Edgewater

Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma

Me, team mates who know how to work as a team. AT doesn't matter, as long as they aren't all "RAWR I'm a villain, I can solo this entire map without you guys".

Originally Posted by starphoenix

Got to level 6 on my Demon/Pain MM and I am rather disappointed that there wasn't any noticeable change. On the other MMs, each upgrade gives a graphical addition to the pets, but there is nothing except that aura to indicate fire demonlings and cold demonlings. Thugs have some weird system for graphical change, but there is a change.

Originally Posted by OABAAB

You know Dr. Aeon, it's interesting that you're preaching patience when you know full well (or should know as an employee) that time isn't a luxury PS/CoX can afford. I know where to find NCSoft quarterly reports and what to look for when it comes to CoX revenue. I'm sorry but I couldn't help myself. This is part of what I do for a living. In anycase, since the introduction of AE in April of last year, CoX sales revenue all the sudden plummeted 40% (compared to a 43% revenue decline in a rolling 12 month period ending in Q4 2009). Basically, during the course of Q1 2009, CoX revenue went down 3% which can be attributed to the natural decline of most aging MMOs. Then came AE in Q2 in the final two quarters of 2009, revenue fell off a cliff and dropped 40%.

Next let's look at the chronology of AE itself. The first 2-3 months after the introduction of AE, there was no doubt that it was wildly popular and widely utilized. Everyone and their extended family were crammed into the AE buildings in AP or Mercy/Cap. That kind of player interest couldn't have been bad from the revenue standpoint and the fact that revenue only dropped 3% from Q1 to Q2 of last year seems to reflect just that. Then came the fine-tuning or nerfs to be more blunt. In chronological progression, ticket cap, custom critter exp, MM pets, and now allied NPCs, just to name a few of the big ones. If you log on during peak hours right now, the players in Mercy and Cap AE buildings are a mere small fraction of where it was a year ago. Going back to the revenue decline in 2009, you can't honestly tell me that these two trends had no correlation. The fact is that drastic and persistent nerfing of popular (and maybe even integral) features in a MMO can contribute significantly to the eventual demise of the game itself. After all it has already happened several times in the short history of MMORPGs. Two prominent examples would be SWG and more recently, Tabula Rasa.

Now let us consider the obvious fact that PS is not exactly flush with subscribers and rolling in dough (at least compared to years before). It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the bigwigs at NCSoft corporate have already expressed their concern over the steep decline in CoX revenue last year. After all in the corporate world, if a product line suddenly loses 40% of sales revenue in a matter of months, it usually gets discontinued. NCSoft may be willing to deal with it for now given that the overall company profitability skyrocketed last year due to the popularity of AION in Asia but how long is it going to last? What if GR doesn't generate as much revenue as desired? That projection isn't all that far fetched given the short term memory nature of the MMO population, ample competition and the fact that CoX is an aging game. This is not to mention that patience isn't exactly a virtue in the world dominated by corporate balance sheets.

With all of this in mind, I am simply shocked that you guys haven't switched to a more conservative approach when it comes to AE fine-tuning. The nerf now and deal with it later approach as exhibited by this latest episode is extremely shortsighted and irrational. It's almost as if PS is willing to alienate some player now while banking on GR to inject fresh blood later but that scenerio is far from a guarantee. Regardless of what the "good riddance, let them leave" or "we don't need players like that anyways" crowd is saying, CoX is currently not on a solid enough footing to be able to afford the hemorrhaging of even more subscribers (revenue).

P.S: If you dislike my bluntness and challenging tone, feel free to put a temporary or even permanent ban on me. If that is to be a consequence of me saying what needs to said, so be it. My main account was already canceled prior to all of this and this account only has about two weeks left. However, allow me to say this one final thing. The reason I canceled originally was due to a perfect storm of busier real life schedule, low CoV population and other diversions. It was not the result of some ragequit over any particular prior issue. However, now that I've seen the way this particular nerf was handled and the continuation of collective tunnel vision on the part of PS, I doubt I would've renewed anyways. Good luck.

Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic

However, to newer players, farms and the "easy route to 50" are not the path to a long stay in the City. I'll be glad to see when this behavior is stopped. Those kind of behaviors don't endear you to the flavor of the City, they tempt you to easy and quick gain make normal progress in the game seem slow and boring or too hard because they aren't used to actually having to fight intelligently to defeat their enemies.

Originally Posted by Lightfoot

I'm curious why, after five years, this is the straw that broke the camel's back?

We've seen hotfixes and temporary solutions come down the pipe before, often with a much longer promised wait time for the "permanent solution" (see: PVP 2.0). In this case, we are being told that the permanent fix is coming with Issue 17, or shortly thereafter (definately before Going Rogue), which is supposed to release later this month.

Some good stories are adversely affected (the amazing Teen Phalanx story, for one ), but there was no way they could have let the jelly bean exploit stand once it got out how to remove the attack powers from your custom critter allies.

The alternative is bringing out the banhammer again, which I'm sure no one wants a repeat of from last year.

Just curious. I can see being hot about it now, especially if one or more of your stories was adversely affected. I tested one of mine last night, and it was hit, so I removed it for now and saved the file on my local drive to be brought out again when the permanent solution is in.

Here's hoping you decided to stick around after all. Don't give away all your stuff quite yet.

Originally Posted by Clebstein

Meanwhile, the "Newsie" in Talos is still informing everyone about the newly released power set, Shield Defense!

Originally Posted by Psyte

Aren't they able to somewhat separate PVP and PVE values since i13?