SwellGuy

Originally Posted by Death_Badger

that


I am someone who would be classed as a non subscriber but willing to return if I like what Premium offers, and willing to spend money in the shop. the money is not really a bother for m. it does irk me that I would have to rent rather than purchase certain items.

I'd be happy purchasing Incarnate access on an individual character basis

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 Zwillinger

I believe that Arcanaville has put it...aptly, however to reiterate:

The cornerstone of our business is still going to be the VIP subscriber. Yes, we are offering both a Free and an Ala Carte experience, both being very robust, however our priority continues to be on delivering an amazing experience for our loyal Community.

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

Whoever wrote that?

They need to do more. Like, lots more. In-game.
I like. I like much.

Originally Posted by Manoa

Then who is the system aimed at?

It certainly isn't aimed at VIP players. If COH subs were generating enough revenue to keep the investors happy and the game running, they wouldn't be adding microtransaction into the picture. An established subscription MMO doesn't add a free-to-play element (whatever the flavor, full F2P or hybrid F2) out of the generosity of their hearts...they do so because they think they can generate more revenue by adding the F2P/microtransaction element than what they're currently achieving with their original 100% subscription.

And I suspect it's not all that aimed at brand spankin' new F2P players. The bottom-tier accounts are pretty much trial accounts without any sort of time limit. But if trial accounts were were doing the trick in generating needed revenues, they wouldn't be adding any sort of F2P element.

To me, the primary demographic that this new model is targeted at is former subscribers. This is a move to generate more revenue (whether microtrans or subscription reups) from this particular demographic. This is the player demographic who is far more likely to add money into the game (compared to their new F2P counterparts)...but you have to recognize the reasons they’re coming back and the stuff they would be interested in purchasing. If incentivized properly, they’ll likely willing to purchase new content and/or look at a subscription to try out the new shinys. But they know what it feels like to have a full game experience and not going to be incentivized to pay money for old content or to get the game working as they remember it.

Originally Posted by MaestroMavius

While not intrinsically hard per se. If you logged in tomorrow and every single character you'd ever made was gone, all those years of alts and TF's and SG events and badges and et al just vanished, wouldn't you feel like 'all your hard work' was gone?

It might be hyperbole in this context, but the effort put into playing, either viewed as easy or hard, is still an investment. Some are more invested than others. We hope the majority of returning prem's aren't so invested they can't adjust/get so upset they don't even care to purchase anything.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger

You will know *well* in advance before Issue 21, and conversely Freedom, goes live.

Originally Posted by Ultimus

Someone is going to have to explain to me (I only have done one character through Praetoria just recently since I started playing again).

What exactly is wrong with the story? I played through it and rather enjoyed it as a Loyalist.

Could someone elaborate what is wrong?

Originally Posted by MoltenSlowa

I think you meant...




I can't wait for i21 to come out. My wallet, on the other hand...can wait for a while.

Originally Posted by SlickRiptide

*shrug* If they do, or they are changed to such, I'll try them on for size and possibly reconsider.

A better question would be, "If they come in those variations then why go to the biggest gaming convention of the year and display the least authentic version of them?"

The only reasonable answer i can infer is that they don't come in those other flavors at the current time. I won't completely discount the possibility that those other varieties exist and the guy who put that presentation together just has a thing for girls in heels. I like to think that the marketing department is a bit more savvy or at least a bit more thorough than that.

The only other answer I can come up with is one that I don't care for - that someone upstream was correct and Paragon Studios is currently suffering from a serious case of group-think.

Originally Posted by Ultimus

Ok another question, what is with teaming now? It auto sidekicks and auto exemplars everyone to the level of the leader? Is there a way to turn this off?

Its just fairly annoying if I want to lead a task force because it puts everyone on my level so if I am not at the max of the TF it puts everyone at a disadvantage. Do exemplars still not get exp?

Originally Posted by TonyV

Wow, that's extraordinarily kind! And I hope this doesn't come off as superficially deferential, but the honest-to-god truth is that I'm mainly just the guy that keeps the server running. (And really, Sekoia is very helpful at that, too.) The real wizards are the unbelievably prolific writers and editors, including Eabrace, Sekoia, Aggelakis, Blondeshell, and a whole bunch of others--the list could go on and on, literally hundreds of contributors at any given time.

Also, I can't help but give a huge shout-out to people like Diellan (lead Mids developer), GuyPerfect (lead Sentinel developer), Keen (lead CIT developer), and DeProgrammer (lead Waterworks developer and generally helpful guy on other projects as needed) who keep the rest of the Titan Network updated. I just cannot emphasize that enough, it really is a group effort with a lot of people contributing.

Although, don't get me wrong, keeping the server running really can be a fun and sometimes challenging task, but fortunately, it's one I kinda like.

Originally Posted by Lemur Lad

At least one maintenance was cleanup from DXP. Another was probably "normal" maintenance. This one is seemingly the most recent patch coming from Test Server.

Truthfully though, people ought to think about it a bit before they get huffy and complain. The devs have clearly been in the process of ramping things up and implementing fixes since the Anniversary event/stress test in May.

They seem to be working hard to finally fix several long standing issues/complaints. Lag Valley on the ITF is gone. Last night I was on a 24man BAF that had less slowdown and lag than I have ever seen. Basically, for all the times people begged them to take a serious look at this stuff, they're finally doing it. I for one say bring it on.

And as usual when this complaint comes up, I'd like to note that even if it were daily, this game ends up with less downtime than any other MMO I've seen, including the big bad 800lb gorilla.

Originally Posted by Amy_Amp

They said 8 hours a day.

Originally Posted by Ironik

Not for me, it won't. My wealthiest character has just over 150 million Influence. Which means I can't even buy a single purple IO.

I literally have no idea how people earn billions of Inf. Farming, I guess. There was one girl on here who played the game 8 hours a day and was complaining about the Inf cap being 2 billion. I'm never going to see that much across all of my characters no matter how long I play, because I'm lucky if I get in 8 hours a week. That means all these super-powerful goodies are forever locked to me.