Doctor Vivian

I sure do miss being able to have 999 units of Salvage in each rack.

Although, given their size, and what salvage is, a limit of 30 is kind of realistic.

-- Vivian

While I am not a fan of the idea since it would change the game balance that has already been carefully worked out by the Dev Team, such a thing could very well be handled like the PBAoE SuperJump, Regeneration / Recovery Auras / Accelerate Metabolism, etc. That is to say, those within the range of the casting player would receive the buff. Then, like Group Fly, it would remain active until (a) the receiving toon(s) moved out of range of the Caster, (b) the Caster turned off the power or (c) the Caster was defeated (or possibly, stunned).

-- Vivian

Hi, Maestro --

If memory serves, Marvel Comics always had a stated mantra when asked why they wouldn't significantly change their content as their fan base grew older, and why they kept recycling plots. Their response was a simple one: that their fan base had not changed, and it was age 6-16.

What they meant, without expressly saying so, was that they felt the bulk of their readership would "grow out" of comics. As they moved on to other interests, they would be replaced by the next generation of avid young readers. New readers to whom the same old recycled plots would no longer be tired, but amazing, fresh and new.

Now, while I believe that policy on the part of Marvel was inherently flawed, and perhaps if they had introduced more mature material they could have prevented much of the fall-away of their readership as they grew into their teens, that's a different matter. The reason I bring it up at all is because new players are constantly emerging on the scene -- ones who have never heard of CoH, much less played it.

It is into that pool of constantly-emerging new players that we must reach in order to help membership numbers climb.

-- Vivian

No, you're right on the money. That's all -- a tiny effort.

Just to print out and put up some CoH posters at likely venues.

-- Vivian

Grassroots marketing campaigns such as actually this cost NCsoft no money.

As it costs them nothing to advertise, there is no downside to such marketing.

All they have to pay is COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), which varies from the most expensive to NCsoft (boxed product, sold at retail through distributors) to the least expensive/most profitable (direct download of the game client from NCsoft, no boxed product, no retail or distributor margins).

There are no initial costs in the creation of the posters that I don't plan to cover.

The only costs that the player base would encounter would be minimal, at best -- and would involve the printing on their home laser printer of a few B&W posters. At the usual laser toner and paper cost of about 1 cent per page, that's fairly small potatoes.

Allow me to express my plan more clearly:

• I would have some good artists put together some nice, ESRB "E" class Heroic images suitable for printing in B&W.
• I would have these made into nice posters in Photoshop or Illustrator
• I would try and gain NCsoft's official approval of them
• I would provide them to the community as High Quality PDFs
• Members of the Community would Download them
• Members of the Community would Print them
• Members of the Community would have them put up in their local Comic Book Stores, Roleplaying Game Shops, etc.

I don't want them plopped randomly at all (although random plopping is better than nothing at all) -- but we're not really yet at the point where we would be talking about a Marketing Plan (which would help us a lot to have).

In such a plan, we would have a list of places where the flyers / posters should be placed, and the highest choices on that list would be the places that would have the greatest chance of having interested players read them, such as the above-mentioned Comic Book Stores, Roleplaying Game Shops, etc.

Now, I am inquiring to NCsoft to see if they have any pre-printed posters of this type already sitting around gathering dust or in PDF form. I'll let you know if there are.

-- Vivian

I'm looking down the road, not in my lap.

You are correct, if the KRW value was dropping, that would mean they would be better off with US Dollars. However, the additional trillion dollars of foreign debt the US piled on itself with the so-called "stimulus plan" has significantly devalued the US dollar. So, the reverse is taking place.

If you look at the value of the Korean Won vs the US Dollar over time you will see a significant drop since 2009.

http://www.forecast-chart.com/usd-korean-won.html

In 2009, the KRW was around 1,450 per US Dollar. Today, it stands at 1,174. That's a 19% drop in value of the US Dollar. Just on the basis of the currency drop alone, and not including any other attrition or gains in user population, it's as if CoX lost 19% of its users over the last year.

Thanks for taking the time to let us know you won't be participating.

-- Vivian

Server load is not indicative of the number of active, paying accounts, nor does it represent sales -- simply the number of people who are playing online at that given point compared to the CPU capacity of the server in question.

If you would like to look for yourself, NCsoft's Quarterly Earnings Reports are all available to the public and can be downloaded at the following site:

http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

My goal here is not to be alarmist, but to try and help put together a grassroots marketing campaign to help bring more people to CoX.

However, having thus far not received a single interested person's comment or PM on the subject, perhaps I have to concede that the Forums are just the wrong place to try and put this together.

I am beginning to think that a nicely-done web site with all of the posters available as PDFs, with the URL promoted across all zones, all servers of CoX and on the various global channels (in a non-spammy, once-in-a-while regular way) would get more traction.

-- Vivian

The Incarnate System was planned out during the development of GR. It's ongoing development and roll-out is part of an overall development schedule. At this point, things are not bad enough that new development would stop. However, expensive, Senior team members are already being removed from the maintenance team.

If user numbers continue to dwindle, this shaving of team members will happen again, and again, with the maintenance budget steadily shrinking in like wise to the diminishing revenue, until new development does cease for all practical intents and purposes, and only the GMs & Customer Support remain. This is a fate I would prefer we avoid.

You missed the point entirely. To clarify for you, my point was that currency values -- specifically the Korean Won to US Dollar exchange rate -- are fluctuating because of the threat of war. This causes the actual monthly "income" from US Dollar sales to fluctuate in like wise, exacerbating the problem of the already-small user base.

-- Vivian

I think, without meaning to be insulting or demeaning to you in any way, that you just don't understand the problem.

Your mistaken belief that the game is "alive and well" is in direct opposition to the facts that are evident in NCsoft's own published corporate documents, which clearly show CoX has had a continually declining user base since 2008.

I'm not "creating" an "attitude". My concerns are based on NCsoft's own published revenue figures for the game.

Perhaps it would be best before you continue to deny there is an problem if you would take a few moments and review the NCsoft Stockholder Reports of the past few years, specifically looking at the CoX revenue figures, and then compare them to the published revenue figures and user numbers from 2008. It will help you understand what I am talking about.

I am not, in any way, advocating a "willy nilly" course of action.

I am suggesting that the players can take an active hand in marketing the Free Trial Offer in their local, respective communities through the posting of bills which I would underwrite the cost of producing the content for.

My stated hope is that, if such an ongoing grassroots marketing effort met with success, it would increase the number of active subscriptions to CoX and help avoid the problems and consequences that invariably arise (in any MMO) from a steadily declining user base.

-- Vivian

What I meant by that (and I apologize for it being unclear) was that I see core team members like BAB being laid off. I.e., the maintenance team is apparently shrinking in the wake of GR. To be clear, I meant that if the active population increased, and the revenue increased, there logically would also be an increase in the budget set aside for the maintenance team. No longer would they be announcing the unfortunate departure of Senior members but rather the addition of new, stellar talent.

The number of people leaving each year is greater than the number of people coming on board. This has been true since 2008. While NCsoft ceased publishing actual user numbers in 2008, they still post revenue figures for CoX in their Stockholder Reports. Extrapolating the ongoing decline in revenue compared to the earlier-published actual numbers and revenue paints a clear picture of an ongoing decline in active users. All signs right now point to there being less than 100k active users.

Couple that with the fluctuations in the currency market given the threat of war -- quite possible a nuclear war -- on the Korean peninsula, the shrinking maintenance budget and the corresponding loss of Senior team members, it should be clear that CoX is in a less than ideal state.

While they did promote and market GR, advertising pits money -- pure cash -- against an uncertain return. Although no published numbers exist, I personally suspect that GR, released into a market that has competing products in it, did not provide the same user spike as the release of CoV did.

With a possibly lukewarm reception to the development and marketing of GR, it is very likely that NCsoft -- given all the other concerns on their plate -- may be less interested in throwing good money after bad on what is one of their smallest titles.

Moreover, even if NCsoft spent more on Marketing CoX, it is very likely that they could not accomplish what an ongoing grassroots campaign of users printing out 10-20 posters and putting them up around their schools and neighborhood would accomplish.

The revenue numbers in NCsoft's own documents tell a different story.

Wow -- that's honestly, a really surprising statement.

After all, I'm the one who's trying to propose solutions and pump people up into getting the word out there and make a difference. Everyone else who's posted here -- including you -- has been of the "I don't care", "Meh", "I tried, I give up" or "It's NCsoft's job" variety.

I don't believe that pointing out the declining revenue in NCsoft's own documents, raising the red flag and suggesting ways that we, as the players, can help the game we all love continue to prosper and grow is evidencing any sort of air of pity or defeat.

If somehow you gained that impression, I would like to make it clear that it was not my intention to convey anything of the sort. I simply would like to help CoX's membership grow, with all the benefits that entails to the player base.

This is a different topic, involving design changes and development, and not what this thread is discussing. The posters I am proposing would be aimed at the general playing demographic of people who like the Heroic genre.

Hard-core Roleplayers have always been a minority in the gaming population of CoX, and from launch to today this has never changed. Any advertising effort, grassroots or corporate, should be aimed towards the widest possible playing demographic in order to generate the largest possible response.

-- Vivian

Yet people do play (and pay) for subscription-based games, and CoX gains a certain number of new players every day.

On the basis of that indisputable fact, I would have to say that any effort, however small, on the part of the player base to market CoX to additional people, and expose more potential players to the game can only be a good thing, and would result in an increase in the number of subscriptions being signed up for.

Under this grassroots concept, recruiting of friends would mostly be done by those who haven't done it yet (i.e., new players). Since you, like most veterans, have already reached out to your friends, all you would be doing would be the poster effort.

-- Vivian