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  • mettrekmettrek Posts: 20 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    axenome wrote: »
    I hear constantly on forums and in game that the game has a critically low subscriber base. For once I want to see numbers that support this. PW doesn't keep the game open out of charity, it must be making money somehow.
    I don't know of any available subscriber numbers for CO. But if you look at the amount of players online at any given time and take note of how often you see the same global handles it begins to look as though the numbers are fairly low.

    I can't remember the last time I saw more than four instances of Millennium City that totaled more than 350 players and only that high during the peak of a holiday event. Numbers in other zones rarely pass 50 and even that is exceedingly rare. It's quite common to see no more than 5 to 10 players in the Canada, Desert, Lemuria or Vibora Bay zones and you're just as likely to be completely alone. During non-event times it seems common to see no more than a couple hundred players online at any given time. That's startlingly low by my estimation.

    Compare that to many other MMOs which require multiple servers to handle the several hundred to thousands of players logged in simultaneously or have a dozen or more instances, most of which are capped at max player capacity.

    Even if we suggest that 500 unique players log in each day and we very, very radically suggest that half of those subscribe (or are LTS players) then that still suggests that subscription rates are fairly low by mainstream MMO comparisons.

    Again, this is just my casual observation.
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    mettrek wrote: »
    I can't remember the last time I saw more than four instances of Millennium City that totaled more than 350 players and only that high during the peak of a holiday event.

    Mechanon event. 6 Zones, average of 500 users online by my calculations.

    CO is not going down anywhere so soon, since Cryptic belongs to Perfect World Entertainment, and a server that doesn't actively have a BIG negative money consumption per month won't be shut down. And if they ever shut CO down it will not be because of not having users online, but because of not having hundreds of thousands of users online.

    From what I was reading and researching here, Perfect World Entertainment has 800 subservers for the Chinese PW game. This means that each one of the average players of PW - 200 - would have 4 subservers to himself.

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
  • mettrekmettrek Posts: 20 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    you people are ALL wrong about what is wrong with champions. whats really wrong with the game, is the fact that it doesnt work. but when it does work. the problem if you ask me is PVP imbalance, most trees of abilities are completely useless. if you cant theme and PVP at the same time then the trees are not balanced. dont nerf the strong abilities. buff the weak ones. like lifedrain, usually a brutal PVP tactic in any other game. but in CO lifedrain is worst than just standing still and taking a beating.
    Well, imbalanced PVP might be a problem for those who engage in PVP but I would counter that with the fact that PVP was never a priority for this game and balancing it even less of a concern.

    The Hero Games content was there to let people bash it out but base don the freeform design it was never intended to be balanced. Everyone is a hero therefor there is no compelling reason to go to great lengths to balance a PVP aspect.

    It is my belief that this game was never designed to appeal to those who are interested in serious ongoing PVP. Dueling exists and can be mildly entertaining between people who wish to see how much more powerful/awesome they are than everyone else but there isn't any apparent design effort put into creating a compelling and balanced system for high-level player conflict nor do I think there needs to be.

    I don't see that a lack of compelling PVP has anything to do with the "state of the game" insofar as subscriber numbers or content production. If anything the focus on PVP and the subsequent need to "balance" every power set would drive me to stop subscribing and leave the game. I grew weary of CoX when the constant rebalancing of powers between CoH and CoV became so bad that PVE suffered for it.
  • chaelkchaelk Posts: 7,732 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Well at least when servers do come back on, most people will be drunk due to New Years! So yay for all the random stuff thats gonna be said in-game!
    NO such luck, I don't drink
    you people are ALL wrong about what is wrong with champions. whats really wrong with the game, is the fact that it doesnt work. but when it does work. the problem if you ask me is imbalance, most trees of abilities are completely useless. if you cant theme and the trees are not balanced. dont nerf the strong abilities. buff the weak ones. like lifedrain, usually a brutal tactic in any other game. but in CO lifedrain is worst than just standing still and taking a beating.
    fixed that

    10.25 and the headache starts for no reason, time to lie down.
    Stuffing up Freeform builds since Mid 2011
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  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    mettrek wrote: »
    Even if we suggest that 500 unique players log in each day and we very, very radically suggest that half of those subscribe (or are LTS players) then that still suggests that subscription rates are fairly low by mainstream MMO comparisons.

    I concur with this analysis. Start in MC. Bring up Map. Click on Change instance. Each instance can hold 100 people. There is, at best, 3 instances of MC, so that's, max, 300 people.

    Bring up Social. Type in "Alert". It will list all people in Alert. Last time I did it during Double XP? 93 people.

    Type in Monster.

    Type in Canada.

    Type in Desert.

    Type in Vibora.

    Type in Hideout (have fun looking for the ones that have 2 people in them!)

    Type in Caprice.

    There is a big chunk of your players that aren't in instances. Maybe you can type in the names of these instances and look... it's not worth your time. The nice thing about Alerts is that it's gathered most of the people into Alerts, making it easy to spot them.

    Maybe 400 to 500 people. And that's like 6 pm Central in the United States.

    A few years ago, soon after Alert! launched, there were often 20 instances (3000 to 4000 people) of Millennium City... Now... there's 3.

    We log in. We go to our designated Alert Box. We log out. Nobody wins. And presently, they are giving the game away for free...
  • zombie2brokezombie2broke Posts: 15 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    you guys really suck at fixing broken stuff....should have known when i saw how the PVP in this game was
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  • zombie2brokezombie2broke Posts: 15 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    and to the guy who said PVP isnt an issue. you have two kinds of people. PVPers and PVErs you have to please both, i can understand this to be very hard to do when you dont have set classes like most games. freeform really complicates things because you can jst go grab the best from every tree if you want, HOWEVER. there are some simple things that need to be done. 2 gun mojo needs a nerf. it needs to do less damage than assault rifle BECAUSE it has the added bonus of nailed to the ground wich assault rifle does not, i have four different 2gm characters why? because its just so much clearly more powerful than any other ability that building around anything else in nerfing myself.
    as far as PVE goes. idk why you people care if one PVE build is stronger than the other...you dont have to fight that person i would want him to be stronger than me.
  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    gradii wrote: »
    We need to keep our superior form of "trinity" rather than design content like fire and ice where if you don't have a 100% tank and 100% healer you're very likely to fail horribly.

    Why? You don't even have to be the tank. Someone else can be the tank. Why do you fight so hard against making tanking viable and to make it easier to tank?

    If our version of the "trinity" is "superior", then why is CO so low pop? People are voting with their feet.
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Actually, we need MORE content where the players are forced to form a team to beat it. CO is meant to be a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER game, and making it in such a way that you can do everything on your own defeats the definition of its own concept.

    As the guy over there said it - I forgot because he said that last year - a game where the team doesn't need to communicate will never form a community.

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
  • modru35modru35 Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    5 hours since an update.
    No chat in PTS makes it so boring.
    At this rate will be a new post called:
    Still Down , morning 1/1
  • mettrekmettrek Posts: 20 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    you guys really suck at fixing broken stuff....should have known when i saw how the PVP in this game was
    If you wanted PVP it should have been exceedingly clear within a few hours (or less) of looking at the game that it was never an integral component or important aspect. What little PVP exists was included as a (potentially) amusing adjunct to a predominantly PvE experience where everybody is an ostensibly "good" superhero.

    The nature of freeform design largely precludes any semblance of "balance" in PVP and therefor it was not a priority for the development team. There are plenty of other games where PVP is the focus and where the players can challenge themselves or base their self-worth on their build. Thankfully, for me, this is not such a game.
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  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Easiest solution to PVP is to have AT only PVP and FF only PVP as two separate classes.

    Problem solved...

    Now, let's focus on PVE, which is needs the most help in CO...
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  • modru35modru35 Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Unstricted Vs REstricted, unless your talkign about duels.
  • kirsroskirsros Posts: 70 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Nothing like ushering in the new year than not having the servers up.
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    CO was never meant to be PVP oriented. Rather, it was meant to be PVE oriented and with the RP ability, meaning that you could do the missions while RPing. This is why there is so much space for people to work on their toons bio, story and make theme builds and so little dedication to pvp.

    Originally CO was released to be a rival to CoX - When Grond says "You are as boring as rival MMO" he refers to CoX - but also a parallel to it. PVP lovers went to CoX, PVE and RP lovers came to CO.

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
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  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    We are starving for content and cant get bugs fixed which have been here since launch or beta. it doesn't take a genius to see that has nothing to do with strict role enforcement from outdated MMOs of yore.

    We are starving for content because the game is terrible.

    1) There's no community.

    2) The instances that we do have are terrible.

    3) The end game content that we have isn't compelling (trying to get the Stolen Kiss Perk will teach you that).

    4) Yes, the game is buggy, but it's "casual friendly".

    Basically, everything that you need to have a successful franchise is absent in CO.

    We have missions in West Side that lead from level 6 to 12, to 14, and then to a level 10 mission... and have you bouncing around West Side in an incoherent and pointless series of missions that tell you to "go here and kill X", with very little meaningful story.

    There's no team related content. And, no, Alerts don't count. A team only exists if they are forced to actually communicate. If CO is filled with the people who couldn't cut it in WoW (or any other game that actually required people to be good at a skill set or role), then that's probably what the problem is.

    That's not how game theory works. If you want to strip away all challenge from the game, and make it so that the only prerequisite for COMPLETING the content is being conscious, then why on earth are you asking for content at all?

    Why bother developing content if the bar for completing the content is so low that literally anyone can do it? How is that possibly fun?
  • zer0x0nezer0x0ne Posts: 113 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    This amount of down time is sad, even for Cryptic. It's sad even for Cryptic on a holiday.


    "I would be curious of your circles because I know I've never heard of you.​​" - championshewolf
  • trailturtletrailturtle Posts: 5,496 Perfect World Employee
    edited December 2014
    The chat and charging Zen issues may take a while, but we're hoping to get CO up and running in the short term. No ETA yet, will keep you updated. Sorry about this NYE disruption, folks, and thanks for your patience.
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    gradii wrote: »
    Still down. WTF.

    Oh geez. This maintenance is a very big one. The servers are off ever since last year.

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
  • glortorglortor Posts: 331 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    What patience? It's 4am I'm about to pass out and I have to be up in 3 hours to work.
    WITHOUT having been able to play, I must add.
  • modru35modru35 Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Starting to wonder if these IT guys are right out of college.
  • ealford1985ealford1985 Posts: 3,582 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    We are starving for content because the game is terrible.

    1) There's no community.

    2) The instances that we do have are terrible.

    3) The end game content that we have isn't compelling (trying to get the Stolen Kiss Perk will teach you that).

    4) Yes, the game is buggy, but it's "casual friendly".

    Basically, everything that you need to have a successful franchise is absent in CO.

    We have missions in West Side that lead from level 6 to 12, to 14, and then to a level 10 mission... and have you bouncing around West Side in an incoherent and pointless series of missions that tell you to "go here and kill X", with very little meaningful story.

    There's no team related content. And, no, Alerts don't count. A team only exists if they are forced to actually communicate. If CO is filled with the people who couldn't cut it in WoW (or any other game that actually required people to be good at a skill set or role), then that's probably what the problem is.

    That's not how game theory works. If you want to strip away all challenge from the game, and make it so that the only prerequisite for COMPLETING the content is being conscious, then why on earth are you asking for content at all?

    Why bother developing content if the bar for completing the content is so low that literally anyone can do it? How is that possibly fun?

    Dr. Destroyer? Is that you?

    Go play in traffic, join date Dec 2014.
  • zombie2brokezombie2broke Posts: 15 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Thats another thing. i guarantee half of these "heroes" people have created were made with villains in mind. lets make factions...
  • alricnarccus720alricnarccus720 Posts: 42 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Thats another thing. i guarantee half of these "heroes" people have created were made with villains in mind. lets make factions...

    I'm like 80% sure they've said in the past they're not going to do that, which is a shame...I'd love to rob a bank or punt an old lady once in awhile~
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    I'm like 80% sure they've said in the past they're not going to do that, which is a shame...I'd love to rob a bank or punt an old lady once in awhile~

    Well, there is a way to kill some friendly NPCs.

    Not Defender tho.

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Dr. Destroyer? Is that you?

    Go play in traffic, join date Dec 2014.

    *sigh* Really? Good for you... you figured out I made this account today, because I messed up my user name on perfectworld when I ported over from an old account (that was created in 2010 thank you very much). #golfclap #fanboydefense #itsadhominemtime #strawmanout #scrubgetsnolovefromme

    PS - fanboy, CO is still down on New Years Eve after over 12 hours. And you are still fanboying. Do you get paid per fanboy post, or is it a salary thing?
  • flyingfinnflyingfinn Posts: 8,408 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Thats another thing. i guarantee half of these "heroes" people have created were made with villains in mind. lets make factions...


    Will you start?
    Whats your faction is called?
    I'll choose 'Injustice League Of Unjustice And Doom'.
    We choose not to help citizens in need of help.
    Do everything that Alert Villians allways win.
    Fail and not finish every mission so the villians win.
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  • alricnarccus720alricnarccus720 Posts: 42 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    belleraux wrote: »
    Well, there is a way to kill some friendly NPCs.

    Not Defender tho.

    I REAAALLY wanna kill him..
  • prettyceltprettycelt Posts: 120 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    modru35 wrote: »
    Starting to wonder if these IT guys are right out of college.

    I've often wondered that same thing myself. Even looking at Neverwinter, some of the older costumes, mounts, etc. look better than what they put out now. It makes me think the older, more experienced devs migrated away to bigger companies and left rookies behind who can't keep up. Or fix a problem in a timely manner.
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  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    prettycelt wrote: »
    I've often wondered that same thing myself. Even looking at Neverwinter, some of the older costumes, mounts, etc. look better than what they put out now. It makes me think the older, more experienced devs migrated away to bigger companies and left rookies behind who can't keep up. Or fix a problem in a timely manner.

    It's a shoestring budget. When they are supporting a game that has at most 500-700 players on at a time... there's probably 1 person in charge of support.
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    I REAAALLY wanna kill him..

    You and the entirety of the servers.

    But while you can't, get Illumination + Celestial conduit. Find a destructible object close to an NPC. Use Illumination on the object then destroy it with Celestial conduit. Watch the friendly NPC being damaged along with the object.

    Now rinse and repeat.

    You can kill all friendlies in RenCen with this, save little exceptions, which is too bad, imagine if someone killed the tailors...

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
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  • modru35modru35 Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    It's a shoestring budget. When they are supporting a game that has at most 500-700 players on at a time... there's probably 1 person in charge of support.

    Ok I understand then.
    Plus it is a Holiday.
  • kellvenkellven Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    CO won't be shut down unless it starts to actually cause problems that take actual money to fix. Like what's going on right now.

    It was made by the clowns of the industry in the least time possible for the smallest budget possible (That was Cryptic's whole strategy), is now "maintained" by bean counters who have absolutely no interest in it, and has suffered through several layers of development hell without any comprehensive attempt at actual game design whatsoever. Oh, and the code base is so arcane and haphazard it would absolutely cost more to fix what's there than just start over borrowing the engine from another PW title.

    The reason it won't close unless it becomes an actual toxic asset (due to technical or legal drama) is that it cost virtually nothing to keep it online. It's the other games PW has that actually keep the data center open and "content artist" stable employed. CO just runs in a tiny sliver of processing and network that nobody ever really notices, with at most a day every couple of months for someone who likes that stuff to make a couple of low-poly superhero models and dish out lockbox #994321X.
    One of the key features of Cryptic games was that they had virtually no actual dynamic content, everything was instanced static content run on the client; resulting in virtually no load beyond the per-player, which takes care of itself as more players=more $.

    All told, I would be extremely surprised if CO had a total budget over 150 a month, at the absolute maximum, not at all surprised if it was more like 50, given they have in house hosting and content teams.

    The real problem is if the game starts having these issues which require money to be spent specifically on CO by itself to fix. Like what we're having now.

    Just my 2 Locals.
  • edited December 2014
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  • ealford1985ealford1985 Posts: 3,582 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    *sigh* Really? Good for you... you figured out I made this account today, because I messed up my user name on perfectworld when I ported over from an old account (that was created in 2010 thank you very much). #golfclap #fanboydefense #itsadhominemtime #strawmanout #scrubgetsnolovefromme

    PS - fanboy, CO is still down on New Years Eve after over 12 hours. And you are still fanboying. Do you get paid per fanboy post, or is it a salary thing?

    Yet, here you are.

    Rather be a fanboy than someone who clearly hates a game but just can't seem to leave it. Pound signs...reminds me of a certain banned person.
  • zer0x0nezer0x0ne Posts: 113 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    The chat and charging Zen issues may take a while, but we're hoping to get CO up and running in the short term. No ETA yet, will keep you updated. Sorry about this NYE disruption, folks, and thanks for your patience.
    Yeah... no one really cares any more. They've all moved on to *****ing about why no one plays the game.


    "I would be curious of your circles because I know I've never heard of you.​​" - championshewolf
  • flyingfinnflyingfinn Posts: 8,408 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    It's a shoestring budget. When they are supporting a game that has at most 500-700 players on at a time... there's probably 1 person in charge of support.

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  • deadman20deadman20 Posts: 1,529 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Dr. Destroyer? Is that you?

    Dr. Destroyer can't even be bothered to do anything more threatening than send down some dinky robots and pay someone to commandeer floating billboards and repeat the same message every hour on the hour for a couple of weeks. If anything, he's a wannabe Foxbat. Mechanon's the real threat here, it's likely his doing that our servers our down, stopping our heroic duties. :rolleyes:

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  • daekyndaekyn Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Seriously? All the tech support go out for NYE and just leave us hanging? WTH is the issue with getting the Servers online?

    Since this IS a Forum, couldn't say, maybe someone from the actual game give an update? maybe? Please?

    Cookies...
  • bellerauxbelleraux Posts: 94 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    daekyn wrote: »
    Seriously? All the tech support go out for NYE and just leave us hanging? WTH is the issue with getting the Servers online?

    Since this IS a Forum, couldn't say, maybe someone from the actual game give an update? maybe? Please?

    Cookies...

    Cookie.gif

    Call Maverick if you need a DPS help, or Combat Medic if you need a healer.

    I am known for having extremely good or extremely bad luck with drops.
  • zer0x0nezer0x0ne Posts: 113 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    daekyn wrote: »
    Seriously? All the tech support go out for NYE and just leave us hanging? WTH is the issue with getting the Servers online?

    Since this IS a Forum, couldn't say, maybe someone from the actual game give an update? maybe? Please?

    Cookies...
    Nothing gets fixed at Cryptic on holidays, or weekends. They just put Trail Turtle on loop and fix it when it's time to punch back in.


    "I would be curious of your circles because I know I've never heard of you.​​" - championshewolf
  • itsakurataigiereitsakurataigiere Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    gradii wrote: »
    False.
    True. See what I did there?

    Alerts are dead silent. You might get the occassional "grats" when someone levels, but... you probably don't understand what I mean. Okay. Let me try it this way. In WoW (I played for 5 years from Vanilla through the start of WotLK), I once leveled a Warrior from ~20 to 70 almost 90% by running dungeons.

    I made SO SO SO many friends during that time. Why? Because 1) people love tanks. Period. 2) people talked. And in talking, they got to know each other a little. We laughed. We cried. We complained. We had... *gasp* fun. And we had fun in a way that was totally unrelated to anything else going on in the game.

    That's community. I kept many of those friends until the day I quit WoW for good. I even cried while making my good byes. So did they.

    That's more or less absent in CO. That's CO's problem.
    gradii wrote: »
    Not really. They're incomplete because they lack good AI and interesting mechanics.

    I can't disagree here. You and I just disagree on what "interesting mechanics" are. How interesting can you make the mechanics when the only requirement for successfully completing content is consciousness again?
    gradii wrote: »
    I got that perk twice and plan on doing it for another couple characters next year.

    Wonderful. So you have only 2 40s? (No, I know you have a lot more than that). Why do you have that perk on only 2 of your 40s, if that content is so much fun? How do you only have it on 2 of your 40s and yet you are begging for more content? What? You haven't even fully utilized the (crappy) content that's available.

    Hello? Get what I'm saying?
    gradii wrote: »
    Those 2 things have nothing to do with each other.

    Yeah, it has everything to do with each other. Again, the only requirement for content is that you be conscious. Not conscious and competent. If competence doesn't matter, then why do bugs matter? Why does Cryptic have to be competent, but the players don't?
  • sarovensaroven Posts: 43 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    Can we skip the game bashing for a bit for some actual updates?
  • jennymachxjennymachx Posts: 3,000 Arc User
    edited December 2014
    saroven wrote: »
    Can we skip the game bashing for a bit for some actual updates?

    Nope, continue with:

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