Disappointment in the Update Schedule

Im fed up with I8 and the slow issues as well. This one is especially bad, I mean the issue is soo small and its taking 6 months to push it out. Maybe its time to take a break for 8 months and hope they get their act together and get an issue out. But really this is getting bad, someone in my SG whos rarely ever upset about delays and such is even mad about I8. Its just taking too long for too little.

I suspect the game will start to drop subs if they don't find ways to rise the interest again . Players need a motivation to continue to invest in this game

These patch cycles are too slow .

The nice thing about a game as varied as CoH is that the patch robustness creates exponential excitement. For example, many of us have at least a dozen alts... so inventions won't just be about inventing thigngs for ONE character, it will be about inventing things for *12* characters. So I agree in the most part, and it's one reason I posted - I hope the devs feel that dedicating more resources to speeding up the rate and/or returning the size of patches to I2/I3 levels is "worth' it. CoH certainly still looks great, and the interface, character creator, and feel all do not make it feel at ALL 2 years old. (In fact, the way it continues to beat up my graphics cards despite upgrades can be irritating ) So there's certainly no reason now to give up on it. It should have legs to run. Given how much gets added and things like inventions going in, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to build up subs rather than lose them.

Inventions ? Maybe they'll be in I9 ... maybe not.

We'll see what next year brings.

I was waiting to get home to look these up, but I wanted to chip in with subscriber numbers:

Month :: Highest Concurrent :: Paying subscribers
09/04 :: 26870 :: 163053
12/04 :: 15741 :: 124435 (Ah, WoW, I feel thy sting)
03/05 :: 21283 :: 140481 (Euro launch)
06/05 :: 20911 :: 162922
09/05 :: 22340 :: 150058
12/05 :: 23730 :: 194000
03/06 :: 23699 :: 171951
06/06 :: 22274 :: 171000
09/06 :: 21500 :: 172420

Two comments:

(1) Someone (Jack? Jeremy?) commented that they needed 100,000 users to turn a profit. City of has always exceeded that, so if anything, one would expect the resources available to satisfy the larger playerbase would be MORE, not LESS than originally budgeted.

(2) City of remains only about 10-15% off its PEAK subscriber counts. In addition to subscriber fees and box sales, a lot of the maniacs, myself included, slavishly soak up any "GvE in-game packs" and such which come out.

Additionally, NCSoft's investor reports indicate that they have upped their guidance for City of, from $21M sales to $26M for Full year 2006. (This is compared to $34M revenues in 05), likely due to the much higher level of box sales in '05, thanks to CoV and the Euro CoH launch.

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5) Review sites have played I8, and offered their takes on it(mostly good, and definitely playable), but the issue is not live worthy yet.

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They can use Test too, you know. ;p

True....and it doesn't state what they based their review on. But, if:

1) The reviewers don't find/mention any major problems with the issue, over a week ago, couldn't that be a "sign"(albeit small) that the issue isn't bad?

2) If Cryptic was worried about major issues/problems with the patch, wouldn't they try harder to stop, or downplay, reviews?


I recognize that it's not the most compelling point....which is why it's five on my list of frustrations. Really, the cancelling/moving of three designs out of the issue, with no significant time gained, really busts my hump.

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Im fed up with I8 and the slow issues as well. This one is especially bad, I mean the issue is soo small and its taking 6 months to push it out. Maybe its time to take a break for 8 months and hope they get their act together and get an issue out. But really this is getting bad, someone in my SG whos rarely ever upset about delays and such is even mad about I8. Its just taking too long for too little.

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I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with calling Issue 8 a "small" issue. Let's take a look at some of the tasks the developers had to overcome to make it:

Vet Rewards
1) Database linkups on PlayNC tied to ingame reward schemes based on account payment history. Not to mention changes to the functionality of the PlayNC site itself to display the results.
2) The technology/coding to actually make many of the rewards work. Wings, trenchcoats, and pets, for example.
3) Game UI changes to process Vet rewards.
4) Tons of new artwork. Costume pieces probably don't get churned out overnight. Things like art design take time, especially to get the various costume pieces to work correctly on not just *one* character model, but on the almost infinite variety of body types it's possible for players to make in this game.
5) And of course, just choosing what the Vet rewards were probably took a great deal of time. Ideas got proposed, hashed out, shelved, etc. I'm sure the rewards we got are very different from the original working list they had, as that's just how things like that go.

Police Band Missions/Safeguard Missions
1) Coding. Massive amounts of coding. I don't claim to know the exact method they use for generating those random missions, but I'm willing to bet it involved either a) Making lots and lots of lists for a random generator to pull from or b) Making lots and lots of missions in a list. Neither one had to be very fast.
2) Zone changes. Adding the PPD precincts and the contacts in them probably took quite a bit, as that involved art design, character modeling, and once again, lots of coding.
3) The coding of the Safeguards themselves. Think about it: yes the Safeguard mission is similar to a Mayhem, but it is just different enough that designing it was probably a royal pain.

Faultline/Overbrook
1) What can I say here but: this is a complete redesign of a zone. That couldn't possibly have been easy or fast.

Pocket D Arena Kiosks
1) A small change from our point of view, sure. But it still took time to set up, debug and test.

And bear in mind while doing all the above, the Devs still had to release things like the Halloween Event, and do their normal work of just keeping the game operating.

I guess my point in all the above is that Issue 8 has a lot more in it than people are giving it credit for. Also, several of the changes it makes to the game are very complex, and most likely not simple at all to do. While I am just as disappointed as anyone else with how long it's taken to release, I can still understand why there could have been delays, with all the new tech that had to be worked out.

And right after the Thanksgiving break, the devs will release I8 and everyone will stop crying about it.. go figure...

Or, more people will play with the new stuff in I8 for a month or two, cancel their subscriptions, and come back when the devs get around to updating the game again.

The update schedule as it is now, is not doing the game any favours.

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Police Band Missions/Safeguard Missions
1) Coding. Massive amounts of coding. I don't claim to know the exact method they use for generating those random missions, but I'm willing to bet it involved either a) Making lots and lots of lists for a random generator to pull from or b) Making lots and lots of missions in a list. Neither one had to be very fast.

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And not all of the police band missions are just random. Some are bank robberies, some have assaults on a police station, some deal with stores being robbed. There's a lot of new stuff in there along with the randomised missions in caves and offices.

Honestly, I dont give a rats [censored] about Vet rewards or arena Kiosks In pocket D. Police bands and safeguards Plus faultlines the only what I consider REAL content. I could make 18 million different costumes but that wont stop me from repeating the same missions over and over again with different powersets. The game needs content not just new costumes.

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Honestly, I dont give a rats [censored] about Vet rewards or arena Kiosks In pocket D. Police bands and safeguards Plus faultlines the only what I consider REAL content. I could make 18 million different costumes but that wont stop me from repeating the same missions over and over again with different powersets. The game needs content not just new costumes.

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And you are getting content. A good amount of it.

Man people need to learn to chill out.

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And right after the Thanksgiving break, the devs will release I8 and everyone will stop crying about it.. go figure...

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Crying about 'cryers'...
Whining about 'whiners'...

Let the circle be unbroken...

I'll go with the "The more complex the game gets the harder updating it gets" theory.

In the golden age of CoH most of the updates were considered fairly obvious. Issue one was probably mostly complete when the game launched. Most of the content of the issues after that consisted of re balancing the game. It inflated the issues quite a bit, and tweaking numbers is probably more tedious than it is hard work. Such things were probably relatively easy. Other content was simple as well. What SHOULD be added was rather obvious.. what had to be done was easy to conceive. Now though? We have started to enter the "what more CAN we do?" phase. It requires more thinking.. more inventive ideas.. and consequently harder to implement ideas.

Take the inventions system. Old timers will remember when it was supposed to be the SSOCS(pronounced socks)? Statesman himself commented on how he couldn't get the system to be fun(which has since been translated by players into meaning balanced so they don't overpower the game again). Apparently a lot of versions of this system were trashed. Then it turned into the inventions system recently. A fun fact about the development cycle(strait from the mouth of a dev once upon a time) is that the content for an issue can be in development up to six months or more before the issue hits the test server. What does this mean? Any delay in a release probably draw its origins to months back.

Wasn't the inventions system supposed to be in this issue untill they eventualy had to just move inventions back to issue nine? That might be part of what we are seeing. Consider how many times this system(and it's predecessor the SSOCS) got delayed. We are finally starting to witness the effects of a problem that goes WAY back. It isn't that the devs stopped trying as hard. More like it is harder to get the new systems in.

I think I will agree that smaller more frequent updates are best. I know that having one big shiney gift is nice, but I have seen how the community gets between issues. It is a tale going back to the golden age of COH. Everyone gets antsy and mean the longer an issue takes to get out. More frequent updates, even if small, would help keep thing cool around here. Probably keep some people subscribed longer too.

Can I cry about whiners?

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Can I cry about whiners?

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Well you could, but that might be percieved as whining in itself.

Ohh....but then I'd whine about people crying over it...

The delays are mainly because there is alot more being jammed into each issue, not because of anything you have listed.

Looking at the number of issues isn't really fair especially when you consider that issues like 'Colosseum' had almost nothing in the way of content added and 'A Council of War' simply added the Kheldians and their story arcs. Issue 8 is adding safeguard missions, veteran rewards, the new costume options, new powers, a whole new zone and its giving powers an overhaul.

In terms of raw bulletpoint features the issues might have more of a gap between them but they contain a great deal more additions.

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'A Council of War' simply added the Kheldians and their story arcs.

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And Striga Isle, don't forget.

And EPPs for heroes.

And Lusca, the Ghost Ship and the Clockwork Paladin.

Issue 3 did a lot more than 'simply' add Khelds.

Perhaps the toughest thing to add on an adequate timeline is "new tech." Issues 7 & 8 had quite a bit of both, and, sadly, that does significantly affect deadlines. Beyond new gameplay tech, they continue to redefine some of the core workings of the game- trying to get performance better or get it to behave on some configurations (not to mention the PhysX support)... any one of those things could significantly impact a schedule with unforeseen and difficult-to-troubleshoot complications

Adding new content- zones & missions- is the typical fare for MMO updates. They're safe, they're existing tech, they're the central focus of updates. Character "powers" are the next, as they're often just a reshuffling of tech options or the most recent "balance issues."

As Lighthouse mentioned, the stability issue was the reason they missed the pre-Thanksgiving release. Cryptic doesn't like crunch time- they prefer to keep their families intact. Maybe they could have launched this week, but the additional support needed over Turkey Weekend would have been a bit of a scrooge.

Cryptic has announced that they haven't cut back on developers, but it is clear that many of the "founders" have moved on... and it takes time for new developers to orient themselves. Perhaps the toughest thing to learn in programming is accurate time estimates... Positron's suggested that future expansions will be smaller and more frequent.

We'll see. I9 has more new tech in it, but from what I've been hearing, it's alot farther along than we might think...



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All that said, I am hoping to see the release schedule pick back up. It can be a bit disappointing. The "free week" promotion had many people appear and hear about all this new stuff "right around the corner." That corner was a bit more distant than we realized, and that WILL discourage new players.

Me? I'm such an alt-aholic and with so little free time that after 2 years' play, I *still* don't have a level 50... so there's still plenty o content for me...

Speaking personally, I'm fine with two updates a year as long as they're good updates. I'm just happy to be looking forward to them again instead of dreading them as per the I4-I6 time period.

Just a quick disclaimer that this isn't a "DOOOM" post. I love the game and I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon, but...

Maybe it is just my own perception, but the changes we get in issues have become more subtle in nature. New artwork, new costumes, and new badges are all very fun and do add to my enjoyment, but I often think that they should separate these quality-of-life additions from updates that really add content, such as new or updated zones or missions. Quality of life updates could be added in at a faster pace if they didn't tie them in to things like the new Faultline or new archetypes (doesn't it seem like we have been talking about new archetypes for heroes for years now?). By having one major update a year and three smaller ones that advance the storyline along and give us small incremental changes, I think the game would be better off and people would complain less. If we all new that the "Winter Update" would be the big one every year, the other updates we got, say quarterly, wouldn't be judged on the same scale. Perhaps they could even time these smaller quarterly updates to the release of new Veteran Rewards.

The entire PhysX concept needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

Sorry, but the blasted thing actually lowers FPS counts. I don't need extra particle effects if they're gonna do that.

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The entire PhysX concept needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

Sorry, but the blasted thing actually lowers FPS counts. I don't need extra particle effects if they're gonna do that.

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I'm inclined to agree, at least until I get a blazing-fast new computer with lots of bells and whistles, at which point I will reverse my position

Seriously, though, yeah - adding features to a game that I have to disable to actually play the game does me no good.