CoH = $15 a month (cool) CoV = $15 a month (BAD!)

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But CoH's free content isnt nearly on par with expansions people pay for. Can you imagine them charging 20 bucks for issue 2?

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If I remember correctly, SOE called it Legacy of Ykesha, and it went for 25-ish. And a large mass of the playing population moaned about it, and still those 5 zones are highly under-utilized to this day.

$15 a month is already one of the highest monthlee fees out there. To pump that up to $20, or even $17.50, for what (seems like right now) will be basically one game is going to be too much for me. Maybe $16.00-$16.50.

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Exact billing is still TBD (COV is a while off). However, it will -not- be $15 a month for COH and another $15 for COV if you're playing both.

It'd be nice to charge a bit more per month for the COH+COV combo (like the $15+$5 mentioned above) but in practice, if you can only play one character (regardless of it being a hero or villlain) online at a time...but it'd be tough to justify. Our bandwidth or support costs wouldn't go up as long as it's still one player with both games enabled...though it'd be nice to financially support the extra content development needed to be increasing the content of both COH and COV. And we like money. The question is, would we not really just be incentivizing most players to turn off whatever game they were not playing for most of the month...which would be a) annoying to users and b) not make us more money - not exactly win-win.

However, the exact model is TBD - or, if it's decided, I haven't heard the final decision. Thoughts welcome.

-jg

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I'm glad gaffer is sayin "We love money!" lol. They are, of course, looking out for the best interest of the company. Like he said though we would only be playing one character at a time, so since I would have paid $30 or whatever for the game in the first place I think that I shouldnt' pay more monthly. I can understand how it'll cost more for new content for both games, but on our end we don't have the money to shell out for two games a month. $15 a month is more than enough on my budget.

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Yeah, that would really fly well with new customers. Could you imagine the posts from new players on these forums? That wouldn't be a wise marketing idea. A company can't show favorites when dealing with real money, that would put your customers on unequal ground. To succeed a company has to show that they care about every customer new and old or else they start to lose one base as a customer.

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Alright, well, based on this does that mean that everyone who starts after the 31st of October should automatically get all the Halloween badges? How about the offer to provide long term players with beta slots for CoV? These are all things that offer older subscribers the chance for something special.

What about the store on your corner that you've been to every week for years that offers you credit because they know you, or a minor discount when they charge everyone else full price for everything? Repeat business is repeat business.

I'm not saying that long term subscribers should NECESSARILY get it free no matter what, although I think that's what my suggestion was, but I don't see anything wrong with giving the long terms players of CoH a break on CoV when it comes out, even if they do plan on charging full price for both to new players.

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You're idea is just not smart business.

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May I see your MBA please?

I speak as a fan of the game. And as someone who is knee deep in WOW right now also. I barely have the time to keep up with characters in both games. If I wanted to invest in COV for the content. And still play both games.. but then it was decided I would need to pay more to do so per month. I would not do so. As a person I would simply make the decision to either quit WOW or COH.

As a person I have newitis. I like to have the new stuff. I am the consumer that cell phone and tech companies love. I am the guy that thech companies love to sell to. On the same boat I am not great for MMORPG's. I generally jump ship and switch. So in order to keep me around the quality of the game needs to be high enough. And the freshness of the game needs to be their too.

To charge any additional fee for CoV is just wrong. Speaking for myself, I will not pay more than $15 per month, which is a lot of money right now as it is. If CoV is going to raise my subscription fee, I just won't purchase it.

If Cryptic wants to make their money, they should just charge full price for the CoV box like they do for the CoH box.

It should be pointed out though, that the it appears Cryptic is going to package Hero Headquarters in the CoV box set, which would lure CoH players into purchasing it just to have their very own superhero headquarters. I'm sure I read that somewhere on these threads. This, in my opinion, is a low blow to us, the consumer. If I only ever play CoH, I will be denied a superhero headquarters unless I run out and pay $50 for the CoV game. If they then charge additional money to subscribe to both CoV and CoH just so I could have access to a superhero headquarters, well, that's just plain evil.

Unless I am mistaken (and I hope I am), all other advances to SuperGroup (expanded roster information, ability to change SG colors and emblems, e-mail upgrades, etc) will also be included in CoV as incentive to purchase it as well. Smart marketing ploy, but bad for us customers.

A retail expansion is paid for at time of purchase. Tacking on an additional monthly fee is a plain bad idea and would definitely hurt the success of CoV and by extension, CoH. I certainly wouldn't consider getting CoV if they were going to add to the already industry-high monthly fee.

I have played EQ from day 3 until a bout 8 months ago. Did you know there are still quests that are in the game from launch day that are broken even now? If SOE had worried less about volume of new content and spent more time fixing what they already had people would have leveled more through questing and learned the story rather thn just hunting each zone as they outleveled it. As for the Epic quests, they were an Epic waste of time and that was even when the item you got for the quest was something a high level character could actually make good use of, but then along came the Velios and Luclin expansions ( hey you know they had broken quests set up in those too at release and never fixed all of them ) and those "Epic" items were less usefull than many of the new basic items. SOE made EQ about nothing more than adding more power to the characters and thus to the mobs to challenge them and thus to the characters to be able to defeat the mobs. I would say in spite of the size difference file size that is of the EQ expansions vs CoH issue udates they were even buggier.

..:word:..

ahhh, but sadly the deepest point of CoH (and ultimately CoV) is profits, not pleasuring its dedicated and even loyal fans. IMO i wish there was a flat fee for both games, though i can't see justifing spending the extra time, man-power and money to develop a new game without furthering their profits. though possibly when the process been set up to perpetuate itself, they can eventually lower the rates for dual-game (CoH/CoV) players or long-time subscribers.

You should have to pay for the game as a one time fee, but not pay one extra penny per month. Just my opinion? Yes, but based on fact.

The 14.95 you pay now is (primarily) for bandwidth and upkeep. You pay 14.95 for unlimited use of their bandwidth and for them to keep the servers running. When CoV is out you will not be using twice their bandwidth. You're the same person playing the same number of hours per month as you played when CoH was brand new.

So when you guys say "I'd pay a little more", I ask you why? Your usage is the same, your monthly fee should not be more. You use the same amount of their bandwidth.

When you guys say "Suck it up, and pay the 30 bucks a month" I tell you to stuff it. You may be a rich [censored], I'm not. One guy said thats like xx number of pizzas or mcdonalds. Well, I don't buy those either. Just because you got money hangin out of your pocket doesnt mean everyone else does or that we are somehow lower forms of life. I play with my wife too, so under your "Suck it up" plan, I pay 60 dollars a month instead of 30. ..!.. to you sir.

Might have been mentioned in another place but I am curious. City of Villians is going to be a seperate game, not an expansion of City of Heroes? I've read little about it but I was under the assumption that this was going to be an addition to what we are already playing, i.e. same servers, same characters just new selections to choose from.

It's just occured to me that we will either be playingCoH or CoV at one time. On the same account, I doubt we will be allowed to play both at the same time. If that is so, the $15 may possibly stand because we will be using one set of servers or the other.

However if both could be played at the same time on the same account, I can see them increasing the subscription fee to compensate.

And to answer the above question, Yes. Official info points to CoH and CoV being seperate play experiences (PvE wise) from each other with connecting elements (such as PvP).

This is everything I understand as of this moment from direct responses by Cryptic customer service people directly on this very thread. CoV as a standalone game = $15 a month
CoH as a standalone game = $15 a month
CoH and CoV at present are set to be $15 a month in combination unless for some reason NCSoft decides there must be an additional fee. That decision has not been made yet. I think they will keep the fee for the game at $15 a month for the two combined. They obviously want to make the right choice or they would have announced it already so the I look at it this way ... No official news is good news

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Might have been mentioned in another place but I am curious. City of Villians is going to be a seperate game, not an expansion of City of Heroes? I've read little about it but I was under the assumption that this was going to be an addition to what we are already playing, i.e. same servers, same characters just new selections to choose from.

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I compiled a set of links to articles/interviews where CoV comes up and also pulled salient quotes for people who don't want to go click-click-click-insane.
Read here.

If they release CoV as a standalone game with an additional fee there's no way I'll be buying it. Before they release ANYTHING though they need to get their finger out and fix the bugs in CoH first.

The way things are turning out though I don't think I'll bother sticking around much longer.

Just a correction:
CoV is playable as a standalone. It will link up with CoH and share certain zones. CoV will definitely cost $15/mo if you are not currently subscribed to CoH. It has NOT been determined whether one will pay $15/mo or more than that to subscribe to CoV simultaneously with CoH.

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Just a correction:
CoV is playable as a standalone. It will link up with CoH and share certain zones. CoV will definitely cost $15/mo if you are not currently subscribed to CoH. It has NOT been determined whether one will pay $15/mo or more than that to subscribe to CoV simultaneously with CoH.

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Sounds like they'll be chargeing an extra $15 for it.

Maybe. or not. or $5 extra. or $7.50 extra. or (pinky up) "ONE MILLION DOLLARS!".

We just don't know, and likely won't know until some time after the holidays.

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May I see your MBA please?

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Sure. Come on down to my office. It's hanging on the wall behind my desk..

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Sounds like they'll be chargeing an extra $15 for it.

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"Reading: It's hard!"


Exact billing is still TBD (COV is a while off). However, it will -not- be $15 a month for COH and another $15 for COV if you're playing both.



From Gaffer.

Wow, I was content hearing Gaffer's response and left thsi thread alone, am surprised to see its still going.

Well, we wont have to pay for both, or $30.00 a month for both CoH and CoV. Maybe it will be nothing for us CoH faithfull, and maybe it will be $5.00 or something. We will have to wait and see now.

My main purpose was to try and get everyones feel for if they did charge $15 for BOTH, and we have that now too, and I am sure Statesman and Gaffer will relay the message of how we feel to NCSoft.

So fear not people, we are in good hands.
Thank you to all those who replied, especially the Dev's.

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Go out to a bar to pick up women.... WAY too much..


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*laughs* amen brother

I guess none of this makes any sense to me. Why would they becoem their own competition?

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I have played EQ from day 3 until a bout 8 months ago. Did you know there are still quests that are in the game from launch day that are broken even now?

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Hundreds of units of good content are greater than 10. A few rotten apples doesnt spoil the orchard, and its still a hell of a lot more fruit than one tree. Thats the difference here people. CoH has nothing to compare with the top 100 quests, its got a few working single group encounters that require a bit of skill (sewer trial and some others), and one obviously broken one (Hamidon) that pale in comparison to strats/prep required on high tier raids. I was looking forward to challenging single group encounters vs AV's. Instead I get blobs of dps and HP that you beat in the exact same way. Tank, heal, kill. Dude, compare to Terris Thule, a chump mob in EQ. She throws out hordes of mephits, summons gargoyles you have to kite, debuffs, etc. Its a simple, very striaghtforward, basic encounter. And its rocket surgery compared to beating Tyrant, the leader of the Praetorians. It wouldnt take much either.

Take the Envoy (please! hah). Lets say he has a bunch of crystal prisons with the souls of MAGI members in there. He can teleport to them, to refill his HP and END and get a huge buff. You can attack these crystals, when they reach a certain level, they change colors, indicating they have cracked and the soul inside can retaliate. One person tanks the envoy, kites him, whatever while the others damage the crystals so when he ports over to refill, he gets hurt. They move back and forth, splitting their attention between these 2 goals. Give him some mega dark defender powers to make him more fomidable, let him summon minions at several points. Sounds hard? But wait! We went through all this crap to learn this jokers true name, and it supposedly helps us, though we never actually use it. OHO! I smell temp power!! $$ Team resist vs his damage type, or huge demon type mob specific debuff, or hold or I dont care. Spice these things up a bit though.

I paid 15 for yksha. I loved the expansion because I loves me some pirates, it offered some very nice features, a new race, and many quests and tradeskill recipes. It was the weakest of all the expansions, and it still spanked issue 2.

CoH has the foundation to be a great game. I recognize that, its why I'm still around. However, and this has been the universal complaint among critics, its the content thats lacking. Fortunately, that comes w time.