Chase_Arcanum

No, it makes sense to have a difficulty slider... which the game provides.

With the difficulty slider, it makes no sense to make differentiated content.

Users that aren't specced out or haven't mastered the gameplay want to try new content and experience the newer stories too.

Bodycount is a bad metric for "evil" though.

Evil is defined by immorality & wickedness. It isn't just "killing" that makes someone evil- its the why and how that really defines the evil.

Westin Phipps practically revels in the cruelty his acts bring to others.

We don't (yet) know the Battalion's motives. It may be that they have some twisted, misguided belief that their actions are truly necessary to save the universe. (At least, I haven't seen any lore about their true motives...

I don't think the complaint is really that its challenging.

Its that it is not CONSISTENT.

When I can have a reasonably-challenging encounter in 90% of the game at a certain difficulty level, then run into a part of the game that's dramatically different, it's annoying.

I'd much rather they do a global nerf to keep the whole game challenging than have inconsistently-applied design that just makes newer content more challenging.

:unchecks the 'give the community team more gray hair' task and starts working on plan b while muttering not-nice words to Texas Justice

Carbine's site still says Wildstar...
Paragon's site still doesn't...
Both sites seem relatively active...

it *does* seem to be a likely web team errors...

But in the interest of discouraging such errors by making their fallout so painful to address, I will gleefully spread misinformation and feed the conspiracy theorists:

I often heard people call Carbine Paragon's "sister studio"...
...this is a superhero MMO...
...and the genre is full of characters with alter-egos...
...has anyone else noticed how you never see Carbine and Paragon Studios in the same room at the same time...
...sister studios.... or (insert dramatic flourish) ONE AND THE SAME?




Ok... so... I can check "give the community team more gray hair" off my to-do list for today.

Wildstar's Carbine Studios, not Paragon.... or am I missing something?

Have you ever PvP'd against the type of character whose combination of garish colors, costume, and aura customization makes foes pause and contemplate gouging out their eyes... or just to type "WTF?" before they die?

Do you want to suck all the fun out of a mods' day?

You haven't been to Virtue's Pocket D immediately after these costume codes were released, have you?

Are all of the players stuck in alternate dimensions and we just don't know it?

Given the forum's propensity for *pancake* do you even have to ask?


Haven't you been getting the coded messages too?

Does this mean you HAVE seen the coded messages, but you just haven't figured out the code?

Do the *special ingredient* brownies count?

Does it cease to be "secret" once that person fesses up?

Why isn't "ketchup" an option?

Isn't it about time for a "greatest hits" album?

Why doesn't anyone ever believe me?

You weren't part if Issue 13 closed beta, were you?

Isn't everything a nemesis plot? Is the soda machine part of everything?

Where? How? Why?

Would you prefer Fuchsia and Turqouise?

Have I ever given a misleading answer?

If I answer this as I planned, and it thus gave you an answer to my previous question-as-an-answer, would my entire post be disqualified ?

Have you seen the proposed "hat-a-day" collection system that Zwillinger's been alpha testing?

Does this count?

Agreed.

No, you have the mental image of the Freedom Phalanx doing that song and leaving one by one... in the order we predict they'll be killed off.

Now, get out of video-production-retirement and make it a reality.

You know you wanna.

If you look at your typical AE map, many of the objects-- even the spawn points-- are rather static to the map. You might have a few hundred items to track over the duration of the mission.

When I decide to "rez" in my base- the system needs to load the map, load the 10,000+ resources I use to make my base's unique appearance, load the x, y, z, and rotational value of each asset, and send all that info to me to display... it then needs to track my movement on that map's mapserv as I run from the medibay to the teleporter and leave... and then unload all that from the mapserv.

That's what I believe Positron was referring to when he commented on how bases were so resource-intensive. it's not only about disk storage (storing the locations of up to 20,000 free-standing-items' positions per base probably doesn't help), it's about what it takes up when the map is loaded and what it's used for.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that, as a "QOL" improvement, they haven't just given us the ability to click on a zone's base portal and access the menus for all our teleporters, storage containers, vaults, crafting tables, empowerment stations, etc. that we have in our bases. It'd save them the resources used every time I use my base to craft, teleport around, etc.

As one of those people that lost more than one weekend to repairing the damage caused by a "routine, well-tested, otherwise-stable maintenance script (that I did not write)" encountering a series of events that causes it to do evil, evil things to several hundred databases at once, I can back up this claim.

Now, if anyone can explain why said scripts always do this between 4:45 and 5:00pm on a Friday evening-- even when they're not scheduled to run then-- and never EVER do it right before marathon meetings I'd really LOVE to avoid (when I might sometimes perhaps intentionally-schedule them to run), I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thank goodness for alts.

I only saw it on the news.

That's one of those "oops" moments that I find more enjoyable than sitting through 20 minutes of gradual detonations.

Sam just likes a good forum explosion.

I do too, but being in the US, I at least had the July 4th fireworks to sate my appetite for big booms (though, to be honest, they were all pretty weak. once you blow up some of awe-inspiring stuff I got to blow up, everything else is just a faint echo. Virtual explosions online, though, are a different beast and haven't lost their fun yet.)

I'd test the theory my making a fake screenshot "from test" - maybe showing hasten with a longer recharge time (and not accepting recharge enhancements) but even THAT may be so much worse than yelling "fire" in a crowded theater that Zwillinger would permaban me from the forums, the game, and the state of California once he's done putting out the forum fires.

Thanks, snowglobe, you seem to have taken my post as an assertion that this was indeed happening, but we seem to be in agreement.

We don't know what strings are attached to steam (or not attached), so judging the devs intentions or reasoning for NOT being on steam (as others have done in this thread) is a stretch for anyone.

I wasn't arguing that what I was saying WAS happening- just that these are possibilities we, as consumers, would be unaware of, and that fit the few actual facts we have at our disposal. They're also somewhat common in other similar businesses (referral fees, commissions, and retail frontage (paying for display space in stores) are all rather conventional methods of reimbursement used for organziations in Steam's position).

Wait, what?
As I said in that line, that was the quote I took DIRECTLY FROM WIKIPEDIA. I was asking anyone here, who may be more familiar with the game (which I admitted not having played) if WIKIPEDIA WAS FRIGGIN WRONG. Wikipedia is often wrong, but as my only source for that statement I wanted to be sure! I couldn't rule it out, since just because you had a store from day 1 doesn't mean you can't add an alternate payment method (steam wallet) to it...

Is there other outside evidence you see other than this timing? (not a criticism here... I'd like to see more info on it).

There is a degree of sense to this. Ages ago (pre-Auto-Assault) a NCSoft explained that their strategy for fighting churn (players only playing for 2-3 months and leaving) was to "not fight it." Rather than try to futilely keep a game fresh for the people churning out, they'd like to have a stable of titles available so someone tired with one game would go on to try one of their OTHER games. Their own proprietary launcher would help guide others to another title whereas Steam would just as easily guide tired users to titles of other publishers altogether....

Granted, that was years ago, and the execs stating that left with the TR shakeup (I think), and the theory seems to have NOT panned out-- few users left Lineage or CoH for AA, TN, or some of the other shuttered games since then.... but the philosophy may still be there. I expect the GWII launch to be trumpted through the editor eventually, for example.

On the other hand, given the dearth of new titles in the NCLauncher, it seems odd that they'd have prematurely broken away from a valuable source of new users (...if we assume that Steam did prove a valuable source of new users...)unnecessarily broken off of a good referral source like steam so early, though. (Of course, I'm assuming it WAS a good referral source, I don't have that data)

It also might not be entirely NCSoft influencing this decision here:
- Back when brick-n-mortar video game stores had a PC section that was worth a hill of beans, MMO's were viewed with suspicion. Some game companies believed that they were losing out on their fair share of revenue from these (since they didn't get a share of the monthly subscription) so they started charging more for frontage for these titles. (One friend with access to this info once remarked that an MMO paid 3x for display space than what a console game would)
<SPECULATION>Extending on this example, it could be possible that Steam, seeing the launcher's ability to divert users to other titles outside of steam's referral & sales system, sought more compensation for listing those titles than what NCSoft was willing to pay...</SPECULATION>


Well, that was the point.

Too many are stating all this as unassailable FACT when we're all playing a guessing game because we're not privy to most of the details.

I was shooting out a blast of alternatives that also matched (as well as I could tell) the few actual details we have available. I tried to use qualitative statements that would stress these were speculative ("could have...", "possibly..." etc) but probably didn't include enough to prevent people from assuming that I was claiming to know the truth. maybe I'll use the <SPECULATION> brackets from now on....

The only advantage that ANY of these theories may have over *some* of the others is that they don't generally require us to assume that one of the parties involved is stupid, selfish, or evil for the theory to work.

Do you KNOW that the competitor to this game is showing up on Steam for free?
Are you SURE they aren't paying a listing fee for appearing there?
Are you SURE they aren't paying a referral fee for each user that discovers the game through Steam?
Are you SURE they don't flag users that first encountered the game and pay steam a microtransaction?
All of these would be revenue models that Steam could use that would be totally transparent to the user, give Steam reason to promote the F2P game, and help explain why every single developer would opt against a free listing in the service.

Also, I don't play the game and know better than to trust wikipedia, but it does list that game specifically and includes this line: " Valve included support via Steamworks for microtransactions through Steam's purchasing channels for in-game items in these titles, in a similar manner to the existing in-game store for Team Fortress 2" so are you SURE that wikipedia's incorrect in this?

Also, note that one of the other "larger" mmo publishers (hint: another caped competitor) have some of their F2P games up there but not all of them. This may be a sign of "limited resources" on the developer's part or it may be yet another sign that they're putting up only the ones that have a reasonable chance to profit enough to cover the costs of listing there. If it was truly a free no-hassle service, there'd be little reason not to include all your titles. It could actually bring new attention to a dying title and would still be beneficial to Steam as a loss leader. They seemed to put only the ones more likely to generate revenue.

That is always a possibility, but loss-leaders are intended to be of less value than what's given away. Referring away users to an F2P MMO means you're:

- introducing them to another community that may compete with the social value of your own community. They may anchor to that publisher's social network, not your own.
- introducing them to another product that will compete for a user's finite time investment with other products you could sell them-- and one that, with regular updates, could continue to compete with that time investment for some time
- introducing them to another money sink that you see no part of.
- forego revenue that could be easily realized- many of these games have advertising budgets and referral agreements where they're willing to pay out for visibility, so why the heck NOT require payment for your service?

Now, that's not to say they aren't treating all these as loss-leaders for now, but given that both the microtransaction market and the "social" markets in gaming are considered a growth field, it seems a tad generous to NOT get money off a socially-driven microtransaction game like a F2P MMO.



What makes more sense for steam: Give away a foothold in a growing market to bolster its somewhat-stabilized existing model, or leverage that stable-yet-matured business model to gain an advantage in the emerging-and-growing area?


If you wanted to offer "free" loss leaders, you could probably find safer ones in offering free single-player games. These would have no social network to compete with yours, a finite timesink (no constant updates) and if it offers paid expansions, you may be able to more readily realize that revenue.

Not saying that it can't still be happening, but I believe that if there weren't strings attached, CoH (among others) would already be back on Steam.

No. You're missing several elements there. A few:

1) It does cost Valve to list a F2P MMO there. Players have limited time to play games. Time spent on F2P games is time not spent on a title they make money on. A "free" single-player game would be a safe giveaway, as they have finite playability, but an MMO that's potentially frequently-updated has greater potential to draw someone away from other purchases.

2) Being the google of games only works if you get revenue from your listings or paid referrals.

If you want to use Google as an example here, Steam would be charging either a flat listing fee (if you want your game listed in our store, give us $X a month) or a referral fee (for every user you get from us, give us $X or X% of that user's transactions) which is essentially what I had stated they'd do.

3) If steam just wanted to offer "referral" absolutely free, like Google, then they could easily craft their store to provide external links to all sorts of F2P games out there, just a Google shows a "City of Heroes" result when I search "Superhero MMO." Nothing would stop it from offering a store PLUS referral service. It doesn't. It enters into business agreements with specific titles and only then are those titles are listed. That relationship alone strongly hints that it isn't "free" to the developers.

That doesn't mean that they didn't approach Paragon / NCSoft with an offer to enter into such an agreement. It just means that any offer wasn't enticing enough...

Granted, you'd have to be a rather hardcore anti-steamer to go through that. Steam could have several ways to handle this with different developers:

- if the user opened the game through steam's interface, steam gets a cut (a "use-through" fee).
- if the game's user account was created through a steam install, steam gets a cut on all that user's purchases (a form of "referral fee")
- if the steam wallet is available, steam gets a cut from purchases that use it, nothing else.


Yeah, wikipedia's blurb (not posted here since it names games) on F2P is the most I've seen regarding the steam wallet's support for microtransactions in certain titles.