SilverSablinova

Originally Posted by SlickRiptide

No. If there's a debatable issue here, it is not in playing word games with people about what "buy" means. It's in directly addressing the desire for ownership at a fixed price.

If you purchase a one-month Architect license, you are not "buying" the Architect. You are renting it. If you subscribe to the game, you are not "buying" the incarnate system. You are renting it.

It's basically belittling to treat people who dislike renting games as people who are just too stupid or too greedy to appreciate what they've been offered.

Whether any individual player cares for the available option or not, the Premium membership does offer alternatives - either rent Architect/Consignments/Inventions at a nominal monthly rate or "purchase" it it by achieving the appropriate reward level. Whether that purchase price is an appropriate one or a better deal than renting those game systems is a question subject to individual taste.

I don't really care what anyone's leanings are one way or the other but I do appreciate when people deal with the real issues instead of setting up straw men with false issues and then knocking them down and pronouncing the issue "dealt with".

Right now, there are some systems that can be purchased outright. The morality system is one such system. Signature arcs is another. There are other systems that can be rented individually, or "earned" permanently through purchases of paragon points. There is one system that can only be rented and only by VIP's - the incarnate system.

Those are the issues. If you want to address them then please be good enough to address the real issues. I've alluded to one of those issues before - some people just don't care to rent their game. Those people have some options with most systems, but not with all systems.

The program managers at Paragon/NCSoft have spent at least a year preparing for this, so they have some good ideas and what they feel are good reasons for doing things this way.

Should they offer other alternatives? Maybe. The game supports vouchers that give per-character access to features. If I have five characters who are all under level 10 and one character who is level 30 then I may not care to pay $6/month to rent global access to invention/market game systems that benefit one character, but I might be willing to pay $10 to purchase permanent access to those features for that one character.

I see the license rentals as an experiment. It's something new in this game that I've never encountered in another game. If it turns out to be a failure after six months, they can always change policy and start offering permanent licenses for sale or offering vouchers as a purchase option.

Complaining won't change it BECAUSE it's an experiment. Until the results of the experiment are known, there's no point is complaining about being one of the test subjects.

The devs have reasons for reserving incarnates to VIP. In the short term, they're probably good reasons. Over the long term, they'll adapt their policies to the trends that their sales figures indicate that they should be following.

In the end, premium players have options about almost all features. It's up to them to decide how palatable the options are. I just ask both sides that if you're going to discuss/argue about it that you make your arguments about the real issues and not about made-up issues or about the character of the people that you're arguing with.

Originally Posted by TerraDraconis

What people miss is that they are not making a desperate attempt to have higher player numbers. If that was the case giving more and better things to the free players would be the goal.

One important thing to remember is that this entire project is over 2 years old. They have been working at it for a long time and that means that it's goal is something besides simply having higher player numbers.

The problem is that COX is in the position of being a cash cow. This means that it's growth has generally stopped but it still remains providing a solid reliable stream of money. The problem is cash cows eventually dry up and NCSoft has a distinct record of not keeping them past some point of return.

Because of this it was and is imcombant on the devs to figure out a way to increase the games money stream. They observed that moving to a hybrid model worked for several games that tried it in the period around the time they were starting this project. Those companies saw an increase in revenue by moving to a hybrid model. So Paragon began exploring it.

One of the clear mistakes made by other hybrid games was giving to much of the game content to nonsubscribers. This means that there was no real incentive to resubscribe to the game just spend money from time to time in the store for this or that. So when the Premium level was designed things where clearly held back to entice players to pay for them. The idea being you don't have to be subscribed to drop back by but dropping back by should entice you to resubsribe for a month here or there as your attention turns back to COH. Premium permits a player to drop by and see if they are interested in playing again for a month or two. And that really is its intended goal. Not to have the majority of the players as premium but instead to have it as a viable solid transitional phase to lure you back into subscribing.

Originally Posted by Death_Badger

I only tend to dip in and out of MMOs nowadays so having a subscription when I may only play a week or two at a time seems ridiculous, especially with all of the other games out there to play. However I would quite happily pay for certain things so that when I did play I could play a full rather than a watered down game.

I don't want anything for free I simply want to choose how I pay for it. I prefer to drop a lump sum on a game and be able to simply play how and when I want. It has nothing to do with wanting to freeload. For the amount of time I play other games I pay well over the odds, but am happy with that as I don't have to manage a load of subscriptions and can happily drop into games with friends to do content. As the overview on the COH website says: Pay for the content and features that you want.

Originally Posted by MentalMaden

The point is to promote subscriptions through premium not to promote premium. Get the returning player to say 'hey' to some old friends and see all the cool stuff they are getting for the sub fee and enticing them to re-sub. If premium could get access to everything, what's the point of having a subscription service in the first place? Endgame is the perfect system to gate through VIP because people coming from other games will be more pro-endgame and want access. Seems like a pretty smart method to me. Something's you'll just have to pay for.

Originally Posted by Neo Shadowdream

Done, I'll be playing with colors.. but it's there

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Probably a double post incoming, for which I apologise, but there's something I want to talk about before I forget what it was:

In this thread, quite a few people have said that they enjoy all kinds of villains, from the cleanest to the most revolting and that it just depends on the concept. Instinctively, I've agreed with these opinions as I want to respect everyone's right to preference. But thinking about this just now, I have to say... No, not ALL kinds of villains work. And I'm not speaking about opinions here, or about likes and dislikes. There's a very real "upper limit" as it were about what the game's rules will actually allow you to make. I may or may not talk about my train of thought behind this, but think back on the things we've actually seen here in City of Heroes.

Once upon a time, a player complained that his character - something along the lines of "Daddy Wifebeater," called this because of the tank top he wore, supposedly - had been made generic. The player's conduct made it apparent that he was using the double meaning as an excuse, and a GM had apparently seen it the same way. Years after this, SkunkWerks had one of his characters called "Die Fuchs" - according to him, German for "The Fox," though I don't speak German to verify - made generic, with a GM explaining to him that it sounded too close to the phrase "Die *****," which will most likely get censored but you know what I mean.

Granted, these are just name disputes, but think about it a bit more broadly. Or better yet, think about it hypothetically - consider you wanted to make a character based around racial hatred or **** or some other kind of universally unacceptable behaviour. Now try and imagine how long this character will last before someone reports it and a GM axes the name, costume and bio without a second thought. I wouldn't want to suggest actually trying that (please don't), but I'd have my money rolling on "not very."

What I'm trying to get at is that even if we want to argue that really, it's all about story and all about what that character calls for, there are still certain boundaries that even the most liberal-minded big business isn't going to cross for the sake of "art," and I say this as a supporter of the arts. If PlayNC and Paragon Studios and Cryptic before them are willing to draw a line in the sand as to just how... "Offensive," let's say, a character can be, then I'd say we could technically draw our own lines, and possibly much lower down.

This is where I cross over into personal opinion, because what level of tolerance each of us has for things that disturb and disgust us is really very individual and, ultimately, a matter of opinion. All I'm really saying is I don't think we should be discussing "villain disgust" on quite as open-ended a scale, because even at the best of times, we're still being constrained by outside forces.

Originally Posted by KianaZero

The Daleks of Doctor Who could fit that description, if only partially. They honestly believe the UNIVERSE would be a better place if all life but pure Daleks were left. Even impure Daleks willingly kill themselves to help further that goal.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

---

Example done, all I'm really saying is that I don't like redeemable villains used as villains in much the same way as I don't like anti-heroes used for legitimate heroes. They're fun once, they're tolerable for a while, but they grow old FAST. And if I'm going to spend 750 hours of my life playing a character (like I did with my primary villain), then I'm going to want a character I can like for the long run and a character who can stand the test of time, at least in my eyes. And the only ones who manage that are the stable, confident ones that don't flip-flop between alignments and don't constantly hint that maybe they can be saved.

Again, this is all personal opinion here, but that's just what I pick for my own villains and usually what I pick my stories by.

Originally Posted by Starwinds

My opinion is that Mars Attacks! succeeded in what it was trying to accomplish. It was meant to be a bad, campy, slightly nostalgic flick about little green men coming down with their ray guns of doom. Asking Mars Attack! to be a "great" movie, would be like asking Monty Python to be serious...

Originally Posted by Visthera

Green Lantern

Originally Posted by Lothic

But I predict, like SilverSablinova mentioned, that a lot of people are going to get themselves into various "accidents" trying to use these things whether they are driving cars or just walking down the street.

Originally Posted by Lothic

Well I'll at least agree with the idea that a movie with a "great" cast will never alone guarantee a great movie even though, as you say, Hollywood relies on "big names" to sway people to go see them. I just don't think we need to dwell too much on hypothetical "what-ifs" with specific movies like Star Wars when there are plenty of other real life examples of bad movies with big name casts we could point out. I guess I just wonder why we'd construct a bad example for argument's sake when there are plenty of pre-made bad examples to poke fun at already?

Originally Posted by ZephyrWind

But, but...Andromeda

*sigh*

Originally Posted by ZephyrWind

NO!

You take that back!

Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

Someone's been watching a lot of Torchwood. Mind you, fitting new batteries would be a bit of a pain...

Originally Posted by Deacon_NA

I wouldn't nominate Magnolia for this particular "award" but I do agree with your sentiment. No other movie has taken me from "really like" to "hate" as quickly as this did when the "wtf ending" happened. Just seeing or hearing any mention of this movie raises my blood pressure a point or 2.

Two movies I'll throw out there, very similar to each other actually.

"Cannonball Run" with Burt Reynolds, Peter Fonda, Farrah Fawcett and many many more.

"Rat Race" - not as star-studded as the above, but John Cleese, Seth Green, Cuba Gooding Jr (when he was still respected) and most importantly (to raising my hopes) directed by Jerry Zucker. It just didn't work.