New efforts!

[Sinistar]

I think I too found the party pack the only one I didn't care for. No costumes, just a bunch of emotes. Wedding pack I was iffy on but I'm glad I got it.

The party and wedding packs I skipped.  The main thing I purchased were the super packs.

[chuckv3]

Players who believed that that pack was a test to see what players valued and would pay for were in fact exactly right.  I had insider-confirmation on that one.  Because Paragon was in uncharted territory, they were not sure what players would and would not consider worth spending money on.  Remember that there was a lot of tension between players who thought the contents of purchased packs should be valuable enough to be worth spending money beyond subscription on, and players who thought the contents of purchased packs should not be things fundamental to the game that subscribers should get included.  In fact, there was significant overlap between the two groups, and players didn't always see how extremely difficult to navigate those two objectives were.  Sometimes, the only way to know was to try, and see what player reaction would be.

I paid for a few utilitarian things, but I never felt costume pieces were worth spending money on. But anything that will make money to keep the lights on is okay by me! I'm sure we can all agree on THAT.

[JanessaVR]

I paid for a few utilitarian things, but I never felt costume pieces were worth spending money on. But anything that will make money to keep the lights on is okay by me! I'm sure we can all agree on THAT.

For me, costume pieces were the #1 thing I was spending money on (outside of Super Packs, my main source of in-game cash and loot).  And there were so many costume pieces (and hairstyles) from the NPC groups that I desperately wanted, but were never offered for us to purchase.

[Noyjitat]

For me, costume pieces were the #1 thing I was spending money on (outside of Super Packs, my main source of in-game cash and loot).  And there were so many costume pieces (and hairstyles) from the NPC groups that I desperately wanted, but were never offered for us to purchase.

I'm kinda hoping if we when we get the game back that some of those pieces which we are finding work just fine with player models can be sold or enabled for player use. Or perhaps city of heroes 1.5?

[MM3squints]

For me, costume pieces were the #1 thing I was spending money on (outside of Super Packs, my main source of in-game cash and loot).  And there were so many costume pieces (and hairstyles) from the NPC groups that I desperately wanted, but were never offered for us to purchase.

I think the most items I spend my paragon points on were the Windfall boosters and new powers like Titan Weapon and Water Blaster (the best power imo). If you going to farm, might as well use a boost  and have sets that have insane number of AoEs xD

[JanessaVR]

I think the most items I spend my paragon points on were the Windfall boosters and new powers like Titan Weapon and Water Blaster (the best power imo). If you going to farm, might as well use a boost  and have sets that have insane number of AoEs xD

I found the Windfall boosters to be cost-inefficient, myself.  I got tons of them from the Super Packs I was purchasing, and then everything else from the packs besides, which was literally worth billions in INF on the market (sell the ATOs you don't need and then spend your ridiculous amounts of Reward Merits on rare recipes to sell).  I would occasionally fire off a Windfall from the huge stack of them I ended up with just for the heck of it, and they seemed to help a bit, but with the cash I was rolling in from the Super Packs, I rarely bothered.

[darkgob]

Let's also not forget that we got issues (mini expansions) completely free since day one. Excluding city of villains (which was given to us to us for free with the ncsoft purchase of city of heroes) and then Going rogue (which was eventually part of city of heroes freedom) Dual blades, willpower, arachnos soldiers, arachnos widows and probably some other powersets im forgetting that subscribers got for free.

Now show me another mmo with free game expansions.

Star Trek Online.  Legacy of Romulus and Delta Rising were both free (mind you, a bunch of stuff like ships and costumes were $$$-gated, but no gameplay was). 

[Aggelakis]

Most MMOs have mini-expansions, actually. Small story updates, additions, changes, etc. Heck, even the big gorilla of them all, WoW just had a mini-expansion (v6.1 - included some more quests, more gear, more things to do with professions, etc.)

[Noyjitat]

Star Trek Online.  Legacy of Romulus and Delta Rising were both free (mind you, a bunch of stuff like ships and costumes were $$$-gated, but no gameplay was).

I don't know much about delta rising since I stopped playing shortly after legacy of romulus but legacy of romulus was essentially a free mini expansion like we got in city of heroes. Which ended up being a let down when you come to realize that you eventually have to choose to join the feds or the klingons after you finish your rommy missions.

I felt cryptic could of done better here but instead of giving us a new faction to play we got another 1 - 20 tutorial like Praetoria originally was in city of heroes. Originally sto was supposed to have several player factions instead klingon/federation.

If anything good has happened for rommy's during my absence I don't know. But last I played they had even less unique content than the Klingons.

[Noyjitat]

Most MMOs have mini-expansions, actually. Small story updates, additions, changes, etc. Heck, even the big gorilla of them all, WoW just had a mini-expansion (v6.1 - included some more quests, more gear, more things to do with professions, etc.)

That was content supposed to be included with Warlords of Draenor on release day and was held back so they could meet the promised release date. Such as the new appearance graphics for blood elf race. And they always purposely hold back some new content from an expansion to keep players from blasting through all of it. Such as the lich king's ice crown citadel dungeon wasn't available to players until many months after the expansion release date.

[darkgob]

I don't know much about delta rising since I stopped playing shortly after legacy of romulus but legacy of romulus was essentially a free mini expansion like we got in city of heroes. Which ended up being a let down when you come to realize that you eventually have to choose to join the feds or the klingons after you finish your rommy missions.

I felt cryptic could of done better here but instead of giving us a new faction to play we got another 1 - 20 tutorial like Praetoria originally was in city of heroes. Originally sto was supposed to have several player factions instead klingon/federation.

If anything good has happened for rommy's during my absence I don't know. But last I played they had even less unique content than the Klingons.

So first you say Legacy of Romulus wasn't really an expansion, then you compare it to Going Rogue...which was an expansion.

Realistically speaking, multiple factions mostly don't work.  You either have everyone play the same content (which is what started happening in CoH's, and is now happening in STO), or you develop a bunch of content for various factions that never gets played because one faction (the original, usually) is always the most popular.  You could give each faction something truly unique that should theoretically balance the playerbase between them, but that's a really tough balancing act.

[Arcana]

I paid for a few utilitarian things, but I never felt costume pieces were worth spending money on. But anything that will make money to keep the lights on is okay by me! I'm sure we can all agree on THAT.

As far as I was concerned, anything I wanted to buy was good for me, and anything anyone else wanted to buy was good for the game in general.  There were very few specific cases of things I thought were bad for the game to add to the stores, but except for that I thought the most important development principle the devs should follow was "something for everyone, not everything for someone" which meant the best approach to adding things to the game was to make sure different player interests were addressed in a relatively balanced way, except for the ones that by definition could not be addressed without violating that principle (there were a few).

[Baja]

Apparently Freedom somehow allowed a smaller developing team design more powers and other content faster than ever before, with less work. No one else found it odd that after a couple months of being on the freemium plan there were 3 new power sets? How long did it take to develop and introduce power sets before? Literally once every 6 months we'd see something new. Yet Freedom comes out and bam, every power set people had been asking about for -years- magically appeared faster than ever before. So somehow these impossible to implement powers show up with a smaller staff in less time than ever before? Were these developers working 24/7 because of the huge influx of money? Highly doubt it.

No what most likely happened is all the "most wanted" content was probably ready to be released but required minor tweaking. I specifically remember BaB even saying staff would never be part of CoH on the forum, which meant it was at least a couple years out in CoH dev talk. Then freedom hits and boom.

Personally I don't like pay to win games, which is what the store was slowly turning CoH into. It also encouraged instant gratification in exchange for cash, which lots of people seem to enjoy these days. I'd have been a lot more happy if it stayed sub based like -all- traditional MMO's. Call me old school that way I guess. I mean the only way this game could have turned into more of a South Park episode was if they started offering 1-50 Lvl boosts for like $10.00. I mean would nobody rather them introduce a storyline and perhaps have us unlock these powersets through playing of the actual game? Or does actually playing the game you supposedly love so much put you off that much you'd rather empty your wallet than have to deal with the content?


The big thing I'm getting from this conversation is in the beginning we payed NCsoft to let us play the game. In the end we payed them so we didn't have to.

[Aggelakis]

Apparently Freedom somehow allowed a smaller developing team design more powers and other content faster than ever before, with less work. No one else found it odd that after a couple months of being on the freemium plan there were 3 new power sets? How long did it take to develop and introduce power sets before? Literally once every 6 months we'd see something new. Yet Freedom comes out and bam, every power set people had been asking about for -years- magically appeared faster than ever before. So somehow these impossible to implement powers show up with a smaller staff in less time than ever before? Were these developers working 24/7 because of the huge influx of money? Highly doubt it.

Apparently you did not read my post at all. Go back. Read it. It's not that they were slower before F2P and were miraculously faster after. It's that ROI went way up after F2P, which meant a LOT more stuff was ABLE to be greenlit than would be POSSIBLE before F2P.

But it's cool. You can refuse to learn and be curmudgeonly... That's fine. :p

[Drauger9]

Personally I don't like pay to win games, which is what the store was slowly turning CoH into. It also encouraged instant gratification in exchange for cash, which lots of people seem to enjoy these days. I'd have been a lot more happy if it stayed sub based like -all- traditional MMO's. Call me old school that way I guess. I mean the only way this game could have turned into more of a South Park episode was if they started offering 1-50 Lvl boosts for like $10.00. I mean would nobody rather them introduce a storyline and perhaps have us unlock these powersets through playing of the actual game? Or does actually playing the game you supposedly love so much put you off that much you'd rather empty your wallet than have to deal with the content?


The big thing I'm getting from this conversation is in the beginning we payed NCsoft to let us play the game. In the end we payed them so we didn't have to.

LOL! I haven't read all of the post before this one. So maybe I'm missing something but what are you talking about?

It didn't seem to me like CoH was becoming Pay to win but then again. The only thing I bought from the cash shop besides powersets, AT unlocks, and extra enhancement slots. Where the AT enhancements. Which honestly I could of lived without but when your getting you favorite toon all the best enhancements. Then why not?

To clarify YOU COULD play the game without those things. You DON'T NEED every power set. You DON'T NEED every AT to "win". You DON'T EVEN NEED set bonuses to "win" and before you bring up that you do for incarnate trails. I'd agree up to a point, there are very few and when I say very. I mean very few builds that could do incarnate trails (maybe slightly poorly) with out IO set bonuses. Two I did myself was my Bots/Trap MM ( he did have a few but wasn't IOed out) and another was my spines/Regen scrapper. Which was well after incarnates came out and the teams I ran with. Where far into their incarnate slots.

As far as them offering to level a character from 1-50 for $10. They could but who would pay that? When you could literally power level a character from 1_50 in hours and to debunk your statement about being put off by playing the game.

I can speak for myself, that I literally power leveled many alts, while simultaneously hand leveling others. It's not hard I know many many people did it too. There was a time, I had three accounts running. Two on my desk top and one on my laptop. One on my desktop would have my PLer, the second would have my Alt I wanted PLed. Then the third, I'd run TFs with an alt that I wanted alcoliades(sp?) for. No I wasn't botting but when you have a claws/fire brute completely IOed with incarnates running a fire farm. It's not hard to multi task. Most of my characters I Power leveld was either other farmers (since I'd get bored farming with just one character or alts I wasn't sure I'd like at high level). Guess what, if I did power level an alt and like playing them. I'd go back and do the TFs and other content threw Orobos (sp?) that I liked.

That's what I liked about City of Heroes, I could play my way and at the pace I wanted to play. With every single one of my characters.

[duane]

Apparently you did not read my post at all. Go back. Read it. It's not that they were slower before F2P and were miraculously faster after. It's that ROI went way up after F2P, which meant a LOT more stuff was ABLE to be greenlit than would be POSSIBLE before F2P.

But it's cool. You can refuse to learn and be curmudgeonly... That's fine. :p

Sigh.  We were getting so many powers during those last few issues. We went a number of issues without new powersets and so many on the cusp of being released.,., the power pools!!!

[Noyjitat]

So first you say Legacy of Romulus wasn't really an expansion, then you compare it to Going Rogue...which was an expansion.

Realistically speaking, multiple factions mostly don't work.  You either have everyone play the same content (which is what started happening in CoH's, and is now happening in STO), or you develop a bunch of content for various factions that never gets played because one faction (the original, usually) is always the most popular.  You could give each faction something truly unique that should theoretically balance the playerbase between them, but that's a really tough balancing act.

They were both mini expansions. But what's the point in releasing an expansion with a new playable faction only to have it merge with an existing faction. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed both of them but I don't understand why every game linked to cryptic can't design enough content for more than one faction to play. City of Heroes had the problem where it didn't start out with villains but when they did create villains it atleast had content to allow you to level to the current max. Both Going Rogue and Romulus did not come close. However we did have more praetorian content added over time and the praetorians themselves were actually two factions in one with the resistance and loyalists.

That said with all the cash cryptic and pwe are making on lockboxes they had no excuse to release an incomplete faction like they did with the romulus.

Multiple factions do work and have worked just fine in many other mmos but those usually start out with atleast two factions and both have enough content to level to max with multiple pathways.

[Waffles]

I personally, think Praetorian content should have gone to 50.

It was really cool making an alternate version of my main, until I realized the faction didn't matter twenty levels in.

But I can't complain, it was the funnest twenty levels I had to slog through.

[Biz]

Personally I don't like pay to win games, which is what the store was slowly turning CoH into. It also encouraged instant gratification in exchange for cash, which lots of people seem to enjoy these days. I'd have been a lot more happy if it stayed sub based like -all- traditional MMO's. Call me old school that way I guess. I mean the only way this game could have turned into more of a South Park episode was if they started offering 1-50 Lvl boosts for like $10.00. I mean would nobody rather them introduce a storyline and perhaps have us unlock these powersets through playing of the actual game? Or does actually playing the game you supposedly love so much put you off that much you'd rather empty your wallet than have to deal with the content?

I do agree with you. Content I unlocked by playing the game (Incarnate abilities, auras, capes, other costume pieces, etc) I enjoyed much more than content I paid to unlock. I guess since I felt like I had worked for it that content was more fun somehow. 

[Waffles]

I would argue that CoH's F2P iteration is one of the only successful examples of the F2P model.