Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Since people will see Heroes leaving hero zones and going to villain zones and vice versa, I'm going to assume that those who do not buy the Box will see some changes with Issue 18.
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So how is CoH REALLY doing? (An answer)
And don't forget there will be a whole new slew of idiots making DOOOM! posts and pointing to the shifting population as proof the game is dying, when in reality the players will be in Praetoria blowing thru the new content as they switch sides.
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i personally will be moving all of my hero toons to villains, i might make all my toons rogues so i can still partake in hero tfs, but ill still be redside primarily, i honestly dislike blueside, the zones are way to big, they are not connected very well, contacts have stupid simultaneous glowy clicking mishs and send you all over the freaking place instead of sticking to 1-2 zones
ive read in at least 2 threads so far that claimed that "redside is gonna be so dead cause everyone will switch to blueside", when i saw stuff like that it kind of made me cringe a little because i strongly dislike blueside, the content and tfs are so dull, yes i dont mind the tfs because they are actually worth something merit-wise, but when half a tf is just mind-numbing kill alls on medium to large maps, then i rather be without
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Lies...
Damned Lies...
And Statistics...
You can have my doom when you pry it from my cold dead doomed fingers.
....
Seriously though, good post. Though I had a feeling NCSoft wouldn't be putting all this money into this game, and hiring all these people, if the game wasn't showing some signs that it could make some money. If it were losing players right and left, they would not be putting this much money into GR etc.
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker
I think we're going to see City of Vigilantes/Rogues because that allows one's toons to play most of the content of both 'cities'.
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I think this will be a boon to Red side, since people who don't like Redside can now experience it in smaller doses if they choose. People moving back and forth more easily will make it more popular, I believe.
Also, I'm hoping that the Ultra Mode graphics, will make redside look a little better in regards to lighting, and hopefully it won't seem so drab and dismal, which honestly makes it less fun to play there. I like blue side zones because they seem so much more colorful and bright. The gray-ness of the red zones seems to run together and make it boring, visually IMO. I'm hoping Ultra mode fixes some of that.
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
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Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
This last weekend, my wife and I attended the PAX COH panel. Now, we haven't played in a few years- but before that, we played COH pretty intensely, starting in Beta. Since then, we've played WoW, AoC, and now we're playing Champions. Anyway, we got fairly excited by what we saw at PAX, and when my wife won a signed copy of the game at the Paragon party, we figured it was a sign.
So when we got home, we (re)installed the game. And...
... I'm not sure, yet. When we last played the game, everything was hopping. Heck, it was almost too crowded. Now, though... we played for two hours last night and I think we saw a grand total of six other players... and two of them were AFK. The city was a ghost town. I looked in Atlas Park, Steel Canyon, and parts of the Rogue Isles... and everything felt just so empty. Where the heck is everyone?
It may be that our server (Victory) is just deserted. Moving to another server would kinda suck, though, as it's unlikely we could get the same names (and I'm very attached to names).
We also found that we couldn't really remember how to play. One feature I was very interested in was the Level Pact system- but we couldn't find any documentation on it. How're we supposed to find out about features like that? And why couldn't I change the colors of my Peacekeeper's powers?
This last weekend, my wife and I attended the PAX COH panel. Now, we haven't played in a few years- but before that, we played COH pretty intensely, starting in Beta. Since then, we've played WoW, AoC, and now we're playing Champions. Anyway, we got fairly excited by what we saw at PAX, and when my wife won a signed copy of the game at the Paragon party, we figured it was a sign.
So when we got home, we (re)installed the game. And... ... I'm not sure, yet. When we last played the game, everything was hopping. Heck, it was almost too crowded. Now, though... we played for two hours last night and I think we saw a grand total of six other players... and two of them were AFK. The city was a ghost town. I looked in Atlas Park, Steel Canyon, and parts of the Rogue Isles... and everything felt just so empty. Where the heck is everyone? It may be that our server (Victory) is just deserted. Moving to another server would kinda suck, though, as it's unlikely we could get the same names (and I'm very attached to names). We also found that we couldn't really remember how to play. One feature I was very interested in was the Level Pact system- but we couldn't find any documentation on it. How're we supposed to find out about features like that? And why couldn't I change the colors of my Peacekeeper's powers? |
www.paragonwiki.com has a lot of information about things.
To level pact you have to both be level 5 or lower and one right clicks on the other and chooses to request the pact and the other gets a pop-up and accepts.
Overall online population is currently lower than a few years ago. It is also probably taking a hit to that from people in I17 beta and people waiting for I17 and Going Rogue and we had free server transfers for a few months and some probably migrated off Victory. You may want to head to the server forum and hook up with people there or find out what the global channel(s) used on Victory are.
Also depending on how long ago it was that you were playing people have really moved "indoors" in the missions with a lot less street sweeping and hanging out. Some play in the Mission Architect buildings so their time out of the missions is even less because there is no running to contacts and street sweep missions.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
This last weekend, my wife and I attended the PAX COH panel. Now, we haven't played in a few years- but before that, we played COH pretty intensely, starting in Beta. Since then, we've played WoW, AoC, and now we're playing Champions. Anyway, we got fairly excited by what we saw at PAX, and when my wife won a signed copy of the game at the Paragon party, we figured it was a sign.
So when we got home, we (re)installed the game. And... ... I'm not sure, yet. When we last played the game, everything was hopping. Heck, it was almost too crowded. Now, though... we played for two hours last night and I think we saw a grand total of six other players... and two of them were AFK. The city was a ghost town. I looked in Atlas Park, Steel Canyon, and parts of the Rogue Isles... and everything felt just so empty. Where the heck is everyone? It may be that our server (Victory) is just deserted. Moving to another server would kinda suck, though, as it's unlikely we could get the same names (and I'm very attached to names). We also found that we couldn't really remember how to play. One feature I was very interested in was the Level Pact system- but we couldn't find any documentation on it. How're we supposed to find out about features like that? And why couldn't I change the colors of my Peacekeeper's powers? |
Though I can't speak for the gamers who have the attention span of gnats, and jump onto every new MMO that comes out.
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Also depending on how long ago it was that you were playing people have really moved "indoors" in the missions with a lot less street sweeping and hanging out. Some play in the Mission Architect buildings so their time out of the missions is even less because there is no running to contacts and street sweep missions.
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People are more spread out, no more bunching-up in Atlas & P.I. (well, less anyway).
Seriously though, good post. Though I had a feeling NCSoft wouldn't be putting all this money into this game, and hiring all these people, if the game wasn't showing some signs that it could make some money. If it were losing players right and left, they would not be putting this much money into GR etc.
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Those Q4 figures came out and the trend continues downwards for CoH/V in terms of quarterly revenue. In fact, Q4 2009 returned the smallest revenue amount in CoH/V's history.
What was more interesting to me is that NCsoft budgeted CoH/V to make less revenue in 2010 than it did in 2009. CoH/V didn't hit its revenue target in 2009, and yet NCsoft has given them an even lower target to reach in 2010. To me, that doesn't say NCsoft is confident in CoH/V's ability to keep generating the kind of revenue they used to, even with GR launching. It is possible that Paragon Studios got some soft numbers past NCsoft's accounts team, but telling your bosses you are going to be earning less revenue than you did in the past is generally a hard thing to do.
I've covered some of this here. Looking forward to seeing the Q1 2010 figures to see how revenue has moved since then.
Isnt this all a bit worthless really? The only thing people would want to see regarding numbers are the ones after GR launches wouldnt they?
Since that is the biggest release in the last 2/3 years.
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Isnt this all a bit worthless really? The only thing people would want to see regarding numbers are the ones after GR launches wouldnt they?
Since that is the biggest release in the last 2/3 years. |
However some players might find the AE system to be that draw.
Or others like myself, find the hardly touched and often hated pvp system to be a draw, even after it was completely ruined (in my eyes) after i13 hit.
Isnt this all a bit worthless really? The only thing people would want to see regarding numbers are the ones after GR launches wouldnt they?
Since that is the biggest release in the last 2/3 years. |
Personally, given the increasingly negative climate on these forums and in-game, I think it's unlikely that any increase in subscriptions from Going Rogue can offset the continuing, slow bleed of subscriptions.
Indeed, things have been so gloomy lately that I'm considering just giving up now, rather than going through several more months of cheerleading for a game no one else seems to want to save.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
Djinniman, level 50 inv/fire tanker, on Victory
-and 40 others on various servers
A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"
Doom levels are no higher than before
In fact, I think they've gone down a bit since last year
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
One thing that struck me recently was one of Positron's tweets where he stated that everyone he met at PAX was a plus four year veteran.
That's not a bad thing, but it is indicative to me that the people playing now are the Diehards who are going to be here till they close the servers.
I don't know if Going Rogue is really going to bring in new players. I'd hope so, but I won't be too surprised if it doesn't. Even with shiny new graphics it's going to be hard to attract more players.
My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links
One thing that struck me recently was one of Positron's tweets where he stated that everyone he met at PAX was a plus four year veteran.
That's not a bad thing, but it is indicative to me that the people playing now are the Diehards who are going to be here till they close the servers. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
So you don't think it might have been anything to do with veteran players being more likely to attend something like that then someone who's only been playing for three weeks?
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I'd be a bit happier if there had been some one or two year veterans ...
My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
This thread fails. Bad.
We're taking numbers without much context and guessing at what they mean. There are too many variables to make many(if any at all) reasonable conclusions.
Thats subjective. For veterans of the game, side switching might be the biggest draw to keep playing in the last 3 years.
However some players might find the AE system to be that draw. Or others like myself, find the hardly touched and often hated pvp system to be a draw, even after it was completely ruined (in my eyes) after i13 hit. |
I never felt a lack of content in the game because I haven't done it all, and AE is just a bonus.
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Yeah, I admit I do find some of the anti-AE objections to be fairly strange. That there are people farming in the AE does not mean that the AE is without merit, and it's not hard to find good arcs if you check the AE forum, and I believe there's a website where people can promote their story arcs.
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I love the AE - I usually play at least one arc when I'm on.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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