LOL! I'm not subbed because it would be incredibly irresponsible for me to waste money on a stupid video game when I'm still getting things sorted from my recent homelessness. I hate to break this to you, but there are things in the world that are FAR more important than a pretend item in a video game.
YOU enjoy those sunglasses. I'll be focused on how awesome the rest of this year is going to be for me. And thanks for the laugh.
Hey, congrats on getting a roof over your head, Sterga. I had a buddy homeless for a while, and it's always a relief to hear about people getting out of that situation. IRL absolutely comes first, and I'm glad IRL is going well for you.
If Cryptic wants to make subscription sales they should better advertise it.
The majority of new players don't even know what Freeform is and what it provides. We need Dev blogs or tutorial videos sponsored by Cryptic.
More awareness of subs is definitely part of the plan. Not sure about tutorial videos, but a blog is in the works, something to replace and upgrade this one.
Chances are, and I'll bet a couple of cosmic keys on it- these costumes from the Gold vendor were 'miscellaneous parts' that the Devs couldn't justify putting into any costume sets, and instead have opted just to toss them out like this.
I think it's actually the other way around, though I'm not sure. I think the devs were coming up with ideas that would've fallen into that category, and weren't able to justify the man-hours to make them in the current full-set model; simultaneously, you have the desire to make the subs more valuable. Combine the two, and you have a system where you can encourage miscellany, rather than having a bunch of pieces already made and wanting a home for them.
I find it impossible to believe CO sees this new program as a grand content solution: It feels like a bonus just as they say it is intended.
Yup. Big stuff is great, and we have some nifty mid-sized stuff planned (think the scale of releases over the past year or so), but we also understand that incremental stuff adds up. If we find a small opportunity for a small improvement, we know that can add up.
Yup. Big stuff is great, and we have some nifty mid-sized stuff planned (think the scale of releases over the past year or so), but we also understand that incremental stuff adds up. If we find a small opportunity for a small improvement, we know that can add up.
Last year's stuff was actually ok, just 3 things I think could have increased replay:
1. Make them re-enterable indefinitely even after initial completion, like Nemcon and Lairs. Daily quest rewards only on first run of the day of course.
2. Add new rare drops! Secondary Gear better than dropped purples but behind Vigi, new Primaries positioned as a small improvement over Heroic, but behind Legion and Justice. Essentially some reason to keep running it without tipping the current itemization hierarchy. Also a solo route to better gear than the three year old Heroic set
3. Meaningful difficulty and reward scaling with difficulty slider. Or at the very least, do something with just the Elite setting. Give Elite mobs new attacks or a random chance to proc Crippling Challenge, NTTG, Trauma, make some perma-Ego Surged, some perma-Unbreakable and so on, but raise droprates like how D2 or D3 does with this kind of setting
Yup. Big stuff is great, and we have some nifty mid-sized stuff planned (think the scale of releases over the past year or so),:
ehhh, thats very bad news. last year was ok for a learning year for the new developers, but for a second year, that is really looking skimpy. i mean, i will admit, didnt play foxbat, maybe it was great, but last year was 3 instanced missions, a few street hunts, a race that wasn't particularly fun without a vehicle, a nice bug fix issue and a handful of alerts. and 2 sets of a small number of additional powers for existing frameworks, and the psy ones had some wonky animations, a second year of that is a long dry spell.
now we did start getting costumes again, and i am very grateful for that and have purchased all of them..but on the mission story side, do you get why some of us feel this way?
Hey, congrats on getting a roof over your head, Sterga. I had a buddy homeless for a while, and it's always a relief to hear about people getting out of that situation. IRL absolutely comes first, and I'm glad IRL is going well for you.
Thank you. Wasn't that bad. The worst part of my day was watching the crappy golfers in Balboa while waiting for the library to open.
Two permanent missions that can be thrown together in a few hours of development doesn't make up for the past 3-4 years of no new places to explore and hang out in.
What about the Lemurian Invasion? That was new content.
Would be nice to see the second instanced mission come back, I admit. The throw away part one bit was cute but too simple/fast.
That was developed and worked on since before On Alert. Its not even a complete version and is missing whole phases to complete. It was butchered so it can be changed into a popcorn mission since the event approach of the game was abandoned.
More awareness of subs is definitely part of the plan. Not sure about tutorial videos, but a blog is in the works, something to replace and upgrade this one.
Something comparable to how STO and NWO advertises features (through a video) is required since Freeform is the BEST thing CO can provide. Anything short of that is considered paltry. If you have a standard in Cryptic, it should apply to all your games.
Yup. Big stuff is great, and we have some nifty mid-sized stuff planned (think the scale of releases over the past year or so), but we also understand that incremental stuff adds up. If we find a small opportunity for a small improvement, we know that can add up.
When thinking scale of releases in the past year, that's a total of 30 minutes of game play. A whole year and only producing that much is shameful. Face palming not from contempt for Cryptic but out of sheer embarrassment for them.
You know what would add value to the game for everyone? Adding a hand-tailored mission daily rather than a costume piece that would be lost forever. They don't even have to use new assets. If any player can create amazing things with demo record, then any of the "professionals" in Cryptic using the Cryptic engine can create a 3 minute mission every week to add to the game's play time.
Two permanent missions that can be thrown together in a few hours of development doesn't make up for the past 3-4 years of no new places to explore and hang out in.
That was developed and worked on since before On Alert. Its not even a complete version and is missing whole phases to complete. It was butchered so it can be changed into a popcorn mission since the event approach of the game was abandoned.
Regardless, they're still content updates, even if they don't fit your personal criteria of what acceptable content should be. The expectation of new explorable content as you described earlier simply isn't their focus any more, nor is it anywhere near realistic considering that they aren't getting the budget for it. The sooner you readjust your expectations the better you will be for it.
Regardless, they're still content updates, even if they don't fit your personal criteria of what acceptable content should be. The expectation of new explorable content as you described earlier simply isn't their focus any more, nor is it anywhere near realistic considering that they aren't getting the budget for it. The sooner you readjust your expectations the better you will be for it.
They do fit my content update criteria. They just should be doing more of this throughout the year. Fatal Error just has the quality of something done in a week's worth of work, including voice acting and editing the dialogue. Its just that plain.
The idea of new explorable content for CO hasn't been their focus since STO was released. (We got the APs and Comics through Atari forcing Cryptic's hand, but that's straying from the point.)
Adding content in this fashion regularly adds more worth to a game and attraction to new players more than an item that costs money ever will.
Cryptic practices this in their other games. The only reason Champions isn't making the budget is because they don't practice that work method to Champions. Players won't come when 99% of updates requires money.
They do fit my content update criteria. They just should be doing more of this throughout the year. Fatal Error just has the quality of something done in a week's worth of work, including voice acting and editing the dialogue.
The idea of new explorable content for CO hasn't been their focus since STO was released.
Adding content in this fashion regularly adds more worth to a game and attraction to new players more than an item that costs money ever will.
The likely reason why they don't add content of that fashion is because there is no justification to the development costs involved. The game isn't up there in terms of popularity and it's not going to automatically to draw or even retain a huge number of new players. Heck, players don't even need to pay a single cent to play the game, so what's the point of investing resources and time into such huge content that don't even promise returns?
Something like Fatal Error is more or less what they need to be focused on I guess, even though I hardly count it as "explorable content". But more likely that not I'm just expecting more one shot alerts.
Cryptic practices this in their other games. The only reason Champions isn't making the budget is because they don't practice that work method to Champions.
Or simply because PWE isn't giving them the budget to make a significant difference.
Alerts like Warlord still get plenty of replay because of the DU core. Incidentally, DU core currently has the dubious honor of best in slot for Prim Off mod slots.
If we get new content around the length of Warlord, with accompanying drops to lend more diversity to gearing, i.e. give DU core, Vigi etc some competition, I'll be happy.
I think people need to exercise a little patience. I've been critical in the past, but I do see the mini-updates we've been getting as encouraging. It looks like we'll be getting lots of smaller updates instead of huge content updates. However, TT did hint some more things may be coming.
I'd be fine with updates like Fatal Error, The Rampages, and Warlord.. being the norm. As players we need to be realistic. This isn't a hugely popular genre or game. The only super-hero game that's even close to mainstream popular is DCUO and they are cashing in on a huge IP. Champions will never be that popular. So having lots of smaller updates spread throughout the year is fine with me. It's much better than nothing.
If that's disappointing for some there are games.. but they won't be Supers themed. This game works for me, for now. When I get bored I stop subbing, and then I re-up my sub with I decide to play again.
In typical fashion the community goes up in arms because what he hinted at can't possibly be enough.
And they wonder why the devs don't talk to us.
Lets look back..
Dev hint at new content--
--New 'content' turns out to be quickly churned out short missions and a new alert t0 grind.
It's not that we're skeptical but.. okay yea it's because we're skeptical
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Or simply because PWE isn't giving them the budget to make a significant difference.
STO got an injection of resources from PWE after the buy out because the Cryptic head convinced the PWE bosses that it would heavily benefit from it. CO didn't because that same Cryptic head didn't care for CO and made that disinterest common knowledge. PWE took that as a sign that CO isn't worth the investment.
Overall PWE only cared about the NWO license and the Cryptic engine to potentially shell out more MMOs. If there wasn't convincing from the Cryptic head for STO, PWE would have been more than fine with letting it continue to fail until they lost the IP.
In typical fashion the community goes up in arms because what he hinted at can't possibly be enough.
And they wonder why the devs don't talk to us.
The community didn't go up in arms (as you put it) about the word of content coming, but that it would be of the same value as the content that came out last year. That's a whole Fatal Error and 2 other custom alerts. So by that pattern, the Foxbat revamp and maybe one more event at most is what we'll get for the rest of this year. Maybe another balance changing nerf.
Its enough to put us in this exact same conversation next year.
If it comes to that again for a third year in a row, I'm out. My time and money was for the value of everything up to Hideouts and Comics. Not this 2 tiny queues a year shlock.
Heck, players don't even need to pay a single cent to play the game, so what's the point of investing resources and time into such huge content that don't even promise returns?
Neverwinter is the cash cow of Cryptic. It's also 100% F2P. And the game they're launching in China. Not CO, not STO, but Fantasy Cash Cow. What you said, makes zero sense.
Neverwinter is the cash cow of Cryptic. It's also 100% F2P. And the game they're launching in China. Not CO, not STO, but Fantasy Cash Cow. What you said, makes zero sense.
So let's ignore the fact that Neverwinter is part of the fantasy genre, like you know, the most popular and mainstream genre when it comes to MMO genres? How about that hugely popular D&D license name? Maybe that fact draws a much bigger audience than CO ever has, hence being much more profitable even if it's also 100% F2P?
Exactly that. We value our subscribers, and we want to make sure they feel awesome month over month, especially with a little kick of something new and fresh.
These are going to be exclusive to subscribers, and exclusive to the month they are released. We will not be re-releasing them later on, either in the vendor or in another system -- these are planned as exclusives that are available only for a limited time. We're really looking forward to seeing the costumes that subbers make with these, they'll be nice little bonuses for them to play with.
Better idea: Costume pieces stick around in that system. They cost 1 token. You get 1 token per month subscribed, and they hold over in your account claimables tab for up to 3 months.
That way if there's a single part you desperately want you won't ever miss it, even if you miss out on tokens.
And since you can have up to 3 months worth of tokens in your claimables tab you likely won't be penalised because of an RL crisis or a vacation or whatever. And even if you do miss out on tokens, you can pick and choose the exact parts you want/need.
In typical fashion the community goes up in arms because what he hinted at can't possibly be enough.
And they wonder why the devs don't talk to us.
nobody is up in arms, but saying content is on par with what we got last year is already deflating the content. we got 2 new permanent missions, 2. we also got a street hunt, and instance and a really cool rampage , and a cheesy race with a boring alert, and finally another alert. i mean, its cool to manage expectations, but that was just flat out telling us that co is going to limp along for another year and leave any expectations of a real mmo at the door. it does help remind us that no matter what certain posters say, nothing big is going to come.
Added a Lifetime tab to the Gold Bonus Vendor. Players with Lifetime subscriptions can pick up the rewards at any time, even after the month has ended.
They listened! Not the exact solution I suggested, but it works. No complaints here; if you miss a piece for whatever reason, there is now a path by which it can be obtained.
Hopefully they apply that philosophy to legacy unlocks. All in due time, I'm sure.
They listened! Not the exact solution I suggested, but it works. No complaints here; if you miss a piece for whatever reason, there is now a path by which it can be obtained.
Hopefully they apply that philosophy to legacy unlocks. All in due time, I'm sure.
I'm not so sure that it's a case of them listening as opposed to having intended to implement the Lifetime tab from the start.
Being a Lifetimer myself, I can't complain, but I still don't really agree with the rewards being temporary offers for regular subs. I think a better alternative if they were so keen on sub retention is to make them time-elapsed rewards.
They listened! Not the exact solution I suggested, but it works. No complaints here; if you miss a piece for whatever reason, there is now a path by which it can be obtained.
Hopefully they apply that philosophy to legacy unlocks. All in due time, I'm sure.
Well then. Its definitely a compromise. Though in the end, the system as a whole is boosting LTS value more than the intention of Gold.
The victory is that we have a confirmation that the costume unlocks won't be lost forever and older releases will be available if you go LTS.
So let's ignore the fact that Neverwinter is part of the fantasy genre, like you know, the most popular and mainstream genre when it comes to MMO genres? How about that hugely popular D&D license name? Maybe that fact draws a much bigger audience than CO ever has, hence being much more profitable even if it's also 100% F2P?
o.O O.o If they released NW and then never touched it again, no one would be playing it, IP be dammed.
Balboa? You were down in SD? I went to school there, UCSD. I suppose if you have to spend some time without a roof, there are worse places. :S
I had a car roof over my head, but yes, I was downtown at the time. Still in SD county, just more north. Being sunny and not actually having weather is a big plus. Shoveling snow is icky.
They listened! Not the exact solution I suggested, but it works.
I really like the compromise on test server. Golds still get their stuff if they log in and maintain their sub, existing LTS can relax and grab stuff whenever they want, and future players / ones who can't afford it now have a path (albeit a costly one) to follow if they want to follow the completionist path. Nothing gets lost from the system, and it rewards people who feed money into the game, even if they arrive late to the party.
o.O O.o If they released NW and then never touched it again, no one would be playing it, IP be dammed.
Once again I emphasize on larger audience. A larger audience means much more significant profit returns to justify putting in resources to generate new explorable content on a more consistent basis. NW might be 100% F2P but you have to be kidding me if it's claimed that it hasn't been making a good amount of money thus far.
CO simply doesn't have the audience to justify putting in the resources to do exactly the same thing, so expecting the very same thing that NW is getting is an unrealistic expectation.
Once again I emphasize on larger audience. A larger audience means much more significant profit returns to justify putting in resources to generate new explorable content on a more consistent basis. NW might be 100% F2P but you have to be kidding me if it's claimed that it hasn't been making a good amount of money thus far.
CO simply doesn't have the audience to justify putting in the resources to do exactly the same thing, so expecting the very same thing that NW is getting is an unrealistic expectation.
One could argue that we could get the audience by PW/Cryptic investing in the game then doing a proper marketing campaign. Just my two cents while we are all hypothesizing.
DnD is a big name only on the roleplaying games market. Which is a niche market, compared to computer games and movies.
It's a very niche big name for a game, I daresay most of NWO players are in it for a f2p fantasy title and doesn't give a damn to DnD itself, and we'll see how big 4th edition related name will remain after DnD next. When it will be obsolete.
Also, CO never had a thing done to have any bigger audience. It was overshadowed even by the much older Cryptic game.
DnD is a big name only on the roleplaying games market. Which is a niche market, compared to computer games and movies.
It's a very niche big name for a game, I daresay most of NWO players are in it for a f2p fantasy title and doesn't give a damn to DnD itself, and we'll see how big 4th edition related name will remain after DnD next. When it will be obsolete.
Also, CO never had a thing done to have any bigger audience. It was overshadowed even by the much older Cryptic game.
DnD has a long and successful history when it comes to computer RPG adaptions ever since the DOS days. Saying that it's only a big name in the PnP market and not computer games is off the mark. The Neverwinter name, out of the many setting names, was also used considering that Neverwinter Nights (the first game at least) was a huge success back in the day and NWO obviously wants to ride off that success.
But forget about DnD for a moment and yes you're right, it boils down to the game being a Tolkien-inspired fantasy and that's enough for the game to be a huge draw.
I don't know about CO not having a thing done to have a bigger audience. I'd like to think that they did try, but just make too many blunders. Atari's 1 new MMO every 3 years policy certainly didn't help either. Again it also boils down to it being a very niche genre compared to the much more popular and mainstream fantasy one.
But forget about DnD for a moment and yes you're right, it boils down to the game being a Tolkien-inspired fantasy and that's enough for the game to be a huge draw.
Nope. Being just a fantasy title will not do it on the market full of fantasy titles. Not without updates.
I never did say that a fantasy title would be successful without content updates.
No mmo can be successful without minimum of content updates. Just recently I realized that I have been lowering my view on those. However, the more time passes the distractions like Bloodmoon or xp weekends has less distracting effect on me.
For instance Fire and Ice is a pretty nice alert. However, it is essentially a casual boss encounter at the level of most mmo 5 man instances, without any prologue(trash mobs). I am grateful to devs for doing the best they can given the circumstances but let's not lie to ourselves about how it compares to other boss encounters in other mmos.
At this point I would recommend CO only if you are into RP or you like costume contest a lot or you pretty casual in time, but don't mind expending in subscriptions+rmt.
It is sad since the core game is pretty awesome, so it has potential for so many things. However, if even Cryptic's head seemed to feel CO as an embarrasment I won't see any major effort or risk taken for this game.
No mmo can be successful without minimum of content updates. Just recently I realized that I have been lowering my view on those. However, the more time passes the distractions like Bloodmoon or xp weekends has less distracting effect on me.
I no longer care about either of these "events". Bloodmoon is easy to the point of being as boring as farming skill nodes. Double XP weekend makes leveling toons go from fast and easy to super fast and super easy.
Good idea, especially for lifetimers like me who crave more costume pieces but have severe altitis preventing them from reaching high levels.
Just... have the pieces up for purchase once they're taken off the freebie of the month schedule. In case one is absent from CO for a bit.
Good idea, especially for lifetimers like me who crave more costume pieces but have severe altitis preventing them from reaching high levels.
Just... have the pieces up for purchase once they're taken off the freebie of the month schedule. In case one is absent from CO for a bit.
Lifetimers can acquire any missed pieces at any time now.
Comments
Hey! HEY! You can't tell people about Them or the fact that They Live among us. Do you have any idea the consequences?!
By now, you've probably seen, available to LTSers as well.
Hey, congrats on getting a roof over your head, Sterga. I had a buddy homeless for a while, and it's always a relief to hear about people getting out of that situation. IRL absolutely comes first, and I'm glad IRL is going well for you.
^I like this idea.
More awareness of subs is definitely part of the plan. Not sure about tutorial videos, but a blog is in the works, something to replace and upgrade this one.
I think it's actually the other way around, though I'm not sure. I think the devs were coming up with ideas that would've fallen into that category, and weren't able to justify the man-hours to make them in the current full-set model; simultaneously, you have the desire to make the subs more valuable. Combine the two, and you have a system where you can encourage miscellany, rather than having a bunch of pieces already made and wanting a home for them.
(100% hypothesis, though.)
Yup. Big stuff is great, and we have some nifty mid-sized stuff planned (think the scale of releases over the past year or so), but we also understand that incremental stuff adds up. If we find a small opportunity for a small improvement, we know that can add up.
Last year's stuff was actually ok, just 3 things I think could have increased replay:
1. Make them re-enterable indefinitely even after initial completion, like Nemcon and Lairs. Daily quest rewards only on first run of the day of course.
2. Add new rare drops! Secondary Gear better than dropped purples but behind Vigi, new Primaries positioned as a small improvement over Heroic, but behind Legion and Justice. Essentially some reason to keep running it without tipping the current itemization hierarchy. Also a solo route to better gear than the three year old Heroic set
3. Meaningful difficulty and reward scaling with difficulty slider. Or at the very least, do something with just the Elite setting. Give Elite mobs new attacks or a random chance to proc Crippling Challenge, NTTG, Trauma, make some perma-Ego Surged, some perma-Unbreakable and so on, but raise droprates like how D2 or D3 does with this kind of setting
now we did start getting costumes again, and i am very grateful for that and have purchased all of them..but on the mission story side, do you get why some of us feel this way?
More repeatable missions like the pair of S.O.C.R.A.T.E.S. missions would be awesome.
Thank you. Wasn't that bad. The worst part of my day was watching the crappy golfers in Balboa while waiting for the library to open.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Two permanent missions that can be thrown together in a few hours of development doesn't make up for the past 3-4 years of no new places to explore and hang out in.
That was developed and worked on since before On Alert. Its not even a complete version and is missing whole phases to complete. It was butchered so it can be changed into a popcorn mission since the event approach of the game was abandoned.
This is disingenuous. First, they are bad when they don't do stuff. THEN, they are terrible when they stick a tack on people and call it doing stuff.
Something comparable to how STO and NWO advertises features (through a video) is required since Freeform is the BEST thing CO can provide. Anything short of that is considered paltry. If you have a standard in Cryptic, it should apply to all your games.
When thinking scale of releases in the past year, that's a total of 30 minutes of game play. A whole year and only producing that much is shameful. Face palming not from contempt for Cryptic but out of sheer embarrassment for them.
You know what would add value to the game for everyone? Adding a hand-tailored mission daily rather than a costume piece that would be lost forever. They don't even have to use new assets. If any player can create amazing things with demo record, then any of the "professionals" in Cryptic using the Cryptic engine can create a 3 minute mission every week to add to the game's play time.
Regardless, they're still content updates, even if they don't fit your personal criteria of what acceptable content should be. The expectation of new explorable content as you described earlier simply isn't their focus any more, nor is it anywhere near realistic considering that they aren't getting the budget for it. The sooner you readjust your expectations the better you will be for it.
They do fit my content update criteria. They just should be doing more of this throughout the year. Fatal Error just has the quality of something done in a week's worth of work, including voice acting and editing the dialogue. Its just that plain.
The idea of new explorable content for CO hasn't been their focus since STO was released. (We got the APs and Comics through Atari forcing Cryptic's hand, but that's straying from the point.)
Adding content in this fashion regularly adds more worth to a game and attraction to new players more than an item that costs money ever will.
Cryptic practices this in their other games. The only reason Champions isn't making the budget is because they don't practice that work method to Champions. Players won't come when 99% of updates requires money.
The likely reason why they don't add content of that fashion is because there is no justification to the development costs involved. The game isn't up there in terms of popularity and it's not going to automatically to draw or even retain a huge number of new players. Heck, players don't even need to pay a single cent to play the game, so what's the point of investing resources and time into such huge content that don't even promise returns?
Something like Fatal Error is more or less what they need to be focused on I guess, even though I hardly count it as "explorable content". But more likely that not I'm just expecting more one shot alerts.
Or simply because PWE isn't giving them the budget to make a significant difference.
If we get new content around the length of Warlord, with accompanying drops to lend more diversity to gearing, i.e. give DU core, Vigi etc some competition, I'll be happy.
Gearing right now is too vertical
I'd be fine with updates like Fatal Error, The Rampages, and Warlord.. being the norm. As players we need to be realistic. This isn't a hugely popular genre or game. The only super-hero game that's even close to mainstream popular is DCUO and they are cashing in on a huge IP. Champions will never be that popular. So having lots of smaller updates spread throughout the year is fine with me. It's much better than nothing.
If that's disappointing for some there are games.. but they won't be Supers themed. This game works for me, for now. When I get bored I stop subbing, and then I re-up my sub with I decide to play again.
In typical fashion the community goes up in arms because what he hinted at can't possibly be enough.
And they wonder why the devs don't talk to us.
Lets look back..
Dev hint at new content--
--New 'content' turns out to be quickly churned out short missions and a new alert t0 grind.
It's not that we're skeptical but.. okay yea it's because we're skeptical
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Pogo: I have met the enemy and he is us.
STO got an injection of resources from PWE after the buy out because the Cryptic head convinced the PWE bosses that it would heavily benefit from it. CO didn't because that same Cryptic head didn't care for CO and made that disinterest common knowledge. PWE took that as a sign that CO isn't worth the investment.
Overall PWE only cared about the NWO license and the Cryptic engine to potentially shell out more MMOs. If there wasn't convincing from the Cryptic head for STO, PWE would have been more than fine with letting it continue to fail until they lost the IP.
The community didn't go up in arms (as you put it) about the word of content coming, but that it would be of the same value as the content that came out last year. That's a whole Fatal Error and 2 other custom alerts. So by that pattern, the Foxbat revamp and maybe one more event at most is what we'll get for the rest of this year. Maybe another balance changing nerf.
Its enough to put us in this exact same conversation next year.
If it comes to that again for a third year in a row, I'm out. My time and money was for the value of everything up to Hideouts and Comics. Not this 2 tiny queues a year shlock.
Neverwinter is the cash cow of Cryptic. It's also 100% F2P. And the game they're launching in China. Not CO, not STO, but Fantasy Cash Cow. What you said, makes zero sense.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
So let's ignore the fact that Neverwinter is part of the fantasy genre, like you know, the most popular and mainstream genre when it comes to MMO genres? How about that hugely popular D&D license name? Maybe that fact draws a much bigger audience than CO ever has, hence being much more profitable even if it's also 100% F2P?
Better idea: Costume pieces stick around in that system. They cost 1 token. You get 1 token per month subscribed, and they hold over in your account claimables tab for up to 3 months.
That way if there's a single part you desperately want you won't ever miss it, even if you miss out on tokens.
And since you can have up to 3 months worth of tokens in your claimables tab you likely won't be penalised because of an RL crisis or a vacation or whatever. And even if you do miss out on tokens, you can pick and choose the exact parts you want/need.
nobody is up in arms, but saying content is on par with what we got last year is already deflating the content. we got 2 new permanent missions, 2. we also got a street hunt, and instance and a really cool rampage , and a cheesy race with a boring alert, and finally another alert. i mean, its cool to manage expectations, but that was just flat out telling us that co is going to limp along for another year and leave any expectations of a real mmo at the door. it does help remind us that no matter what certain posters say, nothing big is going to come.
Balboa? You were down in SD? I went to school there, UCSD. I suppose if you have to spend some time without a roof, there are worse places. :S
They listened! Not the exact solution I suggested, but it works. No complaints here; if you miss a piece for whatever reason, there is now a path by which it can be obtained.
Hopefully they apply that philosophy to legacy unlocks. All in due time, I'm sure.
I'm not so sure that it's a case of them listening as opposed to having intended to implement the Lifetime tab from the start.
Being a Lifetimer myself, I can't complain, but I still don't really agree with the rewards being temporary offers for regular subs. I think a better alternative if they were so keen on sub retention is to make them time-elapsed rewards.
Well then. Its definitely a compromise. Though in the end, the system as a whole is boosting LTS value more than the intention of Gold.
The victory is that we have a confirmation that the costume unlocks won't be lost forever and older releases will be available if you go LTS.
o.O O.o If they released NW and then never touched it again, no one would be playing it, IP be dammed.
I had a car roof over my head, but yes, I was downtown at the time. Still in SD county, just more north. Being sunny and not actually having weather is a big plus. Shoveling snow is icky.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I really like the compromise on test server. Golds still get their stuff if they log in and maintain their sub, existing LTS can relax and grab stuff whenever they want, and future players / ones who can't afford it now have a path (albeit a costly one) to follow if they want to follow the completionist path. Nothing gets lost from the system, and it rewards people who feed money into the game, even if they arrive late to the party.
Once again I emphasize on larger audience. A larger audience means much more significant profit returns to justify putting in resources to generate new explorable content on a more consistent basis. NW might be 100% F2P but you have to be kidding me if it's claimed that it hasn't been making a good amount of money thus far.
CO simply doesn't have the audience to justify putting in the resources to do exactly the same thing, so expecting the very same thing that NW is getting is an unrealistic expectation.
One could argue that we could get the audience by PW/Cryptic investing in the game then doing a proper marketing campaign. Just my two cents while we are all hypothesizing.
Chickens and eggs and all that.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
It's a very niche big name for a game, I daresay most of NWO players are in it for a f2p fantasy title and doesn't give a damn to DnD itself, and we'll see how big 4th edition related name will remain after DnD next. When it will be obsolete.
Also, CO never had a thing done to have any bigger audience. It was overshadowed even by the much older Cryptic game.
DnD has a long and successful history when it comes to computer RPG adaptions ever since the DOS days. Saying that it's only a big name in the PnP market and not computer games is off the mark. The Neverwinter name, out of the many setting names, was also used considering that Neverwinter Nights (the first game at least) was a huge success back in the day and NWO obviously wants to ride off that success.
But forget about DnD for a moment and yes you're right, it boils down to the game being a Tolkien-inspired fantasy and that's enough for the game to be a huge draw.
I don't know about CO not having a thing done to have a bigger audience. I'd like to think that they did try, but just make too many blunders. Atari's 1 new MMO every 3 years policy certainly didn't help either. Again it also boils down to it being a very niche genre compared to the much more popular and mainstream fantasy one.
Nope. Being just a fantasy title will not do it on the market full of fantasy titles. Not without updates.
I never did say that a fantasy title would be successful without content updates.
No mmo can be successful without minimum of content updates. Just recently I realized that I have been lowering my view on those. However, the more time passes the distractions like Bloodmoon or xp weekends has less distracting effect on me.
For instance Fire and Ice is a pretty nice alert. However, it is essentially a casual boss encounter at the level of most mmo 5 man instances, without any prologue(trash mobs). I am grateful to devs for doing the best they can given the circumstances but let's not lie to ourselves about how it compares to other boss encounters in other mmos.
At this point I would recommend CO only if you are into RP or you like costume contest a lot or you pretty casual in time, but don't mind expending in subscriptions+rmt.
It is sad since the core game is pretty awesome, so it has potential for so many things. However, if even Cryptic's head seemed to feel CO as an embarrasment I won't see any major effort or risk taken for this game.
I no longer care about either of these "events". Bloodmoon is easy to the point of being as boring as farming skill nodes. Double XP weekend makes leveling toons go from fast and easy to super fast and super easy.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Just... have the pieces up for purchase once they're taken off the freebie of the month schedule. In case one is absent from CO for a bit.
Lifetimers can acquire any missed pieces at any time now.