Am I the only one not upset?

Sorry, not seeing anything in there that hasn't been considered or discussed previously. It's a fairly sensible analysis, so I'm not taking exception to it, but I'm not sure why you think no one's considered it.

He's basically saying that market neglect on the part of Paragon Studios killed the game, Bill. I think we can see some evidence that they saw a weakness there; through June/July/August they were definitely trying some new strategies to drive up player interest.

But as far as I can tell they had basically zero budget to run any kind of ad campaign and I'm not sure anybody ever figured out what (demographic) opportunities we had for growth. Our biggest market was the thirty-and-up crowd, and that's a broad wall to paint. I don't think neglect killed the game, and I certainly don't believe that people like Zwillinger or Black Pebble lacked enthusiasm for it.

As UberGuy has also said, there's nothing there that hasn't been discussed already, either. So two counts -- neither undiscussed nor real. I'll leave 'obvious' uncontested.

Same to you. When you have something that isnt holier than thou to say, contact me. At this rate, I guess that will be never and that is fine with me. Have a good life.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Not even going to bother with this nonsense of a reply. It's is very apparent that is you is set in your way of thinking and no one can change that and I'm going to.

I learned that you cant force someone to see but in the end if they choose to be blind then let them be blind and think any opinion that is not theirs is idiotic and thier opinion is always the one that is better than everyone else. It's obvious that you think that by the above statements you made.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

I don't know, I can think of lots things Paragon Studios did that alienated players. Balance passes that wrecked characters, features that had promised improvements that were NEVER, NEVER going to arrive, failure to actively or at least meaningfully respond to the declining game population. I don't know if I can say "Yes there is the game killer" about any one of those but I am pretty sure it wasn't just poor marketing. On the player side I still see things that are being taken as articles of faith, The game was net profitable ? coin toss there. That the direction the devs were going was improving the game ? (Combo systems, ever increasing power creep, minimal effort to advance characters but heavily time gated) I really saw those as appealing to a particular subset of the existing audience.

Bill? Set in his ways?

Nawww.

You know, I had to look over this thread because that's definitely not the attitude you came in with. And I found,

Yeah, I don't think that's the case. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...0&postcount=17 The OP didn't appear to have much invested in the game in any way at all; his posts on the subject started with, 'Well, I guess I'll miss it,' and ended up with, 'Eh, nevermind, it was old and kind of crappy anyway.'

I don't know or care why he bothered to point that out to a group of dedicated players; I pretty much have to agree with other posters in the thread that it's deliberate provocation (and I'm a little confused as to why they rose to the bait). I'm a little more concerned with your own reaction to all this.

After all,

Sure. Plenty of people have lectured you on the legalities of this, but I'm more interested in the practicality: Freedom of speech means everyone else has the freedom to yell back. I think what you're looking for is respect of others' opinions, but the OP didn't show anyone that to start with. Why are you defending his right to be disrespectful, but not Tony or Bill's? Because more people disagree with him than with Tony or Bill?

Well... yeah. This is a community about City of Heroes. Of course the majority opinion is going to disagree. It'd be the same as posting on an LGBT forum that you were glad Prop 8 passed. Whether or not you really were, that's not the place for it unless you're looking to start a fight.

You don't play many MMOs, do you.

You just did bother with that nonsense reply by quoting it and commenting on it.

Mostly a wargamer. TBH, I always thought what passed for balance here, escaped from the twilight zone.

Guess the better statement is "I'm not going to bother with the subject of the post."

And no I dont think my opinions are better, I think my opinions are merely opinions. Where was the convo going? Nowhere. It's not an exhange of ideas. A certain part doesnt seem to want that. They see it their way is their way and that is the only way. So is this a no win situation? If I continue that conversation, it might be a waste of time. But if I end it, then it means I think my opinions are better?
Well you are entitled to your opinion too, but I'm ending that conversation with that person either way.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Very different environment. Wargames run on unit mini sales. When they want to drive up interest, they release a new faction or a single new mechanic and propagate it to new units for the existing factions. Up until recently, balance changes were slow and people mostly just learned to play around whatever was broken. The closest MOG (multiplayer online game) equivalent would be something like League of Legends, although obviously the player skill-set is very very different.

MMOs live and die on keeping people playing on a day-to-day basis; there's much less of the 'collectability' aspect. The genius of CoH was the powerset system (even though it was an accident and not what they were going for at all), since it made the game extremely replayable. The things that really helped the game synergized well with this (new ATs with Villains, new powersets here and there and a glut of them recently, and of course new content to level characters with) and the things that hurt it weakened this. (AE was a weird case, because on paper it should've been great for replayability, but it was too much when it launched. DFB and DiB really hit a much sweeter spot for that, but AE was hurt really badly by its rough launch.)

Balance changes push people into replaying or re-evaluating their characters/options. Every MMO uses them this way. They all have those things you were complaining about.

Not really, no. I'd rather persuade you you're mistaken about one specific thing, because I think your heart's in the right place overall.

I guess maybe because I dont see how it was disrepectful. He didnt go on a "Save COH" thread and posted that. He made his own thread, and I would have assumed (which is usually wrong anyways) that most people who was upset over the loss of this game would see the title and think, "hm I'm actually upset over the game so maybe I should avoid that thread." It's like the same if TonyV made one of his inspired speeches to rally people to save this game and the OP went in there and said what he said, it would be considered trolling as the topic was obviously not "I dont care about the game". Since the OP made the thread and the topic, how was it in anyways disrepect to them? Was they one of the noobs? Was they one of the cocky vets that maybe or maybe not disrespected the OP? TonyV and others are doing exactly what they would consider trolling if they made a thread like that.

And even that is cool too, but seems like many was endorsing TonyV's trolling the OP while no one defended the right for the OP to feel the way he felt.

After reading it over and over, I can how this can irk a few of the "hopefuls", yet not sure how they would feel disrespected anymore than posts of TonyV that basically disrepects the people who isnt as passionate as him about saving this game. And some people probably dont see how he was disrepectful in some of his posts to people that may not be as enthused as him. And that is what I'm getting at. Anything can be disrespectful that is why in the first post I stated it seemed like the OP is just stating how he feel. That wasnt good enough for TonyV and his ilk that was out for nothing less than blood and wanting to hang this fellow. I didnt think the OP was anymore disrespectful than what TonyV has posted about people that are less enthused than him about this game. And yet, not many said anything to TonyV about being just that, disrespectful. Yet again, no one else said anything about the disrespect of TonyV here, yet quickly got behind him to get on the case of the OP.

As the game ends it seems to be a lot of zealots. TonyV kinds of reminds of one of those soft spoken, well spoken, charismatic old school preachers that can get a crowd going and turns hell fire and brimstone at anything that is not according to his view of the bible. And wish to burn all heretics at the stake, even though the past Sunday was preaching about how one should not kill.

But this is my opinion and nothing more on the situation that happened in this thread.

Then again who knows who exactly was the intentions of the OP. It could be either way. Anything that anyone says can be disrespect to someone. Even somethign as simple as saying this game is the greatest game in the world, or America is the best country, or NCSoft is stupid and etc.

So many I shouldnt have jump on TonyV case for being disrespectful in my eyes to the OP no more than he should of jumped on the OP for being disrespectful in his eyes. Sounds like I owe TonyV an apology.


I think someone is probably going to shoot me but I wished they had strictly private channels here. Where outside actual questions about the game and stuff, everythig else should have been delegated to private rooms. It would cut down on trolling and or percieved trolling. That way someone can create a channel might be using wrong term, and state a topic and only people that is friends of that person, and or invited to that topic can respond. That way everyone gets what they want. Threads where everyone post in agreement and dont have to worry about people that disagree. TonyV wouldnt have to worry about people like the OP and the OP wouldnt have to worry about TonyV.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Not that kind of wargame, historical or the old avalon hill book shelf style games. But we are talking about monetization vs gameplay.

I always felt that high handed actions were more likely to drive people away, especially when it's not the first time. Someone described it as having PS come in and break their toys.

Well, that's easy enough to fix. Here's what it looks like to a long-term CoH player:

Obviously that's not what he really said, but I bet you can see how it might feel that way. He dwelled on some apparently petty issues and dismissed the game in huge, vaguely-worded swaths. The few 'moderate' comments he made came across as passive-aggressive, in the overall context, and it's pretty hard to see how he could have intended anything else.

Actually, he did.

I'm with you about one thing, though -- I don't really know why he deserved a response from anyone.

Eh. There's always that risk, but other people might see it as PS coming in and refurbishing their toys; that's certainly how I felt about ED, especially when IOs came out. Changing things might drive people away; stagnation certainly will.

(And unfortunately we couldn't have really had, say, IOs without ED. There should always have been diminishing returns in Enhancements. The PvP changes were very poorly handled, but I remember the PvP environment prior to i13, too. It wasn't nearly the noble jousting folks seem to remember.)

Well I am a long term COH player too but I might be an exception, and didnt see it anything beyond what exactly he posted.

Yet I ask this to people that think like TonyV. If I said, to him or not to him directly, that I'm leaving the COX world, how do you feel? He probably would say that he dont give a crap based on his prior experience with dealing with me and I doubt many people would jump his case for that. And to me, that is what the OP was saying. He had bad experience, no matter how petty it seems to someone else, it seemed to bother him beyond the petty side, and said, based on his negative experience that he dont give crap about this game. So why jump on his case, the OP, if he so happen to have bad experiences with the game and not give a crap if it disappear off the face of the earth?

Bugger! Theres go most of my case.
Then it was wrong for him to do that as well, very wrong. And for TonyV to turn around and do it still doesnt make it any more of a right.


Or why not discuss the differences in a manner that is constructive, like this convo between me and you is going, IMO.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

You can go the other route and go more sandbox and let player actions drive the game, It looked like there was a faction ? (maybe maybe not) in PS that was interested in that, things like the phasing tech and the AE pointed that way on the other hand they may have just been stealing features from other games.

Especially from folks that didnt agree with him and only came here with the intention of blasting him. I mean, it wasnt like the topic was misleading.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

I guess I'm the weird one here. I want people to be honest at my funeral and would greatly appreciate it. I feel that never liking a person the entire life then when they die all of a sudden they want to make peace as the most disrespectful thing they can do or pretending they liked the person in the eulogy when two days ago they was on the verge of sending them to the coffin themselves. At my funeral, I rather people be honest than fake. But that is just me. If they viewed me as nothing but a mere spoiled brat and that is on their mnd, then say so. Dont get up there and all of a sudden act like we was the best of friends and I was the greatest person in the world when in no manner when I was living was that ever expressed.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Eh. Everyone's within their rights to their opinion no matter what they've said; whether it was BT15 posting to a farewell thread or Tony posting to this one. More to the point is the issue of consideration; this isn't the time or the place to be especially critical of the game, the staff, or even the players. We might not have any of them for much longer. Now's the time to focus on the good things we remember. I wish BrickstownThug15 had spent more time on that in his OP.

The anger that Tony and others have shown might be mis-directed, but it's part of what's still binding us all together. Many of us, myself included, are very angry that someone wants to take Paragon City away, and it might be easy to see anyone who thinks that's a good idea as part of "those people" who are doing this. Even though they really aren't.

I don't agree with Tony about everything, but I do think it's important that we centralize our efforts. He's volunteered his "home" (Titan Network) to help with that. If you really feel like he's just a demagogue, I understand, but I think we can accomplish far more together than we can in small groups. This unfortunately means compromise... heh, a lot of compromise, maybe. But it's our best shot.

I find myself often going back to this.