Failing to be impressed

People mentioning what they dislike are treated fine and dandy. People claiming that what they dislike is a reflection of most people, or that only the "diehard CoX fans" like a particular thing, as you did, are kicked in the teeth as they deserve.

You want to air your grievances then don't infer that you're speaking for a majority without hard facts to back that claim up.

You do understand the difference between an expansion and a sequel, right?

Sequels are also built upon the original, but they STAND ALONE. They can be played without having the previous titles. An expansion, which GR is and which CoV wasn't, cannot be played without it's parent game.

If you didn't have CoH, and just bought CoV, you couldn't roll a hero, and you only had 8 character slots. That's not what expansions do. It doesn't matter if they share the same engine, servers, costume bits, or anything. How the two games interact with each other does nothing to change what CoV's original intent was.

Going Rogue was never marketed as a stand alone game, with content that could be played without CoH/V already on your system. The fact that buying the Complete Edition gives you an install disc with the entire game doesn't change what Going Rogue is.

I would agree with that myself. What was in Going Rogue is great. I just really wish that they had charged more and given us more.

I wish we had paid expansions every year. I think all the sub-communities (badgers, base builders, PvPers) would get more love that way.

You DO realize that it's common for companies to build new games on existing engines, like Valves Source engine, Lucasarts SCUMM engine, or the Quake engine (Which Half-Life was built upon). Most companies don't build their engines from scratch, unless they simply can't do what they want to with an existing engine, or it would simply be easier/cheaper.

So let me get this straight...

You've done every single piece of content, spoken to every contact, done every single mission, done the new arcs and Trials and reworked arcs and levelled 4 toons with the new powersets to 50 already.

In less than a week.

I take my hat off to you.

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

ok here is the issue, you are assuming there is a standrdized mount of content for an issue, there isnt. cov introduced(at launch) a 1-40 game at a 50 dollar pricepoint. 41-50 was added l6 months later. gr introduced a 1-20 game with 4 fairly distinct tracks of content, as well as a tips system that made a very large number of standalone missions and it reintroduced the cop for people who had no interest in pvp. it alos, like cov, will add in a subsequent issue the new incarnate syste, which will give alternate progression. going by the comparison to cov, they have 6 months to get that out, based on what we saw on test server a bit ago, they seem a bit further along.

Actually... I've been playing MMOs since EQ, and no, it isn't. This is not at all a poor quality retail expansion in relation to the rest of the MMO genre. I've bought expansions that were much MUCH thinner in content for the same price.

Also, to compare oranges to actual oranges...

1-costume set booster with emotes and an inherent power - 9.99
2 character slots - 9.99
1 month of play time - 15.00

That's $35 right there, which is about what most people paid for the complete edition by taking advantage of the sales all over the place (like Best Buy, where my husband got it - sadly I pre-ordered for $30 and then bought the $7 booster to complete it)

Now add 3 more full costume sets, 3 zones, a bunch of tip missions, a new game mechanic and a graphical overhaul.

No, the price for this expansion is certainly more than fair for the content offered by the terms of the game the expansion was for.

I agree on that, and hopefully if GR proves profitable then theres a reasonably good chance of more paid expansions.

No, I'm correcting those that keep misconstruing my posts as such. I never said it was a sequel or a separate game. Standalone expansion yes. Not a standalone game.

I don't know about that. Not really a fan of TOO many extra expansions, especially those that split up the playerbase the way CoV and GR did. I'm not really a fan of microtransactions, either, but as long as they release an "Everything Booster Pack" for a high price every now and then so people can easily catch up, I'd rather go with that.

Then again, the obvious competition (that's WoW) seems to not have deluged its players with nickel-and-dime expansions and has, in fact, only managed to launch two in five years, looking at a third "the Tuesday after it's done." So I can't really point to a game with expansions and say "Don't make it like that!"

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

They actually mentioned they were working on more expansions in a recent interview, but from the context I think they meant Issues, not actual boxed expansions.

The reason the devs pulled the Alpha Incarnate slot from I18 is so that they could release it with the rest of the end game content in I19 - the complain was that even though we had the new Alpha slot, we had nothing to do with it. No content that required its enhancements. So I think that's a pretty good indication that I19 will have some significant end game content.

As for PvP, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Well I think the thing is CoV was a standalone game that just happened to be an expansion to CoH.not have interacted with CoH at all.

I mean you could have purchased CoV, level your character all the way to 40, then eventually 50 after the level cap was raised and never have interacted with CoH in any meaningful fashion. You could PvP in shared zones if you wanted, but that's really pretty minimal interaction really.

Sure, they used a lot of the same systems and art resources as CoH but it was pretty standalone from a gameplay perspective and I think that's how most people are looking at it, which is causing the confusion.

When I first mentioned it, I used the keyword designed refering to the actual design process. It was wholly irrelevant on whether it was standalone at all, it was still designed as an MMO expansion and not as a sequel. The basic gameplay is 100% identical in both CoH and CoV because it's the same game, just different flavors of content. That was the point I was getting at when I made the comparison between GR and CoV as retail expansions.

I thought they pulled it as Posi was not happy with the feel of it and wanted it really shine, and not be a tacked on affair.

I'd agree with you. The way CoV was released was in itself confusing and I think there's a kind of acknowledgement from PS that this was not ideal. However at the time that was a combination of Cryptic and NC... Now the only obstacle to the game's success is NCSoft and it must be difficult for the Dev team in Paragon Studios to be producing such great content to find themselves constantly thwarted by the numpties at head office.

But aside from that little sidetrack CoV and GR are designed to compliment the original game City of Heroes - and both are severely lacking without the base component

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

No...they're mostly happy with the way it works, but there was nothing to do with the new powerlevel gained from the Alpha slot. If it had gone live as it was, it would have seemed like pointless grinding, and there'd be much wailing and gnashing of teeth

When it comes back, it'll likely be with only numerical changes, if even that much.

He pulled because he was not happy with the grindy feel of it. He wants it to be packaged with new content.

On the City of Villains argument of it being standalone or not, its a waste of breath because it was both. It was a stand alone game just like Guild Wars expansions were stand alone games, but the box also added value for existing players so it also was an expansion.

At the end of the day, you only have 3 things you can try to weight when comparing both expansions:

Time to develop
Size of staff
Price of expansion

From announcement to launch it took 15 months to release GR. I dont recall when was CoV announced but it was released 18 months after CoH launch.

The team, from what I understand, is larger for Going Rogue.

Finally, off course, is the price. Many insist on labeling CoV at 60 and GR at 30 but thats extremist. If you got CoV as an expansion, you got a free month applied to your account, that's a $15 discount taking the actual expansion price to $45, still higher than $30.

So more people, either the same time or less, and lesser price.

I guess It's fair to expect less from GR than from CoV. Things jump to how much less?

I will say the expansion was not enough for me (even if, irony dictates I would had paid more for separate features in the form of booster packs,) but I am likely just burned out on things and it's just my opinion.

"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time"- Chesty Puller US Marine Corps

My Characters Deviont Art page Currently-reading Me Skydiving

pretty sure CoV was a $50 game at release, since it's pretty rare for PC games to have $60 price tag unless they know it will sell like Starcraft 2. It should be noted that CoV had a lot of temporary staff brought in such as the lead designer Zeb Cook. The impression I'm getting is no one extra was brought in to help with GR in any capacity. As I mentioned in response to scarlet's post, the less amount of content reeks of executives pushing release dates and skimping on the funding of projects.

You are right, I managed to get to an old WayBack machine link to EBGames website (warning SLOOOOW) and it was listed for $49.95, the free month you got if you applied it to an existing account to treat it as an expansion would lower the actual price comparison to $34.95 vs GR $29.95.

If I was forced to wear my TinFoil hat and make the most absurd of conspiracy theories that still sounded at least plausible, I'd say Going Rogue and the Incarnate content, at minimum, were supposed to be part of the expansion box. Then they realized they were not going to make the deadline and opted to delay it, just add "a preview", and launch what could be ready. The imminent release of DCUO likely had a lot to do with it.


I still would like to know if Issue 19 or 20 plan to expand the lvl 20-50 Pretoria. That's all I cared for, to explore the full "universe of Pretoria."

I also consider it's more important than the end game content, as the new players that get bait in with the new box will have higher chances to see the end game if they don't have to lower the standard of content they got used to in the first 20 levels.

I'm not even going to give NCSoft execs enough credit to have come to that conclusion, that's how low of my opinion of them after seeing what they've done to their past properties.


Similarly here. Though I would also like to know roughly when, since I have a feeling we'll still be waiting around for it 6 months later.