Forbin_Project
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Quote:Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
You know what's awesome? Facts are awesome. Let's have some facts.
First off, here is the (mostly) current Juggernaut's Club of MMORPGs, the ridiculously big dogs.
Note: All of these are absurd. WoW in particular has close to four times the subscriptions of any of its closest competitors. Aion is the new big huge thing. Runescape is massive. These games are all big deals to the entire industry, and in the case of WoW, to the entire world.
Here is the Big Boy's Club.
If you look at them, you will notice they fall into three categories.
1) Strong, healthy games that will not die for the foreseeable future. These include local heavyweights like LotRO and EVE, ancient and unkillable creatures like the EverQuests, and more recent products that are still currently healthy but may not stand the test of time, like Age of Conan.
2) Dying games. These ones all have one thing in common: Their peak was way higher than their current numbers and their descent has not been arrested. Warhammer Online started high but plummeted rapidly afterwards, and is now in its death throes. Whatever malady first afflicted Star Wars Galaxies in 2005 has finally killed it. Dark Ages of Camelot is suffering a similar slow demise.
3) Also, there's Rift. It's new.
The hallmark of games from the first category is that they have fairly stable server populations regardless of how big those populations are. Maintaining servers is actually super cheap (so much so that ArenaNet has made great profits off of Guild Wars using no subscription fees ever, which is why they aren't recorded on the charts), which means once the game has already been developed, there is no reason not to maintain the servers unless the subscription count drops to practically zero.
City of Heroes has that stable population of ~125,000 according to all available data. Now even if CoX profits are decreasing, so long as they level out at some point above about 25,000, Paragon will be fine. Overall, however, Paragon isn't acting like a studio facing decreasing profits. They're still churning out new content, they didn't jump on the F2P bandwagon until after bigger games with enough population padding to take risks had proved it was workable (most specifically, LotRO), and they're not making any sort of desperate money grabs like you usually see with companies about to go under. CoX remains the undisputed king of the super hero genre within the MMO industry (though dark horse challenger DCUO might unseat it eventually, and that actually could put CoX in hot water).
For the curious, there's also the charts for the Wannabes, most of which are already dead or half there, and the Never Stood A Chance category. Although Puzzle Pirates is on that last one and is actually doing fine, but you'll notice the data is five years out of date and that game's got graphics roughly on par with a flash game anyways.
Also, NCSoft is publicly traded which means we can actually download their earnings reports from their website. If you bother to download it, you'll note that CoX is pulling in about double the amount of money as Guild Wars in the past few quarters.* You may recall that Guild Wars is the game that's getting a sequel with awesome new bells and whistles which is hoping to unseat the other non-WoW industry leaders with its incredible new gaming paradigm. The one that's going toe-to-toe with Aion and The Old Republic. And Paragon is making twice the profits of those guys. This data came from November.
I think CoX is going to be fine.
*And also that holy crap NCSoft owns every platinum MMO except WoW, what shady MMO crime lord are they paying to get that kind of market dominance?
Please don't confuse the issue with verifiable facts.
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Quote:Another person ignorant of what Freedom of Speech means.Originally Posted by Godless
I live in America, that makes me an American with freedom of speech
Quote:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
Freedom of Speech applies to the government which has nothing to do with these forums. In fact talking about politics, religion, etc is against the rules of these forums and can get you banned if you persist in violating those rules.
No one has told you that you don't have the right to post your opinion. However just as you have the right to post your opinion we have the right to point out that your opinion is wrong.Quote:Originally Posted by Godless
and the right to have my own opinion.
Oh cut the drama. No one has verbally assaulted you or attacked you. People playing the victim is a sure sign that they know they are losing an argument and can't refute anything that the other side has said.Quote:Originally Posted by Godless
You might not agree with how I feel but you don't have to attack me for it. I allowed everyone that posted the freedom of not being verbally assaulted. -
Quote:And this game cuts non subscribers off from end game content as well as a lot of other things so we aren't free to play either.Originally Posted by Godless
Yes they cut you off at level 20 then you have to pay, so it's not free to play.
Edit: BTW you do realize that that game is advertising that they are Free to Play. So your opinion isn't relevant. -
Quote:Yes they are the people that can't stand instancing and shards. They prefer games where everyone is forced into the same open world environment where they can let other people do all the hard work and while they sneak in and ninja mission objectives and rewards.Originally Posted by Stone Daemon
People have been saying that for years.
Our style of play is the bane of their existence because here they can be easily spotted and 1 starred/ignored/blacklisted by smaller server communities. Leaving them with nothing to do but cry that their server is dead. -
Quote:No they aren't. That game has been Free to play for about 6 months now. They gate their paid content behind a level cap.Originally Posted by Godless
If that was true then WoW would offer the same, but they don't they are pay to play.
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Quote:They also eat snails which negates the awesomeness of coq au vin. So there.Originally Posted by Lord_Nightblade
But France is where the coq au vin is! Coq au vin is awesome!
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Quote:Off topic. Learn to use the quote feature. If you are too lazy to click on the quote button then have the decency to use [] with quote at the beginning and [] with /quote at the end so your posts don't look like an unreadable wall of text.Originally Posted by Godless
Aett_Thorn said,
"You are the one refusing to see the other side in this argument. You've been shown how numerically you are wrong, been shown reasons for why you might be seeing what you're seeing, and been told that some people LIKE the lower-population servers. And yet somehow WE'RE the narrow-minded ones?!?! I'm sorry that you feel the way you do...truly. But merging the servers will NOT accomplish what you think it will. It will actually do just the opposite. This has been shown by many games who have done this in the past. It causes annoyance in the current population, and doesn't bring in new players, because merging servers indicates to new players that the game is dying. So it won't do what you want, and will annoy people. And you still think it is a good idea?"
-- You think shutting down servers will give new players the impression that CoX is dieing but they will get the same thought when they log-in and see there are only 2 or 3 players in each zone. I understand how everyone feels about changes but I also know paying for a V.I.P. doesn't guarantee me anything. If CoX starts to lose money everyone is gone regardless of who you are. They will shut the game down, with out any warning. That's why I called everyone narrow-minded they can't see the inevitable future if things don't change soon.
On topic
You are the one being narrow-minded and having a hissy fit because you play a dead faction that was never popular, no one agrees with you, and the devs have added to the number of servers during the year you were gone rather than merge them. -
Quote:Because it's a cash cow. MMO's that have switched to this hybrid business model have started making a lot more money than they did with just subscriptions.Originally Posted by Godless
Why would a MMO with years of charging a monthly fee add a free to play?
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Quote:If I'm in France again and I'm hungry I'll do the same thing I did the last time I was there. Get in the car and drive toOriginally Posted by DreamWeaver
Oh, and if you're in France and eating burgers, even the indigenous variety... WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU THINKING?? Heave a brick and you'll at least hit two friteries and a crepe van...
1. Italy or Spain where I can get real food.
2. Germany where I can get brats and beer.
3. Denmark where I can get a coffee, a dooby, and 18 dozen donuts.
4. England where I can get authentic fish and chips.
No I'm not a fan of fritters and craps.
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Quote:This is the most likely thing that would happen as it would have the fewest headaches to create.Originally Posted by Doctor Vivian
On the flip side, you know how Kheldians turn into a ball of light when in "Energy Form"... perhaps, when deploying a Sky Skiff vanity power (a la Rocket Board), the hero would simply turn INTO a Sky Skiff with a closed cockpit. Can't see who's in there... but there's a name on top.
All the same power restrictions as a Rocket Board would apply, and with the Character being replaced by a Sky Skiff model, there would be no worries about animations or clipping, etc.
-- Vivian -
I think what the OP is trying to say is he is mad that he chooses to play a faction that has never been popular with the majority of players.
Furthermore while the OP was away for a year the devs implemented a feature that allowed the players to transfer their characters from the unpopular faction to the popular faction and the players used it.
So on the OP's return he has found that his chosen faction is smaller than when he left. This has left the OP with a decision to make.
1. The OP can use the tip missions to switch sides to where everyone else is.
2. The OP can do a little research and start playing on a server where his preferred faction has a higher population. He can either transfer his existing characters there or make new ones.
3. The OP can join some global channels on his current server and make new friends to play with on his preferred faction. Assuming that the OP isn't one of those individuals who we see from time to time who has offended just about everyone on a given server community and has been universally 1 starred/ignored/blacklisted and now claims the server is dead.
4. The OP could suggest that everyone should be punished and have their communities destroyed because they aren't playing the game the way the OP wants. -
Quote:/unsignedOriginally Posted by Robotech_Master
There are a number of recipes and IOs that now sell for more than 2 billion Inf each. These transactions necessarily take place outside of the market (go to the Marketplace board, you'll probably see solicitations for several of them right now) because they involve more than one character sending money to more than one character.
When you've got market forces pushing prices up like that, it doesn't do anyone any good to force players to go outside the system to buy and sell. It means the auctionhouse can't take its 10% cut of the Inf, for one thing, and for another it means that people who want to buy or sell these recipes at "market value" have no choice but to risk the other party reneging on the agreement after they've handed their half over.
It would be simplest all around if you'd raise the cap, at least for VIP players. People probably would still go outside the market to trade, but at least they'd have the choice of selling within it.
1. The market isn't forcing prices higher than 2 billion. Players are.
2. If players choose to exceed the price cap on the market that's their choice. If they get burned that's the price they pay for being greedy. -
Quote:Speaking of bacon since the topic was brought up. How was your holidays Agge? Did you enjoy the Winter Event? I was checking out the launch of another MMO recently and asked myself if it will have any impact on the upcoming presidential election. What do you think?Originally Posted by Aggelakis
I don't know how long you've been on planet earth, but I just want to warn you in case you're new here (lol): conversations are fluid and you have little to no control over where they go. Hopefully you can learn to deal with this fact and stop getting crabby when conversations change topics.
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Quote:Your apathy reminds me of a poem.Originally Posted by GPBunny
Question asked, Question answered. Don't really care about your little side stories.
One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back-to-back they faced one another,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
One was blind and the other couldn't see,
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came and shot the two dead boys.
A paralyzed donkey walking by,
Kicked the copper in the eye,
Sent him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all.
(If you don't believe this lie is true,
Ask the blind man -- he saw it too!) -
Quote:True but that's only 2 of god knows how many Pinnacle Global channels and the search was blueside. I don't doubt for a minute that if I could have checked all global channels and all 3 factions I'd easily reach a minimum number of 70 people.Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell
I see where you want to go with this, and I agree with you a hundred percent, but to be totally fair, there could be a lot of overlap there. It's entirely possible for the same person to be on all three of those lists.
Technically, those screenshots only prove 48 unique players were online at that time, not 70+.
And only the devs could tell us how many people were online at that time using /hide to avoid the search feature.
The point of the screenshots however isn't to get an accurate number but to simply refute the OP's laughable claim that Pinnacle is a dead server. -
<snerk>
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Quote:Now those very same things you mention happening to me are even more reason not to let things sit in emails longer than it takes me to log off and log back onto a destination character and claim them.Originally Posted by GPBunny
Its not just the 60 day part. Its that email has in the past lost items to weird bounces, resets, rollbacks, and bugs.
And I have sent 20 items and then reclaimed them many times.
Maybe it's just me but it baffles me that people will leave stuff sitting in a feature that crashes and has a time limit. I just don't get it.
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Just to prove the fallacy of the OP's statement that Pinnacle is dead I just took these screenshots on Pinnacle at 3:22 pm on a Wednesday afternoon.
What's that say at the bottom? 40 matches found. And how many people are showing up on two of Pinnacles global channels right now?
Hmm 70+ people in global channels and 40 showing up on search in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week. Yeah Pinnacle's a dead server.
The OP needs to learn how to count. -
Quote:1. There are no dead servers.Originally Posted by Godless
2- You need to shut down some "dead" servers. All my main characters are on Pinnacle, when I left a year ago there was almost 100 players on-line at the peek. Now the peak I found was a little over 40 on-line. I am not on-line all day but about 6-7 hours broken up so I can't be sure how accurate this is just what I sew. Also I have not check the other severs so I can only speak of Pinnacle. If the Devs shut down some of the less active servers and make everyone go to a different server(s) that will help tremendously. It was very disheartening to log on for the first time after a year and see 3 players in Port Oaks and I was one of them.
2. The reason you didn't find anyone in Port Oaks is because players use the side switching feature to make their villains into heroes.
3. People make use of the /hide feature so they don't get pestered by people using the search tool. -
Quote:Why would it take you more than 60 days to pull an enhancement off of one character and slot it on another?Originally Posted by GPBunny
Well here's the answer.
Used an old dead account.
Logged in.
Spent 100 PP on Market IO
Claimed it on a toon (From Character Items).
Emailed to self via global.
It arrived in the INBOX.
This means that yes it has a limited life of 60 days.
It does have the limited space based on how many emails you currently have.
This does put a hurt on Stripping a toon with alot of Market Io's and the idea that you could loose an item that you paid for isn't very nice of Paragon either.
Emails were never intended to be used as storage bins and the 60 day limit is more than enough time for a player to find another alt to hold any extra enhancements until he decides where to put them.
Invest in extra enhancement trays that way a character can hold 30 enhancements. That way 2 alts can store all the enhancements off of another alts build. -
Quote:You do realize that if they were to add something like this it would be under the Power Pools just like the other travel powers and it will cost you power choices and slots to use them just like the regular travel powers.Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
Ill just say as I do anytime I see a thread like this pop up, is that they could easily do some batwing type vehicles I suspect, using tech we already have in game.
What tech is that you ask?
The Nova form of the Kheldians.
Imagine if you will a device with an hour of use like the jetpacks, but instead put you in a sky raid air skiff or longboy flyer. Like the nova form it could have several blasts powers to make it useful to some extent but not game breakingly powerful.
They aren't going to give you half a dozen free powers like Khelds and SOA's just because you want a vehicle. -
Just for clarification so you don't get in any trouble. This is for influence not real money right?
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If I overlooked this and it was mentioned previously I apologize for repeating it. There is another way people can be "ignored" without using the /ignore lists, and that's with the /notes feature.
A person can be "1 starred" and never know it unless they are told by the person that has given them that rating. Star ratings are attached to the account and not individual characters so if you've been 1 starred you will be flagged as such regardless of what character/server you are on, and the notes can be used to remind them why they want to avoid you/not respond to you. -
Quote:If they actually played for a long time then they already know from experience that they can store more stuff on the characters on their accounts than they could ever dream of storing in base storage.Originally Posted by Minotaur
These are people who have paid for a long time (enough to get IO use) and accumulated a lot of stuff, the limit on SG storage is what forced them to create their own SG base in the first place, otherwise they'd have used a communal one.
Base storage Maximum number of bins 18
Salvage Bins - 30 slots each (Event Salvage takes up a salvage slots on a 1 to 1 ratio)
Inspiration Bins - 100 each
Enhancement Bins 100 each
No the Vault doesn't count as base storage because it doesn't require SG membership to use and it is accessible outside of bases.
So players can store a maximum of 540 to 1800 items depending on which bins they buy for a base.
Now an individual character (if he maxes out his storage capacity) has the potential of carrying roughly . . .
Inspirations - 20
Invention Salvage Slots - 165
Recipe Slots - 125
AH Transaction Slots - 52 (which can each store stacks of 10 recipes and salvage for a total of 520)
Vault Slots - 80
Enhancement Slots - 30
Event Salvage
Halloween Salvage - 99
Winter Event Salvage - 9,999
So 1 character has 10,570 storage slots (11,038 if he is using AH slots to store stacks of 10)
Plus the Email Slots - 20
So let's say a person returns to play his Premium account to find he has only has 3 slots he can unlock. That means he has the ability to store up to
31,710/33,114 storage slots plus the 20 email slots
while at best his solo SG's can store 1,620/5,400 storage slots if he has a VIP as a member of his SG.
Now as a VIP the storage potential a player has access to increases exponentially.
Minimum 12 characters per server with 16 servers (192 total) equals roughly 6,088,320/6,357,888 plus 20 email slots.
and 192 solo SG's can store at most 103,680/345,600
So what's the next argument going to be? That it's easier to keep track of stuff in SG storage?
Sorry to disappoint but it isn't. A player still has to individually keep track of everything he has in each solo SG just like he has to keep track of everything he has in storage on each character.
The only reason it's easier to track stuff in SG storage is because the amount of items that can be stored in SG storage is so much less than what can be stored on our characters.
Next Argument?
Oh Premium players are afraid that their stuff will be stolen if they invite a VIP into their SG? Invalid argument.
1. As the SG leader Premium players can set individual storage bin permissions to prevent anyone from taking items out of storage except themselves.
2. With access to the base editor Premium players can easily place storage bins in a section of the base and wall it off from access to any other SG member.
3. Finally if a Premium player is going to stop playing for any length of time all he has to do to retain ownership of the SG is kick the VIP from the SG roster. -
Quote:No big loss. If they wanted they could have easily circumvented rent by just removing the items that incur rent.Originally Posted by Minotaur
Unfortunately, I know of 2 players with solo SGs who have recently returned as F2P, they have left again because while they can use their SGs, they can't pay the base rent which is a related completely bone headed design decision.
Storage Items (per bin) 100 prestige
Auto-Doc / Tree of Wonders 100 prestige
Combat Logs / Contemplation Charts 100 prestige
Robo-Surgery / Spirit Signal 100 prestige
Advanced Worktable / Advanced Forge 100 prestige
Expert Worktable / Expert Forge 100 prestige
Robotic Fabricator / Flames of Hephaestus 100 prestige
Radiation Emulator / Enchanting Crucible 100 prestige
Linear Accelerator / Arcane Crucible 200 prestige
Supercollider / Mystic Crucible 300 prestige
There's nothing on that list that a solo SG "needs" to be functional.
What? They didn't want to pay for extra group storage? Too bad. TANSTAAFL as they say. They don't pay a sub They don't get access to extra group storage unless they have a VIP in their SG. They can go buy the extra personal storage off the Paragon Market.
I say good riddance to deadbeats that expect to get full access to the game for free.