No news for a month?

They.... they have... a marketing department?
OMG... I've never seen a single advertisement for CoH. Ever.
I thought they were relying on word of mouth to get new people to play...

Why would they advertise on a show that hasn't been good since the first season? If anything, most of the people watching that show already play this game. It would be preaching to the choir.

Marketing isn't in the business of promoting things that may or may not make into the game. City Vault was an exception, but one they learned from, and hopefully won't be duplicating. Even if they told us today, the only one's that could play around with it are the Friends and Family wave, which isn't the vast majority of us. Stuff's gonna change between now and then. I'd rather wait till things are closer to being done to hear about them.

I see web advertisements pretty often. Prior to Issue 14 and the release of the CoH Architect Edition box, I'd see them maybe once every couple months. Now I see them at least once every few days as ad banners on various webcomics.

It's been a while since I've really read any comic books, but I saw plenty of adds for City of Villains in those shortly after that was released as well.

As far as TV advertisements go, though, name one MMO other than World of Warcraft (or one owned by a TV network, like Cartoon Network's Fusion Fall or SyFy's 9 Dragons) that you've seen a commercial for. I've never seen one for Everquest (1 or 2), Star Wars Galaxies, Warhammer or Aion. I certainly haven't seen any commercials for Champions Online.

Why does everyone think that a TV commercial is suddenly going to double the number of subscribers? Seriously, who watches TV anymore and doesn't fast-forward past the commercials on their DVR?

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Similar to what Dispari said...

I have been wishing for ages, that the devs would revamp Boomtown, and, turn it into a low-level coop zone.

Anyone watch 'The Big Bang Theory?' Whenever they go into the comic book shop, there's a COH emblem on one of the back walls. I noticed it and went, 'Well damn, that's the first ad I've ever seen for this game!' :^)

Someone posted a YouTube link to a clip from the show in the Comic section a few months ago. Apparently there was an episode with Wil Wheaton playing some sort of collectible card game, and someone at the competition was wearing a shirt with a CoH logo.

(Personally, I've only ever watched one episode of The Big Bang Theory, at my mother's request. After a moment that she found particularly funny, she asked why I wasn't laughing, to which I replied, "Mom, my friends and I had that exact same conversation last week," and I wasn't lying. I already live an awkward, nerdy life; I have no reason to watch others get laughed at for it. )

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Some zones do have mini events going on (but that depends on your definition of a mini event I guess).

For example:

• Steel canyon -- building fires. You can get 3 badges from these and temp power (fire extinguishers of various sizes).
• Skyway -- has a troll rave. With 2 badges. Lots of supatrolls and raving trolls. You can also collect a 3rd badge for defeating boss trolls.
• Talos & Independance port sometimes gets a visit from the ghost ship (big green glowing ship) with lots of ghosts that also give a badge.
• Kings row -- clockwork go insane and try to build their paladin. By insane I mean hundreds of the little suckers. Stop them and you'll get a badge.
• There are heaps of giant monsters in just about every zone red/blue side except for the starter zones (ie. none in galaxy, Atlas, mercy, port oakes). All the other non-hazard zones have a monster in them, and some of the hazard zones also have a monster.

There's plenty to find if you go looking.
If you get bored however after doing these just once, then adding new content isn't going to last long to feed your needs for that matter.

However, I do like the idea of more micro events. The more new stuff added the better, at least for those of us who do not get bored just by doing it once :P

Shadow Shard would be my first choice, as it's potentially 40-50 content. They could dial it back to 35-50 to match Cim and RWZ. It's also a big zone with a lot of unexplored lore (read the wiki sometime, there's a lot of stuff they talk about but isn't in the game), and something that would easy to be make into a co-op zone. Not only is it in an alternate dimension of its own, but villains do go there in a few missions.

My second choice would be Croatoa. This would give villains 2 new GMs and a task force, which they desperately need. It could also be something like 20-35 for level, letting it bump right up against the existing co-op zones so that you can have a better range if you're running co-op content. It's also somewhat removed from Paragon City, and you could even have villainous missions where you work for the Red Caps.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Not true. There are no monsters (or equivalents) in Steel Canyon, Skyway City, Faultline, Talos Island, Brickstown or Founder's Falls. Steel and Skyway do have zone events (fires and troll raves, as you mentioned), and Talos shares the Ghost Ship with Indy Port, but there are neither zone events nor monsters in Faultline, Bricks or Founder's. Redside doesn't have any monsters or zone events in St. Martial.

Also, Peregrine Island doesn't have any sort of event-type monster, but they do have "Monster Island" off to the northwest of Portal Court. I don't count that personally, since they're off on their own island and never attack the city.

(Note that Trial Zones, such as Terra Volta and Eden, are not supposed to have zone monsters by design.)

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Arguably, those are less than advertisements and more of easter eggs for fans. What person who doesn't play CoH will know what that emblem is all about? Even when they had the CoV boxes on Chuck in the BuyMore, who else but the existing CoX fans will be able to actually see what those boxes are? We recognize these items by their art, but the average joe, arguably, won't know one random game box in a TV show from another... unless they saw a TV ad for it elsewhere

This is why I should not post when I am tired. *sigh*. I had run a couple of zones through my head and went 'yeah most of them have monsters' then generalised. My bad. Nit picker
Also, I find that the zones with other events in them (steel, talos, skyway etc) do not have monsters as a result. (Except for when babbage spawns related to the taskforce in skyway). I should have specified that :P

Yep.
Wrong. St Martial has an elite boss that roams about. The longbow ballista. Might not be a giant monster, but the devs found him worthy enough to give him mention on the same webpage as all the other monsters on the CoH website.
Also when you attack him, a lot of his friends appear from stealth.

That's nice. But they are in the same zone as PI. And they are huge monsters. And something to do. Also, when the Eden TF used to be popular, we would regularly be over in PI killing the monsters for the yummy inspirations to be used in the Eden TF.
I've also seen some interesting player behaviour in PI where certain tanks have taunted a monster over to portal corp to stomp about on castle.
Not that it is an event, but I always enjoy killing them.

Thanks. I already pointed out that some of the hazard zones don't have monsters.

I've never seen any ads for CoH/V on the internet. But then I don't read webcomics or regular comics for that matter. But it is nice to know that they do stick some ads up somewhere on the interwebs.

I certainly don't expect them to advertise on TV.
But they could at least advertise in something like computer magazines (I'm an aussie & read the australian pc mags and never seen anything about coh in them ever).
They could also advertise on their sibling games websites. Like Aion, guild wars, lineage, etc.
And they could also advertise in the computer game stores here (in australia). All I see in those stores are big banners about WoW and the latest FoTM game.
I have walked into EB Games (an aussie retailer where I originally bought CoH from years ago); and asked the sales clerk if they had the latest edition of the boxed game sometime last year, and they said "what is city of heroes?". .... They also don't sell game time cards for CoH here in australia at all. Not a single shop here will sell them. They got discontinued about 2 years ago. You can't even get them to order them in. So any kiddy who wants to play (by buying one with his pocket money) is unable to do so.

I'm wondering if marketing is following Eric Cartman's marketing example, from the episode when he bought his own theme park, and used the "You can't play here" method to make it popular. All in all, from what I've seen, it's looking pretty dismal marketing wise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fiftycalsniper Anyone watch 'The Big Bang Theory?' Whenever they go into the comic book shop, there's a COH emblem on one of the back walls. I noticed it and went, 'Well damn, that's the first ad I've ever seen for this game!' :^)

When I saw that, in the land of emoticons, I a was colon capital O!

I'm not insinuating anything - just guessing
And as they said that GR will be tested on a separate server from the normal Training Room, that means that we really don't have any clue as to its status right now.

I'm reasonably sure its not. I wouldn't expect GR beta to begin for "a while."

That's "a guess."

Obviously I only "know" what they've told us, and that's clearly not much yet.
That's really the crux of the problem right now.

The core of my point was that the last time we got a major retail expansion (in this case I'm referring to CoV) we got like 5 new ATs and a bunch of powersets to go with them. Sure it's possible that they are going to sneak a new AT or two into this (maybe like a new version of a Praetorian epic AT perhaps) but at this point it just seems like GR is likely going to ultimately offer less in this area than CoV did. That would be unfortunate. *shrugs*

I consider GR to be the *first* boxed expansion. City of Villains can't really be considered an expansion of CoH because it was intended to be a stand alone game - and *was* a stand alone game when it was first released. An expansion can have a new AT, or two, or three. City of Villains absolutely positively had to have five archetypes and a lot of content, because it was possible to buy only CoV, and even if you had both games your villains were going to be locked into CoV content only regardless.

As an expansion, I believe GR should devote about half its effort to adding new content for both sides, and half its effort enhancing the existing content in some way. That means I don't consider the number of new archetypes in GR to be significant. In fact if they had the resources to make five all new archetypes I would rather they spend them making just a couple new archetypes and add more powerset choices to the existing archetypes.

One more thing: it was a lot easier to make the CoV archetypes than it would be today to make all new archetypes. And that's because CoV archetypes reused a lot of powerset types and powers from CoH. Corruptors took less time than a brand new archetype would take because the devs could start by flipping Defenders. Stalkers are mutated Scrappers, they aren't a totally new archetype, at least in terms of the raw work necessary to construct the data for them (so are Brutes). They could get away with that because none of those concepts existed anyway on the red side, because blue-side characters couldn't cross over. They could generate a lot of the CoV archetypal diversity by shuffling, and didn't need to invent as much from whole cloth.

Today, especially within the context of soon-to-be side-switching, a new archetype actually has to be new: it can't be too trivial of a rehash of existing archetypal concepts, because otherwise it will collide with the other archetypes (which will now potentially exist on both sides).

I think GR should be judged at least in part on how it enhances the existing components with the game, and not exclusively on how many new things it adds.

I think people should judge GR more critically than CoV. First off its been ages since we got real dev created content. I dont count the Mission Architect because it did more harm than good to the game, and everything is just too generic with that. I dont count power recoloring because thats just the devs whipping out some crayons for something that could have been done 10+ issues ago. I dont count the return of the 5th column TFs because that isnt dev worthy content. Even after the many revisions it feels like it was half-***** put together unlike their previous content for like issues 1-5. Even now there is still much QQing about the final encounter is more broken than the LRSF by some teams. I dont count the Cimera/Midnighter stuff because it was entirely too short for that zone. It should have been on par with Striga or Croatoa but fell really short of that in my opinion.

So with the devs holding back all this content we should have been getting I expect more missions and such than what CoV had by itself. I dont see this being a problem at all. Considering how easy it is to create an arc in the MA and the devs have superior tools than that we should be getting lots of stuff for the time we havent gotten anything tangible. As for as powerset swapping goes just about everything I ever wanted is there just about so a few more ports isnt going to make my day at all. I think at the end of the day GR has to be bigger than CoV in terms of real content and to make up for all the empty promises the devs never delievered on (CoP, Base Functionality, and City Vault).

There are many folks that feel that way.

To be honest with you I'm more interested in how the story gets progressed than ANY of the new announced ATs.

Also interested in seeing how side switching and the new level 50 content works.

EDIT: That last sentence you posted is probably why marketing doesn't allow them to give much news or previews until they are sure what they are previewing won't be pulled at the last second for technical issues.

Yeah the storyline aspect of this game is long over due for some progress. We should have seen what the so called coming storm was at least by last issue but all we got was crayons and a few ported sets. I will say this it will be interesting to see how the cross-over is going to effect certain TF/SFs. I can see LRSF being uber easy with all illusion controller team. Or how an all stalker team would put new meaning in the term quick Katie Hannon TF, or how easily Mind doms would trivialize the the final encounter on the STF with the sleeps lasting uberly long with domination and power boost. I do think they will eventually have to throw out the whole merits over time metric we have now because certain ATs would butcher the current datamined times to the point where we are getting 1 merit per arc on some of them.

I'm especially interested in seeing Villainous Empaths and Blasters in RV, and heroic Stalkers and Doms in RV.

Even at its lowest points, Heroes is drawing in millions of viewers. City of Heroes is estimated to hover somewhere between 90-150k subscribers.

I wasn't being literal with the idea that "if GR does not give us 5+ new ATs it will be a failure". I was just comparing one retail expansion with another in terms of a feature of a similar scope.

CoV (and at this point I'm not going to quibble about whether it was a pure expansion like GR will be or not) ultimately provided a certain amount of content to the overall game. If GR does not give us 5 ATs and their associated powersets then I would hope that what it does provide is an amount of content at least equivalent to or exceeding that.

Basically I'm saying that if not 5+ new ATs we better be getting something at least as cool as what another 5+ ATs would have been like.

I'll take your word for it that is what you meant. But its not what you said:

That says the exact opposite of what you meant.


I do agree that Going Rogue has set very high expectations, specifically because of the implied amount of time the devs have worked on it. I do not believe any one area needs a minimum amount of attention, but I believe overall GR needs to have a level of content that, if not equal to, is at least in the general ballpark of the content in CoV. Not because they are both boxed expansions, but just because the level of content in CoV just coincidentally happens to be in the general vicinity of what I believe is reasonable for Going Rogue at the present time. If GR ends up having even half or two-thirds the content of CoV, by my subjective standards, I will consider it to have at least nominally achieved my expectations.

Well the more content the better. I think at this point though it needs to be more slanted towards making CoV better. Reason being it has fewer missions, fewer TF. It will get old and stale pretty fast if they dont making many folks just go back to heroside where its generally more fun. Then you have the opposite of the spectrum where so many folks want to get their characters out of the doom and gloom environment that is Rogue Isles and away from that anemic Black Market. In order to draw me folks back to Rogue Isles there is going to have to be the start of them equaling out the content finally instead of it being so hero heavy. At the sametime they need to do away with the villains playing sidekick to the heroes on all future content because thats just getting old too.