Player's Summit

Yeah, that is what I was getting at:

How many master accounts buying how many Super Packs broken into Paragon Points vs Paragon Rewards would paint a true picture of the Super Packs health. By saying 3,000,000 cards (not packs, but cards) they are going out of their way to portray the packs in the best possible light. What, exactly are they trying to hide? That only a subset of players/accounts are bothering with these?

They already said on Wednesday's Ustream that they wouldn't be releasing those details. I know, I specifically asked Zwillinger that and that was his reply.

I don't think anyone could do that.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

They are working on PvP, but do not want to give any spoilers, so they just refuse to talk about it.
I remember a diff panel where they talked asked two questions regarding PvP, and when there was a very positive answer on the amount of people who'd try out PvP if it was revamped, the dev asking the question simply glanced at War Witch and smiled.

They are doing something, also, base love.. I heard it a few years ago, and all signs points to this rumor might become reality.. i24, the return of Base Raids.

As a first step, you (and everyone else) can stop name-dropping people!

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I think that a more important question would be how a group that's claimed to be only subset of the player base managed to force the Superpacks to the top of the sales chart above every single power set and costume bundle, when those apparently generate far more hype and anticipation, and require quite a few less units to be sold to make the same amount as the Superpacks have made - they need to sell 8 Superpacks just to match the amount they make from the sale of one power set.

Hey thanks for the info. I guess he didn't provide any sort of timetable.

I am all for tier 9 rewards etc but when it's some of the best stuff they've made then it really is a piss off. I'll likely never get there and I am a subscriber/VIP. So odd. I think these packs would make a killing at the store. Also, tier 9s shouldn't be too annoyed at having these costumes in the store since they're getting them for FREE and before the rest of us (non-tier 9s)!

That's simple. Super packs are cheap and designed to be purchased in bulk. If 10 players buy the same power set, that's only 10 units sold. If only 5 players buy 5 super packs, that's 25 units sold. So it's extremely easy for superpacks to outstrip everything in terms of quantity sold.

I hope nobody was actually surprised that the best selling item in a store whose model is kind optimized for micro-transactions was the most generally useful micro-priced item they've put in it.

Each account can only buy 1 of any specific costume, 1 of any specific power set, and hundreds of packs. If a player had to buy the costume for each character or the power set for only a specific character, you'd still not equal the number of units moved potential of super packs (even without the trickery of "cards sold" vs "packs sold"). When some players have opened 500 packs (2,500 cards to use Paragon Studios' claim) on live, there is no way possible to compare sales of any account wide purchases with the consumable items. Only consumable items with dismal performance records should be lower than the account wide item sales.

The fact that things like enhancement boosters, store bought inspirations, and store bought enhancements aren't performing as well as costume parts or power sets should be red flags shouting to the marketing and business groups that the items are far too overpriced for their performance in the players view.

Also, partly this:
Exactly. Then again, I don't expect some players to exercise any measure of critical thinking. Especially the "shut up and take my money crowd".

Only that it is still "under discussion".

Not exactly free, but I wouldn't be adverse to a graduated release of the packs (Tier 9 VIP for a time, VIP only for a time, available to all).

Nope. I expected that they would (a) sell a lot of them to a percentage of the players and (b) have to inflate numbers ("cards" vs "packs") to justify more. Basically they sold 1 card for every character created 5 years ago (actually in 2007 they had 3.6 million characters created).

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

I don't want that as a gimmick for a new powerset. I want that added to all the existing primary/secondary self-rezzes in the game.

Which is still 600,000 packs

I personally bought the 1440 point bundle. Got all the costume parts and plenty of other goodies....was completely satisfied. Most of my friends did about the same. I am also looking forward to super pack #2

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

People feel a need to discredit inconvenient truths because it's not what should happen. It's similar to how people discredit Pylon times/dps on pet builds. The super packs are cool and they're making Paragon money so the naysayers need to just deal with it.

Yeah, you say that now...

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. When you think of core elements in other MMOs right now, PvP is a huge part. Quite a few MMOs have based their feature set around PvP and use it as a driving force for what sells their product. Neither of us are in a position to say whether or not it's a good business decision to go forward with it, but a total absence of meaningful PvP is branded as something that can sink a new MMO in this age. I'd say that's incentive enough to at least try to get it going.

As a quick side note, that was Pollyanna Matronic. She was exaggerating to make a point. Having met her at both the summit in November and at this one, I can assure you that she is awesome and one of the nicest and friendliest people you will ever run across. Via Ustream I imagine that her comments may have come across as strange without the full advantage of knowing what other questions she asked or talking to her in person, but "creepy" is about as comically far off from what she's like as you can get.

That is not a gimmick - it is a unique feature of the set...kinda like:
Shield Charge
Rise To The Challenge
Burn
etc...

Almost every armor set has something that makes it stand out...otherwise it would just be two sets: one for defense and one for resistance.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Ehhhh, I don't know about that.

For new mmos sure, but this isn't a new mmo. People coming to play this game the first time aren't coming to it for the riveting pvp.

We already know it's not a good business decision seeing as how a majority of the playerbase doesn't pvp.

With all that said they should do SOMETHING about pvp EVENTUALLY.

But pvp was not the point of this player summit. Anyone who's been paying attention since it's been announced should know that. This event was NOT about big reveals that players didn't know about. PVP if they were doing anything about it would fall under that. So not surprising that the folks who asked about it got the response they did.

Also not surprising about the lolpvp.

I admit to the "lolpvp" comments...
Plummit wasn't about pvp
None of the panels were remotely related to it
The pvp questions/comments were indicative of why people loathe pvp zones

Overall the people interjecting their pvp comments made me giggle... Felt like we were discussing politics and then someone yelled "Yes but Peanut Butter is NUMMY!" Then of course when the conversation went off to..oh say... musical theater the comment felt like "I LIKES MY PEANUT BUTTER WITH JELLY TOO!!!!" It was more of a "lol uhmm is this person special???" feeling among the ustreamers.

I am all for interjecting ideas...especially when they are relevant to the discussion.

To the person who implied coh needs pvp to survive... yeah uhmmm ok sure.

To that I would like to say: Sometimes I cut the crust off my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

(Now I want a PB&J!)

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

They only acknowledged the existence of a few of them. Water Blast, Nature Affinity and Symbiotic Armor (which people seem to be referring to as Bio Armor).

If memory serves, there are still a few others but I won't mention them here.

Also to those who seemed to be concerned with Pollyanna Matronic's comments about enjoying the perks of being a villain, I had ustream in the background 'listening' in when she was up and even I could sense the 'tongue and cheek' humor in her comments.

It was a well received idea...and a set that I have wanted for quite some time. Hopefully the devs will take the feedback from this and who knows...a weapon blast set in i25 or i26 maybe

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I'd say it even if she didn't have a big, sharp knife pressed to my throat right now...

And you're mistaken if you think that my answer to this was arrived at "quickly".

"Because you "have to" have PVP is the reason the systems was dropped in in the first place. "Because everyone else is doing it."

How'd that work out for them?

The reason many of these other games are "successful" with PVP is because they're gear-based. All toons are essentially equal (or nearly so) without gear. And two same-class toons with the same gear are identical.

CoH has an absolute PLETHORA of powers and effects that need to be taken into account. And you have to have some sort of neutral starting point. Which CoH doesn't have. The powers in the game aren't balanced and were never really intended to be. Attempts to bring these balance-breakers down to a "fair" level has people screaming "nerf" and pointing out mechanics in other powers that need to be brought down because they break the new status ideal of "balance". It's all a race to the bottom essentially. At that point, they may as well give everyone an identical amount of hit points and brawl and let them go at it.

I never commented on whether it was a good business decision. But I beg to differ that neither of us is in a position. I've read NCSoft's fiscal reports. So I have a general idea of Paragon's revenues. Moreover, I know what "development time" can cost. I may not know Paragon's SPECIFIC costs, but I have a general ballpark. Moreover, I have the general numbers for the absolute highest number of people who ever PVP'ed in the game. So that gives me a high water mark.

Were I of a mind to, I could comment on the business case with a decent confidence level.

A "new" MMO. Yes. And the weasel word there is "can". Not "will".

Again. No. "Everyone else does it" doesn't mean you go back and continue jacking with an niche system like PVP in a successful game.

Had that sort of rationale been correct, this would have been City of Combatskill and died horribly as many other clone titles have.

What made this game the success it is wasn't the PVP system or following what the industry hacks said "must" be done.

I'm glad you enjoy the PVP system in this game. Really and truly.
Just like I enjoyed playing the Photon laser tag system before it shut down.
Just like I enjoyed playing BattleTech sim pods at Virtual World before they shut down.

PVP is in the ******* step-child state it is for real, legitimate reasons.

And at some point you have to simply step back and assess it rationally.

Now, maybe if CoH had the crazy-insane success a certain 800 lb gorilla in the MMO space had, they'd have money to dump into any little project they desired. Good, bad or indifferent.

They don't. They need to be circumspect about what they spend money on. And they need to take actions that can maximize their returns.

History has shown them that dropping money into PVP doesn't put as much on their bottom line as other, more "foofy" things.

Ask Zwill to compare any of the top 10 market items' gross revenues to how much they can verify (though the exit surveys) was lost in subscription fees from players leaving post i13 and being generous in assuming they'd have stayed subscribed until today (figure $450/player).

Even if they could verify that they lost 1000 players. Look at the revenues from Super Packs ALONE. Even at the WORST possible exchange rate, that's sets the MINIMUM of around $300K in gross revenue (as they were specific about "top sellers on the paragon market"). That's 2/3rds of what was "lost" for a 3.5 year period. And Super Packs made that IN THREE MONTHS.

Paragon has people who can do cost-benefit analysis too.

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Imho it should be dubbed Venom Armor
That aside I´m really wondering for what visual style the devs are going for this. Hopefully like the praetorian DE (Seed of Hami)... chitin/bone, (cosmetic) tentacles and protoplasm Yay!
Even if I´m dead wrong, I´ll still definetly reroll one of my toons for it as the set would really fit the concept.