I wouldn't. But your argument busts a hole in the 'we had it, it should be free' thing. We 'have' cyberpunk costumes on NPC's in the game, guess selling them was wrong.
Hell, I've been saying for a while I'll GLADLY pay more than the standard fee for a new 'variety pack' of those missing costumes.
I would do the same. I have no problem handing over money to cryptic to support more items in the z-store, that is not locked behind a lockbox.
Then how do we attract the publisher's attention so resources can come this way? Is money enough?
As a general rule of life, money is enough. The only caveat is that it has to be enough money to be enough; it would take a very, very, very dramatic change in spending patterns for that.
EDIT: Also worth noting, you specifically mention the publisher -- remember the dev side also has involvement in deciding where resources go. In this case they'd make the same decision, but never discount Cryptic as an active and involved part of the team.
As a general rule of life, money is enough. The only caveat is that it has to be enough money to be enough; it would take a very, very, very dramatic change in spending patterns for that.
EDIT: Also worth noting, you specifically mention the publisher -- remember the dev side also has involvement in deciding where resources go. In this case they'd make the same decision, but never discount Cryptic as an active and involved part of the team.
Well, look- you guys tell us where we can direct our support to make certain things we want happen, and we'll do what we can. I mean, we can legitimately make this a two-way thing and do our part.
As a general rule of life, money is enough. The only caveat is that it has to be enough money to be enough; it would take a very, very, very dramatic change in spending patterns for that.
EDIT: Also worth noting, you specifically mention the publisher -- remember the dev side also has involvement in deciding where resources go. In this case they'd make the same decision, but never discount Cryptic as an active and involved part of the team.
I have run into several strangers today who now have the new dances.
I am one of those people, and I purchased even more zen on top of that.
We hope that Cryptic is following the direction where we throw our money. I also really hope that this emote pack is as big a success as I perceive it.
Well, look- you guys tell us where we can direct our support to make certain things we want happen, and we'll do what we can. I mean, we can legitimately make this a two-way thing and do our part.
OK, well if they were never available to begin with then that does change things. It's not longer a jerk move.
That said, money for emotes? Costumes, adventure packs, those I understanding paying for. But emotes? And just recently they were taken offline for being exploited to cause the game problems. Something smells fishy to me, and not just Slapperfish here.
Finally to look at the big picture, we get the emotes fixed but not the nemesis system? I can't speak for anyone else on this but the priorities here seem outta whack, even if the latter requires more work--that's a staple of the game that's been broken since I don't remember when...
Finally to look at the big picture, we get the emotes fixed but not the nemesis system? I can't speak for anyone else on this but the priorities here seem outta whack, even if the latter requires more work--that's a staple of the game that's been broken since I don't remember when...
True, nemeses are a staple, but emotes were both a server-crashing issue and an incredibly easy fix. High cost of not fixing it, low cost of fixing it.
True, nemeses are a staple, but emotes were both a server-crashing issue and an incredibly easy fix. High cost of not fixing it, low cost of fixing it.
Plus at this point the Nemesis fixes would be no small endeavor, though it would be really nice to see it get some love. Though that can be said about ALOT of aspects of this game.
True, nemeses are a staple, but emotes were both a server-crashing issue and an incredibly easy fix. High cost of not fixing it, low cost of fixing it.
Sooo now that the emote think is cleaned up, about that nemesis system?
Sure it might take some work, and little more than pressing a button to fix, but it seems more like there is an allergy against work and less of cost.
Over the years, I think the high cost of not fixing much, is great, when they could have fixed it if they did so when they crop up, could have been low. Instead they decide to sit on it which may have increased to cost to fix through their inaction, and due to their inaction, there was loss, but now due to that loss, seems they are saying it isnt worth fixing.
Sounds to me, they are simply lazy and allergic to any work that requires any skill beyond a 3 hours to fix.
Yeah, I'd love to see the Nemesis system get attention. It's the only way my villains from CoH can live on since I refuse to do that whole "I do heroic deeds but I'm really secretly evil" bull that some other people do.
That said, money for emotes? Costumes, adventure packs, those I understanding paying for. But emotes? And just recently they were taken offline for being exploited to cause the game problems. Something smells fishy to me, and not just Slapperfish here.
Finally to look at the big picture, we get the emotes fixed but not the nemesis system? I can't speak for anyone else on this but the priorities here seem outta whack, even if the latter requires more work--that's a staple of the game that's been broken since I don't remember when...
It's a fun goodie, much like the costume packs and items from the Zen store. No harm to the game from a player standpoint, just something fun to have. As far as the exploit, the emotes are a nice way to say "hey sorry about the problem we had with the emote exploit, we fixed that issue (which was causing the game to crash, a pretty big issue imo) and gave some goodies in thanks!"
Now I do agree that there is plenty more that needs to be fixed, but at least this is a step in the right direction. Cryptic is listening and trying to actively fix whats wrong. It's still gonna take time, and in the end maybe not everything will be fixed, but it's still progress.
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
There is a time for the nemesis system to get attention. I personally would give them up until the "gritty" zone is released. I would like to see the nemesis move in a new direction: actually being a character we play as villains. We could rise as villains in the new zone and queue for alerts as with objectives that are different from the heroes.
Then, when we log back into our heroes, we could pair a villain and hero character together as nemeses of eachother. I don't believe a new faction would be expensive as far as resources.
Reading between the lines, Cryptic views any effort put into the game as having to pay for itself. As if there wasn't a need for large investment to repair the game.
Vibora Bay again.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
What? They want this game to actually make money???
Say it ain't so, Joe!
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Local restaurant charging me for drink refills might make more money per person, but I'll bet they'll get fewer people, and that kind of thinking can kill a business.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
What? They want this game to actually make money???
Say it ain't so, Joe!
Depends on your definition of making money. They could invest some money into the game and earn a lot of profit, maybe. Or they can give the bare minimum and let the game sustain itself. Both of those options are making money, but only one is going to make a large profit (hypothetically).
Right now it seems to me that, no, they don't want the game to make money, they want it to sustain itself.
The irony of this thread is how many of us told em "we'd pay money for an emote pack". And a lot of us are, my entire circle has that pack, or the ones without the fluid cash are busily farming for it, which means someone else is buying it. Which means it's successful. And I, for one, hope they do more. I'd take that heroic pose you do in cutscenes, the old sit heroic for females, and some other random stuff. And I'd pay for it.
If I didn't already have absolutely all of em, I'd also pay money for an "unlock the legacy weapons" pack, and that was content that used to be free. Why? It gives em a reason to put it back in, and gives players that never had access to it a chance to farm for it. It's either that or more lock boxes, guys. This is our chance to show em that putting stuff directly in the store is going to make them cash.
Do *not* screw this up.
In game, I am @EvilTaco. Happily killing purple gang members since May 2008. RIP Caine
I don't believe a new faction would be expensive as far as resources.
According to Positron, City of Villains took just as many resources and development time as the original City of Heroes. After the two were merged into a single game, meaning that every player had both, about 20-30% of the player activity took place on the villain side.
If Champions were to introduce a villain faction the same way as CoH did, it would likely be a financial failure, for similar reasons to why CoV was considered one.
There's a few reasons why Champions wouldn't need as much in the way of development resources:
-There's no need for a new powers system. Freeforms will work fine for villains, as will most Archetypes. Adding one or two new ATs with a villainous theme would be fairly low-cost. Nothing here would compare to CoV's rebuilding of the entire class system (I'm calling them "classes" throughout this, to differentiate the two different meanings of "Archetype"), addition of several new powersets, or creation of two all new mechanics that their respective classes were designed around.
-There's no need for all-new zones. Add one or two villain themed zones, and make them all shared. Instead of adding PVP zones "between" hero and villain zones, add Villain vs Villain and Hero vs Villain PVP queues.
There would still be a significant cost, since writing and developing content from 1-40, even if few new assets are needed, is going to take time, as will retrofitting the old content to fit the new design.
Once the "new shiny" wears off, it's reasonable to predict that the number of people using all that new content will be similar to the split in CoH. There's a lot of readons to not go "redside": I don't like being evil, my main/stuff/SG/friends are on the other side, I don't want to start over, and so on.
There's also the fact that shared content doesn't work as well in a supers game as In some other games. While it might make sense for human and orc adventurers to sometimes undertake the same quests, even when they're on opposite sides, because neither is inherently goid or evil; both factions have elements of both alignments.
Heroes and villains are far less likely to work together - by definition, their goals work counter to each other most of the time. That means that twice as much content must be developed going forward, or each faction gets half as much to keep the release rate constant.
With all this in mind, the people holding the purse strings have to decide if the projected new income will offset the development costs, past, present and future. In CoH's case, it didn't. That's at least part of the reason why the games were combined and side-switching was added: it made it so that all content was available to everyone. And it still didn't completely stop the people from demanding more for whichever side they played - "Stop wasting your time developing for redside. Nobody will play it anyways!" or"Put more stuff on redside, so more people are willing to come over here!"
As much as I'd love to see a villain side, I don't think it's a good idea. Multi-faction games should be that way from day 1. Adding factions after launch makes the later factions feel tacked on and lacking.
_________________________________________________ @flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
its true, they should not try, its more financially viable. effort leads to failure. I think that is cryptic's mission statement.
There is a pretty significant difference between, "if at first you don't succeed try, try, again," and, "don't throw good money after bad."
What was being asked for was more money and, it is just not a sound business decision to invest money into an endeavor that has (seemingly) demonstrated, repeatedly, that such does not yield significant returns.
CO is not a game where Cryptic is saying, "yeah I know its a money making machine, but we don't feel like putting in the effort to do anything with it." Instead it is a game where every time they have invested a significant amount of developer time/money the game has seen, at best, a short lived increase in population before dropping again.
If developer money invested into CO resulted in large returns we would not have to ask for it.
Depends on your definition of making money. They could invest some money into the game and earn a lot of profit, maybe. Or they can give the bare minimum and let the game sustain itself. Both of those options are making money, but only one is going to make a large profit (hypothetically).
Right now it seems to me that, no, they don't want the game to make money, they want it to sustain itself.
The only way to make a large profit from this game right now is to do a huge sale on something like Steam where there are 12 million people who will see the sale. Not something obscure like ARC that nobody wants to install.
Do the huge sale, and grab as many $5 bills as possible as fast as possible before people figure out the game isn't worth their time and they aren't likely to play it.
It worked for Secret World and Defiance, two MMOs that get bad reviews
and are totally destroying this in paid number of players just on Steam where we can track them.
Another part of that is just post some news and information updates so that the Steam page looks fresh.
Right now, when I go to Steam and click on CO, the last news article is from November 2012.
That looks bad. It looks like a dead game.
Of course, that goes yet again to the critical problem that this game lacks communication in countless ways. And yet another failure to do good business.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Like CO is a training chair for an airbrush booth on the boardwalk.
If customers are happy with their "Ghetto Like Gramma" t-shirt and pay $10 great, if people
say "I can shart better shirts!!' and don't want to pay, that's ok, the practice was worth
the time, because you go from the t-shirts to airbrushing dungeons and spaceships for more money.
I want a "Ghetto Like CO" airbrushed wife beater t-shirt in the next update.
The major road block to adding playable villains to CO is that people would expect PvP to be a part of it, and the folks in charge have no interest in making pvp become in any way related to the core content of the game.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
PvP existed before CoV(see the arena patch) at no time did they build toward the expectation of PvP, no matter what expectation was set by the arena patch that came before.
Content at the same level bands can be the causation of eachother.
Ex: Villain arms gangsters via a weapons deal shortly after busting into a hoard of confiscated weapons at a police station. Hero disarms gangsters by beating them senseless and handing the weapons in at the police station.
The major road block to adding playable villains to CO is that people would expect PvP to be a part of it, and the folks in charge have no interest in making pvp become in any way related to the core content of the game.
Here. Get to know eachother. By the way, I was indirectly supporting your point.
Who do you think I was responding to? And honestly, it didn't look like you were... it looked like you were trying to "correct" me on when PvP entered CoH, which... wasn't what I was talking about.
Thing is, this shows how little Cryptic understands the current situation.
'It costs dev time, and player goodwill is worth only so much' only makes sense in a healthy game.
A game that's universally slammed for having been abandoned for three years needs a MASSIVE amount of work to convince people that they should rethink how CO is doing.
It's Vibora Bay, rinse, lather, repeat.
this.
emotes doesnt really prove to me the game is worth coming back to. It proves Cryptic still thinks random, useless content and lockboxes is all players need.
The irony of this thread is how many of us told em "we'd pay money for an emote pack". And a lot of us are, my entire circle has that pack, or the ones without the fluid cash are busily farming for it, which means someone else is buying it. Which means it's successful. And I, for one, hope they do more. I'd take that heroic pose you do in cutscenes, the old sit heroic for females, and some other random stuff. And I'd pay for it.
If I didn't already have absolutely all of em, I'd also pay money for an "unlock the legacy weapons" pack, and that was content that used to be free. Why? It gives em a reason to put it back in, and gives players that never had access to it a chance to farm for it. It's either that or more lock boxes, guys. This is our chance to show em that putting stuff directly in the store is going to make them cash.
Do *not* screw this up.
yeah, how dare some of us not give a **** about emotes and actually want content instead of being able to do 3 new dances while cybering in a ****ty club filled wth catgirls.
yeah, how dare some of us not give a **** about emotes and actually want content instead of being able to do 3 new dances while cybering in a ****ty club filled wth catgirls.
Correction we DO care about content, this is a tester field to encourage Cryptic to make things outside lockboxes that players will purchase. We want to have new areas to play and new enemies to defeat as much as the next player! But in order to show our support of the game we also choose to support the optional content, the ones we approve of.
And for the record most players don't cyber or play catgirls. Get your facts straight before making assumptions.
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
The problem is how much is 'people willing to buy emotes' a really good measure of 'how much will people buy into the game if we put out regular content'?
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
You know what *might* help? Making some of this stuff free for gold members. Why?
1) It's a good way to appease your currently highly disgruntled subscribed player base. Considering many of us have been gold for so many years and are yet to see any real major content additions and improvements, it would certainly be appreciated and a good sign that we are not forgotten. As it is right now, you have a lot of nerve to constantly ask us to throw MORE money at you on top of what we already pay each month for a game that's basically going NOWHERE all to buy new relatively useless 'content' and stuff that can only be obtain through store purchases.
2) It adds to the value of gold membership which in turns is a very good incentive for silvers to make the jump to gold - which in turns means more money for Cryptic. $15/mo > one time $5. But I've given up on Cryptic making sounded business decisions ages ago so yeah...
There is a pretty significant difference between, "if at first you don't succeed try, try, again," and, "don't throw good money after bad."
What was being asked for was more money and, it is just not a sound business decision to invest money into an endeavor that has (seemingly) demonstrated, repeatedly, that such does not yield significant returns.
CO is not a game where Cryptic is saying, "yeah I know its a money making machine, but we don't feel like putting in the effort to do anything with it." Instead it is a game where every time they have invested a significant amount of developer time/money the game has seen, at best, a short lived increase in population before dropping again.
If developer money invested into CO resulted in large returns we would not have to ask for it.
exacly how many times has this game significantly invested in? the "major additions I recall are vibora bay, free to play which reshuffled existing missions, added some good costumes for paying players and smoothed out some content but did not add a significant amount, the comics series which, while good were pretty far between, and on alert, which(i think) changed the loot to be more standard clothing gear rather than more random, though arguably more comic booky devices and magic implements, and it took one secondary equip from us but made the gear stronger, and they added the traits. there has been no "issue 10" and sure as hell no issue 16.
so yeah, drain enthusiasm from the fanbase with scant updates, over emphasise lockboxes and vehicles, and then throw your hands up ans say "we tried" when the reality is that compared to every competitor in the field, you didnt, you phoned it in to get sto out the door , and then after a a short run of adding content with limited new art assetts, you vanished for almost a year to push nwo while giving one off missions with cut and paste big enemies. yeah, maybe my expectations are out of whack because i played coh and we actually got content on a regular basis, but the landscape of the mmo world has changed, there are a lot of players who got displaced and there was initial good will because co did seem to be initially welcoming...but then deafening silence.
things seem to be a little better with error keeping the door content as permanent, but have you ever wondered why investing money here never got results? Are we just writing this off as something out of the devs hands, or is it because the tiems they tried simply were too half hearted.
Comments
I would do the same. I have no problem handing over money to cryptic to support more items in the z-store, that is not locked behind a lockbox.
Then how do we attract the publisher's attention so resources can come this way? Is money enough?
As a general rule of life, money is enough. The only caveat is that it has to be enough money to be enough; it would take a very, very, very dramatic change in spending patterns for that.
EDIT: Also worth noting, you specifically mention the publisher -- remember the dev side also has involvement in deciding where resources go. In this case they'd make the same decision, but never discount Cryptic as an active and involved part of the team.
Well, look- you guys tell us where we can direct our support to make certain things we want happen, and we'll do what we can. I mean, we can legitimately make this a two-way thing and do our part.
I have run into several strangers today who now have the new dances.
I am one of those people, and I purchased even more zen on top of that.
We hope that Cryptic is following the direction where we throw our money. I also really hope that this emote pack is as big a success as I perceive it.
So could we get some of the STO stances in here then? They have some rather nice ones over there.
Exactly!
.
That said, money for emotes? Costumes, adventure packs, those I understanding paying for. But emotes? And just recently they were taken offline for being exploited to cause the game problems. Something smells fishy to me, and not just Slapperfish here.
Finally to look at the big picture, we get the emotes fixed but not the nemesis system? I can't speak for anyone else on this but the priorities here seem outta whack, even if the latter requires more work--that's a staple of the game that's been broken since I don't remember when...
Flare's guide to hosting and judging costume contests!
(link under construction)
Not entirely. That was on PTS only. The STO devs complained just before that build went Live.
Accept "air guitar" never made it past test. So we still never really had it.
True, nemeses are a staple, but emotes were both a server-crashing issue and an incredibly easy fix. High cost of not fixing it, low cost of fixing it.
Plus at this point the Nemesis fixes would be no small endeavor, though it would be really nice to see it get some love. Though that can be said about ALOT of aspects of this game.
Sooo now that the emote think is cleaned up, about that nemesis system?
Sure it might take some work, and little more than pressing a button to fix, but it seems more like there is an allergy against work and less of cost.
Over the years, I think the high cost of not fixing much, is great, when they could have fixed it if they did so when they crop up, could have been low. Instead they decide to sit on it which may have increased to cost to fix through their inaction, and due to their inaction, there was loss, but now due to that loss, seems they are saying it isnt worth fixing.
Sounds to me, they are simply lazy and allergic to any work that requires any skill beyond a 3 hours to fix.
It's a fun goodie, much like the costume packs and items from the Zen store. No harm to the game from a player standpoint, just something fun to have. As far as the exploit, the emotes are a nice way to say "hey sorry about the problem we had with the emote exploit, we fixed that issue (which was causing the game to crash, a pretty big issue imo) and gave some goodies in thanks!"
Now I do agree that there is plenty more that needs to be fixed, but at least this is a step in the right direction. Cryptic is listening and trying to actively fix whats wrong. It's still gonna take time, and in the end maybe not everything will be fixed, but it's still progress.
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
Then, when we log back into our heroes, we could pair a villain and hero character together as nemeses of eachother. I don't believe a new faction would be expensive as far as resources.
Vibora Bay again.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Say it ain't so, Joe!
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
"Do you know what power is? Power is control of men who are lesser than you."
Local restaurant charging me for drink refills might make more money per person, but I'll bet they'll get fewer people, and that kind of thinking can kill a business.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
lol. How dare they!
Depends on your definition of making money. They could invest some money into the game and earn a lot of profit, maybe. Or they can give the bare minimum and let the game sustain itself. Both of those options are making money, but only one is going to make a large profit (hypothetically).
Right now it seems to me that, no, they don't want the game to make money, they want it to sustain itself.
If I didn't already have absolutely all of em, I'd also pay money for an "unlock the legacy weapons" pack, and that was content that used to be free. Why? It gives em a reason to put it back in, and gives players that never had access to it a chance to farm for it. It's either that or more lock boxes, guys. This is our chance to show em that putting stuff directly in the store is going to make them cash.
Do *not* screw this up.
RIP Caine
They tried that.
We are experiencing the results.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
According to Positron, City of Villains took just as many resources and development time as the original City of Heroes. After the two were merged into a single game, meaning that every player had both, about 20-30% of the player activity took place on the villain side.
If Champions were to introduce a villain faction the same way as CoH did, it would likely be a financial failure, for similar reasons to why CoV was considered one.
There's a few reasons why Champions wouldn't need as much in the way of development resources:
-There's no need for a new powers system. Freeforms will work fine for villains, as will most Archetypes. Adding one or two new ATs with a villainous theme would be fairly low-cost. Nothing here would compare to CoV's rebuilding of the entire class system (I'm calling them "classes" throughout this, to differentiate the two different meanings of "Archetype"), addition of several new powersets, or creation of two all new mechanics that their respective classes were designed around.
-There's no need for all-new zones. Add one or two villain themed zones, and make them all shared. Instead of adding PVP zones "between" hero and villain zones, add Villain vs Villain and Hero vs Villain PVP queues.
There would still be a significant cost, since writing and developing content from 1-40, even if few new assets are needed, is going to take time, as will retrofitting the old content to fit the new design.
Once the "new shiny" wears off, it's reasonable to predict that the number of people using all that new content will be similar to the split in CoH. There's a lot of readons to not go "redside": I don't like being evil, my main/stuff/SG/friends are on the other side, I don't want to start over, and so on.
There's also the fact that shared content doesn't work as well in a supers game as In some other games. While it might make sense for human and orc adventurers to sometimes undertake the same quests, even when they're on opposite sides, because neither is inherently goid or evil; both factions have elements of both alignments.
Heroes and villains are far less likely to work together - by definition, their goals work counter to each other most of the time. That means that twice as much content must be developed going forward, or each faction gets half as much to keep the release rate constant.
With all this in mind, the people holding the purse strings have to decide if the projected new income will offset the development costs, past, present and future. In CoH's case, it didn't. That's at least part of the reason why the games were combined and side-switching was added: it made it so that all content was available to everyone. And it still didn't completely stop the people from demanding more for whichever side they played - "Stop wasting your time developing for redside. Nobody will play it anyways!" or"Put more stuff on redside, so more people are willing to come over here!"
As much as I'd love to see a villain side, I don't think it's a good idea. Multi-faction games should be that way from day 1. Adding factions after launch makes the later factions feel tacked on and lacking.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
There is a pretty significant difference between, "if at first you don't succeed try, try, again," and, "don't throw good money after bad."
What was being asked for was more money and, it is just not a sound business decision to invest money into an endeavor that has (seemingly) demonstrated, repeatedly, that such does not yield significant returns.
CO is not a game where Cryptic is saying, "yeah I know its a money making machine, but we don't feel like putting in the effort to do anything with it." Instead it is a game where every time they have invested a significant amount of developer time/money the game has seen, at best, a short lived increase in population before dropping again.
If developer money invested into CO resulted in large returns we would not have to ask for it.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Um. When??
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
The only way to make a large profit from this game right now is to do a huge sale on something like Steam where there are 12 million people who will see the sale. Not something obscure like ARC that nobody wants to install.
Do the huge sale, and grab as many $5 bills as possible as fast as possible before people figure out the game isn't worth their time and they aren't likely to play it.
It worked for Secret World and Defiance, two MMOs that get bad reviews
and are totally destroying this in paid number of players just on Steam where we can track them.
No sale is no sale.
Right now, when I go to Steam and click on CO, the last news article is from November 2012.
That looks bad. It looks like a dead game.
Of course, that goes yet again to the critical problem that this game lacks communication in countless ways. And yet another failure to do good business.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Like CO is a training chair for an airbrush booth on the boardwalk.
If customers are happy with their "Ghetto Like Gramma" t-shirt and pay $10 great, if people
say "I can shart better shirts!!' and don't want to pay, that's ok, the practice was worth
the time, because you go from the t-shirts to airbrushing dungeons and spaceships for more money.
I want a "Ghetto Like CO" airbrushed wife beater t-shirt in the next update.
In the parallel universe where Cryptic actually cares.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
PvP existed before CoV(see the arena patch) at no time did they build toward the expectation of PvP, no matter what expectation was set by the arena patch that came before.
Content at the same level bands can be the causation of eachother.
Ex: Villain arms gangsters via a weapons deal shortly after busting into a hoard of confiscated weapons at a police station. Hero disarms gangsters by beating them senseless and handing the weapons in at the police station.
See: Hero Games.
I.E., not what I meant, bucko.
If I wanted to address you, I would have quoted you.
I didn't see anyone else mention CoV. You're just sore that you missed my point.
Here. Get to know eachother. By the way, I was indirectly supporting your point.
I'll change it so that it is more clear.
this.
emotes doesnt really prove to me the game is worth coming back to. It proves Cryptic still thinks random, useless content and lockboxes is all players need.
yeah, how dare some of us not give a **** about emotes and actually want content instead of being able to do 3 new dances while cybering in a ****ty club filled wth catgirls.
Correction we DO care about content, this is a tester field to encourage Cryptic to make things outside lockboxes that players will purchase. We want to have new areas to play and new enemies to defeat as much as the next player! But in order to show our support of the game we also choose to support the optional content, the ones we approve of.
And for the record most players don't cyber or play catgirls. Get your facts straight before making assumptions.
@Aleatha1011 in CO | Keeper of the Cheesecake since Nov. 2011| Bunni BOT is on PRIMUS! | Come check out my deviantart page!
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
1) It's a good way to appease your currently highly disgruntled subscribed player base. Considering many of us have been gold for so many years and are yet to see any real major content additions and improvements, it would certainly be appreciated and a good sign that we are not forgotten. As it is right now, you have a lot of nerve to constantly ask us to throw MORE money at you on top of what we already pay each month for a game that's basically going NOWHERE all to buy new relatively useless 'content' and stuff that can only be obtain through store purchases.
2) It adds to the value of gold membership which in turns is a very good incentive for silvers to make the jump to gold - which in turns means more money for Cryptic. $15/mo > one time $5. But I've given up on Cryptic making sounded business decisions ages ago so yeah...
exacly how many times has this game significantly invested in? the "major additions I recall are vibora bay, free to play which reshuffled existing missions, added some good costumes for paying players and smoothed out some content but did not add a significant amount, the comics series which, while good were pretty far between, and on alert, which(i think) changed the loot to be more standard clothing gear rather than more random, though arguably more comic booky devices and magic implements, and it took one secondary equip from us but made the gear stronger, and they added the traits. there has been no "issue 10" and sure as hell no issue 16.
so yeah, drain enthusiasm from the fanbase with scant updates, over emphasise lockboxes and vehicles, and then throw your hands up ans say "we tried" when the reality is that compared to every competitor in the field, you didnt, you phoned it in to get sto out the door , and then after a a short run of adding content with limited new art assetts, you vanished for almost a year to push nwo while giving one off missions with cut and paste big enemies. yeah, maybe my expectations are out of whack because i played coh and we actually got content on a regular basis, but the landscape of the mmo world has changed, there are a lot of players who got displaced and there was initial good will because co did seem to be initially welcoming...but then deafening silence.
things seem to be a little better with error keeping the door content as permanent, but have you ever wondered why investing money here never got results? Are we just writing this off as something out of the devs hands, or is it because the tiems they tried simply were too half hearted.