allow them to make more game and make more money and give the players better overall value would be a win/win/win.


This general dismissal and disbelief in the statements of the devs when they are blatantly obvious is odd to me. Even if you assume that the people making the decisions like Brian Clayton and Matt Miller and Second Measure are acting 100% in self-interest, they don't make a percentage of the grosses like Steven Spielberg. There are only two ways for them to improve their own causes: keep the game profitable so they will still have jobs next year, and make the best game possible so that when the day comes to move on their resume will look good. But they get no additional benefit from the game making more profit than necessary to keep it alive, so its actually in their best interests to spend as much money as possible making as much game as possible, because in the long run they will not be getting jobs because of NCSoft's profit margin. They will be getting jobs based on the work they did. The more of it, and the better it was, the better for them.

Why would they do less than they could? Why would they specifically try to make more money than necessary for NCSoft when every dollar they spend on us - provided the game remains profitable in general - helps us and helps them, and every dollar they save helps NCSoft and no one else. No one is going to hire Positron because of his ability to squeeze money out of our pockets. That's not his job. They are going to hire him to make games, and every day of City of Heroes' existence has been a job audition for him. This is the body of work he'll one day be judged upon. Not whether he engineered a way for me to buy more costume sets.

I'm sure NCSoft has some sort of profitability target for Paragon Studios, and its their job to try to hit it. But why should anyone think for even two seconds that anyone at Paragon Studios wants to do anything but spend as much money as possible making games, and in the process making stuff for us. Everything they make for us is good for them. Every missed opportunity to make a better game for us hurts them *personally* in the long run.

I'm not so naive to think that my interests and their interests always coincide. But they generally do when it comes to trying to make a quality game, because I want one and they have to be able to claim to have made one. We may disagree about the details, but not the general motivation. So when they say, yes, we want to make more money but we want to do it by making more game and selling it to a larger audience, why that seems to be a cover story of some kind to so many people is really bizarre to me.

Not here.

Fair enough. I think the overall combination of how this game manages powers and archetypes, including respec, is reasonable, but more importantly that's why we have different games: different games will appeal to different people. The same thing is true with archetypal limitations: CoX and CO prove you can build two different games with the opposite design philosophy here and you will find neither to be considered universally superior to the other among all players of both games. That's primarily a matter of personal preference: I can explain what effect the design choice has on different preferences, but not why people prefer the two choices: its just personal.


On the other hand:

This falls more under an objective statement, and my experience observing and assisting other players is that City of Heroes is on the low end of the difficulty pool.


Some people have mentioned Guild Wars. That game is substantially different from most MMOs including this one in that the PvE game is subservient to the PvP game. The level cap is low and easy to reach, the PvE game is mainly there as a past time when not PvPing, and characters are essentially PvP weapons. In such an environment the notion of alting and PvE replay value are far lower than in City of Heroes. Here, the game is designed around the foundational principle that your *build decisions* are actual game play; they have consequences the player has to deal with no different than combat or mission completion. Respecs offer a balance between being permanently locked into a build and having unlimited discretion to change things in that environment that is not necessary in GW. That's what makes GW predominantly irrelevant as an example for respec for games more like CoX. The attitude towards respec evolved in GW in a certain way because of their focus, and not just because of an arbitrary realization that was a universally better way to deal with respecification.

Honest mistake: you should have said your marriage was ten awesome years for him.