*peers through the dust and embers*

That, however, doesn't seem to be a popular way of thinking. Most gamers will look at an old game and say "It used to be fun, but now it shows it's age" rather than "YEAH! I still love playing this game!"

Indeed, but the other side of most can still be a lot of people.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

One of the reasons I like the original DMC. Gameplay and graphics I like, all wrapped in one game

Of course, I like CoH gamplay (generally) and graphics.

Also, all the better graphics do is put an even bigger demand on the art team, making the game way more expensive, and therefore way harder to break even.

Nostalgia called. He wants to track down a Genesis game you DIDN'T play 20 years ago and see how well that argument goes - my original Sega Genesis games were stolen, and the XBLA versions did NOT fit the bill (lost like 20 lives on that damn final boss - I blame the controller).

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Better graphics also put a greater demand on the physics engine. CoH may not have the best graphics out there (although the team did wonders with a comparatively limited set of graphical resources), but the basic character movement and physics is still unmatched in the MMO genre. Characters in CoH move with the smoothness and responsiveness to physics you usually only see in shooters. CoH is unmatched (among MMOs) for what I call "kinetic immersion," the sense of being a character moving in real, three-dimensional space with actual laws of physics in play. Sure, the characters are doing "impossible" things, physically...but that's because they're superheroes. Not because the game engine itself is such a poor model...

Haha! Two things. My examples are pretty extreme and nostalgia is certainly a part of the things I was mentioning.
However, if you're claiming that there are no video games from the past that are actually fun and entertaining without a single drop of nostalgia... then I find that to be absurd.
It's almost like people who claim that older movies can't compare to new movies.
I'm sorry for anyone who truly feels that way, but I am certainly happy that I don't.

I guess only sentimental people would find Tetris fun... Or Pong, or Pacman... Honestly, I don't think so. And, again, those are pretty extreme examples.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

75% of the portable market right now only exists because it's either reselling those games to a new generation or releasing clones of them.

Yeah, feel of movement and such is so important to me in games.

I can remember, when I used to be a big Madden Football junkie, each and every Madden Football release was a scary thing, because not all of them maintained that solid, right/natural feel within the game. You'd get clunkers every now and then.
It's kind of one of those aspects of video games that is very difficult to explain, never mind create/implement (I'd imagine).

And that definitely happens a lot with newer games, especially when they're sort of on the first wave of the modern expectations. The graphics look amazing, but the clumsy movement and interactions don't match up with that ooh realistic look.

Anyway, I'm not going to insist that CoH is the smoothest thing around, but you very well may have hit on why I've always felt like this game appealed to my Sega Genesis gamer feel sort of thing... It always felt right and like a good game should... maybe it is as "simple" as the ease of movement and responsiveness.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I know you're being somewhat ironic in that statement to begin with, but now in particular it's especially funny when someone says that a game is outdated because of "graphics".

If anyone actually legitimately believes that a game has to have state of the art graphics to be a success... Minecraft would like to have a word with you.

heh...it's the graphics that keep me away from Minecraft

But! I do see your point. Liking a games graphics will always vary person to person.

That's what I was thinking...

Or WoW even.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Those are the questions I asked.

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!

This is so incredible important to me, and very few games even get close to the smoothness of CoH's animations and, more importantly, transition between those animations. Sometimes you can forgive it because the "kinetic immersion" isn't important to the gameplay, or if the gameplay is so awesome that you can overlook it, but for me this is a very high priority, that most games seem to fall short on. Particular MMOs where, ironically, I find the lack the most jarring.

Convenient way to invalidate any movement you choose, eh?

And the U.S. just should've stayed out of WWII, and let the Axis take over the world. But only because, damn, "If we get involved now, we'll be hypocrites because we didn't do it until WE got attacked. Crap."

There is probably not a single cause in all of Earth's history that you could not apply this argument to. So all the question really implies is, "I don't like SaveCoH because it is run by humans."

If you don't know what's wrong with you analogy, I'm not sure there's any real help for you as a human with empathy or as a student of history.

I dont see how that implies anything really on which side falls in which.


All I said, and meant, was those were the questions I asked too. Nothing more nothing less. There is nothing there to turn into something that it is not and has nothing to do wih SaveCOH or what I feel about them. Just questions that I asked also.


Would be nice if people stop dodging those questions and finally just answer them without turning it into an us vs them thing. I'm fine if the questions are not answered though but still it shouldnt be turned into something or assumed those questions imply something when they dont, especially what you seem to think they imply.

It's just a few simple questions that someone brought up that I just so happened to also have asked not too long ago. But last I checked in the wording I dont think me nor the questions I was replying to said anything about invalidating a movement.

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!

Why, because there was death involved? If you can't see the relevance then I'm not sure there's any real help for you as a human with empathy or as a student of history. It's most likely that you're choosing to focus on the differences between the two scenarios so that you can ignore the similarities.

If you cared about history the way you're suggesting, you'd know that the "hypocrisy" argument could be applied to ANYONE who has ever tried to change ANYTHING.

I don't think there's anyone here who actually has the answers to that. At the very least, I certainly don't, since I was not involved at Titan (if the question is indeed directed at them) until SaveCoH.

The problem with answering these questions is that I don't think they can be answered objectively. In the WWII example, there's plenty of analysis available on "Why wasn't the U.S. involved yet" that can be derived from countless records. It's much easier to dig those things up when everyone is keeping a diary like the government does. But in the case of previous issues with NCsoft, there's no core unit of players that have a common ground with all those games. And even if there were, what are the odds that there'd be any documentation on the reaction to one game getting killed, and then another, and then another? It may be out there, scattered across a thousand boards. But good luck writing the bot that's going to sift through it all and turn it into something that looks like a conclusion. There's nothing I can say about it that wouldn't have to end with a "maybe." Maybe it was just the final straw. Or maybe it's just because it's the first time one person stood up and tried to rally the others together. Or maybe it was summed up best with, "So you made a game where players spent 8 years defending their city? Tell me what they did when you threatened to destroy their city." This monster may have been brewing from the very beginning, just by having a game that encourages players to think like heroes.

I DID answer something of the question somewhere though. But I'm not sure if it was this thread or another. Why did this Players vs. NCsoft thing not happen sooner? Those other games were failing. The business logic there was simple enough for a 2-year-old to get. CoH was still profiting. Bicker all you want that it wasn't enough. It doesn't change the fact that CoH still being in the black made this case different. And it drastically alters what we all have to think about the future of MMO's. We can no longer base the long-term viability of a game on how well its doing. That should be enough to worry ANY MMO gamer, not just CoH players.

Fair enough.

But if those other MMOs were rightfully killed off then why is part of the campaign seem to be to paint NCSoft as a company that is an MMOKiller, as if they have a habit of going around killing good games? If anything, they killed one game off that had some life left, but the rest was a righteous kill, according to your information. So wouldnt it be moot to bring up as negative past that NCSoft killed off 5-6 games, when in actuality, according to your statement, those other games were the right buisness decision and any company probably would done the same to those games?

And also, why wasnt the earlier signs heeded to? Wasnt the sign that a profitable game could be killed off at a moment notice should of have been gotten when say it was sold to NCsoft and or when Cryptic gave up, when COX probably was making more money than it was now. Or the posts where people was worried about the population sloly dripping away but was past off as doomsayers without much thought? Or when people started to notice some servers were seemingly less populated, also passed off as mere doom saying? The signs were there, mutliple times but each time people chose to not take heed.

If FDR got word of the Japs about to bomb Pearl Harbor but dismissed it without looking into it, he probably would have been blamed for not bothering to heed the warnings and for at least looking into it even if there really wasnt much he could do at the time. Revenue postings are not new since the annuncement but they have been discussed for a while now showing slow drops in revenue and yet, it was dismissed as doomsaying without even so much as a consideration. Yet, now those same people are posting these things as evidence of slipping sales when they were flaming the person who posted it and brought up the same discussions now that is happening after the discussion.

I call it the Titanic syndrome. Not many people could believe that ship could sink, it was believed to be unsinkable until it was too late even though the signs were there but it took until it nearly under water for people to realize that yes, even the Titanic can sink.

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 mean the differences like the fact that the US had already abandoned any pretense of neutrality well before the attack on Pearl Harbor? Giving war materiel to the other Allied nations through the lend-lease program and instituting the draft to ramp up the armed forces in anticipation of joining the war directly both predated the declaration of war by a year and a half and two years respectively.

Oops. I guess history invalidates your tasteless comparison.

At least for me, it has cast doubt on some of the other games as well, and attracted further analysis of the "Ncsoft story." It turns out the rumors of attempted purchases of CoH, while maybe wrong, they do fit in line with the past. Auto Assault saw a similar demise, with offers being turned down.

It has always fascinated me, that even with a company that has decided they just don't know the West well enough to market to it, would rather squat on an IP than sell it. It's of no use to them, it's not making them money. But at the same time it's so valuable that it can't be sold?

The "game killer" still holds merit, but it depends on how you look at it. There's the old joke, "The one common factor that is the same in all of your failed relationships, is you." With this kind of a track record, it's hard to assume that everything has always been right with their business model, when there's been this many problems. Not that every business doesn't have flops somewhere, but NCsoft has somehow made a habit of it. They're either extremely unlucky, or they've been doing something wrong. I'll admit that some of what I've seen in B&S looks cool. But do I dare trust that it'll be here in a year, considering who is funding it? And if we call CoH a failure, as numerous people have lately, it seems the ONLY thing that has ever worked out for NCsoft is Guildwars. It's like the Uwe Boll of games. Flop after flop, yet somehow can still afford to make more. But at least movies don't demand multi-year personal and financial commitments from customers.

The bizarre thing about that is, things seemed to be turning around. Not that I'd call it a comeback. More like a snail crawl. Whether that means the populations were better under Freedom, or they were worse and the stubborn remnant population was spending more at the store, I don't know. And NCsoft isn't going to give us the information we need to properly analyze this anyway. Even if it would be GOOD for them, it won't happen.

More on the server issue in a moment, since you brought up the kiss of the iceberg.

I say this to the warning signs. There are certain things you typically do with an MMO when it's in trouble. We got the F2P I'll give you that, but at the time it came out, F2P was already starting to become the standard. Now games are released that way. So was it a last ditch effort, or an attempt to compete with what is becoming the more popular model?

Either way, that's the new one. What do games usually do when populations start waning? Server merges. Many players, despite being given the option for free, will often just stop playing rather than bother with transfers. Yet when that decision is made for them, they are more likely to keep playing. Why were attempts not made to merge servers? It saves money on maintenance, and it gives more content for players who were struggling on dead servers. But it never happened. They also never tried running the game with a smaller PS staff. The only "maintenance mode" period we even got was AFTER the shutdown had been announced.

So the Titanic metaphor may actually not be bad enough. This time, they didn't even bother to try deploying the lifeboats.

And yet, the U.S. gets decried for turning a blind eye all the time anyway. I guess your intense desire to invalidate my tasteless comparison only serves to prove my point. It's more important to nitpick that an entity did something too late, than be thankful that they did it at all.

Well with the past outcry against server merges, and statements saying it would be too hard to do because of various things like names, loads and etc, it may have not even been a viable option according to past posts when the topic of server merges came up.

I think COX deployed without lifeboats. From the sound of it, the code was so spaghetti ball that downsizing would have been a nightmare, downsizing the crew, now I have no idea why didnt try that besides not wanting to causea panic, like on the Titanic where the band kept palying happy music, ordered by the captain to not cause a stir, and the bar remained opened like everything was normal even when the water reached b-deck. And of course there was no "maintence mode". Curious behavior but in the end it was our folly waiting for the crew to tell us something wasnt right instead of inquiring why was the water level getting closer to the deck and or how much damage did the iceberg actually do. Instead, we recieved our life jackets, waiting for the crew to panic and went back inside to have a drink just like the passengers of the Titanic.

At this point, even if they stated a reason beyond what they already said, half the boat is already under water and sinking fast.

In the end, it seems that we all learned something. Sometimes we have to trust our gut, dont immediately dismiss information without looking into it, not depend on the crew to say abandon ship because by then it might be too late, and if the information is available and something isnt right dont be afraid to inquire. Back in 10, when people seen servers getting less populated, less people running around, redzone started to get empty, then there should of been a louder voice.

but what bugs me most is that even now there havent been a single apology for the flames those people in the past recieved for seeing the information and trouble signs of it before anyone else that is very apparent now. Well, for those that been labeled doomsayers and immediately dismissed and flamed, we should of seen it coming, should of listened, should of done something. Just as people are demanding answers now, those answers should have been demanded then especially when the revenue was on a consistant down slope and the ture meaning of it. Now, the decision is done and kind of late to be demanding answers.

But at least now we know to not wait for maintance mode to be the main sign of trouble and pay more attention to the more "less obvious" signs.

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!