RemusShepherd
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I don't think I've ever used a server transfer token, and the SSAs are crap.Originally Posted by DMystic
I'm not sure I follow where this idea is coming from. Let's assume 15 a month for VIP and a premium
The VIP will get 400(550) points
The new SSA (400 points)
A server transfer token (800) points
1 Paragon Reward Token
Unlimited Access to all game zones,systems features and ATs
a Premium will get
1200 Points
1 paragon Reward Token
limited access to all game content
The fact that VIPs are force-fed content we do not like, while Premium players are able to pick and choose, is *another* way that VIPs get the raw end of the deal. -
Quote:I'm still not hearing an argument for why we're not soaking the Premium players to generate income for the company, rather than soaking the VIPs. VIPs get *half* as many points as Premium players do for the same amount of money. You can improve the VIP situation and still generate enough income -- more income, in fact, if you made VIP status truly desirable.Originally Posted by Kyriani
As someone else pointed out we'd get far fewer power sets per year. We'd get less quality of life additions, less time spent on costume sets, less of just about everything.
The power sets we pay for generate income for the company. Even if you use your stipend to buy them those are points you can't spend on something else like SBE's, Superpacks, Costume Sets, etc.
They are restricting how much the VIP players get so that they can push out more content to all players. Non-VIPs then get the new content more cheaply than VIPs do. Doesn't that seem counter to the goal of getting more subscribers? -
Quote:How about making *none* of the new powersets free, but increasing the VIP stipend so that they get as many points as Premium players do for the same amount of money?Originally Posted by Kyriani
That's how anyone who complains about which power sets are free which aren't wants it to be. Unfortunately they can't all agree on what should be free and what should be pay so they decide ALL of them should be free or at the very least all of them should be included in VIP.
Then VIPs will be able to afford all the powersets they want, yet VIP status will be more appealing. Right now the situation is very stacked *against* VIPs. Premium players have it much, much better and that's not the way it should be. -
Quote:Fair enough. They have to thread the needle. Ironblade, I think you and I are in complete and amicable disagreement.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Tiny change to that statement: Only Paragon Studios can do that by *CHANGING* the VIP reward program. If the current scheme is preferred by a majority of the players, then a change might cost more players than it brings in. That wouldn't be an 'improvement'.
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Quote:Fair enough. Everything I say is an opinion, no doubt about that. But I'm backing my opinion up with facts about how PPs are distributed. You can dismiss everything I say by calling it my opinion, but you can't dismiss the facts on which my opinion is formed.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Sorry, but you are wrong. I say that as a factual statement. You are wrong, because you are trying to pass your OPINION off as fact.
But you are right that it's a subjective decision. I don't value having many slots on all servers because I only play on one server. I already purchased Going Rogue and CoV, so I'd still have them as Premium, they don't factor in. I don't value most of the costume bundles. I am being given a lot of stuff for free that I do not care about. Meanwhile, for things that I do care about, like new powersets, I am expected to pay extra. (Yes, there's a stipend, but we've established that the stipend is half as effective as Premium purchases.)
Because of what I subjectively value, VIP is a lousy deal compared to Premium. I am not the only player who feels that way.
Anyone who says that's wrong is trying to pass THEIR opinion off as fact. You can't change my subjective opinion of how I'm being treated as a VIP subscriber. Only Paragon studios can do that by improving the VIP reward program. -
Quote:Basic math says you're wrong. If 13560 (Premium) > 6600 (VIP), then there's something wrong with the VIP rewards.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
There is nothing wrong with the VIP rewards. People with overly entitled attitudes and unrealistic expectations of a for profit company, oh yeah that needs tweaking BAD!
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Quote:You're completely missing the point, so let me explain:Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
You are not making any sense. You get more than enough PP's to get the sets for free eventually. If you are one of those types of people that has to have it nao! Then that is nothing more than you deciding to pay nao instead of waiting for the points to build....your problem not the devs.
There are two kinds of content being discussed; free to VIPs and purchasable.
VIPs have no choice in what they get for free.
If VIPs do not want some of the content given to them, tough. They have to take it. They paid for it with their subscription, whether they want it or not.
Premium players do not have this lack of freedom. They can pick and choose what content to pay for.
This is yet another way in which the current microtransaction system favors Premium players over VIPs. -
Quote:I'm not questioning the business decision to Freedom. (I have and I do, but I'm not right now.) I'm just debating the specifics of the plan.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
7 free new power sets in 4 Issues is a way faster rate than at any time pre-Freedom.
People post about how disappointed they are with VIP status every time a new powerset is released. A simple tweak to the VIP rewards would make all these threads go away. -
I don't care if CoH takes my recommendations, I only care if the game is fun. I feel they're going in the wrong direction. But that's another issue -- right now let's focus on the original question, about whether VIP status is 'worth it' or not.
Look at the analyses earlier in this thread. There are 8 pay-for powersets, including Bio Armor which is coming soon. There are another 7 powersets given free to VIPs.
If you buy those 8 powersets as a Tier-9 VIP it will cost you 6400 points, out of the 6600 you get over the course of a year. 200 points left over; go buy yourself a few costume scraps.
If you buy all 15 powersets as a Premium player it will cost you 12000 points. If the Premium player spends the same amount of money as the VIP they will have 13560 points -- 1560 left over. That's almost two more powersets, or at least two costume sets, or I don't know how many SSA arcs. The Premium player makes out like a bandit.
What balances VIP status is the monthly tokens, Incarnate content, SSAs and superbases. But after Tier 9 the monthly tokens no longer matter. I still haven't spent all of mine, and I don't feel like gambling on sketchy 'super packs'. If Incarnate content does not appeal to you then VIP status gives you nothing. (You can purchase the SSAs off the additional points you get from going Premium.) Superbases are the only thing I treasure as a VIP, and I can't even invite my own characters into a super group; as useful as it is, it's a bad and abandoned system.
If they truly valued VIPs, they'd even up the rewards a little. Doubling the PP stipend would bring them in line with Premium, but even a 50% raise would be more fair. *Or* give more of the powersets to VIPs for free -- no, they shouldn't get all powersets for free, but they darn well should get more than half.
Right now VIPs get about half as much purchasable content as Premium players do for the same amount of money, plus some fixed content that may or may not appeal to them. That's a terrible deal. For those who have been loyal to this game for years, it's downright insulting.
If they're trying to entice people to become VIP, they're doing it wrong. -
Quote:'When' I make my decision has nothing to do with the developers or the game.Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
I'm sorry, how exactly is when and how you make your purchase decisions the fault of the developers?
'How' I make my decision has everything to do with them. I'm weighing whether or not the game is worth my money for the next year. I'm trying to decide how much time I'm going to want to spend in it. If the game isn't worth the money or my time because of bad decisions by the developers, I'm not going to subscribe. Frankly, I don't think I got my money's worth in the past 12 months. The new DA is the only new content I've enjoyed, and even that was infuriatingly buggy at first.
I've posted many, many times offering suggestions to improve the game. I've given concrete suggestions about new power pools, better stories, new character meshes, etc. I don't know if they ever see those suggestions, but it's obvious they don't care what I want. Nor should they -- they need to appeal to the widest possible customer base. I think the devs are content with letting whiny VIPs bleed away, as long as they keep enough Premium players churning. It's a business model. I hope it works for them. But let's be honest, it's not a business model that treats VIPs like important customers.Quote:I hope you realize it's completely nonproductive to tell them you find everything they've done for the last year and a half to suck in terms of content, yet provide not even a hint about what this amazing thing they need to do to keep getting your money is.
I am *an* example of a long term player, but perhaps not the ur-example. Maybe I was, once, but all who were like me left the game. Someday there'll only be fossils of the great old players, our bones imprinted in the rocks of the high-rez revamp of the Hollows someday...Quote:It's clear you don't like what's been happening. That's an opinion. It doesn't change objective facts though. The fact you're not having fun with what they made doesn't mean it's not fun at all ever and they don't care about you (or people who have been here a long time). You're not a meta-example of a long term player.
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Quote:I buy yearly subscriptions, so I only need to make that decision once per year. Every year I agonize over it. Last year I hit the button after realizing that I didn't have anything else to play. That isn't always going to be true; in fact, some very tempting games are coming along in just a few months.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
You could always unsub then
Right now I'm coasting on a decision I made last year. CoH needs to do something amazing to keep me, given the current state of affairs. I see no indication that they'll do that -- they *like* the way things are, even if it means losing players that have been here since launch, even if it means bleeding people away. All I can say is that no love affair lasts forever, and good luck to all. -
Quote:Well then they ought to make us feel more important.Originally Posted by Kyriani
You have this backwards. The devs are on record as saying the subscription model is what they are hoping to entice people into going with. Premium/Free is their way of hopefully getting SOMETHING from players that aren't a RELIABLE source of income.
V.I.P. means Very Important Person. There's a reason subscribers are called VIP. You're insane if you don't think VIP's are treated well or aren't the preferred customers. You have no logical basis for such a claim at all.
Yes, you're all correct, the time they're sinking into the Incarnate trials is evidence that they want VIPs. But Incarnate content is generally awful and grindy. The SSAs are even worse. It feels like they're setting aside low-quality meat for the dog. They take the time to set it aside for us, but the best stuff goes to their other customers.
The economics of the Paragon market are even worse for VIPs. You get more Paragon Points and Reward Tokens by purchasing things a la carte as a Premium customer. Correct me if my numbers are wrong: VIP status is $10/month at the cheapest, yearly plan, which gets you 550 PP/month. If you buy $10 in microtransactions you get 800 PP/month. Once you're a Tier 9 VIP the economics heavily favor switching to Premium. There's a one-time start-up cost to get access to the walled-off archetypes, but as a Premium player you will get *more* powersets and *more* costume sets for the same amount of money. All you lose is grindy Incarnate content, crappy SSAs, and the neglected superbase system.
If they want to entice people to become VIPs, they're doing a lousy job of it. Being VIP should be demonstrably better than being a Premium player in every way. It isn't, and that why some of us don't feel important. -
Quote:I agree with you completely, _Hush_. The free stuff VIPs get is uneven. We get some new powersets, which is good. We also get new content in the Incarnate trials and SSAs, but most of that has been awful. Allowing VIPs access to a tedious grind is *not* doing them any favors.Originally Posted by _Hush_
Well, I am VIP player and I've been playing the game for about almost six years now. Something that really bothers me as that I have to pay for new powersets. Before the launch of Freedom powersets were included in the sub ( correct me please if I am wrong) now it seems almost every powerset has to be purchased off the market. Now as VIP we don't even get a discount. First off, I understand we get new content in itrials, some costume sets, and story arcs ..etc trust me I aware of we get, however it doesn't feel VIPish at all!
All that being said, you have to remember that VIPs are actually the least important players in CoH. The management wants to make money through microtransactions, they want everyone to pay that way, and so they structure their content to entice people to be Premium. They do not want VIPs. So it's no use whining about them not treating VIPs very well. We are no longer their preferred customers, so of course they're not going to be as generous to us as to their micro-paying horde.
If you want to get back in the management's good graces, stop being a VIP player. Turn off your subscription and spend money on the Paragon market. You'll get more for your money that way and you'll feel more appreciated. -
Quote:Let me ask you, can you make a viable character out of Super Reflexes primary and Fire Blast secondary? I pair those two sets because they have no support or utility powers in them. I'd have to insist that you also take no heals from pool powers.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Have you met me? Give me any armor for blasters instead of the secondaries available. In about 2 hours in Mids I will hand you back my Tank Mage. Seriously. Pick any armour set in the game, give me Blaster sets and I can guarantee I can layer that kind of mitigation.
I think a SR/FB tankmage character would be balanced. Powerful in quick bursts, but in the long run he's gonna take hits and go down. -
Quote:I've come to the opinion that game developers are all doing it wrong. All game systems these days are built to define what a character can do. How they *should* be built is to define what a character *can't* do.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
So, if you were making a power armour gatling gun guy, how would you make him?
I've fiddled with my own game system just for fun. I'd define five categories, spread out on a pentagon arrangement. Probably something like: Defense, Melee, Ranged Offense, Support, and Utility. String those in a circle. Allow characters to have one category as a primary, a second *adjacent* category as a secondary, and a third category anywhere as a tertiary powerset.
So you could have:
Defense/Melee/Support (Tanker)
Ranged/Melee/Utility (Blaster)
Utility/Support/Ranged (Controller)
Melee/Defense/Utility (Scrappers)
etc.
But you could also have:
Defense/Melee/Ranged (your Power Armor with Gun guy)
Support/Utility/Melee (A melee defender type)
etc.
But you could *not* have:
Ranged/Defense/x
Melee/Support/x
etc.
...because those are not adjacent on the pentagon.
(Incidentally, this system gets more complicated -- and more exciting -- when I apply it to fantasy game systems, with the categories as Armor, Weapons, Stealth, Magic, and Support. The above description is just to emulate CoX.)
Archetypes should not be delineated by what they can do, in my opinion. They should be bounded by what they cannot do. Tankers should not have ranged attacks or pets -- but let them do everything else. Blasters should not have defense or self-heals. Power armor should have everything except Support and Utility powers. Since Support contains healing and Utility contains crowd control and endurance management, I think the archetype would be balanced. With no way to heal itself and no end management powers, it would be a powerful archetype that could not sustain itself in long combats.
TL/DR: I'd let people build tank mages by stripping away their ability to have any Support or Utility powers, and their ranged powers would be the weakest part of the archetype. Balance archetypes by forbidding core mechanics to them but allow freedom in the mechanics they do possess. -
Quote:You're working with a mistaken assumption.Originally Posted by Ein_Dose
Somebody presumably wrote the entire Citadel TF, likely aware that every single mission was functionally identical, and said "yes, this will work. People will want to play this content, which I have deliberately laid out to be against the exact same enemies, in the exact same maps, without any difference or variation whatsoever, for ten missions".
Help me out here, I'm just completely lost.
In the old days, the purpose of creating for the game was not to make content that people would want to play. The purpose was to make content that people would be forced to play, and to draw out that content for as long as possible.
The goal was to make people play longer, with the assumption that when players invest time in a MMO they become hooked. The more time you have invested, the less likely you are to skip to another game. That's why most MMOs didn't have travel power (and even CoH delayed them), why missions were usually in zones far away from your contact, and why they used repetitive missions to pad out taskforces that players were locked into.
The Citadel TF was not only part of an almost-necessary Accolade (being one of the few endurance buffs in the game back then) but it was also at the start of the difficult leveling period from 25-40, when content was sparse. Players *had* to play it. Since the players on the TF were a captive audience, the developer at the time made the grind as long as possible, then dusted their hands off and said, 'There. I've just made an extra 2-3 hours of game content. Now let's work on the Numina TF, we can probably wring another 3-4 out of that."
Today our devs are much more enlightened, and they appreciate that good content keeps more players than tedious mandatory content does. Citadel is long overdue for a remake. Hopefully it happens soon. -
Quote:Doesn't seem pompous to me. I actually agree with everything in that rant, although his triggers differ from mine. (The free players don't bother me like they bother him, but the company's shift in attitude makes me see red.)Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
Since we live in a F2P(free-to-play) world here, I found this repose to be a good expression of the feeling many have about the system.
http://kotaku.com/5931691/theres-not...to+play-switch -
Quote:Nope. There is evidence that the Galileo probe's RTG went critical when it entered Jupiter's atmosphere. Here's some info about it.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Well if it does go splot I think it'll be the first time the US "nuked" another planet.
We kind of have a habit of accidentally causing nuclear explosions whenever we visit another planet. No wonder nobody out there wants to talk to us. -
I just think it's hilarious that DC's new gay character has a vulnerability to wood.
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Quote:I've heard that Liefeld gets work because he is professional, polite, and always gets his pages done on time.Originally Posted by Furio
At this point there's only one possible reason that Liefeld still gets hired to draw. Blackmail. He's Mr. Boddy from the movie Clue. He's got dirt on everyone running a comic company.
I forget who said it, but the classic way to get work in Hollywood is to be either talented, a dedicated professional, or pleasant to work with. Sounds like Liefeld is two of those three. -
Quote:Actually I think their quote was, "Batman's orientation is 'Gotham'."Originally Posted by Knight_Marshal
DC announced that they couldn't out Batman as he is already gay.
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For those of you who thought the plot of Avengers was a little thin, you're missing Loki's long game. Here's a description of the actual plot of the Avengers, as planned by the Master of Trickery. Makes sense to me.
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Quote:Has Killowog appeared yet in the New 52? How about Mogo?Originally Posted by Frost Warden
While an interesting idea, it can be ruled out: Guy has appeared in the new 52 already, so he's not the one. (according to the information already released)
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Omaha the Cat Dancer.
Which explains a lot about my psyche, when you think about it... -
Quote:I prefer writing it as 'QILTBAG', so you can refer to the whole group as 'Quiltbag'.Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
[Edit: Looks like the forumite in question has beat me to this point. As far as LGBTQIA? I'm gay, and I find that to be entirely too many letters! The L and G are redundant (just for different genders)]
(I can make fun. No, I'm not going to tell you why I'm allowed to.)
As for the DC publicity stunt, I have a sinking feeling that they're going to screw it up badly. Speculators are noting that they never said the gay character would be a hero, so attention is focusing on villains that haven't appeared in the New 52 yet, like Ra's Al Ghul. But will the Quiltbag community be happy if the only prominent gay character in DC is a villain? I doubt it.
This is a fiasco waiting to happen. Which might be DC's intention -- bad publicity can sell comics as well as good publicity, sometimes.