I hate what super boosters have done to the community

How sad for you.

Oh pish posh, clearly the devs are VILE PROFITEERS who enjoy lighting cigars with $100 bills stolen from the collection plates of blind nuns.
Otherwise we'd get everything for free, plus a Magic Pony!


=P

Alright, in that case it seems that my opinion of the dance booster goes from 'meh' to 'lame'.

Funny you should bring it up. It happens to be in that City of Heroes User Agreement that you've obviously never read and skip over every time you play:

"I'm paying to keep the game going and that grants me investor's rights to dictate what the developers can or cannot sell to me wah wah wah wah"

Sounds good to me! (Though, personally, I think I'd prefer Assault/Armour)

So I take it you read the EULA of every piece of software you buy in its entirety before installing? You must, or you wouldn't be snarking at someone else for skimming over one. That would be awfully hypocritical of you.

I do appreciate you finding the passage in question for me, though. Unfortunately, it doesn't really prove your point. Rather than cherry-picking things that look like they support your argument, you should probably take a closer look at the paragraph you're quoting from. It's legal boilerplate to establish that we don't actually own the accounts we pay for, or any items on them. They're not ours - we're merely paying NCSoft for access to them. Therefore, we can't legally resell them. It's a hedge against influence farmers and people auctioning off high level characters on eBay. It doesn't mean, 'The entirety of your subscription fee is spent on server maintenance and upkeep, and nothing else', which would be patently untrue. That's why I asked for a link in the first place - the suggestion that someone at NCSoft might have actually said that seemed pretty ridiculous, and I wanted to see it for myself.

If you actually read my other posts, you would already know that I haven't been saying that. Maybe you ought to try following your own advice.

I believe BaBs said it, some time ago - here it is:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...009#post720009

Hope that works.

It sure would, and I sure do. It keeps me from making bogus claims like the devs misusing my money or that my payment is worth more than a simple access fee.


Well, I'm afraid I can't provide that for you to see, as it's not what I said. I said all of our payment is counted towards access to the service and nothing more. Upkeep and continued development are handled by NCsoft after the fact; we don't get that as part of our subscription. Customer support is basically provided as a token of appreciation; we don't pay for that either.


For the record, my remark wasn't intended for you specifically, but as a general comment to anyone who tries to assert that their money is worth more than it is.

Leo G said it best: the devs don't have to give us *squat* for free. You interjected with a suggestion that your money is purchasing development, and that people who object to the production of Super Boosters rather than get stuff for free are not demonstrating perceived entitlement.

Frankly, the truth is just the opposite. We pay for access; that's it. Someone doesn't want to pay for Super Boosters because they think they should get the new features for free? That's entitlement because it suggests that the devs aren't allowed to charge us for something. But we made the agreement at the time of purchase saying that they are, so it all just adds up to careless ignorance that could have been avoided by reading the ever-present User Agreement in the first place.

I may have canceled my sub lately but I can still post for a bit so on that...

Lemur Lad I really try and keep things sane around here and try to remain neutral even though at this point I have come to loath this game. I did exactly as you asked before and posted the results in another topic, I can't find it right this moment but after combing through patch notes on the official site and Paragon Wiki I came up with a final count of the past two years, roughly when the first booster, the Wedding Pack, was added, and it came out that we have recieved three times as many costume pieces as part of boosters packs as opposed to free releases.

If this is what you were asking for I could run the numbers again and give you a booster by booster and issue by issue post that gives you the information.

On the argument that we pay $15 a month for content patches and new releases vs access to the servers, well...if you take the side of the later good for you. But you know what? I have played a LOT of MMOs and if any of the stoped releasing new content I would have no problem dropping my sub. Understand that it is NOT unreasonable to expect your $15 a month to go a certain distance. It is a simple case of the free market, I can pay $15 for more elsewhere so why not go? If you really do enjoy this game so much that you will pay the $15 a month no matter what the dev team did then you are a "fanboi." But I seriously doubt that MOST people in this thread would do that, ONE noted example comes to mind...

BUT you can still enjoy this game to tolerate a decrease in content while still paying the same price but not be happy about it. So please don't advise people who are unhappy with the current state of affairs within the game to leave. Some people just want it to be better and complaining IS saying that, "Hey I love the game, but I just don't understand why ____."

Those of us truely unhappy with what the game has become and how insular the community has become, like myself, we have the option of unsubing. Which I did. And I wont be back in the foreseable future.

EDIT:

Found a link to the page where I have the count. It is a little biased I grant you I was angry at the time of writing.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...63#post3062063

So that gives you a general idea, give or take a few pieces I may have missed.

Nice to let us know the extent of your failure up front- TY!

So?

I'm not sure what the complaint is, other than "I want this stuff without having to pay for it!", which is, I realize, one of the founding pillars of the Internet. That doesn't make it any more valid as an argument, though.

As it is the reality of the game and the reality of the MMO genre generally, yeah, good for us embracing the universe as it is and not as we wish it to be.

This one has never stopped releasing new content and you're still dropping your sub. So, yeah. I'm not sure any dev team would want to use your fickleness as their guiding light in the storm of the current market.

Hey look, another proof of Campers Dictum!


Alas, you saved it until 3/4ths of the way through the post and now I'm committed. =(

As there probably isn't a single player here that would stay subscribed "no matter what the dev team did" your use of the term is less apt than most other applications- gratz on finding a new bottom!

You keep rambling on about a non-existant "decrease in content".
By this do you mean some premium costume bits ending up in boosters?
Because other than that free issues over the past year or so have been bursting with content.


when you act like an idiot people stop wanting to hang around you.

good luck finding your dream game out there, I have a feeling it's going to be a long haul.

No I stated that I wasn't going to count improved costume pieces because I don't really see them as "new" persay. If you want to go ahead and add the, I think it is 6?, tails to the list and it is still heavily in favor of the boosters. Notice that I didn't count the animated tails that came from the mutant booster either so, fair is fair.

As for power customization how would you count that? Seriously? Each color is a new costume piece? Or are you talking about alternate animations? And how are they apart of thier costume?

You can let power customization weigh in for yourself but I took a very explicit meaning of costume pieces and kept to it, for both sides.

If YOU want to count power customization then go right ahead and count it the way you want to. I just personal do not see a reasonable way to count it. It is its own quanitity and so I left it alone.

If you want to get REALLY litteral, then it is NOT part of your costume. It is under a different tab entierly and something that really doesn't affect your actual costume.

EDIT:

Nethergoat I am not trying to make an argument or make a case for this game being so "ebil!!!" I am just adding to the conversation. It really doesn't matter to me what people do or if they keep playing, great go right ahead. I am not even making the argument that there is an REAL and quantifiable drop in content. To me there has been a drop in the release of new playable content. Most of what has been released in the last couple of years has been quality of life updates which are not bad but not what I am looking for in a game.

But why even bother, you are just trying to start a flame war and yell down the oposition and I wont buy into it. It is great you are passionate about the game you play. I don't enjoy it. So I am quiting. There is nothing here to argue, even if you don't like my points perhapes you can take solice in the fact that I will be gone soon?

Okay but how would you classify power customization? Should I just list it as:

1 Power Customization

I am not discounting it but I really can't "list" it in a way to give it a proper quantity. Go ahead and count it, feel free. I honestly can not tell you what quantity it would fall into and even if you DO quantify it then HOW you do it can be easily scewed. One who agrees with your point of view could count EVERY COLOR two times over because of light and dark. So really I just count it as power customization. It is in a realm all its own and it does affect costumes but I don't see it as a "costume option." I am seriously giving it to you so I don't see what the issue is, unless you are just trying to start a fight with me. Not all pieces on the list weigh the same so add what I did above and weigh them independantly of each other.

And no I have not found a list of costume pieces released in i13 and believe me I looked. I can not find a comprehensive list so in line with what I said feel free to correct it. Seriously at this point I am impartial to this argument as I wont be playing the game much longer. In a few weeks I will have forgotten this post and the entire argument on topic. In fact I just looked up at the patch notes for i13 on the official site and it still doesn't have a list so I can not count what isn't there. I will grant you this but when made that list I gave the disclaimer that it wasn't perfect.

I am NOT trying to put out an agenda, this is just the research I did and it is NOT infailable but it gives a general idea.

Well spotted

it wsnt research, it was compiled in an effort to prove a point, but was done in a careless way because the point was already a foregone conclusion to you. supplying data to support yourself in an argument that you haven't bothered to verify only weakens your argument.

I'll assume you are responding to GG for this which I can't see....

Anyhow, yes PvP is a big deal breaker for me but I enjoyed this game enough to stick around after it was....I'll be nice and say changed.

Alright, I want to make my position on costume bits clear as clear can be. I don't care. Really I don't care at all boust costume pieces. I bought all of the boosters except the Wedding and Party Pack. I am just trying to show how many pieces have been released for free as opposed to in boosters. I am not pushing an agenda of doom or gloom or saying that this game is going to die. It will be around a good long time longer, of this I have no doubt....Well a little because NCSoft did kill Tabula Rasa but this game isn't in that kind of danger zone. If you can prove me wrong? Good for you and I have no issue against that, but I am trying to put out that there has been a lot of development time going towards the booster packs and wether you see that as a good or bad thing is really what the crux of the argument is. I don't like microtransactions. I can ignore them but in this game they are becoming rather prevelant and that bothers me.

So please lets see if we can keep this civil enough to have discourse and not devolve into a flame war. If you can find me a list of costume pieces released in i13 I would happily add it to the list. As far as I can find/remember it was a bit but no more than any one booster pack.

Are you quite sure?

As I pointed out in my last post, the sentence you bolded fails to prove your point. All it establishes is that paying the monthly fee entitles a user to access the game, but does not grant them ownership of any character(s) or the contents of their inventories. That's why 'access' is emphasized the way it is in that paragraph. We get access to the service, and 'nothing more' - that is, we have no ownership rights to the character and inventory data on NCSoft's servers. The specifics of the service itself, and what people can and can't expect from it, aren't expressly spelled out in that paragraph - or anyplace else in the EULA, as far as I can see.

I get the distinct impression that you feel they're doing us a favor by providing users with any new content outside of paid expansions. Regardless of whether or not you agree, it is reasonable for users to expect periodic content updates as part of the core service. It's also reasonable to expect customer support, as with any service, and it strikes me as kind of pathetic that someone would argue that consumers aren't entitled to it when they subscribe to something.

My money's worth quite a bit to me. That's true of most people. Apparently our money's worth something to NCSoft, too, or they wouldn't be trying to get us to part with it.

The most successful businesses are the ones that offer us products we're most willing to buy. And if a product you happen to like starts off as a good value proposition, but looks like it may be becoming less so, then I see nothing wrong with speaking up in the hopes that those in charge will take notice. That fosters goodwill and increases account retention.

They're not 'giving us' anything 'for free' by adding new content. They're not doing us a favor, or giving us some sort of gift that we ought to be thankful for. They're selling subscriptions to a service. It's in their best interest to keep providing new content for said service so that customers will stay subscribed.


I don't think anyone here's saying that they should get everything at no additional charge. On the other hand, I don't think it's 'entitlement' if someone says they think NCSoft should continue to provide a certain amount of new content outside of paid booster packs, especially since that's one of the ways they've differentiated themselves from the competition over the years.

It's not entitlement to expect a certain level of service in exchange for payment, no. And the EULA still doesn't support your argument, and never did, so it's kind of pointless to keep bringing it up.

If Assault = Dual Pistols, then I would agree.

ORLY?


I mean, you might be able to sneak that nonsense past someone who hasn't read your posts in this thread, but unfortunately for you I have.


well except that it's your stated reason for quitting.

You're doing worse than making no sense here, you're flatly contradicting your own posts in the thread.

Enjoy your (short?) stay on my ignore list, and good luck finding the magic game that gives you unlimited content (as defined by you) for free!

Assault would mean Dual Pistols with Martial Arts and the possibility for a Gun + Sword set. And Gun + Bayonet. And Melee Knife + Throwing Knife. And so on and so forth. *salivates at the possibilities and lack of redraw*

*edit*

That could be the gimmick of the new AT, two half-size primary attack pools (ranged and melee) that you can combine in different ways.

No where do I make the case that the devs or this game are "ebil" in that post. I have grown to hate this game, that does NOT mean it is a bad game. I spent five years playing this game and I SHOULD have left a year ago but I kept playing because my wife played. After a year of focring myself to do something I don't enjoy I have come to loath it. You can not argue with me about my opinion and frankly that is what you seem to be doing.

I stand by the statement that anyone who would play this game without recieving ANY new content and continue paying for the service would be a fanboy. Unlike most people though I don't see fanboys as sub-human so take that for whatever it matters. I will freely admit that I am a fan of the Alien and Predator series and payed to see Alien vs Predator three times in theaters even though I didn't think it was that great of a movie. There, perfect example.

The ONE thing I will grant you that might be confrontational in my post was my saying that the community has become insular. So if you take offense to that I apologize. That is, like everything else I have posted, my opinion.

I do not need to quantify the drop in content as my reason for leaving because it is personal to ME. To ME it seems like there has been a drop in content and so I am taking MY business elsewhere. If you disagree with me that is your right but it is overstepping things to say I am wrong to unsubsribe when I feel I am not getting my monies worth out of a game. Unless you feel like paying for my account then by all means you can tell me what is a valid reason to stop playing or not.

Nethergoat I have seen your post across the forums and frankly you are just in it for the flames, you rarely post anything relevant to the topic at hand and attack anyone for what ever reason feels valid to you that day. I will take your ignore as a badge of honor because I don't feel I have been offensive in anyway and have tried to talk with civility.