Gangrel_EU

The "massive number of hours" is normally just in *edit*60-100* hours to completion (you will quite possibly spend more time reloading the game than making progress sometimes) */edit*... I remember reading about one game (i forget which, it was a "big title" though, possibly Fallout 3) was proudly touting the figure of "80 hours of gameplay"... which just staggered my mind.

Christ, the old school RPG's never used to tout the number of hours that it took to complete it... you just assumed that you would get something that lasted for more than a few days of playing the game... quite possibly a few months (Secret of Mana took me 3 months to complete 1st time around, Links Awakening on the Gameboy took me 2 months or so, LoZ on the N64 was 6 weeks).

Right now, i am playing FF13 (late to the game, just got a console), and roughly 60 hours in, i am almost at the end of the game. True, there are side quests/collections that i can do once i have done the main part of the game... but it isnt essential to do it. Infact some of them *only* become completable once you have completed the game.

I have only been playing a couple of weeks!

This is also probably due to the fact that those MMO's also put a lock on how often you can *complete* a raid and get the reward per week.

Going from the MMO that I know, Rift, you had daily lockouts for the T1/2 dungeons (you could run normal mode as often as you wanted), whilst the actual "raids" were on a weekly timer.

Hell, from my RP guild over there, we had people who would run part of the raid with one character, and the other half of the raid with an Alt.

I do agree with you in that "Raiding" gets bit of a bad rap for how much time is spent dedicated to it, but I would believe that it is more due to the "levelling up gearing up alts/new players" treadmill.

If everyone stuck to a single main, the treadmill becomes manageable with lockouts. As soon as you chuck in alts, the time commitment to help out others/your alts gets much higher.

This is one of the *few* reasons why I don't alt. I hate rerunning content on multiple characters whilst I have no problems running the *same* content over and over again with a singular character (alts take time away from my main character....) Illogical i know, but it makes sense to me.

Side note: Considering how fast it takes for people to hit cap nowadays in most MMO's alting is now a fast and *relatively* painless experience. I know i would never spend 700+ hours hitting cap on an alt, especially if i played the same now as i did at launch.

Strangely enough though you *can* get some incarnate progress by running stuff via Oroborus/Exemping by gathering shards. Granted, it isnt fast, but it is a method.

Also by running the WST when the lower end TF's are chosen also helps you do it.

The ITF is generally ran because it is short, fast, and has a butt load of mobs to slaughter (the more you kill, the more you get rewards wise ) and at least handy for Alpha slotting (at least up to T2, maybe T3 status).

The SSA's also give *some* progress as well (well threads at least)

I am probably not alone in saying that the drop rate for shards when solo should be increased by some degree...

The whole 10 shards per day, was so that you wouldn't have to resort to 10 shards = 5 threads conversion ratio...

Hell, more than 10 shards in a day is amazing as standard anyway

Sorry for not explaining it better >.<

Also, how many hours have you actually spent *doing missions* on the character? Because 7 shards could be obtained in 50 minutes by running 1 or 2 ITF's, whilst running tips at +0x4 *should* gain you at least 2 or 3 every 5 tip missions

It is one of the things that should be implemented. Incarnate "replay mode" via Oroborus and TF/SF's. The only thing that needs solving really is the enemy groups that dont have level 50+ equivalents...

Another reason why this is a "good thing" is that you *will* miss out on content as you level up (yes, i know that some people do full content runs, my GF is trying for the triple full content on a single character).. but they are generally a minority of the player base), so you will have content that you haven't done before (at least on that character)...

But being able to do it as "end game" at least provides that "replayability" on a harder difficulty level, and done correctly, also gives you shinies.

Which unfortunately for the *general* MMO playerbase (which does also include people who play CoX), there is only so many times that you can play through content before you get bored with it and then unsubscribe from the game. No matter how much you *love* the game, if there is nothing left for you to do, why should you still subscribe to the game apart from to give the developers money?

I would *love* to see the figures on "average amount of time played on level 50's total life"... more because i am intrigued as to how many people "burn through and skip content" in comparison to "How many people actually try to do as much content as possible".

If you tell players "that is it, nothing else left for you to do", players *will* leave the game once they get to the end. Which is why games have different methods to extend their playtime/value. Different difficulty levels, stuff that can only be done once you have completed the "main game" (Final Fantasy 13 and its mission system for example, listing this as i am playing it right now)

Now granted, the 2nd and 3rd playthroughs *should* be faster because you know the system better, you know how to do stuff...

I think that it is more of a case that it is a problem with MMO's in general and not their development studio's.

Once you have completed something once or twice (or even 3 or 4 or 5 times), do you *honestly* want to go out and do it all over again.... and again and again and again and again and again etc etc. Especially once you know that once you hit the "end" there is nothing else for you to do. It *is* a problem with MMO's, which is why they have time sinks. They are there *purely* to keep on playing the game more, therefore you subscribe for longer.

Once you tell people "That is the end of the road, nothing left for you to do", once people have achieved that goal, why should they still subscribe?

And here is the difference between the MMO world and the general "computer game" world... although the lines are getting a bit more blurred due to DLC becoming available for single player games... DLC, the way to get more money out of the players, as well as adding new stuff to the game (extending its life). Arguments for and against DLC is out there, but MMO's have their own DLC... expansions.

Yep, i have done Dr Quarterfield... took my group 6 hours to complete last september (blame the EU player meet up ), and some of the arcs are incredibly long... and i can see where you are coming from... but to be honest, the old system sucked pre inventions (they helped, but only by so much). Once you got your badges, accolades et al, there was *nothing* left to do for that character. Roll up another one... and do the same *content* again. Granted, playing on a different powerset will produce a different experience, but then you are playing for the powerset, and not the content, in my opinion at least.

Note: I got to level 50 before I actually finished my level 1-50 content... more because i did spend time helping others do it, so i was running *some* content over a few times, it still helped out. /note

True, I do believe that there should be some form of "finality" to a character. But then you have to make sure that the game has enough "replayability" to actually keep people subbed to the game.

But then again, i wonder how many people would *honestly* still be subscribed to the game once they hit the cap with nothing left to do? How many people would still be subscribing once they had done it all (as many times as they can). The fact that there *are* time sinks there to slow people down just extends the amount of time that they will play the game.... the hard part is getting the time sink down to a "sensible" level, whilst still allowing decent forward motion.

This is why I unsub from the game for a few months every year, just because i do run out of stuff to do, and to avoid burn out... I guess that is part of the problem with not being an altoholic (only 2 characters that i have put any serious amount of time into, and they are both level 50... only one is getting incarnated, because i just hate running the same content one several characters... which is strange, because i can cope with running content over and over and over again on just one character >.< )

Then again, you look at the average levelling time for the 1-50 run *NOW* compared to how it was in I2/I3 area... even without powerlevelling you are looking at a faster/smoother levelling experience (I believe the average was meant to be 250-350 hours to hit level cap, took me 732 hours 1st time around, my 2nd 50 was roughly 150 hours, my 3rd was 75 hours).. now I wouldnt be suprised if it was closer to 150 hours to cap on average.

I honestly think you cannot run an MMO without there being some form of time sink (any shape or form) in the game, unless you plan for new content to be limited at cap and alting is "the end game"....

*edit*
I would like to point out that CoX *does* have a lot of stuff out there to do, but that is more because it is coming up to 8 years worth of content. Yes, some of the content is bad, some is good... but there is content. The Invention system helped extend the play time on a character, because if you were so inclined, you could "purple out" your toon... and that would take time (and inf) to achieve.

But once you did that, there was nothing left. Sure you could get the badges, but once you did that... what next?

Side switching came in... which then allowed characters to get *all* the other sides badges, brilliant.. more content for free (effectively)... which is handy for badgers!

The main problem I had before the incarnate system came out, was that once you hit 50, there was no way to actually go "one step higher" apart from "purple/PvP IO's" for your character... and there was actually *no* content that had been released that required you to do it either.

But the Incarnate system has content designed *around* the system itself. You need to step into it to actually get the stuff to do it (slight lie, you can gear up for incarnates, at least Alpha slot wise without running incarnate content). Is it achievable in a sensible amount of time and effort though is open to debate (queue arguments about soloing vs teaming vs leagues etc etc).

Personally, i think that *ANY* MMO's that doesnt try to keep people playing their characters once they hit the level cap is a poor MMO (thankfully, there arent many of them around, although it did take a while for Tabula Rasa to get any form of level 50 content out there.... too little too late though for it)

And this is where i think that PS can take a leaf out of what other MMO's have done and introduce "hard mode" to the task forces/flashback system. (Rift/SWTOR/maybe some others have "Hard mode" which is when you can rerun the old "dungeons" at level cap (and higher) difficulty)

The fact that we can "flash back" to older content is a *god send* for CoX... most other MMO's are "run the content once, forget about doing it ever again..." (thank god for instancing mission content this time around!). All you would need to do is talk to the Hero Corps dude, select "incarnate level" (maybe with additional diff slider!) and away you go for flashback content at a higher difficulty.

To be honest, you will run out of DA content... just depends on how many times you want to rerun the same repeatable

Back to the original question: Players will always devour up new content faster than it can be created, whereas adding in a system that can interact at many levels in the game is more beneficial (more bang for buck as it were). That is not to say that new mission/quest content shouldn't be created, it should, it is called "progressing the story line".

With the exception of a few of the story lines (Tina from PI for example) the flashback system would be brilliant to help out with progressing the incarnate system...the content is there... all they need to do is work out how to make it into "hard mode". In my humble opinion, the return on this would be excellent in terms of hours spent doing it, and amount of "new content" created.

Yes, it is a cheating method of creating "new" content, but think of how many hours of *unique" difficulty content it would generate! (not to mention as well, that with badges linked to it, those people who want "full content" on a character can get it!.

Now, what some people want is content which rewards you directly.

ie complete story arc 1, get power 1, story arc 2 get power 2 etc etc

How long would it take to complete each story arc (what would be a sensible time frame?) and how long would it take to generate said story arcs? You have to remember that the less time you spend on the "mission content" the shorter it will generally be (look at the length of the SSA's in comparison to normal story arcs )

*shakes head* Developers are in a hard place here, as there will always be complaints.... (i like my incarnate mode for flashbacks/TF's though, even though low level mob groups will need to be readjusted due to lack of "level 50 equivalent" and gives lots of additional content for "free"!)

Ahh,

500% of £10 = £50
20% of £250 = £50

The only difference is "how much money were you starting off with"

Percentages are a funny thing... there was a report once in the newspaper (i forget the exact topic), but it was along the lines of "Drinking red wine increases the chance of getting liver cancer by 50%"*...

It then stated further down in the meat of the article that it increased from 2 in 100,00 to 3 in 100,000 ....so yes, although "correct", it was such a small chance of something happening, that actually stating the odds didn't make it seem "important", whilst the percentage increase was an "eye grabber".

*As i said, i forget what the topic was about, but i was surprised with how poor the reporting was inside it.

I might just call that a head shot from 4000 paces... so impressive it blew my mind.

Vault came in at 84 months (7 years), so there would have been a players who got it before freedom launched (which was 7 years and 5ish months after US launch of the game)

It looks like they cooked the bacon in an oven to me, instead of under a grill (or even in a frying pan).

Hell, even deep frying would change the appearance (although those are a *LOT* greasier).

*edit* now, if they did a "pigs in blankets" version (bacon wrapped around mini sausages) that would be even more awesome

I would just like to point out that i was going from the names of the fields that are in the report...

Net Sales for NCsoft in Q3 was 135,735 Million Won, of which 2,812 Million Won was from City of Heroes (roughly $2,500,000).

Gross Profit for Q3 from NCsoft was 119,026 Million Won (no individual break down given between games though)

Gross Profit (again, taking the field names from the spreadsheet) is Net Sales - Cost of Goods Sold (according to the financial spreadsheet)

Now, NCsoft *do* list earnings from Royalties as well, so we can obviously not take those into consideration.... and they do also list under their expenses wages, severance benefits, bad debt, travel expenses, taxes and dues and other stuff as well.

Now granted, since NCSoft (nor Paragon Studios) have *not* released actual subscriber numbers for several months, the only method we have for gauging as to how successful a game is via this method...

Of course, if the monies from subscribers *wasnt* listed in any way shape or form on these quarterly reports, i would be very worried about the figures that NCsoft will be giving to their shareholders.

Of course, you have access to the same numbers as I do, so i would like to know where you got the 150K subscribers pre Freedom from (please cite sources as well)

*edit* and if you look at the last tab on the spreadsheet, you will see that the total takings for their MMO's *DO* add up to the net sales listed.

The numbers are available from NCsoft Quarterly reports (freely available from http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx )

And the numbers are "Net sales from the online games" so pure raw income.

So, that isnt taking consideration their "Cost of Goods Sold" (which is taken off for Gross Profit, nor staff costs)

(and just to make it easier, you want the Game Sales sheet from the consolidated factsheet spreadsheet

They brought in $2,500,000 (roughly) for Q3... so roughly $800K/month

and at $15/month that equals 55,000 (ish) subscribers...

so unless *every* single player was paying $5/month... there is no way that they were getting 150K subs pre freedom

Q3 2010 = roughly $5,100,000 (Note: Going Rogue was also released in this quarter)
Q4 2010 = roughly $2,900,000
Q1 2011 = roughly $2,700,000
Q2 2011 = roughly $2,400,000

This was taking into consideration *all* monies being taken, so I just went for the most expensive sub rate going (assuming all players, EU and US based are paying the same rate as well)... and that a player will not buy any boosters or character slots or server transfers...

Even going for $10/month sub rate (which i believe is cheaper than you can actually get) you only hit roughly 80K players...

((edit, the numbers are from the Consolidated Sales Breakdown by game (excluding royalties)) so from what i can gather they are basically "all monies taken before costs"....

Edit 2: Incase you are wondering Q1 = January - March, Q2 = April - June, Q3 = July - September, Q4 = October - December

Although going by the NCsoft financials, 150K would have been an amazing amount... with one slight problem...

150K active subs pre freedom would have actually had a higher income than they were showing.

I would have been more inclined to say somewhere between 50k (extreme low ball estimate) to roughly 90K... it is hard to say due to how yearly subs work out, if the earnings included booster pack purchases (if they did, then there would have been fewer subs accounted for in the same amount of earnings, unless a booster pack just didnt sell a dime) etc etc

I would imagine that they do this the same way as we have to buy enhancements in CoX... its a cash sink pure and simple... granted as to how much of one varies from game to game.

To be honest, it is a poor MMO where you *dont* have the cash available to skill up. I dont know if it is because I am a miser and only buy what i need, but i honestly *cannot* remember the last time where i didnt have the cash available to skill up (7 years and counting). Yes, if you go and blow all your cash on stuff on the AH and other miscellaneous stuff you can find yourself in this situation...

But the same can happen for a new player in CoX who spends lots of time in Icon swapping their costume around. Hell, before WW/BM came out, i remember giving players inf so that they could buy new enhancements just because they would go red when they next level up. And this was for the player who *didnt* spend ages in the tailor!

Has stuff changed since then for CoX? Yes it has, and for the better... but it hasn't always been this way

Just as a *quick* update, Steam has a client now available for Android and iOS

http://store.steampowered.com/mobile

(would like to state that it is beta only right now, but loading it up and trying to log in will put in the queue for a beta for it)

Well, there is already Steam which shows you which of your friends are playing what game....

Not really suprising either to be honest...

I mean, can you *currently* get a villain into DA or GC (before GC was trashed)?