White Hot Flash
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Posts
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Joined
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A fade into plaid would be cooler.
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If anyone complains about how long this is taking, they deserve a swift kick in their priorities.
Thank you for your labor of love, D_R. Can't imagine how hard this particular one is to make. I'm sure you're doing each player justice. -
Quote:The way he went about it, I think he would have won no matter how events turned out. To me, this movie was more about Bond finally accepting his role in MI6 and getting rid of any remnants of his past life so he can be the OO they all want him to be. Bond did what he did post-exploding HQ as much for M in a personal way as anything, and that wouldn't have happened in either of the first two movies. He wasn't that far along in the relationship with the boss by then.Originally Posted by Black Pebble
I enjoyed the movie a lot, but it dawned on me well after the fact - the bad guy won.
I'm not sure if I like that or not.
I liked this movie a lot, but the sentiment M had during the hearings when she said that the enemy is no longer a known quantity is what makes a Bond story in our present a tough sell. It's not about Russians or Chinese or central American dictators. The enemy is a shadow, and can strike from anywhere, and no longer follows the rules we've become accustomed to. It's hard to invent enemies and scenarios that aren't outdated, because Bond sprang from the Cold War (and the remnants of WWII). I liked the struggle Bond had with the past, both physically and mentally. -
From what I've seen, the Free To Play in SWTOR is going to work almost exactly like CoH Freedom. If you understood our system, you won't have a problem dealing with how it works in TOR.
I've still got two months paid up to go, so I'll see if it's still worth subbing for by then. Nice to have an option if it's not.
I really don't know if it's possible to compare one game's F2P transition to another one, because each game is different, and has different reasons for doing so, not to mention the F2P systems are unique.
If TOR has more than enough subs right now to make money, they won't drop under the threshold, especially when there would be other streams of revenue coming back in with more microtransactions. I'd be more worried when the updates get further and further apart. -
Quote:I just started playing the game myself, on Shadowlands. Rolled a Jedi Guardian who just hit 32. Shaanre is the name. I'm on mostly on the weekends if anyone in the guild wants to shoot me an invite. Been enjoying it so far. Most folks seem to be pretty helpful in General chat when I've asked newbie questions.Originally Posted by Cosmic_Herald
Chyll,
There is a "Paragon Refugees" Guild on Shadowlands if you're interested. -
Please find a way to continue making videos, in whatever media you land on next. You have a great talent. I think this video is your best one yet. It would be a shame to stop there.
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I always wonder why companies don't offer up even a crappy excuse for doing something like this, rather than no excuse at all. A token acknowledgement that shows they're paying their audience (and customers) some attention would be nice.
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I think the premise of this thread is flawed if we're comparing ourselves to the success of WoW. City of Heroes had a pretty solid subscription number for many years. WoW was and is the giant outlier. Witness many of the games that have debuted since that started strong and withered within months. If you've got several hundred thousand playing your game, you're doing well. If you've still got several hundred thousand accounts 5 years later, you're in the minority.
Marketing could have been different, but not in the beginning of the game. Remember that Cryptic was a start up, and no one had done a Superhero game before. There were very few console games that were better than mediocre, let alone something online. If a game doesn't hit the marketing hard at the beginning, no amount of push later is going to make much of a difference unless you're totally revamping the product. Word of mouth served this game very well, probably better than most. -
IMVU is a chat room and nothing more. Those that want a game will be looking elsewhere. It's good for what it does, but it does little that CoH did.
I don't think many people lament the loss of CoH because they'll no longer be able to chat. -
Quote:If you believe all of this about NCSoft, why do you think they would play ball and sell the IP, or do anything to save the game? If you're claiming that they don't know how to run a business, why would they do anything that makes sense in a normal business environment? And more importantly, why would you get mad at that when it's what you should expect from a company you already believe doesn't know what they're doing?Originally Posted by Robin_Everheart
Trying to save the game is only a portion of the bigger picture. NCsoft is a horribly mismanaged company with little to no focus that isn't above forging resignations just to close down a game and they even admitted to doing it (see: Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa). The quality or appeal of that game is irrelevant to the point, they were justly sued for their infraction and lost.
They don't know what they want to offer and they always expect to do the same numbers as World of Warcraft with cookie-cutter Korean clones which is unrealistic and irresponsible. No one else can do those numbers, Blizzard were just at the right place at the right time. A strong possibility that led to the cutting of CoH was Nexon becoming a majority shareholder in NCsoft and pressuring their brass to make some cuts (without stating CoH specifically). Their refocusing back to the East obviously made CoH the perfect choice since Guild Wars 2 was positioned to be a newer, higher profile release here.
They were very much upset that "City of Hero" didn't take off in their homeland and that standard CoH didn't catch on either but that should have been a given because Western comic book superheroes are not part of the norm in their culture. It's easier to single out the game that isn't pulling it's weight in only half of the markets you operate in.
But even with their strong Guild Wars 2 launch, NCsoft stocks continue to fall. That initial $60 retail price for the game will only go so far once the initial wave of interest wanes and they'll be hard-pressed to maintain it solely on micro-transactions. Not saying they can't do it, but the GW2 players should be asking themselves where they'll be when NCsoft's next fiscal year ends if the company is still in the red.
You can even see many negative reviews of the company from the inside from current and former employees over the last several years here:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCs...-E23242_P3.htm -
The movie better have this somewhere in it, or it's not Lone Ranger
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Quote:@Force Majeure would have enjoyed this, Kat. I was one of his RL friends (though I didn't know him as well, having moved to his town not too long ago), and also played on Protector with him and some of our other friends from the area in a villain static group. His impact on his gaming friends was such that a few of them from another game not only drove many miles to his funeral, but they stopped to pick up one of his long-time friends who would not have been able to attend the funeral otherwise.
So initially I was moved to come on the forums after I think about a year and a half since I left the game to say an official good bye to @Force Majeure , Brian, who was an L.E.S. member from probably the first day I opened LES. I know a lot of the old timers would remember him and I found out last night that he had passed away. I didn't think some one I had never met in person would emotionally impact me like that phone call last night did.
It is amazing how we play a video game and invest emotions in people we never really know in person. Now Brian was a bit more than just a gamer buddy because we also were friends outside of the game and even played some D&D runs etc. He was a really great guy and it is a HUGE loss to any one who had the pleasure of experiencing his friendship.
I also looked at my hami raid records a bit ago and he bubbled 92 of the old hami raids for me back in the day so not only were we SG mates but he was ALWAYS willing to help out with different events, base raids, hami raids etc on Champion.
Before the game shutters, I would encourage those that can to go visit one of the many bases he helped design, as he was also an avid base builder. -
Quote:How else are they gonna close their massive budget gaps?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I never thought I would see the day when California legalized Nevada.
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Got a bit over 3 bucks (month to month sub), and didn't get an email first. I just checked my bank balance and saw it there.
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Quote:If investors looked at the books of NCSoft, they'd see that City of Heroes was making a steady profit. Investors don't generally want the companies they put money into to cut out pieces of the pie that are bringing in money. They usually target the dead weight that's sucking money out.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
hmmm. Makes sense.
So it's like the first and last of it's kind? A well liked first and last of it's kind?
Like a favorite ice cream that Breyers killed off that no one else makes? One that you used to be able to find all the time on the shelf then all of a sudden, nothing?
Ok we understand it was a buisness decision. We understand buisness is there to make money. And with that, they tend to listen to investors.
I wonder if the players actually bought stock in NCSoft, would we have hada bigger say, since then we'd be part of that investors group that they listen to.
Have anyone actually put any money into that company besides the product that they paid for? Meaning did anyone actually invest? And since profits margins are slim usually when people buy a product as a couple people have pointed out, buying the product aka, a subscription in this game wouldnt count.
This might have been a business decision, but that doesn't make the decision a good one, or even a financial one.
It would be nice if people kept their conspiracy theories centered around the facts we know, rather than pulling something out of their posteriors, but we all know that's not going to happen. -
Quote:Hey now, keep the gloves up. That's a low-blow warning
You couldn't have found a less palatable bunch of poster boys for democracy than the Athenians back in the day if you hired the same ad agency responsible for all those "The King" Burger King commercials. 
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Quote:Classy.Originally Posted by Satanic_Hamster
I really need to know the exact date of the forum shut down so I know when I post what I think Lighthouse can suck on and post my playernotes file.
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Currently listening to Blue Öyster Cult's On Your Feet or On Your Knees -
I like the glimpse into the development process the most. The juggling act between "That would be awesome" and "Time/Resources/People are limited" factors into so many things, even the really small stuff.
I like the Scirocco redemption angle. I always figured there would be more side switching in the lore once GR came, but it never really happened outside of the introduction of two characters that had already made the transformation (Desdemona and Maelstrom) and a fakeout with Manticore. -
Quote:I was gonna say... The Pic looks like either a stunt double costume, or some stand in for all the CGI they plan on adding.Originally Posted by Unknown_User
From what I've heard the Robocop chrome coloring will be added on via CGI.
Not sure about the one human hand. I wonder if that's part of the look they're going for or just a filming trick. -
I was playing in the Hollows with my lowbie Ice/Ice blaster, before the revamp, and joined a team doing the Frostfire arc. I believe the mission was the one where you save the cops, but I remember astounding my team as I ran around at lowish health (this was also before Defiance 2.0), staying alive while taking down a large troll mob that had wiped the rest of the team. They couldn't believe that a low damage powerset was surviving so long, especially without inspirations that helped (also the time before being able to convert inspirations). It was such a different experience going from an all damage character like an Energy blaster to one that actually had some mitigation (slow is awesome, I don't care what anyone says :P), but could still dish out enough damage to be fun. I got a lot of good comments the rest of the teaming session. I also think I was the longest-time vet on the team, which helped, but hey.
Living on the edge of death is always fun. I enjoyed my Dark/Dark scrapper for the same reason. He was a challenge to play, and I looked for it often while going through zones from one mission to another. No large mob was safe. -
Seems to me the issue is really with those who are offering up half-baked reasons for why the game is shutting down, sprinkling in heavy doses of their own personal biases and vitriol along with it.
I don't mind the sentiment of saving the game, but I'd really like to see an honest, realistic effort that might actually work, rather than using the shotgun approach and hoping the target gets hit by trying anything. We have a limited time to do this, so spit-balling every conceivable option isn't really productive.
I also think that doing more than protesting in Atlas is in order. Playing the actual game as much as we can will show people we're serious, more than just logging in and going AFK while an emote plays. -
Quote:You heard it here first:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I got a larger number than that when I looked, but then the power literally went out in my office and took the calculations with it, and I had no intention of recalculating.
Maybe I'll do it again before the end.
Arcanaville can shut down a power grid just by crunching numbers. Now that's a scary superpower.
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Quote:It's almost like you were employed by Paragon or NCSoft and know exactly what happened...almost. Good try, though. Your theory is no more correct than the OPs. We'll never know for sure if no one ever tells us that actually has first hand knowledge.Originally Posted by InfamousBrad
And Happy Days stayed on the air for 6 more seasons after Fonzie jumped the trope-naming shark. Discussions of when something "jumped the shark" aren't about when the announcement was made to pull the plug, they're about when the mistake was made that ruined the show or the game.
Yes, in fact, I think that if City of Heroes hasn't lost nearly their entire development team after issue 2, it would be a million-subscriber (or more) game now, because that is what happened for every other MMO that didn't make that mistake. At the same number of months in, EVE Online was barely more than tradewars with a 3D interface, and still well below 100k subscribers, not the monster we know now. At the same number of months in, Runequest wasn't even in full 3D, and also still below 100k subscribers, not the millions they have now. At the same number of months in, WoW was over a million subscribers, but well below the ten million they peaked at.
The reason that none of NCsoft's MMOs have ever done this is that they persist in thinking the same thing SOE thought (and still thinks, apparently): that an MMO is just like any other game, you lay off everybody but the maintenance staff after it's done, and people will keep paying you forever. Every studio that has made that mistake has seen the same subscriber curve: sharp bump up, overall steady decline from about a couple of months after the layoffs, when people figure out that bugs are no longer being fixed in a timely fashion and major content only comes out every year or two, at best, small bounce with major expansions but not enough to reverse the trendline. Whereas every game that kept investing in their product kept growing.
When they ramped up hiring for Going Rogue, it was a Hail Mary pass, an attempt to find out if an already dying MMO could be saved by reinvestment. It hadn't been tried before, so it was worth trying. But a game that was barely profitable at 15 employees that did not have revenue go up, was probably only barely cash-flow positive, and not technically profitable at all, at 40 employees. When they doubled that again for Freedom, and revenues only barely went up, it almost certainly went cash-flow negative.
That it bumped along for another five years doesn't change the fact that it was perceptibly doomed by issue 4. -
Quote:That's about how I feel about this particular situation.
But don't you think that's the risk you run, pouring that much money on an online game? Like buying a 'lifetime subscription' to CO? Would you feel cheated that the game bit it after a year?
Anytime you buy Time in advance, you're running the risk that you won't be able to actually use it when the time comes to do so.
And whoever stockpiled thousands of points "just in case" gets no sympathy at all. Why would you spend money for points you might use later when you can just spend money for points that you want to use right now? Why should a company refund someone for poor planning by the customer? If this sounds harsh, it's called Life. Welcome to it.
If I were looking for refunds, I'd stick to game time only. Microtransactions are usually "buyer beware." -
Just a reminder for those who might have forgotten about it, or are wondering if it's available, but the Beta server, and I24, is working. They've made the server available to everyone, even free people, so go check out the stuff the Devs were working so hard on when they got the rug pulled out from under them.
I just finished the new Praetorian story arcs on the hero side (Number Six, and Provost Marchand), which deal with the immediate aftermath of Praetoria suddenly having less Utopia and more Hamidon. I highly recommend all of it. I soloed it with my Incarnate blaster just fine (there are lots of bosses/elite bosses) with just a couple of deaths.
Also, the blaster changes are nice...makes me sad this will be the only way I'll get to enjoy them. New tech being used for cutscenes is also very cool.
Not sure if the character copy is working, and they've wiped the market history, not that many people used it in the first place. Didn't try to use the Paragon Market either. The last two parts of Pandora's Box are on there as well, but they need to be unlocked first. Part 4 is sometime this month. We get to find out what happens once they find the box and open it again, so at least one story that has an ending.