So, Are We Allowed To Talk About Other Games Now . . . ?

/headdesk

And exactly what constitutes "competing products". That's what we need to know. Because in one response you say Connect 4 strategies are verboten, but in another you say they are ok. Again, the whole mixed messages thing.

Meow second this motion.

I am curious as to the intent of this ridiculous rule. Is it to prevent "advertising" of other games that would lure players away from City of* games? To prevent good or bad things being said about other companies product on NCSoft boards preventing some liable situation? Someone is a big fat stupid head and had their feelings hurt by words on this board and dropped the hammer?

All of the above?

Edit: FARKING FORUM LOG OUT BUG

@ Mod 5, you are no Mod 8.

so we're allowed to talk about say Pokemn CCG but not the video game Pokemon CCG... and the Magic the gathering CCG but not the Magic the Gathering CCG video game version... That makes perfect sense...

What about Candyland or board games with video elements?

What about altered reality games that use the internet? Technically they are video games.

What about astroempires or Earth 2025 which aren't video games but are internet games that people consider video games

Candyland has video elements now? I miss the 80s version...

Folks, when considering, "What constitutes a video game?" please use judgement and discretion.

All bets on this. To be perfectly frank, this rule implies that NCSoft either considers its own products inferior and that they require absurd levels of "protection" or simply considers its customers to become flaky, gullible, or otherwise disloyal at the mere mention of other video games, of any genre, platform, or price tag. Or maybe a little of both.

Keep in mind that we're allowed "limited discussion" about any game with the NCSoft logo stamped on the box. But only those. Apparently, as long as you're being swayed by word of mouth into playing Lineage II or Aion, it's a-okay.

I'm honestly surprised to hear we can talk about tabletop games.

It's had video elements since before I was born (1985)

The problem with saying please use judgement or discretion is that since we don't know what is considered a video game or competition it is impossible to do so.

Is minecraft competition? I don't think so
Is Champions Online competition? I don't think so

I also wouldn't necessarily call minecraft a game as there are no game like elements to it, or at least there wasn't for a long time. I would call that a artistic application more than a game.

Likewise I wouldn't call most face book games, video games.

Is a simulation a game? I know of Flight simulators where you can fly around in planes and it uses google earth to render the world under you. Is that a game?

What video games constitute competition? Is that Pirates MMO a competitor?

It's kinda like saying a Volkswagon Beetle is competition to a Lamborghini. Yes they are both cars that people drive and they take up market shares, but there is no way that one market share is going to be effected by the other and as such isn't competition...

Likewise, where is the problem in talking of competition? That is the primary marketing strategy of several highly successful businesses...such as, oh I don't know, Apple with's Mac vs PC commercials.

The world in which we live pretty much has set upon that City of Heroes has no real competition and any thing that one might say is competition is so far beneath it that they can only make City look better by comparison.

So according to you saying use discretion, the rule doesn't apply at all because there are no competing video games that do or are planned to exist. Therefor I should be able to talk about any and all games, but that's not the rule now is it?

You can bet that if NCSoft had actually made the CoH Pen and Paper themselves, we wouldn't be allowed to discuss any PnP games either. Honestly this whole this is bordering on rediculous. I honestly don't know of any other video game company forums where this rule is in force. But then again, they don't have anything to be afraid of, apparently NCSoft does. Somehow I suspect I know what specifically they *are* afraid of, the same thing everyone else in the industry is afraid of, except, oddly, the company I just mentioned. I wonder why that would be?

Seriously, give me my old forums back, stifling people and running your own little feifdom isn't going to help, if people want to discuss other things, they will, and if they want to leave they will, if they don't, they won't. Next we'll be told we can't discuss other games in the help channel, and maybe even tells, eventually..hmm..

I wasn't being serious about that (at least not tells..I hope) but seriously, it's silly.

FYI, yes, I have played against that chicken.
And no, I did not win.

^ Do the forum mods know this? ^

In as much as the child playing cowboys and indians is competition to John Wayne for a movie role.

That's the reality of the situation, but it in so much as how corporate might see it it is.

Because any geek who gets to marry Sarah is a hero in our book!

Comic and Hero/Villain Culture
Saturday January 29th, 2005 (12:37 PM) ~ Monday August 9th, 2010
Those Who Lived It Will Remember Long after your Ban Hammer Crumbles and the servers flicker dead.
We Will Remember This One Moment In Time! ~ Shadow Ravenwolf

you ever work customer service? this part is entirely true, customers are exactly like that. other mmo should be forbidden, all that discussion does is allow for sounding boards for malcontents and rage quitters to leave a flamewar on their way out. single player games are different, they are not competing in any real way more than television, movies, exercise and pnp gaming, and should be allowed for discussion.

*pant-pant*.....*huff*....*puff*

Oh man, that was crazy. I merely saw the names of the games you posted and like a brainless-derp-zombie I immediately downloaded and installed them and was playing both games....AT THE SAME TIME! I had one on my laptop the other on desktop. I was stuck there for hours! Like in a trance or something. The whole time not playing City of Heroes...at all! I never even thought about it!!!

I would still be there stuck playing those games and not thinking about CoH had not my wife thrown water on me like fighting cats get, and then pried me from the chair with a broom handle.

I ran back all the way here as quick as I could to tell my tale! I here by repent my earlier diatribe on the matter! Clearly NCSoft knows better than I, and knows I can not think or act for myself!

Thank you NCSoft! (more like NCHard....amirtie?)

If that was true for all customers all the time, the MMO industry would literally cease to exist. From what I've heard and seen, customers like to be treated with some modicum of respect. How loyal or disloyal they act also generally depends on the market you're looking at.

Banning all video game talk, after allowing it for a number of years, hurt the community and probably did far more damage than any mention of a competing product ever would.

This would be a fine and dandy compromise and I would not be against it. Though I wouldn't go with the distinction between "MMO" and "singleplayer", as where does that leave non-MMO multiplayer games?

Multuplayer games are usually tacked onto singleplayer games, so I would treat them the same. MMOs are different beast than the Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2 games out there.

I think one problem that helped cause the crackdown is that despite some people talking about the legitimate MMO competition, others kept saying how CoX managed to "survive" games like InFAMOUS and [PROTOTYPE], which to any person with half a brain knows those games aren't even like CoX in any way.

Well, TF2 doesn't have a singleplayer component (I'm not going to count bots), and I could easily see an overzealous person wrongly classifying it as an MMO. Really I was just disagreeing with rian_frostdrake's choice of terms. I do believe the distinction should be singleplayer/multiplayer games on one side and MMOs on the other in this regard.

Prototype not so much, but Infamous does have some neat parallels, to the point where a friend of mine jokingly calls it "My Character: The Game". Funnily enough though, despite him enjoying both Infamous 1 and 2 quite a bit, both of his CoH accounts are still active and payed for. (Both of mine too, for that matter.)

That said, outside of those few similarities, it is of course a completely different kind of game, which is the bigger issue.