I hate what super boosters have done to the community

This is just priceless. The guy who is hanging around on the forums of a game he says he hates and cancelled his subscription to is accusing someone else of flaming.

Okay, I can understand "no longer enjoy", or "tired of". But "hate"? REALLY?

That you can actually "hate" something you've played for five years and put hundreds of dollars into points to a certain lack of grounding on the issue.

No. You kept playing because YOU found a reason to keep playing. I'm quite sure your wife didn't strap you to a chair and flagellate you with a wet noodle to make you log on and play.

And if she did? KINKY!

Again, your opinion has a certain lack of objectivity to it, and you're probably long overdue for a break from the game.

Considering I've played for 2 years and have yet to experience "all" of the content in the game, that might be a BIT harsh. For someone who's been here 5-6 years and has picked over each and every last mission in the game at least twice, you might have a point.

On the plus side though, we DO have new content coming out all the time. Granted, it's NOT a doubling or trebling of existing content to give jaded players thousands of new missions to play. But there's been a plethora of content in the last few issues.

However, you DO use the term as an epithet. So there's at least SOME pretensions of superiority there.

Nobody's saying you're wrong for unsubbing if you feel a certain way. They're saying your perception is mistaken. BIG difference.

Take a break. Give it a couple issues. We'll be here when you get back, keeping the servers warm.

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If I get to keep Executioner Shot, Dual Wield, and Hail of Bullets in the Assault set, and an Epic with everything else missing from Dual Pistols (okay I can forgo the mez attack >_>) I don't care how they do it

And I'd pay for the AT.

I'm pro booster packs (though I won't spend money emote packs ...) but if they start with this type of thing I think it'll be time for me to work through my stack of unplayed/unfinished single player games and unread novels.

Well, I don't see the Praetorian Epics turning out this way.

And really, I don't think they'd have any new AT be paid for, outside of a possible new expansion box set.

But if they made the Ranged/Armor AT that way, I'd spend the money to get access to it, and do it happily.

Well, you have a point here. I mean, I keep paying my power company to keep supplying me with power, and they haven't upgraded their service in years, the moneygrabbing *****. In fact, they just keep raising the costs and all I ever seem to get from them is just, you know, power. It's not like I get better power, like they didn't come to my house to replace my 80-year-old wiring or install solar panels on my roof. They don't even really maintain their underground powerlines unless something fries.

I never realised how much of a fanboy I was for my power company. Why, I should cancel my subscription right now. Maybe switch to another power company... I think there's another power company, they may just be subsidiaries of the same one. I don't know. I bet they'll give me constant additions to their service. Like my water company does. Why, just yesterday, they came to my house to install a beautiful water fountain. I just wish they hadn't installed it in the middle of my living room. It's kind of hard to see the TV through the water spray and the moisture is killing my carpets. But, hey, you can't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Oh, and before I forget: Googly-googly-goo.

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.

Gee sounds scary and impressive when you put it that way.


Too bad that wasn't what I was asking at all. The point someone was trying to make was that the trend is steadily worsening over time. No one as demonstrated that yet.

Are they giving us more stuff in paid packs than we get for free? Don't care, not the point.

Are we getting less and less free stuff over time because of it? Not demonstrated by anyone I've seen yet.

Even then, the fact that "I've played this mission before omg its NOT NEW" never even registers with me. I have enough different alts, they play fundamentally differently, and I take enough different progression paths, that each time I play something I've done before, it may not be completely unfamiliar, but it's not likely I remember it in detail.

I know we're getting more stuff now than we have ever gotten before. I remember seeing multiple costume slots in I1 and thinking that surely there'd be more pieces by the time I unlocked my fourth one so I wouldn't have to worry about repeating pieces on my tech armour dude. Two Issues later, not a single costume item had been added to the game, and I ended up repeating myself. Great.

I don't know why that is, but we've never gotten many costume items "for free." Not now, not recently, not ever. In fact, discounting CoV, Going Rogue, Good vs. Evil and the other boosters, we've gotten tangibly very little, now or then. We got the "anime-inspired" jackets and robes, then... Can't really think of anything else before Enforcer, Stealth and Exo-Proto, and then the "casual" clothes fairly recently. There's been the odd bit here, the odd piece there, but by and large, I don't think we've ever gotten many pieces as part of regular issues ever.

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 both fall within the realm of the Art Department. I know BaB made some weapons himself, and some others he got from a costume designer and simply made the adjustments needed so they worked with the animations.

Good point, I forgot about those. Weapons most definitely fall into the realm of costume items. But consider the following few points:

1. A significant amount of weapons were recycled from existing props already in the game. Every single item Assault Rifle has access to and a fair few choices for Thugs Masterminds and Archery anything were dumped directly from items NPCs already used. And it shows.

2. Add one more not to the addition of costume items with whichever Issue it was that brought us weapon customization. Almost all weapons we've gotten since then have been in paid-for packs. I know for a fact that Valkyrie, Martial Arts and Mutation brought us more weapons.

I will grant you that we've seen a few extra weapon additions to the game that weren't paid for. Rularuu weapons came after the fact, Vanguard weapons came after the fact and Cimeroran weapons did, as well. However, those weapons are almost exclusively swords, and almost exclusively for Broradsword, Dual Blades and Katana. Start a new Mace or Axe character, however, and you will immediately feel screwed. Or if you want a better one, start an Assault Rifle character and forever despair. And have we gotten any new shields since those came out?

But let's go back to Vanguard, Cimeroran and Rularuu weapons, because this loops back into a point I had before. Vanguard weapons require you to be level 35 and to have collected a fair few Vanguard Merits. Cimeroran weapons require you to be level 35 and to have killed a fair number of Cimeroran Traitors, and some require you to have done the ITF. Twice. Rularuu weapons, though easier to get these days, still require you to either kill 100 40+ bosses in a high-level zone, or otherwise do one of two high-level arcs. In short, new characters who want them are screwed.

Between weapons locked behind frustrating requirements and certain weapon sets having been given the middle finger since weapon customization was added into the game, can you really blame me for starting to feel like I'm going to have to pay if I want anything added that doesn't come with a catch?

If that means I get called a stupid fanboy, then so be it, but I'd sooner pay for what I want and get it than complain about what I'm not getting.

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.

I love this game. However, that doesn't mean I should feel 'forced' into spending more money just to keep it afloat as if it's on its last legs, by buying a booster pack every couple months.

Dungeon Runners was a F2P experiment that didn't pan out. Auto Assult and Tabule Rasa launched with a bundle of issues and TR especially, had a ton of baggage behind its development.

Well we know that's what they told us and while I'm not calling it a lie, I'm not sure how it exactly translated into getting content out faster unless the booster packs paid for overtime.

Look, I'm not opposed to paying for some stuff in boosters. I have bought some of the packs myself. I would be lying, though, if I said that I didn't have a fear that going forward all the worthwhile costume pieces will be tied to boosters.

I would really rather not have that happen. I'm also worried about powers creeping into booster. So far it has remained benign(with the exception of the game changing Ninja Run). But I also wonder how long it will be until we see people who have all the booster packs start to become increasingly more powerful because they stack small buff on top of small buff without end.

If this game has reached a point where it can't sustain itself without a constant outflow of buyable in-game merchandise, then I'd say that the game itself has a problem and that needs to be addressed.

I don't feel that I need to play the hero(no pun intended) and try to save it via booster pack purchases.

Budget. The more things you can fit into the budget, the more things your development team can create. Maybe they hired extra temporary staff, maybe they cancelled a vacation, or maybe they did overtime. It's not a question of exactly what happened. It's a question of when it was slated to happen.

One of the developers once said that you can have something done fast, cheap or well, and you only get to choose two of the three. If we want something done fast and well, then it can't be cheap, and I assume they wanted villain Epic ATs to be done well, so they had to pick between cheap but slow (i.e. next issue) or fast but expensive (i.e. that issue with the money from the Wedding pack).

Again, that's what the developers said. Unless you want to accuse them of lying, that's what they said. You can't get around that by saying "Well, I'm not saying they're lying, I'm saying their statements aren't true." I'm not accusing you of anything, I'm saying you can't have it both ways. Either you take them on their word or you don't.

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.

I was gonna put in my 2 cents since I read the whole thread. I had many different emotions, LoL,lmao,rofl,roflmfao, felt like it was a roller coaster reading. That is when I read this, I have to go to the bathroom now Just 2 hilarious.

if anything i'd call that a concise version of my point. well states sam.

The issue at hand with arbiter's comparison is that he compares paid to non-paid after boosters started coming out. I dont see that as a comparison that really makes his point. a better comparison would be how much stuff we have gotten before boosters started and after, that would tell us how much we could reasonably expect for free content from issues. now i don't have the numbers, i know there was a list memphis and crew used to post, but i couldn't find it anywhere, so i'm not going to make a specific claim about the number being the exact same, but taking into consideration power customization and weapons, that skews the numbers as well, those are art assets used to improve a player's ability to refine their look, I cant see that as being different in kind than costumes pieces. To me arbie's list primarily shows that we have gotten fairly good value for cost on boosters. I guess the problem is that for those of us(and i am thoroughly in this group) who really dont know the ins and outs of game programming and dont know the costs and timetables of this, it seems like sure they just have time to do all this stuff and they are just holding back, same with dlc on other games, and at times it may be true, game companies are businesses, and if they don't make money they close and everyone loses a job, but other times it really does affect what can and cant be done when the extra cash comes in and they can have more resources.

That said, i really do hope that we get some free stuff soon, partially on a psychological level, i think it would help with people's concerns. It seems that the art team is working hard, so i have confidence, but like a kid at a candy store, my reaction emotionally can feel like "gimmie gimmie now" even though rationally i know why they can't and still give us other content.

That... is exactly the point I was making. And that's exactly what the part of the quote I bolded is stating. I don't know what you think my point is, because you summarized it expertly in this above quote. I'd also like to add that in addition to not having ownership of our characters, we also are not purchasing new content except as provided with a price tag.


I don't know what to tell ya. NCsoft chooses to provide customer service for its subscribers, but that's their call. It's not granted by our individual payments.


Color me uninformed, but I've always been under the impression that our devs work on the game because they like to, because they find it fun, and because they want to provide their best work for us to enjoy. On the other hand, I believe that they are not working on it just to make money on it; that would be a very sad state of existence (like Electronic Arts, for example!).

Any good business will want to ensure it retains customers and draws new ones in by offering things that are better than anyone else offers, but it's pretty clear to me that this specific interest is not at the very top of the list of priorities for City of Heroes. NCsoft wants it to be, but War Witch and the rest of the development team are obviously more interested in making the game good than making the game sell.

Inherent Fitness, as an example, is a prime candidate for a Super Booster: it's all but guaranteed that it would be purchased by the vast majority of players. But we're getting it for free. Why? It just doesn't make sense from a business perspective, so maybe there's more going on here. Maybe they're doing us a favor; giving us some sort of gift that we ought to be thankful for.


According to the user agreement, expecting anything other than server access in exchange for payment is entirely unreasonable. If you can't accept that, then don't click "I Accept." Why on Earth do you insist on arguing to the contrary?

That's not how I read his post. It seems to me that he feels the same way I do here: that you're just here to vent your spleen. You don't like the game so you're leaving. Fine. Then you come to the forums to post pages of ranting and complaining and argument. Not so fine and it makes you seem a small person. If you're going, go with dignity.

There's a fair bit of evidence that none of those 3 games made money in the first place. Even if CoH got a lot less profitable than it is now, it's in a different boat than those games just because of it's proven track record.

This is the key point, I think.

The OMG @#$*% BOOSTERS crowd is motivated by a few confused beliefs- that there was a golden age when free costume additions flowed like the mighty Columbia river (there wasn't) and that booster content would exist without the revenue stream it generates (it wouldn't).

So it boils down to a typical entitlement whine, no different from folk who want purples to be available from vendors for a handful of inf. "I want the shiny for free!"

And that's a valid concern. Why put things in regular Issues when you can hold them back and charge more? This, however, is not an issue of logic, it's an issue of trust. All we know is what they tell us, and they tell us that these boosters pay for themselves. We could choose to disbelieve them, we could choose to doubt them, which is practically the same thing, or we could choose to accept it. In none of the three cases was anything actually accomplished. The only way for things to be accomplished is for us to leave our marks on the bottom line and vote with our wallets, as it were. I, personally, am not outraged at the notion of super boosters for previously-stated reasons, and as such I vote "yes" with my money. People who are, I would assume, would vote "no" and not buy the boosters, and still others fuming mad would vote "HELL NO!" and cancel their subscription wholesale, I would hope with the proper explanation on the "Why are you leaving?" survey.

That, I would assume, is how the system is designed to work. What people have to remember is that, here on the forums, we mostly debate among ourselves. Complaining about a problem and making a big stink does not "scare" the developers, as that's pretty much status quo. The few developers who keep a close eye on the forums on a regular basis are not really Marketing, not that I've noticed, so there's little point to rant to them, either. Yes, we have that Marketing rep who made all of one post, but I still believe that if you want to speak with marketing, you have to speak into your wallet. That's where their ears are.

As far as what we know - provided we trust what we've been told - two things make content possible: guarantee of return after the fact or funding from another source. In this vein, content is most likely to be approved if it either seems like something that will be good "bang for the buck," as it were, or if there's money left over from something else - say a recent Booster Pack - and something extra can be scheduled for that money. In this vein, I see Booster packs as a win/win. They have both proven to pay for themselves, or at least thereabout, and they have proven to be able to pay for other things, as well. So not only are they a safe investment, they actually make OTHER things happen, in turn.

And on completely the other end of the spectrum, I win, personally, because extra costumes I paid for cannot be content-gated, because that WOULD be a ripoff. I paid for the costumes, I get them in the character creator, and my smile grows dangerously wide.

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.