I have done many unspeakble things in my life,but wow isn't one of them(mods need to make that a flame calling someone a wow player).having a server 1250/250 pop wise is an issue.And yes atm its about the only game in town(to pve,or for 5 to1 pvp).There already shifting resources to thier marvel game,and basically only have 2 active servers in the US anyways.Sure alot will try it like i did,it had me captivated for 5 weeks,then poof.
Not sure why people keep thinking that CoH/V is gonna die because Cryptic is doin the Marvel game. There has only been one of the CoH/V devs that basically, but not really left CoH/V for MUO and that was the man behind Statesman (can't remember his real name right now.) And, he didn't really leave, he RUNS CRYPTIC. He's the boss, he works on all the games. None of the CoH/V des have left for MUO, MUO has its own devs. Besides, the game isn't even run by Cryptic, just designed. The game is run by NCSoft, and do the math on this, 171,000 accounts, times $15 a month, equals $2,565,000 a MONTH! NCSoft would be stupid to let the game die.
Only _Castle_ is still around but hes just a designer. Statesman did infact switch to MUO I am not sure where you are getting your information. NCSoft 'promoted' CoX community manager Cuppa to tabula Rasa + CoX did not appear at E3 like Guild Wars / Tabula Rasa and Aion did. Now, I will not say this MMO is dying but the OP is correct the updates are pretty slow and its depressing when you dont see any big plans on the horizon. They still need to balance the sets better Energy Melee for Brutes is standing out a bit too high. Everyone is rolling either SS or EM mostly they need to buff some sets to make them more viable. I could go across almost all the ATs and name 2-3 sets everyone chooses and describe why the unpopular ones get skipped (like Assault Rifle)
Last time I checked, Posi is still on CoH/CoV, they just added BaB, and War Witch is still around. I don't know about Manti or any of the other devs. I also was almost 100% sure that States was going to do both MUO and CoH. Last, Cuppa was a forums person not a game person so it doesn't really matter that she moved.
Okay, so you guys honestly think they have a full team maintaining this MMO? No one does that guys. I know I just visited an MMO developer last week. They have like 10% of their staff maintaining it. Developers make over 100k regularly and if your company is in California in which is where Cryptic resides- you dont make a nice profit by having a big team maintaining an MMO. Especially with the crazy prices Enterprise level Databases cost (sony spent over 1 mil on oracle DB alone)
Honestly do you guys think we are getting a steady stream of updates? Arena has been broken since Day 1- it crashes on people all the time. Base raids are lagged out. Villains cant respec out of their powers. Defenders are outdamaging Corrupters (which are supposed to be dmg dealers)- the list just goes on and on.
And whats wrong with having a well though out build? Nothing as far as I'm concerned. But, having a well thought out build doesn't meant taking the power sets with the best this or that.
And, if they felt the game was finished they would not continue to work on the issues that come out every now and then. Sure people might say "HEY! The WoW expansion was bigger!!!!!" But, how often do expansions come out for WoW, and how much do they cost you? I get FREE expansions for my game for the same $15 I was paying already. And, get 2 or 3 of them a year.
So what if a dev makes $70,000 a year, I just posted that at current population the game is making over 2 million a MONTH!!!!!!!
In conclusion, no matter what I say you are not going to listen, you have your own opinions and bias and obviously enjoy shouting "DOOOOOOM!!!!!11!!!" But, I for one am going to continue to play and continue to suggest others play as well. I am also not going to play MUO . *gasp* Yes I actually feel that way, MUO holds no appeal for me and when it comes out I will most likely be on freedom server, running with a Repeat Offender team. Might even be trying out a peacbringer or something, who knows.
Yeah right that 2 mil a month doesnt go directly to Cryptic recall NCSoft is the publisher. It's expensive running an MMO company otherwise NCsoft Austin would not have had layoffs.
Quote - "The City of Heroes/Villains user base is in decline - December 2006 Monthly Access: 154,953 vs. 194,000 for December 2005."
So yeah its for sure not 171k like I predicted months ago they are losing a lot of subs. They disappointed a lot of us with their inattention to Villain issues.
Manticore is still around. At Christmas I was doing the Holiday mish and I was in the Chateau with Father Time. Manticore was there. The person actually behind the character right then was not the "real" Manti, just another dev, but he said that Manti was still around as well as Statesman. He did say that Statesman has very little opportunity to get into the game any more, but he still cares about it. Also, some of the big devs have alt toons they go in the game as. They don't advertise this, as they'd get slammed with requests to team. I got a temp special title that day. It was cool talking to him. I have a pic, in the pic he looks like Statesman because the toon has a holoprojector that allows him to look like anyone. Someone requested Statesman. I can post a link to it once I get it uploaded to the web someplace.
They dont even plan to have any new powersets in Issue 10 either. At least the producer does wish they could merge all the servers that would be sooooooo nice that would make a lot of people happy perhaps?
Not really, everyoneon the same server would play heII with the freind lists. I would most likely quit if they started merging servers.
I also thought about somthing you said earlier about not having a full team. I doubt they need a huge pool of devs to maintain and update the game. Seems reasonable to me that once a game is released, most of the hard work is done and a smaller number of "key" people are all you need.
I agree with that thinking but CoX has lost 10% of their pop from Q2->Q4 (17,000+). last time CoX pop has dropped this low they released the CoV expansion in which added a nice surge (50k+ subs). But this time there is no expansion on the horizon to look forward too. I do not know what's going on at Cryptic but it seems to be they should expand their team so we can get a lot more content (like new powersets, PvP content or at least fix the existing pvp content to actually work, and the Villain Epic ATs they promised)
I always thought the no items, no character progression thing about CoV CoH is what caused me to stop playing it.. Just didn't feel to me like I had enough control over aspects of my characters development... I know it is a draw for some players, just saying that I think it's the no real character progression is what deal broke this game for me..
IMO, a game loses some of its player retention when they cannot progress their main character anymore at all. This is what I think hurts CoV CoH the most... The thing that keeps the game going at all is the community which I hear is pretty good..
i quit WoW this year and was struggling to find a decent MMO (very hard when you started with the "best") and after months of searching i found CoV and CoH. it is a huge releif to not grind off stupid little imps all the time and worrying about team builds and even teams at all is gone. my friend also found it a wonderful change and we grind together. in WoW 2 rogues (in my opinion the similar class to Scrapper) would never ever grind together. CoH/CoV does away with all that and no matter what avatar you make you can enjoy playing with your friends. if in the comming months more WoW players leave and there have been many in the past few months then i think they will come over to CoH. then again with the new MMO's comming out soon (LOTRO) many might just go to them
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
I agree that CoX does seem to have the Fun Factor built in well. Every archtype can solo (some better than others), so you are never required to find a team if you don't want or don't have time. Plus, by having missions with skill settings you can adjust the difficulty for better xp, influence/infamy and enhancement drops.
I think the people that don't like CoX much are the hardcore pvp types and the "elitists". Some would probably want to be able to gank anyone anywhere at anytime, which wouldn't fit into the theme of a comic book superhero/villain. Capt America doesn't get bored and decide to go kick the tar outta Mr Fantastic after all.
Plus I think that there is no way for your toon to "look" uber puts off some of the people that have to get the rare loots. In other fantasy type games you can tell the raider types, they have the nifty/spikey/sparkly armor & weapons. In CoX, someone could have full HO's but you could never tell just by looking at them. Hopefully with I9 and the rare inventions, these types of people can find things to make to satisfy themselves.
Actually I have seen very few posts where people ask for FFA. The average post on PvP forums is asking for balance in regards to hero vs villain, Arena / base raids fixes, improving Villains, or a Level 50 FFA zone.
I have some friends that were all PvE and they quit the game as well of course. Everyone has their own reasons why they like / dislike the game I dont see how you can classify them into a category. Especially considering pvpers makeup a low percent of the pop according to the Devs datamining. Next time you team up look at the bios and see how many players have 'rep' is a good indicator or see how many ppl are in the pvp zones when you do a /whoall
Do you think they can fix thier old content and put enough new content in.So they aren't mauled by the next-gen releases comming this winter.My bet is no,and theyll be lucky to have 100k subs by jan1/08.just wondering if there marvel game will be released in a year from then.
Yeah I am happy in a way because now for the first time the Devs are taking more of an active interest in their community. Ex Libris is talking to the pvpers and _Castle_ for the first time since I've been around has been dropping in. Still, action speaks louder than words. edit- to be clear, I mean this the first time I've seen _Castle_ try to engage in conversations on the PvP forum but now its becoming clear he is not a number cruncher (hates FOTM, no love for pvp, etc) which explains to me why powersets are not balanced
I see CoX declining not as a result of other MMOs but because of the developers inaction. I ahve read Villain Epic ATs were canceled due to them not having the resources to pursue it.
This is the thing, the other MMOs coming out are all really just small updates to existing models. Nothing really all that ground breaking. They still all have Classes and follow traditional models.
Marvel and the DC MMO- well that is pretty far from now
I am interested in seeing if the population will stabilize a bit with Issue 9. It's more options for the min/maxer so that should help retain players that are into sticking with a main toon. However, if they do not address some of their other imbalances and issues then the pop will still decline. I do not see it growing though- rather just stabilizing or slowly declining.
But this is the kicker- if they just dedicated some designers and programmers that are good with numbers and fixing crashes they could dramatically improve the game for existing players.
Well, its a matter of perception. You and I are villains + pvpers. Thus, for us the game is broken, to be blunt. But, if I was a hero + PvE then I'd probably be on top of the world. If I was purely a hero that did a little pvp I could still be happy -and- I would die to the occasional villain so I might not even detect an imbalance.
Because I am both a full blooded villain + pvper I am trapped by my own perception thus I could not honestly anwser that question w/o extreme bias. that other poster does have a point that the "elite" and "pvpers" are the loudest unhappy forums he was 100% correct.
I will say I think CoX is one of the most innovative MMOs of its time. The developers have nutz I give them that and I think they did a good job with designing and tweaking the heroes. They made a lot of mistakes but for a startup company + small team I think they worked wonders
I agree that CoX does seem to have the Fun Factor built in well. Every archtype can solo (some better than others), so you are never required to find a team if you don't want or don't have time. Plus, by having missions with skill settings you can adjust the difficulty for better xp, influence/infamy and enhancement drops. I think the people that don't like CoX much are the hardcore pvp types and the "elitists". Some would probably want to be able to gank anyone anywhere at anytime, which wouldn't fit into the theme of a comic book superhero/villain. Capt America doesn't get bored and decide to go kick the tar outta Mr Fantastic after all. Plus I think that there is no way for your toon to "look" uber puts off some of the people that have to get the rare loots. In other fantasy type games you can tell the raider types, they have the nifty/spikey/sparkly armor & weapons. In CoX, someone could have full HO's but you could never tell just by looking at them. Hopefully with I9 and the rare inventions, these types of people can find things to make to satisfy themselves.
I'd like to point out this poster has a point and it is the painful truth. Although to clarify we (pvpers) wanted a lvl 50 FFA zone for PvP. But it is 100% correct I just needed to give this post more thought
Vajuras you should run for political office,or at least take over tony snows job.You just when de-spun and translated. said half the game is good as long as you dont try all the features or expansions.The half that does work is highly innovative,since im not bashing r cox guru,lemme digress.Not sure if you remember all the failed attempts and vaporware to get champions superhero game on pc for over a dozen years.So ill give them credit for at least making one.
Is this just a genre that todays kid's with there general fear of live opponents is destined to always be a pve(carebear) game.Or will we ever get a playable villians/heros fighting each other (pvp) type comic game.
Hehe, okay to be honest I do think mathematically this game is broken and the game design is way flawed (mostly in regards to PvP and the math behind powersets and how boring the stretch is to get Stamina for many toons). I think Guild Wars is wayyyy better thought out and many players are seeing the benefit of a game thats actually built + balanced for PvP. The end result is that you also end up with balance in PvE. That's good game design. Guild Wars comes very close to a true skill based system which offers vast freedom to respec at will + switch secondary sets which enriches teaming + nearly infinite builds. It blows my mind how many powers just one toon can have now
Guild wars would be the perfect MMO if it were not an CORPG. Although CoX itself also uses instancing however it is rare when the servers have so many players in one zone it overfills into another instance (I've seen even Grandville spill over into Grandville 2 and the Test Server pvp zones spill over into over 8+ instances can you imagine that?)
I do not want to discourage newbies from trying this game is why I try to mod my posts these days (I still rate this game over 8+ its a good game). I enjoyed this game for months and months. It just kills me that the game designers behind CoX do not balance the powersets. Its such a simple thing to fix what could it hurt to buff gimped sets like Assult Rifle? They had great ideas and did a great job but their math stinks. How else can we explain why Defenders outdmg Corrupters? And they got lazy with the Patron powers and copy/pasted them across all the ATs. How else can we explain why all my villains have the same Web Mace (Black scorpian)
You just pointed out the big thing- Developers do push pvp under the rug because traditionally the PvE mmos have made a lot of cash. But let's look at Lineage and Guild Wars. Both games bring in way more revenue. So now at least the developers I've talked to are thinking bout including pvp. But i dont think we can ever have rich, meaningful open pvp til we move away from Levels. At least then newbies will have a chance against veterans. IT will take a LOT of thought to get really meaningful pvp happening and a lot of wisdom in that field.
I too have seen the game recommended a few times by various people recently, myslf included...and I don't even currently play the game. I've been considering coming back and playing City of Villains, but don't really know if I have the income (I know it's only $15 a month, I'm a full time college student with no job and I do a lot of extra curric. stuff)
Maybe this summer...I just want to feel evil again, like my first few months of WoW playing an undead, that game made me feel evil, and as we all know, good is dumb.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
bah I just realized I posted misinfo. Defenders don't outdo -all- corrupters its only certain sets that both share.
And yes I for sure think you sure try the game especially after Issue 9 releases which could possibly add some depth to the game. <edit> oh my bad I see you have played it before
Well someone said that CoX could go down to "only" 100k subscribers if they don't do something soon. I would like to say, stop comparing every other MMOG to WoW's vast sub numbers. You don't need millions of subs to be successful and profitable.
As for adding new content they did say that I10 is going to have some storyline change. Very hush-hush right now, but I'm guessing could be something along the lines of like when the Council took over the Fifth Column. For those that don't remember, the 5th were basically a neo-nazi type military villain group and then got taken over from within by the current Council. Yes there was even fighting in the streets between 5th and Council villains.
I do agree that pvp needs some balancing, but overall it's not as bad as people say. With the exception of Stalkers one-shotting anything cept a tanker or kheld dwarf of course. It just seems to me that the style of the game itself doesn't really cater to the type of hardcore pvp some people are demanding. Even when they release the Arena so heroes could pvp with each other, they still didn't get much use. At least that's how it seemed to me on Infinity, your server results may vary.
Im not comparing cox to wow,nor am I concerned with thier profits.I just get the feel when I played cox it had a neglected feel to it.hardcore pvp,please,ide settle for any decent pvp.why are people so afraid to fight other live oppenents is beyond me.Im beginning to feel that it might not be the devs at this point ,but the player base that has it at a stand still.Im guessing the median player age is 13.This type of game might be better suited as a fps type game,wonder if someone could mod one.
Well someone said that CoX could go down to "only" 100k subscribers if they don't do something soon. I would like to say, stop comparing every other MMOG to WoW's vast sub numbers. You don't need millions of subs to be successful and profitable. I do agree that pvp needs some balancing, but overall it's not as bad as people say. With the exception of Stalkers one-shotting anything cept a tanker or kheld dwarf of course. It just seems to me that the style of the game itself doesn't really cater to the type of hardcore pvp some people are demanding. Even when they release the Arena so heroes could pvp with each other, they still didn't get much use. At least that's how it seemed to me on Infinity, your server results may vary.
You can compare CoX to almost any product NCSoft has on the shelf. It does worse then both Guild wars and Lineage series. I know I neevr mentioned WoW and I dont think anyone else did. I'm just trying to figure out why we not getting Villain Epic ATs and more features. I'm not sure if anyone is not saying 100k subs is not good but we are saying the pop is declining hence the OP's problem
And yeah I agree with what you say but if they dont satisfy that population that can only hurt their subscriptions. The balance is not there but people enjoy ther fast pace and many of the changes they are asking for are fairly trivial (fix Arena crashes, buff some of the villain powersets to be comparable to heroes).
edit- Am I being unreasonable here? How do you guys compare the rate we are getting these updates and fixes? Do you feel its comparable to other MMOs? I would have to say I felt that Guild Wars got a lot more updates and maybe even too much new content. But perhaps I am spoiled by that. I'm just really frustrated because the stuff I want changed isn't really content I just want them to change around the numbers and do more maintenance
Of course it has fewer subs then Guild wars, Guild wars is FREE. ANd the majority of Lineage subs, unless I am mistaken, are Korean. In the US CoX is the game for NCSoft. The only expansions I have seen or heard about for Guild Wars were by off the shelf type things. At least in CoX the issues and expansions are free. Sure you pay a monthly fee, but they add stuff with out changing the monthly fee. Hell, you can play TWO GAMES for the SAME FEE!!! And to be honest, they don't have to listen to you, if you leave you leave, as long as the 100,000 other players stay I'm sure they are ok with that.
Comments
Only _Castle_ is still around but hes just a designer. Statesman did infact switch to MUO I am not sure where you are getting your information. NCSoft 'promoted' CoX community manager Cuppa to tabula Rasa + CoX did not appear at E3 like Guild Wars / Tabula Rasa and Aion did. Now, I will not say this MMO is dying but the OP is correct the updates are pretty slow and its depressing when you dont see any big plans on the horizon. They still need to balance the sets better Energy Melee for Brutes is standing out a bit too high. Everyone is rolling either SS or EM mostly they need to buff some sets to make them more viable. I could go across almost all the ATs and name 2-3 sets everyone chooses and describe why the unpopular ones get skipped (like Assault Rifle)
Last time I checked, Posi is still on CoH/CoV, they just added BaB, and War Witch is still around. I don't know about Manti or any of the other devs. I also was almost 100% sure that States was going to do both MUO and CoH. Last, Cuppa was a forums person not a game person so it doesn't really matter that she moved.Okay, so you guys honestly think they have a full team maintaining this MMO? No one does that guys. I know I just visited an MMO developer last week. They have like 10% of their staff maintaining it. Developers make over 100k regularly and if your company is in California in which is where Cryptic resides- you dont make a nice profit by having a big team maintaining an MMO. Especially with the crazy prices Enterprise level Databases cost (sony spent over 1 mil on oracle DB alone)
Honestly do you guys think we are getting a steady stream of updates? Arena has been broken since Day 1- it crashes on people all the time. Base raids are lagged out. Villains cant respec out of their powers. Defenders are outdamaging Corrupters (which are supposed to be dmg dealers)- the list just goes on and on.
And whats wrong with having a well though out build? Nothing as far as I'm concerned. But, having a well thought out build doesn't meant taking the power sets with the best this or that.
And, if they felt the game was finished they would not continue to work on the issues that come out every now and then. Sure people might say "HEY! The WoW expansion was bigger!!!!!" But, how often do expansions come out for WoW, and how much do they cost you? I get FREE expansions for my game for the same $15 I was paying already. And, get 2 or 3 of them a year.
So what if a dev makes $70,000 a year, I just posted that at current population the game is making over 2 million a MONTH!!!!!!!
In conclusion, no matter what I say you are not going to listen, you have your own opinions and bias and obviously enjoy shouting "DOOOOOOM!!!!!11!!!" But, I for one am going to continue to play and continue to suggest others play as well. I am also not going to play MUO . *gasp* Yes I actually feel that way, MUO holds no appeal for me and when it comes out I will most likely be on freedom server, running with a Repeat Offender team. Might even be trying out a peacbringer or something, who knows.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/lineage2thechaoticchronicle/news.html?sid=6161358 NCSoft indicates they make way more money from Lineage and Guild Wars then from CoX (but it still pulls in 9%)
Quote - "The City of Heroes/Villains user base is in decline - December 2006 Monthly Access: 154,953 vs. 194,000 for December 2005."
So yeah its for sure not 171k like I predicted months ago they are losing a lot of subs. They disappointed a lot of us with their inattention to Villain issues.
link to earnings page: http://www.ncsoft.com/eng/nccompany/ir_data_report04.asp
They make tons more money from Lineage I & Lineage II. Even Guild wars is producing them more money.
Manticore is still around. At Christmas I was doing the Holiday mish and I was in the Chateau with Father Time. Manticore was there. The person actually behind the character right then was not the "real" Manti, just another dev, but he said that Manti was still around as well as Statesman. He did say that Statesman has very little opportunity to get into the game any more, but he still cares about it. Also, some of the big devs have alt toons they go in the game as. They don't advertise this, as they'd get slammed with requests to team. I got a temp special title that day. It was cool talking to him. I have a pic, in the pic he looks like Statesman because the toon has a holoprojector that allows him to look like anyone. Someone requested Statesman. I can post a link to it once I get it uploaded to the web someplace.
Lisa H.
Dragoness, hero on Protector.
yeah but a handful of Devs still doesnt convince me they have a full team working on this
http://coh.warcry.com/scripts/news/view_news.phtml?site=36&id=70412
They dont even plan to have any new powersets in Issue 10 either. At least the producer does wish they could merge all the servers that would be sooooooo nice that would make a lot of people happy perhaps?
Not really, everyoneon the same server would play heII with the freind lists. I would most likely quit if they started merging servers.
I also thought about somthing you said earlier about not having a full team. I doubt they need a huge pool of devs to maintain and update the game. Seems reasonable to me that once a game is released, most of the hard work is done and a smaller number of "key" people are all you need.
I agree with that thinking but CoX has lost 10% of their pop from Q2->Q4 (17,000+). last time CoX pop has dropped this low they released the CoV expansion in which added a nice surge (50k+ subs). But this time there is no expansion on the horizon to look forward too. I do not know what's going on at Cryptic but it seems to be they should expand their team so we can get a lot more content (like new powersets, PvP content or at least fix the existing pvp content to actually work, and the Villain Epic ATs they promised)
IMO, a game loses some of its player retention when they cannot progress their main character anymore at all. This is what I think hurts CoV CoH the most... The thing that keeps the game going at all is the community which I hear is pretty good..
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
I agree that CoX does seem to have the Fun Factor built in well. Every archtype can solo (some better than others), so you are never required to find a team if you don't want or don't have time. Plus, by having missions with skill settings you can adjust the difficulty for better xp, influence/infamy and enhancement drops.
I think the people that don't like CoX much are the hardcore pvp types and the "elitists". Some would probably want to be able to gank anyone anywhere at anytime, which wouldn't fit into the theme of a comic book superhero/villain. Capt America doesn't get bored and decide to go kick the tar outta Mr Fantastic after all.
Plus I think that there is no way for your toon to "look" uber puts off some of the people that have to get the rare loots. In other fantasy type games you can tell the raider types, they have the nifty/spikey/sparkly armor & weapons. In CoX, someone could have full HO's but you could never tell just by looking at them. Hopefully with I9 and the rare inventions, these types of people can find things to make to satisfy themselves.
Actually I have seen very few posts where people ask for FFA. The average post on PvP forums is asking for balance in regards to hero vs villain, Arena / base raids fixes, improving Villains, or a Level 50 FFA zone.
I have some friends that were all PvE and they quit the game as well of course. Everyone has their own reasons why they like / dislike the game I dont see how you can classify them into a category. Especially considering pvpers makeup a low percent of the pop according to the Devs datamining. Next time you team up look at the bios and see how many players have 'rep' is a good indicator or see how many ppl are in the pvp zones when you do a /whoall
Yeah I am happy in a way because now for the first time the Devs are taking more of an active interest in their community. Ex Libris is talking to the pvpers and _Castle_ for the first time since I've been around has been dropping in. Still, action speaks louder than words. edit- to be clear, I mean this the first time I've seen _Castle_ try to engage in conversations on the PvP forum but now its becoming clear he is not a number cruncher (hates FOTM, no love for pvp, etc) which explains to me why powersets are not balanced
I see CoX declining not as a result of other MMOs but because of the developers inaction. I ahve read Villain Epic ATs were canceled due to them not having the resources to pursue it.
This is the thing, the other MMOs coming out are all really just small updates to existing models. Nothing really all that ground breaking. They still all have Classes and follow traditional models.
Marvel and the DC MMO- well that is pretty far from now
I am interested in seeing if the population will stabilize a bit with Issue 9. It's more options for the min/maxer so that should help retain players that are into sticking with a main toon. However, if they do not address some of their other imbalances and issues then the pop will still decline. I do not see it growing though- rather just stabilizing or slowly declining.
But this is the kicker- if they just dedicated some designers and programmers that are good with numbers and fixing crashes they could dramatically improve the game for existing players.
Well, its a matter of perception. You and I are villains + pvpers. Thus, for us the game is broken, to be blunt. But, if I was a hero + PvE then I'd probably be on top of the world. If I was purely a hero that did a little pvp I could still be happy -and- I would die to the occasional villain so I might not even detect an imbalance.
Because I am both a full blooded villain + pvper I am trapped by my own perception thus I could not honestly anwser that question w/o extreme bias. that other poster does have a point that the "elite" and "pvpers" are the loudest unhappy forums he was 100% correct.
I will say I think CoX is one of the most innovative MMOs of its time. The developers have nutz I give them that and I think they did a good job with designing and tweaking the heroes. They made a lot of mistakes but for a startup company + small team I think they worked wonders
Is this just a genre that todays kid's with there general fear of live opponents is destined to always be a pve(carebear) game.Or will we ever get a playable villians/heros fighting each other (pvp) type comic game.
Hehe, okay to be honest I do think mathematically this game is broken and the game design is way flawed (mostly in regards to PvP and the math behind powersets and how boring the stretch is to get Stamina for many toons). I think Guild Wars is wayyyy better thought out and many players are seeing the benefit of a game thats actually built + balanced for PvP. The end result is that you also end up with balance in PvE. That's good game design. Guild Wars comes very close to a true skill based system which offers vast freedom to respec at will + switch secondary sets which enriches teaming + nearly infinite builds. It blows my mind how many powers just one toon can have now
Guild wars would be the perfect MMO if it were not an CORPG. Although CoX itself also uses instancing however it is rare when the servers have so many players in one zone it overfills into another instance (I've seen even Grandville spill over into Grandville 2 and the Test Server pvp zones spill over into over 8+ instances can you imagine that?)
I do not want to discourage newbies from trying this game is why I try to mod my posts these days (I still rate this game over 8+ its a good game). I enjoyed this game for months and months. It just kills me that the game designers behind CoX do not balance the powersets. Its such a simple thing to fix what could it hurt to buff gimped sets like Assult Rifle? They had great ideas and did a great job but their math stinks. How else can we explain why Defenders outdmg Corrupters? And they got lazy with the Patron powers and copy/pasted them across all the ATs. How else can we explain why all my villains have the same Web Mace (Black scorpian)
You just pointed out the big thing- Developers do push pvp under the rug because traditionally the PvE mmos have made a lot of cash. But let's look at Lineage and Guild Wars. Both games bring in way more revenue. So now at least the developers I've talked to are thinking bout including pvp. But i dont think we can ever have rich, meaningful open pvp til we move away from Levels. At least then newbies will have a chance against veterans. IT will take a LOT of thought to get really meaningful pvp happening and a lot of wisdom in that field.
I too have seen the game recommended a few times by various people recently, myslf included...and I don't even currently play the game. I've been considering coming back and playing City of Villains, but don't really know if I have the income (I know it's only $15 a month, I'm a full time college student with no job and I do a lot of extra curric. stuff)
Maybe this summer...I just want to feel evil again, like my first few months of WoW playing an undead, that game made me feel evil, and as we all know, good is dumb.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
bah I just realized I posted misinfo. Defenders don't outdo -all- corrupters its only certain sets that both share.
And yes I for sure think you sure try the game especially after Issue 9 releases which could possibly add some depth to the game. <edit> oh my bad I see you have played it before
Well someone said that CoX could go down to "only" 100k subscribers if they don't do something soon. I would like to say, stop comparing every other MMOG to WoW's vast sub numbers. You don't need millions of subs to be successful and profitable.
As for adding new content they did say that I10 is going to have some storyline change. Very hush-hush right now, but I'm guessing could be something along the lines of like when the Council took over the Fifth Column. For those that don't remember, the 5th were basically a neo-nazi type military villain group and then got taken over from within by the current Council. Yes there was even fighting in the streets between 5th and Council villains.
I do agree that pvp needs some balancing, but overall it's not as bad as people say. With the exception of Stalkers one-shotting anything cept a tanker or kheld dwarf of course. It just seems to me that the style of the game itself doesn't really cater to the type of hardcore pvp some people are demanding. Even when they release the Arena so heroes could pvp with each other, they still didn't get much use. At least that's how it seemed to me on Infinity, your server results may vary.
You can compare CoX to almost any product NCSoft has on the shelf. It does worse then both Guild wars and Lineage series. I know I neevr mentioned WoW and I dont think anyone else did. I'm just trying to figure out why we not getting Villain Epic ATs and more features. I'm not sure if anyone is not saying 100k subs is not good but we are saying the pop is declining hence the OP's problem
And yeah I agree with what you say but if they dont satisfy that population that can only hurt their subscriptions. The balance is not there but people enjoy ther fast pace and many of the changes they are asking for are fairly trivial (fix Arena crashes, buff some of the villain powersets to be comparable to heroes).
edit- Am I being unreasonable here? How do you guys compare the rate we are getting these updates and fixes? Do you feel its comparable to other MMOs? I would have to say I felt that Guild Wars got a lot more updates and maybe even too much new content. But perhaps I am spoiled by that. I'm just really frustrated because the stuff I want changed isn't really content I just want them to change around the numbers and do more maintenance