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Last week, Gamespy's dedicated F2P reviewer revisited City of Heroes in its current "Freedom" form:
Quote:Although the piece isn't quite as positive as the initial reception of CoH Freedom, it nonetheless comes down in favor for the final "Free or Flee" summary.Honestly, despite how much City of Heroes has grown over the years, its character generator is still easily the best part of the experience. That's no slight against the rest of it, mind you. It's just an endlessly entertaining toy that I think is still unmatched in its versatility, even compared to later games{...}. Even if the entire rest of the content were still pay-to-play I'd recommend City of Heroes just for a chance to monkey with this character editor. {...}
City of Heroes has recently been graced with fancy-pants new tutorial, which I suppose serves as a faster and probably mostly unnecessary introduction to the basics of how to do stuff like move around with the WASD keys. It features some weirdly out-of-place voice acting which you will never hear again, and finishes with an epic confrontation which you literally can't lose. The most difficult thing I'm required to do is open up the online store and purchase a $0 badge, just so I know how to do that in case I ever find myself in the possession of money I don't feel like I need. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Back-brain kick. {...}
I've personally been more tempted to pick up minor, cheap items and non-essential impulse buys. In addition to whole power-sets and costume bits like deliriously cleavage-baring witch dresses or animal heads for the furry types, they've added "booster packs," which much like collectible card games offer a grab bag of random goodies. One of the items in there is a pitch-black non-combat wolf pet with glowing eyes. The chance of getting one of these is less than one percent, yet I've already seen a half dozen of those just in the last few days of wandering around, and I've heard stories of people dropping more than a hundred bucks on boosters to get one.
I'm not rich or crazy enough for that, but I did spend a few dollars on a "ninja run" ability that has made the early levels of all my characters faster and easier. If you'd rather turn into a coyote or ride a magic carpet, that's there too for about the cost of a six-pack. None of it is "pay to win" stuff, but once you've spent some time playing it's hard not to look at the store and be tempted by even the most frivolous cosmetic features. -
The dude in question - the screenwriter of the superhero movie Chronicle and son of director John Landis - was playing the role of the hyperbollically ranting comics fan. Didn't the bottle of alcohol at his side tip you off that it's not meant entierly seriously? ("The Death of Superman didn't kill Superman - it killed death!")
Parodic though the short film is, he does make some good points in a very broad fashion. Stick around for Simon Pegg as John Landis toward the end. -
As the mechanics of those systems are entirely different from the Super Packs, the term "exploitation" can be employed only as loosely as some are arguing about "addiction" or "gambling".
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Quote:Extending that reductive logic, virtually every activity that stimulates our brains' reward center is "addictive".An MMO, or even the internet itself, is addictive by nature. Kinda funny that you're worried about adding an addictive element to something that's already addictive without it.
There's a spectrum of addictive risk that must take into account both the individual's propensities and the system's enticements (the reward is surprisingly less relevant just as long as there's that dopamine rush). While Paragon Studios doesn't really have any control over the latter besides banning players who have fallen into a full-blown addiction spiral like something out of Dostoyevsky, they certainly make the final decision over how their game is marketed and sold. In this case, they've added a game of chance on top of the MMO, which they're marketing as something fun to play in itself, complete with virtual "cards" in shiny, bright colors.
Some people enjoy taking risks, and some people enjoy paying extra for rarities. The Super Pack zeroes in on the overlap of those two groups and monetizes the hell out of their predilections. Paragon Studios has tweaked the odds and results so that it's less exploitative than those in some game studios. Nevertheless, it's on their end of the spectrum in the broad perspective, something the old CoH never was. -
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Quote:If nothing else, the Super Packs are presenting an opportunity for presumably well-meant advice about how everyone should now be playing City of Heroes.All I got to say, what the heck am I supposed to do with all these temps and inspiration I never use!?!
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Did The Blues Brothers 2000 teach us nothing?
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They're already having that discussion for the cameras, from the TV crew to AMC's sizable post-Walking Dead audience. That's a lot of total strangers who are listening to their fantasies about Power Girl, et al. How would having a female cast member put them in any less comfortable a position?
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Quote:So comfortable that three minutes into the show we're presented with their discussion about which superheroine they'd like to have sex with. Yes, having a woman in that conversation might make them feel less comfortable.That's also neglecting that these guys seem to have known each other for a considerable time frame. They're comfortable with each other and you get a more realistic interaction as opposed to dropping someone new into the mix.
There's no question that this show is set up on so many levels that the audience is supposed to be laughing at these guys under the pretense of laughing with them. -
Quote:Argued from what position? I haven't patronized a comic book store in decades that didn't have female employees - including, yes, cute ones. A shop that hired only males would have, well, issues in more than one sense.Conversely, it could be argued that that cute of woman working there is somewhat unrealistic and pandering as a token female or as counter candy.
Smith seems to be deliberately setting up a retrograde image with his "reality" TV show for mainstream consumption. (And Durakken, if he was misquoted, then he's probably already begun an epic Twitter campaign against the Observer.) -
"But the reality of the comic book stores is that these are the people who work in them. There’s not a woman among them," says Kevin Smith, who would have us believe that funnybook stores have little diversity among the employees and the clientele. Why would he have cut even a token female from his show's lineup unless he wanted to pander to stereotypes?
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Quote:What the hell? Paragon has access to _server logs_, and they want GMs to cross-examine players who are trying to be helpful by filing petitions?Later, I checked my e-mail. So as not to quote anything, because they don't like that, the e-mail explicitly states that petitions will now summon a GM to file out, basically, an incident report with you. They want all the information all over again, in the interest of "accuracy."
In another MMO I've been playing much more regularity because of all the problems with CoH Freedom, when I've filed petitions, I've received polite and professional acknowledgements from GMs, not the Spammish Inquisition. -
Quote:It's hardly active deception, but letting Paragon Studios off the hook with "let the buyer beware" is just handwaving.You're implying with that statement that they're somehow deceiving the customer, which is utter ( udder? ) BS.
If the Super Packs are going to be discussed properly, then it will be necessary to introduce such fascinating topics as risk-reward ratios in probability distribution, The Coupon Collector's Problem, The Gambler's Fallacy, The Sunk Cost Fallacy, etc., etc. (to say nothing of the psychological roots of compulsive attraction in games of chance). There's a reason the Lotto is sometimes called "the tax on the innumerate".
Since I don't have either the mathematical background or the hard data to analyze the Super Packs in their current form, there's no way I'm going to spend money on playing the odds on top of spending money to play City of Heroes. -
Quote:The important thing is that Harris states unambiguously: "Its creator owned, so the Artist will OWN 50 % of the property." (Just because a title is "creator owned" doesn't eliminate copyright issues.)Eisner Award winning comic book artist, Tony Harris (Starman, Ex Machina, Liberty Files, Nightmare on Elmstreet, etc.), is taking submissions from serious aspiring and professional artists for a new creator-owned title.
And given Harris's superb work on Starman and Ex Machina, I'm intrigued by this project. -
Quote:The Mann Supply Co. Crate "mystery box" system is one of the most grossly exploitative MTX options in mainstream gaming. It makes this gag ring look innocent.
At least some player are having (expensive) fun with it:
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Quote:Interesting.By asking questions about what would, and would not be acceptable to sell in the store. Exclusive items came up during at least some of the discussion (parts of the day the group was separated into different groups discussing different things with different devs: its possible different people heard different things during those discussion periods due to this fact).
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Not really. The only ambiguity was whether or not they mentioned that to the NDA-bound focus group, since you brought it up.
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Quote:At what point did the devs reveal that CoH Freedom would have exclusive but randomly awarded items for sale on the Paragon Market?Information about the Super Packs, and any other unannounced content from the focus group, was explicitly embargoed until it became officially announced content. The moment it did, I did publicly confirm they were originally previewed at that event, although those posts may no longer exist on the forums.
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Quote:Precisely, and that's why instead I bought the Gunslinger Pack for its upcoming redesigns* (thanks, Dink!) along with a medium-sized batch of points, that is, the equivalent of a 24-pack of Super Pack cards. That's not much compared to the number that some players have to invest in order to get the items they want, but then again, that's why such are so very popular with F2P gaming studios. (There's no use in further objecting to the introducing a random-drawing transaction model into CoH Freedom's MTX-subscription hybrid system - that ship has sailed, and I'm not swimming after it.) The best we can do after voting with our wallets is offer the devs positive feedback for the things they do well.I'm sorry to put this this way, but you did and you do approve of these packs being offered the way they are, and you voted with your currency to prove it. You sent a message to the Devs that you support the system as it stands... because you supported the system as it stands.
Words are cheap, and I'm afraid you put your money behind the system on this one. You've voted. You might regret your vote - I have no idea - but you've voted for the packs as they are.
* If the Marketing Department is on the ball, they'll promote the redesigns here in News, Events & Announcements and on the CoH game launcher when they go live.
Or Paragon Studios could simply offer vanity pets along the lines of the Black Wolf at reasonable prices in the market (who knows what they'd then have to include as rare prizes in the Super Packs, though?). -
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Excellent news! That's a couple of weeks before my current subscription runs out, so I'm getting in under the wire.
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For the sake of comparison, may I draw your attention to a thread on the same topic from a less happy and less lucky customer? (That one was locked, no doubt because it overlapped somehow with this one.)