PaxArcana

Yes. But ... I can't really fault them for it. As I understand it, during Alpha, Garriot scrapped the entirety of what had been done so far, and started over completely. Even changing some of the fundamental concept of the game. Then they ran out of money to develop it further, and NCSoft said "no, I'm not giving you even more money now." The AA developer bit off more than they could chew, IMO. They were too ambitious, spread themselves too thin, and - though for different reasons - ran out of money just like TR did. With the same response from NCSoft. ... In both cases, despite my negative feelings for NCSoft, I can't blame them. There's a saying about "throwing good money after bad" for a reason, after all. NCSoft had already provided the money they felt each project was worth, and weren't going to pour even more in, without some seriously compelling evidence that the game was going to be even more awesomely profitable than originally assumed. Which neither of those games could do. So, while NCSoft gets a sliver of the blame for those games' failure ... they only get a sliver. The developers in both cases get the lion's share of it.

To be fair, I did break rules. No details, per Fiddleback's request to let it lay. But, honesty compels me to admit, yes I did.

I have to agree with the biggest problem being +Defense set bonuses.

To be fair, AutoAssault's problems were Legion ... and the product of the development team/house that made it. Their hyper-PvP orientation wound up damaging the playerbase (did you ever do any of the PvE Epics questlines? GOOD GRIEF.). More than that, they hung their hopes on the endgame, cross-faction PvP zone ... which was nowhere near ready enough for primetime when the game launched. Arguably as well, there were design flaws and shortcomings from a foundational level. In my opinion, they should have started with just two of the three factions - the Biomeks and the Mutants - and added in the Human faction via an expansion. They should also have had Contested Territory (alon the faction borders) from even lower levels (and I say this even as someone who dislikes PvP in general), not only because it would have let them test and stabilize their netcode for PvP zones in time for the official Launch, but also because it would have let people like me ease into the PvP side of the game, rather than being dropped headfirst into the deep end in Ground Zero. I also argue that the vehicle classes were not sufficiently differentiated. Take the larger trucks - instead of just "large vehicle means large weapon in the turret", how about some that had two Medium turrets? Or a Medium and two Small turrets? Just for variety. (Turrets take up 1/2/3/4 spaces for Small/Medium/Large/Huge; vehicles have 1/2/3/4 spaces for turrets based on vehicle size. SOMe vehicles might have +1 or -1 turret space (minimum 1) in return for other attributes - built-in armor or higher HP justifying fewer guns, being faster or more agile justifying fewer, etc. ... and lose the petulantly "PvP-or-else" developers. Those PvE Epics were stupidly punitive in design, and probably cost no small number of subscribers by themselves. The game might have at least limped on for multiple additional years, if they'd done all those things. Shifting it to F2P (much as I hate it) would likely have helped. ... Tabula Rasa ... I was in the closed beta for that; I even made a few suggestions that made it into the final game as permanent features. (Example: being able to use Teleport pads to change which Shard of a zone you were in - proposed as a quick fix, re-using existing code, for a beta bug where a team in different shards, entering the same "dungeon" instance, would end up in different shards of that very-not-solo-playable instance; the very next day that exact feature showed up in the morning hotfix 🙂 ). And a few other places where I showed there was a problem, suggested a solution, and ... the next patch, as little as 1-3 days later, BAM, there was my suggested solution, in place. But, when they announced the schedule for release? The entire forums erupted in UNANIMOUS protest (seriously, when every single beta tester you have says "you are not ready" ... you are probably not ready!!) that the game was nowhere near ready for launch, and couldn't BECOME ready in the just-a-few-weeks timeframe they outlined. Whoever it was that didn't care, they ignored us all and rushed the game out the door .... where it's flaws, it's serious lack of polish, and it's dearth of varied content doomed it before it was finished being born. ... I never tried Wildstar, so I cannot speak to that one. But of the two I discussed above, NCSoft didn't really have much do do with either's failure, except perhaps to say "we are not throwing more money down that hole - either you have a game, or you don't". Which I can't blame an investor for saying, when the budget has been extended twice or more, already.

Success is neither more nor less than the sum of a series of failures. 🙂

Wait. Full stop, please. Are we talking about nerfing SETS, or about nerfing all IOs, even Commons?

At the risk of being banned from this forum too, jubakumbi? Please cease to annoy me with your "prattle". Seriously; I have the absolute right to decide that a corporation - yes, the WHOLE corporation - is one I will not do business with. For any reason, even just "I hate the color of their logo", let alone a specific negative experience with one or more of their employees. Hell, I don't even need a reason at all ...! So don't you dare go sitting there bloody judging me for it, you very annoying person, you. ... I'm not going to discuss the matter any further, especially not with you.

I don't vilify the whole group; rather, if a company - or any part of that company - does me ill, I simply refuse to do business with the corporate entity as a whole. There's an important difference in there. And with companies as large as NCSoft, often the only way to even try to communicate to the higher-ups in the corporate structure that the local bosses are doing that ill, is to "vote with your wallet" (and of course, make it known you are doing so). Which I have done, and continue to do. For example, Blizzard, and their two-factor authentication devices for game accounts. Devices they pushed as being for, say, "shared family computer" situations. Well, at one point, they decided to seriously weaken the system - a computer that successfully used an authenticator, would be able to log in without it for several weeks or months. So much for protecting yourself on thats hared computer! I, and millions of others, cancelled our subscriptions over it. And in our exit surveys, we explained why. I even explicitly said, "if you make this an opt-in, non-default thing? I'll come back and give you more of my money. Until then, NOPE." ... Blizzard reversed the policy. It is now an opt-in/opt-out system. Because enough people voted with their wallets, that the higher-ups HAD to take notice ... and direct those middle-management guys in charge who had implemented the policy to act differently.

The Community Manager is not low-level. Nor was Positron (the "boss" of whom I spoke). Also: a captain is responsible for all the actions of his or her crew.

🙂 It wasn't the length of the ban. It was the WHY of it - not only unreasonably punishing me for their own obsolescent software's quirks, but doing it vindictively because I had the temerity to point out that the Emperor was starkers (in both senses of the word). 🙂 If we want to go all e-peen? I've got permanent bans from at least two big, ongoing forum communities (RPGnet and ENWorld) ... 😄 ... plus a few others here and there. I was ... much more fractious, once upon a time. I "have a list", if you will: companies that deserve to be denied any further income from my pocket. Getting off that list is almost never simply a matter of time; the company has to do something, other than normal business, to earn their way back off of it. And, to be clear: if NCSoft elects to let HC continue to exist, without any punitive elements in the deal they work out, that will earn them .... well, let's call it "a parole hearing", yes? EDIT TO ADD: Paradox got off the list, because people convinced me to focus more on the developer, Kerebos, than on the publisher, Paradox. So Paradox got probation: Stellaris. It's been successful, and I no longer avoid games _just_ because they are Paradox. More recently, Deep Silver earned their way onto that list, with the Metro: Exodus bait-and-Epic-Games-switch this summer. I won't buy games published by them, especially not on PC, for at least another two years. Probably much longer. It's not about grudges, though. It's about "I support companies whose practises I approve of - and don't support companies whose practises I don't approve of". NCSoft hasn't done anything to get off the list. HomeComing is their first real opportunity to earn some clemency ... And this is a key thing to me: I can be here, and not give NCSoft money. 🙂

Not me. Way, way, way back - during i13, when i14 was just about to start closed beta - I actually had one of the Community Moderators throw a personal attack at me. Nimue, I think she used as a name. N-something-or-other, anyway. Other posters were even shocked by it, enough to comment on it. Then she hit me with a warning. So, I did as the rules suggested, and took it to the community Manager at the time ... Lighthouse. Instead of looking at that interaction, Lighthouse went through the entirety of removed threads, found my name in there "over 600 times", and slapped me with a year-long forum ban. Keep in mind, the horribly antiquated forum software at the time was such, that if a post was trimmed from a thread, every post downthread of it was also removed. And that's where nearly all of my appearances in that little list came from. (I'll cop to 3 or 4 being my fault, but not all 600+). Further appeals to his boss fell on deaf ears. That's why I originall left CoX (missing everything in i14 through i23), and turned my back on every NCSoft title under the sun. FOREVER. And "forever" ain't over yet, so NCSoft could offer to pay me to play their games, and all they'd get for a response is my middle finger ... 'cause I do care about them, and it's not a happy-fuzzy-warm, rainbows-and-puppies kind of caring.

I sit corrected.

Except, as I stated previously, the problem is that if you're that good at the game, and have that bleeding-edge a character build? Anything that was made which could give you that challenge, would be useless to 99.99% or more of the playerbase. It would, quite literally, be a complete waste of developer time and energy to make. You need to simply accept that you have "beat the game", and move on. And in the meantime, please note that neither I nor TheDarkTyger said anything about "feeling special". That's all on you, and honestly, that fact makes me think you actually do want to feel special / "more l33t" than the rest of us (or however the kids spell that). (I was wrong about this paragraph.) If you are so far above the curve in CoX that you even have to ask how to increase challenge - after already doing all the things people suggested other than "nerfing" yourself - then "casual chess player" is not an appropriate comparison. Instead, try Fischer or Kasparov. Who would not be challenged at the local middle-school chess club, or by a random stranger in the park.

Any content that could "challenge" someone whose character is at the bleeding edge of the power curve - or worse, actually stop them cold in their tracks - would be content that 99.99% of the playerbase would never even see, because it would be SO far above them that they would never bother to try. And I'm probably overestimating how many people would see and/or play that content.

A Level 25 IO is as good a bonus as an SO that is -1 to your level. You could, therefor, slot IO25s when you are level 22-26, as resources permit you to craft or buy them - and even leave them there all the way to level 50. Of course, as your level goes up, filling remaining empty slots with higher-level IOs would be advisable. On Blueside, the university in Steel Canyon (at the southern end) has crafting tables you can use.

Presumably, levelling (and talent trees, for that matter) will work the same on the Classic servers, as WoW actually did at the time. So, three months, maybe. 🙂

Attuned doesn't change when an enhancement can be slotted, I think it just changes what happens when you Exemplar down to lower levels (it lets you keep the set bonusses down to the lowest level you could have slotted that set, regardless of the actual IO's level). I could easily be wrong, though. I've never actually had or used an attuned IO ...

I believe it's fly speed could be tagged as un-enhanceable / un-buffable. Then it's speed would be it's speed and that would be all, for anyone, ever.

Not everyone plays it that way. Mostly people doing Dungeons and Raids.

Maybe, like the damage "floaters", a text announcement drifting up over the target's head, naming the proc that just went off? In a vivid purple or bright blue color, o it's really noticeable? But for consistency, if procs get their own visual cue, then they should ALL get the same cue.

Which would be child's play. HC is publicly known now; someone let the cat out of the bag. You know, every time you log in to the servers, your computer has to know the exact IP address of those servers, right? Which can then be used to find them physically. The hosting company can then be compelled (rather easily in fact - a simple "or else we sue YOU" would do it in a heartbeat) to reveal whose actual, real-world name and mailing address is attached. Also, payment records indicating the financial institution being used to pay for the hosting service could be extracted from the hosting company with ease. And then that's it A few weeks of sending out letters on a lawfirm's letterhead, and the jig is up. Not all of them. Cryptic's post-NCSoft claim was "concept to launch in 2 years". Not to mention, it's also possible that NCSoft was already deep in development for such a game. My alternate option was only one scenario among many, and only served to show that there are other possibilities than the two dire-grimdark-and-doom scenarios you outlined. What exactly makes you think the HC team initiated those talks? I suspect it was NCSoft who initiated contact, and the HC team (with help, obviously) managed to make a convincing enough case that an amicable resolution was in NCSoft's best interests that, instead of dropping the hammer .... they are instead hammering out a deal. Mirror, mirror, on the wall ...

The problem in this case, is "power creep". Someone who is at max level, and has done all the Masteries for every expansion, is going to be just as far past a starting player, as if all those Masteries had just been additional levels, a la WoW.

Well, you did have the Farming bit. Anyone who wanted to grind that out - and all the Cooking stuff that it would feed (pun intended) - would stay subscribed for a longer time, simply because it was a daily thing. But at least that was unintrusive, and could be ignored. The most recent expansion has always been fashionable to hate. Don't forget the Draenor Flight debacle. That's what drove me away. Here's the thing, though: no MMO can keep the progression treadmill going on forever, without eventually having the same problems crop up.

As originally provided for, under U.S. law, 26 years, potentially extensible to 52 years, IIRC. However, there's another side to it: City of Heroes is not just protected by copyright law, but also by trademark law. And Trademarks never expire (at least, not due to some arbitrary calendar date coming and going).

Option (D): NCSoft happily licenses CoX-1 for nonprofit operation by the HC team ... while quietly spinning up development on CoX2, knowing that a resurgent CoX 1 will work like free advertising. If the HC team were to do that? They could, individually, be tracked down in the real world, and served with various legal papers. Lawsuits, summons to appear in court, and .... yes, U.S. law allows for it, criminal charges. Seriously, telling the legal owner of the franchise to "pound sand" like that would have been absolute suicide.