Pebblebrook

I believe that's what the devs want more than stifling the shard hoarders...compel people to specifically do the trials and not just one trial...both of them. If there's a more reasonable alternative, many would not want to suffer through the growing pains of the new trials.

And that will reduce/deplete the player pool for them, especially once the new shiny wears off and/or the early adopters move on to the next.

One person's hangnail is another person's broken leg. That's part of the problem with the RNG.

That doesn't really make the inf cost trivial, at least to me. It just means the shard requirements (mostly due to low drop rate) are unduly enormous in comparison.

I'm of the opinion that vet rewards have always been a marketing ploy, not just recently.

Before VR, there was no consequence to paying for a month when a new issue interests you, quit when bored then resub when the next issue that's of interest to you comes along. So that's lost revenue for NCSoft between resubs.

When VR was new i've seen people mention they would've quit when they burn out but instead they just stop logging in but still pay money for the rewards. When the rewards became increasingly trivial with each iteration, not sure how it sustains that incentive so the vanguard pack is probably to sweeten the deal.

That's why i qualified it as "if you have no money." But don't want this to derail the thread more than it already did.

I would think it would depend on what that thing is. If you have no money...having it is more pleasing than wanting.

In games, to me, it's not necessarily about the journey or the destination. It's what is fun. If the journey is fun, that's good...if the destination is also fun, that's even better. If the round trip from journey to destination to another journey is good, that's the best.

The goal of an entertainment service is to be entertaining to as many different types of preferences as possible and is fine to focus on segments at a time so long as the focus don't take too long or the rest becomes stale.

I don't know...the OP's article is from 2004 at CoH's launch and back then at least for me, i didn't mind the PUGs.

Although that article is a bit confusing since the /search feature wasn't implemented till much later than a month after launch but the reviewer mentioned using it. But memory of those times is hazy. *shrug*

CO went F2P near the start of their 4Q period so will have to wait till they post their full year report after it closes at the end of march.

You can find the reports here if you're interested.

EDIT:
The full sentence about the 1,000 percent also mentions concurrent user and unique logins which in a free-to-play game would not be surprising to ramp up on launch so not sure exactly what comprises that 1,000 percent number.

So good idea to wait till the actual revenue numbers are published.




Original link

I didn't forget, i have CoX related promos listed along with the numbers so i can use to correlate with the sales. If you want, for 4Q 2010 you can also add the reactivation promo in 10/7/10, the origins pack on 11/1/10, the 6mo/12mo subscription promo on 11/29/10 to 12/13/10, issue 19 in case anyone resubbed for that, the LTX CoX poster for $15 each on 12/7/10 along with that cyber monday sale with the 50% off on many select booster packs.

But subscription revenue has always been what consistently comprises the majority of the sales figure with occassional spikes from box releases and some promos. And depending on what promos are there, it might show up on the sales figure (assuming subs don't fluctuate enough to offset it)

Also, you might want to check that article again...they've updated it to note that the numbers are from 2Q 2009. At that time, CoX sales is about $5,179,637 which makes more sense for 125k subscribers.

Oh, just to have consistent info, that 2Q 2009 sales will also have the AE box 4/8/09, magic booster 4/17/09 and issue 14 4/8/09 and issue 15 6/29/09.

I used to think that till someone posted a correction. Will have to look for that link, i'll edit it in when i do.

So for that quarter a significant number of people have paid maybe $50 for a serial code and 2 months sub instead of $45 for 3 month sub? Kind of?

NCSoft Earnings reports

Average exchange rates. There are others but that's what i used.

Since those codes are one-time use per account, that seems unlikely for a significant number of existing subscribers to use them in succession over the last several quarters.


CoX sales last 15 months in USD

Dec-2009 3,351,182
Mar-2010 2,913,135
Jun-2010 2,989,656
Sep-2010 4,808,316 (GR sales spike)
Dec-2010 2,853,598

Probably should be skeptical. I would think if there were 125k subs that would show up (very roughly) as 125,000 x $10/mo (min) or $15/mo (max) x 3 months and end up somwhere between $3.75mil and $5.63mil quarterly sales. Or average $4.69mil.

CoX sales in 4Q 2010 was about $2.85 mil USD

That might be a more prevalent viewpoint if *all* incarnate boosts/abilities/powers are only usable in incarnate specific content/zone. But being able to use those rewards outside of the environment you receive them tends to have these debates. The thing with PVE usable rewards requiring to enter into PVP mode showed precedence.

Heh, that can make one funny cut-scene.

Well: Ah, young one...i see you have amassed great influence over the world. You are thus worthy of my power.

You: Thank you i wil...

Well: Hmm, seems you have lost all your influence over the world. I'd like that power back now...

You:



Some reason i'm giddy this morning...hmm, what's in my coffee?

True, but i don't think it's the presence of a timesink that's at issue rather the magnitude of it.

[ Until Arcana comes back with a better number, i'm going to use the 400 hours for a very rare as a basis for this post. ]

400 hours is not trivial. One of my 50s has 130ish hours on it so let's say getting a very rare is considered "completing" that incarnate level, that would mean completing 1 incarnate level is on par with leveling 3 characters from 1 to 50 in succession.

So if that 400 hour number holds true and the rest of the incarnate levels have the same requirements, that means to "complete" all 10 incarnate levels would be equal to making 30 level 50s and 4 billion inf (400mil per very rare x 10 levels) *from the OP.

Even if the actual number turns out to be half that (200 hours), that's still means 10 incarnate levels equates to getting 10 alts to 50.

If the gap between payouts is too long, that's also bad for the game, or at least for that part of the game. I mean the devs put in the XP smoothing curve because some levels "acted like brick walls" according to Positron in that interview. And i didn't have much of a problem with the XP level progression back then (or i was distracted by other things...not sure)



[Snippet from your link]

That's likely, but since this thread is mostly about the reasonable requirements of the conversion method versus through TFs/trials, i'd like to see an Arcana estimation on the time:shard with something other than activity comparable to a full TF capable team which is what x8 represents...(in terms of shard drops, not the end of TF reward).

So it would be nice to see an Arcana estimation on that to get some perspective.

It doesn't even have to be a blaster if you prefer scrappers. I'm mostly curious if there's any time:shard differences between x8 (which is essentially equivalent to a TF capable team short of the componet end reward) and those that play on a theoretical "average intended use" meaning someone with average builds playing average difficulty with whatever radio/tip/contact mission they come across. Of course assuming farmers/min maxers aren't the majority of the current playerbase.

And yes with accumulated incarnate boosts, it will get better. But seeing a baseline helps and we can always just take that baseline and assume we can shave off time because of increased capabilities.

If you're not already, can you also run tests with x1 and x4 at least for time:shard comparisons. Not really sure how many people/small teams can handle x8 but before the enhanced difficulty settings, solo meant x1.

That's part of the subject not touched on much here. If that 400 hours holds true, that's just for the alpha slot. What happens when the other 9 incarnate levels are released? Does it take 400 hours for each of them or do they take progressively more shards the higher you go?

Do we even know how the other levels are unlocked? Such as do we need a very rare in the previous level to qualify unlocking the next level or is it like a buffet, just pick what you want and unlock it via another ramiel arc.

If it requires the previous level slotted with at least a rare and they all have at least the same amount of shard requirements, getting all 10 incarnate levels would definitely take years using the conversion method (i didn't say solo method since there's nothing stopping a team farming the ITF to use the conversion...with currently known info anyway). I really hope that's not the case.

The biggest hurdle is the initial development cost, if a game doesn't look like it'll be able to pay off that debt that's when they decide whether they cut their losses or not. CoX i'm sure has long paid off that debt, so the real question is whether the cost of maintaining the game which includes further content development is still less than what it earns.

NCSoft doesn't itemize their cost by game so we don't know the profitability point of CoX to determine how much more it can drop before it goes into the red. But maintenance cost can be controlled by cutting resources, reducing content development etc. So unless revenue shoots back up, it can still linger on by having less and less.

Then again, they might be able to pull off an EVE-like turnaround during that time. That game is 1 year older than CoX i think, so that scenario has precedent though not sure how probable it applies in this game.

If you mean a site for the exchange rates, not sure which is the best. But i used this one. There are others like this one but didn't really use it.

I'm not confident that people with long-term sub plans comprise a majority of sales. They had a 6mo/12mo promo in november. If the bulk of the subscribers took that offer i would think it would've shown a more noticeable uptick between 2Q and 4Q.