Starsman

I think by now it's clear that exec wanted the game out in 2011. It does not matter if the dev team says it won’t be ready until Sep 2012, the guys up top set the deadlines and GameStop had to announce a quarter delay on the game (they dont speculate this stuff, usually when GameStop makes plan for preorders and floor shelf space, its because they were given a date.)

My point is not that they can’t do work fast, it's that the entire quality of work, art assets and code, have gone up so high in GW2 that it will take them way longer to produce huge content expansion packs.

We can't take GW1's track record as evidence of the capabilities of speed to expand GW2.

A huge part of the success of GW1 was that each expansion (but the last one) was a full stand-alone experience that was as complete as the original game itself. GW2 is much more ambitious than the original GW, and I think it's nearly unrealistic to expect a GW expansion next year that is as large as the base GW2 game is.

Again you look at the past. This is not going to be entirely up to ArenaNet, this will be dictated by NCSoft. Eventually, they will be demanded to do so. It's the road the company has been taking with their games in the last year and they will likely keep pushing further that path. Would not be shocked to see more pay-to-win things added to GW1 in the next 2 years, btw.

First we need to see at least 3 years of consecutive expansions being released without delays.

Thank you for not killing our hope.

*squints eyes*

Who are you... (seriously confused)

Jack_NoMind already did a good reply for this, but I want to clarify something: As usual, when someone says "no one" or "everyone" I am simply referring to "most people" or "a huge percentage of the current market."

Two things:
1) Monopoly actually sells at 99c but it has a lot of rep behind it.

2) People [see disclaimer above] are way more willing to pay money for tangible goods than virtual ones.

I still have a hard time getting people that know ME, and seen me kill myself developing, how much work goes into it, to pay 99c for a game they like instead of keeping it on a watch list hoping it goes free someday. This while in a BK line where he super sizes his meal!!! Odly that same guy spent $25 in in-app-currency for a game he once he got hooked on, but first, he had to download it for free...

The game in question was MonTower for the iPhone.


No. They have to be marketed games. How do you know a game you have not tried is good? I am certain most people that bought Guild Wars 2 had never played it. But the marketing campaign made sure to paint it well.

However, marketing is very time sensitive. Eventually, marketing budget drains. You can't keep marketing forever. That tends to be the point where MMOs jump to F2P and social-media-lize every move they can.

I doubt those are in the list of people that either buy a new iPhone, or pay 60 bucks for a video game. That' is not your target as a developer (unless your goal is to go free and USE those people as word of mouth advertising machines.)

I'm not saying there is no one out there that would rather spend money on pay-up-front games. But that's not where the real profits are anymore. The market is too competitive, especially in the pure digital front.

Here is a perfect example: Bejeweled. You likely are familiar with the game.

Right now there are two versions of Bejeweled in the iOS app store. A free one with IAP and a paid one with a lot of game modes and extras. In any standard, the 99c is a sueprior app with 6 fully fleshed game modes. The free has a timed mode that is designed to suck money out of you.

Right now, the paid app is ranking at 169th spot in the grossing charts. That's not bad for the amount of money that moves in the App Store, but again: the name Bejeweled is VERY well known.

The free app is ranking at 21th spot in the top grossing today (after a strange drop, it was 10th spot 2 days ago.) One thing to keep in mind, in the App Store, the amount of money an app makes the closer they get to the top tends to be nearly exponential. We are not talking about the free app likely making 148 "times" more, we are talking about way way more.

All this, because people are too cheap to pay a price of entry, and once they get hooked, they don’t even care there is a paid version, they are in their tiny fun box now and should this box manipulate their grindy-senses, they will open their wallets.

So yes, the gaming industry has "figured this out" and THAT is the problem. That is precisely why games are every day more bare bones and free up front. In fact, you may be laughed at if you go to an investor today and tell him you just want to make a product and sell it. They want you to make something social that will grow so they can then "exit" via an acquisition, or they want you to use the freemium path since it’s so much more profitable.


Investors are not banks. Investors expect ownership on your company. They are not lending you money; they are buying a percentage of ownership in the company. It's insanely rare that they will just sell you back the ownership. What they want is for you to make your company more and more appealing for big guys like EA to acquire.

Stock holders are similar, but they may expect the company to make money, grow, so they can then sell that stock at a profit due to increased company value.

First off, you can clarify your point without getting all worked up. I was just replying to your point about rushing through based on the statements given by you.

So, taking this as a clarification, OK, see where you coming from. I have not played the game myself so I can't argue it. All I can say is everyone I know seems to enjoy it all the way through until they run out of content. I have heard minimal complaints about the gameplay, although admittedly nor have I heard any high praises either.

Now you talking taste. Neither is really ugly to look at, although I admit I still like CoH design way better.

Chancess are, another MMO, made by the same team, you still would not enjoy. Heck, it's proven fact. This game was made by the same team that made Champions.

No artist likes making the same painting twice, even if they like using the same style.

OK so the MMO you heard they are working on is called something entirely different, got it.

*PS: dont ruin the fun, we all know better, we just having some fun here.


And you would patiently wait until the day J_B identifies himself while at the same time claiming "This is the best MMO ever and what all other super hero MMOs should have been like!" ?

I know enough people that love the game as it stands. It just needs LOTS of high level content. TOR is a story MMO, once you are done you are done. They need to overload that game with content ASAP.

Shortly before this game was announced I started a new character. I was shocked how much content CoH has now. I am not sure I'll be able to eat through it all before shutdown, and then there are many arcs (especially the core Pretoria startup line) that can play in so many different ways.

I think this is why the game didn't click with you. That's not a game you play "as quickly as you can", it is a game that (until they add end game content) is just about the quest. If you rush it... what's the point?

*kicks the rumor mill on full power*

Who knows, maybe she already was approached to do a "new breed of MMO", something that can be done with a smaller budget without server dependencies and this thread is just her first assignment at scounting player feedback on the concept.

I don't think the IO system had to be unlocked, but do think the SO/DO system needed a heavy revamp.

I would have created a few multi-trait enhancements, and simplified the enhancement typing (1 plain mez enhancement instead of 7 for each type, imagine if you required 8 damage type enhancement types?!)

The ability to have more recharge and endurance without heavy sacrifice alone would have made F2P play much more appealing.

That almost sound as you are discretely saying "I am aware of private statements addressing that topic specifically that I can't talk about right for obvious reasons"

I would not be shocked if Matt Miller pursues such a goal, but you can't do that kind of stuff without strong financial backing. He will have to spend a time shopping the idea around, and once he gets a publisher we will not see any fruits for at least 2 or 3 years in the future.

Keep in mind, if they don't aquire CoH and all that is under it, they will be forced to start from scratch.

I think they love the super hero genre. If the rumors are true, 2 of the "secret project attempts" were City of Heroes 2 and a revamp of the current City of Heroes (v2.0?) I would not be shocked if they pursue similar again.

The effectiveness of the taunt is highly diminished if there is no damage or heavy debuffing being inflicted.

The auras you mention are 25% longer duration, but the damage provided by damage auras is much higher than that.

Chilling embrace also adds a bucketload of debuffs that all add up to the final aggro multiplier. Unfortunately we never were told the exact formula, but we have enough experimentation with Chilling Embrace to think it's either a very strong weight, or it may use base magnitude for the debuffs (each speed debuff alone is 70, and there is one for each movement type.)

Tests in the past have shown it's nearly impossible to steal aggro from an Ice tanker using Chilling Embrace.

Wait... you street hunted in CoH???

But on the serious side, one idea that crosses my mind is... what if private servers got somehow had a centralized hub, like a register. Even single player games, as long as there is internet, may be able to communicate with this register and find out about other servers....

In theory, with a lot of work, a game may entirely in the background merge your game with another player's game. Another player may simply walk through and show up on the world. Depending on the player, he may just fly by and ignore you, he may stop and help, or he may just be rude. Who knows. But it would add an illusion of being in a big breathing world.

Maybe even take it further; a single player game does not need to have “private instances” as we know them. Perhaps the game can choose to toss other players into your own instances. Always giving the player a setting to entirely turning off multiplayer mode, though, but turned on by default.

BTW, look at my sig. I am talking from experience too. Like they say: "been there, done that, got punched in the face too."


I'd argue it's because many realized (or had no choice) early on that it was cheaper (or the only way) to compete on price than to fork money (they likely did not have) on marketing.

Many devs still have to realize how much they hurt the market by doing this. It's like attempting to do the harm Wal-Mart has done to local small economy, but managing to do that nationwide 20 year slow process compacted into a 1 year international one that was all about killing, not just pushing back, the profits of the competition.

But that's the world we live in now, players are no longer willing to spend money up-front. I think that's a huge part of what is hurting the MMO market too.

Same. I don't think anyone with the actual skills to save the game (via emulation or rewrite or whatever) is likely very busy trying to make money instead.

Honestly: even without names this is not the time nor place to bash anyone over your tastes.

In my opinion, the last 3 years have seen the best writting CoH has ever tossed our ways.

Plus, DA was no more grinding than repeating the same handful of TFs every single day.

The indie development scene is paved on the corpses of wasted time.

But how many of those games were freemium games? My point is not that anyone can make money on the mobile game scene. My point is that we have seen that people are very willing to pay money, in free games, bucket loads of money, for things you would never expect them to pay for outside of a controlled server environment.

Players have spent millions on Bejeweled Blitz, just on tiny cheats to climb up leaderboards!

Yes, there is a lot of stuff out there. There is a lot of competition and it's hard to be noticed. That's one of the reasons why it's Freemium games that are breaking it big: the barrier of entry is just a free download. They don't have to download a demo version and then restart from scratch by buying the premium version, they simply start tossing money at the game they already have in their device.

But yea, even that is getting harder. Great visuals and quality is now a must. Without them players may just pass up the game in the app listings, even if it was free.

Although I see your point, the key figure is Matt Miller. We got to keep in mind, team changes have happened in the past, as long as the Matt manages to stick around, the core vision may stay. Obviously i would love for Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Dr Aeon to stay, though!

They usually have that covered as part of the distribution deals, and in the worse cases (bookstores do this a lot) they may just tell the store to destroy the copy since they cant do anything with it. There is certain level of trust (along with some ratios that cant be exceeded) between publishers and big chains like GameStop.

I am crossing my fingers for "hey, we may be able to save the game!!! Lets not spoil anything yet!"

If the game is saved, i doubt it will be under NCSoft umbrella's.

Either Paragon Studios will manage to reform with the help of some investors and buy the IP, or the game will be lost. I don't expect anyone but Paragon Studios will be interested in acquiring the IP, and am 100% sure NCSoft wont decide to keep it running.

The team likely wont be the same, some may already have been lucky enough to find a job and may opt to stay there instead of returning to a risky venture.

I'm not holding my breath for anything saving us, but should saving happen, I think it will look the way I just described.

They usually just return it as defective merch. All NCsoft loses is perhaps 1 to 50c from the disk and box printing.