Hertz

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Hedgehog.... You're just being ignorant of how real businesses work (as is the other who I am not replying to directly).

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Ah, accusations of ignorance, the last refuge of the self-deluded.

It is difficult to get that last two percent, as you describe — and indeed, it is not worth pursuit of those few dollars if it comes at the expense of pleasing your existing customers.

In this case, there is virtually zero risk that existing customers will walk away from the game because they didn't get the name they wanted. I can say that because, by definition, somebody who has "been here since the beginning" has never left for any reason, much less because a single name was unavailable.

NCsoft could bend over backwards and make names available for that never-quitting customer. But it wouldn't make any more money by doing so, would it? You can't make more money off of a person who has never left, can you?

Seen from that perspective, the cost-benefit of reverting names is "piss off customers who might someday pay us money, in exchange for $0.00 in payments from customers who wouldn't leave even if we did nothing." They can therefore pursue that mythical 2%, as you describe it, without sacrificing existing revenue.

But that 2% figure is a chimera of your own invention. You pulled that number out of your butt. Any intelligent and thorough business analysis of the MMO industry as a whole would surely make more fine distinction than lumping people into two categories: Haven't Been Here For Years, and Have Been Here All Along. You can't simply break down customers into "paying" and "non-paying." That's too simple-minded.

What's far more likely — and a business-savvy person such as you claim to be would understand this — is that there is a small core of loyalists and a wide range of come-and-go behavior. Person A has never left; but Person B pays for 4 months, quits for 2, over and over. Person C pays every other month. Person D pays 1 month and disappears for 5. Person E pays 1 month and quits for 11.

Any system you devise that reverts names that are idle will zing Person B, C, D, and E. Are you saying they're not worth pursuing? Or are you trying to narrowly target Person F, who paid 1 time and disappeared for 35 months?

You don't have the detailed business analysis of return customer behavior. And yet here you are, claiming a wide experience of business and assuming we have none, and you are spouting off destructive business practices because you, personally, have an outcome in mind that benefits you.

Don't you think that NCsoft is capable of making sound business decisions based on actual data that are more reliable than your armchair hand-waving? I do.

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No, seriously. No one is trying to "steal" anything here.

If a person *is not playing the game*, they *won't care*.

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Look at this from a cost-benefit perspective, from the business's point of view.

If you're a current paying customer who has never had that name, and who has never missed a month paying, there is a 100% chance you will be paying $15.00/month without that name.

If you're a non-paying former customer who has had that name, there is a non-zero change (call it X%) that you will return if sufficiently enticed.

As far as a business move goes, the higher you can make X%, the more likely you are to make additional revenue. Therefore, the prudent business move is not to find reasons to irritate former customers in the hope that they come back.

You have said you have never seen anybody complain that they returned after several months to find their names were purged. Well, I've never seen anybody say "I can't get the name Super Burger on my favorite server, so I'm quitting."

So while it's all fine and good to say current paying customers should get all the good names, it isn't as if there's a huge risk that they'll walk away from the game if they don't get 'em — so the smart money is on attracting back former customers in addition to retaining current ones.

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Granted this isn't a democracy, but the idea of pleasing the most customers as possible, is still very much a part of your typical business model.

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You're right: however, you can define "pleasing the most customers as possible" in many ways.

You apparently have chosen "take longer, spend more money, and give out the most expensive powersets after a significant delay."

They have apparently chosen "take less time, spend less money, and give out the easiest sets first, and budget for all the rest later."

Both are valid means to achieve that business model.
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But still, we don't know the devs reasoning and they may have had a good reason for in.

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Says who? They stated very plainly that they were going with the quick-and-easy-to-port power sets first. I fail to see how we didn't know what they had in mind. They said so in plain English.

Why everybody started imagining Electric Tanks, Illusion Dominators, and all the other pie-in-the-sky exchanges, I have no idea.

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Villains just will not stack up against a group of heroes with Therm Buffs, Emp Buffs and Cold Buffs as well.

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Yes... my God... think of how amazingly over-powering it would be if one faction had Sonic bubbles, Force Fields, Thermal and Cold shields! Why, that team would win in PVP every time!

Wait... no, Villains have had that for 2 years. So... gamebreaking it evidently is not.

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I find this hillarious. You do know the person responsible for Champions Online is Jack Emmert, right? The same Jack Emmert who people have been ready to crucify for ED, Regen Nerfs, His belief of "Risk versus Reward", and for his constant ability to promise stuff only to find out he was full of it?

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What's even funnier is that he's going to be given a bolus of the whiniest, most self-entitled ex-COV players when they storm away in a huff. Most Overpromising Developer, meet Most Self-Entitled Whiners. Let the Champions forums commence.

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So is this the outlook for "new" powers to come?. Crossovers? ... Is it too much to ask to come up with some not many, but some ideas?

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Uh, yeah. It's exactly what they said they were giving us: they were porting powersets from one Archetype to another, crossing some over between Hero and Villain, starting with the ones that required the least artwork re-design. What were you expecting?

And yes, it was too much to come up with "new" ideas, considering that they're already working on Shield characters AND the two new Villain epic archetypes. Is five new powersets not enough for you?

They also said they had a choice: design 1 Mastermind powerset from the ground up, or proliferate 20 powersets. You'd think that giving out TWENTY previously unavailable powersets would have made many more people HAPPY than just giving out ONE.

In other words, Aramar, Villains will whine until an Issue comes out that grants all new Epic Power Pools, balances PVP, gives Villains 30 more zones, and adds 10 Strike Forces.

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Judging by this first round of proliferation, I'm almost scared to see how badly Red is gonna get it in the second and third rounds.

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Good grief. To hear people on the thread tell it, the developers couldn't have chosen more poorly! How can it be worse next time? What powersets could they proliferate that would actually be worse?

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But why should we have to focus on other things now? A forum is meant to express one's distaste.

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A forum is meant to discuss things in the proper time and place. This is not the time or place to bring up the entire list of grievances with City of Villains starting at the dawn of time and continuing up to the present day. This thread is to discuss the revealed new power sets, not to bring up "well Stalkers PVP blah blah, etc., plus Defenders get Power Boost."

The developers are open to reasoned discussion. The number of lies and insults flung in their direction would make me frankly put about half the thread contributors on /ignore, as they clearly have no reasons and no inclination to discuss, and what's more, they hurl lies and invective and exaggerations as if that proves something.

But hey, if anybody wants to be uncivil, go for it. It won't change a damned thing, of course, but it's their right.

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Never said everything was bad. Just some stuff I dont agree with.

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I would respectfully suggest that you focus your attention on places that really are badly out of balance, lest the forums become The Villains That Cried Wolf. If everybody continues to wail and gnash their teeth at perceived insults from the developers, then the real issues go unheeded. And there are issues: but "omg we gave away Thermal and we didn't get anything" isn't one of them. Villains did get something for it; it just wasn't what you, personally, wanted it to be.
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...however I do feel that the lack of powerboost on villain side for buffs and not having an empathy since heroes got thermal is wrong. That is basicly my issue.

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Then why don't you encourage the developers to consider Empathy as a villain set next go-round? That would be much more constructive, and it'd moderate the repetitive "devs hate villains" whine coming from the rest of this thread. The suggestion might even be heard — I'm sure the whining won't be much heeded. It's just background noise at this point, like living next to the freeway. Sooner or later you don't hear it. So be heard instead.

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Not trying to start another arguement, but when does Assassination work?

A. When Hidden or Placated

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And B., a chance to critical when the enemy is slept or held.

And by the way, does the Scrapper inherent grant AOE defense and stealth?

You're trying to play victim here, O woe, villains are always getting the short end of the stick, etc., but I ain't buying it. Villains sometimes end up on the losing side, but I refuse to put scales over my eyes and pretend that everything is always bad for villains.

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Why are stalkers the only AT in the whole game that their inherent power takes up a power slot?

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Since when is Hide an inherent power? Their inherent power is Assassination, which is basically Scrapper criticals.

If you're gonna count Hide as an inherent, then Stalkers have two inherents: they get Scrapper inherent criticals and Hide. Is that fair that they get two?

And if you don't count criticals as an inherent, then Scrappers don't get any inherent.

Count it however you like, you're still only seeing what you want to see.

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Devices is a Blaster secondary, which was supposed to be excluded from this list. Arguably, also, Ninja Blade and Katana are near clones of each other.

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Why exclude devices? It is a set that villains do not get.

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Didn't we already do this argument?

Because there is no light-control-plus-melee Archetype on Villain-side, that's why. It doesn't map across directly to any Archetype.

If you include Devices as a set that Villains don't have, you have to include all Blaster secondaries, all Dominator secondaries, all Mastermind primaries, Kheldian and VEAT powers, and all Stalker seconaries (because they're not exactly the same as Scrapper secondaries). The list gets long and ridiculous. Didn't you see it?

This is fun! I want to hear more whining like this. Who’s with me?

NEXT PROLIFERATION REVEALED:

Heroes
Blasters: Radiation Blast, Dark Blast + Radiation Melee, Dark Melee, Traps
Controllers: Electric Control, Water Control, Sandstorm Control + Poison, Thermal Radiation
Defenders: Cold Healing + Fire Blast, Assault Rifle, Laser Beam Rifle
Scrappers: Street Fighting, Knife Fighting, Super Strength + Shield Defense
Tankers: Shield Defense, Electric Armor, Energy Aura + Electric Melee

Villains
Brutes: Pillow Armor + Sock Puppet Melee
Corruptors: Fingers Shaped Like A Gun Pretending To Blast + Trick Arrow
Dominators: Paper Clip Domination + Origami Assault (now with Paper Airplane blast!)
Masterminds: Citizen Mastermind (3 harlots, 2 cops, and 1 doctor, all of whom run away from danger when summoned) + Managed HMO Healing (10K influence co-pay per heal, power takes 30 minutes to activate, 3 day recharge, by appointment only, some injuries not covered)
Stalkers: Pie Assault, Food Fight Melee + Armour Hot Dog

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The only thing that upsets me is that some of us always thought Thermal was their version of Empathy and now heroes have it also and we didnt get anything in return.

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2 Hero Archetypes received powers previously unavailable on blue-side: Thermal and Cold. 1 Hero Archetype receives a powerset that didn't exist anywhere until now: Mental Manipulation.

3 Villain Archetypes received powers previously unavailable on red-side: Storm and Electric Blast.

So Villains "didn't get anything in return" for giving away Thermal? More creative blindness.
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Heroes can give +perception at lvl 8 with a emp defender and villains can give +perception at lvl 35 with clarity. Am I the only one who finds this to be wrong?

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No, you aren't — but how many heroes get access to Hide? Is that right? Creative blindness again.
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Controllers and Defenders get the same buffs that create easier team playing and PvP. Corruptors and Masterminds have different buffs/debuffs except traps and dark miasma that forces one AT to be a buffer. Am I the only one who finds this to be wrong?

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Forces an Archetype to...? Okay, let's keep perceptions out of it and talk about just facts. You're not forced to do anything, not even play.

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Luminous Blast
Bright Nova
Luminous Aura
White Dwarf

Umbral Blast
Dark Nova
Umbral Aura

Black Dwarf
Psychic Blast
Mental Manipulation
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Villains

VEAT primary 1
VEAT primary 2
VEAT secondary 1
VEAT secondary 2
Electric Assault


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Since you felt the need to include a set that cannot be added to heroes like the mastermind pets I think I should include the extra forms given by the hero epic AT. ... I think this is the stupidest post I have ever done; however a stupid post gets a stupid reply.

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Hey, you almost had it. Remember, the Villain Epic Archetypes also have additional form sets: Fortunata, Night Widow, Crab Dude, and the other one. Add those back in and call it a day: and villains still win, man.

I didn't include 'em the first time around because I knew somebody would be whiny enough to mention it. Wanna list the all the 41-49 power pools too? Or hasn't the argument got stupid enough yet?

The point is, anyone can present a selectively edited list that purports to show heroes have more unique primary and secondary powers. But it takes some creative blindness. Truthfully, they're pretty equal, all things considered.

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Heroes
Illusion Control
Empathy
Archery
Broadsword
Katana
Ice Melee
Ice Armor
Devices
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Villains

Energy Aura
Ninjutsu
Ninja Blade
Electric Armor
Electric Melee
Traps
Poison

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Fixed

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Fixed? You threw in a Blaster secondary, which doesn't have an equivalent in COV, and an armor powerset proved not to work? Good. let's throw in all the powersets, even the ones with no logical equivalencies.

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Heroes
Illusion Control
Empathy
Archery
Broadsword
Katana
Ice Melee
Ice Armor
Devices
Ice Manipulation
Fire Manipulation
Energy Manipulation
Electric Manipulation
Luminous Blast
Luminous Aura
Umbral Blast
Umbral Aura
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Villains

Energy Aura
Ninjutsu
Ninja Blade
Electric Armor
Electric Melee
Traps
Poison
Thorny Assault
Fire Assault
Ice Assault
Psychic Assault
Energy Assault
Thugs
Necromancy
Robotics
Ninjas
Mercenaries
VEAT primary 1
VEAT primary 2
VEAT secondary 1
VEAT secondary 2

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Now it's fixed. Villains are still ahead in unique power sets after Issue 13.

Waaa, boo, hiss, etc. The Doom Train is right on time, and there's no more room in the Whining Car.

The developers said they were going to begin by porting over the power sets that required the least redesign: basically, the straight-across ports with no new artwork. Only one new power (!) had to be created for Mental Manipulation, and a few powers had to be copied and pasted in (such as Hide for Stalkers).

And what did we get? Ice and Cold, Thermal and Fire, Earth, Psychic Blast, Storm, Electric Stalkers, melee weapon Brutes with Super Reflexes, and ... well, without exception, we got the powersets that required no new artwork. Even Electric for Corruptors and Dominators had 90% of the work already done, what with Electric Brutes and Mu Guardians.

In other words, all those pie-in-the-sky dreams of Illusion Dominators, Electric Tankers, Earth Assault Dominators, and any other combination that required heavy modification, well, those were just pipe dreams. Maybe later — but not this time. This time we got exactly what we were promised.

And another thing. Am I the only one who sees a logical disconnect here?

A: Waah, heroes beat villains in PVP because Empathy is better than Thermal. And it's not fair, boo, Storm is so much better in PVP because Hurricane is totally cheap, devs hate villains.
B: Waah, heroes will beat villains in PVP because now they have Thermal. And it's not fair, boo, all we got was Storm, that's totally cheap, devs hate villains.

Cognitive dissonance? Maybe. Or maybe some people just like feeling like perpetual victims. I swear, to hear the forums tell it, the game has more "slaps in the face" to villains than a Fatty Arbuckle movie. It'll be pies next.

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I've fought similar fights before just to see my ideas come into the game and the doubters slink away to enjoy that which they said they would hate.

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Such as... ?

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Loot
Crafting
Flashback
MoG fix
A way to earn unlimited respecs

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Never fought against Flashback or MoG.

I did point out that unlimited free respecs had a potential exploit in it, namely that you could sell off all your Enhancements at full price. Having a for-fee recipe for crafting a respec seems like a wise solution.

And as I pointed out many many times in my arguments with you over crafting, it isn't crafting in itself that I abhor, but the things crafting made you do — namely, farming for 100 Rat Tails so you can make the Pitiful Stinky Armor of Tails, so you can skill up your crafting power to Level 2, so now you can farm 500 Dog Noses... the ultimate goal of which is that everybody must purchase the top-level loot in order to maintain parity. That's what I objected to.

And it didn't happen. The system they implemented satisfies me — largely because I can completely ignore it — and I think we can agree that it was precisely because we (and others) had loud, large public debates over these things that the crafting system turned out so well.

Of course, I still don't use it much. I think only my level 50 has any IO sets at all. The rest, I just buy SOs and sell the salvage and recipes at the store. So... your opponents "slinked off and enjoyed" the crafting? No, because it's rather uninspiring. I'd rather play than sit around and comb the CH. And I still don't enjoy the loot aspect, where you need 20,000,000 Influence to buy anything useful. So you can take that off your resume, bub.

My answer may surprise some people.

I can get behind the idea of opening all zones to both sides. I just can't see what good it'd do, unless a tremendous and possibly wasteful amount of labor is thrown at it. The trouble is, there are a lot of roadblocks to making this work smoothly.

Problem: Transportation.
Heroes would need ways to get to Villain zones, and vice-versa. The trouble is, why would anybody bother crossing 2 or 3 zones from Mercy Island so they could level up in Atlas Park? I mean, jeez, by the time you walk from one to the other, you could have leveled up already.

Problem: Stores.
Villains would need to have Quartermasters tucked away somewhere in Atlas Park. It would be tremendously inconvenient to have to travel back across 2 or 3 zones just to sell.

Problem: Consignment Market.
Hero and Villain consignment markets are now separated. (Whether they should be joined as one is a separate argument.) Villains would need access to the Black Market in Hero Zones, otherwise it becomes counterproductive to hang out there. You'd have to run back across several zones to sell Villain-side (and vice-versa, of course). Of course, if by opening Hero-side to Villains you do combine the markets, you're not saving yourself any labor; work must still be done.

Problem: Hospitals Drones.
If police drones don't attack Villains, then you have given up your best tool for keeping PVPers from unnecessarily ganking lowbies, or from interfering in safe areas such as the Hospital. If drones do attack Villains, you need to construct redundant Villain-specific transport routes and basically rebuild the entire Green and Yellow lines for Villains. In either case, Villains would need their own hospitals in every zone. Redundant features just take up space that could be used for actual, you know, content.

Problem: Contacts, Newspaper, Mayhem, Missions.
Villains would need contacts and mission doors assigned to them. No Villain would bother to hang out in Atlas Park if they had to run back to the Fortunata in Mercy to get a new mission. What a drag that would be.

Problem: Badges and Teleport Beacons.
One begets the other. Teleport Beacons to Hero zones, inside Villain bases, would ease the transportation crunch we're talking about, but that means more time and effort to revamp every zone.

Problem: PVP.
The zones weren't designed for PVP. There are no safe places in Atlas Park or Galaxy City built for Villains. Recreating these zones with PVP in mind would be a tremendous burden on the art and design staff. It would not be a walk in the park, and it would put off further content development.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I personally don't have that much of a problem with PVPers being in Atlas Park, as long as there's no deliberate or accidental way that they can interfere with me, no exploits, etc. I also know not everybody feels that way. However, opening more zones for PVP doesn't seem to create more opportunities for people to fight — it creates less. It would dilute the pro-PVP population across a wider area, forcing people to look harder to find a good fight — and when people have to search harder for a good fight, then they start pestering passers-by, which is exactly what I wouldn't want happening to me.

Problem: Duel Me, Noob.
If I could have a button that said "auto-ignore all of the opposite faction, and auto-ignore anybody who has their PVP flag on, don't even draw them on my screen, don't accept tells from them, don't even look at their broadcasts, don't accept gifts from them or anything," then that'd work for me. And it defaults to On.

See, I don't really care if there's Villains in Atlas Park. It's not about immersion. It's about the tremendous amount of work it'd take to make Atlas Park a zone friendly to Villains, and is that really what we want the developers wasting their time on? It's not like they can flip a switch and boom, suddenly Villains have 30 zones more content. It's an extraordinary amount of work to do it right.

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Does the absence of any "red named" response mean what I think it does?

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You tell me: is it good policy to have your lead developers personally answer every whiner on the board? What kind of behavior do you think that would encourage: less whining, or more whining?

Maybe that's why "calling out the developers" is against board policy. That could be it.

Update:

I have moved, and following that (for the past three weeks) I have been trying to shake off a cold. It's been difficult getting my voice back in shape — just in time for winter, when auditions come thick and fast.

Tomorrow after work (that is, Saturday) I'll record the next Stan & Lou, in Croatoa.

It may take a day or three to complete, because of the timing of my various... er, guest stars.

I'll try getting the next Stan and Lou written over the weekend, as well. Sorry for the long delay.

If I were to be magically granted any change in the name policy, it would be to ask for a more informative UI. When I cannot have a name, I would prefer to be told why.

"Sorry, that name has been deemed unsuitable under the terms of the EULA."

"Sorry, that name is already taken by another active account."

"That name is already taken by account that has been inactive for more than 90 days. Would you like to claim it?"

Epic? Complicated, perhaps.

Absolutely! Now if only we could find somebody with good writing skills who is as wise about Blasters and Stalkers...