Mission Architect - CoH killer?

LOL

MA is what brought me back after my 6 month hiatus.

More zones?? really?? Blue Side has/had way too many zones in the first place.

MANY factors contributed to the decline in revenue....stating it was one factor more so than the other without PROOF is... well.. simple internet arguing.

Since you are the one who is trying to convince others that the decline in revenue is mainly due to the implementation of MA.... Either show some facts....or be viewed as just another person whining/arguining without any merit/proof.

Quote:

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

Looking at the chart, the first, and only, really big dip was about when WoW came out. Then it bottoms out and settles, we get a huge spike, then it settles again a little lower, and pretty much stays constant from there on.

The only thing we can conclude from this, is that the game eventually found its core player base. I can't see any reason that the game wouldn't be financially viable given that steady number. If you know how many core players you have, you can adjust your costs to make the game profitable with that many players.

Nothing else matters. MMOs usually seem to have that big drop off after the first X amount of months. Did WoW draw away players that didn't return? Probably. A bunch would have left anyway, though. Did MA make people leave? Certainly? Did it attract players? Yep. Did any other number of changes cause some flux? Almost certainly.

Nothing killed City of Heroes except NCSoft's internal decisions. If it wasn't profitable, that's on NCSoft. If it wasn't profitable enough, that's also on NCSoft. They had a game with a known and stable number of regular players. There's no reason they couldn't have made it profitable.

So, the blame game and finger pointing is really pretty pointless.

As I pointed out earlier, the economic crisis and the release of Champions Online were both going on that year. It seems reasonable to conclude those factored significantly into the Great Decline. It seems some people are just bringing back their ax to grind with AE again.

And I also knew no one that left because of AE.

I generally avoided it myself, though, as it was generally hard to find a legitimate story arc rather than a farm, so I pretty much played through dev-created content as I was still new to the game at the time anyway. I had started playing during Issue 13.

Looking for easy single factors is silly.

That's like saying "Oh noes, they killed Statesman now the game's dead!"

The reality it's probably a combination of things - a tanking western economy, too many zones - Praetoria was mostly a graveyard for tubleweed, and only two servers ever really got past the "almost thinking about the possibility of wondering if we need to consider capacity"

Epic marketing fail: outside of the fan base, learning about CoH became difficult. Unless you were interested in MMOs and kept up with the big sites there seemed to be no external advertising. Great for those in the superhero bubble. Crap for those outside it.

Backroom discussions by person(s) unknown. Clearly CoH, whilst making a profit wasn't making enough profit and probably wasn't ever likely to repay the investment NCSoft had made in it quickly enough to satisfy the shareholders. This, above all else, is the overriding reason.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I quit playing at Issue 13 until almost Issue 19 mainly because issues 9-13 wreaked havoc on my enjoyment of the game. The huge changes like ED, constant and relentless regen nerfs, GDN and the introduction of IOs (and grinding/crafting with same) just made the game too different to be enjoyable to me for a time. I only got back in when the Incarnate system opened up endgame opps for me....which, unfortunately, ended up being yet more grinding/crafting.

The game has run its course IMO.

The only person I ever knew to ragequit the game did so over ED. I've known a lot of people that burned out over the years though, myself included. I was... extremely aggravated at most PuG's when the first 2 iTrials came out, so I took a step back and figured I'd probably come back to the game when I could enjoy it again. I kept my subscription though.

I have seen a lot of people who burned out and stayed out come back over the last 2 weeks though. And for them, it's new and fun again.

Interesting and valid points from most people.

Whilst I can see that there could have been other factors involved in the revenue dip, I find it curious that people refuse to accept that MA could be the reason for the dip - or at least one of the reasons.

I have no idea who's baby MA was and I have no axe to grind with it.

It was simply an observation based on my experience with the game at the time.

When the game was crying out for new content, we were given MA instead. If we had been given normal new content, I don't believe that the dip would have occurred - or at least have been as pronounced as it was.

Knightward .... It wasn't a ragequit episode ... more of a frustrated/annoyed feeling with the game direction.



It's my opinion only.

I respect other peoples opinions on the matter, and I suppose that's where we should probably leave it.

Here's hoping we can save this game in any case......

Save the game but blame AE for making people quit the game? Yeah right... I see you, just like I did after reading your initial post.

This is the kind of trolling that will not be missed. Pfft.