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Post by XStorm on Aug 27, 2015 13:06:24 GMT -5
The Villain thing is terrible; after I got over there, and really testing it out, I hate it, and then that feeling was massively amplified with the -INSANE- token cost of the stuff they just released, if you do it legitly; you're looking at about 6 months, doing it every single day, to get one power. And there's 3 of of them. So, people are forming groups to volunteer for lvl 6 kill farming, so that people can get their powers quicker. I suspect that they'll do something else to fix it later, so that you can't do that.
I decided last night that I was done. I'm not going to rebuild my characters again, I'm done, give them a handshake for killing it. By year's end, you'll see one MC with 5 people in.
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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2015 19:24:27 GMT -5
Like every update, in every MMO ever made, some people will like this, and some people won't. How many will feel one way or the other remains to be seen, but either way neither opinion is "right" or "wrong", as they are just opinions. Personally, I'm happy something new is happening, and that Champs will get a little publicity again. Maybe some people who were 10 or 11 when this game came out and have no idea it even exists will hear about it and decide to give it a try.
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Post by Meegatron on Aug 28, 2015 3:27:34 GMT -5
Yes, I'm also very happy that something as new and revolutionary as are become devices is happening in CO. =] This will be truly a new gameplay...
For a month max. Until most of people will figure how long it will take. Eventually they will do the only sensible thing and start exploiting by killing lvl 6 alts. One could expect that developers should be smart enough to think about a system that is doing something different than basically inviting exploits. But this is Cryptic, after all. Plasma beam, rotating ADs and Resistance farming... Within a few next years they might even nerf the exploit.
And the game needs to have actual production value before it can hold any public attention. So far it can't really compete with basic things like graphics or abyssmal user interface. Cryptic would need to invest in the game first and polish it finally. Otherwise it will never benefit from any publicity for more than month max, after which people are bored/leaving again/new players saw enough.
The game has a new players influx, but it does very poorly at keeping people inside. People are staying for two weeks or month at best, then they're gone.
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Post by Lantesh on Aug 28, 2015 9:40:18 GMT -5
That's why I think the first thing they need to do is revamp the F2P model. Locking FF behind the paywall is a mistake. It's the meat and potatoes of the game. The main feature. And I truly feel that it cost them players.
I think they need to revamp it to follow STO's model. STO makes the base ships free to everyone and then sells new ships to everyone, both free AND subs. So for CO, make FF available to everyone. All the current powers will be usable for free and will become "base powers" similar to STO's free ships. They can then create new powers and powersets and sell them to everyone in the C-store. They don't have to remove ATs either. They can just leave them there and let the players decide what they want to play.
I realize they would be a good deal of work for Cryptic. But...I just don't feel that CO can ever recover and hold a decent sized playerbase unless they change the F2P model. After they do that is when they can start supporting the game with shiny new content.
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Post by XStorm on Aug 28, 2015 12:40:56 GMT -5
I doubt that will ever happen now; not with all the people that have bought the FF slots, they would throw one hell of a fit, especially those that have bought like 40 of them(avianos), I think he used q; but still. That's a LOT of money, they should have changed it a long, LONG time ago; but now? I don't think it can happen, the damage is already done.
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Post by Lantesh on Aug 28, 2015 13:26:00 GMT -5
I don't think it's too late. There are so few players left that it might be worth it to just let those players throw a fit. Those who have 40 slots or w/e will still have them. Free players still only get like 2. Cryptic can give them some bonuses or something to make it up to them.
I don't think they will actually do it though. But I still think it's the only way for CO to every truly recover.
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Post by XStorm on Aug 28, 2015 17:44:49 GMT -5
Yeah; it doesn't seem like they will, esp with the way they basically excluded the f2p people from the new stuff they're adding completely. It's like they're saying, come on, sub! You want to play right! Well, you can't until you sub! Come on lil guy, gimme your $$.
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Post by Lantesh on Aug 28, 2015 19:28:37 GMT -5
Exactly. The main point of CO's model is to push subs. And that is the whole problem. Sure, they have a FF slot for sale for $50, but I don't think they really planned to sell all that many of them. I think they might have priced it that high to encourage picking up a monthly sub for much cheaper rather than go for volume of FF slot sales. Mainly because, in my opinion, paying $50 for a single FF slot is beyond ludicrous. But maybe that's just me. I personally don't feel that's a good value in the least. I also think that it doesn't work well since the Champs IP isn't well enough known to take advantage of a model like that. SWTOR, for example, can get away with doing it because Star Wars is a massive IP with an equally massive company backing it. The F2P model in that game is rather brutal and basically leaves you with no choice but to sub (and shoves messages about subbing right in your face and rubs it all around) if you ever want to really play that game. But for them, it works. Champs just doesn't have the brand recognition power to pull that off. Champs doesn't have any real brand recognition at all, come to think of it. But that doesn't mean it needs to languish like it has either. That's why when I see them adding in new content like this, I just can't take it as anything other than a half-hearted attempt. I think that adding in this new Villain content is all well and good as the game really did desperately need a fresh infusion of playable content, but at the same time I see it as mainly a stop gap measure aimed at the short term sustainability rather than the long term. I say that because it might keep the old vets who are still playing occupied for a bit or bring back some of them, but I don't see it hooking in new blood. As Meegatron mentioned, new people come and play around for a few weeks to a month with their ATs and then leave. I don't see Villain content, or really any content, fixing that. All the content in the world isn't going to be as fun as it could be if you don't play it with the main attraction of the game...the FF system. And that's why I don't think this Villain system is going to be as good as it could have been. They put in cool new powers as rewards and then locked out ATs from ever being able to use them. Yay. Anyway, I think I've rambled on waaaay too long about CO's F2P model so I'll leave it there lol. My bad haha.
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Post by XStorm on Aug 28, 2015 20:47:02 GMT -5
I agree with you, 100%, I have almost 0% interest in even logging on anymore; and the 25000 tokens/power?! That makes me not want to do it period, after seeing how hard it was to kill players using those things.
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Post by Meegatron on Aug 29, 2015 4:13:04 GMT -5
Well, thing is...
STO can sell ships.
CO would need to be selling new powersets, with subscribers and LTS simply using accumulated stipends for new powersets, like most golds are buying their ships in STO. There isn't that many things to spend stipend on in STO and dilithium isn't that hard to farm to burn all your Zen on it. Any gold who's not a compulsive buyer will eventually get this new ship for free.
But I can't really imagine Cryptic suddenly investing into new powersets, and without selling new powersets freeing FFs would not work.
Also, STO has better subscriber rewards. IIRC You can respec every few levels? Now, a perk like that would be really useful for golds in CO, much more than it is in STO. But of course CO has none of it.
I think about CO as of abandoned legacy game. It's retained to keep the IP (I did hear a rumor that CU IP stays with Cryptic only as long as CO is running, but it was a rumor only) or for testing purposes, but otherwise PWE doesn't really care because the game is basically leftover of old Cryptic - the only subscription based game in PWE portfolio that doesn't really fit with their profile. It's kept mostly because it's no harm in keeping it.
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Post by Lantesh on Aug 29, 2015 8:43:24 GMT -5
Yeah, selling new powers and powersets would be a must. It's something I would definitely support for a F2P model shift. They can then do what STO does with event ships and give away a single new power for events and promos to let the free players who can't/won't spend as much play with a new toy every now and then. Basically a full on shift to the STO model is what I'm looking at.
As for the STO sub rewards, they aren't so useful these days to keep an ongoing monthly sub. I's only worth it to sub for 1 month to pick up the perks and then drop it and use the 500z you get to buy the EC cap increase since you keep those perks when your sub lapses. Skill respecs aren't good anymore since most of us figured out a way to spec ourselves so that we fly any type of ship comfortably and never have to use respecs ever. That's why Cryptic has been looking into revamping the skill trees. The best bang for your buck in STO is either play free and buy what you want/need or pick up a LTS. LTS is still worth it since you get all the vet rewards the second you buy it. I'd want this to happen to CO as well. Devalue the monthly sub from where it is now to entice more free players to come to the game, stay, and spend. Just as STO does.
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Post by XStorm on Aug 29, 2015 18:40:51 GMT -5
I concur with that; however, I don't see them adjusting the f2p stuff at all, if they were considering that; they wouldn't have locked off all this new stuff from the f2p crowd. To me, they're pushing this out like that to push people to get lts, or to sub, I suppose so they can accumulate the needed funds to begin adding new stuff? Who knows? They said they were going to have a lot of new stuff coming out here in the next few months; but I've seen these publicity sites say stuff like that before, and it turned out to be something very tiny that you can finish in 15 minutes; and then never touch it again. I suppose that it's just wait and see. This adjustment to the cooldowns really does change the way the game is played; however. You're going to see a lot more healers, and tanks now; because it's going to be tough to do everything at once, with the cooldowns on everything being so long. The community is very against that, though; there may be a huge exodus of players due to those adjustments; again, I suppose we'll just have to see how it all plays out once the updates actually go live.
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Post by Lantesh on Aug 30, 2015 10:49:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm interested to see how the INT thing turns out myself.
We had a situation like that in STO where people were using a specific skill (Auxiliary to Battery) to basically get all CDs down to global. The devs outright said that they HATED it but felt that it had become so prevalent that they saw it as a "third-rail" issue. Basically they felt that if they changed it, they would lose tons of players. So rather than nerfing it, they added in all kinds of new ways to reduce CDs to get people off the crutch that A2B had become. So far that approach has worked quite well. I know, I know...CO is a different game with different needs, but it's still interesting to see a similar issue (CDs) being handled in a completely different way. Will be interesting to see.
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Post by XStorm on Aug 30, 2015 15:21:25 GMT -5
Yeah, most of my builds were completely ruined by it, it almost seems to me like they're trying to drive off the 200 people that are left, so they can shut it down.
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Post by Meegatron on Aug 30, 2015 19:55:37 GMT -5
We had a situation like that in STO where people were using a specific skill (Auxiliary to Battery) to basically get all CDs down to global. The devs outright said that they HATED it but felt that it had become so prevalent that they saw it as a "third-rail" issue. Basically they felt that if they changed it, they would lose tons of players. So rather than nerfing it, they added in all kinds of new ways to reduce CDs to get people off the crutch that A2B had become. So far that approach has worked quite well. I know, I know...CO is a different game with different needs, but it's still interesting to see a similar issue (CDs) being handled in a completely different way. Will be interesting to see. Reminds me of Marvel Heroes balancing policy. They tune underperforming powers until there's a semblance of balance across the board. If a character is too weak, it gets a pass and is adjusted to be in line with others. But then, I suppose CO has not enough resources to do it any other way...
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