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.
<going to break this down> Of course it would be ignorant to compare number of subscribers. However, both Guild Wars and City of Heroes are products that generate earnings for a publisher. This is how we compare them directly by examining their performance over a Quarter. So please read my posts carefully I never compared the number of subs to another game in this thread
Like I keep saying, NCSoft has a very simple pie chart that shows the percentage of earnings each game brings in just look at the Q4 2006 earnings report. Cox is less then 6% while Guild Wars is at 22%. No one is talking subscriptions here lol I'm talking about earnings. This way we can do direct comparisons no matter the business model.
Like I said before I am merely trying to figure out why has NCSoft has put the CoX series into cruise control. The only thing I can really go by is their earnings sheet so going by this it allows me to figure out why the company isn't devoting resources to increase server population. So obviously Lineage is more successful overseas however it still earns NCSoft over 70% which also leads me to conclude why they are focusing on that and Guild Wars expansions. Lineage was made by Korean developers and first released in Korea. So compare Lineage Korea against City of Heroes US & Europe if you want which is what I've been doing all along anyway.
Once again, please point me to my post where I told newbies to not play this game in this thread. I think you are not reading my posts and making pretty confusing replies
Well I know no one mentioned WoW, it just seems to me lately that if a game has "only" 100k or so subs some people begin mourning the imminent death of said game. Ignoring WoW's vast sub numbers, most other successful games are in the 100-300k range which pre-WoW would be considered "successfull".
They did say that villain epic AT are en route, they just didn't want to rush out "evil khelds" as it were. That is a good thing. Although some would be happy with their epic villain AT, if it basically was the same as a warshade they'd get bored quickly and start complaining.
Again about the subs, I never notice a lack of players when I play at off-peak times. I do admit, this could be server specific as I only play one server for both my heroes and villains.
Well I know no one mentioned WoW, it just seems to me lately that if a game has "only" 100k or so subs some people begin mourning the imminent death of said game. Ignoring WoW's vast sub numbers, most other successful games are in the 100-300k range which pre-WoW would be considered "successfull". They did say that villain epic AT are en route, they just didn't want to rush out "evil khelds" as it were. That is a good thing. Although some would be happy with their epic villain AT, if it basically was the same as a warshade they'd get bored quickly and start complaining. Again about the subs, I never notice a lack of players when I play at off-peak times. I do admit, this could be server specific as I only play one server for both my heroes and villains.
Thank you for your well thought out post. Again though I should rehash my posts specifically do not complain about low population. I would like to get an expansion that includes a slew of new content (specifically I'm hoping for more content). In the suggestions forum someone did post Epic ATs for Villains got punted. That interview with CoX producer does confirm no Villain Epic ATs coming in Issue 10l. Thats loooonnngggg time from now.
I am not saying this game is not successful. I am posting reasons why the OP miught notice low pop. Also, historically I am saying when the pop dropped this low before, they released an expansion which added 50,000 subscribers! Issues do not add subscriptions, historically speaking (I'm looking at NCSoft Quarterly reports). But expansions do. So if they made a bigger push to get a huge update into an expansion that would be nice! That would mean more powersets and hopefully improved pvp. Basically, my reasoning is if they hire more people to make an expansion at Cryptic perhaps we'll get some competent designers onboard that can fix this numberical disaster. Sets that are shared between Corrupter and Defender- Defenders do more damage. That is broken and villains are not happy with our Epic sets overall. Maybe some are- but a huge population are not hence everyoine has rerolled heroes and now the pop outnumbers 4:1
I am not a doom prophet. I am not saying 150k is not good. I wouldnt know to be honest.
Good post just clarifying my intent here. I check official boards regularly in hopes an expansion will be announced.
Yes City of Villains is the expansion I refer to. It added 50,000 subscriptions and for a long time I would say it helped sustain the population. We have just now recently declined back to 150k again. My 'opinion' is that if they managed CoV expansion a little better we would have being able to retain our subscribers better. But perhaps what was missing is Issue 9. I think it might be possible Issue 9 can help retain the subscriber base because when I study the user ratings most complain about depth and repitition. Well, I think the lack of depth is remedied by rewards (like Inevntions dropping). In WoW, players repeat instances all the time in hopes of drops I know I farmed mobs for hours for loot. So, my theiry is that Issue 9 may help retain and sustain the player base. An expansion, if properly done right, could add more subscriptions. If Issue 9 helps retain them, then we can have a very good MMO here that should last everyone til Marvel + DC MMOs. When those MMOs release I cannot even estimate what will happen.
I think inventions are a very welcomed addition but what I don't like is this notion of shoe horning us into the economy by playing games with the storage. They did this before, bases & prestige and it back fired. People want more freedom.
They need content in a big way. They need to add new powersets & the villian EAT quickly. This can not wait a year from now. They also need to add NEW zones. I love what they did in Faultline but revamping old zones is not the ticket. They also need new map tilesets, layouts and different mission objectives. Lastly, EVERY month they should be sprinkling new content into existing systems, not waiting for big Issue releases. Costume, inventions, base items and new map layouts should be added on a more consistent bases.
I know, it is a lot but I am concerned inventions will ended up like bases, neglected for the most part.
I would come back if they updated the game more often. As it is right now, updates seem to be coming slower, and I doubt even I9 could keep me busy waiting 4 - 6 months for the next update. And it's already been said that there will be no new powersets until Issue 11 at the earliest which is what? Possibly another year?
I really wish they would have just put out the expansion, and continued with the smaller more frequent free updates at the same time.
I am definitely coming back once I9 comes out. The invention system, along with the salvage and recipe drops it brings, and the Auction houses make the game much more economy-based than it once was, and leads to much more player interaction, which should be awesome. Something like this was needed from the beginning.
I just hope they add more to inventions than enhancements and costume pieces. I want little things that I can have fun with, like making little robots or something to keep upgrading and putting them into robot arena's against other people's robots in a new mini game or something.
Little things to do for fun will keep me paying. People put too much importance on leveling and combat, etc., that they hardly ever add any little mini game type stuff that would be fun to do on the side.
Originally posted by Kravis
I think inventions are a very welcomed addition but what I don't like is this notion of shoe horning us into the economy by playing games with the storage. They did this before, bases & prestige and it back fired. People want more freedom. They need content in a big way. They need to add new powersets & the villian EAT quickly. This can not wait a year from now. They also need to add NEW zones. I love what they did in Faultline but revamping old zones is not the ticket. They also need new map tilesets, layouts and different mission objectives. Lastly, EVERY month they should be sprinkling new content into existing systems, not waiting for big Issue releases. Costume, inventions, base items and new map layouts should be added on a more consistent bases. I know, it is a lot but I am concerned inventions will ended up like bases, neglected for the most part.
Definitely need more updates. They keep fixing bugs and other stuff immediately after a new patch comes out, so they should give us at least bug fixes and whatever else they get done. They can leave the major updates until the next issue, but at least pass out the bug fixes and smaller things in between. Would make me much more motivated to keep going, knowing the game is constantly getting better, rather than only getting better once every few months or more.
Originally posted by Kravis I think inventions are a very welcomed addition but what I don't like is this notion of shoe horning us into the economy by playing games with the storage. They did this before, bases & prestige and it back fired. People want more freedom.
Well said. I'm actively annoyed at the way they're handling storage. I would have every intention of playing with the market anyway but this extremely restrictive limit makes me feel like I'll have to play games back and forth with salvage so as to have it when I want it. Plus the lack of base storage for it makes transferring between characters a royal pain. Because of this I predict the use of alts as storage mules a lot, for individuals and SGs.
It's clumsy and forceful and smacks of everything I dislike about the Devs. It's the old "this is our game and you're going to play it our way" attitude. There are many, many examples of this but in my mind the most heinous was shown when Positron admitted the reason Villains are locked into power pools is they wanted to force players to role-play.
And just when I think they've caught on, finally getting over their stubbornness about no stores in KR or no tram to FF, the go and do this. Maybe eventually they'll give in. I'll settle for base storage on invention salvage and recipes. But man am I ticked off in the meantime.
Can you guys elaborate on how Issue 9 will handle storage? This sounds like we wont be able to automatically store the inventions we find in our inventory (I "assumed" we were getting an inventory). It sounds like they have not thought this thing through is what I'm hearing. For instance we we find salvage it allows us to store it in our personal inventory on our character and then once a month or so I meet with my base SG lead and transfer my salvage over to them for storage, etc
You do store it automatically, you just don't have many slots. Base salvage limits were so high, you could store 20 of any raw type and I think 100 of the "crafted elements" (Mystic Foci, etc.) Plus the base storage bins for salvage are incredibly cheap and hold 1000 pieces.
That's just base salvage though, invention salvage is handled completely differently.
At level 10 (lvl 10 enemies are the first that drop invention stuff so you don't need to worry about it before then), you have 30 Invention Salvage spots. Not 30 of each type, not 30 types. 30 pieces of salvage. By level 50 this will grow to 50 spots. Also your recipe slots are limited to 10 at lvl 10 and 20 at lvl 50.
You also get an off-person storage, which grows the same as your own storage does, from 30 at lvl 10 to 50 at lvl 50. These "vaults" are placed all over (bases, pocket D, and in just about every zone not far from the auction house).
That's the facts. Now for more editorial:
A) They act like this extra vault space is doing us a favor. IMHO it's just a pain in the ass that ate up development (and graphical) time since they could have just doubled our storage space in the first place.
As I said in the last post (and Kravis implied as well), the limits are quite low. Your level 50 can only have 100 pieces of salvage saved at a time. You have to predict what salvage to save based on recipes you don't have but hope to get some day.
C) Certain Salvage drops only at certain levels (10-30 and 30-50 are the common breakdowns). If you exemplar or Sidekick you get salvage and recipes from the level of the enemy you beat. That means non-50s (who have less storage even) can get stuff they can't use yet but might hope to one day. It's going to take up space that whole time.
D) Lack of a cross-character bank or Base storage means there's no easy way to transfer things between alts.
E) Even if you just want to use basic Inventions (for which you can buy recipes for in the university), it still outlevels you very fast. For example, since 20 IOs are better than 15s (and better than DOs) I decided I wanted as many as I could get at 17. Starting at 15 with a clear inventory, I still had to sell / delete salvage numerous times before hitting 17. And of course once I did, I didn't have enough. See, common recipes use common salvage, uncommons and rares tend to use uncommon & rare salvage. So what do you sell, the common salvage that's easier to get (until you outlevel it) or the rare salvage that you may not ever be able to use but couldn't get again if you do need it. It's a horrible unfun choice.
F) It's not balanced, especially hero side (villain isn't so bad). From 10-25 most of the hottest recipes (acc, dmg especially) use Tech salvage. But more Arcane salvage drops than tech stuff at those levels. At high levels, it reverses.
And all that's done on purpose, to force people to use the auction house.
The best choice is to play along and auction most of what you get until you're sure you can use it. Especially for salvage. Recipes - auction set stuff, temp power stuff, costume recipes, bonus proc type stuff; then sell common recipes at any enhancement vendor. (They buy all salvage and recipes but it's ususally better to sell at auction.) Then when you need something later, you have to hope someone else sells it the way you did.
They did say that villain epic AT are en route, they just didn't want to rush out "evil khelds" as it were.
Wrong....
Positron nixed the idea that we would EVER see a villain EAT anytime in the foreseeable future. The reason was balance/time/resource/money.
Now secondly to this thread...server populations are down. They have to be. The game itself is down subs based soley on Q4 2006 data and we should have new Q1 2007 data in the next couple of weeks. This isn't mathematical wizardary here...its simply - if 17,000 people left already and we know X amount left in the last 3 months, then server population therefore must be down.
But..Issue 9 saves all....almost. I give them credit for trying. They are making some effort on listening to us the fans of the game. However, they aren't listening to us. Having played the game just shy of 3 years before I quit, I can tell you that there has been a very long petition to get new content for the 45-50 crowd into the game. For 8 issues it has been asked. It has been asked almost as frequently as a level cap increase. Just in case you are wondering...Castle shot that one down recently.
Adding an economy to a 3 year old game shows signs of desperation and stupid. Now, I am not saying IO's aren't going to be cool and that inventions aren't going to be fun grinding for....more on that in a minute, but honestly, I know several just on 1 server sitting with 200-500 mil influence on a single toon. The infamy side of the house isn't quite so rich but there is still plenty of cash floating around. Now...considering new players are going to jump right into the game because Issue 9 is the UBER...tell me how many are going to be able to win an auction for anything meaningful when a single player can offer 10 mil influence and not blink an eye. Heck, I could make 10 mil in an evening. The economy is grossly skewed due to 3 years of doing nothing with it.
Now...onto the grinding questions. Will this fix the grind? No. You are still going to be running through the same contacts, the same zones, the same story arcs and the same arch-villains. There are NO content changes. No one is selling me on the fact that inventions is content because it adds something...you still got to play the same stuff I have done time and time and time and time and time again. How many 50's does one have to have before the same content gets old and stale?
Now...PvP balance. That was the beginning of the end of fun play in this game in Issue 4. The Dev's attempted to start balancing powers left and right for the sake of PvP and screwed over PvE in the process. A game should never be balanced for the sake of PvP. It is a mistake to do. Because once you start "balancing", you never stop. You nerf the scrappers and buff the defenders, next patch you buff the scrappers and nerf the blasters....it's now a never ending cycle of nerfs.
Let's address problems outside of issue 9 right now. Let me slip back all the way to issue 6. Cathedral of Pain and base raids...a highly advertised CoV selling point. Back to issue 9, oh yea...they still can't figure out how to get them to work right....our bad. Back burnered due to other more pressing issues...a year and a half delay.
Wait...as I recall, wasn't inventions supposed to have been in issue 8? Pushed out because of the complexity of the system. Ok..I'll buy that one. But...that means they were working on it for months prior to issue 8. Then why the lengthy delay and saying 3 issues per year?
Then we have flight poses...a promised feature in issue 8. Wait...my bad....they didn't get that to work correctly so they have a work around built into issue 9 to save face - 6 month delay.
I am not crying dooom. I don't have to. I quit the game because of the large inconsistancies in which the Dev's deal with problems. I believe that issue 9 isn't going to be terrible but I think that it is going to hurt the game in the long run and force more elitism on the game. The gap widening between the casuals and the min/maxers gets a little further apart and people keep doing what they always do. I am hurt that this game is in the state that it is because it had great potential. The potential is lost now because the drive isn't there for them to do anything wildly super anymore. Issue 10 will be smaller than what people are expecting and the content they are adding is going to be for the wrong levels again (rumored 35-45). The focus is on MUO and the devs are giving us just enough to keep us on the hook without forcing their hand too much.
I will tell people its a fun game and I will recommend it. But in the same breath, I will tell them why I left.
Comments
<going to break this down> Of course it would be ignorant to compare number of subscribers. However, both Guild Wars and City of Heroes are products that generate earnings for a publisher. This is how we compare them directly by examining their performance over a Quarter. So please read my posts carefully I never compared the number of subs to another game in this thread
Like I keep saying, NCSoft has a very simple pie chart that shows the percentage of earnings each game brings in just look at the Q4 2006 earnings report. Cox is less then 6% while Guild Wars is at 22%. No one is talking subscriptions here lol I'm talking about earnings. This way we can do direct comparisons no matter the business model.
Like I said before I am merely trying to figure out why has NCSoft has put the CoX series into cruise control. The only thing I can really go by is their earnings sheet so going by this it allows me to figure out why the company isn't devoting resources to increase server population. So obviously Lineage is more successful overseas however it still earns NCSoft over 70% which also leads me to conclude why they are focusing on that and Guild Wars expansions. Lineage was made by Korean developers and first released in Korea. So compare Lineage Korea against City of Heroes US & Europe if you want which is what I've been doing all along anyway.
Once again, please point me to my post where I told newbies to not play this game in this thread. I think you are not reading my posts and making pretty confusing replies
Well I know no one mentioned WoW, it just seems to me lately that if a game has "only" 100k or so subs some people begin mourning the imminent death of said game. Ignoring WoW's vast sub numbers, most other successful games are in the 100-300k range which pre-WoW would be considered "successfull".
They did say that villain epic AT are en route, they just didn't want to rush out "evil khelds" as it were. That is a good thing. Although some would be happy with their epic villain AT, if it basically was the same as a warshade they'd get bored quickly and start complaining.
Again about the subs, I never notice a lack of players when I play at off-peak times. I do admit, this could be server specific as I only play one server for both my heroes and villains.
Thank you for your well thought out post. Again though I should rehash my posts specifically do not complain about low population. I would like to get an expansion that includes a slew of new content (specifically I'm hoping for more content). In the suggestions forum someone did post Epic ATs for Villains got punted. That interview with CoX producer does confirm no Villain Epic ATs coming in Issue 10l. Thats loooonnngggg time from now.
I am not saying this game is not successful. I am posting reasons why the OP miught notice low pop. Also, historically I am saying when the pop dropped this low before, they released an expansion which added 50,000 subscribers! Issues do not add subscriptions, historically speaking (I'm looking at NCSoft Quarterly reports). But expansions do. So if they made a bigger push to get a huge update into an expansion that would be nice! That would mean more powersets and hopefully improved pvp. Basically, my reasoning is if they hire more people to make an expansion at Cryptic perhaps we'll get some competent designers onboard that can fix this numberical disaster. Sets that are shared between Corrupter and Defender- Defenders do more damage. That is broken and villains are not happy with our Epic sets overall. Maybe some are- but a huge population are not hence everyoine has rerolled heroes and now the pop outnumbers 4:1
I am not a doom prophet. I am not saying 150k is not good. I wouldnt know to be honest.
Good post just clarifying my intent here. I check official boards regularly in hopes an expansion will be announced.
Didn't they try that with COV?
I think inventions are a very welcomed addition but what I don't like is this notion of shoe horning us into the economy by playing games with the storage. They did this before, bases & prestige and it back fired. People want more freedom.
They need content in a big way. They need to add new powersets & the villian EAT quickly. This can not wait a year from now. They also need to add NEW zones. I love what they did in Faultline but revamping old zones is not the ticket. They also need new map tilesets, layouts and different mission objectives. Lastly, EVERY month they should be sprinkling new content into existing systems, not waiting for big Issue releases. Costume, inventions, base items and new map layouts should be added on a more consistent bases.
I know, it is a lot but I am concerned inventions will ended up like bases, neglected for the most part.
I wanna delete this post. This place has a crappy forum system.
I would come back if they updated the game more often. As it is right now, updates seem to be coming slower, and I doubt even I9 could keep me busy waiting 4 - 6 months for the next update. And it's already been said that there will be no new powersets until Issue 11 at the earliest which is what? Possibly another year?
I really wish they would have just put out the expansion, and continued with the smaller more frequent free updates at the same time.
I am definitely coming back once I9 comes out. The invention system, along with the salvage and recipe drops it brings, and the Auction houses make the game much more economy-based than it once was, and leads to much more player interaction, which should be awesome. Something like this was needed from the beginning.
I just hope they add more to inventions than enhancements and costume pieces. I want little things that I can have fun with, like making little robots or something to keep upgrading and putting them into robot arena's against other people's robots in a new mini game or something.
Little things to do for fun will keep me paying. People put too much importance on leveling and combat, etc., that they hardly ever add any little mini game type stuff that would be fun to do on the side.
Definitely need more updates. They keep fixing bugs and other stuff immediately after a new patch comes out, so they should give us at least bug fixes and whatever else they get done. They can leave the major updates until the next issue, but at least pass out the bug fixes and smaller things in between. Would make me much more motivated to keep going, knowing the game is constantly getting better, rather than only getting better once every few months or more.
It's clumsy and forceful and smacks of everything I dislike about the Devs. It's the old "this is our game and you're going to play it our way" attitude. There are many, many examples of this but in my mind the most heinous was shown when Positron admitted the reason Villains are locked into power pools is they wanted to force players to role-play.
And just when I think they've caught on, finally getting over their stubbornness about no stores in KR or no tram to FF, the go and do this. Maybe eventually they'll give in. I'll settle for base storage on invention salvage and recipes. But man am I ticked off in the meantime.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
You do store it automatically, you just don't have many slots. Base salvage limits were so high, you could store 20 of any raw type and I think 100 of the "crafted elements" (Mystic Foci, etc.) Plus the base storage bins for salvage are incredibly cheap and hold 1000 pieces.
That's just base salvage though, invention salvage is handled completely differently.
At level 10 (lvl 10 enemies are the first that drop invention stuff so you don't need to worry about it before then), you have 30 Invention Salvage spots. Not 30 of each type, not 30 types. 30 pieces of salvage. By level 50 this will grow to 50 spots. Also your recipe slots are limited to 10 at lvl 10 and 20 at lvl 50.
You also get an off-person storage, which grows the same as your own storage does, from 30 at lvl 10 to 50 at lvl 50. These "vaults" are placed all over (bases, pocket D, and in just about every zone not far from the auction house).
That's the facts. Now for more editorial:
A) They act like this extra vault space is doing us a favor. IMHO it's just a pain in the ass that ate up development (and graphical) time since they could have just doubled our storage space in the first place.
C) Certain Salvage drops only at certain levels (10-30 and 30-50 are the common breakdowns). If you exemplar or Sidekick you get salvage and recipes from the level of the enemy you beat. That means non-50s (who have less storage even) can get stuff they can't use yet but might hope to one day. It's going to take up space that whole time.
D) Lack of a cross-character bank or Base storage means there's no easy way to transfer things between alts.
E) Even if you just want to use basic Inventions (for which you can buy recipes for in the university), it still outlevels you very fast. For example, since 20 IOs are better than 15s (and better than DOs) I decided I wanted as many as I could get at 17. Starting at 15 with a clear inventory, I still had to sell / delete salvage numerous times before hitting 17. And of course once I did, I didn't have enough. See, common recipes use common salvage, uncommons and rares tend to use uncommon & rare salvage. So what do you sell, the common salvage that's easier to get (until you outlevel it) or the rare salvage that you may not ever be able to use but couldn't get again if you do need it. It's a horrible unfun choice.
F) It's not balanced, especially hero side (villain isn't so bad). From 10-25 most of the hottest recipes (acc, dmg especially) use Tech salvage. But more Arcane salvage drops than tech stuff at those levels. At high levels, it reverses.
And all that's done on purpose, to force people to use the auction house.
The best choice is to play along and auction most of what you get until you're sure you can use it. Especially for salvage. Recipes - auction set stuff, temp power stuff, costume recipes, bonus proc type stuff; then sell common recipes at any enhancement vendor. (They buy all salvage and recipes but it's ususally better to sell at auction.) Then when you need something later, you have to hope someone else sells it the way you did.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
Wrong....
Positron nixed the idea that we would EVER see a villain EAT anytime in the foreseeable future. The reason was balance/time/resource/money.
Now secondly to this thread...server populations are down. They have to be. The game itself is down subs based soley on Q4 2006 data and we should have new Q1 2007 data in the next couple of weeks. This isn't mathematical wizardary here...its simply - if 17,000 people left already and we know X amount left in the last 3 months, then server population therefore must be down.
But..Issue 9 saves all....almost. I give them credit for trying. They are making some effort on listening to us the fans of the game. However, they aren't listening to us. Having played the game just shy of 3 years before I quit, I can tell you that there has been a very long petition to get new content for the 45-50 crowd into the game. For 8 issues it has been asked. It has been asked almost as frequently as a level cap increase. Just in case you are wondering...Castle shot that one down recently.
Adding an economy to a 3 year old game shows signs of desperation and stupid. Now, I am not saying IO's aren't going to be cool and that inventions aren't going to be fun grinding for....more on that in a minute, but honestly, I know several just on 1 server sitting with 200-500 mil influence on a single toon. The infamy side of the house isn't quite so rich but there is still plenty of cash floating around. Now...considering new players are going to jump right into the game because Issue 9 is the UBER...tell me how many are going to be able to win an auction for anything meaningful when a single player can offer 10 mil influence and not blink an eye. Heck, I could make 10 mil in an evening. The economy is grossly skewed due to 3 years of doing nothing with it.
Now...onto the grinding questions. Will this fix the grind? No. You are still going to be running through the same contacts, the same zones, the same story arcs and the same arch-villains. There are NO content changes. No one is selling me on the fact that inventions is content because it adds something...you still got to play the same stuff I have done time and time and time and time and time again. How many 50's does one have to have before the same content gets old and stale?
Now...PvP balance. That was the beginning of the end of fun play in this game in Issue 4. The Dev's attempted to start balancing powers left and right for the sake of PvP and screwed over PvE in the process. A game should never be balanced for the sake of PvP. It is a mistake to do. Because once you start "balancing", you never stop. You nerf the scrappers and buff the defenders, next patch you buff the scrappers and nerf the blasters....it's now a never ending cycle of nerfs.
Let's address problems outside of issue 9 right now. Let me slip back all the way to issue 6. Cathedral of Pain and base raids...a highly advertised CoV selling point. Back to issue 9, oh yea...they still can't figure out how to get them to work right....our bad. Back burnered due to other more pressing issues...a year and a half delay.
Wait...as I recall, wasn't inventions supposed to have been in issue 8? Pushed out because of the complexity of the system. Ok..I'll buy that one. But...that means they were working on it for months prior to issue 8. Then why the lengthy delay and saying 3 issues per year?
Then we have flight poses...a promised feature in issue 8. Wait...my bad....they didn't get that to work correctly so they have a work around built into issue 9 to save face - 6 month delay.
I am not crying dooom. I don't have to. I quit the game because of the large inconsistancies in which the Dev's deal with problems. I believe that issue 9 isn't going to be terrible but I think that it is going to hurt the game in the long run and force more elitism on the game. The gap widening between the casuals and the min/maxers gets a little further apart and people keep doing what they always do. I am hurt that this game is in the state that it is because it had great potential. The potential is lost now because the drive isn't there for them to do anything wildly super anymore. Issue 10 will be smaller than what people are expecting and the content they are adding is going to be for the wrong levels again (rumored 35-45). The focus is on MUO and the devs are giving us just enough to keep us on the hook without forcing their hand too much.
I will tell people its a fun game and I will recommend it. But in the same breath, I will tell them why I left.