ClawsandEffect
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Quote:Assuming that Paragon's employees averaged $60,000 a year salary, it cost roughly 4.8 million a year to pay them. I'm sure actual salary fluctuates above and below that, but it is unlikely that any of them were making more than $100,000 a year. Even if they were ALL making 100k a year their collective salaries would not exceed $8 million a year.Originally Posted by Eldorado
At the risk of going in circles here, a lot of us here have seen charts showing REVENUE coming in from CoH -- VIP subscriptions, money spent on Paragon Points, timecards and whatever else.
Has anybody seen/CAN anybody link anything concrete showing CoH's expenses such as salaries, rent for office space and equipment, insurance and everything else, OR anything else showing "net" income after expenses instead of the "gross" revenue numbers we've seen so far?
It has also been estimated that CoH was bringing in $3-4 million a month, for a total of roughly $42 million a year.
It is HIGHLY unlikely that operating costs for the game exceeded $38 million a year.
Hard facts? No. A reasonable estimate? Absolutely. Even if the game was only making $2 million a month and employee salary was $8 million a year there was still around $16 million to pay the rest of the operating costs out of. I would wager that the operating costs did not even come close to that, especially since they probably own the office space outright and have no rent to pay.
They clearly weren't spending much money on advertising, so that leaves equipment costs. Most equipment only needs to be bought once, so that's not a recurring expense. Utilities probably didn't eat into that much either.
Unless CoH's revenue completely tanked practically overnight (which, from all reports, was not the case), it is entirely reasonable to conclude that it was still turning a profit. A huge profit? Probably not, but it wasn't losing money either.
You don't need the exact numbers to come to the conclusion that CoH was not losing money. But we can't say how MUCH money it was bringing in either. -
Quote:You mean like getting to have a nice steak before you're executed?Originally Posted by Hell Razer
just remember..they want to make your final days..enjoyable..so enjoy
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My namesake, Claws and Effect.
Claws/Regen scrapper. Don't have his build handy, but he's gotten pretty beastly.
He was a scientist developing cybernetic replacement limbs for soldiers who lost limbs in battle so they could return to active duty. Crey wanted his research and he refused to sell, so they blew up his lab with him inside. After losing the use of all 4 limbs he had the prototype cybernetic replacements grafted on in their place.
Initially his body tried to reject the limbs, so he had to use experimental nanomachines to repair the interface between his body and the cybernetics. That had the unexpected side effect of givng him incredible regenerative abilities. The nanomachines are trying to maintain the status quo between man and machine, and that includes repairing all damage to its original state. -
I'm still sort of around.
I haven't logged in lately because I've been busy with RL stuff. But I would have been busy with that stuff whether the game was shutting down or not. -
Quote:I'm kinda with you there Bill.Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
I remember when I first loaded Wolfenstein 3D. I remember Doom, Wing Commander and spending days in and out playing Mechwarrior. I remember DOS and Glide and my voodoo video cards. I remember all of this through, I'm sure, rose-tinted glasses.
I remember when you had to go look for game patches and know what you were doing to get them installed.
The Mechwarrior MMO is about to come out and I'm sitting on a closed beta invite that I'll probably never use. The whole "pay to win/nickle and dime the users to death" model that the gaming industry is diving face first into rather disgusts me. I'm guessing that this is because I'm an old fogy pining away for days long gone.
I was disgusted by how empty/shallow Dragon Age 2 was compared to DA:O. I was disgusted by having to install the Origin service to play ME3 and I was disgusted at how pathetically the ending was written. I'm disgusted by NCSoft's handling of the CoH shutdown.
I've never been very good at tolerating what I consider to be ********. Hell, I left this game twice over the forced teaming/screw the soloists mindset I saw coming from the devs.
I can't shake the feeling that the bean counters have, again, won the war; that there won't be anymore games where the taint of greed doesn't overpower the happy smells of beautiful art, smooth animations and fun gameplay.
I wonder if I can find a working 486 anywhere...
I'm sure folks have noticed my conspicuous absence on the forums of late. That's because I'm pretty much done with CoH now.
Sure, I'll continue to play a bit until shutdown day, but both my forum presence and playtime have dropped off sharply. I'm getting myself used to the idea that the game will not be here anymore pretty soon.
And.....there's not really much else out there that has my interest. I have Skyrim to work on on my PS3, and a few other games that I haven't beaten yet. I might join some of the Pinnacle players in SWTOR after a while, but that's a few months down the road.
I'm just kinda disgusted with how things are going in the industry myself. Remember when you bought a game and you got the WHOLE game? Nowadays there are things ON THE FREAKING GAME DISC that you have to pay extra to access. Yes, there is code contained on the disc you bought at a retail store that you cannot use unless you give them MORE money.
People's attitudes aren't helping any either. If they are expected to pay for a game, they get pissy about it. If they don't get everything they want in a game for absolutely free, they get pissy about it. Spending $5 is too much to ask for a lot of people, and they expect that these games they don't want to pay for are going to be mind-blowingly awesome. Really? You expect an Elder Scrolls quality game for $0?
The day is coming where every new game is going to adopt the pay-to-win scheme, where the money you spend actually makes you significantly more powerful. Sad, but the mindset of this generation of gamers is going to make it necessary in order for them to make any money at all.
All of that is contributing to my disillusion with gaming in general. I will probably check out the Warhammer 40k MMO when it eventually comes out (IF it comes out), but that's the only game coming up I'm even a little bit interested in. Oh, and the DayZ standalone they're working on. And that's......pretty much it.
The way NCSoft handled this shutdown is souring me on MMOs in general. I spent 7 years of my life with this game as a major feature of it. Hell, I met my WIFE in this game. To have the rug pulled out from under me like this is going a long way toward an attitude change from me as well. I understand the desire for a game to be free.....why should we pay for something when there's no guarantee it will be there later?
I probably will not be posting nearly as much as I used to (never will hit 10,000 posts I don't think).
Pretty disillusioned about gaming in general here.
Claws out. -
I have a Claws/Regen build on live that is soft-capped to S/L with perma-DP. It's 2 purple sets or so away from perma-Hasten as well. (Apocalypse and Hecatomb are needed, donations being accepted. I'm broke now after building it
)
I figured if I gotta go out, I'm gonna go out in style. Never bothered with purple sets, but I figured out a build that has the defense I want and can slot them still. -
Met my wife on Pinnacle in 2006. Met in person in 2007. Moved in together in 2008. Got married in 2009. Had a baby in 2010.
There was more to it than that, but I figured I'd keep it simple this time around (you can find the story elsewhere) -
A couple questions:
1) Was Sister Psyche's death an excuse for a character redesign, like I figured it was? (Since her costume was the most dated of the Phalanx members) Redesigning her costume would have been as simple as her mind-riding the body of a brain-dead woman. Voila, new look.
2) How was Manticore NOT kicked out of the Phalanx after the events of the first SSA? I mean, the entire series of events is basically his fault.
3) Were there any plans to involve Synapse and Citadel in more future storylines?
4) Was there a plan to go deeper into the relationship between Penny Yin and the Clockwork King?
5) Recent events hinted at Manticore going at least as far as Vigilante and Scirocco turning Hero. Were there any plans of that happening? -
Quote:You sure you're not confusing them with Japanese beetles?Originally Posted by Tog
Ladybugs bite. They bite hard. In a side by side with red (not fire) ants, I'd rather be bitten by the ant. Spring is a bad time of year to be around them. They get snotty and mean.
They look almost identical and hang out in the same places. Easy to confuse them. -
I was partially responsible for Regen getting regen debuff resistance and Resilience's damage resistance spread across all types.
I also named the Targeted AoE set we would have gotten in i24.
I might have had something to do with Spines getting a buff in i24 as well.
That's all I'm aware of. -
Devs and/or management peeps:
I got your back. I've signed all the petitions. I've attempted to contact investors (no luck so far). If I come into a huge sum of money I'll make NCSoft an offer they can't ignore for the IP and Paragon Studios, and Cryptic a similar offer for exclusive rights to the game engine.
On top of that, if you need any legs broken to facilitate the negotiations, Send me a PM and something will be arranged. (I'm actually not sure myself if I'm kidding about that)
Incidentally, is it just me, or is the prospect of tens of thousands of superpowered individuals gunning for you a daunting one? -
Quote:Crap.Originally Posted by Positron
And I want everyone to know, in my entire time posting on the forums, I have never, ever, put ANY player on Ignore (even though I have been sorely tempted). When I read a thread, I would read EVERY POST in it, everyone was entitled to their opinion, and I would be doing them a disservice if I didn't at least read their complaint (even if I didn't agree with it).
He read my barely coherent raging.
Sorry about my carpet F-bombing in the announcement thread. It just.....REALLY.....pissed me off when I read it. And the filter came off. -
Quote:Speaking of which, you should see Claws' build now.Originally Posted by Fire Man
That, and help with Scrapper builds on the Scrapper forums.
It's pretty epic.
Softcapped to S/L, perma-Dull Pain, close to perma-Hasten.
I just need a set of Apocalypse and a set of Hecatomb and I will probably be able to achieve perma-Hasten.
Never bothered with purples before, but with the end looming in front of us, I'm gonna go out in style. -
I might check out Neverwinter Online, since BaBs is working on it.
Other than that, the only other MMO that even somewhat interested me is the Warhammer 40K MMO I caught a blurb about.
I'll probably do some console gaming here and there, and otherwise will be focusing on music and trying to get this book out of my head and onto paper. -
Quote:Same.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
They can take MY characters when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. Scumsucking vermin...
I plan on deleting them all on the last day so if I want to use them elsewhere there is no way in HELL anyone can pull the data up and say "We own this"
If it carries on afterward, I can always recreate them.
You've got at least $30 a month from me and Kres. -
I'll be logged in as Claws when the servers go dark.
Thanks for helping me grow from a clueless noob to one of the Scrapper Build Gurus.
Still can't believe I actually reached that status. I wasn't really trying to. Just over time I started seeing questions that I knew the answers to. And then I started seeing more and more questions that I knew the answers to. And then people started soliciting MY opinion on things.
I have to give special thanks to Bill Z and Werner, many others contributed, but those two guys took me under their wing and taught me how to go from randomly slaughtering things to deliberately slaughtering things.
I give thanks to any and all participants in this section of the forums who taught me something, or asked a question that made me realize I already knew it.
Salute!
Chris Newman AKA Claws and Effect -
Now that Claws has vented his rage (Yes, I really feel like Claws and myself are separate people sometimes), I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks for making....
....my second home.
....my refuge from the world.
....the place I could let my imagination run rampant.
....the place where I met the woman who changed my life forever.
....and most importantly, the place that proved to me beyond any doubt that heroes DO exist, they just seldom take the form you expect them to. -
In hindsight, I was in much the same situation as you SDragon.
I didn't have the same things happen, but I was at a point in my life where I was just.....lost.
I would spend 4 or 5 nights a week at the bar, drinking myself into not caring how miserable I was. I was unemployed and broke, but I had generous friends and hung out at the same bar so I knew all the regulars. I'd walk in with $5 in my pocket and leave hammered, with $3 left.
Most of my friends never knew how bad I'd gotten, I've always been good at masking what's going on inside my head. But *I* knew what was going on in there, and it scared the bejeezus out of me.
Now, I've always had anger issues. They're mostly under control now, but for a long time I was a self-destructive mess. I lived in constant fear that my control would slip at the wrong time and I'd end up hurting someone I cared about or myself. I wasn't suicidal exactly, it was just that I didn't care about much of anything.
I was also prone to fits of violent rage, for reasons that didn't make a whole lot of sense. It's more than a little unsettling to be absolutely furious and have no idea why.
That was 7 years ago.
I had bought CoH at some point in 2005, but my parents' computer really couldn't handle running it, so I kinda forgot about it for a while. Then they got a new computer. I was helping them set it up and the game box fell out of a stack of discs I was moving.
I was on one of my "recovery" days, that being one of the days when I wasn't drinking myself into oblivion, so after the computer was set up I sat down and loaded the game into it. Now that I could actually PLAY it, I was immediately hooked.
I kicked around a few different servers, starting on Guardian because that's where my friends older brother played. I never did find him in game, so I server hopped some more, since I still hadn't had a character grab me yet. I decided to check out Pinnacle, for no particular reason.
It started with a name. Claws and Effect. It immediately struck a chord somewhere inside me. I'd been musing on the nature of cause and effect for a couple days and the pun struck me as I was browsing through the Scrapper powersets. From the second I loaded into Outbreak with him, I knew I'd found "me".
Here was something I could pour all my pent up frustration and barely understood rage into that wouldn't hurt anyone. Claws quickly became an extension of myself, a means to act out the violent impulses I was struggling with that actually dissipated them. I took on his personality when I played, but when I logged out it stayed in the game with him.
I wasn't "cured" yet, but I was taking steps in the right direction. I was staying home more and playing CoH instead of going out on my nightly self-destructive rampages. A lot of parents would be annoyed that their 20-something year old son was spending all his time on their computer beating up pixelated thugs, but mine seemed to understand on some level that I needed this. And they were definitely happy that I wasn't coming home drunk every night.
Fast forward 9 months.
I was now spending more time in-game than I was out trying to drink myself to death, and I was starting to make friends. I was working again, and paying my own way, even if I was still living in my parents' basement. That alone was a big help, not feeling so useless anymore. I was working 3rd shift at a convenience store and gaming at 8 AM when I got home. That's how I met Bundle. I was leaving The Hollows on one of my alts and he stopped and commented that I had a cool name. The name was Wraithwind, which is a combination of words that has more meaning to me than just about any other. The reason will become apparent soon.
After chatting for a few minutes Bundle invited me to his newly formed SG, the Night Walkers. It was named that because it was comprised of a group of 3rd shifters that ran together in the morning after work.
Several weeks later I met Kresnik 02, and my life would never be the same again, only I didn't realize it at the time. Since the character was male, I assumed the player was as well. I cannot tell you how thankful I was that I was mistaken.
You see, several years after that day, Kresnik 02 became my wife. Today, we own a house in her hometown and have a beautiful 2 year old son together.
2 names. Claws and Effect and Wraithwind. Claws and Effect set me on the path to healing my bruised psyche, and Wraithwind led me to the woman who gave me a reason to finish the process.
Those 2 characters, and this game as a whole, were instrumental in my ability to make a positive change in my life. If this game had not existed, I can't even imagine where I would be today.
In an abstract yet very real way, NCSoft is killing a part of me by taking those characters and this game away.
I understand Claws and Effect is just a character I made up in a video game. But he's also a very real part of me. If he had never existed, the person I am today would not exist either.
I've never shared this story with any of the people I've met in-game other than my wife. But, given the circumstances, I felt it was appropriate to share it with 150,000 of my closest friends. -
I suggested the tweaks to Regen from a few issues back.
Okay, it wasn't ALL me. But I did start the thread.
I also named the Targeted AoE IO set that........isn't going to make it into the game now. -
Quote:That's a safe bet.Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
I've got 400 points on Claws!
In real life I have a nasty violent streak in me that I've struggled my whole life to keep in check.
Fortunately I've only ever let it loose on inanimate objects.
I kinda have that scary quiet kind of rage going on right now that, if I were a movie protagonist you'd know the feces was about to hit the windmill.
A BIG part of why I'm so upset about this is that CoH has been a huge help in channeling my anger issues. -
Quote:You're CuppaJo?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Swing and a miss, strike one.
Strike two.
Strike eww.
(shot in the dark) -
Quote:LIKED Scrappers?Originally Posted by Fire Man
You liked Scrappers. You were fine by me.
Dude, I AM a Scrapper!
And I'd prove it if I ever got put in the same room with the [vocabulary failure, harsh enough word does not exist] who made this decision. -
Quote:Yeah, the bit in the official statement about "those of you reading this after the fact" tells me that the vast majority of the dev team didn't know they were unemployed until they showed up for work this morning.Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I have decided that, beyond being angry about being shut down, I have another reason for never, EVER spending another red cent on an NCsoft product. The treatment of Paragon studios, some of the best developers I have ever had the joy of knowing. These fine people were let go just like that. No prior warning. Nothing. Just gone. And I think that is the worst crime of all. While yes, we all lost something important, they lost both that and their jobs.
NCsoft can go **** itself.
It's like the amount of themselves they poured into this game didn't mean a ******* thing to NCSoft when it came to kicking them out in the street.
NCSoft's official statement is exactly that....an official statement designed to cover up the fact that they did this in the most reprehensible, cowardly and callous way possible.
News flash mother*******......we ain't buying it. Or anything else you're selling for that matter. -
Quote:I plan on respeccing and deleting all my characters except my main, and using the proceeds to fund the ultimate build I never got around to doing.Originally Posted by cohRock
I know after you've been kicked in the head, one reaction is to leave the barn. But if CoH's closure hurts, does it make sense to leave right away? Why not stay and keep having fun?
The jacka** who kicked us was not the developers, nor the players. It looks like we have until at least 30 November. So, please, let's make the most of it until then.
I also plan to go out very melodramatically.
My wife and I will be logging in on the last day and spending our entire play session in character.
Except for the last few minutes when we say goodbye to everyone....
.....dammit, I promised myself I wouldn't get choked up. -
Quote:Sibling of a dev.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Missing three variables.
College roommate of a dev.
Love triangle middle piece between two of them (former)
Also:
HOLY CRAP, bAss was a dev!!!
That gave me a Usual Suspects moment there.
Is it odd that I feel strangely honored that dev sent ME a gfriend request?
I mean, I'm kind of a dick and all.