Discussion: European Services Update

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, I can't really point fingers, seeing as I already all but deserted Vigilance for Freedom due to lack of teaming potential. Even after Freedom launched, the population never took off, and I got tired of being stuck in the ONE trial being formed a night day in, day out. But then again, I have the advantage of being fluent in NA english, so it wasn't a big deal. Hardest part really was leaving behind my 2-billions prestige one-man-army SG base. No real buggy in the end. And I KNOW I'm far from the only French player to take advantage of the server lists merge to take off. And frankly, with the abysmal level of translation efforts and quality, I'm almost relieved you're giving up on atrocious (and too often weeks belated) attempts.

On the other, I still feel that the marketing argument is fallacious. If I hadn't had Americans friends online, I'd NEVER have heard of CoX in France. It's virtually unknown, and (far worse) all-but-utterly UNADVERTISED. WoW markets here. Some MMOs advertise in the parisian Metro. GW 1 & 2 (sic...) got full-pages ads in the gaming press. CoH got ZILCH, and believe me, I LOOKED. Even Freedom didn't get announced so much as vaguely mentioned in some circles. So I'm sorry, but if you expected to magically attract new customers with no marketing effort whatsoever in a culture that's already less comics-savvy than the US, all I can say is that you were delusional. The argument doesn't fly for a millisecond. Frankly, were I even a tiny bit paranoid, I'd say the lack of non-english advertising in the world was a step to facilitate this current move, so as to cut costs on all fronts. I'm not saying Paragon Studio would stoop so low, but hey, NC Soft never said they were in this for anything but the dough, after all.

Now, since it's all but acted, I'm gonna roll with the punches and try to help the few hardy French souls who stay transition to English gaming as best I can. But I DO have a question for the Red Names That Be™. I play on a MAc, and our language files are hard-coded into the CoH client. We CAN'T change the interface's language - which believe me, made playing on an english server a pain already. HOW do we get our hands on an English client when all the current versions calibrate their interface on the system's language?

In France, the Captain America movie grossed just 5% of what it made in America. This was with professional level translations, something you admit CoH lacks. Even so one might expect that Paragon Studios would spend 5% of what they spend in the US to promote the game in France.

I searched the forums for US advertising and as near a I can tell 5% of Paragon Studios US budget means they should send France $2.15 (Surprisingly Zwillingers claim of $43 to drive 20 miles to the Player Summit was approved), 3 T-Shirts (rounded up since sending 1/3 of a T-Shirt was considered impractical), and 7 Burger King coupons.

Seriously if you read the threads on the lack of promotion here in the US you would see that France is being treated no differently then the US.


http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...rtising&page=3

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ht=advertising

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...rtising&page=2


Even if Paragon Studios proportionally spent more on the US market, by your own admission, it would be the right decision. After all spending $100 to promote CoH to Die Hard US Comic Fans will generate far more players then $100 spent trying to convince "...a culture that's already less comics-savvy than the US..." to play a Super Hero Game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Netphenix5 ...And frankly, with the abysmal level of translation efforts and quality, I'm almost relieved you're giving up on atrocious (and too often weeks belated) attempts... On the other, I still feel that the marketing argument is fallacious. If I hadn't had Americans friends online, I'd NEVER have heard of CoX in France. It's virtually unknown, and (far worse) all-but-utterly UNADVERTISED.... ...So I'm sorry, but if you expected to magically attract new customers with no marketing effort whatsoever in a culture that's already less comics-savvy than the US, all I can say is that you were delusional...

Keep in mind one FACT of gaming; Most games, even MMO's, make the majority of the sales within the first week. Advertisement beyond that point is generally going to result in a loss of income. City of Heroes has FAR passed advertisement, unless they want to do things like Youtube Promotions and the like.

They CAN promote, but major distribution commercializing is out of the question.

so you can't moderate french forum... hum... my spider sense is already crying in my head...

so you put back french server with other in the english section... oh... are you not forgetting something?

and then by the magic of the forum... all french palyers will write in... english.

-_-

are you serious?

french will write in french, and you will not be able to moderate either.

p.s do you expect french players to use paragon market after i23? you won t spend money in translation but you will lose money too.

oh, btw, as i am a french player, playing on freedom from the start, i am not concerned by the issue, but i am concerned by the way french players are treated by NCS... so... no guild wars 2 for me, thks.

yup guys... seems you forgot the image of NCS in this story...

No news from PS. Can we have any answers about our ideas please ? Here or on the french forum.

*tumbleweed*

It seems that contemp will be the only answer we will get from now.

Well, thank you for the time i spend on the game, and bye.

I'm Dutch and I play on Union with the English client, so the issue only marginally concerns me.

I understand this business decision. I'm not sure about France, but I think the market is there in Germany, although capturing it with an eight year old game would be difficult, probably impossible without a major advertising effort.

I have one point: You might want to keep a forum for these languages, even if you can't moderate it. Maybe just keeping the server forums is enough, like you plan to do, but then make sure they are marked as Zukunft (Deutsch), Vigilante (Français).

I'm Dutch and have friends in Sweden, Finland, Portugal and Hungary. These are usually all unsupported languages even in the largest MMOs. As long as you don't censor messages in those languages, as long as there are no complains, you give people from these communities the opportunity to organise themselves. I've seen many posts on forums of other MMOs in unsupported languages, usually questions for help by new players. I've answered questions in Dutch, Fench and German myself pointing people to guilds or clans of people using the same language.

Given the population numbers on those servers, I wasn't surprised. I think the market is there, but the opportunity was missed years ago, when CoH was young.

Other MMOs now have more players in the EU than they have in the USA, the potential is there. And I think superheroes and comics are well known enough in quite a few countries here. The various DC and Marvel titles and associated movies have been quite popular where I live and what I've seen in other countries. I was an avid X-men fan growing up in the eighties. It's a very international group in the comics, unfortunately much less so in the Holywood translation. I think it's too cheap to blame it on a lesser penetration of superhero comics here.

I think the potential is there. I think more for a Marvel type world than for a DC type world game design and more X-men than Captain America. The stories themselves don't need to be in a European setting to appeal to us, but I think an international team of SuperHeroes fighting for world peace has more appeal here than a more Americanized hero like Superman or Captain America. But maybe that is something to think about if we ever see a successor to CoH.

Since we're talking about servers: even if Vigilance will stay open, it's emptier than ever (without being as aggressive as Pifou, I don't see why an English player would like to come and play on a server which is just plain dead). Some of us have already begun to move elsewhere but I think most of us would like to have an answer to our questions.

Some players volunteered to do a fan-made translation of the upcoming content. Will it be possible? Since we got no answer within one month, it seems it's a "no", but I think some of us genuinely hope there's a small possibility to keep on playing in French after i23. If it's a "yes", maybe it would be worth to keep on fighting to play on Vigilance, but if it isn't...

That leads me to the next question: can we expect sales on character slots and server transfer tokens (or - soyons fous - free slots and transfers)? While some of us may be attached to their native server, some others would like to... take part in iTrials for instance. Or just plain TFs. Which proved veeeeeery difficult these last weeks on Vigilance.

We doesn't even deserve an answer ... Do you really think we will get any effort so we can make a fan translation, or transfer to another server ... That's just the end of it for me.

I don't work for Paragon Studios, but I think it's pretty unlikely that they would use a fan translation.

One reason is potential liability. They would be responsible and liable for whatever was put up, even something that could be potentially offensive or in violation of the TOS. The only way to avoid that would be to vet the translation which would mean that they would have to have someone on staff that could translate it, which is what they are trying to avoid.

Plus, having to depend on someone for volunteer work is notoriously unreliable. Would they hold up an issue launch because the fan translator was on holiday when they had to have the translation. Typically, corporations do not rely on volunteer work for critical data. (I work for a small non-profit and we use volunteers for everything except key positions. We make it work by recruiting 5 times the help we need to get the 1 person who does show up.If 5 do, we can always find something for them to do.)

In addition, I am pretty certain that translation isn't the only expense. There would be a savings in having to do just one update instead of one for each language. Reduced cost in bug testing the patch and other areas as well I would guess.

Unfortunately, it breaks down like this:

They could invest 10,000 dollars in keeping localisation and make back say 30,000 OR they could invest 10,000 dollars in something that would return 100,000 dollars. Corporations always go with least risk/greatest potential profit.

But I could be wrong and I hope I am. Good luck!

That said, I would certainly expect them to give out server transfers.

I am not sure what the limit on the stack is, but it should be enough to transfer an account that had 36 toons or whatever the stack limit is sounds fair. It won't cost them much of anything to do this I wouldn't think.

As much as I hate to say it - and I do hope I'm wrong in this, but still - I don't see them handing out free transfers past the VIP stipend. The server isn't *closing* after all. Just (and I should put "just" in quotes) changing language.

Admittedly that can certainly feel like "closing" to our French-only players.

Oh, and Ispahan:

See my Guides and Tutorials

Meh. I can see the logic behind your statement. I still think it would be a nice gesture and a pretty cheap one as well..

The 2 non-English servers will stay "dead" if they keep the language message beside their names on the server list - that will put off any non-French and non-Germans from even trying them out.
The server names don't need to change, the he language messages beside them do.