Mission Architect - CoH killer?
By
afocks,
Posted on: 2012-09-16 19:35 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I find it curious that you assert that people refuse to accept it as one of the reasons. I don't think I've seen anyone assert it couldn't have contributed. The counter arguments have been that it was not the single "death knell" factor that your OP suggests. Several posters, myself included, have suggested that it may have gotten some people to leave when considered on top of other factors, such as burn-out, dissatisfaction with prior releases, the economy, etc.|
Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
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.
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When people refer to something as the straw that broke the camel's back, the implication is, in fact, that the straw had a role in the back breaking. It just wasn't the main factor. There may not have even been a main factor - just a really big pile of straw.
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From an RP'ers perspective the AE system was invaluable. Pretty much the Holy Grail of MMO RPing, especially when it came to playing a villain (since, as you know, Villains Act, Heroes React) so being able to create our own schemes was a godsend. Literally 95% of the RPing I've done in the last year wouldn't have been possible without AE.
Honestly, if a player is willing to leave because the devs added something to a part of the game that they don't even have to look at, they would have left anyways, just for a different reason.
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Strangely enough, I don't know any player who quit the game because of reasons you listed.|
Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
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...... |
Although, I know handful of people who quit in protest of handling bans over MA exploits. These people just get up and went palying some F2P FPS. Most of them were back in 6-12 months though.
I also know handful of people who unsubbed their 2nd and 3rd accounts for the same reason. I don't think they resubbed these accounts afterwards.
I -loved- the MA system...massive RP sessions and comedic stories, ahoy!!
Baffled(and still baffles) me as to why people would want to exploit such a wonderful creation for the sole purpose of power-leveling...haven't played since late 2009, but discovered just yesterday that my -own- creations are still out there...hopefully, they're still useable, and if so, I'm working on getting some friends to get screengrabs and possibly even demo files out of it! 
Pretty decent responses again.
MA was just something that I always felt damaged the game. Right from the off, I was worried about the long term consequences of its introduction.
I have to say that my comments were not aimed at the players who genuinely used MA to make interesting missions to play.
It wasn't my intention to undermine anyone who used MA as it was intended to be used.
My intent was always to highlight the harm that misuse of MA caused - and indeed the lack of new content that was left out in place of MA.
There isn't much more for me to say.
Thanks for your time.
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Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
Pretty decent responses again.
MA was just something that I always felt damaged the game. Right from the off, I was worried about the long term consequences of its introduction. I have to say that my comments were not aimed at the players who genuinely used MA to make interesting missions to play. It wasn't my intention to undermine anyone who used MA as it was intended to be used. My intent was always to highlight the harm that misuse of MA caused - and indeed the lack of new content that was left out in place of MA. There isn't much more for me to say. Thanks for your time. |
What do you do ?
You look over to the guy with the gun and say, "I told them to cut down on fatty foods"
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Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
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Now it's a little bit clearer.
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Originally Posted by mauk2
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Well, since the system of the MA grew out of an internal tool created to make the Devs more efficient at writing missions... it therefore seems less unlikely that creating MA displaced huge amounts of content creation elsewhere. They were making the core parts of MA anyway, for their own use.|
Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
and indeed the lack of new content that was left out in place of MA.
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And given that one player who was a talented MA writer went on to be hired by Paragon as a dev to write new missions...
I think implementing Mission Architect had a lower opportunity cost than you might think, in terms of displaced content.
Had it taken off, MA would have been the holy grail of MMO content production, in a way. It would have been a solution to the "Devs take 3 months to create new content, hardcore players finish it in a week, then ask what's next" syndrome. Given that potential, even if we take every criticism of MA as a undisputed fact, it was a risk worth taking by the Devs.
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The problem is that I vividly remember the amount of people on this forum who were complaining about the MA content not being game canon - before it was rolled out to the live servers.|
Originally Posted by Shagster
Well, since the system of the MA grew out of an internal tool created to make the Devs more efficient at writing missions... it therefore seems less unlikely that creating MA displaced huge amounts of content creation elsewhere. They were making the core parts of MA anyway, for their own use.
And given that one player who was a talented MA writer went on to be hired by Paragon as a dev to write new missions... I think implementing Mission Architect had a lower opportunity cost than you might think, in terms of displaced content. Had it taken off, MA would have been the holy grail of MMO content production, in a way. It would have been a solution to the "Devs take 3 months to create new content, hardcore players finish it in a week, then ask what's next" syndrome. Given that potential, even if we take every criticism of MA as a undisputed fact, it was a risk worth taking by the Devs. |
This was deemed to be vitally important, and something that I personally agreed with.
The conclusions that I drew from the forum feeling was that there was never any chance of MA being used by players as a substitute for game canon content, and in the end it was used extensively as a tool to power level toons with ease.
I have no doubt that MA was created with the best of intentions. It just never had any chance of working as it was intended, except for a minority of players who genuinely made good use of it for personal satisfaction.
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From my own personal experience at the time, I remember seeing the announcement of MA and thinking that it was just going to be abused as a power levellers delight and being equally amazed that despite the good intentions of it the devs really thought it would be used as it was intended by the majority; especially as at the time the numbers of low level toons begging for PL in Peregrine was on the increase.
I don't have a problem with people playing the game that way, if that's what they want to do, but CoH is a game best enjoyed in teams. If you're on a relatively low population server and the majority of the population are doing stuff that doesn't interest you (i.e. running farming missions in AE), where does that leave you?
The other thing worth mentioning is that if you do have a system where you can get to the level cap much more quickly than you would normally, its very much like having an infinite lives or invulnerability cheat in an offline game; you play through it to the end and because you've played it with very little challenge, it doesn't give you much incentive to want to play it again.
Granted, I don't think MA was the SOLE reason for the sharp dip in sales in the period mentioned and I do agree that perhaps if it had been implemented better it'd have been more likely to have been used for it's intended purpose, but it's interesting to note that before the XP nerfs to MA you couldn't move for people. Afterwards, it was a more or less empty. To me that shows that a system like MA that allows for player creativity that doesn't give a levelling edge appeals to a relatively small number of the players.
To offer a system like that in place of dev created content at a time when the game really needed it, probably wasn't the best move for a game that was already starting to show a steady decline.
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I'm late to this party. To answer the OP - No.
To ignore the fact the economy tanked at that time and blame MA, would be about as naive as to blame the tanking economy on CoH. Nearly every chart across the market looked exactly like that.
Plus, MA to me was one of the greatest things ever, and was yet another aspect of ingenuity provided by the developers of this game that separated it from so many others. It was (and still is) so much fun to be able to create your own missions, your own character stories/origins and lore, etc.
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This combined with the absolute lack of advertising ever seem to be the major culprits, near as I can tell.
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Originally Posted by Knight_of_Armor
To ignore the fact the economy tanked at that time and blame MA, would be about as naive as to blame the tanking economy on CoH. Nearly every chart across the market looked exactly like that.
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Problem is advertising costs money and it's not all that cheap.
Why do we see WoW ads, because it has over a billion in revenues every year. If they set aside a mere 1% for advertising, that's more than this game had last year in revenues. And from what I can tell, it's normally recommended to have an ad budget in the 4-8% of gross revenues.
So NCSoft did the cheap way to advertise, press releases and granting of interviews to MMO gamer sites. They may have even taken out web ads but I would have never known since I've run with adblockers since they were first introduced to Firefox and Chrome.
How much did it cost them to run the GameStop Going Rogue promotion? How about the Razor promotion? Do you think they're free? When PC gamer magazines all went online and then folded into the main site (RIP CGW/Games for Windows 
) they couldn't run conventional print ads anymore. The two major comic book labels had their own MMO plans for years so I can see why they couldn't advertise there. It costs a lot to get bodies on the ground with booths at the major comic book and game cons.
And the hurdle of convincing people to spend $15 a month to play the game you just spent $30-50 on really limits the number of people you can hook even when the first month is free decreases the conversion rate (people who buy / people who've seen the ad). And that low conversion rate relative to the ad costs could be used as an argument to gut the ad budget of the game.
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Hey, I'm not claiming ads are free, I'm just pointing out that there are a great many people who to this day have no idea City of Heroes even existed in the first place! It's a gamble, certainly, but maybe had a larger amount of revenue gone into advertising it would have had a much stronger impact. I'd like to think it would have made a difference, at any rate. I've seen people leave due to burnout or financial reasons, but I've never seen anyone say, "I didn't like this game, I have no interest in it." Given this game's heavy degree of player retention, a more aggressive advertising campaign would have been a safer bet than it would otherwise be in more conventional circumstances.
But again, I could be wrong.
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Thanks, Fluct; I bet what you've written how many former subscribers feel; however, I urge you NOT to feel sad. As harder economic times have hit, various friends have had to give up MMO subscriptions, even as they didn't want to. Seems to me, what you did made sense at the time. I don't recall ever seeing a notice, official or otherwise, that CoH was in danger of ending due to either a lack of players or revenues/profits.
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Originally Posted by Fluct
CoH revenue has been slowly declining for years and in part that'll be due to people like me. I realise that probably sounds weird, why would anyone admit to that, but I guess I represent a silent percentage of the player base.
I bought the game at European release and played solidly until a few months after CoV arrived as part of a very active SG coalition. However once people had one or two 50s they tended to lose interest, with nothing compelling to do at max level they were left with alting for replayability. As people began to leave the game, and friends lists became silent, it just started feeling boring. The weird thing is I kept my subscription for quite a while even though I wasn't playing at all. Eventually though economics caught up and I cancelled. Since then I've regularly come back, but rarely for more than a month at a time. Why? I'm not sure. Since Paragon took over the reigns the game has improved immensely, but something just doesn't grab me long term and my sub inevitably cancels again. I've been doing this repeatedly for the past 4 years, you'll notice I'm not a VIP at the moment as my most recent subscription literally finished just prior to the announcement. I'm a fan of the game, I'm definitely a fan of the Dev team - but I've not subscribed as much as I feel I should have - as much as the game has deserved. In effect I've contributed directly to it's downfall in some small way. That makes me sad. |
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I guess I'll have to let all the older veteran players speak to this. I started under Issue 15, so Mission Archetect and many other features were standard for me that you all saw developed. I don't really see how AE/MA could be construed as leading contributor to the decline of CoH player popularity. Every seven and eight year veteran I'm spoken with has taken a break from CoH for some period of time and for a variety of reasons, usually personal and not game related at all. (Yeah I know, some veteran MMO players DO leave to check out every new game, just to see, but many if not most return.)
Some people wrote really GREAT stories using Mission Architect--I'd hoped to do so but never did--and I love those arcs as well as those developed by Paragon Studios. Yeah, there were tons of XP/AE ticket farms/farmers, so what? MA added more options, which I think is good. I was still cutting my teeth on original content and MMO gaming in general when I met one of my oldest friends here. Her brother had gotten her playing and over the course of a couple of days had PLed her Def to 50. When I met her she was solo on a low level tanker, as she put it "learning to play" CoH. Over the course of the next three years we each got several alts to 50, joined active supergroups and rarely missed a day online (prior to 8/31/12). We still played AE when we felt like it. Pardon my digression into reminiscence. I don't think Mission Architect is the smoking gun.
aka @Kristoff von Gelmini, leader of small SG bases (Infinity/Victory/Virtue/Protector), member of The House of Tera (Justice) and various others (Champion/Infinity/Victory/Guardian/Freedom).
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Yes, the trolls and other miscreants have been set free in this forum.
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
We've come to this now, turning on the game as the cause.
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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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So I'm a troll for posting something that I firmly believe in and have given reasons for my belief - and have provided figures to evidence why I think I'm right?|
Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Yes, the trolls and other miscreants have been set free in this forum.
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I also said at the time AE was released that It was potentially dangerous to the longevity of this game - for the very reasons that are contained in my posts in this thread.
If you think I enjoy being right about that, then think again.......
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Your evidence mostly seems to be as convincing as the evidence that hemlines control the stock market while ignoring all the other factors out there affecting hemlines and markets both. You might as well pick some celebrity who died the same year the international financial crisis started and claim their death caused it. Did MA also cause the similar declines seen in many other MMOs at the time?
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Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
So I'm a troll for posting something that I firmly believe in and have given reasons for my belief - and have provided figures to evidence why I think I'm right?
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i make stuff...
Problem is you weren't right. MANY factors contributed to a decline in subs.... but only one thing killed CoH - NCSoft. AE went live in April of 2009...So no AE did not KILL CoH. There are MANY factors why sub #'s shrink...why profit shrinks... to try and state that AE was even a minor part of it is laughable at best.
There is more of an argument in stating that Incarnates "Doomed" CoH than AE...and no I do not believe that to be true either. While I would LOVE for CoH to continue it did have a great 8.5 year run...to forget that is to diminish the hard work put in by every dev who has been a part of this game.
Did SOME people dislike AE... I am sure they did. Did SOME people quit over AE...NO ONE will ever know. Sure you can say "Well I played with So and So and they said they quit because of AE (Stupid excuse btw)," But maybe they were too proud to admit financial hardship at the time and AE made a great scapegoat to keep one's pride intact.
People quit games for a multitude of reasons: loss of job, increase in bills, boredom, family issues (deaths/births/marriage), change of career, etc etc... Your little graph does not state WHY people quit when they did...it simply ASSUMES.... and you know what they say about people who assume
And for every person you say quit because of AE... I can just as easily state... I know X amount of people who came to CoH because of AE. The TRUTH is no one will ever know why subs shrink...but you go right ahead and ASSUME it was AE instead of a plethora of other things it could have been
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Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
So I'm a troll for posting something that I firmly believe in and have given reasons for my belief - and have provided figures to evidence why I think I'm right?
I also said at the time AE was released that It was potentially dangerous to the longevity of this game - for the very reasons that are contained in my posts in this thread. If you think I enjoy being right about that, then think again....... |
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Your evidence mostly seems to be as convincing as the evidence that hemlines control the stock market while ignoring all the other factors out there affecting hemlines and markets both. You might as well pick some celebrity who died the same year the international financial crisis started and claim their death caused it. Did MA also cause the similar declines seen in many other MMOs at the time?
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Why don't you try and read the thread first - then attempt to throw in some lame comparisons....
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100% correct.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
Problem is you weren't right. MANY factors contributed to a decline in subs.... but only one thing killed CoH - NCSoft. AE went live in April of 2009...So no AE did not KILL CoH. There are MANY factors why sub #'s shrink...why profit shrinks... to try and state that AE was even a minor part of it is laughable at best.
There is more of an argument in stating that Incarnates "Doomed" CoH than AE...and no I do not believe that to be true either. While I would LOVE for CoH to continue it did have a great 8.5 year run...to forget that is to diminish the hard work put in by every dev who has been a part of this game. Did SOME people dislike AE... I am sure they did. Did SOME people quit over AE...NO ONE will ever know. Sure you can say "Well I played with So and So and they said they quit because of AE (Stupid excuse btw)," But maybe they were too proud to admit financial hardship at the time and AE made a great scapegoat to keep one's pride intact. People quit games for a multitude of reasons: loss of job, increase in bills, boredom, family issues (deaths/births/marriage), change of career, etc etc... Your little graph does not state WHY people quit when they did...it simply ASSUMES.... and you know what they say about people who assume And for every person you say quit because of AE... I can just as easily state... I know X amount of people who came to CoH because of AE. The TRUTH is no one will ever know why subs shrink...but you go right ahead and ASSUME it was AE instead of a plethora of other things it could have been |
This is a forum. I'm posting my assumptions and beliefs - not anyone else's.
I believe that the introduction of AE and the subsequent ramifications caused a backlash and a player loss/revenue drop that effectively torpedoed this game below the waterline.
Yes there certainly were other factors that undoubtedly contributed to this game's sudden drop in revenue, but I believe that AE caused an ungodly amount of damage to the game that was simply unnecessary and unforeseen but sadly irreversible.
It's my belief only, and whilst I fully understand and respect that others might not share that belief - it doesn't make me wrong.
Proud member of FOXBASE ALPHA and coalition associates.
Hero 50's - 25
Villain 50's - 1
And I assume that MANY factors of a more personal nature contributed to declining subs. Doesn't really matter WHY subs decreased....CoH was still bringing in profit...just not enough profit for NCSoft... So yes.. NCSoft killed CoH ...nothing else but corporate greed
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Originally Posted by Cobra_Man
100% correct.
This is a forum. I'm posting my assumptions and beliefs - not anyone else's. I believe that the introduction of AE and the subsequent ramifications caused a backlash and a player loss/revenue drop that effectively torpedoed this game below the waterline. It's my belief only, and whilst I fully understand and respect that others might not share that belief - it doesn't make me wrong. |
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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Anyone who claimed they left because AE ruined the game for them was likely going to leave anyway. AE was something you could completely avoid and didn't have to deal with at all. The only people that were "forced" to participate in AE were badgers. The only reason badgers would have quit due to AE, was Positron's thermonuclear hissy fit and badge ectomy. That wasn't an AE issue. We had people who didn't know how to play before AE, we had them After AE was nerfed, again and again and we still have them.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
Did SOME people dislike AE... I am sure they did. Did SOME people quit over AE...NO ONE will ever know. Sure you can say "Well I played with So and So and they said they quit because of AE (Stupid excuse btw)," But maybe they were too proud to admit financial hardship at the time and AE made a great scapegoat to keep one's pride intact. |
I always viewed our developers critically I make no secret of it, but if you want to understand the problem it was never anything individual. It wasn't even any particular poor decision, it was always the lack of follow through. Our developers were like Thomas Edison's Goatee wearing counterparts from another universe. Where Edison would have an idea and hammer at it till it was perfect and then hammer at it more, our guys would have an idea leave it half done move on to the next thing.
You don't get a good hit by just making contact with the ball, it takes follow through.
I actually saw a big surge in people interested in the game and especially in Mission Architect story arcs when Architect Edition was first released. The novelty of player-created content was a huge draw. This died down after a couple months though; the shiny-ness wore off and incarnate trials became the new shiny thing that people chased. Even the devs seemed to lose interest in Mission Architect, instead switching their focus towards creating "end game" content, which is rather sad because Mission Architect is one of the most innovative and brilliant game features they've created.
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