Energyman

Agree with all of these 100%. I'll also add that archtypes felt wanted in teams. So many other games won't take you if that AT is already filled on the team or if the mission calls for multiple of an AT that you aren't. CoH community on the other didn't seem to care, all were welcome, even if the entire team wound up being the exact same AT. This community, bar none, is the best.

I agree with this. In beta I'm able to hit Aim, use my fast snipe, use charged bolts, use lightning bolt, and get off another fast snipe all before the Aim buff wears off. I'm playing my build now to see if I can get Build Up to provide the 22% needed as well so I can just rotate between Aim and Build Up with the attack chain just listed.

I agree with this. Although a part of me, probably the 7 year vet part, misses the old music too. Love the new stuff though.

As boss I think you should be in shiny new office digs. You can't crack the whip if you're standing next to the minions, you've got to do it from you're temple they just built for you. Congo Ratz War Witch.

I did it in an earlier thread, couldn't resist. But I have the same sentiments. And as for the server architecture, yes you can have many virtual servers running on a single physical server. You would just need to make sure the physical server has the resources, memory, CPU, etc, to handle the virtual servers. A server like that for a game like this I would imagine would be pretty beefy but it's out of the realm of possibility.

I'm a vetrin!

Anyway, I totally agree that vet rewards should not be purchased. As others have said it's not about the money it's about the time. The vet rewards at their core are a loyalty program. Loyalty does not equal money loyalty equals continual use of a product. I've said it before in similar threads it's akin to Frequent Flier miles. You can't pay for 25K miles worth of flight time in advance in one lump sum and expect to be elevated to Premier status on your next flight that for all the airline know will be the only flight you ever take with them. Over time that's a loss of money for them. You have to put in the time and actually prove you'll stick it out with them and user their product on a continual basis.

Vet Rewards are the same thing. How does NCSoft know that you won't just drop down the $900 to get all the veteran rewards, play one month, and then never come back? Now pay $900 over 60+ months and obviously you've put in the time and given them the continued business. It is about time and loyalty and in this case you can't put a price tag on that. Leave vet rewards as they are.

People who constantly say things like this should stop complaining and just flock to those other games. Why be unhappy and negative here when it seems you'll be happy there? And I'm not trying to call Eiko or anyone out in particular, but why cry doom and the grass being greenier somewhere else when you have the option to go somewhere else for relatively the same monthly cost?

As to the HeroCon models, yes, they are not costume pieces. But they affect the look of your character just as costume pieces do. As mentioned they are far more exclusive than the vet rewards. As I've said before the vet reward program is essentially a frequent flier program. The more miles (active account time) you rack up the more rewards you get. Plain and simple. Don't like it, fly a different airline.

I'm confused. You say they are truthfully answering "No" to the question that they heard. And they question they heard according to you is "Do you want an extra $180 from me between now and when the game shuts down, or not?" So they don't want our money but are in trouble of going under?

First off rarely ever does any business tell you months in advance that they're shutting their doors. The best advance notice you get is when they have those going out of business sales where they mark up everything 50% and then have a 60% off sale. The questions above your not going to find answered in detail unless you're a stock holder of a company or senior manager. The fact of the matter is we aren't directly accountable for the metrics above, NCSoft and its employees are. Those accountable for the metrics get to know what they are, those that support the metrics only get to know that there are metrics and we're contributing to them. That's the way of management in any major company.

Secondly, I don't see where people are thinking NCSoft has suddenly gone double down on CoX. Is it soley because an expansion pack is coming out that's giving feature and upgrades fans of the game have been asking for awhile? If that's the case I guess WoW is in trouble too since they have Cataclysm coming out. Or maybe it's because NCSoft has bought out CoX from Cryptic and devoted more resources and headcount to the product?

Again I'll tell you companies don't buy out companies/products and triple their resources to a product they think is going to fail in some last ditch effort to get an explosion of customers that they think won't churn over especially in the midst of economic troubles and increasing competition. They devote money and resources into products they believe can weather the storm and come out with a good market share and provide a good revenue stream for the company. Going Rogue is just a new product/service to the CoX name that NCSoft believes will position one of their flagship titles in a good position when the storm calms down.

Sounds to me like you're assuming DOOM for the game unless someone really high up from NCSoft comes to you and shows you the business plan for CoX and the Excel spreadsheet showing the numbers are fine. That's not happening unless you own enough stock in the company. Businesses don't give those numbers to customers because they don't know how to completely understand them and they end up thinking the worst which ends up making the numbers worse in the long run.

Are their metrics that this game is measured against, sure. Is there a deadline of when those metrics have to be hit before some action is taken, yes and no. Taking action does not mean pulling the plug. Taking action could be scaling back on upgrades, personnel, or reduced server count. If things like that were to happen, and I don't think they are, then my guess is it would probably happen in the EU markets first assuming they are the lower customer base. As for a deadline, rarely does business have one solid drop dead date for something like this. They'll give it a quarter, two quarters, a year of evaluation, trending, and trials to fix issues and repeat the process before drastic moves are made.

Have other NCSoft games failed, sure. Were players "lied" to, I cannot say as I was not a part of those games. But I can tell you this, the games that were shutdown are not games by which a standard was set and other games are measured against. Champions Online is directly measured against this game and the standards it's set for the genre. DCUA may very well also be compared to this game. You don't set a standard and have the new kids in town compared to you if you're in danger of going belly up. CoX is doing fine and by many measures is doing better than ever.

What you're asking for is unrealistic and by the sounds of it you won't believe anyway. If you feel that negatively about the game and its future and the past of NCSoft then do as you suggest and find a new game. There are plenty of us who have been here through it all and plenty of us who will still be here to watch and bask in what the long future of this game has to offer us and we'll enjoy every minute of it.

Been on the ride for 63+ months and if the game is still around for 63+ months more I plan to still be riding. I've not jumped ship yet. I played WoW for a while. I beta tested The Matrix Online. I open beta tested Champions Online and have debated giving it a try for the 30 free days. I'm looking cautiously forward to DCUA. I'm excited about Star Trek Online. I have high expectations for The Old Republic (even went back through KotOR 1 and 2). And yet through all that I've maintained an active CoX account and always find myself coming back here and comparing the other games to it. From what I've seen of Going Rogue I'm only that much more excited.

If some of those other games are good then I'll give them a try and if I like them, then I'll have to find a way to pay a second game fee again. I don't see anything stealing my love away from CoX, especially with GR coming. I was here pre I1 and I'll be here post I100 if it goes that long. Massively obviously has no clue what they're talking about.

/signed. So long as there is also level 50 versions of these as well. Maybe one or two of these every 10 levels or so. Then at 50 have a handful of them.

And this is the basis for my point. Different vets look for different things out of the system. For some they want the costume pieces to stand out, for some it's the powers, for some it's the badge, for some it's the freespecs, and for some it's the MA tokens and whatever else we have in the system. Every vet has something they look forward to most in the system and taking out a piece of that and swapping it for something different runs the risk of losing those vets or at the least causing just as much if not more complaining.

The vet rewards have been around too long now to change at that level. It would be like taking VS out of Electric blast powers. Some people would love it, others would cry doom over it, and some would even leave the game all together they feel that strongly about it. As such the devs can't get rid of it even if most players thought it was a bad power. And I'm just using that as an example, I'm not picking on VS or getting into that debate.

Now if they wanted to say no more costume pieces in the vet system for any 66+ vet rewards, fine. Swap out what might have been higher vet costume pieces with temp powers, tokens, freespecs, whatever. Heck I'd be for adding the free crafted costume piece at those higher levels or free Vanguard, the unlockable costumes for free basically, or even maybe adding a free choice of booster pack. The multi hundreds if not thousands of dollars the 60+ months vets have already paid in monthly fees alone would seem to make that a fair option in my opinion. Of course if we already have them all they'd have to come up with some way to compensate that or have it a token for X amount that can be used in the CoX store, that way we could use it towards server transfers, renames, whatever as well.

Just some ideas. But I think what is fundamentally there cannot be changed without too much backlash at this point. Maybe had they done that withing the first few months of release of the vet system, maybe even the first year. But now it's just like completely removing a power from a powerset and swapping it with something completely different.

Yes we have Hami, and I've even shown it to some hardcore WoW players that were impressed. The high-end WoW dungeons last I knew at most were 24 man raids where as Hami is at least a good 45+ and I've seen a good 150 in there taking him on. But, we only have the one "raid" and WoW has many.

I think that's the point. We need more monster raids of the Hami class. However the WoW raids are more story driven, you have to go through a dungeon, take out dozens of mobs, a couple sub bosses, then fight the big monster. I think it would be nice if CoX did something similar with smaller 24 man max raids against let's say a 5th Column base where at the end you actually have to fight that giant Robot of theirs. Or perhaps a Circle of Thorns map where at the end some sort of giant ancient mystic evil is awaken that must be stopped.

Heck they don't all have to be giant, just something that takes larger than 8 man teams to fight but has some defined limit so there aren't 100+ people in there. Keep it big but not too big. Give it a little bit of a story and mission that goes with it so it's not just "go kill the big monster" like with Hami and then make it level 50ish so that it's high end content. Have it drop it's own unique enhancements ala Hami, or give out some higher end recipies, a badge, etc, etc. I know this game isn't WoW, and I don't want it to be, and for the record I like the Hami raid, but I think it could work if we took some of those WoW concepts and implimented them in game.