Leo_G
-
Posts
4398 -
Joined
-
Quote:...is what I think you meant. That is, he's not rallying everyone for massive boycotts just stating what he's going to do with his money.Originally Posted by JoeKent
Oh wait, I get it. Now that it's YOUR money not getting refunded to YOU that it's ok FOR YOU to go "
antagonising NCsoft"
Even me, the person who's been going on and on about how boycotting and blisting NCsoft won't do you any good, the person that hasn't bought GW2 yet but is going to buy it today...still is of the opinion that your money is your money and you're not evil for spending it on a product you want to support owned by a company you don't like nor are you anything bad for choosing to withhold your money specifically because you choose not to deal with the company.
To paraphrase, don't call me some traitor for buying GW2. Don't say people refusing to deal with NCsoft are 'punishing' ANet. It's your money and you should be allowed to express your stance as a consumer with it. Period. -
Quote:GW2 is a 3rd-person/1st-person view. If you can't jump right in 1st-person, zoom the camera out to 3rd.Originally Posted by Ironik
I think it's hilarious that in Guild Wars the mechanics were so colossally retarded you couldn't even jump. So they added jumping to GW2... and felt the need to add jumping puzzles. First Person platformers are easily the stupidest thing I've ever encountered.
-
Quote:I actually agree with this. Even Shadow Shard doesn't feel like wilderness because...you can just fly. It's hardly wilderness when you've got speedy transit through any zone either through leaping, teleportation or flight. Wilderness stops being wilderness then and instead becomes nice scenery to look at while you zip by.Originally Posted by Winterminal
Nowadays, with all the available travel powers, teleport powers, etc. to which we have access, no, I do not think there is wilderness in this game. I don't honestly know if there ever was.
However...
I distinctly remember my first days in the Hollows, before I had figured out the chat interface, and before I had any travel powers, and before the Hollows revamp. I was sent on a mission in the southeastern corner of that zone, hoofing it with Sprint the whole way (since I also did not know to pick up Fitness at that point). That was really the one moment in this game where I felt truly isolated. -
Quote:I'm rather confused by your comments, Jayb. You're basically telling someone to shut up. Why, though? Having a bad week?Originally Posted by JayboH
The quoted parts you are replying to were not in response to you, but I can tell from the history in this thread how hard you seek out chances at cutting the game title down at every opportunity. There is nothing that you can't ignore in either title to continue believing your own personal story and be perfectly happy with it, so that point is moot. The act of insulting the title is so addicting, that all these pages in, after making the point perfectly clear multiple times, you seek out other conversations to interject insults into. At no point are you forced to PVP in GW2 just like in CoH. Some do find enjoyment in crafting the art of an argument and can even find that addictive.
But there is no need to get defensive about anything. Expressing an opinion isn't a crime or an insult...and you're replying to Sam, after all
Going off on someone for expressing an opinion usually forfeits being treated the same way and since a lot of the examples brought up to counter GW2 are of no interest to me, they don't matter. Pretty simple. -
Quote:So those things have a name? Why not just call them 'portals' like I do?Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
A Horta Vine is some kind of mysterious energy plant that provides the "manual" form of transportation around the shard. You enter in one end and show up on another end in another zone. It's how you chase the Rulu-Shin in SSA2, those transparent funnels.
-
Quote:I'm not new but don't know what a hortha vine is...but that's because I hate the Shadow Shard and never go there.Originally Posted by Largo
New players have no idea what a hortha vine even is.
That sounds amazing...are there any other MMOs that do something like this?Quote:Originally Posted by Mental_Giant
Star Wars Galaxies had hideously large planets, and since it had player-built structures, you could really be hell and gone from anyone else.
Now that brings back memories. Beastmaster used to be *the* job for stuff like that. And back when I played under lvl 75 cap, a *LOT* of zones were like wilderness for several reasons: towns really are very separate from each other by many zones that are pretty bit, those zones had creatures in it, even at lvl 75 that would attack and aggro-add on you, and the best place to level is always going to be a 'safe' corner somewhere in one of these wilderness areas where no one else will travel through your camp (possibly training stuff near you) or force you to compete with other parties for mobs.Quote:Originally Posted by Quin
The closest I've come to this is probably Final Fantasy XI, for all it's flaws. Sure, there's still towns, but it is possible to travel to some very isolated places that few other players really bothered with, a bit like the Shadow Shard. When I used to EXP off Bombs on my Summoner, I usually went out of the way to find places where I wouldn't be disturbed by passing players, and I wasn't disrupting any nearby EXP groups. The only people I'd usually see were other summoners. The closest city to Uleguerand Range is (or was, before the introduction of Abyssea made more fast travel options available) four zones away.
Since there was no requirement to be near some sort of crafting table, it was possible to field craft supplies. I was no cook, but I often took out ingredients for Silent Oils and Prism Potions, in case I needed stealth buffs in magic-aggro areas.
More recent changes to the level cap have meant that most of the non-Abyssea zones are a little less...well, scary, for lack of a better word. When the level cap was 75, areas designed for level 75 characters still had a lot of stuff around that could be considered challenging, the areas themselves felt hostile. With the cap now at 99, these areas are a little more trivial, although I've noticed the devs have thrown a few curveballs by adding some really high level mobs to old areas in far off corners.
Then there were places like the Beastman Strongholds that were pretty dangerous and no one really went inside there unless they had a quest or something to complete...then the activity inside would be isolated to a *part* of the stronghold that included a path from the entrance to the destination inside...but that leaves nearly 75% of the stronghold rarely ever traveled.
Beastmaster was the perfect job for being in the wilderness because the wildlife was like your weapon and without the danger of all those mobs breathing down your neck (because you could tame them, kill them, release them, whatever) you could reach far-off isolated corners of the map that no one would go to because it wasn't on the 'path' through the zone. -
Quote:I wouldn't call college a service though, but paying for a concert, sporting event or access to some means of entertainment in advance does come with risks of service. Even still, those examples have their exceptions where one *must* pay fully in advance to access at all at some point...Originally Posted by EvilGeko
You must have never went to college then? Because there's none I'm aware of that let you get your degree (or even start a class) without getting paid.
You must not have ever went to a major market team sports event or concert. Last I checked, you paid, sometimes months in advance for a ticket.
I could keep going, but your comment is absurd.
But this is ONLINE entertainment we're talking about. What stipulation are you encountering that makes it more attractive to pay for online access in advance? Afraid there won't be enough room (which makes no sense)? That time will dry up? -
Quote:It's not, but there's no obligation to make good on that acquired amount of points. It's left to the good will and intentions of the one you gave money to. I suppose I just can't afford to be put in the situation where things are left up to how nice someone wants to be. If NCsoft is nice, they'll hand you your money back and offer you discounted services with any of their other games if you keep buying from them...or NCsoft can be a **** and and point to the agreement you make every time you log in.Originally Posted by Ground_Fault
If you think that this is an acceptable business practice I don't know what to tell you.
-
Quote:But what if you're like me or Sam and you're playing a female character but you have a deep guy voice (or does Sam have a girlie voice)? I wouldn't want to hear my voice coming from the mouth of my female charactersOriginally Posted by Feycat
Personally, OT, I don't want those things either. I take them as an entertainment, I use what I like and I discard the rest. No one else gets to make decisions for my characters except me. Watching my toon's mouth move and a voice and words not my own come out makes me CRINGE.
PS: I usually prefer making male characters though I have female ones. -
Wow, some people have multi-month paid time over several accounts? Must be nice to have disposable income like that...
But don't you think that's the risk you run, pouring that much money on an online game? Like buying a 'lifetime subscription' to CO? Would you feel cheated that the game bit it after a year?
Sort of why I only buy month-to-month on anything MMO since I have no idea if I'd even want to keep giving a company my money despite not being able to play. You may get a better deal by buying X amount of months at a time...but that savings comes from paying for a service whose quality is outside of your control. Whereas, you pay more for per-month installments but if anything were to go sour, you're not beholden to being cheated out of something you already paid for.
Even if you guys get your refund on advanced time, hopefully you'll learn it's not always wise to pay that way for online entertainment. Because, technically, you got what you paid for and aren't entitled to anything in my eyes. Paying for a service before you get served (and isn't a reactive service) is like tipping your waiter as you walk into the restaurant. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Yes, mining in Guild Wars annoys me less than mining in Tera, but "mining" itself annoys me irredeemably. The most you can do is make it annoy me slightly less, but you'll never make me LIKE it.
When City of Heroes launched, it had no gear, no crafting, no inventory management and no loot. And I LOVED the game for it. It was a simple, light MMO which didn't waste my time with busywork ******** and simply let me build a character directly and, most importantly, go play the game. MMOs of old were designed to be "virtual worlds" in the image of D&D campaigns more so than games - an environment for people to log into and live in, rather than a game for people to play through. I'm pretty sure that's not all MMOs can be, and it's high time we started seeing MMOs that aren't trying to be Ever Quest, but with less annoying crap.
Well that's an interesting perspective. Personally, I've always disliked crafting because it often was such a sink at first that you'd *lose* money playing that side-game until you were practically maxxed...then you'd bank on everyone. As a mini-game, it was an interesting prospect but after going through your first few batches of goods, it wore pretty quickly. Because now I was looking at the world like "okay, I need to cut corners with costs here or I'll be broke and won't be able to get good gear in a few levels. If I can set aside just X amount of currency for selling on the auction and gather costly resource Y instead of buying it..."
No idea how GW2 handles that side of crafting but I'm libel to say crafting in and of itself is just dated annoying crap.
Lots of people envision their character capable of doing more than just swinging a weapon. That a game built to provide you a long-term gaming experience tries to offer other avenues of play isn't, IMO, trying to copy MMOs of old. A game is better for offering these things rather than not offering them at all. On one side, if you don't like the side-game/mini-game, you can opt to not play it...vs being only able to do one thing.
That said, I'd particularly enjoy more 'learned' activities for characters that didn't directly tie into making/obtaining goods. Like, it would be very interesting if you could choose a profession like 'Personal Trainer' that then lets you visit a towns local barracks and then go through the process of 'teaching' the NPC guards. Now those guards are stronger and better equipped to fend off attackers...
Or maybe a political career where you'd then establish cease fires, safe zones, treaties and aliances with warring factions that'd offer alternative ways of affecting the world other than blowing things up. Because some people actually like the concept of a learned aristocrat who deals with kings and nobles...yet isn't below picking up a knife, putting on a mask and assassinating a few pesky enemy generals.
I think one point you can keep in mind, Sam, is other players often have other preferences. It's no more adverse to try and touch on lots of little things in a game to make lots of people happy than it is to focus only on instanced play with no interaction with any player or NPC at all like you seem to want. -
Quote:Sure you can complete the overworld quests! From the videos I've watched (I haven't actually played or bought this game), the quests don't 'wait' for anyone. If you're tasked with stopping a group of pirates from sieging some villager's house or fend off a hoard of bears, the quest action takes place until that part is completed (i.e. pirates or bears will stop spawning) to which then the quest immediately moves on to the next part.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm not worried about kill-stealing, I'm worried about having a sense of accomplishment. There's no sense of accomplishment in a task that loops itself if I don't leave the area quickly enough which visibly has more to do about it by the time I'm finished with it. Say I need to break up a poacher camp and free all the cubs they've taken. I CAN'T. I can kill some of the poachers, but they just keep spawning on top of me too fast to even get all of them off-screen. I can free some of the cubs, but the cages reset faster than I can release them. I can never "complete" these quests. I can just do enough to tick the numbers on my time sheet and move on.
This is a problem I have with Champions Online, as well. An NPC tells me that civilians are trapped in the streets with the aliens so defence forces can't use their heaviest weapons. I'm tasked with saving three people. I save three people and go to head back. Before turning the corner to speak with my contact, I turn around and see around five or six people more trapped by aliens. I speak with him, and he says defence forces "can't see any more civilians." I guess they aren't looking very hard and those poor sods I left behind will be carpet-bombed.
I don't like overwold activities, because they can never be "completed" on account of all those other people that the activities have to be available for...
The quest doesn't hold your hand and wait for others to 'complete' it, if you miss it you miss it...but it will start over again later. If you're talking about the fact the quests start over later, well that's usually why there's other stuff in the area, so you don't have to stand around and get caught in the chain again when it does.
IMO, that's no different than flying about Paragon City and seeing a purse snatcher taking a woman's belongings and swooping in to rescue her only to see another purse snatcher half a block away...but it seems a bit more spread out in GW2.
Again, from my observations, if there's a quest about rampaging minotaurs, it's within a chain of quests. You don't stop the minotaurs and immediately another rampage starts. You start at the *beginning*, most likely involving why the minotaurs are rampaging in the first place...or if that isn't the end of the quest, you're then told to go and speak with the minotaur leader to talk him down from another series of attacks or something. You shouldn't be getting the same task over and over unless in the gap you spent after finishing the task, someone else came along and set the event in motion again.Quote:It's Aaron Thiery chastising me for not stopping to punch every purse-puller when there are an infinite number of those and they will always respawn as soon as my back is turned. It's why I don't give a toss about fighting street crime - because it never gives any indication that I'm accomplishing anything. And at least City of Heroes events are infrequent. A fire starts, I put it out, and the zone is fire-free for another half hour. In Guild Wars 2, I stop the rampaging minotaurs, am congratulated for it and then I run into another set of rampaging minotaurs for a repeat of the even before I can turn around to leave. -
Quote:And skins, I hear.Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Who cares how refined it is when there isn't really anything to do? Your character is identical to every other character of the same class and level except as far as your preferred weapon (hint: it's greatswords) and the amount of grinding you're willing to subject yourself to to earn more shinies. Even if you go wild with dungeon loot you're still one of ten thousand spooky clones instead of one of a hundred thousand.
But I don't find it realistic to hold a game up to *all* of another's strengths. I wouldn't expect to be able to make a character look extremely unique like in CoH primarily because *no* game on the market does. That's just a strength of CoH and probably one of its strongest strengths.
Very harsh. The same can be said for CoH, I'm afraid.Quote:Nothing you do in the game matters and they never pretend that it might matter.
You must have rose tinted visors on. Have you actually played CoH?Quote:Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
It's like WoW in that both of them are about delivering a constant trickle of pap that has no risk of offending or exciting anyone. Don't worry, everyone, our game is a safe place for you to log on after work and earn various rewards! You don't like teaming? That's great, we don't want you to have to do any of that! Don't worry about balance, it's been tuned by our team of Swiss watchmakers to ensure perfect adherence to our predetermined curve at all times. Hey, I know your type... you like customizing your appearance, don't you! I've got one word for you: dye! Your chainmail can be a whole rainbow of unique pastels!
Mmm, the only game that doesn't resembles any MMO I have any knowledge about (if this all applies to GW2, at *least* have is mirrored by CoH) is the Final Fantasy MMOs...but those are touted as horrible.Quote:Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
For the first day or two I was with you on that, Spyral. By "that" I mean that exploratory feeling that you get with a big game. Everquest was what came to mind, in a good way. The times I had running around, uhhh... EverLand with my level 30 magician, who was level 30 for several months right up to my cancellation of billing, were memorable just for the anticipation of what I'd run into next.
Everquest did it better than Guild Wars 2 and one of the many reasons for that is that the fact that you can instantly teleport anywhere takes what could be a pretty big world and shrinks it terribly. The reason they did that, of course, was to make the drip feed more compelling: don't worry, you don't have to walk all the way over to that new story quest, just teleport there in exchange for our carefully measured moneysink tax. That's in keeping with every single major design choice in the game: when ArenaNet had to choose between making you work for something really cool or just giving everyone the same crappy, impossible-to-get-angry-about version of it, they went with option B every time.
The thing about Everquest was that it only took me a few months to realize that I wasn't playing the game the way I was supposed to. I was supposed to be grinding like everyone else. The reason I didn't have to was that they did a bad job balancing the game to require me to. ArenaNet did a very good job of reaching that balance and killed my buzz all the more quickly for it.
Don't read this paragraph, or really anything I've written here, if you don't want to hear some cynicism but today, bored of my level 52 guardian, I looked to my last character slot and wondered what I'd make next. A norn? No, I already ran through those areas on my human guardian. An asura? No, I already... I think you can see where this is going. Why bother? The only real advancement comes with the scaling of Mt. Grind, whose dizzying heights will surely claim many lives in Korean net cafes. Apart from that, everyone and everything is interchangeable. The new game smell is great but when it faded I was left wondering how new this ride really was.
And CoH had 8 years to fiddle with all their screw ups. GW2 has only been out a couple of weeks. You tell me how balanced CoH was in i2/3 and say that again.Quote:Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
The difference is that City of Heroes at least tried to have a narrative, City of Heroes may have been intended to be balanced by was actually balanced by literally no conceivable definition of the word, and City of Heroes wasn't beholden to some weird concept of fairness that seems to exist here but especially elsewhere on the internet.
Defenders are crap for soloing. Defenders can solo nearly anything in the game. Both of those statements are true in City of Heroes and nobody ever yelled "STOP! No more content development until all of this is FIXED!" To put it another way, Cryptic and then Paragon to at least some extent assumed that their players were semi-rational adults capable of evaluating their options and making decisions based on that. Not everyone had to be the same, not everything had to be created equivalent. Look at Guild Wars: every class can solo everything at precisely the same rate. Every class has essentially the same access to single target DPS, aoe DPS, healing, buffs and debuffs.
It's all preference. I, frankly, find instances get old after you've been inside the same office, warehouse or cave dozens of times over the course of just a single character's levels and likely hundreds of times over the course of your entire play. I don't hate instances, I just prefer variety and CoH didn't have much of that.Quote:"But at level 80..." Let me stop you right there, I don't care about level 80. I'm never going to get to level 80 because I'm not patient enough to repeat the necessary impersonal clusterloves to fill in all of those requisite golden hearts. It isn't that I object to being able to solo in Guild Wars, I object to the fact that there is absolutely no reason to ever team except in dungeons, which are much worse than task forces but I assume they're similar to something from WoW. Hell, you can't team on the story quests, what's the deal with that?
Maybe the issue is that I only like instances and Guild Wars basically doesn't have any. I feel that there is a bit more to it than that, though, and I sadly suspect that there will never be another game made with this one's design philosophy because the company brass wouldn't have it.
Not saying GW2 has that, but it's new too. I don't expect it to have as many instanced missions as CoH but it doesn't need to.
Again, I guess this is all preference.Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If by "no different from City of Heroes" you mean "completely different from City of Heroes," then yes.
I want instanced missions that tell a story. I don't want overworld tasks that exist for the sake of having something to do.
I want missions that have consequence. The majority of CoH missions hold your hand in that, it doesn't matter if you fail...because you can't. You just have to keep trying until you 'finish' which hardly seems realistic. It's hard to 'tell a story' when it breaks its own immersion in that way. Being unable to or refusing to do a part of a mission should have consequences that affect what actually happens in the story.
And hero side is notorious for this..."You failed to rescue Lt. soandso? Don't worry, we teleported him out at the last instant and he'll be okay...You didn't see that happen? Of course, it's teleportation. It's faster than your eyes...What? You've got super reflexes? Well you must have been distracted..What? You're a robot and don't get distracted? Must have been a glitch in your systems...What? Your systems are flawless? Look, just go along with this, okay? Now where was I..." -
Quote:Healix needs an adult! NCsoft is holding her in a nono place!Originally Posted by Healix
-
Quote:Sure. I guess I'm part of the problem. My friends told me how much fun they're having playing GW2, friends I've been trying to get into MMOs forever. I do plan on buying that game and enjoying it because I believe it is a quality product. As a consumer, I'm making the right decision to support a product that I feel is worth my dollar.Originally Posted by JoeKent
If you truly love COH and feel like NCSoft gave the game you loved a raw deal, then boycotting NCSoft is the logical outcome.
I'm not making anyone choose between their loyalty to COH and GW2, NCSoft did that.
So , yes, either you're with me or you're my enemy. And I do have a pair of Sith Lords in SW: TOR.
If anyone wants to make a difference in how NCsoft's company is run, those hired by the company should be doing their part to ensure they feel they work in a non-hostile work environment and receive the compensation they deserve. It's not my responsibility to ensure the world is pure and righteous (by enforcing my ideals on them).
Sure. I let my money speak for the product. I think CoH is a quality product and am willing to help the game out in any way I can.Quote:Originally Posted by JoeKent
Lead, follow or get the f**k out of the way.
Apparently, my help isn't welcome here so I should just keep my money and support?
Yeah, stop trying to be the voice of a movement. Just stop talking period.
Well, from what I can see, lots of people are enjoying the game. Even if the company goes bankrupt tomorrow, I have a hard time believing the game would simply die with the company.Quote:Originally Posted by jfp2004
And with NCSoft apparently having money problems, I think investing into ANY of their games right now would be a bit unwise, regardless of how you feel about them. Granted, Guild Wars 2 doesn't have the monthly fee, but I still don't have that much faith in things staying stable/online in the near future. -
Lol I don't think anyone even mentioned FFXIV....uh ten plus...five minus...yeah XIV.
I've been watching posted vids of lots of games that released in the past year and a half that I completely lost track of (omg Zelda Skyward Sword released last year!? Man I'm really disconnected >_>) Frankly...FFXIV looks exactly like FFXI...except they pissed me off by renaming all the races (the exact same races) with names I can't pronounce...what was wrong with Mithra, Hume, Galka, Elvaan and Tarutaru? Now it's Miqo'te, Hyur, Ryogadyn(?), Elezen and Lalaffel.
Now you try and remember which name goes to what (hint, they're the same order I named the FFXI races). At least with the original names, you could tell. Of course, a hume is a human. Galka sounds like it's a synonym of Bulk which fits with the big guys. Elvaan is just a mispelling of Elven. Tarutaru is just cute like the weird little toddler race...you got me on Mithra, that name isn't quite descriptive of catgirls...but the new names are like...I can't even pronounce half of them without making myself sound like an idiot.
And I don't even think the plot even relates to FFXI in any way despite it *LOOKING EXACTLY THE SAME!!* I mean, the world structure, some of the mobs, the style, the characters and much of the system is the same so *WHY* not tie it into FFXI which had a pretty epic and interesting plot (if you managed to keep up with it over the many quests it was spread out over) and awesome characters.
That aside, I hear the story of XIV isn't terrible which is good and they're slated for a major update in a few months or early next year that overhauls their graphics, UI, maps and varies their content. Since launch, they revamped their combat system to be more intuitive and interesting and they'll be updating to add more races (namely a 'Male Mithra' among a couple of others...I was always more interested in playing a catboi vs a catgirl since XI).
Along with the revamp of the combat system, they also added the job system back into the game (no clue why SquareEnix strayed away from the part of their game that was done right) so you can play your Bards, your Paladins, your Blackmages and so on.
All in all, it heralds back to the old-style MMO with your tank, healer and DD. I don't particularly find that a problem in FF games primarily because of the job system. Sure, you're always going to want a healer and always a tank but anyone can take a healer or tank profession and level it...in fact, it's encouraged so you can vary your abilities to enable you to solo things (because you're not going to solo well on a pure DD character unless you have defenses or healing spells). It also lets you connect with your character vs just making a billion alts so you can experience all the different content. Nah, you can do everything (unless it's race specific I guess) with just the 1 character. You can become synonymous with that one character and that's the other point of FF MMOs that I find their strength.
Come the holidays around Nov-Jan, I'll have free time to play games and I'm hoping to get a chance to jump into the beta if only to see if there's any improvement over the original at all. I doubt it, but you never know... -
Well here's hoping. If you guys succeed, that means I don't have to shell out a chunk of $$$ to aid the 'save CoH' fund
-
Well that's nice. I feel I should probably give that game a shot since I've never played it before. If anything, here's hoping for more 'superhero' MMOs in the future...
Too bad it doesn't run on mac
have to wait till I get home to play.
-
Quote:*gets a chance to see Forbin's sig*Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Glad to hear it. I hope others get at least a smile out of it as well. I may be a PITA in many respects but a little laughter is good for everyone right now.
Lol okay I'm still laughing
-
Quote:Not sure if that balances anything. I still think Stalkers are broken too...just in the way that they've been made into Scrappers rather than improving their ability to be Stalkers.Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen
... to balance this tear in universal fabric: Stalkers are still broken.
-
Quote:And just to mention, I agree with this sentiment. I just don't condone leaving it at that. Because a big corporation doesn't care if some single person stops buying their product, they care what products are worth funding.Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
If you don't like what ncsoft is doing here, then the best way to show them that you don't like how they operate is to stop supporting their products.
The state of MMOs is bleak. At some point you have to wonder what you're hurting more, the corporation or your interests. -
Quote:NCsoft does't make those products, they fund the studios that hire the talent that makes those products. To boycott a game you believe is worth buying because you hold a grudge against some business huddle that made a bad decision is also punishing the artist paying their student loans and feeding his wife and kids who was hired by a company who decided that artist was worth giving a salary to.Originally Posted by Steele_Magnolia
I will not invest in anything NCSoft because I do not consider any product they make or will ever make to be worth it.
To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it.
-Confucious
Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
-Anne Lamott
The other studios under the NCsoft name had no participation in what happened to Paragon Studios. I bet the workers of Paragon Studios are mad at the situation they're in but I doubt they will hold a grudge. Video Games are part of the entertainment industry and the entertainment industry is even more cut-throat than just regular business fare.Quote:I buy the product that I want. I do not want a product derived from abusing workers, which is how I consider NCSoft's treatment of the Paragon Studios staff. Therefore, I do not want any NCSoft product.
Do you only buy from thrift shops and mom-and-pop stores? Do you run your car on vegetable oil? Do you make all your own shoes or buy your clothes from only professional seamstresses who handcraft all their wares? If not, you support super-stores like Walmart who put mom-and-pop stores out of business. You support oil refineries that barely give two ****s about the environment. Those clothes and shoes were probably made by underpaid kids sweating in factories for long hours. Those hamburgers were probably made from mass-farmed cows whose living conditions are so horrid I couldn't describe it.Quote:I buy products I enjoy. I can not enjoy something that I know that derives from the suffering of others. Therefore, I do not want any NCSoft product.
Buck up. Unless you isolate yourself from anything mass-produced, you're likely deriving your products from the suffering of others.
It's one thing to be picky about who you buy your products from and it's another to hold your ideals on a hypocritical soap box just because you feel wronged. -
Quote:Feel? I don't. Well, not when it comes to the actual money side.Originally Posted by TonyV
So let me ask this, and I really want serious answers because I'm in the midst of writing releases and communications: What if NCsoft agrees to let us or someone else purchase the IP and software?
Given that NCsoft wants to focus on other efforts, how would you, the City of Heroes community, feel if they came out and said something to the effect of, "Unfortunately, City of Heroes isn't part of our future, but we understand that you still want it to be part of yours," and opened the door for the game assets to be given or sold to someone else?
The way I look at it, if it comes to us to 'save' CoH, I'll have to invest most likely more than I would normally. That is, if I pay $15 a month + maybe $50 every 3 months in extra points, that's like $24 a month or something...If it came to saving CoH, how much would I need to pay to make the endeavor a success?
I probably would help(if it were a reasonable amount...I'm not dropping more than $300 as I have bills too) but then I'm looking at a product that will simply exist. Will it grow? What about the devs that made it? Won't they be off making new games? What if I want to support them and their new projects?
At some point, you have to think with both your heart and your head. You have to let go and look to the future. As much as I love CoH, I'm actually awake after so long of keeping my blinders up. There's a world of other experiences out there (Uh, BaBs is doing Neverwinter Nights for Cryptic...I've at least got to try that out if not outright stick there).
Again, we should support the products that we feel deserve it to see any progress otherwise you're not telling the people poofing products into existance what you want to buy. Telling them "Oh, yeah I want a superhero themed MMO...but I'm not buying it from soandso company" only expresses that it's not worth investing in therefore you don't get your superhero themed MMO....or you get one of subpar quality to reflect how worthwhile an investment it is. -
TonyV, I have to agree with the majority: don't try and make a corporation look like the good guys here. They're not.
But then I'm probably on the other side of the fence here too. Why boycott NCsoft? Because they made a business decision that directly affected you? Meh. Happens every day. Happens every second. A corporate decision will affect someone somewhere in a negative way...Let's boycott Cryptic because they were in direct competition with CoH...or Activision because WoW sucks up all the market for MMOs.
Corporations are collectively cut-throat, at least the largely successful ones. That's just the nature of business. You can go through the history of pretty much any big business and there's going to be a dark side. Business is corporations is money is greed. It's inescapable.
The way I see it, if you yourself don't think of your money as an investment in a product, you're shortselling yourself. Support the product that you think deserves money rather than believing you're lining the pockets of some evil CEO. Because if you don't, you'll never get the product you deserve for the price you're willing to pay.
Dunno about you, but I'm buying what games I find fun and innovative because I'm supporting the artists, writers, designers, programmers, animators, musicians, etc who make the game in hopes the future will be just as fun and innovative. Boycotts only stifle advancement and blinds oneself with their own emotions. Similarly, if Sony supported the continuation of CoH, those boycotting Sony simply expresses the sentiment that 'CoH is still not worth my soul'.
Well dignity and money are two seperate things in this world. Either you want the product that you want or you should be dumping it all into charities for people that don't have it.
/cue hyperbole of NCsoft killing 50 puppies per min to run Aion or something.
Yeah, well I'm sure Walmart also runs on the eternal souls of dead orphans...I doubt those orphans need their souls anyway now that they're dead...