Brillig
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Posts
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Quote:Look at the first graph Father Xmas posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...68#post4410268Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
I can't remember where I read it now, but Paragon had started hiring again about a week before the news came down. Furthermore, War Witch is quoted as saying "We were doing so WELL!" in response to the news.
If there were signs, Paragon missed them, too.
The blue line is CoH revenue for the trailing 4 quarters.
If you can look at the blue line and think that the business was going well, I don't know what else to tell you.
This is why I've said repeatedly that if the Paragoners were caught by surprise, then they weren't paying attention to how their business was going. Neither GR nor Freedom were able to stop the decline. The only thing that they really had going for them was the secret project. -
Quote:No. $10 million/year is revenue, not profit.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
So while it is clear that COH was not a huge money maker (reports have it at 10 million per year),
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Google translate says "Wait til I foreclose on your house! #StupidCOHPlayers"
(or just use Chrome) -
Quote:Well if profit seeking killed CoH, then the original problem is with the developers who wanted to get paid for their work. They should have just developed and run the game for free for everyone.Originally Posted by Torment And Agony
Guild Wars 2 - excellent point and you are probably correct there.
Whether one owns 90% or 0.00000001% does not make anyone less culpable. All 100% combined are seeking the same goal - profit. -
Quote:I don't remember where I first found out about basic CO mechanics. It may actually have been from reading the manual.Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
At the risk of sounding ignorant, I will ask: what the hell is that, even? Where is it? I dont even know where that is.....
This game gives you NO basic tutorial. I looked around on their forums, and every tutorial I can find is about crunching high-level numbers or what have you - there is nothing for people coming in on the ground floor, who don't know anything.
The only thing I remember being told about in the "tutorial" was blocking. That is NOT MUCH. they don't tell you how to level up, I was in the tutorial and had no idea how to get out, or even when that would happen.
Perhaps I am spoiled: in CoX the tutorial spits you out in front of a trainer, and tells you to go talk to them. I was level 5, running around the beginner zone wondering Who do I talk to, to level!?
Turns out you DONT level in there, but a little info would have been nice so people know what to do next. I am aware that all this makes me sound of small intelligence, but many of us without a lot of non-CoX MMO experience are doing a bit of flailing, I think.
Anyway, your energy bar has a point to which it'll naturally end up when out of combat. That equilibrium point is based on one of your stats (Recovery).
Each power framework also has an Energy Builder attack (it's the first power you get).
A list: http://championsonline.wikia.com/wiki/Energy_Builder -
Quote:Use your energy builder.Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
Not to mention my endurance bar regens to only just over half full, even just standing around much less fighting - and I have no idea how to fix this. I just dont have the sheer endurance to take on bosses just now. 5 hits and I am out of blue bar and dead.
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Quote:You keep missing the point. It takes two to dance. The big guys can't buy out the small guys if the small guys don't sell. And now, with the internet, the big guys don't control the distribution channel any more, so it really is a choice.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Artists flocked to where they could get a paycheck. It was not their fault the large corps. eliminated niche opportunities at every turn.
Kickstarter, crowd funding etc. are great to get started, but as most small music publishers found out, if you want to go beyond a certain small niche, you must at some level get in bed with the big guys.
Also don't forget the factor that sees small niche companies reach a certain level then the big guys come in and buy them out and ***** it all up again. Until I see "that" trend change I don't see any difference. The small guys always sell out to the big guys for the money and then the big guys ***** it up.
And as for the artists needing a paycheck - well, there's a reason why the phrase "starving artist" exists. Again, their choice. If you want to get a regular paycheck for your art, then that's a choice you make. Alternatively, you can get a mundane 9-5 and work on your art in your spare time. But no one is being forced to work for a corporation at gunpoint. This ain't Shadowrun. -
Quote:Except that this change could not have happened without the willing cooperation of the artists, who flocked to the big publishers/distributors in order to make the big money.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Artistic endeavors survived quite nicely in various niche's until the modern day suit/money trained corp. types took over with the increasing revenue and MAXIMUM bottom line mentality.
I couldn't disagree more. The advent of crowdfunding has made funding for niche projects a reality. Cloud computing has eliminated one of the biggest barriers to entry for online gaming by making it possible to pay for cycles on demand and cutting out one of the biggest costs of the online game - the datacenter.Quote:We will be lucky to see anything unique in the future. Very lucky....
People are still figuring out how to work in the new reality, but this could be the beginning of the golden age of online gaming. -
Quote:Because the actual cost of selling CoH (when you add together due diligence, contracts, releases, etc...) is going to be in the low six figures.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Why would they decline any offer?
An offer of $50 is $50 more than the IP/game is going to make them just sitting there.
This is not selling a used bookcase to the guy down the street. -
Quote:In what warped dimension do you imagine I care if you believe me?Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
I got a PM saying that you are lying about your PM...of course I won't post it out of courtesy...
See how that works...ANYONE can say they got a PM! WOOHOO! -
Quote:I won't give details because the information was sent to me under PM, but the 'small studio' that was talking to NCSoft - well, while their offer to talk may have been made in good faith, I found a number of red flags that would likely have turned NCSoft off considering it a serious offer.Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
Depends on how we define 'serious' and who may have actually been looking. I read Mercedes Lackey's requirements for investing over at Titan, and I start seeing seven-eight figure numbers in my head. We're talking major serious money. Its not just buying the IP, there's a metric buttload of legalese and other obligations to cover, and then you have to finance migrating City from NCSoft to the new publisher. New servers, new market, replacement staff, etc. And remember that all of this is for a game that may never see $10 million annual in revenues again.
Our best hope has always been to get someone like GamersFirst to take a flyer on Paragon, but as of now that disappointingly doesn't seem to be the case. :/
But you're right also in the costs involved. Just transfering the property over to a new owner is likely a seven-figure process, and then the new owner has to get everything set up and running? This is why the Paragon Studios folks had the best shot, as they had the inside knowledge to run the process smoothly. -
Quote:Maybe you should wait to make those predictions until those properties aren't making massive amounts of money.Originally Posted by DarkCurrent
Ok, so WoW is going to close at some point.
GW2 is going to close at some point.
And when those announcements come in the future I can claim to be as prescient as you. And I can tell their respective communities to just accept that it was going to happen and they should have known better.
And here's my evidence when it happens:
http://investor.activision.com/events.cfm
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx#none
Wait until WoW has under 100,000 subscribers and stays there for two years.
Wait until Blizzard goes two years with no new products or expansions.
Then you can make that kind of a prediction.
Or you can do it now and be a pancake.
ça m'est égal. -
Quote:It really doesn't matter what you intended. It wasn't an investment (other than perhaps an emotional one.Originally Posted by Minotaur
It is an investment of sorts, I put my money into NCSoft to get back something more valuable (to me) at a later date. While this is conventionally more money, it isn't in this case, I bought the points to pump my second account up the "veteran" levels with the intention of using the points to buy stuff at sale prices later meaning I was going to get more for my money later, having the same effect as making it grow.
He's pretty clear when he says they're reverse-engineering the server. This is well after the character exporter was made, so it wasn't about that.Quote:This I don't fully understand as the only reverse engineering I see going on is in 2 parts, one thread which is basically "what bits can we legally take that aren't owned by NCSoft" like some of the fonts, and a possible attempt to archive the costume pieces (which can be done by screenshotting rather than PIGG diving) with the intention of making their own graphics rather than using the NCSoft ones, but trying to cover a lot of the same ground and using them as an aide-memoire. I don't know if you count their program to export the characters as reverse engineering, I can't make up my mind about that.
Perhaps negotiate is the wrong word, but in the OP, TonyV refers at least five times to communicating with NCSoft or NCSoft communicating with him.Quote:And you assume Titan wants to negociate with NCSoft. They don't really, and are as I said NOT looking to buy it themselves (although that may have been the case in the early days). The goal is to persuade NCSoft to sell it by a variety of creative but legal means, but preferably to some people who know what they're doing and can hit the ground running. -
Quote:Oy.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
In a world of "Save our game" you shouldn't be an outward jerk when someone calls you on holding the "why bother" flag. I understand your arguments logically. But please, don't lump this entire forum into some crowd you want to condemn just because people don't share your view.
Again.
I'm not saying "Why bother."
I'm saying "You're doing it wrong."
I'm saying "TonyV is a bad standard bearer if you want to negotiate with NCSoft."
I'm saying "If you want to negotiate with NCSoft, have a better story than: 'a few people are really upset!'"
And the fact that you think I'm the jerk here just goes to prove how narrow-minded this "community" is. If the community doesn't want to be lumped in to one category, maybe they should stop acting like a cult. -
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Quote:Now you're just being a pancake.Originally Posted by DarkCurrent
So you knew the closure was going to be announced Aug 31? That the I24 development was just NCSoft pissing money down the drain?
When did you post this knowledge? And what is the evidence of which you speak?
Please confirm my ignorance.
The fact that I knew the game could be closed at any time, and in fact was on its last legs, doesn't mean that I had some Kreskin-like ability to know what the precise date was.
And I'll point out that every active MMO is undergoing continuous development. That means that when the closure of an MMO is announced, there are always features and updates being worked on, and plans well into the future. If those things weren't true, it'd be complete negligence on the part of the developer team.
As for posting this knowledge, there's no point of doing so. Shouting 'the game is dying' on the forums runs the risk of being a self-fulfilling prophecy. And besides, there were people doing that already (pretty much since launch).
Here is the evidence of the lack of growth you asked for: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx -
Quote:Cool, once again we find that "troll" is the same as "person whose facts I can't deal with" on this board.Originally Posted by Minotaur
Brillig, please stop trolling these threads with dubious facts at best.
Go ahead. Prove that NCSoft made no effort.Quote:Originally Posted by Minotaur
1. NCSoft made no effort to find out whether a number of the efforts to rescue the game were serious. Titan haven't made an effort to buy it out themselves because they wanted Paragon to have a go which occurred and some negociations did happen. Information (due to NDAs) is very scant but several other bids from consortia and studios are rumored, only one enquiry confirmed from a small studio that didn't even get a reply.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Yeah.
I already told you why "one enquiry confirmed from a small studio" doesn't constitue a serious discussion. Unless your name is Gabe Newell or Bill Gates, you'd better have your financial backers and business plan lined up before you're considered serious.
Absence of contrary evidence doesn't prove anything.Quote:Originally Posted by Minotaur
2. CoH must have been profitable purely on the basis that in the announcement of the closure there was no mention of disappointment with its performance or unprofitability, which there was with AA and TR. It may not have been very profitable, but if it wasn't profitable, they'd have said so. Anecdotal evidence of profitability only although has been confirmed off the record by Paragon people. Do you think Paragon would have tried to take it on if it wasn't profitable ?
And I note that nothing you said makes CoH significantly profitable. I like how you ignored that part.
That's not an investment. Go learn what an investment is, eh? If you buy arcade tokens for your local arcade and they close, you didn't invest in them. You purchased a virtual currency. You paid for a service. You may have a case to get a refund for services not provided, but that's not an investment.Quote:3. The community has invested. It was mentioned a LONG time ago that purchasing over and above the subs = new content. People who bought costume packs pre-freedom invested, and people who bought points as I did and had 6K unused have invested in the game and not got a return.
Direct quote from TonyV http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....c,5437.0.html:Quote:4. Tony has always said reverse engineering is illegal and they weren't going to do it. Certainly private servers are not on the Titan agenda.
Quote:Still, at this point, at least for now, I think that our efforts should be fully focused on reverse engineering the game servers (which they are). -
Quote:And my counter-point is that it wasn't a shocking surprise to all of us, and in fact should have been a surprise to none of us (if we were paying attention). Sales were flat or trending downwards, the launch of Freedom brought a very brief bump, but had no real positive effect on sales.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
I think the point being made was the how the announcement was a shocking surprise to us all. No rumor, no steady downsizing of the developer or reduction of new content that hints the end is coming, just BAM!
Reducing staff, rumors about the end, all would lead to one thing. Even fewer sales. In a situation like this, the most rational thing is to end things immediately once you've made the decision to end it. Letting things linger just keeps the costs running while the revenue goes to zero. -
Quote:Yes, because an attack that killed thousands of people is exactly like shutting down an online game.Originally Posted by DarkCurrent
I'm just glad that Tony finally realized you bring weapons to a fight not words.
Negotiation isn't part of NCSoft's lexicon. Their Aug 31 Pearl Harbor of CoH is proof of that.
And anyone who was surprised by this wasn't paying attention.
If you want to make this a fight, go for it - I can't think of a better way to guarantee that you'll lose.
Go ahead, ask me if I work for NCSoft. Gangrel has pulled ahead in the race. -
Quote:Don't feel bad, I may yet catch up to you.Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
3 times in 3 days!
Must be some kind of record.
No, I don't work for Ncsoft, have never worked for NCsoft, although I have helped out in the past with an NCsoft ran event, and also helped organize the past 3 EU CoX player meets.
I have also ran a set of forums for Tabula Rasa in the past.
So, am I affiliated with NCsoft or not?
Apparently, being rational, calm and even-tempered is a sign that you might be an NCSoft employee.
I'm not sure that was what the hysterical mob was going for, but oh well. -
Quote:No, I'm just pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.Originally Posted by Xzero45
What do you expect? What you're doing is the equivalent of going to a funeral and shi.tting all over the casket.
I haven't said that the Save COH efforts are a waste of time.
I haven't said that the Save COH efforts are doomed to failure.
All I'm saying is that TonyV's message contains distortions and hypocrisy and that's not the way to be taken seriously. -
Quote:There's that incredible CoH community again! Not sure why anyone wants to save it... I really have no clue why NCSoft won't hold substantive discussions with them...Originally Posted by Xzero45
Fix'd
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Quote:I don't like Indiegogo's partial funding model though. If half the amount needed to save CoH is raised, then... what?Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Indiegogo.
(In either event, there wouldn't be enough money, so this is all theoretical.) -
Quote:Unfortunately, Kickstarter cannot be used for something like this, it is explicitly for "new projects."Originally Posted by Sengara
I've been saying this in a few posts, and I just want to hear a reply from someone before I give up pushing the idea.
Is it possible to "sell" the game to the fans through something like Kickstarter?
There seem to be a lot of developers and designers that got "let go" or moved off of CoH that could basically form a new company and take CoH off NCSoft's hands. Would it be feasible to buy the game from NCSoft with that raised money and form a new company? In one of NCSofts reply posts they said they couldn't find a buyer... so could the fans be the buyer? -
Quote:Originally Posted by th1sisajoke
No I have been refunded paragon points purchased from July, not sure how many times I've got to say the same thing.I'm just asking - this sounds like you had to contact someone at Support to get them to issue a refund? If so, I should probably do that, I bought a bunch of points in early August...Quote:Originally Posted by th1sisajoke
No I have actually received the refunds from the original transactions from july on paragon points, had to provide paypal transaction id's date & amounts.