Slashman

This is exactly why I chose Bioware. They, of all developers, should be able to sell a large number of copies of any game they make, but they still market like crazy from start to finish.

Is it then smarter for a lesser known game like COX to do less marketing? Especially with a new expansion on the way?

This is what makes me bang my head against the wall. All this work and money spent on a new expansion and the only people who are being informed about updates to their website is...US? We already know about GR and the GR website. Why aren't they telling other people?

You just reinforced my point!

Perhaps I'm living in a slightly different universe than you, but in what reality do game companies wait until less than 2 months before release to do aggressive advertising for their game?

Most games and expansions ramp up advertising well before that. Multiple interviews on as many sites as will have them. Banner ads all over the place(these should be going on for an MMO regardless of an expansion being near release or not). Taken a look at the The Old Republic website?

You hype stuff to make sales. Successful game companies and even terrible game companies do this because you want to draw attention to your product. You want people to constantly be in anticipation of what you are bringing. You want your game to be on the minds of potential customers all the time. You do not just sit on your *** and make a few website updates and then post a note about it on your own forums if you want to bring in sales.

Take a closer look at the game industry and how it works before you make statements like that. Bioware pushed Dragon Age so much that folks at Bluesnews and other gaming sites were talking about being sick of hearing about it.

The people on the forums aren't the ones who need to be reminded about COX...its all the other folks who haven't heard about it or who may not know enough about it to give it a try. Good grief...you realize that there are free to play MMOs that do more advertising than COX? That doesn't seem weird to you?

That's just it. Nothing is being done. Forget TV ads...but I'm not seeing COX on web comic sites or other gaming/tech sites.

Perhaps I'm missing the bigger picture, but you put this much money and effort into an expansion and do minimal advertising. Is this an expansion squarely aimed at retaining veteran players? The expansion itself isn't something that's paid for on a monthly basis...it's a one time buy. Is NCSoft really OK with not pushing for maximum sales on this?

I'll probably never understand corporate business...

Not to say that that isn't accurate, but does the economical situation mean that people are dropping subs to MMOs that they have been playing more than usual?

Sales in terms of boxes is one thing, but is the regular player base shrinking in this MMO. I'd be more interested in those specific numbers than an industry-wide blanket assessment.

I think most people who complain about the population are going on the assumption that the regulars who have been with the game for some time are leaving and that is what is affecting the population(however accurate or inaccurate that may be).

Something I wonder about is the basis that people make for saying that the population is x or y based on the ability to get on teams easily or how empty/full the streets are.

If there was, in fact, a gradual decline or increase in population, how noticeable would it really be? For example, I always get to team when I want to, but my SG/VG friends all have toons on the same servers and we generally only team with each other. There are enough of us that even if the population has dipped, we would hardly notice since we team with ourselves almost exclusively.

By the a similar token, if someone were into PUGs and suddenly found that they couldn't get a team easily or that they were getting teams more frequently, this would still not be a good indication of population. The dynamics of PUGs vary greatly and you simply might be getting on at a bad time for recruitment or it may be that a lot of people are running with a 'regular' crowd and aren't looking for additional members etc.

I still run across a fair number of folks on my 4 servers who ask me for a team invite on site, even though I'm not on a team and have no intention of teaming at the time. Does this mean that teams are harder to find across servers?

In the end...it's a crap shoot and no one can say for sure except people with concrete proof of population numbers.

You mean this is not a big deal to you right?

I didn't even know that this change had been made until yesterday. I had no idea there was an exploit associated with walk and that this change was made as a result.

I think it's funny that because people are assumed to have a minority opinion that it automatically means that what they have a problem with is a non-issue. Did all of you like-minded thinkers post in each thread where people complained about the original effects of the sonic resonance powers?

Was it a non-issue because you weren't the ones getting headaches from the effects? I never got headaches from Sonic Resonance. So should I have posted in every thread about it, belittling the opinion of the people who claimed to be affected?

I just want back the option to reject the buff. I don't' much care how it is accomplished. Fix the walk bug or give another option to turn off just Mystic Fortune buffs. Either one works for me.

I didn't want a buff period. I was about to test my toon out on a mission without inspirations or buffs of any kind. Last time I checked, there wasn't a law against that.

This 'helpful' nonsense is mostly just that...nonsense. What danger am I about to face standing in the middle of the Black Market or WW setting up bids?

How little you think I should find something annoying is irrelevant because you are not me.

I didn't shout in Broadcast that I needed buffing and the person doing the buff has no way to know what I'm going to do next. They are not on my team and have no vested interest in buffing me unless I'm in danger(which is about the only time I throw around buffs on people without them asking).

It doesn't matter what buff I find annoying. If I happen to not like The Hermit, then it's no business of yours apart from deciding if you want to respect my right to not have a buff cast on me or not.

The small extra speed from The Fool is only negligible if there isn't another speed boost of some kind active. Suppose I had the Day Job travel speed boost? The 2 stacked together is a heck of a lot faster than someone might want.

In the end, that's all I'm saying. I can deal with a short duration buff...because 2 or 3 minutes is tolerable. But having a buff I don't want for 20 minutes certainly is not tolerable to me.

Gah! I agree with GG! The sky might fall

But seriously, a lot of the times people throw buffs at you isn't an 'act of kindness'. I don't play a lot of buffing toons, but when I do, I will only throw buffs at people who I see involved in actual combat and are having a hard time with it. Mostly on newbies who have gotten in over their heads. I usually get thanked for that.

Most drive by buffs occur in places like WW and the Black Market where they are of zero value because the recipient is standing there and will continue to stand there for the next 15 minutes or longer while sorting through IOs. Most of those are for nothing else besides the amusement of the caster.

That's on the order of annoyance of people who insist in running all of their more flamboyant AoE buffs in public places and refuse to be courteous enough to turn them off when they don't need them. At the very least I can move away from an AoE toggle buff. I can't get away from Mystic Fortune now!

Firstly, does this occur bi-monthly? I'm not even on the boards enough to check.

Every other buff in the game lasts for 20 minutes? I must have missed that memo. If someone passes by and gives me an Inertial Reduction buff and I don't want it, I can at least wait it out for the few minutes it will take to go away. If I don't want a Mystic Fortune, I have to frikkin' deal with it for 20 minutes!

I don't think that works. With the safeguard buff there is a delete option when you right click. With the Mystic Fortune, there is only a 'Remove from Tray' option. Which really doesn't make any sense anyway.

Are you saying that there are no MMOs that have weather effects? I seem to recall that even the original Everquest had rain and snow. I may be wrong though.

Considering the crappy performance ultra mode gives now with anything above stencil shadows, I'd be happy if they fixed that and got it working before they thought about adding something that will give more performance hits.

It's seriously irritating that I can run pretty much every new game out with settings at max or close to, but a six year old game makes my system chug from turning on shadows.

Usually my policy is that unless I'm fighting a boss or got a really bad spawn to deal with, I shouldn't actually need them. Well that's how it plays out in my head anyway. For one thing, my luck is lousy and I've had half a mission go by with no inspiration drops. That's me killing +1s and +2s with no inspirations except for maybe one blue and one yellow.

Also...at earlier levels, if you need inspirations for every spawn...you're dead because you have 8 - 10 slots til you hit 25(which sucks ***).

Since I play blasters a lot I'm a big stickler for thinking my fights through carefully so that I have minimal damage and danger to myself.

I'll admit that there are times when I have died with several useful inspirations in my tray because there is no way I should have missed that many times in a row...stupid accuracy nerf!

Also...Sam...what's this about turning off bosses? How do you test your toon out properly if they can't handle a boss or 2? Or an EB.

You know, before Smallville got abysmally stupid, I thought they were doing a rather good job of that with Lex Luthor's character. Even as he began to gain more and more of what he wanted, he started to lose the people he did care about and found he couldn't trust anyone etc. etc.

In the one instance where they try to interject some kind of sense of the 'price of villainy', it just turns into a morbid and sickening affair. Because in Westin Phipps' arc...you still can't make even the simple choice of letting the teacher off the hook. You have no say in where the arc goes and in the end when they give you the whole reflect-on-your-life moment...I was thinking: 'You're trying to slop guilt on top of me being a mindless lackey for the past 43 levels?'

Bad and stupid writing from top to bottom.

Actually I was able to confirm that this is mostly happening so far in Atlas, Kings Row, Steel Canyon and the Hollows.

When my blaster moved to Faultline, it magically disappeared. And also, now that you've mentioned it, it doesn't happen with the same intensity at every point in a zone. Like it's really bad around WW, Icon and the University.

Whatever that maintenance was supposed to fix, I guess the lag wasn't part of it. This server is still laggy as heck for me. I thought it was my net connection at first, but Infinity, Victory and Justice are fine.

Just standing in Steel Canyon I can see the traffic and pedestrians sticking and stuttering. It's really annoying since this is the only server where I made a DP blaster. Now it looks like I'll need to move him because I really hate lag.

If you ever bothered to play villains you'd know that working for Arachnos isn't the issue. In fact, it should well be one of your options.

The problem is, how, even when working for someone with no ties to Arachnos, the player isn't treated as having made any progress past what they were in Mercy Isle. I can actually understand having Kalinda treat you as slime because you are an unproven commodity. But the tone of contacts doesn't change even as you progress and accomplish greater and greater feats.

Why would Darla Mavis, a normal human who lost all her powers, be in a position to tell you to take a flying $@#*! after things don't go her way and she's still powerless? In fact, why is she acting like some overlord ***** instead of asking you very nicely, and bribing you along the way so she can get her powers back?

Hardcase...same thing. The pirate guy in Sharkhead, same thing. Even Marshal Brass has an annoying attitude. And the list goes on.

The major problem with COV seems to stem from the fact that the developers expected PVP to be a major focus of heroes and villains going forward from its launch. In that respect, I can actually see why no one would initially bother to take into account how villains are treated by contacts because you were supposed to earn all your respect in the PVP zones(well that's my guess anyway).

PVP was/is a big fat flop and now all we have is the PVE side of things to work with. The trouble is that heroside PVE has had a whole lot more time to mature and was correctly setup from the get go.

Villains should never have had a similar contact system to heroes in the first place. As well there should have been other supporting systems with mechanics and gameplay that made being a villain a different experience than being a hero.

The fundamental difference between heroes and villains is that one side is reactive and the other side is proactive. Heroes wait til there's trouble and then respond and try to fix it. Villains set out to do something which very usually causes trouble and then heroes come to try to thwart them.

Villains aren't usually the ones fighting their way through a bunch of obstacles and enemies to reach an objective for someone else. Not to say they wouldn't kick the butt of an entire security force to steal something valuable. But they are most usually the ones creating the obstacles and stumbling blocks that heroes have to wade through.

In fact, even villains with the power to tear through a legion of heroes will usually come up with a subtler plot that maximizes rewards and puts their enemies at the greatest disadvantage possible. It's how they operate.(Well the interesting ones anyway).

All I can say is that the Justice League Unlimited animated series does a very nice job of illustrating how heroes and villains play off against each other.

In the episode 'For The Man Who Has Everything', Mongul wanted to beat Superman in a one on one fight, but he still brought along a telepathic plant to render him helpless because dead is still dead, fair fight or not! That's how villains think and work.

What she is stuck in is some thick fog of ignorance and stupidity.

How a grown woman could possibly think that the the constant use of 2 emotes and repetition of the same baseless opinion time after time is in any way cute, informative or conducive to a serious debate is beyond me.

Furthermore, why someone who has never and will never play a villain would choose to spend time commenting in a thread meant pretty much for villain only players is also a great mystery to me.

The only solution being that this person is deluded enough to believe that her 'morality' applies to a videogame which is clearly meant to have two opposing factions which are supposed to offer similarly rewarding experiences.

I actually, at one point, used to believe that there was something worthwhile between GG's ears and that she really wasn't taking herself seriously with this nonsense...but I honestly don't know anymore. And I'm beyond caring.

My only real issue is that when an actual interesting discussion is going on, someone comes and introduces a large mess of pointless nonsense into it that derails everything. And this happens with every thread she pokes her nose into. It's getting to the point where for the first time I'm considering putting someone on ignore. And that's not something I ever do because I usually believe that everyone has something to contribute.

I'd say that plot is only worthy to be appreciated by one of the Baka Rangers!


Seriously...stuff like that has got to go.

Kelly Uqua is one of the most stupidly written arcs in the game. The 'big reveal' is so obvious from the beginning. I thought it would inevitably lead me to an opportunity to betray her and they even gave you an opportunity to do so when the Longbow Ballista guy pleads with you to see what she really is. But you just continue on calmly betraying the entire human race and still acting like a brain-dead lackey. It's beyond insulting. It's just stupid!