WST -- Ill-conceived.

Awesome. Be sure to let us know when you've launched a commercially successful title.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Nor did I suggest they should just "toss something out there". I already stated that a crafting solution probably isn't the best - but if, in the example given before, the "prototype" solution falls through, the crafting solution already exists, and thus avoids the trip of "oops, we can't do it after all."

They can do it. The technology to do it exists. It might not be elegant, pretty, or preferred - but impossible is already ruled out.

Who claimed it was impossible? And seeing as this is the first time there's something resembling an end-game after nearly 7 years, I really don't think they're going to settle and go with a "eh, that's good enough". That's why they delayed the initial Alpha unlock in the first place...what they had was "meh" at best according to most of the people that tested it.

From what I can make out from your posts like this one below

You want the devs to give 100 percent confirmation that solo options for components for the higher tier of alpha slots will be available without the approval of marketing. That's what my example was about. Telling a customer about something that was not approved to be mentioned in the first place. It's a legit example, just because it doesn't deal with the shards, crafting components, or solo alternatives or adding or removing program code or features doesn't make any less valid. The moral of the story is "loose lips sink ships" plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you are confirming or denying the exsistence of a feature or product. If you don't have marketing's approval you don't talk at all about it.

That pretty much sums up every suggestions thread, and a large percentage of the general threads.

I've been incredibly consistent about what I want - a solo path to acquiring the top tier Alpha enhancements. Samuel Tow is the one that is asking for solo arcs (I don't disagree with him, but it hasn't been the hinge of my requests.)

I do not consider the marketing department of NCSoft or Paragon Studios to be separate from the development team of Paragon Studios. When I say "they" in reference to "the dev team", marketing is included. I'm not sure why this would not be the case. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that marketing works at odds with the developers, not in tandem.

Because they're *are* different departments, with different priorities and skill sets. Sure, same overall goal, but they have different jobs and responsibilities.
Jack used to get *tons* of flack pretty much every time he opened his mouth here, because he wasn't all that great in communicating his thoughts...people would twist things he said, things he left unsaid, etc etc. Devs, in general, are excited about what they have planned down the road and would *love* to talk about it. Marketing's job (in part) is to reign in that excitement so that the Devs don't end up over promising...or saying something that could be interpreted that way.

I'm not going to stop lumping them together. So if "they" (development and marketing) are actually working on an option for solo players to acquire Notices of the Well, then "they" (development and marketing) have no justifiable excuse not to tell us that "they" (development and marketing) are working on an option. No details need be provided - merely that the work is progressing.

If "they" (development and marketing) are not working on a solo option (even if they have plans to work on it in the future), then "they" (development and marketing) have good reason to couch their statements in maybes and future possibilities, allowing them the chance to change directions without blow-back.

Why should I trust cagey statements from a group whose only justification for caginess is to allow them to not deliver what it is I want from them?

Yet in your posts you seem to prefer that the members of this unified team, devs and marketing, to work against each other when it comes to giving some kind of absolute confirmation or denial to features that you want in the game.

What you can or cannot fathom does not delineate the boundaries of departments, either.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Ohhh! I get it now!

You're not introverted, you're solipsistic!

Ok, pop quiz here.

What position does Black Pebble hold inside Paragon Studios?

Coder
Marketing
QA
Brand Manager
Tea Boy

Answers on a post card please.

Which of the above would sensibly be linked to "developer" status...

Not just that, but also keep some information to be exclusive to certain media outlets so that it can generate more buzz about the product.

That said, the bulk of the reason for lack of discourse with a product is going to typically be, as you say, not to release information that may not be valid when it actually does come to pass. More so when you are talking about an 'older' game such as CoH, since there's not a whole lot of media interest in your title anymore. I imagine some of it still becomes habit, but in general, it's different.

Also, it's kind of awkward to expect a business to be as candid with it's plans as an open-source or hobby driven project. Some reasons on that as well, some justified, some not so much, but it's part of the reality of being a business. SecondLife does an ok job with that perspective, that said, I feel it does well because many of the players fill the role of developer as well.

Guy Who Posts Way Less Than He Should.

Well, for one, what YOU want from them doesn't delineate the boundaries of their responsibilities, either.

For another, they have a very hard requirement not to make statements that are -- or can appear to be -- any kind of commitment to things that they cannot, with GREAT certainty, know WHEN they will produce.

If they aren't sure HOW they're going to do it, then obviously they don't know when it will happen.

If they haven't tested the fundamentals of a mechanism, they can't be sure that's how they're going to do it.

Marketing can't effectively do their job -- which is to maintain the image of the product, and bring in new customers -- if people are freaking out over things they THOUGHT the developers meant.

This results in marketing having a very real need to control what the developers say, because developers don't know marketing, and they aren't always able to predict how people will respond to their statements. Mostly because (ideally) most of their attention is on what they're trying to make.

Marketing can't be the one to make the forward looking statements, because they need to work with things that are pretty much nailed down from the development end of things. They aren't involved in the actual creation of the product, so they need to not be selling things that might not actually be happening in a relevant timeframe.

Expectation management is not a nontrivial task.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

It's beyond awkward. It's exactly the opposite of the way pretty much any business any where operates. The ideal situation is that you release the info you want out there, to whom you want to have it, when you want them to have it, objective being to create the maximum amount of buzz for your product in advance of it releasing. (edit- See Apple's response to the Iphone/Gizmodo snafu)

Seriously, take a step back and really look at what we're talking about here. Soloable End-Game progression in a MMO. Has that even been seriously considered before, much less implemented in any MMO? And people seriously expect them to say more than "we're looking into it" at this point in time? And then there's the other unprecedented thing about this situation. Issue 20 has been in a *physically signed* NDA beta since *before* Issue 19 went in to beta.

Before the release of the Strike Pack and the announcement of the Notices of the Well, City of Heroes had a fully implemented solo End-Game progression that allowed soloers to reach the same pinnacles as those running task forces, while still making task forces the preferred method for reaching those pinnacles.

Let me tell you, the praise was pretty epic.

No we didn't. We had 1/2 of 1/10 of an endgame progression system. Perhaps I should have been more specific in that I meant "we're talking about an entirely soloable endgame progression system". So yeah...everyone could get to the Uncommon boost, which is 1/2 of the first of 10 slots but that's not "fully implemented solo end-game progression".

Heh, good one. At least we can agree on that.

I'm glad someone liked it.

You can't go lumping 2 departments together, even though they are under the same Company name they are 2 seperate divisions in charge of 2 totally seperate things. It's like saying that the accounting division and the concept/design team of a car company are one and the same.

As mentioned they probably can't really go out and 100% confirm or deny that they are working on a solo path because it would jeopardize their future projects, give the competiton an insight to what Paragon Studio is up to, and has a good chance of ruining customer relations if they can't get it up and running or haven't even bothered with it. Heck, the fact that Issue 20 has been in the works before Issue 19 and that it requires a signed NDA should indicate how close to the vest they want to play this one, and the last thing they need is one little slip up to screw the whole pooch. It's not a hard concept to grasp.


Even giving a hint that it's being looked leads to implications. Saying that we're looking into it can give people the wrong idea and make people think that it's actually being worked on it and giving your customers false hope is not something you ever want to do in business. Black Scorpion saying that he is aware that people want a solo option for high tier alpha slots is probably the best answer that he should be giving.

We did a good job of unequivocally proving even that was too much.

Exactly. Granted, relatively tame this go-around, but reactions like those seen in threads like this are one of the reasons devs are tight lipped about future plans until they're vetted by marketing