So is COH finally dead?

[CoyoteSeven]

*holds up his boing ball secret decoder ring*

You reminded me to upload an icon here, hee.

[plasma]

No one's managed to do a fair and honest f2p option yet.

My college roommate is one of the founders of Grinding Gear Games, and they made Path of Exile. I'd go check it out. It is the absolute antithesis of the crappy coin-driven f2p or "astral diamond"-driven garbage out there. All you can get is stash tabs, character slots (both of which you start with enough of for most purposes), and cosmetic things. "Ethical microtransactions" they call it, and it frankly scares me on their behalf, but so far it is working.

[downix]

My college roommate is one of the founders of Grinding Gear Games, and they made Path of Exile. I'd go check it out. It is the absolute antithesis of the crappy coin-driven f2p or "astral diamond"-driven garbage out there. All you can get is stash tabs, character slots (both of which you start with enough of for most purposes), and cosmetic things. "Ethical microtransactions" they call it, and it frankly scares me on their behalf, but so far it is working.

Tell your former roomate that they did an excellent job! Their skill system is absolutely mind-blowing for customization!

[Kyriani]

No one's managed to do a fair and honest f2p option yet.

Honestly COH's F2P was the one I found most palatable.

There was incentive to subscribe and you got a lot of bang for your buck from doing so.
Not subbing still let you enjoy the bulk of the game from 1 to 50
Many things sold were account wide unlocks which personally to me made making purchases more likely because I really liked the idea of enhancing the overall value and capability of my account.
While prices on somethings were a bit outlandish (I am looking at your increased inventory options!) most of them were acceptable especially given the monthly stipend from subbing.

[thunderforce]

Honestly COH's F2P was the one I found most palatable.

Forgive me if you joined late, but I think one reason for that would be that if you had a stack of vet rewards, the F2P option was vastly different to that you'd get as a new player.

[TonyV]

Forgive me if you joined late, but I think one reason for that would be that if you had a stack of vet rewards, the F2P option was vastly different to that you'd get as a new player.

...But not really vastly different than what we got over the years as subscribers.  Keep in mind that when we started playing, we had no extra costume slots (when I started playing, you only got one costume, and if you wanted to change it, you had to reroll your character), no access to fancy powersets like Archery, Waster Blast, Sonic, etc., less than half the archetypes (only Blaster, Scrapper, Controller, Tanker, and Defender), less than half of the city zones, no Ultra Mode, no crafting, no market, no Incarnate system (when I started, you couldn't even get to level 50 yet), and so on.  And we were paying $15 per month for that.

With the possible exception of access to Controllers and some inspiration drops, new players at the end had access to vastly more content and features than a lot of vets did when they started playing.  And like the vets, as the new players kept playing, they gained access to more stuff.  Yeah, we got a stack of vet rewards when CoH: Freedom was released, but you have to remember that the people who got the biggest stacks?  They'd been playing (and paying!) for eight years to get that stuff.

And that stuff wasn't even denied to new players.  If they were willing to pony up as much money as we did over the years, they could have it all from day one if they wanted.  If they were willing to wait long enough like we did (barring the game shutting down...), they would have had access to most of it anyway.  I never bought into the argument that new players were somehow deprived because they didn't get all of the stuff that long-time veterans did.

[thunderforce]

...But not really vastly different than what we got over the years as subscribers.

There is one standout difference there, though; when we as subscribers had no Inventions, no-one had any Inventions. As a new F2P player, you were in the situation that makes many feel F2P is unfair; you could pay to make your character enormously more effective.

[Kyriani]

Forgive me if you joined late, but I think one reason for that would be that if you had a stack of vet rewards, the F2P option was vastly different to that you'd get as a new player.

I did have a stack of vet rewards since I had been playing coh since beta... with that said I also made a second account when Freedom launched to see the game from a free players perspective. Without vet rewards I appreciated buying account unlocks from the store even more because they not only enhanced the value and capability of the account but also led to vet rewards.

[Sleepy Wonder]

I had a really long thought out post about F2P, but I realized it's one of those arguments that kind of just goes in circles (if you can understand and analyze both sides of the argument), which leads me to believe that F2P really is a tricky thing to "get right".

I remember Matt Miller's comments about it on Massively, and it doesn't surprise me he was very happy and proud of the way City of Heroes did it, because from everything I can see, they did a fine job having come from a purely subscription based model with free trials in the past.

I think the key to keep in mind is:

As a player..
1.) Expect limitations as a free player. Especially if the game does not have a subscription model (no subscription model is typically a red flag for Pay 2 Win games, but your mileage may vary)

If the game has a suitable subscription model, expect (demand?) that as a paying subscriber, nothing in the game should have to be purchased on a F2P market that cannot be earned legitimately in-game by subscribers.


CoH didn't exactly live up to this standard entirely, as there were minor cosmetic items unavailable anywhere else in game (certain jet packs, travel temp powers) - HOWEVER - they did give subscribers free points every month that could in turn be used to purchase these, so technically they did. It's sort of on the line really.

As a developer..
2.) Your subscribers are not walking banks. They are moms, dads, children, teenagers, etc. They are people - a community of people who are all playing your game for one thing: entertainment. fun. the core of any game. Don't treat them like banks and they will probably give you more money in the long haul than they would otherwise. Ask the average gamer what they think of publishers like EA to understand my point.

It's difficult because there's a difference between the publisher and developers a lot of the times. We know we're being exploited but we can't help ourselves in some cases. It's not the developers fault the game is addicting, but it's unwise for any publisher to exploit this. Then again, I guess publishers don't necessarily care about public opinion as long as the money keeps flowing. But eventually enough people WILL start to wake up and smell the coffee.

At least I hope so. The cycle of younger gamers will keep replacing those who've smartened up to publisher money grab tactics, so its a vicious cycle.

[Sleepy Wonder]

I did have a stack of vet rewards since I had been playing coh since beta... with that said I also made a second account when Freedom launched to see the game from a free players perspective. Without vet rewards I appreciated buying account unlocks from the store even more because they not only enhanced the value and capability of the account but also led to vet rewards.

Ultimately this is how the model works. There are a smaller number of people who pay much more than they would have with an occasional subscription, which offsets the cost of the free players who generally don't purchase anything in the market.

It's basically just like advertising (at least I look at it that way) in that not everybody is going to go and buy a Ford Cherokee after seeing a commercial, but enough people will to offset the cost of the ad. Same way spam works too.

I had both, and like you, I didn't mind. The value to me was worth it. I have no idea if I would have been better off with 2+ monthly subs, but I know that in my head, I was basically paying for time. I would've had to have waited for veteran rewards to kick in as a subscriber, so the cost difference was basically "I'll pay more to have it _right now_".

I'm impatient this way, and I fully understood it all, so it didn't bother me. But again, it's all about how you feel about the value. Some people can be more stingy, others not so much.

[Sleepy Wonder]

Keep in mind that when we started playing, we had no extra costume slots (when I started playing, you only got one costume, and if you wanted to change it, you had to reroll your character)

If CoH was still around, I would've suggested after reading that (LOL), that you roll up an old-timer who shakes canes at heroes around Atlas.

"Why in my day sonny, we didn't have spandex!"

[batqueen]

My son actually had an Old Timer in game, I forget which server. His battle cry was "Dagnab it, you kids get off my lawn!!"   

[downix]

My son actually had an Old Timer in game, I forget which server. His battle cry was "Dagnab it, you kids get off my lawn!!"   

I remember a guy with this battlecry on Champion! Made me laugh every time!

[adarict]

There is one standout difference there, though; when we as subscribers had no Inventions, no-one had any Inventions. As a new F2P player, you were in the situation that makes many feel F2P is unfair; you could pay to make your character enormously more effective.

I don't buy that argument either.  Even if you had ACCESS to inventions, a lot of people weren't made enormously more effective than their non IO counterparts.  A lot of people didn't earn enough influence to afford the really good IOs, and stuck mostly with generic IOs or mismatched sets of lower end IOs.  The percentage of people with large amounts of purple IOs was likely a tiny percentage of the population.  The really good drops didn't show up all that often, which meant the only way to get those awesome purple sets in many cases, was at the auctions, which priced them astronomically out of the range of a large portion of the population.  Sure, making Inf was not THAT tough.  I didn't even actively TRY to earn Inf, and I always had plenty laying around, but I know there were a LOT of people on Guardian at least, that always struggled to keep enough Inf to buy the IOs they wanted.

Not to say that even lower tier IOs didn't make you more effective.  Obviously they did, but MOST of them were not huge jumps over standard SOs.  Wait.  Let me rephrase that.  Numerically, IOs in general gave better performance, but in day to day usage, did not make a huge difference to most players.  There are exceptions of course.  As you get to higher level enemies, or things like GMs, the IOs can actually be the difference between success and failure.  For most players though?  I doubt that it would make that much of a difference if it took a couple extra minutes to clear a mission.  If their build is so bad that IOs are what are making the difference in their general survival, then they were doing something wrong in the first place.

[thunderforce]

I don't buy that argument either.  Even if you had ACCESS to inventions, a lot of people weren't made enormously more effective than their non IO counterparts.  A lot of people didn't earn enough influence to afford the really good IOs, and stuck mostly with generic IOs or mismatched sets of lower end IOs.  The percentage of people with large amounts of purple IOs was likely a tiny percentage of the population.

You didn't need large amounts of purple IOs; I barely saw one or two. A perfectly ordinary Frankenslotted build is still enormously more effective than SOs.

[CoyoteSeven]

You didn't need large amounts of purple IOs; I barely saw one or two. A perfectly ordinary Frankenslotted build is still enormously more effective than SOs.

I regret I was never able to finish Purpling and PvP-IOing my very first character (after managing to do the same with some of my other level 50's)...

[Golden Girl]

I never used purples

[JanessaVR]

I never used purples

Then you were missing out on the truly good stuff - they definitely made a real difference; and then never got nerfed, even if you were exemplared down to Level 1.

[Golden Girl]

Then you were missing out on the truly good stuff - they definitely made a real difference; and then never got nerfed, even if you were exemplared down to Level 1.

I liked the normal IO set bonuses too much too replace them with purples.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

You didn't need large amounts of purple IOs; I barely saw one or two. A perfectly ordinary Frankenslotted build is still enormously more effective than SOs.

Very true, but few people understood how IOs, especially those that enhanced multiple aspects, worked. i suspect they looked at the numbers for each aspect of a triple aspect IO and just saw that they weren't very large. They never considered what it would add up to with multiple IOs all adding their bonuses together. Also, there were a lot of people who were effectively afraid of WW.
While simply leveling up did not supply the inf for a full set of IOs even dumping salvage and recipes onto the market for 1 inf each could add up to a hefty chunk of inf just in the course of leveling up to thirty or so. Actually taking a few minutes here and there to actively use the market could add up very quickly. i had several alts that were nearly fully kitted out with sets by level 32 or so. Of course since i was rarely chasing the bonuses most purple sets provided it was relatively easy to do even on a fairly casual marketeer's budget.

Actually, having been playing SWTOR recently two of the things i miss the most are CoH's market system and the chat/social interface. And don't get me started on how there are basically six powersets shared among eight archetypes and yet i'm seeing people posting in their test server forums about needing to lock down variant gearing approaches and prevent hybrid builds from being viable because it'll make balancing too difficult. They've got eight archetypes basically using six powersets and a rigid adherence to the MMO holy trinity, and people think that's still way too difficult to balance. Yeah, the sooner i can play CoH or an equivalent the better.

i'm patient (about some things), so even half a decade for an honest successor is reasonable to me, but as has already been mentioned there are reasons i suspect it might not require nearly that long. In any event every other MMO i've tried has mostly succeeded in making me miss CoH's gameplay. (Especially SWTOR. (See above.) How could a game come out over six years after WoW and CoH while making those two games seem more advanced in so many ways?)