TrueGentleman
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After reports of missing Paragon Points and Reward Tokens, our diligent community manager Zwillinger has stepped in to alert the CoH community to a significant problem with the VIP billing cycle:
Quote:Unfortunately, Paragon Studios does not yet have a timetable for when we can expect this problem to be corrected or indeed a definite endpoint for when everything will be resolved. This leaves an appreciable portion of the CoH playerbase - paying subscribers, "VIPers" - in limbo. Paragon's plans for weekly new releases and sales mean the delayed distribution of points some of us have already paid for will not be available for them. It's frustrating not to be able to purchase, say, the latest power set on time, despite having in effect spent money toward it. It's even more so to miss out on sales that will not be repeated for a long time, if ever again. In the bigger picture, this problem increases uncertainty about the reliability of back office operations for Paragon Studios.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
There has been some recent confusion surrounding the schedule for the awarding of Paragon Points and Paragon Reward Tokens included as part of your VIP subscription. When we first announced the details surrounding Freedom, we communicated that players would receive their monthly stipend of Paragon Points and Paragon Reward Token on their monthly billing date. Unfortunately, due to technical limitations of the Paragon Rewards Program and safeguards with the stipend system there have been some adjustments to the cadence of release for these VIP Benefits.
So how will VIP subscribers be awarded their monthly stipends and Reward Tokens?
LetÂ’s address your Paragon Points first. If your game account has a bill day between the 1st of the month to the 10th of the month, you should expect your October stipend of Paragon Points on October 11th, provided your VIP subscription continues. Over the next few months, your stipend date will line up with your bill date as long as you maintain the VIP status of your game account. If your game account has a bill day between the 11th of the month to the 31st of the month, you will receive your Paragon Points on your game accounts billing date, as long as you maintain the VIP status of your game account.
The monthly Paragon Reward Tokens are awarded differently. They follow the same schedule as the old Veteran Reward program. This means you may not receive them on the same date that you receive your monthly VIP Paragon Rewards Points. Veteran rewards are were calculated based on the time your game account is was actually playable with active paid game time, and not just based on your bill date. Just as a temporary block changed your Veteran Reward dates, these types of things changes to your game account will also change the date you receive your monthly VIP Paragon Reward Tokens. You also have to play out the month of game time before receiving the tokens. You may pay for time in advance, but you have to play out the time before you receive your next reward.
We sincerely apologize for any confusion that this may have caused. I know that many are anxious to receive their monthly points, especially in light of our weekly releases in the Paragon Market. Hopefully this post will help set expectations moving forward and allay concerns you have about receiving your points for October.
Thanks!
-Z
Obviously the first order of business is to fix this billing-related error as quickly as possible. Fixing this, however, looks like a long- or medium-term issue, a matter of "months" rather than weeks. Here's hoping Zwillinger will have more news for us soon.
The next important issue for Paragon Studios is how to retain the good will for affected subscribers and the playerbase in general. Positron has on numerous occasions declared how much they value CoH's devoted community and clearly appreciates that once good will is lost, it's incredibly difficult to regain. The issue of how to preserve this abstract quantity also overlaps with addressing other recent problems that have come up during the launch of CoH Freedom (e.g. the erratic server behavior and downtime, unscheduled server maintenance, the last-minute delay of VIP head start, the Mac client's stability issues and market access, etc., not to mention the on-going logout bug in the forums). This rather large ball is of course in Paragon's court. In other threads about game-related problems, people have suggested everything from partial refunds and extra Paragon Points to special badges, costume parts, or emotes and double-XP weekends. There may well be remedies that Paragon has already been considering behind closed doors and is on the verge of announcing. We can only wait to see what the next move will be.
Meanwhile, anyone whose billing cycle lands on the first third of the month can expect their VIP Paragon Points to be held in escrow for another week. -
Quote:Zwillinger said "months", plural.Originally Posted by Golden_Avariel
I missed that it would be back to normal in November unless "gradually fixed over time" means "fixed this month." Still, that only makes my request even more reasonable if it is just this one month they extended the current sale (particularly on costume slots in my case) another week in addition to whatever is already planned for the 11th.
Suggesting things will be fixed by November is an overly optimistic interpretation of his official statement.Quote:Originally Posted by Zwillinger
TOver the next few months, your stipend date will line up with your bill date as long as you maintain the VIP status of your game account. -
Quote:There's no good way to break bad news like this except for candidly, so thank you for at least telling us this straight up. Of course, this is particularly frustrating for anyone who changed their billing cycle to the 1st to avoid any confusion about when VIP points would be available.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
If your game account has a bill day between the 1st of the month to the 10th of the month, you should expect your October stipend of Paragon Points on October 11th, provided your VIP subscription continues. Over the next few months, your stipend date will line up with your bill date as long as you maintain the VIP status of your game account.
This is an understatement. Paragon Studio's plans for weekly new releases and sales mean the delayed distribution of points we have already paid for will not be available for them. It's a problem for not being able to get, say, the latest power set on time, and an even bigger one for missing out on sales.Quote:We sincerely apologize for any confusion that this may have caused. I know that many are anxious to receive their monthly points, especially in light of our weekly releases in the Paragon Market.
We look forward to hearing how Paragon Studios plans to address this problem.
Thank you for your clarifying. We hope that you will be soon able to announce a more specific timetable as to when we can expect this situation to be fixed.Quote:Originally Posted by Zwillinger
Gradually fixed over time, depending on when your billing date. -
Quote:Oh, the trolling, misinformation, and crassness is under way in the Comic and Hero/Villain Culture obit thread. Decorum is rarely part of 'net culture.Originally Posted by Mad_Scientist_JC
Anyone want to bet that the trolls are going to have a field day talking crap about a dead man they never knew?
My condolences to his family and friends, my sympathies to everyone who feels a loss after Apple's computers, software, and devices touched their lives. -
Quote:Sure, one could employ a burnable e-mail address to create a fictitious account, but that then defeats the purpose of Paragon Studios using Facebook as a resource in the first place.Originally Posted by Obsidius
I'd just create a crap FB account if I didn't already have an actual account, just to get to promotion. The only real piece of info you need to make a FB account (AFAIR) is an actual email address. Everything else could be fictitious.
Then again, if it's clear that both parties' time will be wasted on this, then maybe Paragon/NC Soft should consider a better platform for spreading news about CoH. -
Quote:While this move will undoubtedly generate a lot of complaints, it might be better for the game overall if MA stayed a VIP-only perk.Originally Posted by Von Krieger
They took the MA license out of the store due to performance concerns. They'll add it back in eventually, but for right now MA is quite a bit of resources, a lot of map servers since people use the heck out of it. Thus they've made it a VIP perk.
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Here's the preview art from the Cannes presentation:
Apparently Alfred received his firearms training from John Woo. -
Quote:Exactly. It's better in MTX-supported games to set a budget in real-world amounts rather than try to estimate what the virtual one should be.Originally Posted by Mazey
Actually, buying in bulk gets you 20% extra, not savings. Which means actual savings work out as 16.7%, and that's assuming you wanted those extra points and didn't just want 8000 exactly.
At this point, only the second month of CoH Freedom, I'm still working out what my budget will be under the new system. I can place the dollar amount as something like two booster packs a year plus one expansion pack (i.e. Going Rogue), provided Paragon Studios keeps the content coming. We received sufficient advance notice about new costume sets and power sets to factor those in, along with the signature arcs, but we're still in the process of determining what the prices will be like at the Paragon Store. -
Quote:Dan Didio & co. certainly don't want new and different. They want Barry Allen back as the Flash, Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl, Hal Jordan back as Green Lantern, etc., etc., ignoring basically the entire post-Crisis generation of readers who have their own nostalgic attachment to the pre-DCnU status quo. They've entirely forgotten the Modernist adage about the creation of art with respect to the legacy of tradition: "Make it new!"Originally Posted by NinjaPirate
They still haven't figured out that people don't actually WANT "new and different".
Pneumatic pinup reject from the 90s is for those already buying DC comics, or at least All-Star Batman. If the editorial line says the DCnU is supposed to attract new readers - especially younger ones since the current fan demographic is noticeably aging - then the question of familiarity is much broader. In the case of Starfire, the biggest exposure the character ever received was the award-winning cartoon Teen Titans series, which Cartoon Network's #1 weekly show and was watched by millions of kids and which was based mainly on the "golden age" of Marv Wolfman's run on the comic with George Perez. That's the version of the character that's "familiar and known" to their biggest potential audience.Quote:People prefer the familiar and known.
DC's editorial decision to recast the character as a roofied-up alien Real Doll may have generated enough controversy to sell out the premier issue, but where sales stand in a year remains to be seen. -
Quote:Precisely - it's the same reason (allegedly) hot dogs come in packs of ten and buns in packs of eight.Originally Posted by The_Spad_EU
It's the same reason that you can only buy points in chunks that are almost entirely incongruous with the number of points that anything costs, so that you always have just too few or too many (leading to too few next time) points for what you want so you have to buy another chunk of too many or too few points.
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Quote:That would definitely have been interesting, although the devs probably aren't looking to change the brand-new tutorial, unfortunately.Originally Posted by Felderburg
I think the best idea I heard for Crey was having a Paragon Protector helping out in the tutorial.
Still, with the new phasing technology, it should be possible to introduce a Paragon Protector as, for example, a Vendor NPC that will be replaced once the player has run some Crey arcs that reveal the corporation's nefarious agenda. -
Quote:Indeed, but this leaves open two obvious questions: What happens when players alert the authorities to this, and what is Dr. Aeon doing with this data himself in the first place? What should be the tip of the iceberg is currently floating along in the overall CoH narrative like a pool toy.Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Basically Crey, who helped out with AE, are trying to get Aeon to let them access the data of the meta users of AE for the safe of their Reverent Hero Project.
Moreover, integrating AE into the CoH environment properly might give it more of a boost for storytelling instead of primarily powerlevelling. (That's a long shot, I know.)
Or at least introduce them in a neutral light so that their revelations later carry some weight. As things stand, players are basically introduced to a sinister mega-corporation in the mid-game that quickly turns out to be utterly malign. If it could be established how much Crey has worked itself into the city's power structure, then it would make more sense that it's difficult to dislodge once the revelations of its wrongdoings come to light.Quote:Originally Posted by Zamuel
The better the devs can make Crey look in the low level game, the stronger the revelation of their actions becomes. -
Quote:The article claims its source is Worldsfinest.com, which is actually a real estate site (virtual tour of some property), not the animated series's site, worldsfinestonline.com.Originally Posted by Unknown_User
according to this is the name of the new Batman show set to launch in 2013.
Here's the actual press release. -
Quote:Here's hoping that Paragon Studies/NC Soft will rethink exclusivity with Facebook. Facebook continues to have severe privacy issues, and many players feel uncomfortable dealing with them. Thank you for your consideration.Originally Posted by Beastyle
Currently, the facepalm emotes are only available through the Facebook Facepalm promotion.
EDIT: It should go without saying that I'd rather pay Paragon Points at the Market than give up personal data to Facebook, but I'll say it anyway. Thanks again. -
Architect Entertainment, that is, in-game AE. It's got a solid backstory and a lot of unanswered questions. Is it Dr. Aeon's revenge on Television? Is it Aeon Corp.'s scheme to offset the problematic Power Transference System or follow up the commercial success of NutriPaste? Is Dr. Aeon's rivalry with Professor Echo somehow involved? Is Positron content to merely monitor its usage, or will he start actively investigating its purposes, especially with Crey Corp.'s involvement?
Besides, having the Architect Studio Manager bug new characters to visit then never have any other missions for them seems like a waste of an NPC. -
Quote:As easily as if it were written correctly.Originally Posted by Ukaserex
Dunno about you folks, but I read that mess just as easy as if it were written correctly.
Also, it's not about the order of the letters (I'm certainly prone to typos at the best of times) but the care a potential conversation partner takes to compose their statements. Someone who can't be bothered at all with proper spelling often can't be bothered at all with other things. -
Quote:"And Darwyn Cooke."Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree
My three words on the new Catwoman...
"I miss Brubaker."
The first issue of the new Catwoman series looks like an all-around embarrassment, something to be hidden under a mattress rather than shown to a potential new audience (in retrospect, that's what Selina's Big Score probably should have been).
Oh, and some wiseacre has come up with a meta-parody comic epilogue to that awful splash page (NSFW language). -
Quote:Thank you for the official statement, Zwillinger, as well as for regularly checking on the status of the log-out bug. I was indeed recollecting Von Krieger's summary of Posi's comments in UStream (and I expect Memphis_Bill was also). While UStream is only an informal platform, in the absence of clear positions such as your post, offhand comments from the dev team receive disproportionate weight. It's always appreciated to have a red name give us clear-cut information in cases like this.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
The "Not our problem" is anecdotally recollected comments paraphrased by others.
Here's hoping the log-out bug will be addressed as soon as possible. -
Quote:With all due respect to the devs, we are not VBulletin's customers, Paragon Studios is. They are the ones who need to complain to VBulletin about their poor software, and if they do not get a satisfactory response, then they should consider taking their custom elsewhere. All players can do is quit in frustration if the forum log-in can't be fixed.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Last thing we were told was "It's a known vbulletin issue. If you want to see it fixed, pester vbulletin on their forums."
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Thank you - we look forward to their revised pricing and more accurate descriptions.
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Quote:Perhaps this could be a feature in the team or league windows, just to minimize the segregating effect?Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
- Color-coded players to differentiate VIP, Free, and Premium - I mean within the name/UI, similar to the system used for "Help Me!" and "Helper" currently. In fact, perhaps all Free Players could be permenantly set to Help Me (and the color) by default. VIPs could become the Helper color, and a third could be added for Premiums.
This would be a nice feature, but I suspect the coding is up there with contacts alerting you when you're about to out-level their mission arc.Quote:- Better/Updated Mission Description Text that explains what the problem is - If Alastor had said immediately, "Not all players can participate in this content because not all players are VIPs," it would have shaved off a few seconds in my SSA experience enumerated above.
The issue remains, however, that CoH Freedom's MTX-hybrid F2P model is always going to divide the player community into Have's and Have-Not's. -
There's a new Inspector Spacetime t-shirt, featuring the Blogons and the DARSIT, to go with a new Tumblr, Inspector Spacetime Confessions.
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Quote:That would be amazingly shortsighted. Cynically tolerating this kind of obnoxious inconvenience can only hurt the CoX community in the long run. The only way imaginable for the devs to take such a course would be at the enforced suggestion of some devious NCSoft corporate suit.Originally Posted by Feycat
I'm not actually sure it's unintended. I think they wanted it to be obtrusively obnoxious so that they had to spend at least SOME money just to relieve the aggravation.
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Quote:My own request for the devs to prevent this would be to make petitioning for spam a one-click option from the character name.Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Shan't be long before even they will be drowned out with advert spam.
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Quote:This is just one unintended consequence of limiting F2Pers' channel options. If F2Pers wind up having to use /help as their default /broadcast channel, then anyone actually needing help will likely be drowned out. Once a channel stops being used for its intended purpose, it's almost impossible for GMs or the community to return it to its proper state.Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
The second problem is that there was some friction in the help channel when f2p players started using it to look for groups. The channel nazis (in /help, really? *sigh*) discouraged them from using it.
Either of these would be helpful, and there's no reason the devs can't implement both. Improving F2Pers' experience of COH Freedom will ultimately benefit the whole community.Quote:Give f2p players access to the /req channel. It's a channel that can be easily filtered by other players who don't want to see it, and can be used to better coordinate groups.
Additionally, to help avoid the friction in /help, it'd be a great idea to create a similar, server-wide channel that can be used by f2p players. Call it something like /f2p or /lfg.