Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Pauper

As far as I can tell, this is exactly what happens.

- If you have tier 5 Paragon Rewards, masterminds and controllers are unlocked as a premium player anyway.
- If you don't have tier 5, but you created a controller or mastermind when you had access to it (as pre-Freedom subscriber or VIP), you retain access to that character when going premium if that's one of the slots you have unlocked at premium.

If you're not tier 5, all that happens when you go back to premium is that you lose the ability to create new controllers or masterminds until you re-up VIP or reach tier 5. I guess I don't see this as a huge problem.

And as an aside, I seem to see this other misconception all the time -- the 'game is balanced for SOs' is interpreted as 'I can play this game at whatever difficulty setting I want'. That's simply not true. Sure, a kitted-out toon can probably play at seriously bumped difficulty from a fairly early level, but if you're going with just SOs, assume that your default difficulty should be +0/x0.

--
Pauper

Originally Posted by Gemini_2099

IO's will have to given away if they plan on putting in place instant snipes. IO builds can be more powerful than SO builds, but this is the first time where the power will function differently because of that difference. Instant snipe is very binary in that you either meet the tohit requirement or you don't. Most SO builds will never be able to reach instant snipe unless in highly situational team settings with certain pairings/compositions.

VIP system is about Incarnate content. Tying it to IO system was, and still is a mistake, because the IO system genesis was based on having to nerf the game across the board to make room for IO's.

Originally Posted by Gemini_2099

If we are to use such rudimentary logic:

P2P no sub fee = Can't play
F2P/Freemium = Both IO builds are greyed out obviously can't play either.

Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU

One thing that i have noticed, is that the fantasy MMO about a ring has locked character classes.

No big surprise there.

However, to actually create said class, you needed to have the expansion already, and if you dropped down to premium status you *still* kept the ability to play them if you chose to unlock the character slot.

Ok, no real big deal.. however, if you were a returning player, it is much better to do something this way. You already bought the box/expansion, then unsubbed and now want to come back... Unlock the character slot and away you go!

Brilliant for the returning vets of the game, you paid for it, you keep access to it (with the character slot restriction of course... but that is a slightly different matter).

My 1st 5 characters in City of Heroes were 4 Controllers and a Peacebringer (honestly, they were!). My *only* City of Villains were a dominator and a Mastermind.

I have bought City of Heroes Deluxe edition, City of Villains Collectors, and Going Rogue Digital (no box set for EU account holders BOOO!).

IF i hadn't already been subbed long enough to already have them unlocked in the Paragon Rewards tree, i would have 1 valid character to play. Just the one. So in my mind, you are *not* keeping what you have already paid for.

Sure I could also drop £8.99 for the month to get my feet wet again with everything unlocked, but then it defeats the purpose of returning on a premium account.

Some people *like and enjoy* playing one archtype. For me, that is the controller... i love playing it. Other classes do not fit right to me. Tried them, got bored with them quite rapidly. I can play on my fire controllers all day long though.

The IO side is *slightly* annoying, but I did make my IO build a secondary one so I still have my primary SO build available.

Sure, i could spend 1200 points (non sale price) on unlocking Controllers or masterminds. Might as well drop the $15 to sub for that, and see if the game is ok.

The *current* setup is totally fine for *new* players to the game, but the returning Premiums are finding themselves in a slight problem of finding themselves locked out of stuff that they have already paid for (Masterminds/Controllers)... and if the returning player *cannot* play their old characters then they are going to be more pissed off (HEATS/VEATS are different, because you had to unlock them in game, so you already had a character at a certain level... sucks if it was a controller/mastermind though)

Originally Posted by Siolfir

I somewhat agree with the OP - I felt (and argued during the Freedom feedback threads) that there should at the least be a one-time per-character IO unlock for 400-800 points that would allow someone who was coming back to play a character or two that didn't want to have to keep up a subscription to spend a small amount to permanently be able to use IOs on that character.

When you come back you're already losing a lot of alts, so why should you have to subscribe to get the ones you selected to keep? Because an IO license is a subscription, it's just a lower-cost one that doesn't get you nearly as much and once you start getting IOs by using the subscription they shut off if you ever let it lapse until you're tier 8, so you're almost locked into it.

I still feel that way, despite my account currently having access to IOs whether I'm paying for it or not. It's also one of the reasons that I was unable to convince a friend who had left the game to come back and even try it as a premium - she didn't want to have to rebuild her favorite characters after finally getting the IOs the way she wanted them. There's a sentimentality from returning players about their characters that is being ignored in the hucksterism of "just pay ($5-$15) every month and you can play the way you remember!" attitude.

Originally Posted by Gemini_2099

If you can't play the way your character used to play you lose attachment of that character, and you lose the appeal of playing again.

If you can't even play at all (both IO builds are greyed out) that is even worse.

Originally Posted by Gemini_2099

If both builds are IO'd that isn't happening.

Like I said, the #1 reason for returning players to be turned off is they can't play with their IO builds, and a respec isn't available to turn one of the builds into an SO.

Originally Posted by Captain-Electric

Well, okay, that all sounds reasonable. Though I wouldn't ever worry about, say, Steam replacing the NCSoft Launcher. I've seen that concern crop up quite a bit in this thread and I just don't think it would ever be worth worrying about. Sure, I've seen new games built for Steam; but Steam has never replaced a pre-existing game's launcher that I'm aware of.

I got into my first MMORPG as soon as there was an MMORPG to subscribe to. I have been paying attention to the genre or industry or whatever for well over a decade. Oftentimes we, as players and fans, misinterpret the strategies of the studios. In cases where Steam wasn't in the pipeline at all and the chances for it were completely void, community reps at other studios have generally (but not always) been forthcoming with their communities about it. If Steam integration was in the pipeline, or was at the very least under consideration, we wouldn't know about it until it was real close to happening; and the pipeline can be long and slow at studios that don't crunch (boy have I learned to prefer studios that don't crunch).

I guess, what I'm saying is that none of what we've seen so far says anything definitive, or even close to definitive, to me, being someone who has read a lot of threads on a lot of forums for a lot of MMOs. People have made assumptions based on circumstances that weren't STRICTLY influenced by CoH's management, and weren't tinged at all by the fact that Paragon Studios wisely doesn't discuss the long-term when it comes to overarching business strategies.

I'd much rather have read along as people typed about what they would like to see if Steam integration happened, and what they would wish not to see; suggestions for compromises that would make the mictrotransactions more palatable to a larger number of folks. There is some of that here, but probably not enough to count as good feedback.

Originally Posted by Tenzhi

I presume that the people who make such decisions are in a better position than most (or all) of us to make an informed decision about whether CoH can or should be on Steam. I don't think there's any information we can give them that they don't already have access to on such matters. Steam isn't exactly a secret internet novelty these days. Thus, when it starts sounding to me like some grandiose Pros-n-Cons pitch to the devs I feel compelled to point out that it has already crossed their minds (and, for whatever reasons, was ultimately rejected).

I don't have an axe to grind here (if there were a suggestion that CoH be *solely* available through Steam then I would), or an argument to win.

How "cool" it would be to have CoH on Steam is entirely subjective and relies on a lot of supposition. *If* it brought in some decent players, that could be cool; but if there was more chaff than wheat it might be more of a detriment. If it brought in more money which allowed the devs to make even more new items, that could be cool; but if many of those items were Steam exclusives it would absolutely suck. It's hard to have an opinion on shaky ground like that. I can give reasons why I currently don't use Steam, many of which boil down to the fact that it's basically useless to me, but they may be moot in the bigger picture. ::shrug::

Originally Posted by TwilightPhoenix

But yeah, however much anyone has spent on CoX before it went free to play is seriously irrelevant. If anything, it can easily be argued you got the massive perks of having 6+ years of exclusive access, possibly including stuff such as events that may never be repeated (like the Rularuu invasion) and able to provide feedback to help shape the direction of the game before Freedom launched. Free players don't have that and never will. And it's really besides the point regardless.

Originally Posted by TwilightPhoenix

Yes, that would be deciding that the game is worth returning to and worth spending $5 every two months for points for the IO license or for a VIP sub every month in the current situation.

Not being able to try out my unlocked characters as I used to play them considerably deters me from being able to make a proper decision to do so, especially with the default option being "go elsewhere" if I end up lacking sufficient information. Things they could do to improve that are mentioned here, but that doesn't solve anything right now and I doubt any staff are reading this topic anyway.

Originally Posted by DarkGob

Because if there's one area of the CoH UI that's not cluttered, it's the power trays.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Phil's Power Pool Pre-release Promotional Preamble is Pending for Prime Paragon Public Production?

Originally Posted by Oathbound

I don't get how it really makes a difference.

It's an entirely meta change. It doesn't change your Fire Blaster to a Heat Blaster. Your powers and powersets are virtually untouched.

You're still burning your foes exactly the same as always.




Which, conversely, is exactly why I don't see the need to change it in the first place. It's an entirely superfluous alteration that has trivial effect at best on game play or enjoyment. Seriously, if you can suspend disbelief enough to let you "arrest" a purse snatcher with a battle axe, you can suspend disbelief enough to accept that hot water does fire damage.

Originally Posted by Android_5Point9

It didn't support f2p titles around the time CoH's conversion was announced, iirc. Very shortly after and by the time it launched it did though.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle

Again, this is not how steam works. Steam does not take a cut of all future revenue from games sold there, steam does not require that every game it sells have steamworks integrated. Steam is not the mafia.

Originally Posted by Desi_Nova

it seems like the most vocal anti-steam people are the ones that are against any form of DRM. Sadly, DRM is a reality today it's just a matter of whether it's something that does a quick check in or must have a consistent Internet connection even for Single player mode (like D3)

Originally Posted by BlackSun17

Update - A new Marvel book will be relaunched each week from October 2012 to Februar 2013....

Originally Posted by _Pine_

Quick Commenting on the video without reading yalls posts:

This seems like a definitive proof that Power Creep is not happening in the game. Especially since things like Fire Armor, Invuln, Elec, DA, Stone, as well as Dark Melee, Fire Melee, Katana, Fire Blast, and other sets that are almost as old as this game (older than 'newer' stuff) are still considered great and even sometimes better than some of the newer stuff. (Dual Pistols, Beast Mastery and Staff Melee anyone?)

New sets have ADDed to the game without making the old stuff obsolete. In fact, besides the two level 40 trials, Eden and Sewers, and Regen I cannot think of too many things that were once really awesome to now being meh and even bad. (Titan Origin Enhancements anyone? Who wants to pay me 5 mil for mine?)

You _could_ say that IOs made SOs obsolete, but all the Free to Play people need em, as well as people who are leveling often use SOs over IOs.

Perhaps FBZ content not being done at all anymore... though, was it ever really popular?

That is my take on the fabled Power Creep. I just don't see it.

Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane

Indeed. I supported this game across multiple accounts for years. At times, I gave more than my share of $15 a month.

The Paragon Rewards program doesn't even count that, not that I'd expect it to. But really, with the amount of cash some players have sunk into the game over the years, they should be getting more.

At the very least, what I coughed up should grant me a direct line to Positron's phone to regularly call him at home at 3:00am and nag him about Tankers.


.

Originally Posted by Snowzone

This may come as a surprise to some people, but those four roles aren't exactly the most moral. I seriously doubt con artists care whether they offend people or not just as long as they get the job done.

Stop complaining that you're being forced into playing something immoral - villains have to pretend to be heroes in normal content so why can't heroes pretend to be villains in something which is obviously not that serious.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

I'm always sort of astounded by threads like this, in that so few people evidence any ability to think conceptually or burrow underneath the surface of an issue.

"the game is easy so who cares!"
"why do you care if I have fun!"
"I can do all that stuff anyway, it's just more annoying and tedious, so what's your point!"

In the interest of not getting Geko's very enlightening thread sent to the Elephant's Graveyard I'll leave it at that.

Here's hoping 'everyone' is right and they don't overreach on this.

Although in this instance history is not on 'everyone's' side.