Gangrel_EU

Although I don't disagree with you on that part... or for those who have read the announcement and not actually tried it, the announcement *does* state:
So, it all depends on how you read into it. To me, it *does* heavily imply that the Paragon Market is offlined, and that you *cannot* buy anything from it.

From my experience of the TR closures there was *some* discussion between the two sides (Destination Games and NCsoft) as to what should actually be in the compensation package. So if you are saying that the compensation package should ahve been already worked out between NCsoft and Paragon Studios... I would have gotten mad at Paragon Studios for keeping the news from us.

In terms of refunding the points, that is something else. Because if you subscribe you get a stipend of points for *free*, but you can choose to buy more... and there is no difference between "subscriber points" and "bought points" when it comes to spending them.

How should those be refunded?

In terms of the subscription, if you email the customer services (which some people did as soon as they heard about what was happening), they got the message from customer services that NCsoft would be contacting them *directly* concerning the billing/unused subscriptions.

I cannot comment on how that works exactly from experiance because for the whole time i was playing TR, i was running on free game time codes (slight perk of the job running a set of forums)

*edit* I would like to emphasize that NCsoft are only legally required to refund the unused subscription time and offer nothing else. The offering of other stuff is where the discussion between NCsoft and Paragon Studio's kick in.

Flagship was the dev studio for Hellgate London (the 3rd person RPG shooter with sub fees/free to play option). You still had to *buy* the game in the 1st place.

Thanks for the clarfication.

With my immense google-fu, i have deduced that the percentages given are the points where you start to experience diminishing returns (ED as it were) on that given stat.

15% for Strength, 30% for Superstrength.

*HOWEVER*, this is only for the bonus from a given stat, it can be enhanced further via other means (gear bonus's, damage mods etc etc)

To be fair, they have stopped reporting numbers for pretty much all of their MMO's from their reports from what i can tell.

Just goes to show how much attention people pay to some stuff.

I still have the TR beta install program, as well as the actual TR live client still saved on my computer... granted, they are zipped up to save some space, but i still have them.

To be honest, with large layoff off the development team this seems to be fairly normal.

I know that Bioware did it when a lot of the SW:TOR team was laid off (including Rockjaw (ex EU Community/Creative Concepts person)).

So it isn't all that strange.

To be honest, all the emails that went out when TR was closed down also included in them what compensation you would be receiveing at the same time, when you will receive said compensation and what else is happening. This was about 2.5-3 weeks after the initial announcement.

To be honest, i would rather they take their time on this one, instead of rushing out one email, then another, and then a 3rd....

Side note: They did a release (that went out to press outlets) about the closure, and their reasons for it. You might not like *their* reasons for it, but those are the reasons that they have given.

Ironically, living by this rule, all those CoX players really shouldn't have complained.

/sarcasm

(yes, this will be game number 5 (or 6 if you include the closure of Lineage in the western market) that they would have closed down.

Auto Assault was given 4 months notice for closure of the server. Am not sure how much warning the developers were given *ahead* of the announcment (to be honest, i wasnt really one of community there).

Tabula Rasa: There had been several staff/management changes in the run up to the announcement of the closure of the game (I think they went through 3 different producers in under a year).

They used scrum development techniques so they were *always* working on something, even if it wasnt coming out for that month, it was still being worked on to roll out in a couple of months time (the Armoured Mech Suits for example were about 4 months work)... the 1st person view was pretty fast. I know that other zones were in development and lining up for release when the announcement came through.

When the announcement came, they let everyone go, some came back as consultants i believe, because they would be working on the big final event for the game.

Some of them even came back unpaid to help release and run the "final event"... twice (once for EU once for US). There was a new zone to fight in. There were also some new mobs that hadnt made an appearance in the game before then (well, not as *active* NPC's.. some where depicted as statues previously )

Was some of the work already in progress, more than likely it was, and they repurposed it for the end game event. However, there was a lot of work that they did to get it repurposed, and they didn't have every one needed to do it as a consultant... some of the work was done unpaid.

Useless piece of information: The Microsoft collection of 3000+ reviews is across the complete company, and unfortunately isnt broken down by division (so for all you know, the Xbox side of marketing for the company could be *pants* to work for).

Without you providing context to it (or even the passage/link that it is from)... i cannot say.

For a laugh, many years ago, me and a few friends tried to come up with a fairly comprehensive RPG *stat* system for dealing with something like what you have suggested.

Even if we started off with a few basic stats, to avoid the "lumping" together (ie strength for melee damage, although not necessarily for lifting stuff), we ended up with a nice large selection of derived stats, advantages/disadvantages and so on. Somewhere in the region of 20 odd. We then decided that we would stop there, as we hadnt even gotten to the "powers/skills/abilities" stage....

This was only done for fun, and more as an example of depending on how you describe the basic statistic, and then interpreted and explained your reason to the others, if the action should be stuck into a basic stat or a derived stat.

Side note: I have also played a very basic RPG system, 6 stats rated from 1-6. Roll a die, add relevent stat, beat target number.

You had to explain why you were using a stat, even if it wasnt directly relevent (so intelligence *could* be used for a lifting test, as intelligence could mean that you know where to place the tree branch properly to get the most leverage).

Yeah, lumping of stats together can be annoying, but if you are already running with 6 to 8 fairly distinct stats, it will happen unless you want to have an explosion of derived stats.

To be honest, there isnt anything that i have met in my short time playing the game where you *had* to lift something large to progress... Sure, it might make it *faster* if you did, or allow you to throw that car out of the way, but there is nothing making you do it (tell a lie, i believe that in the tutorial you have to lift a wall off an NPC... adrenaline allows you do it though is my reasoning for the "non strong" characters.)

Rough stat overview:

1. Constitution
   • Increases your health points. You get 15 health points per point of Constitution.
2. Endurance
   • Increases your maximum Energy.
   • Indirectly increases the energy returned from your Energy Builder, as energy builders return a percentage of total energy.
   • Indirectly increases the energy gained from your normal regeneration (as you gain about 2% of your max energy per tick)
3. Strength
   • Increases the strength (both distance and chance to penetrate resistance) of all Knockbacks, for melee only.
     1 Str = 1% Knockback strength
   • Increases your Knockback resistance
     1 Str = 1% Knockback resistance
   • Increases melee base damage with a target of 20% (does not include Ego Blades attacks). This bonus is separate from the Super Stat bonus
     At level 40, it requires 70 Strength to reach this target. For levels below level 30 the formula is Level*2, and from levels 30-40 the formula is Level+30.
   • Increases the size of objects you can lift, and makes lifting lighter objects faster (numbers scale with level).
4. Dexterity
   • Increases your chance to land a Critical Strike with a target of 30%(?)
   • Increases the effectivness of Stealth granting powers.
5. Intelligence
   • Increases your ability to see through Stealth
   • Reduces the Energy cost of all powers
   • 1 point of INT accelerates recharge by 0.15%
6. Ego
   • Grants Hold Resistance.
   • Increases ranged knock strength (1% per point).
   • Increases the amount of Energy gained from a successful Block up to 30% of your maximum energy pool.
   • Increases Ranged and Ego Blades base damage. This bonus is separate from the Super Stat bonus similar to how melee powers scale with Strength.
   • Increases the size of objects you can lift with Telekinesis and makes lifting lighter objects faster (numbers scale with level).
7. Presence
   • Increases the effectiveness of Healing Powers. This bonus is separate from the Super Stat bonus similar to how melee powers scale with Strength but presence has a target of xx%.
   • Increases the duration and health of all Crowd control effects.
   • Increases resistance to all Crow control effetcs.
8. Recovery
   • Increases your Energy Equilibrium
   • Slightly increases your maximum Energy
     8 Rec = 1 Energy
   • Increases the energy returned from your Energy Builder and Energy Unlocks.

Semi agree... if you stick to the archtypes.

This is the totals of stuff that you will get by the time you hit level 40:

14 Powers (12 for Archetypes)
2 Travel Powers
3 Super Stats (pre-chosen for archtypes)
6 Talents (awarded at different stages if Freeform or Archtype).
36 Advantage Points (these are like enhancements... each power can take up to 5)
6 Build Slots (Freeform Archetypes only)
2 Costume Slots (Gold Members only)
1 New Character Slot (Gold Members only)

Correct
Electric and Ice Using (basically mixing together 2 archtypes) is a "Freeform" selection, and that is limited to Gold members aka subscribers

*edit* Looking through the store, you can buy a freeform character slot, although it appears you would still be limited to what you have unlocked as a non subscriber as the abilities you can use.

I had a talk with a friend of mine around the launch of TSW, and we got onto the topic of sub fee's.

We *both* came to the agreement that the days of $15/£8.99/€12.99 were drawing to an end.

We felt that $9.99/£6.99/€7.99 would be more in line (side note: the non US$ prices roughly equate $9.99 as it stands today) with a global market, whilst opening it up to more players.

If you had Microtransactions, you should possibly think about reducing the sub fee, and then try to monatise the extra's up to what you are expecting to be paid as a sub fee.

But nowadays, the sub fee rate is a bit too high, especially with purse strings getting tighter and tighter.

Yep, they are still up in a fashion. Not heavily used at all right now, although people do still pop by every so often. It is something at least for some old TR players to link through.

That is an interesting line to take indeed... however with both AA being closed as TR launched, there was a 2 month gap between the closure and next launch. Same with TR and Aion (and that was a 7 monthish gap IIRC).
So whilst it is a nice theory, it holds less water with the TR closure and Aion. Because you are then sitting on servers that are not doing anything.

I do remember reading about Netdevil trying to buy the IP back. Too much money was asked/not enough was offered (take your pick), so the deal went nowhere.

Lots of politics that probably had an influence on it getting closed down... however, it did bomb sales wise as well. *Personally* I would have expected the lack of sales being the main reason, with the corporate politics giving it more of a kick when they managed to oust the Garriott brothers from the top of NCsoft Interactive (instead of Garriott possibly using some influence/pull to keep it alive, and possibly try to get it swapped over to F2P and see how that went)

The scary thing is that with the average retention Ratio for MMO's (roughly 40% i believe), that would leave just 80K players after the 1st month. Not a failure, but the player base just drops from there (in general, in the long run. Eve Online and WoW are notable exceptions)

Side note: City of heroes has a *high* retention ratio of roughly 75% i believe (I remember reading in a presentation, possibly the 7 year presentation where the number of characters created was popped up).

Oh god... that would be *awesome*

Sorry for corrupting your mind (albeit slightly)

2 minutes to midnight
The hands that threaten doom.
2 minutes to midnight
To kill the unborn in the womb.

Nah, 2 minutes to Midnight....