ClawsandEffect

Access to Incarnates was gated by whatever the devs decided it was going to be gated by.

Now, we know they've been planning the switch to the Freedom game model for WELL over a year now. (We know this because they outright told us)

It seems quite clear now that we can look back on it that they intended from the beginning for Incarnates to be available to subscribers only.

Why was access to it gated by owning Going Rogue?

Simple. It was the only thing they had available to gate things with that made any sense. The fact that having purchased Going Rogue is no longer required, but having a paid subscription IS required just illustrates that further.

They could have chosen to gate Incarnates by having bought the GvE Item pack or the Wedding Pack if they'd wanted to. They chose to gate it behind Going Rogue because it made the most sense.

If they had decided to wait until they had subscribers and non-subscribers we STILL wouldn't have Incarnate content. The only difference is now it's working like they wanted it to in the first place.

If you're taking the power because you want a thematically appropriate power for your cyborg bunny, then by all means go for it.

If you're taking it because it's an attack that sounds like it will be particularly powerful, you're likely to be disappointed.

My wife has Jump Kick on one (and only one) of her characters, which is an MA/Regen human/velociraptor hybrid. Since velociraptors attack with their feet, it's entirely appropriate for her character.

I concur with an above poster though: Don't slot the Force Feedback proc in it.

Forgot to add: It's a bad choice for melee characters, since you will have many much better choices in your melee powerset. It's a not-horrible choice for non-melee looking for a melee filler attack though.

You really don't have to wonder at all.

Of course they will.

Video games aren't the real world. You should not be more powerful in someone else in a video game simply because you have more disposable income than them.

You want Incarnate powers? Earn them like everyone else.

That's funny.

Most of the posts I've seen regarding alignment balance are saying that Vigilantes are getting screwed because they don't get alignment merits, and to be honest, that's exactly what I expected this one to be as well.

I may bookmark this and use it as evidence the next time I see one of those posts.

Personally, I think the alignments are balanced pretty well. Heroes/Villains are constrained to their own side of the game, but get alignment merits that let them obtain rare recipes faster.

Vigilantes/Rogues don't get alignment merits, but they can travel to anywhere in the game and run any content they like.

Seems fair to me.

AE farming raises the price of everything in the market.

Most of what the AE farmers acquire is influence. Which they then use to make an outrageous bid in an attempt to get what they want NOW.

The marketeers KNOW they can sell things to the farmers, and take advantage of it. If there weren't people out there with more cash than they know what to do with, we probably wouldn't see such ridiculous prices. And people have more cash than they know what to do with via AE farming.

It's no secret that prices in the market go up along with the amount of influence at large in the game. I clearly remember the prices when Inventions and the market were first introduced back in Issue 8 or 9: 10-15 million for a LotG +7.5% Recharge, you can't get one for under 100 million now. The average price spiked again once people discovered they can use AE to craft easily killed enemies that are no threat to them and farm them all day.

When you can obtain ridiculous amounts of influence for little or no effort via AE farming, you are making the problem worse.

And it doesn't create market supply. Random recipe rolls in AE are usually crap, and very few people will use a auction sale slot on a recipe that already has 5,000 for sale and 0 bids, with an average last 5 of 10,000 or less (which is what 90% of bronze rolls produce). When people get an inventory full of those, they either delete them or vendor them, because they aren't worth the time to go put them on the market.

If you really believe all of this is true, and yet continue to pay your subscription as you always have, then you are adding to the problem.

You are SUPPORTING their "doublespeak, bait and switch, and misleading policies" by continuing to subscribe.

If you believe what they are doing is wrong, why are you pledging your support to it?

In MY book, knowingly continuing to support something you personally believe is wrong makes you JUST AS GUILTY OF IT.

Analogies are actually pretty apt here. Especially the ones regarding things that are a prerequisite.

Example:

1)Because you needed to have Going Rogue to access Incarnate content, that means Incarnate content is in fact PART of Going Rogue. (That's what you're saying, right?)

2)Now, at my college, English Composition I is required to get a degree, any degree. Since it is a prerequisite, that means that every degree the college offers degree is PART of English Composition I. (See? Exact same logic)

If the first is true, as you are asserting, then the second HAS TO be true as well because it is coming to the exact same logical conclusion as the first.

I can tell you right now that the college does NOT consider every degree they offer to be part of a single class simply because that class is a prerequisite. If they did, you would be entitled to any degree you like on successful completion of English Composition I, since that degree would be part of the class.

Since the second is most definitely NOT true, it kind of shoots the first in the foot as well.

No, the time I played was worth the money I spent. Obviously, since if I felt it wasn't I wouldn't have paid it.

My gripe is the fact that I earned my permanent status (i.e. what I keep if I stopped my subscription) through the time that I played, which cost me X dollars total.

A new player, if they are so inclined, can acquire the exact same permanent status with a wad of cash, instantaneously. No waiting, just throw $400 at the game and you get the same thing as a guy who's been here for years and spent 3 times that much.

And this after we were told that subscribers are still their priority because of their loyalty to the game. Apparently 70 months of loyalty is worth $400.

I just wanted to do the math and see how much it would cost someone to get to the same status I'm at. And honestly, it kind of pissed me off when I realized that I spent 6 years and $1200 for the same thing that someone can get for $400 today.

By continuing my subscription, I get TWO things not available through any other means:

1) Access to the Exalted server (whoopty freaking doo)

2) Access to Incarnate content.

Everything else can be purchased in the market if you want to spend the money.

Basically, if they give Incarnate access to anyone who bought Going Rogue, any subscribers will essentially be paying $15 a month to play on one server that is exactly like all the others. The 400 points costs $5, no subscription necessary. The free transfer costs $10, no subscription necessary.

Given that, if we got to keep Incarnate content free of charge for buying GR, who in their right mind would keep paying $15 a month? Is ONE server worth $15? Not to me it isn't.

If there is nothing you can't get by other means than a subscription, there is no reason to subscribe.

If there is no reason to subscribe, pretty soon no one will once they realize they don't have to to get the parts of the game they want.

Once no one is subscribing, the game will be forced to exist on whatever it can earn through the Market.

What happens when everyone already has everything they want?

If there is content ONLY available through subscribing, there will continue to be subscribers.

As long as there are subscribers the game can continue on almost indefinitely.

If the game starts relying on the Market for the majority of it's revenue, it will reach a point where most of the players have everything they want and revenue will drop off sharply.

If revenue drops too far, the game gets the plug pulled.

Keeping some content only available through subscribing is simply in the best interest of the long term survival of the game.

The one thing that will kill this game faster than anything else is the developers caving to the greed and entitlement of it's players. Once they start giving in to demands for x content to be free just because it was demanded, start looking for a new game, because this one won't be around much longer.

This isn't doom, this is realism. I'm sure the devs are much more aware of the stakes of this gamble than I am. (and a hybrid model IS a gamble, there's no guarantee they will make enough profit to make it work it)

I love the out of context word wrangling you're trying to do. The topic of this entire thread has been people who paid for Going Rogue, and now you're saying that because VIPs got it for free it counts just as much as purchasing it? It doesn't, not in the context of this thread, which has been people paying for something and not keeping it. Oh, and a lot of misunderstanding what it was they paid for.

And NOW you're saying that since VIPs were given Going Rogue content it counts toward what you keep when you stop paying? Which is what you'd be saying, unless you're talking about something different than everyone else in the thread.

So, by being given Going Rogue content for free with their subscription, all VIPs should be allowed to keep it when they stop paying? Is that what you're saying?

Talk about entitlement.

Ummm, you're really going to throw this at me?

As of the Freedom head start, any player with a paid subscription has access to Incarnates, whether they bought Going Rogue as a separate item or not. That's because all VIPs got the content in Going Rogue for free with their subscription.

The only difference having purchased it makes is that you get to keep everything except Incarnates when you drop to premium, whereas you don't if you got it for free with your subscription.

According to your proposed rules, I win.

No, you are remembering incorrectly.

It worked fine. They removed it because there was nothing to DO with it. They pulled it and started working on Apex and Tin Mage, and the arc that unlocks it, because having the slot and having nothing to use it on made little sense.

None of which changes the fact that the devs have the final say on what is included in what. The fact that they DID give refunds to people who bought Going Rogue under the impression that Incarnates were going to be part of it says, to me at least, that as far as the DEVS are concerned, Incarnates are NOT part of it.

If the devs decide that having bought the Collector's Edition will grant you access to First Ward, they can do that, because it's THEIR GAME. And we have no say whatsoever in it.

Bottom line: If the devs decided that you still need to have an active subscription to access Incarnate content, then you still need to have an active subscription to access Incarnate content.

Unless you think any business's customers are entitled to tell that business what they get for free when that business decided to be nice. When you walk into a car dealership and they give you a free keychain, you don't get to demand a free car because a keychain isn't good enough. Businesses don't work like that, if they did we'd call them charities.

Except people GOT refunds when Alpha slot was removed from the deal. It can be very safely assumed that those who did not ask for a refund were comfortable with what they paid for as part of the deal.

If you did not ask for a refund at the time, you don't have a leg to stand on. By not asking for a refund (which you would have gotten), you were implicitly saying "I am comfortable with paying for this content without the Alpha slot."

You can't sit there and complain because something you could have been refunded for a year ago is not now free.

Well, that's not entirely true. You can complain all you want. It just makes you look like a jacktard though.

Agge is aware of that. The word sans means "without". So, Agge was saying "keep everything in Going Rogue without Incarnates."

This is the important point here.

Never at any point have we been able to access Incarnate content without an active subscription. That has not changed in the slightest. Just because you can play other parts of the game without having a subscription does NOT mean you are entitled to play ALL of the game without one.

It's much like having a cell phone. Just because you bought a phone doesn't mean you get
to use it for free. You still have to pay your bill.

Going Rogue was a purchase, that much is true. But when you bought it, were you permitted to use it without having an active game subscription? No?

If you paid for it separately, you are permitted to access PART of it for free. Which is a far cry from a few months ago, when you had access to nothing without a subscription.

And now, because you can use other stuff without a subscription you think you should be able to use all of it without one.

You want to talk about the devs spitting on your loyalty. What about YOU spitting on THEIR loyalty to US by telling them they have to give you everything you want for free? They've busted their butts working on a game for an ungrateful, greedy bunch of people, and now you think they should work just as hard for the benefit of people who aren't giving them squat in return.

Right.

Did you not notice the fact that the VAST MAJORITY of the things available in the Paragon Market are one time purchases? As in, you buy them once and you have them forever.

When you spend enough money buying points, you automatically get Reward Tokens toward keeping features unlocked without a subscription.

Now, if the things you've bought are yours forever, without having to spend another dime on them, and you get 100% of the game for free, you will no longer have ANY reason to spend money on the game. If enough people go that route, the game will go the way of the dodo because it is no longer profitable enough for NCSoft to bother keeping the servers active.

THAT is why we aren't getting to keep 100% of the game when we stop paying our subscription. There has to be a reason to keep giving them money, or once everyone has everything they want the game will STOP making money for it's parent company and start actively losing it. Once that happens, we will have no more game to play, free or otherwise.

Why is that so difficult to understand? The devs want to keep enough people subscribed to keep the game afloat once the rush of spending in the Market has died down (in other words, once everyone has all the stuff they want). Making some content VIP only is the only way they can encourage people to remain subscribed once they have all the perks they want permanently unlocked.

Can you HONESTLY say that you would remain a subscriber if you could keep every single thing you have now without paying for it?

I can't. I can't imagine a whole lot of people CAN honestly say they would keep paying while getting no more than someone who is NOT paying.

This sums up my stance nicely.

If everything is free, and you lose nothing, there is no reason at all to keep spending money on the game.

If no one is spending money on the game because it's all free, how long will we still have a game to play?

NCSoft is not at all shy about canning unprofitable games, they've dumped 3 of them in the last few years. If no one is giving them money for CoH, and Coh starts costing them more than it's bringing in, the game will be shown the door in a hurry.

Basically, the people complaining that they can't keep everything when they stop paying their subscription are being remarkably short-sighted.

No one pays = no more game. Then you won't be playing anything at all for free because it will have ceased to exist.