Mission Architect - CoH killer?

Well, I can't argue against what you are saying. For truly great AE's such as "Talos Vice", we ran that as a small team when my friend who was leading said, "This is too funny! We have to run this again with each of you holding the 'star' to see how funny and well done this is."

Additionally, Largo, while I feel your criticism is fair, it also applies to regular, non-AE content. I used to feel some frustration at players who seemed only to want to click thru quickly, even the battles and get to the reward. Among a different set of players, it was common for the lead to say "Reading" if the text was long and we none of us hurried while the text was read and any important info relayed. Ditto for all of the signature story arcs, if one of us hadn't played it yet, he or she was the defacto leader so as to get ALL of the story. (Just sayin' how some of us handled this.)

Yeah, that's a great rhetoric and all, but you weren't there to read their chat either.

"where do i buy inspirations"
"what are enhancements"
"Why doesn't hurricane do AoE damage"
"stop pulling them together you'll die"
"the orange inspirations don't do anything"

Trust me, these were not players who'd been in the game long. I specifically remember at least two people getting stuck in a mission because they didn't know there was an exit button.

I don't think you've grasped the idea of debating a topic on a forum.

From what you've said here, if anyone posts something that you don't personally agree with ... that makes them a troll?

Brilliant.

I don't see how you got that conclusion from what he wrote. He's pretty much said the exact opposite.
Your intent/topic/position on any given issue is irrelevant to whether or not people see you as a troll, it's your behavior.....and things like an OP ignoring the on-topic posts in their thread and instead arguing about what constitutes a troll....that's kinda trollish behavior.

I'm not buying that.

Here's a pretty standard definition of an internet troll, this one taken from wikipedia.

A troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response



I started this thread, and I've repeatedly stated that I believe what I wrote in the OP - and every subsequent post I've made.

I've assured Uber and others that it was not a troll thread.

Despite this they have derailed this thread by labeling me a troll (off topic messages) and have continued to throw about insults, which quite simply appear to me to be designed to provoke an emotional response from me.

Do you not think that ticks the boxes as trolling?

He doesn't agree with the subject of the thread - that's fine. I have no problem whatsoever with that.

To start trolling the thread is another matter altogether.

The facts in this case have been laid out already by the party that made the decision. Specifically NC SOFT stated they decided to go in a different direction. They made no reference to declining sales from x point to x point(ie. since AE or ANY other feature was introduced) as a contributing factor in their decision. Attempts by OP and others to "blame" game features that they did not like is nothing more than axe grinding at best.

Z confirmed in the podcast that the target audience of the new secret project was the evolved hardcore gaming market a direction NC SOFT did not want go. There was no reference to declining sales or features driving people away as a contributing factor in NC SOFT's decision.

NC SOFT is going in the direction of big budget blockbusters that cast a wide net targeting as many gamers as possible and did not see specifically targeting the evolved hardcore gaming market as part of that wide net.

So NC SOFT decided not to continue to support the new projects direction and closed Paragon with COH being a casualty of the higher decision.

These are the established facts in this case and were well before this thread appeared. Of course anyone can continue to spout non-factual personal issues they had with the game, that will not change the facts one bit.

I would agree with much of your post.

The point I've been making is that the backlash to AE made it much easier to cancel CoH because I believe that it contributed greatly to the revenue drop.

Would NCsoft have canceled the game had it been drawing in $20,000,000 a year, rather than just (!) $10,000,000?

To be honest, I don't know (and we'll never know) but I'll say that it may have had a bearing on the decision to cancel.

As for this thread, it is indeed based on a personal issue I had with the game - but non factual?

I would point again to the chart I included in the thread.

Yes it could also reflect the launch of CO and the worldwide economic downturn, but my personal experience was that the AE backlash was the real culprit that caused to people leave. Neither CO or the cash economic downturn did anything whatsoever to change the game - AE most certainly did.

NCsoft delivered the final blow, but AE - or rather the misuse of AE - made the game a dead man walking.

That's all I'm saying.

The "backlash" from AE introduced in I17/18? was NOT a contributing factor, nor was ANY other feature or issue including I13 when pvp was close to killed. You saying that they were and showing chart sales do not prove anything other than "your speculation and bias about AE".

It is as simple as NC SOFT and Z put it, they decided to go in a different direction than Paragon was going with the secret project period.

If Z or NC SOFT had mentioned sales as a contributing factor then you would have specific support for the specific claim about sales, but you don't because that had nothing to do with it.

Put away your axe mate, it is blinding you to the established facts that are staring you right in the face.

FWIW you don't seem to be a troll, just stubborn.Your position is ill formed and incomplete most likely because you don't have access the data., and you considerably overstate the case.

If you read the Dev Decisions that killed the game thread, there were an enormous number of things presented that could have contributed to the death of the game. What I saw there was all wrong as well.

What we had was NCsoft not doing it's job. At some point you need mgmt that isn't in love with ideas to rationally evaluate decisions. Every business has bad ideas, makes bad moves, has failures. The successful businesses are those that can recognize , recover from and mitigate their mistakes quickly. CoH quick was 6 months to years. The only people that could be reasonably expected to do this and enforce it on the culture of Paragon Studios was NCsoft. They didn't.

They don't mention but it's there. They haven't canned wildstar. yet despite the fact it's easier to kill a game before launch than after spending the marketing money to bring in customers. You can also be certain that there was a profit number that there was no way NCsoft would walk away from.

I remember reading a while ago (might have actually been in a "free giveaway" book that game with a magazine that apparently 25% of *completed* games get cancelled due to the publisher having similar titles that released around the same time (or that another publisher had a *larger* title out in the same time frame).

Hell, there have been in the past games that were *reviewed* in magazines, that were never released. "Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill" for the SNES is one that springs to mind for some strange reason. "Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors" is another that was not released, although its Desert Bus minigame has recently been released by itself.

Obviously this doesn't happen with the *super big budget* titles, because they are the ones that get all the press. But what about the games that we *don't* hear about. We don't hear about every single game that gets developed, nor what they are working on, until after the fact.

Side note: NCSoft have killed titles in development before. Scott Jennings was working on one whilst he was at NCsoft as a developers, and NCsoft Europe had a dev studio that was working on *something* (i believe it might have been PS3/PC based, but i am going off very bad memory right now, after a conversation with Rockjaw). That was canned before the guttering of the EU offices.

*shrugs*

It is NOT there and that is why it is not mentioned. The reality will always go back to the truth which NC SOFT AND Paragon have BOTH confirmed.

The studio was shutdown because the "NEW" secret project aimed at the evolved hardcore gamer was in a different direction than NC SOFT wanted to go period.

So while it is clear that COH was not a huge money maker (reports have it at 10 million per year), it was NOT closed due to a decline in sales because of AE or ANY other feature/issue.

That claim is personal axe grinding crapola with no real factual support from the parties involved.

What in crappity does that even mean?

No. $10 million/year is revenue, not profit.

The more I hear about this secret project the more sad I get at never being able to play it. Sounded real promising to a gamer like myself. I hope one day in the no so distant future the beans get spilled about the details and such and hopefully gets picked up by another studio/developer what have you.

no idea but it sounds exciting doesn't it.

Zwill mentioned it in a podcast interview. "Evolved Hardcore Gamer" was a phrase they used internally at the studio. Zwill said he was a good example. A hardcore gamer who now had a a job, kids, commitments, etc, and only gets a few quick hours of gaming and not every day.

Basically, the ex-hardcore gamer who still loves games just as much, but for whom the 7 days a week with marathon day-long gaming sessions on weekends are a thing of the past.

As I understand it from what Z was saying, its the guy that played WOW for days on end but now has a job and family.

Furthering my point and thanks for the accuracy.

Agreed.

Is it bad that I JUST got that reference...?

Granted, I only learned the name Sonny Crocket about 2 months ago as the result of playing the Back to the Future point-and-click adventure game by Telltale Games... I wasn't allowed to watch anything with guns in it in the 80s.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I think for me, i would need more info before connecting their secret project with "...continued support of the franchise no longer fits within our long term goals..." as the main reason for the shutdown.

It could be a factor for the closure decision...but still not sure it's a significant part of that decision. Since that project was said to not be part of CoX. If NCSoft didn't like the new project because of its target audience, that sounds like a good reason to deny just that project and not the whole thing unless something else more compelling was the driving force.

[tinfoil] Perhaps Paragon's insistence on continuing with the secret project and diverting resources from CoX to it sounds just as plausible a reason but not sure how likely. [/tinfoil]

I mentioned this elsewhere but i still believe CoX's declining revenue is a significant part of their decision. And it wasn't $10mil per year...it's looking like it's down to maybe $10mil this year and even possibly down to about $9 mil.

Which is down from about $11mil the year before...which was down from $13.6mil the year before that and down from $17.8 mil before that and so on.

If the rate of decline continued to next year, we could possibly see maybe only about $8mil for 2013.