Shadowpuff

If you're suggesting subjectivity is irrelevant in decision making, especially when making choices about entertaiment, then it's simply a silly, or willfully blind, position to take. People usually don't think like Vulcans, weighing the logic of this or that dev decision. In addition, if you're commited to this game till the servers are turned off, you're perspective is vastly different than someone who may decide not to subscribe based on what you view as a minor, trivial annoyance. Such "irrelevant" decisions have led to significant attrition in the sub base. Or is the new model not evidence of that?

It may still be too little, too late for CoH. The free/hybrid MMO market is about to become somewhat crowded, including the game featuring the previously mentioned Vulcans by end of the year, and that other superhero game by the Distinguished Competition next month.

It's my private belief that this game could have been greater, and had the potential to explode in population at various points in the past. Certain decisions, like looking down on how some players used AE, have hurt their bottom line. In a game allowing us to play as villains in an environment created by an in-game villain, they clamp down on "improper" or "unintended" use of game systems? Who cares how they're having fun, as long as they continue to pay to play. In a fantasy environment, it doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about "immoral" use of what the game makes available. The pretend money doesn't matter as long as the real money keeps rolling in.

Yet I've met players who left this game because they felt like they ran into that kid who yanks the ball out of play because he doesn't like how it's being used. "It's my ball and I'm taking it home. You guys aren't following the rules." So potential customers are driven away. (But maybe I should have posted some of this in the MARTy thread... )

Anyway, I'm not optimistic about the future of this game, despite the denials from diehards or loyalists.

There are reasonable decisions and there are shoot-themselves-in-the-foot decisions.

The shrinking sub base is hardly an academic, minimal issue. People do follow up on their statements. Was it academic a year ago, for example, when people complained over the forum changes and actually followed thru on their threats to quit?

I doubt that there's such a thing as a trivial element where entertainment's involved. Everyone's pleasure threshold is different. What you can tolerate because you've decided to be loyal to this game forever is different than those who easily see themselves playing another game that won't frustrate them as often as this one seems to do.

In other words, rational thought can't always explain the x-factor that results in fun.

YaY! Summer is here!