PeerlessGirl

Apparently so, sadly.

*sighs* Yeah...I was sort of afraid this would be how it would turn out in the end. If it's just ComicCon, that's even more sad, hopefully it's more than that. I had a friend who was a vet to the game back when CoV was in beta (I was only in for about 4-5 months and didn't even know CoV was coming until the public announcements) that were supposedly guaranteed access to the beta if their paid time was at least 18-24 months, something like that, similar to this situation. They never got in, even though it was promised, and that person is still bitter about it to this day, even though I pointed out that that was the "old administration" and Cryptic, and while we expect that from them, that Paragon would be much more on the up and up in a similar situation."

Sadly it's possible I may have to eat those words now, as it looks like history is repeating itself.

Let me be clear, I really don't care in the end if I get/got into beta or not. I've had my share, over half of them since i9's first closed beta, and I did a lot of actual work, especially on Flashback testing back in..11 or 12. I had a year paid account when the loyalty program went in, so I was going to get it regardless, and I didn't pay with the expectation of getting anything, I was just playing and having fun.

However, by the same token, I understand that when a group of people believe something in good faith and it turns out to be less than ideal, why they might be upset.

This is to say nothing of the fact I passed 60 month status in June, and I won't even touch that one.

Color me disappointed, at least. Oh well, life goes on. With Alpha Incarnate removed, there wasn't that much I was actually interested in testing, as I didn't want to "spoil" the storylines for the tip missions and Praetoria anyway, so I guess there wasn't much to test. Perhaps I'll have better luck in i19 when all of this hackneyed "Loyalty" stuff is over with.

Yeah, that announcement hurts a lot. On the one hand, I'm glad he posted it now, to tell us ahead of time, and that takes a lot to do. On the other, I was really looking forward to stuff for my 50 main to do. Thankfully though, sideswitching and Praetoria is a major draw for me, so I'm still ok, just that my awesomescale has gone down from like a 9 to like a 7.5.

Subscription is a given, so I'm not even going to touch that. Booster Packs and box sales aren't REQUIRED for anything major (if you've already bought the game once, and I'm not counting that either, but even counting that, that's 3 times you've had to buy the game, assuming you bought CoH, CoV, and buy GR). If you CHOSE to buy more boxes and packs because you thought they were cool, that's awesome, the same with character slots, server transfers, respec tokens, renames. None of those are you required to buy. For example, I've bought CoH on DVD twice, GvsE twice, CoV once, CoV collector's edition twice, architect edition twice (once physically, once digitally). as well as one copy of every pack released to date, and I've bought about half of them twice for my second account, that's not counting copies of the game bought for friends and significant others, also some of those were second hand/ebay/half.com purchases, so Paragon probably didn't see that money.

My point being, you can't factor all of that stuff in, you were never reqired to do anything beyond buy CoH or CoV once (if you waited, the other side came in free). or buy each one once, then there's GR. I'm being generous allowing for three purchases, which many of us long-timers have done.

At this point, you're just complaining because they chose to put out an expansion, and you're being (as typical of many around here) whiney and entitlist. Would you like to complain about not being in GR beta while you're at it? Thank you, drive through.

Oh darn. Amazing that they might want to make money. They haven't released an expansion ever (once if you count CoV, which I do, anyone who thinks it was a worthy game all on it's own is full of it, it was always intended to be an expansion to CoH). So in 6 years, they will have released 2 expansions, and the game itself. That's not nearly as bad as SWG with 3-5 in 3-4 years. or EQ with like..10 in 10 years, or something. Most everything Paragon gives us for free, this is only the second time they've asked us to shell out expansion/game-level cash. The nerve they have, huh?

Edit: Heh. Beaten to the punch by Nethergoat and Golden Girl.

I guess as an RPer, switching sides is a huge deal for me (I have high levels on both sides also, but that's not really the point, all of my villains aren't really villains anyway, but Rogues or Vigilantes, so I'm really looking forward to that option personally. As for i19 and Incarnates, I would bet that'll be 6-8 months after i18 (if not faster). So that pretty much covers my whole "some people may wait 6-8 months" bit above, doesn't it? Something tells me Incarnate is going to be big, and I await it with baited breath. It's funny, between i14 and i16 I was really losing steam on CoH, but i17, i18, and i19 have really pushed me back into the "addicted" camp again. Now, someone just needs to announce Double XP (preferably before GR), and a "buy 12 get 14" deal again, so I can re-sub both my accounts for a year!

That was it exactly. I'm sure there'll be some extreme cases where people will wait 8-12 months even maybe, but IIRC, by that time Good Vs. Evil had released, and both games were in the same pack anyway, I'm fairly sure that was a year or so later, wasn't it? GR will be good for CoH though, because it'll get the game shelf space at the retailers again. Belive it or not when I went in to my local Gamestop to preorder 2 copies (for both my accounts) the guy there said I wasn't the first one, and that it was fairly popular in their local system, and I live in a smallish (in my mind) town where I doubt many people play CoH. I'm glad it seems to already be doing so well.

There IS level pacting now, of course that pretty much means you end up dragging the "unconcious" body around with you all the time, XP-wise (there was a funny PVP Strip about that I think). Of course you can't level-pact Heroes and Villains, so...nevermind, I don't know what I'm talking about :P

Short answer: If you have a concept like that, make two versions of the same character, one Hero, one Villain. It even makes sense when the "evil" or "good" side is lower level as compared to the "other" side, it holds less influence. The closer the two get in level, the more the other comes out. If the "opposite" side "passes" the original, you flip the character's personality around. I considered something similar back when CoV launched, but ultimately I found it too much work, and didn't put the effort into it.

I can't frankly imagine why anyone playing CoX would choose willingly to be a "non-GR subscriber". It'll probably quickly be akin to not owning CoH AND CoV. I'd be curious to know, up until the point where they "merged" the games, how many people actually only owned one of the two?

For a few months, maybe even 3-6 sure, there may be people without GR, but after that point it'll be 20 bucks in the store for the Collection disc probably. It almost feels like someone wants to complain, doesn't it? Perish the thought, on these forums? Never

Yeah, I remember the old one, and of course there's the new one. I WOULD actually like to see that drastic of a change (especially for Boomtown, the Hollows (though it's been done recently, so I can let it go somewhat), Perez, etc. Especially Boomtown though, no real city would leave a mess like that, sure the first and second Rikti War slowed them down, but it's a hive of scum and villainy, they need to revamp it :P

I used to run past a lot of the city, or got in the habit of O-porting, Base Porting, D Porting, Mission Transporting, Wentworth's Transporting everywhere, and doing stuff as fast as I could. Since UM went in, I and my group have made it a point to try and get to places as much as we can the "old fashioned" way. Either flying through zone connectors, or using the tram, admiring the scenery again, really appriciating the game. Unless we're OOC pressed for time (or sometimes ICly pressed, where it makes sense story-wise) we don't use the porters that much, and we've really been enjoying that. If the other zones got a more "UM" upgrade, that'd be even more awesome. We wouldn't want the overall age of the game to show in Galaxy and Mercy for example, compared to Praetoria.

No..I know. I mean, I wasn't trying to be an *** by making the comment, so I'm glad you appriciated it for what I said, is what I meant :P I think we just got crossed there.

Then let me put it this way. Unless you think the CoH Devs really see a lot of people actually wanting said feature (as opposed to it being ignorable for most if they didn't) why would they take the effort and development time to do that when they could say, add new zones? Heck, some of us have tried to suggest they revamp and touch up (especially in lieu of Ultra Mode) the old zones, but they've always said they'd rather make new zones than touch up old ones. The problem with that perspective is, come GR, the rest of the game will look "old" next to Villain Side, the newer hero zones (Faultline), and especially Praetoria.

My point with that analogy is, knowing our devs as you do, do you think they'll add a detailed numbers system and spreadsheet tracking to the market because maybe 5-10% (being strongly optimistic I think) of the players want it, or will they say, work more on the Incarnate System, or work on new post whatever level content for Praetoria, or go for some (developmentally speaking) low hanging fruit with more costume packs and costumes, and story arcs?

I think we know what the answer is.

For the record, I'm not a marketeer per se, I play with it sometimes, I used to make a sell a lot of IOs during and after getting my table, I enjoy messing with it as a mini-game, or finding IOs I want, but I don't try very hard to 'game' it. Though I can see the fun in doing so.

Also for Talen, I wasn't really trying to be smart with that comment so much as "it seems to work mostly well for them as it is, why mess with it? (short of merging it, which I'm in favor of).

Frankly, I'd rather see the marketeers work the challenge with the little data they have, than overburden a mostly "casual" game with spreadsheets and excel files. If CoH turns into EVE I'm gone. People seem to work the market just fine as it is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Thankfully, people with your point of view don't balance the game, or we'd all HAVE to use IOs to play top end content, then everyone would have to use Incarnates, then everything would have to use "Omegans" or whatever the next thing PS had to come up with to deal with the fact that IOs became like SOs so they relased Incarnate, then that became like SOs, so they released "Omegans" and so on and so on*. The entire point being, I personally like IOs and sets, but they are not "required" nor is the game balanced around them, thankfully, you can get along just fine on SOs. For the record I don't even LOOK at IOs until 35, until then it's not cost effective.

If the game was going to be balanced that way (a la WoW and every other MMO) they might as well raise the level cap, and end up at 90-100 in another 3-4 years, instead of just inventing new stuff. *


*= Anyone who reads this and is stupid enough to suggest I'm advocating for either "something beyond Incarnates, Omegans, or a level cap increase is a moron. Thank you.

You'd be surprised how much value "frankenslotting" sets actually has. I would estimate I have about 25-35% of my sets with only partials from one and more, sure posi's blast is great, but so is a couple pieces of Pounding Slugfest, or entropic chaos, or a hami-o or two in the right spots, not everything needs or wants a homogeneous set all across the board. The devs "balanced" things with that in mind as well, Castle as much as said so during i9 beta, and others.

Your point being? I said those are the only people that came quickly to mind, and they're the only people that came quickly to mind. The community may have far more than four people, but they don't come to mind quickly to me. Anyone else want to try re-writing my opinions for me? That's what the Internetz are for after all, right?

geeze, some people are so full of themselves...I think this thread has officially lost it's point.

Edit: now that I read it, you actually miscounted my original quote too, I said "you [Lemur Lad] was one of a few people whose oppinions *I* trust personally on matters relating to beta. That and 2 others Arcanaville and BillZ. That's 3. Well four if you count myself, which I guess was implied.

*officially removes the thread fromsubscrption as the point has been lost*

I agree with you entirely Oubliette, for the record I never accused them of breaking any promises either, I was simply pointing out that it can and will likely be misconstrued as such if long enough time passes, and that some people ar going to do it regardless, because that's the nature of internet forums.


That's it exactly. Neither was I demanding entry into anything, as I've had my fair share of closed betas. I'm not opposed to more of them, especially when I actually have time to test, but I've had more than half of the ones that exist. It does rather bother me though that around these parts, so much as opening your mouth to suggest that there's a POSSIBILITY something might be misconstrued, or that people may feel a way gets a bunch of people down your thoat. I've gone so far as to be accused by some (especially since I'm fairly anti-PvP) both in CBs and otherwise as a "Dev Sympahizer", then you turn around and make a comment that MAYBE people aren't going to take certain actions well, and everyone else jumps down your throat because you're "whining", "complaining", or "demanding entry" into something. I've come to realize that's just how things work on MMO company forums, in general though. The sad thing is, CoH's forums are a fair bit better behaved than any others I've seen.

As a general rule, no, I don't trust many people but myself, I've seen plenty of people who get into closed betas on reputation as "amazing testers" who do absolutely nothing except 'window shop the new shines". You are one of a few people whose opinion on such matters I would trust (Arcanaville, and BillZ being 2 others who come quickly to mind). I agree with you that it's a downer when people work their butts off testing stuff and don't feel it got them anywhere. I was rather happy and proud to spend the entirity of my time in i12 closed working on flashback testing, while everyone else was focusing on other things. About half the bugs I reported did end up getting fixed, and the other half mostly got fixed within an issue or two. (I'd still like to see that Calvin Scott TF re-added here soon though, and I know the devs have mentioned it.) I'm not in the slightest "upset" about not being in, I'll test the same way in OB that I always do during CBs, throroughly and carefully. I personally have attempted to test my best in every CB I've been part of, I've also watched the PvP community run rampant over CBs and ruin them for everyone else..so YMMV I suppose.

Yes, that's true, also thanks for posting the list to re-fresh my memory. I'd forgotten about tails, and the mission count, and the auction house UI etc. So you're right, it's probably more like 33%, but again, that's all largely subjective. I mean..the furries are gonna love the tails the most (I personally would LOVE a fox tail (hint)) etc. My first post wasn't to you, it was written before I read yours, the one you quoted was to you, it did seem like you thought I was complaining, mostly I was speculating, and making some fairly safe guesses. But yeah, I didn't have the list in front of me when I posted my list, seeing it helps, I forgot to reference it. Oh..and more missions is also good.