SwellGuy
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Posts
3799 -
Joined
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Bah! Mine is still for sale.
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Quote:I understand what you are saying but here's my main issue with it.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
I keep playing this card, but... "I used to work for a certain video game company back in the day..."
If they're anything now like they were then, you'd be amazed what a disconnect their can be. Earth sweeping decisions can be made without other departments even being informed. There's a lot to keep track of. Think about the unique situation MMOs are in: They're product is being distributed 24/7 with virtually no exceptions. This puts the pressure on each department to be reaching for the stars every moment that they're in the office. It is extremely easy to not be on the same page.
To get the announcement out "on time", they'd need the following:- Marketing (To state when the best time to announce it would be)
- PR (To make sure they're on the same page as the other companies)
- Community (To know when to post it on the local pages)
And all of them would have to be acting in tandem in order to make this work. Now, I'm not saying that I'm absolving Paragon's marketing efforts of all sins, but saying "Why isn't X marketed the way I'd like?" is a slightly more abstract version of saying "Why doesn't Positron hit the 'Fix it' button on the latest bug?".
Heck, I'd bet very real money some of the Red Names on these forums didn't even know this was happening. Not an insult; an observation of the fact that this CD has very little to do with the actual game, so they may not have received emails on it.
Anyway... bleh. I listened to the soundtrack twice today. Now onto my P!nk/Lady Gaga mix with which I'm currently experimenting. The results is a spectral aura of euphoria pervading the scents and sensations of everything around me... <3
Someone came up with the idea of the CD.
It was approved.
It was made.
It was setup with Amazon and whomever else.
At some point between it was approved and it got to Amazon there are all the details to be hammered out. One of those details should have been make it known. At the very least you post it on your forums and lately they have done a lot with Twitter and Facebook so you announce it there.
Unless it showing up on Amazon was premature, a mistake of some kind and the announcements were planned but they were scooped.
It just boggles my mind is all. - Marketing (To state when the best time to announce it would be)
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Quote:This is what just continues to baffle the heck out of me. They had to know about this product well in advance so why no announcement?Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Let's take bets on how long it takes for there to be an official press release/Announcements post about this, if any.
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Quote:There's the slap in the face they were looking for.Originally Posted by Alpha-One
Stupid Amazon won't sell MP3s to Canadians *shakes fist with rage*
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Quote:The reason it is green is they buffed the servers. That is why Freedom doesn't go yellow/red very often. It is not just due to less players.Originally Posted by Slashman
That's exactly the point. It is rarely yellow. There are no longer population stats given next to servers. But even green can still mean that Virtue is bursting with players as compared to Victory or Justice.
As to how a new player may know to join Virtue as opposed to say, Infinty? There are external sources of info about this game outside of the forums. There are, in fact, some very vocal people who have strong opinions about COX and spread them on other gaming sites. So you might be surprised to hear someone comment on an article on Bluesnews that Virtue is the only server worth joining if you are going to play COX and don't want to play in a ghost town.
But again, so then the new player can jump onto Virtue. What will merging do to affect that? What would those sites say if servers were merged? What did they say when SWG merged servers?
And if even just one server is not a ghost town (which is a laugh since Freedom is no less populated than Virtue) what is keeping people from signing up and playing there?
I feel like this goes around in circles.
The claim that all the servers are "dead" except Freedom and Virtue. Ok then play on those two.
New people won't know. Ok then let new people know.
New people know from other sites. Ok then what's the problem.
The other servers are "dead". Well then play on the ones you don't think are dead because enough people play on them and are satisfied and even happy.
How long will NC pay for "dead" servers? What's that to us? As some have stated in this very thread the server costs can cost more on a busier server than a "dead" one.
Honestly I am beginning to think there is some kind of dementia or agenda related to the pro-merger people that they aren't stating. Do they think they would get more content if the devs closed down some servers? -
Quote:And can you imagine how the prestige nazis would demand people deposit X amount of inf as well as earn Y prestige per week/month?Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Only problem with that idea is the one that Star Trek Online has with the same issue. Bank Thieves. Every one that chips into an SG bank is going to want access to what they stored and it will be very easy to rip the whole SG off.
Then theres also the problem with an SG leader that suddenly decides to lock everyone out. The GMs have already stated that the SG and everything in it belongs to the person with the rank Super Leader. They won't get involved with internal disputes.
I think a private bank is the way to go. -
What is one of the biggest causes of the sense of server emptiness? Empty outdoors areas I would expect.
With Going Rogue more zones are being added with a third place for players to start at.
Education of the fact that we are heavily instanced and have so many zones to spread out in is going to do more than any thing else to end the "servers are dead" mantra.
Besides one factor is human stupidity and no matter what they say if they merge any servers the "known fact" will be "the game is dying and they had to merge servers."
They gave us free server transfers for quite a while last January and people did not flock to Freedom. I happen think that speaks to what the players want.
Of course some will argue Bob didn't want to transfer because the rest of his SG wasn't going but then the question would be why did he want to move in the first place and why does his SG hold him back?
I am still stuck on your Virtue is laggy comment. It is rarely yellow except on special occasions so then how does the new player know it is busy or not? If all the servers were that way would that entice people to join/stay? -
See the "some number quit" only has to be 1 for them to have lost subscribers. It is pretty obvious there would be more than 1 but even if just Claws quit they still lost a sub. And they paid for all the work to merge.
So they will begin in the hole. Now they need to get and retain more players to make up for the costs.
Now there are two things you wrote which give me pause for concern regarding merging.
Quote:If this is true, which I believe it is for some number of players but not all of us because they are fine on my computers, then we are making the experience worst by merging for even more people.A few reasons I can think of.
First: Lag. Freedom and Virtue are almost always laggy even when the rest of the servers are butter smooth.
Then merging the servers would sever very little purpose as opposed to simply working on these things you listed. Merging would simply be a stopgap measure that would only satisfy a subset of the playerbase of unknown size temporarily yet without those three things the bleed off would continue.Quote:In terms of why we don't bring in more new players though? I have several theories on that myself.
1) We do little to no real marketing for this game. Even with GR so close, coverage has been sparse, to say the least. The people who are getting info on the game are the people who are already playing it.
2) The relative failure of MA to become the driving force the devs thought it would be. And that is compounded by the rampant exploiting that releasing it in a broken form encouraged. When you read forums on other gaming websites, there is a notable lack of respect for COX after what happened with MA. It got the reputation of being a 1 - MAX level game in a couple hours even after the bugs in MA were fixed.
3) It has taken rather too long to get the stuff that people want in the game implemented. That leads to a bleed off in players who want something new. We have waited a long time for GR to come in order to get some solid content. I can only hope that it performs above expectations and truly reinvigorates the game. Not just for long time players, but for people who want to try it for the first time. -
Quote:One option: Incrementally.Originally Posted by Absorber_NA
Is there some type of trick or something that I am missing, because I see all of these IO's for millions of influence, and its just out of my price range.
I have about 20 mil on my 30 tanker, and he is looking at IO's that are 100+ mil, so my question is how do I get these IO's.
How do I make the big bucks?
I know there is the buy common IO's and sell them, but theres no way ur making 100 mil doing that.
I used to memorize the common endurance IOs for the level 35. Then bulk cheap buy the salvage, craft and make some inf. Then once that got me a decent nest egg I would bulk buy a recipe and its salvage which had a huge difference between the recipes and the enhancements.
Another option: AE tickets
Go to the AE and run missions. If you don't want to level turn off exp. You can either random common salvage to sell, buy rare salvage to sell or random recipe roll for the really good ones to sell.
With new characters I tend to hang in AE earning tickets except for the departure to earn the safeguard/mayhem raptor pack and zero-g pack from levels 5-15. Then at 15 I roll the tickets for bronze recipes. There are a few high value ones that I get often enough to get started. -
You can use merits to buy them or buy the cheap ones on the market and combine 3 of a type to the ones you want.
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Quote:You should try dropping one on the market and see what happens since they shouldn't technically exist.Originally Posted by Von Krieger
Or sell them as a novelty to the highest bidder(s) off the market to avoid risking them. -
Quote:What about sparkles?Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Can't get more suicidal and emo than...Comic Sans. *shudder*
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Quote:I think you completely misinterpreted Claws post.Originally Posted by Slashman
As evidenced by...? You threatening to quit?
I'm not completely sold on server merges myself...but to make a statement like that implies that you absolutely know what a majority of subscribers will do in any given situation. As even the developers have demonstrated on several occasions, even they have a hard time determining what actions a majority of players will take in response to a change.
Also, if, as you said, it resulted in more populous servers across the board, then might that not mean that the game would be come more attractive to new players and thus increase our numbers in the long run?
If you're going to play the 'I know what will happen' game, then play it right out to the end.
He wrote
So first they merge some servers. Let's say it goes from 11 to 4 in NA and 4 to 1 in EU as someone posted somewhere in this thread.Quote:Merging servers would be a bad business move for NCSoft. The remaining servers would be more populous, but the game as a whole would have fewer subscribers.
Immediately the remaining servers are in fact more populous. Some number of people quit over losing their SG, their character name, etc. The game as a whole now has fewer subscribers. The remaining servers are still more populous unless enough people quit to drive the population of those servers to the current levels or lower.
Now as to the bad business move part. They have lost some number of subscribers and incurred the cost of server merger. Unless they recoup enough subscribers to make up for the lost ones and the cost of the merging they have lost money. That would be a bad business move.
Now would it be more attractive to new players? Perhaps but why aren't they playing on Freedom and Virtue already? Unless you merge all the servers to one server or just down to those 2 to get populations greater than those two currently have then why aren't those two currently sufficient to attract new players? -
Quote:Good but it needs more dark.Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Henceforth, Dark Miasma, Dark Blast, Dark Armor, and Dark Melee will all be known as Darkity Dark Dark Darkness of Darkity Dark Darks.
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Quote:I bet she never responds to this in any substantive way.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
There are hungry people in our streets. Today.
Get off your *** and feed them. -
Quote:Well then almost everyone would be locked up. Seems a bit unrealistic and impractical for the laws to set the bars that low.Originally Posted by RedSwitchblade
What if the defined parameters of "criminal thought" were a bit more stricter than you were expecting?
"I think I'll go for a walk in the Park."
*bring in number J8923 for questioning about walk in park, collaborator with Resistance?* -
Quote:/em Mr. Scott "I'm grimacing as much as I can, Marcian!"Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
More grimacing! MORE GRIMACING!
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Quote:It's the only logical choice.Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
What, you don't speak winky? *eyeroll*
I'd join the Loyalists. It's the right thing to do. -
Oh and I am off on Friday from work so I can join any EoE teams.
Global: Anti-Gravity Man -
I can join on Saturday. Is the time ET or some other time zone?
I've not been involved in a Hami except I9 beta so let me list my 50s and you tell me which is best to bring to help.
DM/Inv Scrapper
Warshade (purpled up)
Grav/Rad Controller
Then I will read up on any recommended guides or walk throughs if people want to post links to them. -
Quote:Come on, Dechs. You know old one liner winkie thinks you should die or at least suffer because she has decided what is good and evil with no shades of gray. Too bad Issue 18 was titled that.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
What about 'em?
Seriously, what are you implying here. I'm missing it entirely. -
Going Rogue is coming on August 17. That's enough to last me a while.
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Quote:I bet the Emperor would love chili dogs and chili cheese fries and Coke. I know I would.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
How much freedom do you really need?
You let me read my Bible, eat food I like, log on to City of Heroes... I'll be fine. -
Quote:I'm still hanging with the Emperor. No sewer sauce in my food, please.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
You don't have super powers, but I've altered scenarios slightly: Everyone has skills. Keep in mind that, in The Dark Knight, the second most dangerous person was Lau. He wasn't a terrorist, nor did he have powers. He was just a really good accountant. And he was the heart of the criminal underworld.
In my altered scenario, your Primal earth skill set holds such influence. You can scratch the paint on the car, even if you can't dent or explode it.
If that's not enough power to change your answer, so be it. I just wanted to make sure I had been lucid in my speech.
Maybe the Emperor would like to have a state run MMO. -
Quote:With no super powers? I'm the Emperor's newest, bestest buddy. Joining the Resistance would get me killed and I dont want to live in a sewer for the last day of my life.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
Okay, so here's the situation: You, yes you, the one at the keyboard, accidentally fall into a rip in realities and land in Praetoria. The anti-rippy-fixer-thing won't be fixed for a year. You're stuck in Praetoria. For a year.
Because of your outside perspective, expertise in (Fill in the blank here), and charisma granted you from being an outsider, you find yourself with the ability to get people to listen to you. So here we have the Loyalists, the Resistence, or a myriad of other options.
With your unique position, skill set, and a year to affect the world, what would you do?- Join the Loyalists and form a stronger, safer Empire than ever. Turn your charisma into propaganda for the good of the people.
- Join the Resistance and bring greater freedoms and independence to the people. Turn your charisma into an engine of justified anarchy.
- "Go away! I just want to go home and be normal!" ~Zim, Invader Zim
- Something... else.
ANSWER NOW!
Yes yes yes, we'd all use our celebrity to get some hottie's phone number. This is about after that.