Nothing good comes from cutting staff. It means COH is hurting big time.
CoH's population EXPLODED with GR. And far from just returning players checking it out. The free month that came with the combo pack is up and people are staying. CoH isn't hurting...
The expansion is done..less labor is needed. Makes perfect sense to me. This isn't something that doesn't happen with virtually every software release, game or not. People are hired on for the development cycle, some of them are let go when that part of the overall product cycle is finished.
Developers are retained if there's additional development planned for the future. For MMOs, when one expansion is released, the next one starts to go into development, so developers typically aren't let go. It only makes sense to fire developers after a release if there are no more major expansions planned, which means the game is near the end of it's life cycle.
Sounds like you're thinking of boxed expansions. When City of Villains came out, the team shrank quite a bit just afterward - and down to their 15 person minimum. (Of course, Cryptic at the time was also looking at the marvel MMO and going on to other things.) 15 people moved with the IP to NCSoft to start Paragon Studios. Those 15 put out quite a few updates - COH doesn't get many boxed expansions, but does get several free issues a year with content updates of various sorts.
So your assumption there is incorrect. This so far looks like nothing more than post-release shrinkage, given past history. (Note they do have Issue 19 and Issue 20 - 20 supposedly big enough it's requiring a *signed* NDA, something they haven't done in a long time, already in beta testing and not due till next year.)
Zeriaswhen talking about Tabula Rasa pvp, their did not give players the pvp their where asking for, their where asking for doing pvp as the 2 sides, insted their made human on human pvp, wich dont make sense in terms of the game.
Plantside has alot of ppl playing when it was new, enouge ppl must still be playing as it is still online.
Global Agenda, is just an instence game, and had only a small team pvp, there was bigger pvp fights in BF1942, same why as crimecraft and guildwars, it is a multieplayer game with a mmo lobby system.
WAR made not have gotten the subs their wanted for it, but it havnt close, and it still got alot of ppl that normal dont pvp in to pvping, as the pvp in that game is the most easy, fun and casual I seen in any mmo.
Since for some reason quoting is not working for me...
SnarlingWolf said: (snipped) "Give me a company that will be straight forward and honest for a change "This is how many people we have working on the project, this is how many players we have, here is what we plan for the future" and they will get my money."
Dishonesty is what drove me away from a game I had played for well over 5 years. Telling someone their petition was "being treated as a bug report" when they knew full well it was an intended change is uncalled for. Spin and obfuscation - they're not just for politicians, anymore.
The expansion is done..less labor is needed. Makes perfect sense to me. This isn't something that doesn't happen with virtually every software release, game or not. People are hired on for the development cycle, some of them are let go when that part of the overall product cycle is finished.
Developers are retained if there's additional development planned for the future. For MMOs, when one expansion is released, the next one starts to go into development, so developers typically aren't let go. It only makes sense to fire developers after a release if there are no more major expansions planned, which means the game is near the end of it's life cycle.
Speculation Ceridith. It makes more financial sense to hire on temporary employees to push out a major expansion and then let them go until they or others are needed again. Layoffs are done for budget streamlining, cost cutting.... it doesn't necessarily mean anything bad for the CoH franchise or Paragon Studios. Either way, private sector employment / stability is tough!
The expansion is done..less labor is needed. Makes perfect sense to me. This isn't something that doesn't happen with virtually every software release, game or not. People are hired on for the development cycle, some of them are let go when that part of the overall product cycle is finished.
Developers are retained if there's additional development planned for the future. For MMOs, when one expansion is released, the next one starts to go into development, so developers typically aren't let go. It only makes sense to fire developers after a release if there are no more major expansions planned, which means the game is near the end of it's life cycle.
Speculation Ceridith. It makes more financial sense to hire on temporary employees to push out a major expansion and then let them go until they or others are needed again. Layoffs are done for budget streamlining, cost cutting.... it doesn't necessarily mean anything bad for the CoH franchise or Paragon Studios. Either way, private sector employment / stability is tough!
The part i am not sure about your argument is that if Paragon hired temporary employees for the purpose of helping on GR, shouldn't Paragon have stayed as contract workers to let them go at the end of the development cycle, and if that is the case wouldn't be more an end of contract than a lay off, so I question why they are talking about lay off then. Besides, if I read well Back Alley Brawler is among of the rumored lay offs.
Looks like Going Rogue didn't meet NcSoft's sales figures and now some people are getting the boot. I was thinking of going back to the game but now i have even less desire to return to it. This is not good news at all.
Looks like Going Rogue didn't meet NcSoft's sales figures and now some people are getting the boot. I was thinking of going back to the game but now i have even less desire to return to it. This is not good news at all.
It was priced way to high. For what was offered asking 40$ is a joke. WOW Cata is coming out in Dec and it's the same price and we getting a hell of a lot more stuff.
Looks like Going Rogue didn't meet NcSoft's sales figures and now some people are getting the boot. I was thinking of going back to the game but now i have even less desire to return to it. This is not good news at all.
It was priced way to high. For what was offered asking 40$ is a joke. WOW Cata is coming out in Dec and it's the same price and we getting a hell of a lot more stuff.
$40 was only if you bought the "complete edition", which was the expansion plus basic account. Targetted at new players. Just the expansion was $30. Note, however, that the complete edition came with a free month of play even if you already had an account, so it was effectively cheaper than just the expansion ( $40-$15=$25 )...
I just hope this game doesnt suffer too badly because of it.
There was...is alot of stuff planned and slated to come out.....i just hope that those things dont get too badly effected.
As a number of people pointed out...there have been things being put out that just dont seam to have alot of content....little do they realize thats becasue some of it got pushed back becasue it didnt work the way it team wanted it too.
Originally posted by Zerias look up Tabula Rasa It was an NCSoft published game developed by Destination Games. After the Game launched the developers decided to do a 180 and turn a PvE focused game into a PvP focused game. The subscriber base flopped, Destination Games folded, and City of Heroes pulled NCSoft's collective rear end out of that fire.
Holy crap! You have NO idea what you are talking about.
CoH didnt "save" NCSoft when Tabula Rasa went under. Lineage 2 and Aion did.
In the financial quarter following Tabula Rasa's demise CoH accounted for about $5 million in sales. Lineage 2 and Aion were both around $35 million.
Ok, its great that you love CoH but dont make up lies to make it bigger than it really is.
As for the impact that Going Rogue has had on sales we will have to wait until November for that. But I can say that days before Going Rogue launched CoH accounted for 2% of NCSoft's total sales. Which is less than Guild Wars, a game that has no monthly fee and hasnt had a new release in 3 years.
Funny. If you (figuratively) put WOW revenues in the denominator, and what you get in the numerator, and compare that with the same for CoX, you might find your statement is slightly miscalculated.
They always cut staff after a major expansion... it's perfectly normal. Unfortunatly I was expecting they'd start work on CoH2 but looks like that might not be in the makings right now.
My opinion (yes, opinion) is that while CoH still retains a reasonable player base, given it's age, NCSoft has made the decision that the game has been taken as far as it will go. The game will continue to be supported, but it's quite likely that Going Rogue will be the game's last major expansion. It would appear that, to NCSoft, CoH has now become that old car that has served you well for years, and still has a few miles left on it, but it isn't worth putting a lot of money into anymore.
CoH has had a nice run, and I'm sure that it will continue on for a few more years, but in my view, this announcement is evidence that the game has now taken it's first step on the long walk to MMO retirement.
Sadly rogue was not a game changer. It refreshed the graphics and added some content, but it didn't address a lot of things that could keep the game growing instead of shrinking like pvp zones, base raids, and server populations (on some servers).
You are so full of something it is not even funny. First, the graphics refresh was Ultra-Mode. Yes, it was scheduled and developed with Going Rogue. It, however, was not part of Going Rogue.
Second, pvp-zones have been in the game since Wednesday, May 4, 2005. In over 5 years time the PvP-zones have never driven more than low single digit percentages of the player-base. Adding in more PvP-Zones would do nothing for the game. Since you obviously skipped MMO-History 101, look up Tabula Rasa
It was an NCSoft published game developed by Destination Games. After the Game launched the developers decided to do a 180 and turn a PvE focused game into a PvP focused game. The subscriber base flopped, Destination Games folded, and City of Heroes pulled NCSoft's collective rear end out of that fire.
Even looking beyond just NCSoft Citing PvP as something that brings players to games is a brain dead idea. Would you mind opening your eyes and telling me what happened to WarHammer Online? Sony Planetside? All Points Bullitin? Global Agenda? All of these multiplayer PvP-centric games failed in their original markets. The only reason Global Agenda survives as an independent game is that Hi-Rez studios had the brains to figure out that a PvP focus was not going to pay the bills.
Then there's your subject of Base Raids. Again, the player base hasn't been there to support any sort of PvP content to begin with. Implementing Base Raids would do nothing to bring back players that already left, and it's not going to do anything to drive new subscribers either.
Now whether or not you like it, or accept it, and obviously you don't, Going Rogue was a huge game changer that demonstrates what the current Paragon Studios staff can accomplish. It was such a game changer that even DC had the brains to figure out DCUO didn't have a prayer against Going Rogue in it's current state, leaning on SOE for the delay.
Basically Mr. Nox, you can take your trolling SCO style F.U.D. and take a hike. Nobody's buying the lies your selling.
COH saved NCSoft? That has got to be one of the most insane comments I have seen on these forums in a long time, gratz. Just as insane, "DC had the brains to figure out DCUO didn't have a prayer against Going Rogue". So please pony-up some links and educate us.
"Going Rogue was a huge game changer", I was thinking the same thing when I did the trial and on my 3rd or 4th mission in Praetoria running yet another generic warehouse map. Yep, made me want sub back in.
As for the layoffs, very sad. It may be they don't need the extra help now that the expansion is on the market or it didn't meet sales goals, it's anyone's guess. With that being said, IF BaBs is on that list I think we can assume it's a little more then shedding some extra help.
I only played a new toon to 12 for the 7 day trial, played for only few hours and got really bored. The reactivation weekend is online and I did not delete the client (yet) and decided to load my old toons. All I can say is, WHERE IS EVERYONE? All of my toons are on Virtue, took a trip through Talos and was a bit concerned very few people were around. Used to be piles of people in Wentworths and hanging around the Geen Line. The server was red when I logged so I don't know what's going on, will check it Friday night and see what's what.
As for the future, again that's anyone's guess. When I used to play one thing that did happen was the population taking a nose dive whenever WOW put out expansions. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 6 months. My guess, nothing good.
I wish those who are now unemployed that they find speedy re-employment. It's very hard in this day and age to find a job quickly, but can always hope for the best. I feel for them.
CoH was a game I liked for short periods, but never could really get my claws into. I think it's good to have a game like this on the market since it's pretty much a one-of-a-kind, being in its own city and all, the artwork, the combat abilities, character templating, etc. I hope it lasts for a good while yet, despite it never having been my cup of tea.
There are a lot of people in this thread who don't understand when layoff is used (including the guy who tried to act like no one else understood the business world but him when clearly he was clueless).
If they were moving them to another product they would not use the word layoff, it would be transfer etc. because they're still hired by the company.
If it were temp employees then it is never a layoff when you let go of temps.
There is never truly a "laying these people off is temporary and we're going to hire them back soon". It doesn't work and it wouldn't be done if they were just going to hire them back. In non-MMO studios it was common practice to hire up a bunch of people (mostly QA) shortly before a release and then let most of them go after the release but MMOs don't work that way since they are constantly expanding/updating and running.
If the leak is true it can essentially only mean that their revenues are lower then expected (or are expecting them to go down in the near future) and they need to cut down their work force to stay in good shape. That simple.
Well... I hope the game stays healthy. My whole family played during our 7 day trial and I am about to pick up the 40 dollar version of going rogue. We all loved it and had a blast on the trial! Shame to see anyone get laid off too, because I would much rather be hearing the exact opposite and keep those guys around for future updates.
I only played a new toon to 12 for the 7 day trial, played for only few hours and got really bored. The reactivation weekend is online and I did not delete the client (yet) and decided to load my old toons. All I can say is, WHERE IS EVERYONE? All of my toons are on Virtue, took a trip through Talos and was a bit concerned very few people were around. Used to be piles of people in Wentworths and hanging around the Geen Line. The server was red when I logged so I don't know what's going on, will check it Friday night and see what's what.
This part i can answer.Virtue is the unofical rp server sooo alot of people in atlas,Pokect d as well as riki warzone.more top end toons in pi as well.An id guess half would be in pretoria on new toons.
Gota rember to when zones over fill it spawns another zone their was 2 pis yesterday an for while 2 atlas parks as well.Content in coh is spread out an not always hand held lead to.In pretoria i found a few contacts i could work for just by talking to them not being introduced.An no you dont have to leave pretoria at 20 just you can at 20 on.Some realy neat stories their.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Comments
CoH's population EXPLODED with GR. And far from just returning players checking it out. The free month that came with the combo pack is up and people are staying. CoH isn't hurting...
Ah yes, the inevitable outsider's view of the business world. Fortunately for the rest of us, you don't know what you're talking about.
Sounds like you're thinking of boxed expansions. When City of Villains came out, the team shrank quite a bit just afterward - and down to their 15 person minimum. (Of course, Cryptic at the time was also looking at the marvel MMO and going on to other things.) 15 people moved with the IP to NCSoft to start Paragon Studios. Those 15 put out quite a few updates - COH doesn't get many boxed expansions, but does get several free issues a year with content updates of various sorts.
So your assumption there is incorrect. This so far looks like nothing more than post-release shrinkage, given past history. (Note they do have Issue 19 and Issue 20 - 20 supposedly big enough it's requiring a *signed* NDA, something they haven't done in a long time, already in beta testing and not due till next year.)
Zerias when talking about Tabula Rasa pvp, their did not give players the pvp their where asking for, their where asking for doing pvp as the 2 sides, insted their made human on human pvp, wich dont make sense in terms of the game.
Plantside has alot of ppl playing when it was new, enouge ppl must still be playing as it is still online.
Global Agenda, is just an instence game, and had only a small team pvp, there was bigger pvp fights in BF1942, same why as crimecraft and guildwars, it is a multieplayer game with a mmo lobby system.
WAR made not have gotten the subs their wanted for it, but it havnt close, and it still got alot of ppl that normal dont pvp in to pvping, as the pvp in that game is the most easy, fun and casual I seen in any mmo.
SnarlingWolf said:
(snipped) "Give me a company that will be straight forward and honest for a change "This is how many people we have working on the project, this is how many players we have, here is what we plan for the future" and they will get my money."
Dishonesty is what drove me away from a game I had played for well over 5 years. Telling someone their petition was "being treated as a bug report" when they knew full well it was an intended change is uncalled for. Spin and obfuscation - they're not just for politicians, anymore.
Speculation Ceridith. It makes more financial sense to hire on temporary employees to push out a major expansion and then let them go until they or others are needed again. Layoffs are done for budget streamlining, cost cutting.... it doesn't necessarily mean anything bad for the CoH franchise or Paragon Studios. Either way, private sector employment / stability is tough!
The part i am not sure about your argument is that if Paragon hired temporary employees for the purpose of helping on GR, shouldn't Paragon have stayed as contract workers to let them go at the end of the development cycle, and if that is the case wouldn't be more an end of contract than a lay off, so I question why they are talking about lay off then. Besides, if I read well Back Alley Brawler is among of the rumored lay offs.
Looks like Going Rogue didn't meet NcSoft's sales figures and now some people are getting the boot. I was thinking of going back to the game but now i have even less desire to return to it. This is not good news at all.
Will make the meet and greet at the NY Comic Con interesting, eh?
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
It was priced way to high. For what was offered asking 40$ is a joke. WOW Cata is coming out in Dec and it's the same price and we getting a hell of a lot more stuff.
$40 was only if you bought the "complete edition", which was the expansion plus basic account. Targetted at new players. Just the expansion was $30. Note, however, that the complete edition came with a free month of play even if you already had an account, so it was effectively cheaper than just the expansion ( $40-$15=$25 )...
Thats sad to hear about the layoffs...
I just hope this game doesnt suffer too badly because of it.
There was...is alot of stuff planned and slated to come out.....i just hope that those things dont get too badly effected.
As a number of people pointed out...there have been things being put out that just dont seam to have alot of content....little do they realize thats becasue some of it got pushed back becasue it didnt work the way it team wanted it too.
CoH didnt "save" NCSoft when Tabula Rasa went under. Lineage 2 and Aion did.
In the financial quarter following Tabula Rasa's demise CoH accounted for about $5 million in sales. Lineage 2 and Aion were both around $35 million.
Ok, its great that you love CoH but dont make up lies to make it bigger than it really is.
As for the impact that Going Rogue has had on sales we will have to wait until November for that. But I can say that days before Going Rogue launched CoH accounted for 2% of NCSoft's total sales. Which is less than Guild Wars, a game that has no monthly fee and hasnt had a new release in 3 years.
Funny. If you (figuratively) put WOW revenues in the denominator, and what you get in the numerator, and compare that with the same for CoX, you might find your statement is slightly miscalculated.
(I was referring to Aguitha)
CoH rocks. Tons still play it. Maybe people were fired but the reasoning here is all speculation. So many haters online.
They always cut staff after a major expansion... it's perfectly normal. Unfortunatly I was expecting they'd start work on CoH2 but looks like that might not be in the makings right now.
My opinion (yes, opinion) is that while CoH still retains a reasonable player base, given it's age, NCSoft has made the decision that the game has been taken as far as it will go. The game will continue to be supported, but it's quite likely that Going Rogue will be the game's last major expansion. It would appear that, to NCSoft, CoH has now become that old car that has served you well for years, and still has a few miles left on it, but it isn't worth putting a lot of money into anymore.
CoH has had a nice run, and I'm sure that it will continue on for a few more years, but in my view, this announcement is evidence that the game has now taken it's first step on the long walk to MMO retirement.
COH saved NCSoft? That has got to be one of the most insane comments I have seen on these forums in a long time, gratz. Just as insane, "DC had the brains to figure out DCUO didn't have a prayer against Going Rogue". So please pony-up some links and educate us.
"Going Rogue was a huge game changer", I was thinking the same thing when I did the trial and on my 3rd or 4th mission in Praetoria running yet another generic warehouse map. Yep, made me want sub back in.
As for the layoffs, very sad. It may be they don't need the extra help now that the expansion is on the market or it didn't meet sales goals, it's anyone's guess. With that being said, IF BaBs is on that list I think we can assume it's a little more then shedding some extra help.
I only played a new toon to 12 for the 7 day trial, played for only few hours and got really bored. The reactivation weekend is online and I did not delete the client (yet) and decided to load my old toons. All I can say is, WHERE IS EVERYONE? All of my toons are on Virtue, took a trip through Talos and was a bit concerned very few people were around. Used to be piles of people in Wentworths and hanging around the Geen Line. The server was red when I logged so I don't know what's going on, will check it Friday night and see what's what.
As for the future, again that's anyone's guess. When I used to play one thing that did happen was the population taking a nose dive whenever WOW put out expansions. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 6 months. My guess, nothing good.
I wish those who are now unemployed that they find speedy re-employment. It's very hard in this day and age to find a job quickly, but can always hope for the best. I feel for them.
CoH was a game I liked for short periods, but never could really get my claws into. I think it's good to have a game like this on the market since it's pretty much a one-of-a-kind, being in its own city and all, the artwork, the combat abilities, character templating, etc. I hope it lasts for a good while yet, despite it never having been my cup of tea.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
This is fishy news.
Besides, the layoffs could be temp.
There are a lot of people in this thread who don't understand when layoff is used (including the guy who tried to act like no one else understood the business world but him when clearly he was clueless).
If they were moving them to another product they would not use the word layoff, it would be transfer etc. because they're still hired by the company.
If it were temp employees then it is never a layoff when you let go of temps.
There is never truly a "laying these people off is temporary and we're going to hire them back soon". It doesn't work and it wouldn't be done if they were just going to hire them back. In non-MMO studios it was common practice to hire up a bunch of people (mostly QA) shortly before a release and then let most of them go after the release but MMOs don't work that way since they are constantly expanding/updating and running.
If the leak is true it can essentially only mean that their revenues are lower then expected (or are expecting them to go down in the near future) and they need to cut down their work force to stay in good shape. That simple.
Well... I hope the game stays healthy. My whole family played during our 7 day trial and I am about to pick up the 40 dollar version of going rogue. We all loved it and had a blast on the trial! Shame to see anyone get laid off too, because I would much rather be hearing the exact opposite and keep those guys around for future updates.
This part i can answer.Virtue is the unofical rp server sooo alot of people in atlas,Pokect d as well as riki warzone.more top end toons in pi as well.An id guess half would be in pretoria on new toons.
Gota rember to when zones over fill it spawns another zone their was 2 pis yesterday an for while 2 atlas parks as well.Content in coh is spread out an not always hand held lead to.In pretoria i found a few contacts i could work for just by talking to them not being introduced.An no you dont have to leave pretoria at 20 just you can at 20 on.Some realy neat stories their.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Has anybody seen anything about this other than what came from here? The other articles out there all point back to MMORPG.com as the source...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%