An Update

Just to point out that as far as I am aware, the GM's for City of Heroes are paid for by NCsoft because they don't just cover CoX, but also the rest of NCsoft stable of games.

It's not like he was making up numbers, he was just reporting the results of an annual survey run by Game Developer magazine.

In both cases, they're self reported numbers, I see no reason why PayScale.com would be more credible. In any event, there's not a huge difference, considering that the survey reported an average salary of $70k for a game designer, not that far off from the $66k you posted.

It's still well over the $50k average you'd need to justify costing Paragon out at $75k a head.

The only reason this may be good for them is that they have been at the job for at least 3-4 years. This means they have some extra solid years of experience that increases their ask-for price in the market.

Once you are in a company, you don't get your compensation increased proportionate to your gained experience, that's something you only get when you change jobs (IF you are good at negotiating.)

It tends to be the reason why people rarely stay working for the same company for too long (unless they already are darn high in the corporate food chain.)

That assumes that NCSoft doesn't respond to the decreased workload by decreasing staff. And support costs for MMOs tend to be quite high.

PayScale.com data mines their information from employment websites and headhunting firms among many other sources. Their data has much more solid backing than a voluntary survey.

Setting oneselve above the entire community as to be able to see clearly through "The lies" while putting them down for their ignorance as well as slamming the developers for their attempts at bringing in more revenue for the game.

Five gold stars good sir!

The beauty of servers is you don't need anyone pedaling them

Server maintenance is a crazy job. I been involved with that in the past and taking half the servers off the grid still does not change the team job a bit. It's tends to just result in fewer lines to look at in a weekly report or up-status.

Support costs for MMOs can be high when managed in isolation, but when you consolidate support centers and host huge numbers, they tend to go down like crazy. I think it was quoted a few years back as the reason why EQ1 would not be canceled anytime soon. SOE hosts so many MMOs that adding new ones comes basically for free.

That's an interesting site but not sure if i'm looking at the right place, or probably it's only showing a small portion to unregistered viewers.

But what looks like a list of entries for the video game designer category is showing only 220 data profiles and clicking it brings up a chart that says 205 individuals reporting (for that chart)

How many data points does it show for you?

Actually, I think the real reason that EQ1 continues to soldier on is that they manage to sell an expansion a year (or more).

All hindsight, of course, but you have to wonder what would have happened if CoH had been doing an expansion a year instead of putting everything in free Issues...

/em eyeroll -- And yet here you are.... ( ' ;

Thanks for the amusing read, I'm off to enjoy the game now! ( ' :

I just ran a custom report for the region, didn’t register. I am not certain but I don't think "data profiles" mean "employees".

BTW, the reason I trust this is precisely it seems to align with what I have been told by people in the industry in the area. One of the reasons I entirely disregarded the idea of finding a job in the gaming industry: it would be an absurd downgrade. Heck, many positions are not even "employee" status, but as contractor with no benefits at all.

My point was something about it being nearly imposible for the game to go into the negative zone. If it became unprofitable to maintain the dev team, the game itself would still live as long as they have data centers.

BTW, you got me curious and I looked up info on their newest expansion. This thing jumped at me in the feature list:

• New Autonomous Brokering system that allows you to post your Trader in the Bazaar while offline

It took them THAT long to allow offline trading?!?


You would have to remember they also were not offering free content updates in any regular fashion. For a long time EQ kept pumping these expansions to secure shelf space. I think they stopped shipping them a while ago, though. Are they not pure DLC now?

I think they are DLC - but they are also still advertised - which addresses a different complaint many have about NCSoft's support of CoH.

Yeah, i'm not sure either...though the specific job chart shows individuals reporting (205) shows a close number but still different to the data profile number (220).

So i thought maybe not being registered had something to do with it...oh well still interesting.

The Architect Edition did a LOT of good for the game. Would have been indeed much better if every big issue somehow managed to sell boxed editions.

One of the reasons WoW is where it is, are the silly basic game CDs you can find in almost every store that sells games. Think they sell them for $1.99. For that price, people just p ick them up. It's like the drug dealer that gives you the first sample for free or extremely cheap.

No download to do, just go home and install this thingy in that computer gadgety of yours.

Actually for that to be true CoH sales would have had to be going into the basement without the AE. (Not an unreasonable proposition with the introduction of merits in I13). We know this because just after AE they did go into a serious decline.

It is posts like yours why I could never consider myself part of the forum community. The in game community was wonderful the forum community insular and totalitarian.

Are you proposing merits were good or bad?

Overall bad at the very least not good enough.

Well, we will have to agree to disagree big time. Without merits I would not be playing this game (they could have been more generous with them, I admit, but was WAY better than the state before.)

Think of this like in Aion or Lineage 2, or any game where you could set up a *stall* for players to look at and buy, and not "sending stuff to an offline person".

It just allows you to set it up so that when you are offline, you can still trade/peddle your wares.

Yep, I had to google it up, but this isnt just "throw stuff up on the market and leave it be". You can choose for your character to stay in game and do it...

Actually, thats how it used to be (the stall thing.) They seem to be changing it so you can buy from offline players and you can sell or buy from anywhere in the world. No more need to be in one specific zone to sell and buy.

I dont doubt that. The problem wasn't generosity with merits it was limits on how you could use them. In a game that only requires 10 or 20 pieces of more or less generic gear it would have been fine. In a game that required 100 pieces of specialized gear that had to fitted together in a particular pattern, not so much.

Indeed. If anything it is a *logical* extension of their stall thing. Am I correct in thinking that they didn't have a "Auction house" style of selling stuff, and that this was the closest to it?

Thank you, Golden Girl, for posting this! Is this quote off the Titan forums? I did previously see Mercedes Lackey over at Titan mentioning a long shot she and a few pals over there were trying to pull together, so this additional info doesn't surprise me at all. She is another great ally we have in this fight to save CoH, and she's not one to give up. She actually mentioned prefacing all her future works with a permanent anti-NCSoft rant, not totally unexpected as she has actually written multiple stories about her CoH main that are still in print. She's really into this game, and even wrote some arcs for it.

I'm thrilled that Brad is finally going public with *something.* He's one of the missing links from this whole ordeal. And I'm ultra-thrilled (and I secretly wondered this myself) that most of the Paragon Studios team could still get pulled back if CoH's future changed.

Even if this falls to dust, thanks for posting REAL news and not attention-grabbing false b.s. like so many others have littered the forums with. And thanks to Mercedes Lackey and the others involved in this not-giving-up, last-ditch effort they're trying to pull together, whatever happens.