Arcanaville

Z says VIPs will be able to ride Premium players, woo hoo!

You're not supposed to be leaking screenshots of the VIP server yet.

Longbow vs Plate Armor

Bottom line seems to be: longbow vs mounted knight = win for the longbow. Longbow vs dismounted knight = win for the knight, but at the cost of being virtually incapacitated by the armor and easy pickings vs anyone else.

There is a point beyond which no analogy should go. If you go three blocks past that and take a right, you'll see my house on your left.

That's actually a good point. Even when Alpha was originally intended to be part of I18/GR, it was called a sneak peek not the actual system. So the devs never actually said that buying Going Rogue was equivalent to buying the Incarnate system itself.

I also think I have a cleaner perspective on the difference between buying something and upgrading your subscription to access something after thinking about the discussion going on in the global slot thread. My best analogy on that particular point is here.

Maybe not after you see what everyone is wearing.

Masterminds would be a bank of Dance Dance Revolution arcade games that were very loud and bright, and shorted out the building's power when more than six people used them.

City of Heroes isn't really like any car, because its normally not the case that a car comes with independently accessible components.

Its more like a gym you have a membership to. This membership gives you access to everything at the gym. Then one day they add a VIP section to the gym with special equipment, and to use it you have to upgrade your membership for a one time fee.

Then one day they decide to allow anyone to come in and use a subset of the gym for free, without a membership. But that free section is limited to just a few things in the corner. At this point, if a VIP member decides to stop paying for their membership, its unreasonable to expect that they would have access to the free corner *and* the VIP section because they "paid for it." What they paid was to upgrade their membership. They still needed to continue actually paying their membership to access the VIP section. They didn't buy a permanent pass to the VIP section, they bought an upgrade of their membership. A membership they terminated when they stopped paying. Which made them no longer a member, and no longer able to access membership rights.

Some people think they are losing something, but those people are frankly lunatics.

More people seem to think they are not getting to keep what the devs said they could keep if they fall to Premium when Freedom launches, fully aware they don't get to keep that now. I'm much more sympathetic to that confusion because it is a new way of thinking about access rights to the game which the devs haven't really fully articulated the mindset of, although that sympathy extends primarily to attempting to clarify what the devs seem to be trying to say, not justify the results of what they are saying. The justification for what they are saying is that we're getting more than we do now under basically every possible scenario. Complaining about justification rather than explanation is looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I think that is being somewhat deliberately parsimonious in interpretation. While there are some corner cases here and there, the vast majority of the problem centers squarely on the fact that the rule "you keep what you bought" doesn't cover access because we've never actually had the opportunity or the right to buy access. Buying CoV did not purchase the right to play a mastermind, because that right came with subscription. It unlocked the ability to create one. It did not purchase the right to play it.

Because *no* player purchase *ever* covered access the rules for what we can and cannot access under Freedom don't trump the purchase rule. The purchase rule cannot ever actually apply to access.

Players currently associate access with "logging in." Its the moment you're turned away if you do not subscribe: you cannot log in and select a server. So people might be assuming that since Freedom now grants you that right, you're home free. There are no restrictions past that point: no gates past the one big gate, so once I'm past the sign in I should have access to all my characters on all my servers.

But Freedom doesn't give everyone the keys to that gate. Freedom *eliminates* that gate. Everyone can log in. Freedom *moves* the gates to the character slots themselves. Now, everyone can log in, but not everyone can access all their slots with every possible character they might have previously had the right to create. If you stop subscribing, some of the slots won't open anymore. Some of the slots won't open if they contain things you don't have the right to open.

If this is not obvious, neither is it as complicated as people seem to be attempting to portray it as. And its not arbitrary or unfair. Relocating the gates in this way is part of differentiating the resources available to free players, premium players, and subscribers. You could characterize that as just the devs having to make "something" off limits, but its not just randomly chosen for the sake of choosing something: its the most logical access right somethings to differentiate in a tiered hybrid system.

Well, can't say I didn't try. I'd recommend asking the devs directly, because only an answer from them will satisfy you, if that. While you're at it, mention your theory on what their business model entails, in spite of everything they've said about it. I think it would place your request into its proper context for them.

Actually, to be perfectly clear Zwillinger should answer the following questions yes or no, to avoid any further confusion.

1. Is the current base cost for a subscription per month increasing from its current value of $14.95?

2. Does that value pay for the same amount of time?

3. Is that time consecutive?

4. Are you authorized to answer questions about subscriptions?

5. Are you authorized to answer questions about what you are authorized to answer?

6. Will we be charged a transaction fee for processing our subscription?

7. Will the game client have a completely different usage fee?

8. Will the game add a completely different additional charge to access resources otherwise required to log into the game?

9. In all cases where the devs refer to "VIP status" is the VIP acronym referring to the same program, or are there multiple VIP programs all referred to by the same initials?

10. Have the devs placed superseding information in a location the playerbase has not yet discovered?

11. Is the subscription fee set by a completely separate entity other than Paragon Studios or NCSoft that is not required to honor the intentions of the developers or producers, making your answers void?

12. Are you, currently, someone who believes themselves to be Bizarro Zwillinger?

13. Do you know of any plans to apply diminishing returns to our subscription, such that it will take $23.74 to equal $14.95?

14. Have you verified that Positron, aka Matt Miller, has not been given access to the financial spreadsheets of the sales department?

15. In Zwillingese, does the word "subscription" have the same meaning as in standard American English?

16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard?

17. Will there be a penalty for paying in advance, and a separate penalty for paying late?

18. Is this offer only valid in Canada?

19. Do you plan on retroactively increasing the original subscription and charging customers the difference back to their original subscription date, making the subscription fee at Freedom release identical to the fee at launch?

20. Did you put answering this set of questions on your timesheet, forcing Paragon Studios to increase subscription fees to fund the time spent?

The term "hybrid model" is a term barely out of diapers, and it encompasses games with a subscription base and microtransactions coexisting. You can't make deductions simply from the use of the term. You seem to be suggesting that because the devs *call* the system a hybrid system, that *means* it focuses on the microtransactions as the primary source of revenue. What justifies that leap in logic?

The model isn't defined by what its called, its defined by what it does. If subscriptions were intended to be only a small part of the total revenue base and the focus was on microtransactions, there would be no need to make a program for specifically going out of their way to reward subscribers over and above premium players. In fact, that would be economically illogical: you'd be spending additional resources for less gain than focusing them on the microtransaction side of the house.

How are you going to know if the devs really are focused first on their subs and then second on their MTX population? Simple: see if the sub experience grows or shrinks. But you won't be able to tell in Issue 21. Issue 21 is far too packed with content: it honestly wouldn't be fair to judge sub content in Issue 21 because its going to be blockbuster huge. Issue 22 might be fair, but its also likely to still be heavily affected by the Freedom release pipeline. So it will be I23 when we will likely be able to judge if the devs are really supporting their subs strongly: it will be the first moment when they really show their true colors. Until then, subs will *definitely* see an improvement. We just won't be certain why.

But that's why all the doom and gloom is doubly dumb. Even if you think the devs are going to shaft the players, its stupid to predict they will do so immediately in ways the players will see. You're just going to destroy your credibility because the devs have stuffed the pipeline for the Freedom launch. The best even the strongest, but not brain-dead skeptics, should be saying is "you'll see, come late 2012, you'll see."

But I guess that doesn't really have the same punch, does it.


Since your assumptions don't match the devs' intentions, zero.

It is also possible it was not phrased in a sufficiently Asian manner.

You find it messed up that if you stop paying them money altogether, they will only give you access to most of your characters for free instead of all of them.

If you've been here long enough you'll be able to unlock MMs with the equivalent of veteran rewards, but lets set that aside for a moment. You think giving you *free* access to some, but not all of your characters, forever, without you having to spend a dime ever again, to be messed up. Because having access to most of the game completely for free is not enough.

Furthermore, even though there is going to be a way to pay a one time fee to unlock not just one of those masterminds, but all of them simultaneously which will then allow you to play all of *them* forever, without spending any money every again, that is too burdensome.

Is there something about your position I'm mischaracterizing or overlooking?

You're not willing to make a free account, spend like a buck or two and buy it a nice hat, permanently converting it to a premium account, and then use that to manage your personal SG?

That's also possible, but boooooring.

On the other hand, if they did do that, that means I can continue working on the mechanics for animation speed up for Martial Arts!

Just to be clear, I'm not asserting a success bias between offering and not offering lifetime subscriptions post launch. Games can be wildly successful both ways. What I *am* saying is that a wildly successful game that offers lifetime subs is more likely to be basing their business model on acquiring new players, not retaining old ones. They are relying on churn. Every lifetime sub that sticks around too long costs them money. To reverse that, the correct price to set for lifetime subs is a function of average retention, and the higher that is the higher the price has to be. A wildly successful game that refuses to offer lifetime subs is more likely to be basing their business model on retaining veteran customers than rapidly attracting new and limited lifetime customers. A lifetime sub is counter-productive in that environment.

I believe City of Heroes' core business model is still based around the long-term subscriber. That is where Paragon expects to get most of their money. The primary purpose to the freemium program is to create a constellation of players that they can market VIP access to.

That's in contrast to some other games where the freemium program appears to be the center of mass of the model, and subscription is really more of a bulk rate for ala carte gaming.

In theory both. In practice I'm not actually sure precisely what they did. I just know there are a couple of options available to them.

I can't answer that question.

Gotcha!

(I'm not really that cranky about Martial Arts. But don't tell the devs that.)

Incidentally, a while ago I said it was easier to make variable length animation powers than certain other things players were suggesting. I wasn't aware of this set when I said that, so I'm going to count that one as another win in the game mechanics column.

And yet another game mechanic that Martial Arts really should have gotten.

Well, yes and no. It depends on the return of those lifetime subscriptions.

Interesting comparison. We have Jack, quoted often as saying that the average MMO player plays for about a year and then moves on. And we have post-CoH Cryptic trying to develop multiple MMOs and selling lifetime subscriptions. The philosophy is obvious: the average player won't be around forever, so there's a break even point on lifetime subs, and if you charge a little more than that you can make more money, and also accelerate your cash forward. Also, if players are going to leave anyway, then you make more MMOs for cross-sell opportunities. They might leave one game, but you can try to sell them on the next game.

Then we have Paragon Studios, constantly harping on City of Heroes player retention rate. Suggesting that we have a better than average player account lifespan. And we don't sell lifetime subscriptions. That also makes sense: if you think your players stick around longer, and some will stick around literally forever, lifetime subscriptions are a losing proposition: the players most likely to want them are the ones that will most likely cost you money by buying them.

Selling lifetime subscriptions basically says this: we think the average player will play us for a year, maybe eighteen months, and then leave. Some of the players we sell lifetime subs to will stick around much longer than that, but the ones that don't will make up for the ones that do. It can also say that if most of our revenue is going to come from microtransactions anyway, whether we keep or lose the subscription revenue for players that stick around for years isn't as big of a deal either way.

City of Heroes isn't that kind of game, and it doesn't seem to be the perspective of the devs that the goal is to frontload revenue on the players. They hope to be making long term revenue streams from their players. If they want the long term player, and they are aiming for the long term player, and they hope to convert as many players as possible into long term players, then lifetime subscriptions don't make sense. The sub is worth more than that.

Counter-intuitively, the single lifetime subscription is a stronger indicator that the game might be thinking of nickel and dimeing you in the future. Because its a devaluing of the potential subscription revenue.

New players can join social networks. They just have to prove they won't abuse the privilege by making an investment in the game: either an investment of time or an investment of money. Once they've put down the security deposit, the doors to the social networks start to open.

Somehow, being called the most intelligent thing since baked dough doesn't sound like all that much of a compliment.