NCSoft and Massively

One person requested this feature during the "Wouldn't it be great if...?" Panel, which was the final panel, and a chance for players to pitch ideas.

One Developer (I believe BABs) said "Well, we are always looking for new veteran awards..."

At which point, one person shouted the phrase "Little black book".

To summarize: The current status on that is: One developer kinda thought about it.

I've been using my Pocket D teleporter to get to Faultline for so long that I don't remember any other way to get there..

Well, that's a first step anyway

Only one.

Who's 'we'?

The ego might count as a separate person, perhaps?

Please name the "several" NCSoft run MMOs that had paid expansions added to them, and then got the plug pulled.

Also, what is the time-frame between them adding the expansion and the game dying?

If you're gonna make accusations, please bring definitive examples.

So yes, I guess there are further questions.

Him, obviously. Also, remembering how NCSoft dealt with their EU Mod team for the most part, me.

Also the point about how NCSoft changed their results reporting a while back is well made. It obfuscates the overall population in the game behind a nice whirling cloud of microtransaction payments (and we do know that CoH has always had dedicated users who tend to buy the packs). So realistically they don't tell you anything about the overall population of the game. And they certainly don't tell you much about the EU side.

I'm confused. You say they are truthfully answering "No" to the question that they heard. And they question they heard according to you is "Do you want an extra $180 from me between now and when the game shuts down, or not?" So they don't want our money but are in trouble of going under?

First off rarely ever does any business tell you months in advance that they're shutting their doors. The best advance notice you get is when they have those going out of business sales where they mark up everything 50% and then have a 60% off sale. The questions above your not going to find answered in detail unless you're a stock holder of a company or senior manager. The fact of the matter is we aren't directly accountable for the metrics above, NCSoft and its employees are. Those accountable for the metrics get to know what they are, those that support the metrics only get to know that there are metrics and we're contributing to them. That's the way of management in any major company.

Secondly, I don't see where people are thinking NCSoft has suddenly gone double down on CoX. Is it soley because an expansion pack is coming out that's giving feature and upgrades fans of the game have been asking for awhile? If that's the case I guess WoW is in trouble too since they have Cataclysm coming out. Or maybe it's because NCSoft has bought out CoX from Cryptic and devoted more resources and headcount to the product?

Again I'll tell you companies don't buy out companies/products and triple their resources to a product they think is going to fail in some last ditch effort to get an explosion of customers that they think won't churn over especially in the midst of economic troubles and increasing competition. They devote money and resources into products they believe can weather the storm and come out with a good market share and provide a good revenue stream for the company. Going Rogue is just a new product/service to the CoX name that NCSoft believes will position one of their flagship titles in a good position when the storm calms down.

Sounds to me like you're assuming DOOM for the game unless someone really high up from NCSoft comes to you and shows you the business plan for CoX and the Excel spreadsheet showing the numbers are fine. That's not happening unless you own enough stock in the company. Businesses don't give those numbers to customers because they don't know how to completely understand them and they end up thinking the worst which ends up making the numbers worse in the long run.

Are their metrics that this game is measured against, sure. Is there a deadline of when those metrics have to be hit before some action is taken, yes and no. Taking action does not mean pulling the plug. Taking action could be scaling back on upgrades, personnel, or reduced server count. If things like that were to happen, and I don't think they are, then my guess is it would probably happen in the EU markets first assuming they are the lower customer base. As for a deadline, rarely does business have one solid drop dead date for something like this. They'll give it a quarter, two quarters, a year of evaluation, trending, and trials to fix issues and repeat the process before drastic moves are made.

Have other NCSoft games failed, sure. Were players "lied" to, I cannot say as I was not a part of those games. But I can tell you this, the games that were shutdown are not games by which a standard was set and other games are measured against. Champions Online is directly measured against this game and the standards it's set for the genre. DCUA may very well also be compared to this game. You don't set a standard and have the new kids in town compared to you if you're in danger of going belly up. CoX is doing fine and by many measures is doing better than ever.

What you're asking for is unrealistic and by the sounds of it you won't believe anyway. If you feel that negatively about the game and its future and the past of NCSoft then do as you suggest and find a new game. There are plenty of us who have been here through it all and plenty of us who will still be here to watch and bask in what the long future of this game has to offer us and we'll enjoy every minute of it.

50s - Energyman, Elec^3 Blaster - Light Bringer Prime, Triform PB - OxyStorm, Robo/Storm/Mace MM - Widow Lotone, NW - Psi-Vox, Ill/FF/Earth Control

Garbage in terms of dev content. AE doesnt count, 99% of those arcs are crap and you know it. Reused powers ported to different ATs is not content, recolored powers are not content. Cimerora was no where near big enough and the arcs too small and too few. And dont get me started on that epic phail of the M.Bison TF that we got. We flatout told them that TF wasnt dev worthy from a story standpoint yet they didnt change it much. So yeah the past 6 issues were garbage.

I enjoyed them

*Claps*

So you both think AE is mostly good for producing stories over reheated leftovers and that producing new interesting content is easy because of what AE shows us...

You might enjoyed them but we know the devs can do better. I dont know why you all are just not seeing this. Am I so wrong to set the dev standard so high? If they did awsome work before then why didnt they continue to do that? The past 6 issues have been phail because I know they can do better. I am not saying issues 1-10 have been perfect either but its more dev worthy content than the past 6 have been. Thats what I am saying. If you all want to keep the standards that the devs have so low then all it does is open up more room for the competition (provided we get some I dont count CO) to move in and steal players. For the record am I saying what I am saying not because of the Massively article because I know those things are biased but because the devs need to know this, we all know you can do better. I have a ton of friends who left CoX for Aion because there was flatout nothing worth playing in CoX. At least now there might be a chance they will come back but only if GR is content heavy.

I think in an odd way you've just highlighted what's so great about this game: There's SO MUCH content that sometimes we vets forget (or ignore) the stuff that we have subconciously selected out. But as a new player there's a shed-load of stuff to do. Sure some of it does show it's age to old-timers maybe but if you could put yourself in the shoes of a newbie I doubt you'd notice that so much.

Especially blue side there are so many different paths to 50 that you don't need to cross contacts a few times, and with Ouro, there's a chance to go back and do the stuff (that is often surprisingly good) that you missed.

What maybe some of the doom-mongers are griping is that there's no new content just for them. But then I mostly find forums pretty toxic places these days and often people post vitriol at the expense of reason.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Yes it should be easy. They have professional writters already, so coming up with the story shouldnt be the hardest part for them. Setting up the missions would be, but since they get better tools than we get in the AE, I dont see what the problem is. I created a few arcs myself for testing purposes and challenge to see how long my tanks can last. I know how long it takes to create an arc so there is no reason why someone who has better tools should not be able to create better content faster. They could have someone create an arc a day or even every few days and we wouldnt feel so content starved as we are now. Hell even if it was just more dev missions put in the AE that would be better than what we have now.

Yup. Me too. Especially Cimerora. I like how ER is now apparently the standard-setter for what is and is not "dev worthy" storytelling.

Also, assuming that there are at least 1000 MA arcs, and assuming ER's "99% crap" standard is actually applicable, that's at least 10 new story arcs just from the MA.

Given that I, personally, have played at least 2 dozen MA arcs that I enjoyed (and I haven't been able to play much in the last 6 mo), I'd say that number is far, far higher.

But again... ER doesn't play the game that the rest of us are playing.

I disagree with everything in your post except perhaps this statement: AE doesnt count, 99% of those arcs are crap and you know it. But if the Dev's would be brave enough to give the AE a much needed oil change you'd find things improve dramatically. The Guest arcs have been fun and some more Dev's choices work well.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

NCsoft went form releasing far more information than their competitors to something more closer to the industry norms about any individual game for a publically traded company.

Personally, I liked that we could track the numbers, but gievn that the industry did not rise to the higher standard it really was only a matter of time before such information was pulled.

Thinking it is about COX is simply amazing, compared to the losses in revenue and subs from Lineage and LII.

Because it's a matter of opinion?

Translation: Who cares if you (and others) enjoyed them? I didn't and that's all that matters, for I am The Decider of what is, and what is not, good content.

Because you're wrong.

Short answer: Reverse JRanger.
Longer answer: You're not setting the standard "so high" you're trying to set it solely to your own, personal taste, even when it's been shown that many people disagree with what you would like in the game. I never, ever, eeeeeeeeeeeever want this game conforming to your standards.

Other than some (occasionally pretty big, but no more so than before) mistakes, they have.

Let's examine that... what, exactly, was contained within issues 1-10? Hmmmm?

Give up?

How about two FULL boxed sets worth of content?!?

CoH has been out for 5.5 years. Of course players leave to try new MMOs. Heck, counting betas, I did it 3-4 times, twice in the last year. But I'm still here. And many who leave and up coming back after a while.

LOL! That brings up one of my favorite anecdotal quotes: Writing is the easiest profession in the world, if you enjoy sweating blood!

Give it up, you're only digging yourself a deeper hole

Actually, a number of us wanted COH2.

We'll take GR as a lovely comparting gift though - thanks for playing...

Ahahahahahahahaa... <gasp> hahahahahahahah...hah... heh... wooo... <snicker><chortle><wheeze>.

DR/Michelle/Sauraiko, would you care to address this one?

/headdesk

Ow.

I'm not sure what makes me head hurt more. The banging off of me desk or the reading of that statement.

If writing and creating content were that easy, why doesn't any MMO add 10-20 new missions/arcs per month, genius? C'mon. Think about it. I'll wait...


...


A long, long time, I'm sure.