Arcanaville

Well, I never said that. I did think it was unlikely they would go all the way to the hybrid model, but something like it was probably inevitable.

Lifetime subscriptions are a great idea - for the players. Its a bad idea financially for Paragon Studios. The very fact that I would jump at the prospect is *why* I would advise Paragon not to offer them. In this case, good for me is bad for them, and bad for the game in the long run.

And every dollar they lose from a lifetime subscriber that hangs around forever is that much less content everyone gets, or that much more money they have to earn by shifting a higher percentage of the generated content from VIP-included to ala carte.

Doppleganger melee set?

Jurassik want to know why doze need two hands. Me still waiting for Buick/Shield combo.

The problem is overgeneralizing what is meant by "buying" something. There are people who think that when they bought City of Heroes itself they "bought" several dozen slots. But that isn't really true, and even if they did they didn't buy permanent *access* to them.

If I buy the Martial Arts pack now and then unsubscribe, do they take Ninja Run from me? Well, not really: all my characters still have it. I just can't log in. This distinction between access and ownership becomes especially blurry when it comes to things like the boxed expansions. Did we "buy" four slots per server with CoV, or did we just become entitled to access four more slots per server so long as we maintained a subscription.

This isn't so much a semantic quibble as it represents an inadequacy of simplified language. The bottom line is this, we used to have two axioms that worked pretty well to describe what happens to our accounts with regard to monetary transactions:

1. Once you buy it, the fact that you bought it stays on your account forever.

2. Once you stop subscribing, you lose the ability to log into your account.

Simple. Freedom changes the rules, and all statements by the devs must be interpreted within this new context:

1. Once you buy an account unlock, its unlocked for your account forever.

2. Subscribers have access to a subset of the content so long as they remain subscribers.

3. Non-subscribers have access to a smaller subset of the content automatically.

But just as now, to *use* anything you must both *own* it and have *access* to it. The problem is that what we get in City of Heroes Freedom is the *intersection* of what we have bought and what we have gained access to. If we bought Electric Control but not controllers, we still own Electric Control, we just can't use it. We may have "bought" the Incarnate system with Going Rogue, but we will only have access to it if we meet the requirements for access which at the moment seem to be either maintaining a subscription, or buying or earning an unlock of some kind.

Brian Clayton addressed this to a certain extent in his letter to the community and the ustreams touched on this as well, but the sign that this isn't a last ditch effort to save the game is that this has been in motion for a very long time. No one plans last ditch efforts that take over a year to implement. If they thought the game was on its last legs, taking a year to develop Freedom would have been too long: the game wouldn't be around or healthy enough to matter.

Second Measure mentions that Paragon Studios performed significant changes to their development structures to streamline themselves for the ramp up to Freedom, including the creation of strike teams internal to the company that were designed to focus on particular areas of the game. I know for a fact that was happening at the beginning of 2010 because I heard the term "strike team" that far back. So the seeds of Freedom go back at least that far.

With a launch date that is probably out in the September/October timeframe, that will mean that when City of Heroes Freedom launches, it will have been in development for about two years. Does that sound like an act of desperation?

There's no question that this is an attempt to grow the game. The devs have admitted as much that its hard for a seven year old game to grab mindshare and attract newer players. What we can do is retain existing ones with our seven years of content and depth of gameplay. So they see Freedom as a way to bridge that gap: get people interested in the game again and get people playing with a minimal barrier to entry. That's why free to play. That's why the game client will launch within a couple minutes of starting the installer - the idea is to get them in the game, quickly. Once here, the hope is the game will sell itself. Some will play for free forever. But I doubt many will. Many will become premium players, playing the game ala carte and coming and going casually because there's no money on the line if they take a break for a week, a month, or a year. Some will become VIP subscribers, and some of them will become long-term veteran players.

So its not like Paragon doesn't need Freedom to succeed. It does. I think they realize that something dramatic like this was the only way to grow and evolve the game. But the game doesn't need to have been *failing* for Paragon Studios to want to grow and expand the game. We don't even *consider* for one instant that Catalysm was a desperation move on the part of Blizzard, because we all know their Mr. T budget is probably higher than Paragon Studios' office lease. Most MMOs continuously try to push the boundaries of what they do, constantly try to figure out ways to attract new players to their game, and figure out ways to deliver newer and more interesting content. For some companies, and not just NCSoft, the Hybrid model is part of that overall strategy.

I think many people are operating under a curious fallacy. That fallacy is that either City of Heroes was successful, so Freedom wasn't necessary, or Freedom was necessary, so City of Heroes wasn't successful. In other words the only reason to transition to a Hybrid model is at the end of a gun. But that's very wrong. If you're going to do this, the time to start, and the time to launch, is when you are still strong. If you're weak when you launch, you may be too weak for the model to help you any more. And if you're weak when you start development, you'll be rushed to launch too early, before you have all the structures necessary to make it work, before you have a well thought out plan for what to sell, before you've stocked your shelves, before you figure out how to compensate your VIPs, and before you've generated enough related content to launch big, and loud, and in a way people will notice, and be attracted to actually try the game whether its free or not. Its no coincidence that Issue 21 is designed to be a very large issue, designed to update the introductory content from the tutorial through the low level mission. Its no coincidence the devs forced the NCSoft launcher on us, so that they could eventually move to the quickstart launcher that can get a new player in the game in a couple minutes. They aren't just opening the doors to free players, they are giving new players an experience worth trying out the game.


Why now, if this is not a desperation move? It was only a few years ago when some big names made this transition to the hybrid model of freemium buttressing the subscription model. Its taken that long for other companies to see the results of that transition, and try to learn what works and what doesn't. And now you're seeing the second wave of companies try to apply those lessons to their own games. NCSoft is one of them, but not the only one. Its happening now because to be honest, others have shown it can work. The trick for Paragon Studios is to make it work with their own unique circumstances and in their own way.

The canonical story from the bad old days was the Honeywells which used to be field upgraded to faster speeds by removing a jumper that introduced waits. And unfortunately even in my long but not that ancient career, I've seen examples of this sort of thing.

But that's not really relevant to this situation.

The problem with this theory is that you'll never find consensus on what a reasonable speed is to earn anything, so if the devs do the reasonable thing which is to pick a reasonable target in the middle and then offer optional ways to accelerate that speed for a price they feel is fair, there's no way to distinguish that from the more sinister motive of deliberately making the game slower than necessary for the sole purpose of selling accelerators. It is an unfalsifiable conjecture regarding motive.

However, it is theoretically possible to determine, by direct calculation of man-hours, how much resources go into subscription content and how much go into ala carte content not automatically accessible to VIP players. It is therefore both falsifiable in theory, and provable in theory, to state with no ambiguity that the players are getting more game in terms of actual development effort, and not tricks for their subscription dollars with the new model. In the absence of the raw data to perform that calculation, I'm going to estimate. I have several very strong bases upon which to extrapolate those estimates. Not everyone will accept those estimates, but that's not really particularly significant. The point is I will know if we're getting more or less game, within some margin for error, and everyone else will have to either accept that estimation or come up with their own. And then act accordingly.

Then they would be making twice the money for the same amount of content generation? If they can pull that off without a general revolt of the playerbase and without someone like me noticing they are a lot smarter than I am.

In any case, I can't make promises for the devs, and I can't honestly state I know with certainty what they will do in the future, or what they might be forced to do in the future. What I do know is that I looked Positron in the eyes and told him that's what I thought Freedom would need to do in order to be successful, and it needed to be done so obviously that everyone would be able to see it was true except for the extreme tin foil hat wing of the playerbase. The fact that he didn't burst into laughter I'm going to take as a sign that he didn't think what I was saying was absurd.

For me, the bottom line is that this is about value. Either I'm getting more value for my money or I'm getting less. If I believe subscribers are getting more value for their money in I21, I22, I23, and so on, I'll say so. If I believe they are not, I'll say so also and the devs know that my assessment of that will be a very informed one, since there's no quibbling with me over the amount of effort it takes to do different things. The Standard Code Rant doesn't apply to me, in other words.

The impression I got, from everyone I had a chance to talk to at Paragon about Freedom face to face, is that they believe this will open doors to expanding the game and delivering a better product to its subscribers as well as the premium players that the new model picks up. They could be wrong: it wouldn't be the first time. But I believe they are sincere, and I believe they are on the right track at the start. That's really all I can ask for from the development team.

And as I said previously, even if you are right it will take quite a while before we know that. The biggest problem with Issue 21 is that its going to set the bar pretty high for Issue 22. Only the most jaded and flippantly negative players are going to be able to say we aren't getting our money's worth and then some in I21. And my guess is that I22 has stuffed the pipeline with stuff as well. So if a drop off is coming, the earliest we're likely to be discussing it is sometimes around Spring 2012. And it would take at least until Summer 2012 to establish a trend. Long before then I think we'll know if City of Heroes Freedom ends up opening doors for the game to expand its footprint, resources, and development.

I think you misunderstand. I hope that my subscription buys at least as much game as it did before if not more, period. I expect my subscription to provide at least the same level of game as it has previously, and as a practical matter it should be at least minimally better.

Totally separate from that, the 400 points should buy me something nice, but it should be all gravy. If that gravy is a hearty wine reduction with garlic and shalots, fantastic. If its peppercorns and pan scrapings, its still all good.

The real purpose to the 400 points isn't a cash back reward. Its that actually, buying things ala carte can be fun, engaging, and empowering all its own. The 400 points is to ensure that VIP subscribers *also* have at least some access to that side of the house for no extra cost: that they can play with the house's chips as it were, to get them involved with the system. This is a form of empowerment that the premium players get automatically as part of satisfying their need to buy many parts of the game we VIPers get for free. But the devs want to get us involved as well - and to be honest hope we decide we *want* to buy some of the new shinies as well - so they comp us some chips to see what happens.

If you can exercise self-control, the 400 points will be free money. if not, it might be the loss-leader that gets players spending even more money. But either way, the choice is the players to decide what to do with it. But it is *not* supposed to buy what your subscription used to buy. Your subscription plus the 400 points should net to what you're getting now *combined* at the very least, and for this model to be truly successful your subscription alone, without even counting the 400 points, should continue to deliver $14.95 of content. The 400 points isn't supposed to be delivering $14.95 of content on top of the $14.95 you're supposed to be getting with your subscription, and it would be amazing bordering on ludicrous if it did.

You mean like the April Producer's Letter:

Or the May Producer Letter:

Or the fifty bazillion posts Jay makes in the art threads, which can't *all* be about incarnates, like:

I would hope my $14.95 is still worth $14.95, and my 400 points is worth a little bit more on top.

Many people tried many times to point out this apparent gap in your knowledge. You were simply highly resistant to being told this, or having this information pointed out to you. Its that resistance, not your lack of knowledge, that is the problem.

I accidentally blew the fact they were reorganizing into strike teams fourteen months ago (didn't seem significant at the time) and it was not a secret that the devs were working on I18, I19, I20, and I21 simultaneously. The closed beta structure of I19 in particular, which itself was discussed on the forums when it opened, basically outed that fact directly.

The information was here, on the forums, for anyone who was following along.

That doesn't mean I accept your premise that content in the last two years has significantly underperformed the historical average. Only that to the extent the devs' ancillary actions regarding the restructuring for Freedom were obvious, predicting them - or should I say postdicting them - is not noteworthy.

I wanted to be incognito, so I asked Second Measure if I could stand on his shoulder and watch from there. No one seemed to notice he had a shoulder ornament or the fact he was occasionally tossing bagels at it.

The Incarnate closed beta and the Freedom focus group were two completely independent things and the closed beta testers had no specific hint this was coming.

The Freedom focus group was selected to be a cross-sectional representation of the playerbase to gauge reaction and solicit feedback and critique from the player side.

Amazing what the devs can do in thirty days when they really put their minds to it, and relax the workplace drug use restrictions.

Yep. Galaxy City is *really* going to need a clean up crew now.

I know that their love for Mother means -they- -would- -not- -do- -this-!

When that random sample happens to be "everyone who randomly decided to play City of Heroes and roll blasters" kinda, yeah. Primarily because for everyone else on Earth collectively, the problems with playing blasters are mostly theoretical. Also because their performance problems would be much more difficult to datamine. Its possible that blasters are fine, just not for the specific group of people that happen to play City of Heroes, but that is a bit more existential than traditional analysis normally accommodates.

Any other questions?

I don't recall ever telling you that blasters have no trouble soloing in general. Its possible that in very specific circumstances I might have said something vaguely like that - for example, in my specific instance I don't have problems soloing blasters, nor do I personally have exceptional issues with them in high level content - but definitely not in general. I've been repeating the fact that the devs datamined blasters to be the worst soloers prior to the Defiance 2.0 buffs since I first discussed the matter with Castle, back when Blasters got the Defiance 2.0 buffs.

Anyone who has been reading my posts on the subject knows I've been extremely consistent in this regard. Back when the D2.0 buffs were being kicked around, Castle specifically said publicly that the reason Defiance was being reexamined was because of extreme performance problems datamined with blasters. There are limits to what I can say about my discussions with Castle, but I was allowed to repeat this statement which summarizes that discussion on the open forums at the time:

Blasters are the *only* archetype for which it is the case that *all* powerset combinations underperform the average performance of all players, whether solo, small teamed, or large teamed, at all combat level ranges. No other powerset combinations in any archetype underperformed as much as the worst blasters, no archetype had lower average performance, and no archetype had anywhere near the number of underperforming powerset combinations.

What's more, the *best* blaster powerset combination underperformed the average by a substantial margin: far outside any margin for error.

I know some of the numbers which I can't repeat, but we're not talking about something like three percent. They are numbers higher than levels of performance difference players complain about just on paper.


Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, computing performance averages isn't a statistical question when the devs measure everybody which it seems they did. Second, averaging normalizes those results. Third, the most logical reason for popularity shifts across higher combat levels would only serve to reinforce the numerical conclusion, if it was actually relevant at all.

The question I'm assuming you're probably referring to is the issue of self-selection. The players playing different archetypes might not actually have the same normalized skill level. But that would have the highest impact at the lower levels, not the higher ones. Shifts in skill would show a very strong counter-trend to the numbers, and at the performance gap values inherent in the numbers, that was extremely unlikely to be the case.


Mostly, I'm mentioning this for the people actually interested in a revisit of those facts, all of which were discussed at the time and several times after that. I'm not especially interested in quibbling with you about something you know nothing about and can contribute nothing interesting to. You're also not all that interesting as an antagonist really, especially when you quote me and point to it, and not only do I not see the point of the insult, I'm wholly convinced not enough other people will to make it worth my time figuring it out to respond. That's pretty much scraping the barrel of boring.

At City of Heroes, we match people based on deep compatibility, not just color schemes and hair styles, but true compatibility. Do you both hate knockback? Are you both badgers at heart? 29 dimensions: do you both like farming the same one?

Love is out there. And City of Heroes can help you find it. And immobilize and confuse it. And Assassin's Strike it if it gets too needy.

I was not informed of this.

Probably not. The last time hard data was looked at, Defenders were about average in solo performance, as measured by measuring actual player performance in-game. I know for a fact Blasters soloed slower, and I suspect tankers probably did as well. Both archetypes that received archetype-wide buffs directly related to their leveling bottlenecks: Blasters getting additional offense and mez mitigation with Defiance 2.0 and Tankers gaining additional solo damage with bruising.

I can't actually state that its impossible Defenders are now the lowest performing archetype, but to believe that you have to believe that D2.0 basically turned the entire blaster archetype around 180 degrees, and bruising accelerated the entire tanker archetype completely past defenders. And everyone else underperforming or performing comparably to defenders took an unexpected dive. The tanker assertion seems iffy, and the blaster assertion is virtually impossible given the performance gap that existed at the time.