Pebblebrook

Just to offer some feedback (couldn't test before because of the broken copy tool):

Vertical placement has sort of been officially unofficial feature since i13 (before that it was still considered a bug). Because it was thought of that way, i was fine with accepting that many base items didn't have a bottom graphic.

But now since it really is officially official...couldn't you have gone the extra mile and added bottom graphics to all items? That would've greatly increased the building options since i've avoided many items because of the transparent bottom.

Also more of a wishlist request, could you also reconsider putting back the ability to put items in doorways.

I know it was redacted during i13 beta because of the problems that occurred when placing functional items outside of the room they're meant to be confined in. But could you just put it back with an additional check to only allow "decorative" items to be placed outside its designated room.

Think you might be referring to this round of layoffs, but BackAlleyBrawler mentioned there were only 9 people including him that was affected.



[For clarity, just so we're not comparing apples to oranges:]

The operating cost number i previously mentioned is the cost NCSoft incurred not by the studio (Cryptic at the time). Unless i read this article incorrectly. Though now, i would think since Paragon Studios is actually owned by NCSoft, it would be different. How much, we won't know.

Sorry, from the way you phrased your previous post it seemed like it wasn't obvious.

...you're welcome?

A bit early for us to determine that. Have to wait till the bulk of the F2P crowd's contribution is shown, and that will be in the next quarterly report. And then wait another quarter after that to see if the revenue uptick is sustainable or just a temporary spike in sales.

Yeah, costs won't be like at launch since that includes marketing costs which i think would be very low by now.

But just for clarity, when you say staff in the high teens, are you referring to just the devs? Or everyone behind the scenes including but not limited to customer support?

Yes, revenue refers to all monetary transactions related to CoX, and since that quarter had 2 months before Freedom, that would not just include the Freedom store but the previous NCSoft store that you used to buy boosters from.

As for operating expense..yeah wish they separated those per game but probably would never know. However, if it is somewhere around $2mil, that's a very drastic decrease from $18million per year when CoH started.

Anecdote: My first mmo was Everquest and there were many encounters where i could stumble upon or purposely engage but be (many times unknowingly) unprepared to succeed. But i could still try and if it looks like i'll fail, i try again when i'm more prepared (higher level) or bring more people to help. Yes, sometimes failing can be frustrating but can also serve to strengthen one's resolve and to later succeed with a higher sense of accomplishment.

I can understand the need for a maximum requirement, you don't want it to get too easy. But not so much on the minimum teammate requirement, as there are people who state they can succeed with less.

So maybe the devs should experiment with removing the minimum teammate requirement. Just have the contact clearly state that attempting with less than the "recommended" (not enforced by the game) minimum would be risky. If some teams still try with less and fail, well they can always try again with more people up to the maximum. The devs seem to be fine with people repeating existing content.

Saying that...if they do this, then the TuT needs to be altered to not be (effectively) like a blind invite unless you have a pre-formed team.

You sure those 2 extra tokens aren't from buying any amount of points for the first time and buying 1200 pp? You said you checked your token count 2 days ago but mentioned you bought the points 7 days ago (assuming by "the tenth" you meant october 10)

I had 38 tokens when freedom launched (35 automatically applied with 3 remaining) and as of last night i still have 38.

I don't know, "long" has been used to describe play time before.

I think i found that presentation but it doesn't explicitly define lifetime of a sub though it could be inferred.


In slide 34 in this link it says:

(Though can still be interpreted either way)

In slide 15 has:
Eh, wish people would put definition footnotes on their terminology in presentations dang it. Heh

And now i do find i am tired...i'll keep looking for a more definitive one tomorrow (if it exists)...if i don't sleep through the day.

Heh, i think i actually got more questions rise up from that screenshot than from the blog excerpt i quoted before.

Did they define what the lifetime of a subscription and engagement are?

I swear i'm not trying to be dense or i might be tired but i'm interpreting that graph a bit differently. Expected lifetime revenue as based prior to f2p would be sort of the monthly fee times the average time an account is continually subscribed (uninterrupted) and engagement is time spent in-game.

If that's the case, that graph is showing the f2p crowd shows less time in-game (casual) than someone with a monthly financial commitment (subscriber) which is what i would expect them to be. And customers that spend more time in game tend to spend more (with f2p than without)

The vertical axis shows expected lifetime revenue not expected lifetime duration so i don't really see (from the graph at least) that they're saying players who spend more money stay subscribed longer. It could just mean they're spending more over a typical lifetime of a sub.

If the average lifetime of a sub is say a year*, within that year the ones spending more would be subscribers who spend more time logged in. (*Note: that's just an example and i take it the average sub lifetime is for one game and not an industry average)

From that point of view it seems to jive with the blog excerpt.

Or maybe i just really need to see the original presentation preferably with speaker notes to be on the same page as you. If you can find it would be appreciated.

Not sure where that strawman comment comes from, it wasn't meant as one. Just saying as my post stated. I don't know about the other players but i was looking for 50s content as well, just not team-required, which is true.

I don't know about many players, but i was asking for something to do with my 50s for years. Though that something had nothing to do with required teaming.

At the risk of sounding like an armchair dev, since you lock down issues almost a year ahead of time and with the history of this game's solo-friendliness, i would think having plans for the solo path should've been included from the start (even if it wasn't released at the same time as i19...but sooner than i21) instead of waiting to see if the forum blows up then have people stewing in that dissatisfaction for close to a year.

But then hindsight is 20/20 so...


EDIT: *Instead of solo-path, i should say team-optional.

If they want to show investors the full impact of F2P, it makes more sense to launch at the beginning of 4th quarter instead of the end of 3rd so October would be better to show a full quarter revenue for Freedom.

Since the sale ends at the end of august, they might want to let the free 30day game time that's included in that purchase to expire before going F2P as well.

Then again, October might be a bit close to SWTOR's "holiday 2011" (nov/dec) launch window that they might want to avoid colliding with and/or NCSoft want to use Freedom to bump up 3Q's numbers that is likely to still still be in decline.

But eh, either way, it's live when it's live i guess heh.

Speaking of the future...if this comes during/after Freedom launch, would these powersets be attached to free issues where it's free for f2p/premium accounts also, or will these type of things be a store purchase for them?

I'm not commenting on Bill's testing methodology but 3 shards an hour seems a bit high to me when i'm running x8 team-optional missions, maybe he just got lucky (or i unlucky) or his sample of 2 hours is too short.

For those saying x8 is not a diff setting playable by the average player, Aracanaville 4 months ago did a test on shard drops with x2 diff setting which could still apply unless the devs change the drop rate since then.

Not really. Trial accounts won't have any established characters or alts that could have a 50 with incarnate abilities or slots that were previously purchased or boxed account serials attached to it, unless that trial account was previously played/upgraded, lapsed then "reactivated", then that would be closer but that still makes it a reactivated account.

Of course we won't have an absolutely exact scenario for comparison since the freedom scenario is new.

[EDIT]
Just to add, i do know what you mean with trial accounts. They do share some similarity to reactivated accounts in the sense that they both didn't pay a sub and they have limited play time (14 days or 2).

If it helps for the purpose of comparative discussion, we can consider trial accounts as the F2P tier and the reactivated accounts (during a promo) as the premium tier.
[/EDIT]

And i didn't mean to imply that devs should change things, that was an example of a possibility to illustrate that they actually chose it this way when trying to justify my use of the word arbitrary, but that's an aside by now.

Perhaps arbitrary is not a good enough word to use to refer to something determined by individual (Parago Studios) preference.

I actually agree those limitations are "baked" into the design of freedom that's why i said further down from what you quoted about "things the devs can use to compel current subscribers from unsubbing to premium once freedom hits".

It is a disincentive to unsub to premium.

But if we're comparing content access when logging into the game pre-freedom with post-freedom, then use the scenario that fits best (reactivation weekends).

From that perspective paying and non-paying players can log into the game but the non-paying don't lose any content access. Post-freedom, non-paying accounts do.

And which of those f2p restricted content goes to the cash shop and which is permanently cut off from f2p accounts is determined by Paragon Studios because if they wanted to, they could just set every content as a cash shop purchase and that is a technical possibility since if a premium paid for every content, then that is fully equivalent to a reactivated account during reactivation promos where they don't pay a sub but still have access to everything.

And that's part of where the disconnect is. The other part is as you said, from what the devs said about not losing things you "bought" can muddle the situation.

I understand why the devs are choosing certain limitations on f2p accounts.

The freedom mtx revenue is largely an unknown and they don't want to lose current subscription revenue to it. Maybe when they know mtx revenue can solely support the game, perhaps it might change then, but that's a long way off.

Quoted For Truth (most of the time)

Not quite true during reactivation weekends. During those promo days, is the closest comparison we can use to set the scenario for post-freedom since both subscribers and non-subscribers (reactivated) can log in to the game.

But the reactivated accounts don't lose access to anything. Post-freedom, all (non-paying) accounts will essentially be reactivated accounts but with limitations.

I don't think that's the part that is causing a disconnect because it's like comparing apples (pre-freedom) to oranges (post-freedom). For the sake of discussion, let's set aside the subcription for a sec and just say login instead.

Givens: Bought GR.
If you (subscriber) log in to the game pre-freedom, do you lose incarnate abilities? No
If you (Premium) log in to the game post-freedom, do you lose incarnate abilities? Yes

Yes, you can't login to the game if you unsub now, but technically (if you login during a reactivation promo but don't pay a sub, for instance) you don't lose incarnate abilities.

The way i see it, losing incarnate abilities is a bit arbitrary because incarnate content is one of the big things the devs can use to compel current subscribers from unsubbing to premium once freedom hits.

And they don't want to lose those current subscription revenues to freedom's premium tier. At least in the beginning when freedom's mtx revenue is still an unknown.

Maybe they don't like teams of free fire/kin controllers farming.

They seem ok with premiums paying to unlock controllers though.

You can also get an impression by looking at the amount of consumables they might put in the cash shop. If the devs decide to eventually support the game primarily from mtx that's what they'll need along with the one-time purchases where issues become issue bundles. Also see if there will be a steady stream of per alt item purchases instead of per account.

Guild Wars' quarterly revenue is somewhat close to CoX's albeit more prone to fluctuation but still gets close relatively consistently every quarter and most of that is from microtransactions. It's interesting to see a primarily mtx game and a sub game from the same company having comparable revenue.

I do agree that Freedom is designed to make money but not in place of subscription revenue (at least from the start), but as a supplemental revenue from the cash shop from premium players and/or VIPs.

I'm not quite sure if attracting more subscribers is a primary focus. I'm sure they won't mind getting them, but gameplay-wise, CoX hasn't changed that radically and if people were inclined to pay the subscription fee they could've done so at any time.

I think it's more designed to supplement the revenue and to do that, they have to have enough compelling reasons to dissuade the current subscribers from going premium which it looks like they're doing.

At least in the beginning anyway. Will have to see how this evolves over time after launch.

That's an interesting feature to add.

Don't know where else to post this but are you able to elaborate about SG and SG base feature access on the premium tier?

The matrix only says premiums can join an sg but what about previous subscribers with personal bases (only their own alts) that goes premium. Does that mean they can still enter their base but not administer it (no super leader authority)?

If so, can that license be purchased?