SodaPops

I will never touch another NCSoft game. Never again. That's the !@#$ing petition. That's all that's left.

Lots of interesting perspectives at Titan. I really do think this is an effort at getting us to shut up.

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,5434.0.html

Translated!

Oh, there's that wound salt I was looking for. Thanks OP!

Well whatever went down there was a shareholder shift that resulted in (or was perhaps a symptom of) a poorly planned restructuring effort that resulted in this:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/2503...ss-since-2006/

That's right. Too much money spent in the short term letting people go. So what did they do? They let Paragon go. WTF?!

I'm currently a dev and an ex-Game Informer reviewer. After years of thinking about the ethics of writing reviews I came to the conclusion that all you can do is share your experience. My experience is that I'm quite convinced it's an awesome game and that I was interested in GW2 but that I can't enjoy a game knowing that the publisher has behaved this callously towards a community, not even offering a graceful retirement with notice longer than three months for a game that's still making a steady profit nor offering refunds to people who purchased year-subs in advance or who spent a lot on micro transactions in recent months assuming perfectly reasonably the game wouldn't be randomly and unreasonably shut down for no apparent reason with very little notice.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the Korean side of NCSoft is basically douchebags and it is not going to give a damn about this community until they realize they've just opened up a PR sh*tstorm right at the launch of a property that does fit their "focus."

On the matter of screwing things up for Paragon devs wanting to continue working at NCSoft, which of the Paragon crew that were unceremoniously drop-punted out the door with zero notice that was hoping to work NCSoft again would you be referring to? You couldn't pay me enough to work under a publisher like this and I don't get the impression there were any hires to other divisions of the company. Just a mass-ganking with very little notice for a studio that wasn't in the red and could have at least been sold along with the IP if somebody could have been bothered by the apparent chump-change of an 80 person operation that brings in millions a year. I can't speak for designers and QA but quality devs do not have a hard time finding work and COH is a respected property.

They haven't just alienated COH fans and MMOers in general with this move, they've alienated talent.

When somebody kicks you in the nards and refuses to apologize or explain their abhorrent behavior you do not try to be a bigger person than they are. You make noise and you kick back.

Here's what I consider the relevant facts of the situation with some speculation filling in the holes. But hey, if NCSoft doesn't want to fill in the gaps for us, I'm willing to speculate and my conclusion is that ultimately this is corporate douchebaggery coupled with a bizarre anti-Western mentality that makes me confused as to why they even did business in NA/EU in the first place.

http://www.amazon.com/Would-Touch-NC...sin=B008MAZ0PU

A lot of us spent money just before the way-out-of-left-field announcement on purchases that we wouldn't have made if there were only three months left and that's unacceptable. This game was profitable. They killed 80 jobs with no attempt to sell the studio or the game when it was in no clear danger of going into the red, in fact seemed to be experiencing a resurgence in popularity IMO, and there has been no communication to the fans about what went down other than Paragon basically saying they had no hint/idea why it happened this way either.

This is a pretty mature, mellow community overall but they clearly have no intention of treating us right so !@#$ 'em. Smear them all over the internet. Add "Avoid Publisher" reviews everywhere. Since GW2 is a micro-based profit-model, I think it is an entirely relevant and reasonable thing to point out that every COH fan that made a micro transaction in COH just got severely burned for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. MMOs, IMO are perfectly fair game for bad publisher reviews. And after all, isn't GW2 taking a bit of a loss right now? How can we be certain they won't just can it with zero notice?

But bring that maturity to the review. Don't write rants. The only chance of getting this made somewhat more right by which I mean, they sell the game to somebody who actually doesn't see a problem with a modest steady profit with IP-potential where a sequel is concerned is to remind them that COH fans are smarter than your average gamer and we have big beautiful literate-if-not-eloquent mouths.

Bring your villains to the table kids. It's time to tear up some NCSoft profits for the games whose "focus" they apparently do care about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...action=preview

Yep, that's corporate logic for you.

"The game doesn't make enough money for our tastes, but just to cover our butts from criticism of our critical thinking skills and basic managerial competence we're not going to give anybody else a chance to actually turn it into a success where we couldn't even though we have no similar competing MMO on the horizon."

The only thing that might save this game and that's a big "might" is massive amounts of bad publicity threatening to hurt their other endeavors.

I'm only moderately pissed that I just spent 60 bucks in the marketplace. If I'd spent hundreds in recent months, I'd be livid. IMO, it is messed up to pull the plug on an MMO with only 3 months notice with a content expansion right around the corner when you were just taking post-subscription money for extras.

Mostly though, I'm just disappointed yet again by an industry that seems increasingly hostile to its customers. DRM, short-notice shutdowns, small-publisher IP-strip-mining followed by pointless IP-hording, subscription models for games that don't update content... WTH is going on?

No, but seriously I can't find the original thread because of all the cross-posting. It's not helping.

Wolves, lions, WOLF, seems like an odd mix but it's the sounds that win me over. Is it just me or are the bird attacks a bit nastier than most MM attacks (or have I just been whipping it too much with my demon MM?)

Okay, I made a similar post that was moved to Ideas and Suggestions which I still can't find or I'd move this one if I could.

Let me know if there's a better place for level design issues:

I forget the mission name. It's after you've been to the other side of the dam and now have to investigate multiple Arachnos dig sites. The map pointer is not helpful at all and points you at an area just under the Freaks. I'm used to the occasional vague pointer I did a lot of searching along the surrounding cliffs. It got to the point where I thought something was bugged and have abandoned this quest-line on multiple accounts in the past.

When somebody off of help showed me where it was (it took a while to find somebody who knew), they said "nobody can ever find that one on their own."

I know it's old but mission designs like these can be kind of frustrating when they're towards the end of a long-ish arc.

This is more about one particularly confusing mission design but I added some nice-to-haves. I understand it's a really old zone but as a player who is new to lvl 30ish, and who really enjoyed look and feel as well general plot-concept of the zone, I was surprised by a few things:

Main issue: (Mayor Quest-line) Get Information From all Ghosts - You're given a divining rod which your told is what you're supposed to use on everything to get information. It has about a 60% hit rate and 20 uses with the side-effect of one-shotting ghosts.. Not enough to nail every ghost. I replayed 3 times trying to figure out what I was doing wrong before folks in help pointed that I could just kill the ghosts. Please note, after having played the Cure the Lost mission, I assumed it was "one of those" wack 'em with a magic stick missions and that maybe those mysterious clouds that don't really do anything to you were supposed to recharge your stick or something.

* That wasn't so bad but at the point I was really sick of office mazes in Croatoa. Most building interiors appear to be bordering-on-non-Euclidean office mazes, regardless of description or facade appearance. Warehouse, store-front, doesn't matter, if it was in a building and not a cave, it was an office maze. Camera also got really jerky with demons moving in and out of confined spaces causing focus shifts. Started giving me a bit of motion sickness.

* A little clarity on the mission where you have to keep the 30 Fir Bolg from escaping would have been nice because they don't really run at first and it wasn't clear to me that the ones that were running were actually fixtures of the area or just random spawns and there was some sort of timer countdown. Ultimately, folks on help pointed out that you just play goalkeeper until it's over so I parked my MM with a full crew of demons by the gate and made myself a sandwich. If it's a timer, that would be nice to see. If it's a monster-mash, it would be nice to see monsters remaining.

* Kid with the goatee's dialog was kind of stupid. He could relay the same info without making you feel like a dweeb for helping him.

Haven't tried thermal yet but I've got a time/robots MM in the 20s.

Time is very effective. I think overlapping single-enemy, AOE and and aura slow effects actually stack to some extent. The early single-enemy buff is worth taking since it will paralyze enemies that are in the AOE zone debuff. The heal is very effective when boosted. It's a nice balance of burst-heal followed by heal-over-time so it's good as an emergency fix and to maintain max health for a while. I've only got a couple heal-25s in it and it's pretty strong.

I highly recommend adding teleport enemy to your build-strategy. You can basically create a debuffing slow/stop nightmare zone and drop enemies right into it. Haven't tried the first buff yet but it looks pretty powerful.

I haven't tried the single-target buff yet.

I have a demon MM with the dark powers in her 20s. Demons + DR-reducing whip attacks + slow/stop/heal from time should work quite nicely.

It might get higher priority if every MM starts reporting the bug every time it happens. I still haven't gotten over how neat the robot upgrade animations are. That might be why I don't complain as much as I should.

I haven't noticed the demons bugging out so they must know what they need to do to fix this. As a programmer it strikes me as pretty silly that it's been around for years now.

I don't know how great it is at levels higher than 24 but I find teleport enemy with some accuracy mods highly effective at grabbing runners and isolating problematic enemies in a mob before engaging. Especially when you have some nasty debuffs waiting for them. Sometimes you can snatch people without their allies noticing. Surrounded, knocked down, and slowed/paralyzed is a tough way to start a fight. Love this with my robot/time MM. A more experienced friend tells me there's been a long-standing preference for taunt skills over TP. I have no idea why. It's fun like sniping and stealth killing at the same time and let's you start the fight in places that are hard for allies to get to.

Nathan Explosion: "We will make everything metal, we will make it blacker then the blackest black times infinity."

Concept: Your early minions are about as effective as street thugs. The more advanced minions are actual band members and not so much insanely nasty at kicking butt in their own right as they are buffing your allies into a frenzy and debuffing the opposition into a stupor. As they are added, band members add to damage of attacks, new specific buffs/debuffs, and of course add to the actual sound effects you put out with their instruments which can pop in/out of thin air in a flash of fire and darkness.

Weapon: An axe of course. No, the music-kind. You're also the vocals.

I. Minions 1-3 - Fan, Roadie, Body Guard - Your tanks and primary damage dealers. Effectiveness increases as your ability to buff/debuff increases. Fan moshes. Roadie swings equipment. Body Guard beats people professionally.

II. Minions 1-2 - Bassist, Drummer - It's about the music. They can attack but they will stop and support your attacks/buffs when you use them. First adding these guys on is a big deal as it dramatically enhances regular attacks and lower tier minion potential.

III. Minion 1 - Lead Guitar - Similar to II but can lay in some serious damage with his double-axe after a couple shots of jack which we will of course merely imagine he hits in order to maintain a T rating.


Attack I. - Raaaa!!! - Weak to start. Eventually adds on knockback and debuffs enemies in specific ways as II + III get added on.

Attack II. - Power Cord - High knockback %. Damage gets heavier as band members get added, adding their instruments to the sound effects. Reduces DR of individual enemies.

Attack III - Kaos (with an umlaut over the 'a' of course) - Minor cacaphony of music expression knocks back all enemies in immediate vicinity and adds buffs to allies as band members get added. Followed nicely by Raaaa!!! to debuff enemies as they get up off the ground.

Attack buffs shouldn't affect allies. It would unbalance things, I suspect. Additional powers can handle healing and buffing allies as well as band members. The adding to the band mechanic should apply to all powers where possible, however.

I'm not a heavily experienced COH player, but certainly at earlier levels up to 20ish the DR reduction on the whip attacks from dark Miasma seems to make a pretty huge difference. MMs of the no-player-attacks-persuasion may want to reconsider when choosing DM as a secondary. Given the nature of DR, I would think DR-reduction attacks would only become more useful as you go up in level and enemies get tougher.

I actually skipped the light attack and went with the medium and heavy knockback whip attacks, which still have plenty of range to let you stand behind your minions. I haven't put much effort into slotting either for damage so that's been negligible and I rarely seem to draw aggro for long with the whips. It's the DR reduction and fairly reliable knockback that really make them shine. Also it's deeply gratifying to whip the bejeezus out of stuff, seemingly inspiring a performance boost on the part of your minions who suddenly start killing stuff a lot faster.

I think the trick to slotting minions is to just watch your pet combat chat and keep an eye on their endurance bars. I've put 5-slots of damage on the little guys with one slot of whatever I happen upon for accuracy (just damage-15s, no acc. invention yet) and they melt health bars pretty darn quickly with acceptable accuracy.

One thing I find somewhat puzzling is that the ice demonling almost always tends to go down first when things get dicey. Not sure why. I know they're all different but I haven't seen anything about him being particularly weaker. Do his attacks draw more aggro? Taking the leadership defensive aura with some slots seemed to help with that but I don't get the impression it's a major buff.

It would be nice to have some kind of indicator for stuff you can actually earn in-game vs. stuff you can't. I would feel silly if I realized I could have earned something without a whole lot of effort if I'd just done a little research.

The monthly stipend really quells a lot of issues I'd have with the MTs. In fact by basically making the argument a matter of paying-a-few-bucks-to-not-wait-a-month, I've probably ended up spending more on MTs in COH in the last couple months than in MTs from all other games combined.

I'll feel like they've crossed a line when they start putting out a lot of stuff that's worth more than a monthly stipend or they add stuff that's just way too powerful to ignore that you can't earn with reasonable effort in-game.

Am I missing something or are there only like 4 rifles when you ignore the variations and repaints?

I was never really into wrestling but with some tutelage from a true fan back when I wrote for a gaming magazine during "The Rock" era, I came to the conclusion that yes, believe it or not, all these wrestling organization shows live and die by the quality of the writing (yes, I'm serious) and the talent of the choreography/wrestling. It's all about stunts and comic book style posturing and when it's done right, it's an absolute hoot to watch.

When the producers get lazy and ignore talent on the writing or choreography/stuntman front, and they focus more on trying to force a kind of Wolverine/Drizzt/Boba Fett fanboyism on this or that character, it's just kind of silly and dull. It's kind of like Saturday Night Live. With all that focus on trying to find the next big easy money win (in SNL's case, - the NEXT BIG SNL-to-movie character), they often forget to work to make the show entertaining overall even if it involves work that doesn't directly lead to an obvious epic merchandising win.

As somebody who was a bit 'meh about the original COH, I have no idea what any of this has to do with COH Freedom, which is becoming much more for me than a mere holdover for SWTOR. It's a highly approachable somewhat laid-back game about having superpowers and using them. This attracts an A+ community that seems less about min/maxing, more about having fun with new approaches via the highly flexible build system. I love what's been added to the core of this game and the only thing I think COH really needs is a facelift. Whatever else is added, gimmicky or not, is just gravy. Not sure why my forum status didn't update but I upgraded to VIP after about a week of play.

My conclusion: I do not think the producers of this game have been lazy.