Where did the game go wrong?
By
Agonus,
Posted on: 2012-09-01 18:46 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Oh great, an under-performing video game being cancelled is a serious enough issue to make the call to restructure the world's economy. In all seriousness, no Carlin gifs, no ******** remarks, it's tough to give up something that was a constant in most people's lifes, but this isn't the first game to be cut and it will not be the last.|
Originally Posted by mercykilling
Because this is the first time I've felt strongly enough about an issue to not just let it go. NCSoft.....hades. ALL corporations must fall. Or be seriously restructured. There used to be a time where a product or service a company/corp offered sold well because of it's quality. Advertising wasn't a whole department, it was word of mouth. "Hey, Joe. This whatchamajigger made by so-an-so is really a good product. Give it a shot."
That's no longer the case. We're mass media stuffed and fed what to believe, what to buy, how to think...and we lap it up. I was JUST as guilty. This event opened my eyes finally. That's all I'm trying to say. |
The thing to do right now is to give support to the devs. Boycotting NCsoft is not going to do much and trying to buy the IP license seems like a wasted effort, but the devs were the ones who helped make CoH what it was. If they can stick together and find themselves in a developmentally viable situation, they may just make the spiritual successor to CoH.
It wasn't the Freedom Phalanx, 5th Column, Praetorians, Steel Canyon, or Atlas Park that made this game fun, it was how the game was made and the characters we made. I'd rather play a new IP made by the devs than CoH on life support.
The game went wrong by using a level-based, con/raid/end-game system. There's nowhere for it to go. There's no world to play in so everyone is hostage to 'new content'.
Don't get me wrong I've had a LOT of fun with City of Villains for a long time. But games of it's ilk are dead-end paths.
p.s. Super Jump was the best power in the game.
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No, here is the post from Tic-Toc (BaBs) from another thread about "Jack wanted to destroy the game!". |
Originally Posted by BrandX
To my understanding it was a Cryptic/Re-licensing the Engine problem.
Cryptic wanted to get rid of the competition, so they raised the price of the license, NCSoft didn't think it would make back the investment. I think with i24, it totally would have. |
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Originally Posted by Tic-Toc
As the person who got power customization implemented in CoH, this post is full of crap.
Jack never said nuffin about power-customization. It was probably me that said something about it and probably before the switch from working for Cryptic to working for Paragon (or shortly after). At the time, it was impossible. We didn't have the code to support it and it would require rebuilding every single player power effect, something that just wasn't feasible for one person who was the sole animator and VFX artist on the project at the time. I did manage to get weapon customization in, because that was something we did have a way of doing. Fast-forward a couple of years and Paragon's humming along, Champs is on the horizon trumpeting 'power customization' as a huge selling point and I, in a competitive spirit that I'm sure Jack would appreciate, decided we were going to beat them to the punch. So I pushed for the feature. I came up with a way to do it. Wrote out a detailed process so one of the programmers could write a python script to do most of the heavy lifting. Then I and Keetsie (Tunnel Rat)--mostly Keetsie if memory serves--put a lot of time and work into tweaking a few values in every single player power particle and FX script. The UI interface was designed, implemented, code was written. In short, it was a metric ****-ton of work. It was crazily expensive to implement, took a long time, and involved a lot of work from many people...which did not result in any real measurable gains for the game or studio. New player didn't flock to the game. Current players didnt' throw buckets of money at out feet. You guys playing at the time enjoyed it and appreciated it...but from a business perspective, it was a recklessly stupid thing to do. I'm honestly shocked it happened. It's still one of my proudest accomplishments. People talk a lot about Jack's vision this and Jack's vision that, but reality is that by the time CoH was being offered to NCSoft, Jack's "vision" was focused on other projects at Cryptic. Cryptic needed those other projects to keep it's doors open. So when Jack would say X wasn't possible, it was because little Timmy, who was actually working with X, told Jack, "X is probably not possible, and here's why..." In reality, practically nothing is really impossible, but if it's going to take a dozen people 6 months to implement and probably not be a net gain for the business, then it's "impossible". Side-switching was another one of those things. Technically, very possible. It's a couple of flags to flip on a character. BAM. Your Tank is a villain. Problem is, you've got no contacts, no way to get new missions, no story explanation as to why it happened, nothing organic about the process, etc. Again, I was involved in a lot of those conversations about 'Going Rogue' and it was a TON of work from multiple people to get implemented. Nowadays, Jack is the CEO at Cryptic. He has very little to do with games. Other people have stepped in and provided 'visions' because no game, NO GAME, gets done without someone having a vision for it. And no one person's vision is going to match every single player's vision. Hell, it won't even match half the developers vision. As for rumors of Cryptic/PWE sabotaging CoH. There's one company and one company alone responsible for this. NCSoft. It was their decision to pull the plug on this, and it's perfectly in line with things they've done to other games and studios in the past. FYI, I worked on Auto Assault, I worked for Cryptic on CoH, then Paragon on CoH, and I'm now back at Cryptic on something not CoH. Friday's news went through cryptic like a cold ripple. We were as shocked and dismayed as many of you. While many people who originally worked on CoH have moved on to other things, some to Paragon, some to other ventures entirely, there are still a lot of people at Cryptic who put love and care into this game that has so profoundaly touched all of our lives. God, it's nice to not be a redname anymore. I can say things like metric ****-ton! |
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Originally Posted by BrandX
To my understanding it was a Cryptic/Re-licensing the Engine problem.
Cryptic wanted to get rid of the competition, so they raised the price of the license, NCSoft didn't think it would make back the investment. I think with i24, it totally would have. |
Except Cryptic has debunked that rumor.
Ghost Widow was online the very evening of the announcement and debunked it.
THIS IS A RUMOR AND IS FALSE.
Besides, even if it was true....which it's not......it's still not the game's fault itself.
And omigod. End times. thatninja and I agree on something.
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It's more like we decided on acting like ********.
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Originally Posted by mercykilling
And omigod. End times. thatninja and I agree on something.
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Originally Posted by That_Ninja
It's more like I decided on acting like ********.
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Fix'd.
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There is zero evidence that this was the actual reason- this coming from one of the first people to bring up the licensing angle. A community manager for STO has explicitly shot it down on their boards (but, personally, I wouldn't put a huge amount of stock in that), BaBs (who currently works for Cryptic) has said that to the best of his knowledge the license wasn't up for renewal or anything (in multiple posts now), and Zwill has bothered to go out of his way at least twice now to say it's only a rumor and nothing more. At this point we can only make guesses- poor ones at that.|
Originally Posted by BrandX
To my understanding it was a Cryptic/Re-licensing the Engine problem.
Cryptic wanted to get rid of the competition, so they raised the price of the license, NCSoft didn't think it would make back the investment. I think with i24, it totally would have. |
I don't see how looking who to burn, when we still have a chance to save the game is at all productive. If you want to burn someone, wait until CoH's fate is already set in stone. As long as we have a chance to save it, however slim, put the pitchforks down, and focus on saving it, not counterproductive personal vengeance that can only serve to make yourself feel a tiny bit better, while accomplishing nothing in practice. But I'm sure I'll have someone reply to this saying I don't care for CoH because I'm not squandering the little time we have to make a difference with revenge.
Edit: Oo, another BaBs quote I'd not seen... so at least three
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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For one moment, the world was fine. Now it's gone.
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Originally Posted by mercykilling
Fix'd.
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Kitsune...nay. Not revenge....justice.
You seem to think all I'm doing is trying to burn down NCSoft. I'm not. I'm VERY active in trying to save this game. Handwritten letters? Sent to the CEO via certified mail pleading to do whatever is in their power to do to not just abandon the game so many love? Done.
Petitions signed.
Money set aside for any possibility of a kickstart? Done.
But I'm also going to burn down corporate greed. I'll fight it until I draw my last dying, wheezing breath. THAT is what this event did to me. Woke me up. Opened my eyes. Made me hate greed, which is very likely at the root of this event. No solid proof, true. But in my heart I feel strongly it's money. The fact the CEO's of the corporation can't afford their mistresses gold necklaces any more. Or the business trips to massage parlors and the "happy finish". Or any number of other things the wealthy enjoy that the poor do not. And not just any poor....but the poor who ultimately contribute to their wealth. That's US. Even if you don't think you're poor, you are compared to them.
Even the team at Paragon Studios, whom we all love very much....are poor compared to them. Especially now.
That is my grievance. It is my mission. These forums are my starting media point.
I'd suggest coming up with a better backstory than 'a game I played was shut down' if you want to be taken seriously in your war on corporate greed.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
I'd suggest coming up with a better backstory than 'a game I played was shut down' if you want to be taken seriously in your war on corporate greed.
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Quite so. Plenty of evidence out there, too.
Worry not, young padwan. I know people that have been collecting evidence for years. Until recently, I was among those that debunked them. No more.
And....have my words hurt you so much that you wish to tear down this good thing I'm trying to do? Or are you truly offering advice in the best interest of this cause?
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I'm saying such a backstory will make people take you less seriously than when they see a picture of this guy:|
Originally Posted by mercykilling
And....have my words hurt you so much that you wish to tear down this good thing I'm trying to do? Or are you truly offering advice in the best interest of this cause?
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Interpret my intent however makes you feel best.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Clearly, Mercykilling is the hero we deserve, but not the one we need.
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Very well put. I rarely ever met people who had played COX. I was usually the one doing the sales pitches to friends, family, and neighbors.
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Originally Posted by Combat
The game didn't wrong; the marketing did. And this started even before the game was released. The real problem of the game is that it was a well-kept secret, which is a hard way to run an MMO. The only reason it stayed around for so long was because of the loyalty of the fanbase, because it did too little to get itself in the hands of new players.
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Weird, I met a surprising amount of people who played CoX in other mmos. Of course, they were all past players, not current ones. I may have met one or two on Team Fortress 2, but never on any other non-mmo game.
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Originally Posted by BurnSucka
Very well put. I rarely ever met people who had played COX. I was usually the one doing the sales pitches to friends, family, and neighbors.
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I'm generally disgusted by corporate greed, myself. I see the effects of it regularly even within the small corporation I work for. But I also see odd decisions get made that, at best, pay lip service to financial motivation but which really seem to be rooted in petty social concerns - corporate politics, I would call it. And that's what this whole fiasco seems like to me.
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Originally Posted by mercykilling
But I'm also going to burn down corporate greed. I'll fight it until I draw my last dying, wheezing breath. THAT is what this event did to me. Woke me up. Opened my eyes. Made me hate greed, which is very likely at the root of this event.
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
This may be elsewhere on the board, I've not read every thread in detail, but I took the time to go through NCSoft's statements back into 2008... and there is a definite trend in terms of CoH's income, and it's not good.
CoH/V Revenues (Millions of Won)
2007
Q4 5401
2008
Q1 5416
Q2 5743
Q3 6193
Q4 6865
2009
Q1 6837
Q2 6673
Q3 5471
Q4 3928
2010
Q1 3348
Q2 3941
Q3 5709
Q4 3239
2011
Q1 3055
Q2 2787
Q3 2812
Q4 3453
2012
Q1 2890
Q2 2855
You can see the bump from GR in Fall of 10, but then I also notice that Freedom didn't really spike revenue.
I'm not an accountant, and I have no clue what expenses were, but that's what they've published.
(All on Virtue)
Guidestar: lvl50 Grav/FF Controller
Madame Insight: Lvl 50 El/El Blaster
Astrolabe Lvl 50 Grav/Eng Dom
Too many others to consider.
Thanks for collecting this information, Ashtur.
I played the first part of Who Will Die yesterday, and it struck me how technical issues prevented me from enjoying the story. It reminded me how often I've had to go look at the console to check out what characters said, and for a game that's story heavy (which is one thing I love about it) that's a problem. For one example, it looks like Synapse was there at the end and said something, because the text was there, but I never saw him. All I saw was a black screen.
I'm not saying that's what killed the game, but I would guess that such problems make it a harder sell for new players.
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Eh, supervillains have started their careers toward world domination over less.
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
I'd suggest coming up with a better backstory than 'a game I played was shut down' if you want to be taken seriously in your war on corporate greed.
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Only problem with that list of numbers, at least in one sense, is the US Dollar <-> Korean Won fluctuated quite a lot over that time period, even between quarters.
Here's that list converted into dollars based on average exchange rate for that quarter.
CoH/V Revenues (Millions of US $)
2007
Q4 5.874 - NCSoft buys off Cryptic and forms Paragon Studio, Issue 11 (end of Nov)
2008 - 22.243
Q1 5.684
Q2 5.655 - Issue 12 (mid May)
Q3 5.841
Q4 5.063 - Issue 13 (beginning of Dec), the "death" of PvP (by some)
2009 - 17.684
Q1 4.850
Q2 5.201 - Architect Edition Box came out, Issue 14 (early Apr) and Issue 15 (late June)
Q3 4.425 - Issue 16 (mid Sep)
Q4 3.373
2010 - 14.030
Q1 2.935
Q2 3.395 - Issue 17 (end of Apr)
Q3 4.834 - Going Rogue Box came out, Issue 18 (mid Aug)
Q4 2.866 - Issue 19 (end of Nov)
2011 - 10.933
Q1 2.734 - Issue 19.5 (beg of Feb)
Q2 2.576 - Issue 20 (beg of Apr) and 20.5 (end of Jun)
Q3 2.605 - Freedom, Issue 21 (mid Sep)
Q4 3.018 - Issue 21.5 (beg of Dec)
2012
Q1 2.559 - Issue 22 (beg of Mar)
Q2 2.485 - Issue 23 (end of May)
Note the upswing in revenues when an actual physical box set shows up in a store.
Yes the first two quarters of 2012 is down from 2011 by about 5%. Q2 was down only 3.5% from the previous Q2 in US dollars. Now if you look at all the games they call out in their quarterly presentation;
Aion down 33.0% year over year
Lineage II down 29.1%
Lineage I down 11.8%
GW down 43.3%
CoH up 2.4% (when comparing revenue in KRW)
So of all the games they called out individually, only CoH was up in KRW when comparing same quarters. Still down in US $ a tad but there is a worldwide economic downturn going on, just look at the revenues from every listed region;
Korea down 12.3%
Japan down only 1.2%
Taiwan down 45.3%
Europe down an incredible 86.1%
North America down 16.2%
Overall down 14.9%
So every region's revenues were down. Revenues from every game they listed individually were down, except for CoH which is only down 5% if you take the exchange rate into consideration.
From a cold calculating look at the numbers it appears on the surface that the graphic engine revamp in Issue 18 didn't spark a boost in users. Or Level 50 raids in Issue 19 and larger raids in Issue 20. Or the conversion to a hybrid F2P model. Or new content every quarter for the last nine quarters. We seem to be permanently stuck in the $2.5 to $3 million a quarter.
On face value it wasn't the game not doing well, relative to the rest of their line, I think the reason is more esoteric, it missed projected targets or NCSoft believes the money they spent on Paragon Studio could be better spent on something else with a better rate of return than what this game made. Or it could be a case of making an example for the investors, showing they are trimming away portions of their business that aren't helping significantly in revenues or profits to "refocus on their core markets", some silliness like that.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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"I feel in my heart" is reasoning equally as bad as the one you're trying to combat. I'm not saying City of Heroes doesn't need defenders right now, but what I AM saying is that fanatical defenders who don't watch what they're saying can do more harm than good. Tony has been explicit in this - and I agree with him wholeheartedly - that antagonising pretty much anybody, especially NCsoft, helps nobody.|
Originally Posted by mercykilling
But in my heart I feel strongly it's money.
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This isn't some crusade we can "win" by brute force. We have neither the numbers nor the pull nor the money to constitute any kind of force. The only thing we have, really, is City of Heroes and its many strengths. In order for other people, especially corporate leadership in the various game publishers, to understand this is to be diplomatic about it.
If you have to start a campaign against corporate greed, at least wait until the deal with City of Heroes has been settled, one way or another. To go to war now will just burn what's left of the game.
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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.
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As angry as I am at NCsoft right now, I have to agree with this. Just listen to reason for a bit. Let's see what we can do to save it, before we go and start fires. Don't burn the bridge while we are still on it, as it were.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
"I feel in my heart" is reasoning equally as bad as the one you're trying to combat. I'm not saying City of Heroes doesn't need defenders right now, but what I AM saying is that fanatical defenders who don't watch what they're saying can do more harm than good. Tony has been explicit in this - and I agree with him wholeheartedly - that antagonising pretty much anybody, especially NCsoft, helps nobody.
This isn't some crusade we can "win" by brute force. We have neither the numbers nor the pull nor the money to constitute any kind of force. The only thing we have, really, is City of Heroes and its many strengths. In order for other people, especially corporate leadership in the various game publishers, to understand this is to be diplomatic about it. If you have to start a campaign against corporate greed, at least wait until the deal with City of Heroes has been settled, one way or another. To go to war now will just burn what's left of the game. |
"I have something to say! It's better to burn out then to fade away!"
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Originally Posted by That_Ninja
Clearly, Mercykilling is the hero we deserve, but not the one we need.
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Chief Hamster of the Fist of Justice / Shadows of Victory
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Rock, rock on Hamster.
To my understanding it was a Cryptic/Re-licensing the Engine problem.
Cryptic wanted to get rid of the competition, so they raised the price of the license, NCSoft didn't think it would make back the investment.
I think with i24, it totally would have.
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