You're supposed to get the pack in the bonus tab if you've ever been a gold sub. So, for free.
Oh. Even better. I get to save my stored up 1500 Zen.
But, unfortunately, the release of the Premium Pack has been delayed until, well, we don't know when. It may not be the same when they return with their new plan.
I'd accuse you of astroturfing if I had even heard of you before. I checked your profile, you certainly haven't had a lot to say before this thread came along, but you have been here since the current forum ate the old one.
Literally nobody else in this thread wants to increase the cost of everything to all players, just you. Still smells like an astroturf to me.
That's really sweet of you, but I'm afraid of you are wrong.
I am not a silver member, however I was for long just like everyone else. Still, I wouldn't crawl for this Premium Pack change if I was a silver. Every blind could see that this change will lead toward game termination. There are plenty of reasons, why. Just because it sounds good, does not mean that it is good. At least not for everyone, and definitely not for the game.
Silvers do not see the circumstances cuz they are way too hyped.
Of course I raise my voice when the game is about to collapse.
I must admit that I did not check the prices, my apologies for that. Then the price should be more than the cost of one month sub.
Since, as it was mentioned before, without subscription, this pack contains way too much stuff for a low price like 1.500 ZEN. I do not need to log into the game to say that, 3-4 travel powers cost 1.500 ZEN.
But go on, log in and calculate. Wonder how much ZEN the Premium Pack contains. And add + some ZENs for the color customization, perhaps 1K.
Even 50% of the full price will be much more than 1.500.
I'm not trying to be hostile but reasonable. Apologies for mistakes.
Charging more money for the Premium Pack is stupid. Getting people over the initial hurdle of spending money is hard. This pack is clearly for silver players and probably specifically to ones that have not spent money. To them, they are getting a bunch of neat costumes and powers as well as some more character slots for only $15. In reality, it's a bunch of stuff that by today's standards are janky, old things that have long since recouped their dev cost and few people would buy anyway.
Having a higher price point makes it a whole lot harder to get players to get over the initial spending and from a business standpoint makes that idea bad.
The premium pack is worth it just for the services, though they're mostly services which are super-obnoxious not to have (limits on bags and globals), rather than things that feel like cool bonuses. However, they're also things that were traditionally part of a subscription.
Why I think that 90% of the users of this forum don't recognize the result of this change.
Let us make it short:
It is a horrible punishment for subscribers while a pat-pat for silver players.
Wonder how much ex-gold members will stay with the game with their locked gold characters.
You can guess.
On release day:
If you are a silver member with many years, let someone to change the password of your account and let them known that to ask a lot of money for the new password.
If you do not want to pay, start a new account and buy the premium pack and be happy with it with your fresh account.
Just because this will happen to the current gold members.
They will lose everything and can make characters from zero if they do not want to pay for the upcoming "convert silver toon to ff toon" token which will cost 4250 ZEN at least, as someone already made a calculation earlier in this forum.
But, as they delayed it, they might come up with a better plan, so we can suppose that, they see the problem there either.
Luckily the people with reason was able to save time or the game, unlike the people blinded by hype.
[quote]> @leowyld#9736 said: > I commend the devs for listening to player feedback, but... As a one-time subber but current Silver player, I was really looking forward to that Premium Pack this week. Proceed with its launch, please, that is not what the people disliked. The general apprehension seemed to be about changing the way subscriptions work. I'd say, as some others have, release the Premium Pack as planned and then release whatever subscription changes later on, once you've figured out something that works.[/quote]
I disagree on releasing the Premium Pack and waiting for a solution to the "Locked Gold Characters" problem. Cryptic and its various owners have made massive changes like this before with the promise to fix issues those changes caused -- but it never happened.
This is called a pack, short for package deal. It's all or nothing. If they don't find a way to take care of the "Locked Gold Characters" issue WITH the release of the Premium Pack then there will be nothing to force them to later. That's the reputation we've come to expect. Promise everything and do nothing.
Don't get me wrong. The Premium Pack itself is a great deal. For the cost, that's lot of content.
[QUOTE]> @sterga" said: > Digital items have a manufacturing cost of zero dollars.[/QUOTE]
What dream world are you living in? Just because they don't need a factory doesn't mean there wasn't a manufacturing cost. As a programmer and artist, I can confirm that it took someone some time to come up with all the little things we kill for everyday in that game. Someone had to craft everything in the game and that someone was paid.
It gets better.
One Common method of buying FF slots- The Q exchange. Save Q, trade for Zen, Save up and wait for a sale.
People who put zen on- ones desperate for Q fast, unwanted stipends, traders buying low and selling high.
Less subs= less stipends= less zen on the exchange. You will be relying on the people desperate for Q and the traders.
I foresee the Q exchange hitting 500/zen fast and staying there.
Less FF slots being sold and management wondering why.
Due to making the FF only available by two expensive methods. LTS and $50 a pop, the "be the character you want to be" is now "be the character you want to be, if you can fork out a lot of money."
If they are providing only those 2 methods of getting the main interest of the game, then the price needs to be dropped a lot. To about $15(double the AT slot price.) It will be cheaper but a lot more people are likely to buy it. Since the only other option is $2-300 in one go.
You are more likely to get 3-4 at $15 than 1 at $50.
If you are having a product to fix a problem caused by a change, you need to have the product ready BEFORE the change, not Soon [Tm]. We've all heard that way too much in this game and know exactly what it means.
The package deal- yes I'll get that for my silver acct. Which already has 22 characters on it, thanks to Vigilance farming.
Creation cost for items is the Devs making them.
Actual manufacturing is the program amending the account. Which does take electricity and computer gear and internet access and someone to feed the hamster.
So you are both correct
@kaizerin ,@ambassadorkael
> @leowyld#9736 said:
> I commend the devs for listening to player feedback, but... As a one-time subber but current Silver player, I was really looking forward to that Premium Pack this week. Proceed with its launch, please, that is not what the people disliked. The general apprehension seemed to be about changing the way subscriptions work. I'd say, as some others have, release the Premium Pack as planned and then release whatever subscription changes later on, once you've figured out something that works.
I disagree on releasing the Premium Pack and waiting for a solution to the "Locked Gold Characters" problem. Cryptic and its various owners have made massive changes like this before with the promise to fix issues those changes caused -- but it never happened.
This is called a pack, short for package deal. It's all or nothing. If they don't find a way to take care of the "Locked Gold Characters" issue WITH the release of the Premium Pack then there will be nothing to force them to later. That's the reputation we've come to expect. Promise everything and do nothing.
Don't get me wrong. The Premium Pack itself is a great deal. For the cost, that's lot of content.
> @sterga" said:
> Digital items have a manufacturing cost of zero dollars.
What dream world are you living in? Just because they don't need a factory doesn't mean there wasn't a manufacturing cost. As a programmer and artist, I can confirm that it took someone some time to come up with all the little things we kill for everyday in that game. Someone had to craft everything in the game and that someone was paid.
But the Premium Pack itself doesn't cause any issues that need to be fixed. It was the changes to the subscription model that caused people to be upset, Premium Pack can easily be released, as planned, independent of those changes.
But the Premium Pack itself doesn't cause any issues that need to be fixed. It was the changes to the subscription model that caused people to be upset, Premium Pack can easily be released, as planned, independent of those changes.
You are wrong about that. The Premium Pack contains that much stuff because they wanted to close the subscription. So they would sell the benefits of subscription in a pack.
As they are wondering about of keeping the subscription (or finding another solution), the Premium Pack most likely will change. Especially if they decided to keep the subscription. Then the pack will be changed a lot.
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergies! Playing since 1 February 2011 128 + Characters (21 ATs, 107 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
But the Premium Pack itself doesn't cause any issues that need to be fixed. It was the changes to the subscription model that caused people to be upset, Premium Pack can easily be released, as planned, independent of those changes.
You are wrong about that. The Premium Pack contains that much stuff because they wanted to close the subscription. So they would sell the benefits of subscription in a pack.
As they are wondering about of keeping the subscription (or finding another solution), the Premium Pack most likely will change. Especially if they decided to keep the subscription. Then the pack will be changed a lot.
I am not wrong about the Premium Pack not causing issues itself. I am not wrong about it not being the main thing that caused people to be upset. The rest is speculation and is not as simple as being right or wrong. In my opinion, there is plenty of value for a subscription not included in the Premium Pack - free Freeform slots (cost 50 dollars for one, for Silver), the 500 Zen monthly stipend, and access to all of the archetypes (which would cost a decent amount to buy as Silver). It's completely possible they could change the Premium Pack if/when they change their subscription plan. I do not agree that it is necessary and we do not have information to indicate whether they will, so that is all more agree/disagree than right/wrong.
(Why did the forums delete my post when I tried to make edits, twice?)
"It is a horrible punishment for subscribers while a pat-pat for silver players."
Uh, no, we noticed. That's why there are a bunch of threads unhappy with the garbage way gold subs were going to be treated and why I made a suggestion thread to grandfather in gold subs. BUT that has nothing to do with the Premium Pack.
"What dream world are you living in? Just because they don't need a factory doesn't mean there wasn't a manufacturing cost. As a programmer and artist, I can confirm that it took someone some time to come up with all the little things we kill for everyday in that game. Someone had to craft everything in the game and that someone was paid."
The one where context and definition of words matter? No digital item has a manufacturing cost, they have development costs. I also talked about recouping dev costs, if you had continued reading.
"I foresee the Q exchange hitting 500/zen fast and staying there."
That happens when a lockbox comes out... It was at 470q/zen last night. That is what the exchange is going to be in the future whether subs continue to exist or not. That is due to nothing in the Q store being of value to most people and could be rectified by making the Q store full of fabulous items just as appealing as Keys.
$50 FF slots was a price point suggested by players who liked to argue with their feelings instead of looking at what other successful developers are doing. Today, the number of people who think $50 is fine is pretty much zero.
I've been playing since Labor Day Weekend in 2009. I have 74 characters, 42 of which are level 40. I had no idea there was a cap on how many characters you can have. Apparently I'm not the only one. There's a lot in this thread and I've barely scratched it, but suffice it to say, as others have said, getting a character to level 40 in order to get a new one has felt like the whole point of the game for a long time. Any other reward pales in comparison.
WOW!!! Big changes on my return! I have to admit I'm not too pleased about them.
Soooo.... let me get this straight; as an LTS I no longer recieve a free character when I get a character to level 40. Not good. In my opinion, Lifetime Subscribers should get at LEAST 35 percent off the price of a freeform slot for compensation. And, without monthly subscriptions there will be no more monthly subscriber rewards either, correct? I guess this means that any new costumes and emotes will have to be purchased in the C-Store. Figures.
This is a very bold move to let go of the monthly sub model; it is usually the bread and butter of western MMO''s in general. It makes me wonder how this game will continue to generate income.
Question: will Champions Online follow the Japan and Korean game models, where "every step you take and every move you make" will cost players money? It seems that is the way this game is going....
To be honest, knowing the circumstances I think, this whole change thing is happening because they want to get money from the game before server termination.
However, I -think- that they might see that the game still could generate more income than the maintenance cost. Who knows...
But I hardly can imagine an expensive maintenance cost since no-one develops the game for long. The server.exe is running on a server-machine and that's all. Even I could run said server on my pc with my connection. Perhaps not for 100 players, but still. For the cost of 3 months of subscription, you can get net connection especially for server machines in here. +1 month could handle the electricity bill. And it is only 4 months of subscription from 4 different players.
Is the game really loss-making ?
(Okay, do not forget about George, who makes one 3D model / month and puts it into the monthly reward store.)
In what stupid world does a company shut down one of their top five games? I know the thing with the garbage way gold subs were going to be handled was dumb, but wow, shutting down one of their most popular games? Really?
The games PW has shut down this year were dead. I mean I played some of those games years ago and saw maybe two or three people in 30 minutes dead. No one screamed about CO's death when PW shut down the Immortal games earlier this year. Oh and Gigantic is shutting down next month. You know, because Motiga was "downsized" and all. Runic was shut down at the end of last year. Where was the outrage that CO was next on the chopping block then?
I suspect PW / Cryptic is standardizing the subs for their games and perhaps cleaning up the half-**** f2p conversion of CO. There is no way in hell PW is going to waste dev time making stuff like the Premium Pack (minimal effort most of it probably was) just to turn around and dump the whole game into the toilet. You will know CO is on the road to death when they move the devs to another game and replace them with nothing.
You will know CO is on the road to death when they move the devs to another game and replace them with nothing.
Seems we know it for long then.
If I am right, the last thing the game got was the eidolon boss fight. Not sure when but... Around half a year ago, perhaps ?
About that "move the devs to another game" thing.. Just remember why the hideouts were left in half-baked. The guy just got moved to do something else. And it is not an urban legend, the devs or/and moderators confirmed that either.
There are just as much reason to shut down this game as much not to.
In what stupid world does a company shut down one of their top five games? I know the thing with the garbage way gold subs were going to be handled was dumb, but wow, shutting down one of their most popular games? Really?
The games PW has shut down this year were dead. I mean I played some of those games years ago and saw maybe two or three people in 30 minutes dead. No one screamed about CO's death when PW shut down the Immortal games earlier this year. Oh and Gigantic is shutting down next month. You know, because Motiga was "downsized" and all. Runic was shut down at the end of last year. Where was the outrage that CO was next on the chopping block then?
I suspect PW / Cryptic is standardizing the subs for their games and perhaps cleaning up the half-**** f2p conversion of CO. There is no way in hell PW is going to waste dev time making stuff like the Premium Pack (minimal effort most of it probably was) just to turn around and dump the whole game into the toilet. You will know CO is on the road to death when they move the devs to another game and replace them with nothing.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The main issue with the Premium Pack/Subscription change isn't that it signals the game's death in the near future, but that it ensures (or would ensure, if it went live as-is) that the game would never recover its older players, let alone attract newer ones, which would undoubtedly lead to CO's death eventually.
If anything, pushing Lifetime subs and FF slots more is a cash-grab intended to show the execs that the game still has life. A misguided attempt, to be sure, but not one that spells doom in itself.
@ilyens we got new content like 2 weeks ago. Nemesis.
Where have you been ?
Ah, my apologies. I totally forgot that thing with the raised stats and nothing else. Hope it wasn't too hard to make after half of a year.
But the players of CO won't have problems with new content if this planned change goes online.
And I not even can get online in time to buy some account wide costume slots since they will get rid of it too.
Awesome updates ahead.
In my opinion, Lifetime Subscribers should get at LEAST 35 percent off the price of a freeform slot for compensation.
That would be a worthless compensation... LTS isn't changing aside from us losing our ability to gain free characters slots with every lvl 40... every slot is a FF slot for us... so FF slots are effectively 750ech (625ech if buying 2 pack) for LTS already, we have no reason to buy the expensive $50 FF slot when regular slots are FF for us.
Ah, my apologies. I totally forgot that thing with the raised stats and nothing else. Hope it wasn't too hard to make after half of a year.
It's an entirely new alert. What do you mean "raised stats and nothing else"?
I have doubts you've been actively playing the game for a very long time. If you're gonna talk about the s,pint of development the game gets (about which you've been pretty wrong) you should at least go take a trip through the release notes if you're not going to be bothered to actually log in and play.
Ah, my apologies. I totally forgot that thing with the raised stats and nothing else. Hope it wasn't too hard to make after half of a year.
It's an entirely new alert. What do you mean "raised stats and nothing else"?
I have doubts you've been actively playing the game for a very long time. If you're gonna talk about the s,pint of development the game gets (about which you've been pretty wrong) you should at least go take a trip through the release notes if you're not going to be bothered to actually log in and play.
Thank you for writing a reply for the most insignificant statement in the whole tread. We highly appreciate your time and effort.
And thank you for the suggestion, I will take a closer look at this new event. I wouldn't want to miss the result of half of a year.
In my opinion, Lifetime Subscribers should get at LEAST 35 percent off the price of a freeform slot for compensation.
That would be a worthless compensation... LTS isn't changing aside from us losing our ability to gain free characters slots with every lvl 40... every slot is a FF slot for us... so FF slots are effectively 750ech (625ech if buying 2 pack) for LTS already, we have no reason to buy the expensive $50 FF slot when regular slots are FF for us.
That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot. I have 120 slots currently, I've long since bought the maximum amount of character regular slots I'm allowed. Now I don't know if I can buy the FF slot but the one free slot they gave away has a few annoyances that are enough, and on top of that it's a $50 price tag.
If they were to remove the free character slot, with out removing the cap for buying more character slots, there's not much of a reason for me to continue leveling/playing. The cosmic grind isn't very exciting, and I doubt its sustainable long term.
Hmm, what's going to happen to the resources that were used on the games that have been shutting down? Will any of them be directed towards CO?
Swordsman Online and Jade Dynasty were both developed by PWE’s Beijing studio, so not likely. And even if they were utilized as a satellite studio for Cryptic, they’d probably end up working on Magic: the Gathering anyway. Remember how all the ex-Paragon devs Cryptic hired ended up on the Legacy of Romulus and Neverwinter launch crunches, not CO?
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Thank you for writing a reply for the most insignificant statement in the whole tread. We highly appreciate your time and effort.
And thank you for the suggestion, I will take a closer look at this new event. I wouldn't want to miss the result of half of a year.
The point is, most of your info is old, outdated, or wrong, but you're presenting it like fact. If you'd like anyone to take you seriously, get your facts straight.
Oh look someone else who hasn't played the game in ages only to show up during a controversy to make uninformed statements and doomsday predictions about the not too distant future.
Thank you for writing a reply for the most insignificant statement in the whole tread. We highly appreciate your time and effort.
And thank you for the suggestion, I will take a closer look at this new event. I wouldn't want to miss the result of half of a year.
The point is, most of your info is old, outdated, or wrong, but you're presenting it like fact. If you'd like anyone to take you seriously, get your facts straight.
Thank you for brightening me up, I really appreciate it.
After you are done with helping me, it would be nice to help to others with their questions as well. They would be as grateful as I am.
[i] That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot.[/i]
Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
Apparently that is too much to ask of some people based on reactions I got in another thread for making this same suggestion.
> @magpieuk2014 said: > [i] That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot.[/i] > > Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
I wouldn't want to delete any. My characters are a lot more to me than just some stats and a build. It would be bad to lose them.
While I do have some joke characters that I wouldn't mind replacing down the road, this news means that at some point in the future I will lose the ability to create new characters and have no "joke" characters left to delete.
Having the ability to keep creating new characters and building my roster was literally one of the things I enjoyed best about this game, and it's what's kept me playing for over 8 years, compared to most other MMOs in which I don't even make it to a full year.
To some people, deleting an old character is no big deal, and that's fine. But to me it's like being a car collector (or collecting anything else for that matter). You don't tell a car collector that has a 200 car garage that he shouldn't have more than 20 cars. You're not gonna tell him "remember that old Corvette you restored with your brother? Just get rid of that so you can get a new one."
When I can't make more characters, that's when the novelty of the game wears off for me. I don't wanna quit the game, but this is the first time in this game's life that I've been considering it. I'm in no way trying to use that as some sort of threat to them, just being honest with how I feel.
Just admit to trying t kill the game and be honest about it. You're not fooling anyone with this transparent scumbaggery.
Whoever recommended/forced this foolishness on the game needs fired. Also, LTS had very specific promises involved in what was being bought, which included those gained freeform slots. Lawsuits could happen - again, anymore possibly deliberate in an attempt to kill the game?
You're fooling no one.
Yeah no one does anything nice without a massive unnecessarily dramatic conspiracy behind it. They're also probably attempting to start World War 3 at the same time.
Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
Apparently that is too much to ask of some people based on reactions I got in another thread for making this same suggestion.
Yes, asking someone to delete a character they spent time, and potentially money, to level is too much. Especially with many auras being character bound, and now costume slots are character specific as well.
Yes, asking someone to delete a character they spent time, and potentially money, to level is too much. Especially with many auras being character bound, and now character slots are character specific as well.
That's OK. I was only asking, it wasn't an instruction of any kind. I suppose I max out at 15 level 40s or so... otherwise I think I don't play them, so why keep them?
Did I miss the bit about slots being character bound, though? Delete the character, delete the slot? If true, that's nuts.
Yes, asking someone to delete a character they spent time, and potentially money, to level is too much. Especially with many auras being character bound, and now character slots are character specific as well.
That's OK. I was only asking, it wasn't an instruction of any kind. I suppose I max out at 15 level 40s or so... otherwise I think I don't play them, so why keep them?
Did I miss the bit about slots being character bound, though? Delete the character, delete the slot? If true, that's nuts.
Yes, asking someone to delete a character they spent time, and potentially money, to level is too much. Especially with many auras being character bound, and now character slots are character specific as well.
That's OK. I was only asking, it wasn't an instruction of any kind. I suppose I max out at 15 level 40s or so... otherwise I think I don't play them, so why keep them?
Did I miss the bit about slots being character bound, though? Delete the character, delete the slot? If true, that's nuts.
I meant costume slots being character bound. Once a character reaches around level 20 they've reached a point where I won't delete them. I took the time to give them a backstory, costumes, and possibly even found them some auras. With out the ability to earn new character slots the game will quickly become stale for me. The cosmic gear grind isn't a compelling enough reason to play this game.
That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot. I have 120 slots currently, I've long since bought the maximum amount of character regular slots I'm allowed. Now I don't know if I can buy the FF slot but the one free slot they gave away has a few annoyances that are enough, and on top of that it's a $50 price tag.
If they were to remove the free character slot, with out removing the cap for buying more character slots, there's not much of a reason for me to continue leveling/playing. The cosmic grind isn't very exciting, and I doubt its sustainable long term.
Same here. I have 403 character slots and I've spent an equal amount of time designing and playing as each one. How the heck am I supposed to pick which ones to delete?
Literally the only reason I still play and subscribe to the game is because of the fact that I can unlock a new character slot when I hit level 40. I don't see a point in grinding for new costume parts if I can't design a new character to use them on. Even leveling up a character at all without the incentive of getting another one seems pointless to me. If that is removed, I'm leaving. That's all there is to it.
I would have stopped playing the game back in 2012 if the 59 character "limit" actually worked. I purposely never bought a lifetime account because I wanted to continuously support the developers. That's 6 years worth of monthly subscription money that Cryptic/PW wouldn't have had the supposed character slot limit been implemented properly.
> @magpieuk2014 said:
> That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot.
>
> Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
I wouldn't want to delete any. My characters are a lot more to me than just some stats and a build. It would be bad to lose them.
Well I roleplay on here with my guild the Angels of Fury and I use my many alts as NPC's this would be like killing off a character. Having the ability to make more and more new characters has helped our plot lines as well.
The Premium Pack as an item is not the problem. The problem is how Cryptic has managed their systems.
The character slot cap was 59. Why was this never enforced?
Because one thing I can guess is that the method of granting new slots was so haphazardly designed that it could continue to grant slots beyond the intended cap, because it was never programmed to acknowledge said cap's existence to begin with. This is something that likely existed from the beginning of the game, and was never addressed.
As for Gold characters turning Silver at the end of subscription, that's something Cryptic has to fix. Not because they have to be nice to some of you (honestly belligerent) veterans, but because it's a dated system that needs fixing rather than duct tape.
Comments
"Who can purchase this pack?
Anyone who has never been a Gold Subscriber, or purchased this pack before, can purchase the Premium Pack."
So does that mean since I HAVE had gold in the past I cannot get the Premium Pack?
@Chimerafreek
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Oh. Even better. I get to save my stored up 1500 Zen.
@Chimerafreek
But, unfortunately, the release of the Premium Pack has been delayed until, well, we don't know when. It may not be the same when they return with their new plan.
That's really sweet of you, but I'm afraid of you are wrong.
I am not a silver member, however I was for long just like everyone else. Still, I wouldn't crawl for this Premium Pack change if I was a silver. Every blind could see that this change will lead toward game termination. There are plenty of reasons, why. Just because it sounds good, does not mean that it is good. At least not for everyone, and definitely not for the game.
Silvers do not see the circumstances cuz they are way too hyped.
Of course I raise my voice when the game is about to collapse.
I must admit that I did not check the prices, my apologies for that. Then the price should be more than the cost of one month sub.
Since, as it was mentioned before, without subscription, this pack contains way too much stuff for a low price like 1.500 ZEN. I do not need to log into the game to say that, 3-4 travel powers cost 1.500 ZEN.
But go on, log in and calculate. Wonder how much ZEN the Premium Pack contains. And add + some ZENs for the color customization, perhaps 1K.
Even 50% of the full price will be much more than 1.500.
I'm not trying to be hostile but reasonable. Apologies for mistakes.
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
Having a higher price point makes it a whole lot harder to get players to get over the initial spending and from a business standpoint makes that idea bad.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Let us make it short:
It is a horrible punishment for subscribers while a pat-pat for silver players.
Wonder how much ex-gold members will stay with the game with their locked gold characters.
You can guess.
On release day:
If you are a silver member with many years, let someone to change the password of your account and let them known that to ask a lot of money for the new password.
If you do not want to pay, start a new account and buy the premium pack and be happy with it with your fresh account.
Just because this will happen to the current gold members.
They will lose everything and can make characters from zero if they do not want to pay for the upcoming "convert silver toon to ff toon" token which will cost 4250 ZEN at least, as someone already made a calculation earlier in this forum.
But, as they delayed it, they might come up with a better plan, so we can suppose that, they see the problem there either.
Luckily the people with reason was able to save time or the game, unlike the people blinded by hype.
FurAffinity
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> I commend the devs for listening to player feedback, but... As a one-time subber but current Silver player, I was really looking forward to that Premium Pack this week. Proceed with its launch, please, that is not what the people disliked. The general apprehension seemed to be about changing the way subscriptions work. I'd say, as some others have, release the Premium Pack as planned and then release whatever subscription changes later on, once you've figured out something that works.[/quote]
I disagree on releasing the Premium Pack and waiting for a solution to the "Locked Gold Characters" problem. Cryptic and its various owners have made massive changes like this before with the promise to fix issues those changes caused -- but it never happened.
This is called a pack, short for package deal. It's all or nothing. If they don't find a way to take care of the "Locked Gold Characters" issue WITH the release of the Premium Pack then there will be nothing to force them to later. That's the reputation we've come to expect. Promise everything and do nothing.
Don't get me wrong. The Premium Pack itself is a great deal. For the cost, that's lot of content.
[QUOTE]> @sterga" said:
> Digital items have a manufacturing cost of zero dollars.[/QUOTE]
What dream world are you living in? Just because they don't need a factory doesn't mean there wasn't a manufacturing cost. As a programmer and artist, I can confirm that it took someone some time to come up with all the little things we kill for everyday in that game. Someone had to craft everything in the game and that someone was paid.
championswiki.com
One Common method of buying FF slots- The Q exchange. Save Q, trade for Zen, Save up and wait for a sale.
People who put zen on- ones desperate for Q fast, unwanted stipends, traders buying low and selling high.
Less subs= less stipends= less zen on the exchange. You will be relying on the people desperate for Q and the traders.
I foresee the Q exchange hitting 500/zen fast and staying there.
Less FF slots being sold and management wondering why.
Due to making the FF only available by two expensive methods. LTS and $50 a pop, the "be the character you want to be" is now "be the character you want to be, if you can fork out a lot of money."
If they are providing only those 2 methods of getting the main interest of the game, then the price needs to be dropped a lot. To about $15(double the AT slot price.) It will be cheaper but a lot more people are likely to buy it. Since the only other option is $2-300 in one go.
You are more likely to get 3-4 at $15 than 1 at $50.
If you are having a product to fix a problem caused by a change, you need to have the product ready BEFORE the change, not Soon [Tm]. We've all heard that way too much in this game and know exactly what it means.
The package deal- yes I'll get that for my silver acct. Which already has 22 characters on it, thanks to Vigilance farming.
Creation cost for items is the Devs making them.
Actual manufacturing is the program amending the account. Which does take electricity and computer gear and internet access and someone to feed the hamster.
So you are both correct
@kaizerin ,@ambassadorkael
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But the Premium Pack itself doesn't cause any issues that need to be fixed. It was the changes to the subscription model that caused people to be upset, Premium Pack can easily be released, as planned, independent of those changes.
You are wrong about that. The Premium Pack contains that much stuff because they wanted to close the subscription. So they would sell the benefits of subscription in a pack.
As they are wondering about of keeping the subscription (or finding another solution), the Premium Pack most likely will change. Especially if they decided to keep the subscription. Then the pack will be changed a lot.
FurAffinity
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This is getting ridiculous
I am not wrong about the Premium Pack not causing issues itself. I am not wrong about it not being the main thing that caused people to be upset. The rest is speculation and is not as simple as being right or wrong. In my opinion, there is plenty of value for a subscription not included in the Premium Pack - free Freeform slots (cost 50 dollars for one, for Silver), the 500 Zen monthly stipend, and access to all of the archetypes (which would cost a decent amount to buy as Silver). It's completely possible they could change the Premium Pack if/when they change their subscription plan. I do not agree that it is necessary and we do not have information to indicate whether they will, so that is all more agree/disagree than right/wrong.
(Why did the forums delete my post when I tried to make edits, twice?)
Uh, no, we noticed. That's why there are a bunch of threads unhappy with the garbage way gold subs were going to be treated and why I made a suggestion thread to grandfather in gold subs. BUT that has nothing to do with the Premium Pack.
"What dream world are you living in? Just because they don't need a factory doesn't mean there wasn't a manufacturing cost. As a programmer and artist, I can confirm that it took someone some time to come up with all the little things we kill for everyday in that game. Someone had to craft everything in the game and that someone was paid."
The one where context and definition of words matter? No digital item has a manufacturing cost, they have development costs. I also talked about recouping dev costs, if you had continued reading.
"I foresee the Q exchange hitting 500/zen fast and staying there."
That happens when a lockbox comes out... It was at 470q/zen last night. That is what the exchange is going to be in the future whether subs continue to exist or not. That is due to nothing in the Q store being of value to most people and could be rectified by making the Q store full of fabulous items just as appealing as Keys.
$50 FF slots was a price point suggested by players who liked to argue with their feelings instead of looking at what other successful developers are doing. Today, the number of people who think $50 is fine is pretty much zero.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I've been playing since Labor Day Weekend in 2009. I have 74 characters, 42 of which are level 40. I had no idea there was a cap on how many characters you can have. Apparently I'm not the only one. There's a lot in this thread and I've barely scratched it, but suffice it to say, as others have said, getting a character to level 40 in order to get a new one has felt like the whole point of the game for a long time. Any other reward pales in comparison.
WOW!!! Big changes on my return! I have to admit I'm not too pleased about them.
Soooo.... let me get this straight; as an LTS I no longer recieve a free character when I get a character to level 40. Not good. In my opinion, Lifetime Subscribers should get at LEAST 35 percent off the price of a freeform slot for compensation. And, without monthly subscriptions there will be no more monthly subscriber rewards either, correct? I guess this means that any new costumes and emotes will have to be purchased in the C-Store. Figures.
This is a very bold move to let go of the monthly sub model; it is usually the bread and butter of western MMO''s in general. It makes me wonder how this game will continue to generate income.
Question: will Champions Online follow the Japan and Korean game models, where "every step you take and every move you make" will cost players money? It seems that is the way this game is going....
However, I -think- that they might see that the game still could generate more income than the maintenance cost. Who knows...
But I hardly can imagine an expensive maintenance cost since no-one develops the game for long. The server.exe is running on a server-machine and that's all. Even I could run said server on my pc with my connection. Perhaps not for 100 players, but still. For the cost of 3 months of subscription, you can get net connection especially for server machines in here. +1 month could handle the electricity bill. And it is only 4 months of subscription from 4 different players.
Is the game really loss-making ?
(Okay, do not forget about George, who makes one 3D model / month and puts it into the monthly reward store.)
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
> CONGRATULATIONS ambassadorkael you have killed the longest running Super hero game of all time. Well done.
Nobody Cares , This is an AMAZING Pack
Now sit back down on your Chair and be grateful that this Game is actually doing something Amazing for players that cannot afford Lifetime
The games PW has shut down this year were dead. I mean I played some of those games years ago and saw maybe two or three people in 30 minutes dead. No one screamed about CO's death when PW shut down the Immortal games earlier this year. Oh and Gigantic is shutting down next month. You know, because Motiga was "downsized" and all. Runic was shut down at the end of last year. Where was the outrage that CO was next on the chopping block then?
I suspect PW / Cryptic is standardizing the subs for their games and perhaps cleaning up the half-**** f2p conversion of CO. There is no way in hell PW is going to waste dev time making stuff like the Premium Pack (minimal effort most of it probably was) just to turn around and dump the whole game into the toilet. You will know CO is on the road to death when they move the devs to another game and replace them with nothing.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Seems we know it for long then.
If I am right, the last thing the game got was the eidolon boss fight. Not sure when but... Around half a year ago, perhaps ?
About that "move the devs to another game" thing.. Just remember why the hideouts were left in half-baked. The guy just got moved to do something else. And it is not an urban legend, the devs or/and moderators confirmed that either.
There are just as much reason to shut down this game as much not to.
We will see what happens soon enough anyway.
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The main issue with the Premium Pack/Subscription change isn't that it signals the game's death in the near future, but that it ensures (or would ensure, if it went live as-is) that the game would never recover its older players, let alone attract newer ones, which would undoubtedly lead to CO's death eventually.
If anything, pushing Lifetime subs and FF slots more is a cash-grab intended to show the execs that the game still has life. A misguided attempt, to be sure, but not one that spells doom in itself.
Where have you been ?
Ah, my apologies. I totally forgot that thing with the raised stats and nothing else. Hope it wasn't too hard to make after half of a year.
But the players of CO won't have problems with new content if this planned change goes online.
And I not even can get online in time to buy some account wide costume slots since they will get rid of it too.
Awesome updates ahead.
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
I don’t know how long it took them, but they were fixing issues during that time as well as updating rewards for the events they run.
Which they just added more stuff to the event store and nemesis store this week...so content.
That would be a worthless compensation... LTS isn't changing aside from us losing our ability to gain free characters slots with every lvl 40... every slot is a FF slot for us... so FF slots are effectively 750ech (625ech if buying 2 pack) for LTS already, we have no reason to buy the expensive $50 FF slot when regular slots are FF for us.
It's an entirely new alert. What do you mean "raised stats and nothing else"?
I have doubts you've been actively playing the game for a very long time. If you're gonna talk about the s,pint of development the game gets (about which you've been pretty wrong) you should at least go take a trip through the release notes if you're not going to be bothered to actually log in and play.
Thank you for writing a reply for the most insignificant statement in the whole tread. We highly appreciate your time and effort.
And thank you for the suggestion, I will take a closer look at this new event. I wouldn't want to miss the result of half of a year.
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot. I have 120 slots currently, I've long since bought the maximum amount of character regular slots I'm allowed. Now I don't know if I can buy the FF slot but the one free slot they gave away has a few annoyances that are enough, and on top of that it's a $50 price tag.
If they were to remove the free character slot, with out removing the cap for buying more character slots, there's not much of a reason for me to continue leveling/playing. The cosmic grind isn't very exciting, and I doubt its sustainable long term.
Swordsman Online and Jade Dynasty were both developed by PWE’s Beijing studio, so not likely. And even if they were utilized as a satellite studio for Cryptic, they’d probably end up working on Magic: the Gathering anyway. Remember how all the ex-Paragon devs Cryptic hired ended up on the Legacy of Romulus and Neverwinter launch crunches, not CO?
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Just a hunch
The point is, most of your info is old, outdated, or wrong, but you're presenting it like fact. If you'd like anyone to take you seriously, get your facts straight.
Thank you for brightening me up, I really appreciate it.
After you are done with helping me, it would be nice to help to others with their questions as well. They would be as grateful as I am.
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
I don't work for Cryptic. I don't have any answers for the current situation that anybody else doesn't already know.
Oh, it is really a shame. Thank you for your time anyway. Was a pleasure.
FurAffinity
SoundCloud
Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
Apparently that is too much to ask of some people based on reactions I got in another thread for making this same suggestion.
> [i] That's the biggest change for me. Part of the fun for me is getting to lvl 40 so I can get that new character slot.[/i]
>
> Could you bear to lose a few? I like getting the new slot, etc, but I do find myself getting rid of level 40 characters from time to time, and not really regretting it too much.
I wouldn't want to delete any. My characters are a lot more to me than just some stats and a build. It would be bad to lose them.
While I do have some joke characters that I wouldn't mind replacing down the road, this news means that at some point in the future I will lose the ability to create new characters and have no "joke" characters left to delete.
Having the ability to keep creating new characters and building my roster was literally one of the things I enjoyed best about this game, and it's what's kept me playing for over 8 years, compared to most other MMOs in which I don't even make it to a full year.
To some people, deleting an old character is no big deal, and that's fine. But to me it's like being a car collector (or collecting anything else for that matter). You don't tell a car collector that has a 200 car garage that he shouldn't have more than 20 cars. You're not gonna tell him "remember that old Corvette you restored with your brother? Just get rid of that so you can get a new one."
When I can't make more characters, that's when the novelty of the game wears off for me. I don't wanna quit the game, but this is the first time in this game's life that I've been considering it. I'm in no way trying to use that as some sort of threat to them, just being honest with how I feel.
Yeah no one does anything nice without a massive unnecessarily dramatic conspiracy behind it. They're also probably attempting to start World War 3 at the same time.
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Yes, asking someone to delete a character they spent time, and potentially money, to level is too much. Especially with many auras being character bound, and now costume slots are character specific as well.
That's OK. I was only asking, it wasn't an instruction of any kind. I suppose I max out at 15 level 40s or so... otherwise I think I don't play them, so why keep them?
Did I miss the bit about slots being character bound, though? Delete the character, delete the slot? If true, that's nuts.
I meant costume slots being character bound. Once a character reaches around level 20 they've reached a point where I won't delete them. I took the time to give them a backstory, costumes, and possibly even found them some auras. With out the ability to earn new character slots the game will quickly become stale for me. The cosmic gear grind isn't a compelling enough reason to play this game.
Same here. I have 403 character slots and I've spent an equal amount of time designing and playing as each one. How the heck am I supposed to pick which ones to delete?
Literally the only reason I still play and subscribe to the game is because of the fact that I can unlock a new character slot when I hit level 40. I don't see a point in grinding for new costume parts if I can't design a new character to use them on. Even leveling up a character at all without the incentive of getting another one seems pointless to me. If that is removed, I'm leaving. That's all there is to it.
I would have stopped playing the game back in 2012 if the 59 character "limit" actually worked. I purposely never bought a lifetime account because I wanted to continuously support the developers. That's 6 years worth of monthly subscription money that Cryptic/PW wouldn't have had the supposed character slot limit been implemented properly.
Well I roleplay on here with my guild the Angels of Fury and I use my many alts as NPC's this would be like killing off a character. Having the ability to make more and more new characters has helped our plot lines as well.
The character slot cap was 59. Why was this never enforced?
Because one thing I can guess is that the method of granting new slots was so haphazardly designed that it could continue to grant slots beyond the intended cap, because it was never programmed to acknowledge said cap's existence to begin with. This is something that likely existed from the beginning of the game, and was never addressed.
As for Gold characters turning Silver at the end of subscription, that's something Cryptic has to fix. Not because they have to be nice to some of you (honestly belligerent) veterans, but because it's a dated system that needs fixing rather than duct tape.