Thanks Akinos, was just coming here to cut and paste!
What are we paying for again? The new zone? I didn't see that it was a paid expansion but the word 'expansion' does sort of lend itself to that belief.
Nah, they wouldn't make us pay for that, surely...
Shawnasee on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
I'll cut off this speculation before it even begins. Vibora will be our first paid content expansion. I can't talk pricing yet, but it will not be something on the scale of a full boxed game. It is a new zone, and will be priced accordingly.
This guy's post later sums up my feelings on the subject:
THERE IS TOO LITTLE CONTENT IN THIS GAME. Far too little. There's one path to 40, god help you if you want to avoid any of it because you'll be grinding open missions and defeating foes waiting for nemesis clues to drop. And once you hit 40 - not only isn't there much to do, but if you do an alt, you'll be taking that same path with all the same content. And for a third alt or a fourth alt...
And many of us still bought into it, knowing that "hey, they know that, they'll have more content coming." Now we learn that yes, you do have more content coming. FOR A PRICE.
Completely unacceptable.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
I'll cut off this speculation before it even begins. Vibora will be our first paid content expansion. I can't talk pricing yet, but it will not be something on the scale of a full boxed game. It is a new zone, and will be priced accordingly.
Hahaha. Good luck selling that to players.
People are already paying a monthly subscription. I highly doubt anyone is going to want to pay to get access to new zones, which are basically just different settings where you can beat NPC's up and pick up some kill quests.
Even if people do buy it, I highly doubt it'll justify the backlash and ingame issues that'll come up from segregating the playerbase through paid content. Nevermind the fact that it really is too early for them to be pushing out a "paid expansion" (It's not even that, since most MMO expansions have way more content. This is DLC for a MMO, plain and simple.), since the game has almost no content at the endgame as it currently is.
Also, didn't the developers say that the only things that would be buyable were cosmetic items? What the hell happened to that?
I hate to say it, but after the crap that happened with STO pre-launch, Cryptic is fast becoming a company that I wouldn't trust to buy a sustained product from, like a MMO, given their predisposition to dicking over their playerbase in extremely irritating and unfair ways.
Even if we had WoW amounts of content, I would still be slightly bitter even as I punched in the numbers of my debit card.
BUT.WE.DON'T!
So I won't.
Is it April already??
Jeez, I feel like opening up my CoX account back up. Are they really making me regret missing out on Vet rewards?
Shawnasee on
0
Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited January 2010
I'll be back tomorrow, after the anger has died down.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
You know, with the way Cryptic keeps acting, given the constant fuckups on both the design and PR front, they had might as well just change the company slogan to something like "SOE has nothing on what we got!" since they're starting to get a reputation as "that" sort of game company.
I mean goddamn, making people pay for a zone, at a tier where content is sparse, and leveling is hard. Most other games give zones as a free content expansion rather then making people pay for it. They're essentially making people pay for a fix to a problem in their own damned game.
Also, what the hell is Cryptic going to do five more months down the line when the paid content has split up the playerbase between those who paid and those who didn't, and left Vibora Bay either a lifeless husk, or the preferred method of endgame content, thus killing off the other two endgame zones outside of the occasional novelty dungeon run?
The announcement is brand new on the forums, and there's already an insane amount of people saying they've canceled their subs in disgust over it, and even more saying they aren't going to pay for the expansion. I don't see the game lasting at this rate without some sort of beneficial interference on Cryptic's part.
That said, there is not enough content. You should have to go through a few characters to have actually seen all of the content without backtracking in a properly-designed game.
--
The announcements are firmly cementing my loss of trust in Cryptic.
We still love you Akinos.
But I want to knock over the cereal box of some of the people in charge.
It'd be more palatable if there was more than one zone and it did more than just cater to high levels. An additional path for 35-40 is great. But, how about 26-34? Fighting the cast of He-Man is fun and all, but Monster Island doesn't seem to have the same variety as the MC, the Desert or even Canada.
I am hoping beyond hope that what we are seeing is not a game collapsing in on itself with bad decisions but rather a company that just has its priorities a little mixed up and bad PR guys. I read on the forums that Daeke (or someone else, I don't know) said that there is still a "legendary" patch coming in 2010; that Vibora Bay is not what they've been hinting at recently about a big content update. So the only bad choice they've made is putting Vibora Bay out now (and even working on it now) rather then holding off on this to pour more manpower into fixing content issues in the existing game. Some people on the forums are decrying that the idea of paid content is some horrible scam, which its not - its just poorly timed as of now. Getting the free stuff out first would bring back people who've already left, and maybe get some new subs. Doing it this way will only have a negative effect on subscriptions. No one will come back for this and a few people will probably leave over it.
As a lifer I will probably, someday, buy Vibora Bay (unless its content/price ratio is heavy on the price side). But in the short term I can't see why anyone would spend money on this before the free stuff comes. I guess if it was $5 I'd buy it regardless of how much content it had, but still not till the free patch is out. $10 or more and it would have to be substantial content. Spending around or more then the cost of a month's subscription cost means I would expect to have enough content to keep me busy for at least that amount of time (as a casual gamer I don't see that as an unreasonable amount). Compared to how fast I went through the existing content, even at a casual pace, that's still a lot. Time will tell.
I wonder how they will test Vibora Bay. Will it be on PTS? Will everyone be able to access it?
Dr. Face on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
So I did what Bri said he/she was going to do, and decided to sleep on this to see if I calmed down. Turns out i'm still pissed.
This is the exact same shit they're doing with STO right now, right down to the order of events pre-launch. So i'm done with Cryptic as a whole for now. Just wish I hadn't blown my money on the DDE on STO prior to this mess, since it looks like I can't get a refund on it.
I've been trying to figure out what Cryptic's actual gameplan for the future is though, and I just don't get it. Everything they're doing here is counter-intuitive to getting people to play or stay with their game.
Are they trying to get it shut down, or put into a F2P status? Because making people pay for content that other games offer for free, when there hasn't been any real content since release outside of one small dungeon and a powerset is a good way to do that.
I have to wonder if the reason behind all these boneheaded PR mistakes in both games is that Cryptic doesn't have a marketing or PR division. It'd at least explain some of their decisions as of late.
I'm pretty sure anyone who understood the mechanics behind public relations and how to sell a product wouldn't have advised Daeke and the other developers to work the community into a frenzy over news of a massive content "update", and then tell them it'd be paid DLC while they're still paying a monthly sub.
So I did what Bri said he/she was going to do, and decided to sleep on this to see if I calmed down. Turns out i'm still pissed.
This is the exact same shit they're doing with STO right now, right down to the order of events pre-launch. So i'm done with Cryptic as a whole for now. Just wish I hadn't blown my money on the DDE on STO prior to this mess, since it looks like I can't get a refund on it.
I've been trying to figure out what Cryptic's actual gameplan for the future is though, and I just don't get it. Everything they're doing here is counter-intuitive to getting people to play or stay with their game.
Are they trying to get it shut down, or put into a F2P status? Because making people pay for content that other games offer for free, when there hasn't been any real content since release outside of one small dungeon and a powerset is a good way to do that.
I have to wonder if the reason behind all these boneheaded PR mistakes in both games is that Cryptic doesn't have a marketing or PR division. It'd at least explain some of their decisions as of late.
I'm pretty sure anyone who understood the mechanics behind public relations and how to sell a product wouldn't have advised Daeke and the other developers to work the community into a frenzy over news of a massive content "update", and then tell them it'd be paid DLC while they're still paying a monthly sub.
I thought I read somewhere on the forums (can't look for it now at work) that this DLC is not the hyped content update, its just extra. Content update is still coming, we just don't have any info on what it will be.
Dr. Face on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
So I did what Bri said he/she was going to do, and decided to sleep on this to see if I calmed down. Turns out i'm still pissed.
This is the exact same shit they're doing with STO right now, right down to the order of events pre-launch. So i'm done with Cryptic as a whole for now. Just wish I hadn't blown my money on the DDE on STO prior to this mess, since it looks like I can't get a refund on it.
I've been trying to figure out what Cryptic's actual gameplan for the future is though, and I just don't get it. Everything they're doing here is counter-intuitive to getting people to play or stay with their game.
Are they trying to get it shut down, or put into a F2P status? Because making people pay for content that other games offer for free, when there hasn't been any real content since release outside of one small dungeon and a powerset is a good way to do that.
I have to wonder if the reason behind all these boneheaded PR mistakes in both games is that Cryptic doesn't have a marketing or PR division. It'd at least explain some of their decisions as of late.
I'm pretty sure anyone who understood the mechanics behind public relations and how to sell a product wouldn't have advised Daeke and the other developers to work the community into a frenzy over news of a massive content "update", and then tell them it'd be paid DLC while they're still paying a monthly sub.
I thought I read somewhere on the forums (can't look for it now at work) that this DLC is not the hyped content update, its just extra. Content update is still coming, we just don't have any info on what it will be.
Well, that's weird, because from the way the state of the game post was phrased and going off of the lead-up to it, they make it seem like it was. If that's the case though, this paid DLC crap makes much more sense, since it's entirely optional in every sense of the word. Without it just seems like extortion.
According to the original expectations of the game however, they've got to push out about three more free zones if that's the case. Supposedly at least two of three that were cut from release due to time constraints were a moon zone, and a Neo/Mega Tokyo styled zone, according to speculation on the forums. No clue on the last one.
That being said, apparently the moon zone is technically already in. A quick search for the words "moon zone" has several posters claiming the new nemesis dungeon takes place on the moon. Not sure if that's true, though. That's kind of a shitty way to implement it if that's true, though.
Them merging threads into one thread isn't exactly encouraging however. That's how they ignored replying to the whole "we advertised a game without a skill cap, now one week from release, here's a severely imbalanced and untested capped skill system" thing in STO at the end of beta. They just merged most of the topics together, essentially shoving them out of the way, and creating a megathread of 4000 or so posts, and never bothered to address the concerns listed in there.
And now I am banned for discussing them deleting my thread lol serious fail Cryptic.
Funny how I hopped off the game a few months to take a break and everything goes to Hellgate and back.
Sorry, had to.
As someone who fell out of love with CO pretty quickly (despite being excited enough initially to get the lifetime sub), this is really disappointing. I had hoped that the game just needed more time in the oven and would be more streamlined and fun when I came back. I still have a bit of that hope, but I'm increasingly wary of the direction it's heading.
if you made a new thread titled "hay guys why'd my thread get deleted" then of course you got punished. kinda sucky it's a ban, but is it a forum ban or a forum and game ban?
honestly pay for play would be a great business model if Champions didn't also have a monthly fee.
If it was a free-to-play game with purchasable extra content and stuff that is a perfectly stable business model. DDO switched to it recently and from what I hear they're doing a lot better with it than they were with the whole "$15 a month" chicanery.
Honestly, going for a money grab for a new zone in a game that is already seriously lacking content is the most ridiculous decision I have ever seen such a company make.
Cryptic released a half-finished game, that I paid $200 for, because I allowed myself to believe in them and I was so wowed by the gameplay and the game's potential.
Now, they've got the fucking brass to try to ask me for more fucking money for them to complete their half-down game?
At the speed they produce content and the amount of content they have available, a pay for play model would have already killed the game, especially since PVP is craptastic. PVP, for SOME people, can make up for content gaps for a lot of people, though certainly not all, but, they killed it.
Incenjucar on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
At the speed they produce content and the amount of content they have available, a pay for play model would have already killed the game, especially since PVP is craptastic. PVP, for SOME people, can make up for content gaps for a lot of people, though certainly not all, but, they killed it.
PVP is largely why I have such a hard time leveling at the endgame.
I have maybe one or two quest hubs that are just three NPC's at most handing out mini-arcs per level, and then I have to grind the rest of the crap out or do overleveled quests, since I refuse to do PVP while it's broken as hell.
Granted, I tend to PVP immediately after massive balance patches that destroy the FOTM builds that end up dominating PVP between patches, but given a week, someone just finds a new one, making the entire process of PVPing incredibly tedious and annoying again, forcing me to go back to my original stance of "fuck PVP".
Coincidentally, this is why I think them offering Vibora Bay as paid endgame DLC is a load of shit, since content is very sparse compared to the rest of the game in that area.
again, two level 40s, using pve content. valid to complain that there's no variety in the pve route or that you can't skip anything along the way, but you can't say there are leveling gaps.
PikaPuff on
0
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
again, two level 40s, using pve content. valid to complain that there's no variety in the pve route or that you can't skip anything along the way, but you can't say there are leveling gaps.
And you can say that as many times as you want, so long as i'm having trouble getting to fourty i'm going to have to disagree with you.
I didn't have any problems getting to level 40, but I kinda sorta gamed the PvP system with some buddies, back when reward scaling was fucked up and you could get 200k XP in an hour.
i mean you have good points; i disagree with how you're presenting them
The thing is, players shouldn't have to go to an outside website to find quests that they missed. In a well built MMO, quests are plentiful enough in obvious locations that players should have more than enough to reach the maximum level without traveling all over creation to find them.
Honestly, it's pretty sad that they don't have enough obvious quests. It's not like they're deep, interlocking stories; they all essentially amount to <Insert Baddie> is doing <EVIL!> go fight them, <SUPERHERO>!
Fuck the paid zone, fuck the nickel and diming they do for costume parts and everything else. It's become fucking ridiculous and is likely going to kill the game.
Posts
What are we paying for again? The new zone? I didn't see that it was a paid expansion but the word 'expansion' does sort of lend itself to that belief.
Nah, they wouldn't make us pay for that, surely...
Wait. We have to pay for it?
Where did you read that? Because usually games like that do free content expansions.
If it costs money though, what the blue fuck did I buy when I bought the game?
This guy's post later sums up my feelings on the subject:
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Hahaha. Good luck selling that to players.
People are already paying a monthly subscription. I highly doubt anyone is going to want to pay to get access to new zones, which are basically just different settings where you can beat NPC's up and pick up some kill quests.
Even if people do buy it, I highly doubt it'll justify the backlash and ingame issues that'll come up from segregating the playerbase through paid content. Nevermind the fact that it really is too early for them to be pushing out a "paid expansion" (It's not even that, since most MMO expansions have way more content. This is DLC for a MMO, plain and simple.), since the game has almost no content at the endgame as it currently is.
Also, didn't the developers say that the only things that would be buyable were cosmetic items? What the hell happened to that?
I hate to say it, but after the crap that happened with STO pre-launch, Cryptic is fast becoming a company that I wouldn't trust to buy a sustained product from, like a MMO, given their predisposition to dicking over their playerbase in extremely irritating and unfair ways.
Even if we had WoW amounts of content, I would still be slightly bitter even as I punched in the numbers of my debit card.
BUT.WE.DON'T!
So I won't.
Is it April already??
Jeez, I feel like opening up my CoX account back up. Are they really making me regret missing out on Vet rewards?
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I mean goddamn, making people pay for a zone, at a tier where content is sparse, and leveling is hard. Most other games give zones as a free content expansion rather then making people pay for it. They're essentially making people pay for a fix to a problem in their own damned game.
Also, what the hell is Cryptic going to do five more months down the line when the paid content has split up the playerbase between those who paid and those who didn't, and left Vibora Bay either a lifeless husk, or the preferred method of endgame content, thus killing off the other two endgame zones outside of the occasional novelty dungeon run?
The announcement is brand new on the forums, and there's already an insane amount of people saying they've canceled their subs in disgust over it, and even more saying they aren't going to pay for the expansion. I don't see the game lasting at this rate without some sort of beneficial interference on Cryptic's part.
We're going to have to agree to disagree then, because i've had all sorts of hell trying to level up post 35.
two 40's never hitting a content gap. all quite quick.
Like I said, differing experiences.
That said, there is not enough content. You should have to go through a few characters to have actually seen all of the content without backtracking in a properly-designed game.
--
The announcements are firmly cementing my loss of trust in Cryptic.
We still love you Akinos.
But I want to knock over the cereal box of some of the people in charge.
i have a lifetime membership so i'll never really "quit", because i can log in whenever
but basically i get the feeling this might be Hellgate London all over again and it's going to fold in a few months because of decisions like this one
so, i'm done for now
if the game's still around in like, months from now and there's actual content to it and they stop being silly geese
then i will be interested
but i get the feeling that Roperware is what this sort of thing is going to become known as
by god i'll make it a meme if i have to
As a lifer I will probably, someday, buy Vibora Bay (unless its content/price ratio is heavy on the price side). But in the short term I can't see why anyone would spend money on this before the free stuff comes. I guess if it was $5 I'd buy it regardless of how much content it had, but still not till the free patch is out. $10 or more and it would have to be substantial content. Spending around or more then the cost of a month's subscription cost means I would expect to have enough content to keep me busy for at least that amount of time (as a casual gamer I don't see that as an unreasonable amount). Compared to how fast I went through the existing content, even at a casual pace, that's still a lot. Time will tell.
I wonder how they will test Vibora Bay. Will it be on PTS? Will everyone be able to access it?
This is the exact same shit they're doing with STO right now, right down to the order of events pre-launch. So i'm done with Cryptic as a whole for now. Just wish I hadn't blown my money on the DDE on STO prior to this mess, since it looks like I can't get a refund on it.
I've been trying to figure out what Cryptic's actual gameplan for the future is though, and I just don't get it. Everything they're doing here is counter-intuitive to getting people to play or stay with their game.
Are they trying to get it shut down, or put into a F2P status? Because making people pay for content that other games offer for free, when there hasn't been any real content since release outside of one small dungeon and a powerset is a good way to do that.
I have to wonder if the reason behind all these boneheaded PR mistakes in both games is that Cryptic doesn't have a marketing or PR division. It'd at least explain some of their decisions as of late.
I'm pretty sure anyone who understood the mechanics behind public relations and how to sell a product wouldn't have advised Daeke and the other developers to work the community into a frenzy over news of a massive content "update", and then tell them it'd be paid DLC while they're still paying a monthly sub.
my take sorry the first link got moved in an obvious attempt to hide it.
and now they deleted the new thread entirely...sad
I thought I read somewhere on the forums (can't look for it now at work) that this DLC is not the hyped content update, its just extra. Content update is still coming, we just don't have any info on what it will be.
Well, that's weird, because from the way the state of the game post was phrased and going off of the lead-up to it, they make it seem like it was. If that's the case though, this paid DLC crap makes much more sense, since it's entirely optional in every sense of the word. Without it just seems like extortion.
According to the original expectations of the game however, they've got to push out about three more free zones if that's the case. Supposedly at least two of three that were cut from release due to time constraints were a moon zone, and a Neo/Mega Tokyo styled zone, according to speculation on the forums. No clue on the last one.
That being said, apparently the moon zone is technically already in. A quick search for the words "moon zone" has several posters claiming the new nemesis dungeon takes place on the moon. Not sure if that's true, though. That's kind of a shitty way to implement it if that's true, though.
Them merging threads into one thread isn't exactly encouraging however. That's how they ignored replying to the whole "we advertised a game without a skill cap, now one week from release, here's a severely imbalanced and untested capped skill system" thing in STO at the end of beta. They just merged most of the topics together, essentially shoving them out of the way, and creating a megathread of 4000 or so posts, and never bothered to address the concerns listed in there.
so no moon zone in game yet
They best get to the 'splainin.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Sorry, had to.
As someone who fell out of love with CO pretty quickly (despite being excited enough initially to get the lifetime sub), this is really disappointing. I had hoped that the game just needed more time in the oven and would be more streamlined and fun when I came back. I still have a bit of that hope, but I'm increasingly wary of the direction it's heading.
But then someone decided to try and make money the way that Sims makes money instead of the way a Western MMO makes money.
Gameplay innovation is great. Pay for Play innovation not so great.
If it was a free-to-play game with purchasable extra content and stuff that is a perfectly stable business model. DDO switched to it recently and from what I hear they're doing a lot better with it than they were with the whole "$15 a month" chicanery.
Honestly, going for a money grab for a new zone in a game that is already seriously lacking content is the most ridiculous decision I have ever seen such a company make.
Cryptic released a half-finished game, that I paid $200 for, because I allowed myself to believe in them and I was so wowed by the gameplay and the game's potential.
Now, they've got the fucking brass to try to ask me for more fucking money for them to complete their half-down game?
Fuck you, Cryptic.
Fuck you hard.
also i'm just taking a break and playing ME2. now that is how you do combat in an RPG
PVP is largely why I have such a hard time leveling at the endgame.
I have maybe one or two quest hubs that are just three NPC's at most handing out mini-arcs per level, and then I have to grind the rest of the crap out or do overleveled quests, since I refuse to do PVP while it's broken as hell.
Granted, I tend to PVP immediately after massive balance patches that destroy the FOTM builds that end up dominating PVP between patches, but given a week, someone just finds a new one, making the entire process of PVPing incredibly tedious and annoying again, forcing me to go back to my original stance of "fuck PVP".
Coincidentally, this is why I think them offering Vibora Bay as paid endgame DLC is a load of shit, since content is very sparse compared to the rest of the game in that area.
And you can say that as many times as you want, so long as i'm having trouble getting to fourty i'm going to have to disagree with you.
i mean you have good points; i disagree with how you're presenting them
The thing is, players shouldn't have to go to an outside website to find quests that they missed. In a well built MMO, quests are plentiful enough in obvious locations that players should have more than enough to reach the maximum level without traveling all over creation to find them.
Honestly, it's pretty sad that they don't have enough obvious quests. It's not like they're deep, interlocking stories; they all essentially amount to <Insert Baddie> is doing <EVIL!> go fight them, <SUPERHERO>!
Fuck the paid zone, fuck the nickel and diming they do for costume parts and everything else. It's become fucking ridiculous and is likely going to kill the game.
though I'd replace "well built mmo" with "non-grindy mmo"