Doctor Roswell

The packs are clearly priced. 80pp (or less!) each, for five cards, including at least one which is at least rare. Seems pretty clear to me. You don't have to like it, but it's hardly ambiguous or deceitful.

"Freeloaders"... wow.

Right up until you factor in the merits that come in the packs themselves. I bought the 24-pack and came away with over 1,000 merits yesterday -- 175 from a single pack. Sure, that just gives more incentive to do things like... buy more packs, or run the WST (and this week, the WST is VIP-only! Probably not a coincidence -- subscribe now and you can earn all these cool new enhancements with your merits!), but you have to know they want us to do those things anyway.

I often have close to 200 merits sitting around that I accumulated "by accident" just from normal play. If I were actively trying to earn them? A few hundred in a week wouldn't really be much harder than earning fifty or so Astrals or a handful of alignment merits every couple of days. ATOs are still easier to get than purple/PvP IOs, at any rate.

To me, 400-500 merits honestly doesn't seem out of line for the things. The VIP requirement is kind of a pain, and the length of the timer seems a little harsh, but the price itself? Actually not too bad.

How is this transaction not clear?

Right now, they're only available through the super packs. Once Issue 22 goes live, they'll be a normal (rare or very rare, I believe) drop, supposedly from pretty much any mob at any level.

Sort of, except it requires the new cover page. Like the one you're supposed to be putting on your TPS reports.

I would have too -- maybe even if I had a rez available, depending on whether they'd acted like that the whole trial or not.

You have to run back from the beginning of whatever map you drop on -- Hellions, Vahzilok, Lost or Hydra. Each one has its own hospital that sends you back to the "entrance" to that particular section of the sewers. It's kind of a pain to have to run all the way back from the Longbow agent/arbiter to Meinst or Prophet since those are (relatively) large maps, but the trip back to the Hydra Heads takes less time than an average load screen (depending on your system, obviously).

Keep in mind that enemies in a DFB come in groups of 11, so 10 targets only leaves one unaffected, and that's assuming you use it on a fresh group the rest of your team hasn't started stomping on yet.

Wait, seriously? Rezzing is an issue in a trial with hospitals on every map, with no loading screen or anything?

In fairness, from what i can tell that was intended for release in a more timely manner, but... it's a complicated set, and like so many things in software, the release date had to be pushed back. It goes back to the same reason we don't get hard release dates for new issues.

I actually wonder if this was part of the reason we got the Roman pack when we did, given how flimsy its attachment to Valentine's Day is -- a while back when the store was new, people were clamoring for the Roman armor to be available too and the general consensus there was that it was probably being held back for just such an occasion, so that unforeseen delays wouldn't cause any "missed" weeks with no new content on the market.

So would I; plus I think it's worth reminding everyone that with the Christmas items, they waited until a few weeks into the holiday event, to encourage people to actually play that content first. I think it's safe to say that if we get these items on the market, it'll be toward the tail end of the Spring Fling.

If this is anything like Christmas, we'll see all that stuff up for sale after the event has been running for a week or so, just like we did with the Santa hat/boots/gloves etc. The stated idea then was to encourage people to actually participate in the event, then give them the option of buying account-wide unlocks.

Yes, you've explained that. Multiple times. Every time someone brings up a valid reason they don't like your idea, you assume they've just misunderstood and explain it again. Everyone understands your idea just fine. We just don't think it's a fine idea.

I don't give a damn whether the ads are actually placed in the game, in the forum, or on the main page of the website... the sale of ad space within City of Heroes to third parties has already been tried and dismissed as not worth it -- and last time, all it was was billboards that didn't require any interaction on the part of the player at all, and were in places where there were already fake billboards. An idea that actually requires people to seek out the ads on their own is going to go over even worse.

Third-party advertising isn't likely to happen again in any form. The end.

...to you, who are apparently just dead-set on beating this horse. The idea that makes the most sense to me is to not implement a plan that involves possibly exposing your customers to ripoffs, malware or identity theft.

After the fact. Which is all well and good if everything runs smoothly. But if it doesn't, and one of these advertisers is a sham (or worse), that won't become apparent until something has already happened to someone, probably multiple someones. The only way to be absolutely sure would be to hire people -- likely a whole team of them -- to monitor all aspects of the setup.

No, there's quite a bit of risk. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But this is unnecessary risk. And that's just wasteful.

Brilliantly stated. And on top of all this...

Since purchased IOs can't be put on the market, they're not contributing to the massive inflation that makes billions of influence "necessary" (and I use that term loosely) in the first place. The reason people "need" billions of inf is because these things cost billions of inf. They cost billions of inf because people are selling them for billions of inf. People are selling them for billions of inf because they know that other people are willing to pay billions of inf for them. If those people were to pay a few dollars of real money for those same items instead, they wouldn't have to pay billions of inf to get what they want, and the sellers would have to lower their prices in order to sell their product at all. (And no, this wouldn't really hurt the sellers either, because prices would -- theoretically -- drop across the board, so anything they were going to spend their profits on would itself be cheaper.)

Or to put it another way, when supply increases and demand remains constant (or effectively decreases, since some of the demand is being met by other means), it causes prices to go down instead of up.

Thus making the game an even less attractive target for gold sellers.

The money is there because the people are, not vice-versa. Facebook is something that's useful and relevant to nearly everyone on Earth who has an internet connection. An MMO -- any MMO, even "that one" -- isn't. Breaking into programming every so often with 3-5 minute blocks of advertising works for TV networks (NBC-Universal is worth about $30 billion); let's just interrupt the game with an ad in-between missions!

No, let's acknowledge that different media is different and treat it accordingly. Yeah, I like that one better.

Besides that, they've tried selling ad space to third parties once before and... notice you don't see it anymore? It wasn't worth it, for Paragon or the advertisers.

Next suggestion, please.

They're selling -- for money -- a product that is, arguably, incomplete, and the reason they've given for it being incomplete doesn't hold up to even casual scrutiny. It presents more questions than answers.

I think you just answered your own question there. Or questioned your own answer.

My Invuln tank (created around issue 16 or so and one of my most-played to this day) is easily the most survivable character I've ever had, tank or otherwise. I'm including both my when-I'm-VIP incarnate/IO build and my when-I'm-premium SO build. Neither of which even has Unstoppable.