I honestly hope we haven't given up already. Have you given up?

Depends.

COX as we know it may be dead but it doesnt mean that in the future that they may or may not need the things in that IP. We might see pieces of COX IP stuff in other future games. I.E, we might see the icons, fighting style, in one game. IN another, the wentworth market, in another game might be the same costumes, in another game see the HUD display. Or see Warshades and Peacebringers in a future space game. And more.


Being able to use those features when ever you please without having to tip toe around it because some short sighted exec sold the IP for a quick buck.

Remember how people say that COX does this the best does that the best, I like the way this or that is set up, or the way you can solo or team or the TFs sorylines and such? They would be a fool to sell all of that to someone when they can basically take it and put bits and pieces into new games as features that are well liked and or make a new game using the IP but with a different look.

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 think people are talking about the code, i.e. the 'engine'. They're talking about the intellectual property.

That's a pretty good argument. I feel like it only applies if NC doesn't pull out of the Western market though. In Korean games, PvP is everything, and it makes U.S. PvP look like toddlers on a playground. It is incredibly cutthroat, and leveling usually demands hardcore grinding. There is nothing casual about it, and much of what made CoH special is that it was accessible to casual gamers. One didn't even need to play the game (in terms of doing hack & slash every day) in order to enjoy it. It just doesn't fit the Korean gaming model, which is exactly why I thought NC didn't want to do anything with it anymore.

But heck, if they want to hold onto the IP in that way, there's no reason they couldn't do when "selling" it. In fact, I thought it would be better that they retain ownership and just collect royalties on whatever a new developer did with the game. And if NC wanted to do their own spinoffs, or recycle assets, they'd still have that option.

90 days is a long time for soemthign to happen. Imagine some one gets pissed because of the layoff and next thing you know, the game kicks bucket every day at 10pm for the rest of the night. As simple as that is, imagine how much more [pissed the players would be? and think they are going to listen if NCSoft say, "we are sorry, some rogue dev did it." Like the way the rest of their statements seem to have been taken, those people will think it's a load of crap automatically. And you think it's right to go into an office and say, Alright people we are shutting down. All of you can stay till Nov.30th. Well except Bob, Rick and Amy, uhm, they look emotional so we are going ask them to leave today." Yeah then if the layoff didnt do it, then now you have a disgruntled employee because his friend Bob got singled out to leave immediately even though he have three kids, a wife, a sick grandma, and been working for NCSoft for the past 15 years. So to avoid that, rid of them all since they will get paid anyways for a while just cant work, 60 days I think. What's the problem? Paid to stay at home. I dont see the problem.


I think it would be worse if they kept silent and waited until i24 was done, the devs finished up, then on release day of i24 you get two messages of "I24 is live!" followed by the announcement of all devs and paragon studios is immediately fired. Sure I'm sure the players would be happy as hell and probably wouldnt give two craps about the devs then because they have i24 and beta i25. But as an employee I would imagine that would be a big thumb in the eye. To work hard on something and finally finish to have the boss basically say "Good job, kid. This is excellent work for the company and our customers will love it. But you're fired."

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!

Well I wouldnt call it "Korean gaming model" per say as seeing that Blizzard is American that been around since 1991 and been making games that seemed to have been labeled the Korean gaming model and even their grindfest is hugely popular. It's almost the eptiome of grindfest yet huge player base in the US.

When looking at numbers and compare the "grind games" numbers compared to casual, especially the superheroMMO with the largest peaking at 180,000 or so and considered an excellent game, rave reviews especially from 2004, yet, it remained small. This is before NCSoft got it hands on COH. When looking at the numbers it looks like the Korean gaming models are the money makers, and thus probably why there are many of them and for them to make any type of money with that type of stiff competition is remarkable to break even. But on the other end of the stick with the likes of COX, the competition is nearly nill for what seems to be the playerbase. Yet, only 180,000 peak players and the rest of the games in that category even less? Either, the COX model is not very popular to begin with, something happened, grindfest IS truely what most gamers want and we are a small minority, or some other factor.

Remember COH hit before WoW, thanks for that info as informed from a poster and here and it checks out, so the 900lb gorilla wasnt around. YetI think COH opened with 125,000 players or so and hit 180,000 players. By that time WoW, even being released after COH was in the millions.

Realignment focus, really though if you look at NCSOft game lineup, there is one that doesnt seem to fit with the rest of the games. COH. I think NCSOft is about tired of their games peaking at 180,000 or so and want a larger piece of the pie. Some people said that maybe more advertising would have worked but remember that advertising costs money which had to be generated. Like a circle. We want to advertise but they are not making enough money to leave room for it but they cant make money because there is no advertising. While Blizzard seems to have advertising here down packed must remember Blizzard is local while NCSOft is overseas. Although I do wonder why didnt just give Paragon Studios an Advertising budget and or send a marketing person to that office. Onthe other hand those very frequent updates couldnt have been cheap to produce. Might have nothing left. It even could have been that there wasa marketing person there and apparently they wasnt doing the job good. In the land of marketing, no money is not an excuse. You work with what you have, especially if you want more money. Most companies will not spend more money on advertising if there wasnt signs of results prior. Or it could be someone just plained boloed.

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!

The problem with a "moral conscience" is that there isn't unanimity on what "being good" is. And remember, when you want to demand that a company give resources because it's good, it's not their money.

So some comparisons. Let's say you give money to disaster relief (pick your organization about which) every month. At some point you look at your budget and say "I can't keep doing this". Would you want the government or the relief organization to say "No. You've been making those donations. You must continue them indefinitely. You can't stop."

Or you've got a car, you've been giving rides to work with coworkers. Things change and you're now working from home. What would your reaction be to the idea you're obligated to continue giving rides to those people, or sell your car to someone who will?

I've been pretty hard on NCSoft in this thread, and I think they've earned it. They're doing some stupid things that are upsetting people. But I think they have the right to do these stupid things (at least until their shareholders say "stop doing stupid things or we're going to vote in new management). They followed the legal requirements for their employees - the "actual" firing day wasn't the day of the announcement because there's a law on notice for layoffs so they continued to actually be employees until very recently, and are presumably giving severance packages as required by law and contract. They've refunded the unused account payments to the players. You can argue that they could/should've done a bit more for the points, but I think its reasonable. These are what the law should and does demand. To demand some higher level of but they must be nice is unrealistic, vague, and unwise.

basically

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!

Have they said that's why they decided to close it? If not, the decision itself isn't evidence of that particular motive but rather it's just evidence that they had a reason to close it... and the guess about the motive remains a guess - possibly an educated one based on other evidence aside from the mere decision itself.

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

Shouldn't they have halted development work on I24 then? Or at least, not let the devs advertise the T9 Tech Knight armor set 3 hours before the shutdown announcement?

No I mean at Titan, regarding any other attempts.

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

Didn't that sort of happen anyway with the shutdown announcement? Granted a lot of the protesting would have been the same and the Unity Rally kept a big mass of players around, but aside from that, would the rate of population-thinning be any different?

Instead all development on I24 is just wasted resources now.

Thus saving them from having quite so many refunds to give out.

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

Sorry that not everyone has your level of "clarity" on this.

This has been a part of people's lives for nearly a decade.
And the crew at Paragon has been SUPERB at establishing an emotional, community connection with its player base.
So pardon them if they're upset to the point of outrage.

But please understand, the whole "I'm above it so you're an idiot." posture, even if that's not how you intended it to come out, simply rings hollow and reeks of bridge-base dweller.

If you don't like how people are reacting? Fine! Make your point and move on. Coming back over and over and over to grind people's faces in it?

This shows that the people you're arguing with aren't the ONLY ones with an emotional investment in here someplace.

And IBTT, this isn't directed solely at you. So don't be totally offended (well, a bit of mild taking-of-offense should be a given) at what I'm saying.

Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

This applies to all sides in this little debate.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

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

In this case I dont think the end result would have changed one single bit. Still would of been protests, still angry people, still devs out of a job, and etc. So if the end result will be the same all that is left is to chose the best way to get it done. Since the i24 and probably the issue after that probably began long time ago, I wouldnt be surprised if early March or prior late last year, then that would have been a factor.

If they just halted production... well they kind of did at the same time of shutting down, just in the last steps of production.

I really think that they picked a perfect time line. If they would of announced it early, players would have jumped ship, still would have the angry people, even though they probably would have created and or nit picked a reason to be angry if it wasnt for the same reasons now, paragon studios probably would start losing employees. If you think of the potential effects of if they announced it earlier, it probably would be worse off than it is now. We have i24 beta. If it was announced earlier, I would imagine that with the devs finding new jobs and or just leaving, then there would have been delays and thus by this time it probably wouldnt even be on beta and thus we wouldnt even been able to get the glimpse we have now. And guess what, that would make the angry players more angry again now they would be angry about i24 not being on beta. And within that time, i24 slowdowns and less devs and employees, more players would leave. Assuming that billing have continued say in June and the announcement made in March, then that would be even less money. Then while the second announcement they made in actuality stated they confirmed the shutdown, if they would have announced the shutdown earlier, the game may have been costing them money and they have to shut down earlier than expected and thus instead of orignal date of Nov. 30th, lights out end up being June 30th. And thus the same reaction. Different day same reaction. Just for example. One may ask of if they announced it earlier and they lose money isnt they losing money now? Maybe, but there is a huge difference between losing money for 90 days and 180 days. If you had to lose money, which one would you choose? 90 days or 180 days? I would pick the 90 days thank you very much.

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!

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

Never got what is wrong with someone NOT being emotional. Been alot of

"Oh you're not emotional. We get it. state your point and move on." Yet, they keep saying how emotional they are about it over and over and over and over. Cant even get a dicussion on the buisness aspect, in this thread or others without someone coming in saying how emotional they are and how anyone who look at this from a buisness stand point is an (insert insult). I think the emotional and the ones that may not invested their entire heart into the game can coexist, but ying/yang. If they feel the right to express how evil NCSoft is and how emotional they are and etc, then we have as much right to post how we look at teh situation just as much as when we post how we feel about the situation, they post about how evil NCSOft is and anyone that dont how evil NCSOft is an employee of them and trolling because they invested emotions and NCSOft took it all away."

That is fine and dandy, but just as must as they are tired of the grind in the face over it we are tired of them doing it to us. Like I said, We get it, you're still feel like someone shot your favorite dog, set you house on fire, killed your entire family in front of you and ate their liver because NCSoft killed the game. But as they love to state that not everyone feel like us, not everyone feels like them.

It's almost like I want to send them a case of Everclear with a note saying, here drink your sorrows away for christ sakes.

What you said should apply both ways, as you said.

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!

yep.

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!

Dehumanization perhaps? Which coincidentally (or maybe not so much) is a lot of what many people also dislike about a "profit first/everything else second" philosophy. Having no emotion also tends to go hand-in-hand with having no moral conscience.

Not saying you CAN'T be emotionless and still be moral or empathic, but it's certainly a lot easier to just ignore those things. Just like drinking and driving, there's probably some folks out there who can and do partake in it without ever having an accident, but the odds are still in favor of you getting yourself or someone else pulverized.

Sure. Here's the steps.

(1) Prior notice, if not directly then things like major but not completely layoffs or leaks to let it be known that the results weren't sufficient. At worst it wouldn't have been a surprise, at best it would have spurred the same sort of action you see now but directed into "get more people playing the game".

It also would have meant that the game could have been pushed into a state for the future downtime - get the contact NPC in the game for SSA 2.5, for example.

(2) Wait until I24 ships and GW2 ships. I24 both can see if that changes anything and at least doesn't leave that tantilizing "what could be" in place. And have happy players who are interested in GW2 buy it instead of being pissed off about what happens in CoH. (The latter may not have meant less complaining but would have been smarter financially for NCSoft.)

(3) Followup the Paragon Studios announcement by Zwillinger with a complete honest NCSoft explanation. "We love it but we're focusing our interests" is bull and sounds like bull. If the reason is that they aren't seeing the growth and the costs are rising, say so. It won't have silenced everyone, but there'd have been a lot less "why" going on. And don't tell me why they did it because you don't know. You think you know. I think I know and it's different. Unless NCSoft says why, we wouldn't know.

(4) Include in that discussion an honest discussion of the issues of selling the game, what would be needed to make it practical. Not an actual number, but set forth the reasons that "well, if you sell for $1000, that's $1000 more than you had". And provide contact info for who to reach if you're interested in opening negotiations in buying the game (and do discuss things seriously).

(4a) If, after two months, they've been unable to strike a deal, another post and be honest about it. "We've been talking to a number of people. The highest offer we got was in the range of xxx which just isn't high enough."

Out of the millions of companies out there, have any of them actually followed this guide with everything they do? I mean hell half the time by the time a person found out they changed an ingredient in a food product is when someone gets sick, ill, or have some crazy allergic reaction.

The thing about this, is that they probably told someone all that information about and I think that is maybe what Freedom was suppose to do in what is suggested to be done with i24. To be honest, they might have been trying to get the game to grow for a long time now and each issue, each change, was another trying to make it work. IT probably just got to the line. As I mentioned in a previous post, why stop with i24 why not i25, no wait maybe i26 will bring growth no? Then try i27, yeah that will definately do it... It sound liek a set up to never close down and just continue to throw parts at it.

It woud be nice to know everything about this but on the other hand, they dont have to answer anything to us. It would be nice, sure, but not a requirement of them. They answer to their investors, and by investors, I mean those people that actually put substantial amount of money into that company, some probably put more into that company per day more than the most dedicated player put into the game thier entire time since 2004. Those are the people they may have to answer to. If we wanted those type of answers, should have invested in the company. Right now, all we need to know is it is due to realignment of the company. Plus I dont think anything they say would be taken as "Oh ok, they explained why." I think it will be more like what it is now. Angry about the answer, angry about the reason and calling it bs because they dont believe it, or for soem it's nto what they want to hear. So really why should they waste they time trying to explain themselves? Even here, people barely listen to each other on a good day, but expect them when they are emotionally scared, some a little seemignly unstable, to the company that is viewed to be that pain? If I was NCSoft, I wouldnt bother and just let it die off.


No matter when they ended this game there would have always be "what could be" whether it's about i24 or about i25 or i26 and so on. Either way even if COX ended on the best note with all of that, there would still be many who would be pissed at the game closing, still would say that GW2 is not COX and thus sucks, and about the same amount of people that have switched over would still switch over.


I think NCSOft already gave a reason. It's up to the person whether or not they believe it or not. The thing is that person do not seem to realize is that it is probably not on their high priority list to try to convince people of something they wouldnt beleive even if they said, growth and the costs are rising. Just go over to the debate section of where posters talked about the growth of COX and see there of how many say it wasnt the case. I think if NCSoft said it was because of growth and rising costs, people still would call BS anyways and still be asking for the "real" why. It might be BS, but so far we have no other evidence that it's a lie, but many assume because it's not what they want to hear, it cant be the real reason. People make realignments all the time in their lives so why is such a crazy concept for a company to do it? In real life, do people tell their boss "hey, I'm leaving in six months." and what if the boss asked why and you state a reason and the boss said that is bullcrap they want the real reason. Most people probably would not take too kindly to it, especially if the continue on with how you are being selfish and tearing the team apart and they will make sure to sully your name.

And may have to be careful of what you ask for as the real reason may not be what you are prepared to hear. Hell, some people get upset when calling it a buisness decision now how you think that is going to go over well and peachy when the actual buisness, the experts at looking at it from buisness perspective put it into buisness talk their reason? I think NCSoft given us enough information for what many have shown to be ready to take. Which seems like many are just angry and there is no way to appease that anger besides flipping back time and making COX the way it was prior tp Aug 31st, which is not going to happen and thus silence. Why hsould they just add more fuel to the fire even if the fire is asking for it?


But no worries, with Plan Z, it is suppose to be the perfetc game, ran by people who only care about the players and their ideas, and soon they will be a multi million dollar company but they never will have to make "buisness decisions" and survive on making ones that are pure emotional and everyone is happy and in the year 3492, the game still still be running, whether it's losing money or not and even if it's only 17 people playing. Hey, dont want to rip a community apart, kill a perfectly good game and have to make calculated buisness decisions. Not to mention releasing every single detail of what is going on and why those decisions were made. Hmmm speaking of which, I dont think they have been around here doing that. Yet we demand that NCSoft does it.

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!