Osborn

I suspect the odds of anybody with a balance of Paragon Points or a power set or in-game item recently bought that's now entirely pointless is going to get a refund of any sort is exceedingly low.

I think at best the only people looking at being legally entitled to a refund are those who have paid for a future subscription service. And by future, I'm pretty sure that'll mean "November 30th", not "August 28th", even if that subscription is greatly diminished in value between those two dates due to the news. I doubt anybody will hear claims for refund based on the services paid for between August 28th and November 30th diminishing in quality due to the player base fleeing the game or because your friends couldn't become VIP with you to do the things you wanted to do with you.

According to the EULA of this, and pretty much every video game and console in existence, you don't really buy anything so much as lease it for an indeterminable period of time. It'd be hard to claim that you bought, and subsequently were robbed of, Nature Affinity power set when you really leased Paragon Points which then could be transferred to a vague in game utility of undetermined game value (sometimes none even, in the case of costume pieces).

Especially if the judge hearing the case is old fashioned minded and doesn't understand the internet and sees the Paragon Points or the game subscription as having no inherent value due to being digital or virtual. It's hard to claim that something 'valueless' that you agreed you were leasing until NCSoft decided you weren't has decreased in value and you require compensation or a refund for it. "You spent money on garbage then complained the garbage wasn't up to your standards?" seems like what somebody of that mindset would think.

I think at this point the deck is heavily stacked against us, and we're relying on the goodness of NCSoft's hearts at this point at every juncture, and hoping that they fear enough of a hit to their reputation or fear enough of a hit of customer confidence to the genres they produce to do what we'd consider the right thing to do. And maybe that will happen. So far I've been of the mind to take the approach to see what happens.

I think the most likely way for people getting refunds or for the game to be sold to another studio is for them to worry that frightened customers won't invest so heavily in new properties after a AAA title closed down.

I know a lot of people are suspecting other MMOs will see dollar signs from CoH going down, but I believe it's likely going to be the opposite. People in those games will freeze their own spending habits fearing "If it happened to a AAA game, it could happen here!". A lack of customer confidence can drive business away as fast, if not faster than quality in the game or the quality of the tech behind it. I know the big topic in all the other games I've played isn't so much "Cool, new customers and maybe employees are coming" it's been closer to "Is our game next?". That attitude in itself can drive customers to dive away from the genre.

So, I suspect that NCSoft, if it does indeed start giving out generous refunds of some kind, it'll be motivated more by trying to alleviate fear that customers will be burned if they come to their new products, whether or not they originated in CoH or not.

But considering how fast and unceremoniously axed CoH and Paragon Studios despite it making black, I suspect this is not a high priority concern for them. It's 'other games' problem', I bet. I don't really think that we, in the United States or the EU are NCSoft's primary market, in any real appreciable fashion. Good customer service or building up consumer confidence and loyalty implies you want repeat business. I'm not sure if NCSoft really cares how the west thinks of them. Not because I think they're all racist or anything like that, though I've seen that accusation thrown around a lot. It's more that, if I owned a local chain of a restaurant in Ohio, I might not be super concerned with how well I'm personally liked in Paris, France.

I wish everybody the best of luck with getting a refund, if that's the path they're taking in this situation, or with getting the game to stay online, if that is the path they're taking. I know I'm personally doing what I can to keep the game online, myself.

But I think at this point almost every avenue for legal advancement in this situation relies entirely on hoping the guys at NCSoft have bigger hearts than wallets, and I guess I'm not expecting much on that front in general. I think that if that was true, you wouldn't lay off 80 people over Labor Day weekend and then inform them by a public newsletter on their game's website.

My humble suggestions, without trying to ask for much, and hopefully not anything that would require a lot of new coding (but let's be honest, I don't have any idea the amount of coding that goes into the game).

-Eliminate all melee attacks for all mercenary pets. Factor range of powers so that all pets stay near medic in a medium range setting. Medic has an interuptable heal, which becomes useless as pet will attempt to cycle through heal repeatedly, then gets distracted to use melee range weapons, or chases down other pets for stimulant, making the medic have ADD. Hopefully this will cut down on some bad behavior problems without actually needing to modify any AI code.

-Add some survivability to make up for lack of pets capable of recharge intensive pet IO sets. (Simple solution, give spec ops some leadership ability, or allow all pets to take attack or recharge intensive sets). This should even up the odds a bit between Mercs and other mastermind sets, while staying in theme (Special Ops forces able to lead and command in hot zones on even terms with street thugs? Check). Both would be nice and make up for the fact that some secondary sets can take those IOs and some can't, making it so that any Primary/Secondary combination is viable, again, a core draw to CoH.

-Mercenaries were build around the advantage of their pets having extra control powers (as compared to other sets who's strengths lay elsewhere). Either eliminate this and make their strength somewhere else, or actually make the powers useful. Spec Ops and Medic's grenades are worthless, as is. I would personally not mind seeing Medic lose his short range attacks altogether to force him to stay back with the bulk of the group, giving him a mid range shotgun or pistol (and would fit in the theme of a combat medic).

-Serum is useless as is. Due to the cottage rule, keep it as a resistance/tohit based buff, but a simple solution would be to make it a lesser buff that hits the whole team without as significant of a crash. Make it a "Let's get dangerous" button, at cost of endurance for the mastermind or a longer recharge for the power, rather than "Let's have one of my minions become a tauntless tank for 20 seconds, then crash". Maybe make it a tactical click 'leadership' power that effects player and all minions within supremacy.

There are probably about 12,000 different ideas for this power all that are better than leaving it as is.

In my experience (Mercs/Dark), you'll love your mastermind, until about midway through the game. People who believe the AT is overpowered speak mostly from experience with their early game play, or just straight up aren't talking about most Mercs/* builds.

Mercenaries bring absolutely nothing to the table in the late game, and are functionally useless for all level 50 content, except farming -1 minions for salvage.

They really excel at destroying a billion of really weak things, but once the heat gets turned up at all (and I'm not meaning +4/X8 content, I mean being on basic +0 content with EBs), they wilt like nobody's business.

Serum is pretty much useless, as it is. The third minion, Medic, doesn't use his healing enough to even warrant mention of it as a bonus. Spec Ops stealth is pointless outside of theme, and their debuff grenades are all thrown at the first guy they see and have a long recharge time. You'll often face the first, lowest level set in a mission to watch 4 grenades hit the first poor sap they see, only to never see the grenades again for the rest of, or at least most of the mission.

The pets don't behave which I'm told is a symptom of all masterminds, but really does them no favors in keeping them alive as weak as they are, especially if, oops, you didn't take a secondary set with a Recharge Intensive Pet, and can't even IO your guys into surviving.

The power set doesn't really work in practice or theme (why are street thugs more able to command and defend on a battle field than hardened mercenaries?) out of the box, and has to be finagled into working with very specific secondary power sets (which goes against the general feel of the rest of the game, with most other power set combinations being viable from 1-50).

If you're a primarily role player and have friends who don't mind carrying you through later game content, then by all means take the set, otherwise stay far away, or do some major looking around for ways to use your secondary set to make a viable build.