The proposed Experiment

I personally don't count "services" as content, myself, for the simple fact that these are repeatable actions with a cost on each use. I would no more expect to be entitled to many enhancement unlotters than I would expect to be entitled to unlimted server transfers or character renames. Any "consumable" features and services don't and shouldn't count towards a subscription, aside from maybe having an allotment of free uses, which may not be a bad idea.

That said, I also hugely dislike taking things which SHOULD be content and turning them into consumable services. For instance, I could earn the right to travel to the new zone, which is content. Or I may have to pay Paragon Points each time I want to travel to it, which one could call a service, but is in fact a ripoff. Anything which can be considered a permanent in-game right, especially when it has low or no operating cost, should be done as such - as an in-game right. If I buy a costume piece, I want to buy the right to use that piece in the creator, not A costume piece to use on a single character and then lose access to it. I don't, however, expect to earn the right to move characters across servers at will.

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.

ok sam, lets get to it. power customization also included animation customization, we got new ranged attack animations in issue 19 and in issue 20, with the judgement powers, we got to customize the color of our attacks. how exactly is that backburnered?

So if all this 'stuff' sells well, what do you honestly think they're going to do with any increase in revenue? It's not so much a faith in the devs as it is a faith in Paragon Studios being a business. If it sells well and they can conceivably make more of that type of thing that sells well they most likely will, and while they haven't talked about hiring people they have certainly talked about optimizing their studio structure to enable a more rapid production of content. On top of that if things sell well and they need to hire people to keep up the stream of content I would hope they will as not hiring people to keep up with demand (assuming you can afford to do so) would be silly.

Basically my expectation is based on the thought that they will see an increase in revenue with Freedom. I'm not saying I expect the equivalent of a booster every month or anything here but I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least a small increase in things they release to sell to us after it goes live.

In any case, who knows. I may end up being horribly wrong (it's certainly possible), but then again so might you. We'll have to wait to find out.

1. You HAVE seen the Blast set animations, have you not?

2. Judgement powers were made customizable at sizable player request, which was not in the original plan, and as I understand it, UI for pool customization did not come with it.

3. Power customization came out in I16. Nearly two years later, we've gotten about five new animations that didn't get applied to nearly the full scope of powers which could use them (such as Blast powers being used in Assault and Melee sets), and still gotten nothing to mitigate the horrible colour selection in ice-related powers, the limited earth powers colours, to facilitate the customization of pool and epic powers, to give ANY customization to weapon sets at all...

Just because they did SOMETHING doesn't mean power customization isn't on the backburner, especially with its chief advocate - BABs - gone. That's like saying they gave 15 000 for the first new SG members and made only active items cost rent, so clearly bases aren't on the backburner. Or like saying that dropping a few new instances in the Architect and opening up new Boosters for purchase with tickets means the Architect isn't on the backburner.

I expect to see a MEANINGFUL addition to the system, not token additions here or there.

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 don't know. What do you think they'll do with it? Because things like "optimising the process" and "gearing up to deliver more content" are things I've heard so many times before, and I've yet to actually see them have an impact on the content we get. In fact, Matt Miller made a big huff about restructuring the studio so that they could deliver much Incarnate content without having to halt production on non-Incarnate content. Neither of those happened. Incarnate content has been embarrassingly slow, even three Issues after the fact, and that slowness has put work on EVERYTHING ELSE to just about a dead stop.

Much as it pisses me off to think about it, I do hope 3/4 of the studio was busy making and holding back content to sell to me on top of my subscription and that now they'll be back to working on regular content, but at this point I have no faith in Paragon Studios either as being ethical or as a business. I have faith in them to try to squeeze the most money they can out of me while delivering as little content as they can get away with, trying to wow me with bright flashes and pretty colours that have no substance. I pray that I'll be proven wrong, but I've seen enough hollow promises to have low expectations for it.

I do expect them to see an increase of revenue from Freedom - out of my pocket. I don't expect that increase of revenue to mean much more than the increase in revenue from City of Villains did, or the increase of revenue from Going Rogue did. Both of those came with promises of all the stars in the sky and ended up with years of content droughts, scraping by to find the cheapest, easiest, fastest additions and me wondering what's going on.

However, at least back with the CoV drought, we still had Castle and BABs who spoke with us and seemed to genuinely care about the game. Now we have Marketing spin doctors feeding us advertisement speak about how rosy things are looking and how the future is so bright I need to wear shades and all that. And I don't buy it. The Development team is all but silent, and God knows what happened to David Nakayama or Tunnel Rat. You'll occasionally see a post from Black Scorpion, clearly run through the Marketing censors before it ended up on the forums, but that's a far cry from Castle and BABs posting like they're part of the community.

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Personally, -I- will be very surprised if Freedom doesn't end up costing me more while delivering less and turning the game into class struggle with "pay to win" options. I want to be wrong, but I'll believe it when I see it. Promises are cheap.

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.