Mission Architect - CoH killer?

I've been trying to figure out what caused the decline in revenue of our game in 2009. The start of the second quarter heralded a sharp decline in revenue - according to the chart below.

The only obvious reason that I can see is the introduction of MA.

I know that I was extremely unhappy with MA when it was introduced (and I made that clear in forum posts), as it made it ridiculously easy for anyone to achieve level 50 in a matter of hours - and continues to this day to be a place where power levelers are happily operating.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that MA pretty much broke the game for a great number of people - and contributed directly to the situation that we're in right now.

Am I right, or do the figures point to some other reason for the drop?

I think that's a stretch. I won't say its impossible, but I find it hard to believe it was solely responsible.

I consider it more likely that 1Q 2009 was the global economy really tumbling into the crapper that was responsible for that. The very first thing that goes when times get tight are discretionary expenditures, and game subscriptions are right up there.

It may have contributed to some loss, but no one I know left over it.

The only thing that killed CoH was NCSoft's loss of interest in the US/EU market. That or miscommunication about what the US/EU market wanted in an MMO.

competeing mmos

Well let's see, like someone pointed out already, the economy went down the crapper. Also, wasn't 2009 the year that Champions Online came out?

I wasn't interested in Mission Architect, and I saw very little else from I14 to I18 to make me want to resub. Sure, they made some QoL improvements, and I think some power proliferation, but there wasn't much new to do, and I didn't want to just keep running the same old content. Judging by the revenue numbers, I'm thinking that I wasn't the only one who felt this way.

We've come to this now, turning on the game as the cause.

Yes in 2009 there was a sudden drop in revenue during the later half of that year. Yes MA came out in 2009. So did official Mac support rather than Bootcamp. So did the first round of power customization. So did Aion and Champions Online.

I really would like to believe that players weren't so petty that they left because they didn't like others PLing with reckless abandon or because of the devs repeated attempts to halt the PLing with reckless abandon. Or that the repeated attempts to fix things broke legitimate stories time and again because cleverer players kept finding ways to abuse what was believed to be safe.

Or is your premise that the influx of AE babies consumed new players so quickly they quickly grew tired with the game so they were gone within the first few months than hang around and let the game grow on them? Or that the barrage of AE spam drove existing players away? Or maybe all of the above.

I personally never got into AE at all. I wrote terrible dungeons in college, I'm a big believer in what's commonly known as Sturgeon's Law and I knew trying to find good stories to play would be nearly impossible. So I ignored it. Turned off broadcast, hid from general search and always started in Galaxy.

And when Posi went nuclear the forums erupted with the usual arguments about exploits (how should I have know?), PLing (they said you could level up with just AE missions) and the pros and cons about farming. But it was just a rehash by the usual suspects from either side of the issues.

But still it was a permanent 40% dip in revenue. That's a lot of POed players, way more than what I would expect from those ticked off over an optional system like AE.

Not surprised

This offered a way to power level and get exp fast....(thus it made some people feel they completed the game and had nothing to do when leveling up super fast)

I kept telling the developers through messages onthe forums and suggerstion to stop giving exp...and influence and to only have more tickets....

But instead they made it so you could get more exp....and less tickets...>_>

They didnt listen....but i did warn them.

They should have listened to the Kitty

Agreeing with Uber here..it may have helped, by not the sole thing.

As much as I hated MA..no, wait..I didn't hate it. Have always thought it was a truly awesome tool, and in the hands of the more creative and wise players we have..it could have been utterly fantastic.
Weekly or monthly User created weekly AE tfs, more publicity to the winners etc. I played some truly amazing arcs.
The best would have to be Blight by Witch Engine (I THINK that was it..sorry if I am mistaken) that just did amazing things with the game and mission engine, that I would not have even thought about...or even thought possible.

That said..AE, for the first..year or whatever, was awful. We all know the PLing that went on. As broken as fire kins (or whatever) were in BM farms, all those ae exploits were just so stupid.
I actually just had an argument about in on the Beta server. My stance was that the ae farming and exploits WAS bad for the game, regardless of your feelings about pling. I still say it was..anything that pulls people away from the content..is bad.

The worst things about AE for me..was how stupidly obvious it SHOULD have been..that it would become a farming tool. Seriously, before AE, you could spend 5 mins in PI and tell how it would end up. Not that I miss PI being full of farmers..but at the least having farms in PI taught people how to use the Green Line..

Then the way the Devs just patched up each exploit in turn..as if it would STOP people trying to find them. And now..we have the Hall of Fame full of fire farms. Awesome.

I don't think AE killed the game..but in no way was it as good for the game as it was bad.

The way I see it, MA came out in I14, right? And CoH didn't die until slightly less than TEN ISSUES LATER! If MA was responsible, CoH would've been dead much sooner if you ask me.

I think it's more along the lines of...

1) New Games - CoH Killer!

Seriously, how many times have we seen people leave (and maybe come back) because a new game came out. With every new MMO, we lost players.

2) Economy - CoH Killer!

People couldn't afford the sub. Budgets got tightened.

3) Entitlement Issues - CoH Killer!

"I can't solo everything! I'm leaving!" or "I'm not handed everything free! I'm leaving!" or even the basic "Oh look! I can come back and play for free, never buy anything, and I'm okay with that!"

All valid reasons.

That all hurts the loyal fanbase, as the game becomes less and less profitable.

Though, I do think if CoH didn't go through that rough patch between, what was it i6 and i9? Maybe things would of played out differently.

Not necessarily a CoH killer since the game persisted for a while longer before NCSoft gave it the ax. That and we still don't know for sure what the operating costs for City of Heroes looked like. Or the operating expenses out of Paragon Studios period.

But all those reasons you listed, BrandX, I'm sure they had a hand in cutting the revenue in half.

I wonder if where the revenue would have looked if NCSoft stayed their hand for a year or more, though. Would the revenue's steady decline have stabilized?

Architect Entertainment, I13's PVP changes, Enhancement Diversification, City of Villains, Going Rogue, raid-style end game content, OP Incarnate Powers, a non-existent Moon Base, and any other feature anyone ever complained about all teamed up to kill CoH.

I'd also add to the list the very slow progression of the game's story.

Coming Storm (tm), anyone?

In a way, it seemed that for the longest time nothing was happening.

It might have been nice to have some sort of annual story event, serialized like SSA, but available to all levels, and then chucked into Ouro when the year is up ... and on to the next annual story.

It would be nice to be able to look back on the game year by year and think back, "Oh yeah ... that was the year of the big Praetorian battle," or "that was the year of the Shivan invasion."

Clearly, it was a Nemesis Plot that killed the game.

Disclaimer: I like AE. It certainly helped keep my interest going in the game

Alternate explanations.

If you want to 2nd guess you have a target rich environment. These are all items I found really annoying and or I know people that were turned off to the point they left.

1. I13/14,I15,I16,I17 were all IMNSHO very meh issues.
2. I18 introduced 4 new zones that didn't get much use.
3. New maps/zones were very unfriendly to older graphics cards
4. There were some very unpopular nerfs over the time period. That in light of where the game is now were pointless
5. The reward system in the game became ever more strange. The best way to directly gain rewards was to have large number of alts running SSA1. Ouro arcs and older content got mercilessly punished. Why is Sister Psyche as a flashback only worth 20 merits ?
6. The lack of solo path for incarnates, and when one did come it actively had a goal of punishing soloists for pursuing it. The Dark Astoria repeatables offer an incarnate component once a day ??
7. Population decline on servers was never well addressed. The closest we got to a solution was the free transfer/month. Really not a good solution for people with large bases, more than the base number of slots/server or close ties to groups on servers
8. Bind on acquire currencies/items coming into the game
9. Proliferation of unneeded unwanted currencies
10. Two different modes of incarnate progression Ixp unlock/currency acquisition
11. Two base incarnate currencies shards and threads forced playing particular content to advance beyond a certain point.