Did we miss the signs of the apacolypse?
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2012-10-09 14:58 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
"It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly.
Do not mistake activity for achievement.
Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs, therefore avoid
undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.."
�Many things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.�
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Yes oh. This is where the reading comprehension is needed. |
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Oh ?
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The "partial quotes" are being taken from a "different" thread MA-COH Killer. The theme of "that" thread was declining sales due solely to MA being introduced as the sole reason NC SOFT decided to go another way, which is patently false as NC SOFT AND PARAGON have already commented on.
Nice try to muddle up the "separate" topics, but still a fail on the pick a fight meter. Pfft.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Not serious. I think it's somewhat silly to think that if it was that evident that Paragon was sinking, you didn't have many more [Tunnel] rats leaving the ship. If you think that your job is in jeopardy of going away, you start looking. They don't seem to have been.|
Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Not sure if serious.
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I think it's also silly to expect that folks playing an online game are supposed to obsess over stockholder meetings and earnings reports. If someone buys the new Assassin's Creed, do you think they do a full background check on the financials of the company developing it? Heck no. People don't sign up for fantasy football leagues but think Hmm, I don't know about using Yahoo again - their new CEO is untested!. Players (by-and-large) are interested in what is in or what is being added to a game. And Paragon had been adding a buttload to City.
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
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If you are using Yahoo for email and contact information better make sure you have some way to get that stuff out of there.
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Originally Posted by gec72
Not serious. I think it's somewhat silly to think that if it was that evident that Paragon was sinking, you didn't have many more [Tunnel] rats leaving the ship. If you think that your job is in jeopardy of going away, you start looking. They don't seem to have been.
I think it's also silly to expect that folks playing an online game are supposed to obsess over stockholder meetings and earnings reports. If someone buys the new Assassin's Creed, do you think they do a full background check on the financials of the company developing it? Heck no. People don't sign up for fantasy football leagues but think Hmm, I don't know about using Yahoo again - their new CEO is untested!. Players (by-and-large) are interested in what is in or what is being added to a game. And Paragon had been adding a buttload to City. |
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Nice try, but what you said is pretty definitive.
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Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Yes oh. This is where the reading comprehension is needed.
The "partial quotes" are being taken from a "different" thread MA-COH Killer. The theme of "that" thread was declining sales due solely to MA being introduced as the sole reason NC SOFT decided to go another way, which is patently false as NC SOFT AND PARAGON have already commented on. Nice try to muddle up the "separate" topics, but still a fail on the pick a fight meter. Pfft. |
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Yes in another thread about another topic. You not being able to comprehend the difference notwithstanding. Pfft.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Nice try, but what you said is pretty definitive.
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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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It is hard to take anyone seriously when they make false claims of I told you so, when NC SOFT did not even make the decision until the 11th hour. I guess Australia needs to check their Bauxite mines for tons of missing material.
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Originally Posted by gec72
Not serious. I think it's somewhat silly to think that if it was that evident that Paragon was sinking, you didn't have many more [Tunnel] rats leaving the ship. If you think that your job is in jeopardy of going away, you start looking. They don't seem to have been.
I think it's also silly to expect that folks playing an online game are supposed to obsess over stockholder meetings and earnings reports. If someone buys the new Assassin's Creed, do you think they do a full background check on the financials of the company developing it? Heck no. People don't sign up for fantasy football leagues but think Hmm, I don't know about using Yahoo again - their new CEO is untested!. Players (by-and-large) are interested in what is in or what is being added to a game. And Paragon had been adding a buttload to City. |
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Let the babbling beg- oh, it already has. Carry on.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Let the equivocating begin.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Umm... didn't M59 finally shut down?|
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Complete tripe. Is this your new line ? The "Revenues didn't matter" started sounding ridiculous even in your own ears ? All games close ? Tell it to Everquest, Ultima Online, Meridian 59 all still going.
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Granted, your point is correct. Many MANY mmo's do hang on and "sunset" differently. When costs of development or hosting start to exceed the revenue from subscribers, you consolidate resources and reduce the dev team, continuing to remain profitable. You might get down to "the game is run on the server under the basement stairs. The dev team is the intern that sits beside it" and STILL make some trickle of profit while you wait for the last member of the dwindling population to turn out the lights.
Here, we had Paragon Studios effectively sustaining itself. From what we've heard, CoH's revenue was pretty much funding Paragon Studios- so it was not only paying for its own development, but the development of the mystery project. Rather than drawing down, Paragon had 'hiring notices' being put up even in the weeks leading up to the shut-down.
If money had been a factor, NCSoft could have terminated the second project, kept the same people working on CoH as before, and gained revenue. They could have told the development team to wrap up their current project and put things in place for a "diminished release cycle" with fewer people involved. They could have done many things to keep meeting the community's needs while realizing more revenue.
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True, but in that alternate universe the news that NCsoft was cutting 80% of Paragon Studios' staff would have been seen as the death of the game as well, with a lot of the same comments made. F2P / MA / dev treatment of PvP would all have been blamed for being partly responsible for the firings.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
They could have told the development team to wrap up their current project and put things in place for a "diminished release cycle" with fewer people involved. They could have done many things to keep meeting the community's needs while realizing more revenue.
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It would have been more typical for NCsoft to let people go and let the title drift off into maintenance mode, but I'll assume some numbers were crunched and that didn't look particularly attractive. And while CoH/V was possibly seeing Paragon Studios as profitable now, how long was that going to last? Over the next 3 - 4 years as their second title developed?
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Both of those scenarios, though, give openings for a healthy, gradual decline. They assume that a decline was ongoing and progressive, but that naturally means that an ongoing and progressive drawdown of resources invested into the game would have been possible over that same projected time.|
Originally Posted by UnSub
True, but in that alternate universe the news that NCsoft was cutting 80% of Paragon Studios' staff would have been seen as the death of the game as well, with a lot of the same comments made. F2P / MA / dev treatment of PvP would all have been blamed for being partly responsible for the firings.
It would have been more typical for NCsoft to let people go and let the title drift off into maintenance mode, but I'll assume some numbers were crunched and that didn't look particularly attractive. And while CoH/V was possibly seeing Paragon Studios as profitable now, how long was that going to last? Over the next 3 - 4 years as their second title developed? |
Alarmists would cry doom, for sure. The herd-mind is powerful and many will leave for the "bigger" "winning" "neverending" games rather than continue to play something that's eventually going to peter out. Alarmists cried doom when EQ2 was announced, but EQ1 still has servers running. It has been years. Several years passed while the SWG dev team was essentially a skeleton crew allocated part-time at best to the game. Community needs were met and the people still played.
Yes, my preference would be for everyone in Paragon Studios to have stayed together fully employed on my favorite title for their entire career. I'm not advocating layoffs. I'm stressing that shutdown at this point wasn't a sensible option for foresee given the evidence we have, particularly not in this way. Assuming numbers were crunched and rational minds were in charge here, we're missing several key components to understand their rationale.
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The finances we really have no idea about. What we have is a big loss in NCInteractive, and Gross Revenues for Paragon that corresponds to roughly 50k subs. The actual number of subs you would expect to be less because of the cash shop contributes into that. NCsoft presumably has a much better idea what the subscriber numbers would have been come January.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Umm... didn't M59 finally shut down?
Granted, your point is correct. Many MANY mmo's do hang on and "sunset" differently. When costs of development or hosting start to exceed the revenue from subscribers, you consolidate resources and reduce the dev team, continuing to remain profitable. You might get down to "the game is run on the server under the basement stairs. The dev team is the intern that sits beside it" and STILL make some trickle of profit while you wait for the last member of the dwindling population to turn out the lights. Here, we had Paragon Studios effectively sustaining itself. From what we've heard, CoH's revenue was pretty much funding Paragon Studios- so it was not only paying for its own development, but the development of the mystery project. Rather than drawing down, Paragon had 'hiring notices' being put up even in the weeks leading up to the shut-down. If money had been a factor, NCSoft could have terminated the second project, kept the same people working on CoH as before, and gained revenue. They could have told the development team to wrap up their current project and put things in place for a "diminished release cycle" with fewer people involved. They could have done many things to keep meeting the community's needs while realizing more revenue. |
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The logical thing to do would have been to milk the subscribers, well more than the cash shop had been doing already while the base declined.
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Originally Posted by UnSub
True, but in that alternate universe the news that NCsoft was cutting 80% of Paragon Studios' staff would have been seen as the death of the game as well, with a lot of the same comments made. F2P / MA / dev treatment of PvP would all have been blamed for being partly responsible for the firings.
It would have been more typical for NCsoft to let people go and let the title drift off into maintenance mode, but I'll assume some numbers were crunched and that didn't look particularly attractive. And while CoH/V was possibly seeing Paragon Studios as profitable now, how long was that going to last? Over the next 3 - 4 years as their second title developed? |
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That was way down the line for me, I knew the game was in trouble as soon as they hit the switch for Freedom.|
Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
This is the only thing that I can think of that may have pointed to the game being shut down, but it at least made SOME sense--the amount of people playing the game who spoke only German or French were minuscule.
Like you, OP, I also felt bad for them losing their native language, but I thought it was going to lead to more focused and faster releases in general.  |
They had a active contingent within my server about 250 loyal and long standing subscribers, when they flipped the switch for Freedom my Global list went from glowing to a very gloomy grey.
Basically these long standing subscribers were dumped in favour of free to play players on the long shot they would provide more monies via the market.
If a more fairer system was implemented in the conversion of the global names this may have kept quite a lot within game, they then would have invested quite a bit on the market, but alas was not given that option
Too many 50's to list here's a few you may know.
Slazenger, Area51, Area53, Area54, Erruption, Mind Plague, Thresher, Sheath, Broadside, Debt
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There were others : the union of the european and USA servers (since one of my two accounts was an european one i can tell you that it was because there weren't many players left on the EU servers and that two years ago) and above all their going free to play. Of course the Paragon Studios employees continued their work like nothing was happening: on one hand they were hoping that somehow they could avoid the catastrophe if more players would join and on the other they were paid for it
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Originally Posted by cohRock
Missed portents?
1) About a year ago, the Test Server was wiped. Not in itself evil; we always knew that the devs reserved the right to wipe or even shut down the test server at any time. But after six years of unofficial support for the tester community, all characters were wiped. No warning nor explanation was given. Everyone, including many advanced native characters were just gone one day. Note that the test server had been overwritten before; the devs would announce that a backup would be made, a copy of Freedom (?) would replace it, and when the testing was over, the actual test characters would be restored. Not this time. 2) About six months ago, official foreign language was dropped, both in the forums and on the Zukunft and Vigilance servers as well. Since I speak neither German nor French, I felt slightly bad for those players, but I didn't think it was something that would affect me. 3) Two days before the closure announcement, Zwill held his final coffee talk ( http://www.twitch.tv/paragonstudios/b/330380418 ) as a Paragon Studios employee. It started late, was very disorganized, and covered nothing very interesting. While they joked about upcoming "secret projects", I wonder now if they sensed the reaper. That all said, I still hope that somehow City of Heroes continues. Still, maybe I wasn't listening as well as I should have been. |
"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."
Does not mean "Revenues didn't matter" as you made up. Reading comprehension FTL. You need to stop trying so hard to pick a fight where there is none to be had man.
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.
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