New efforts!

[doc7924]

I would love to play COH again - I don't need the 8 years of accumulated stuff I had- I want the game. I don't need AE or even Incarnate stuff . I subbed the entire time from August of 2004 till shutdown Very soon I will be 61 years old. I have been a comic book fan since the 1950's and I just want of play the most perfect rendition of my lifetime interest. I will happily pay to play again possibly even have a second sub again.

And people thought I was old playing at 52. I will play games until I literally cannot play anymore.

This city and game was like a second home since 2004 and I would be bummed if I lost my 8 years of vet perks and side purchases but having the game and city back is more important. I made lvl 50 toons and I can do it again.

[Remidi]

I'm not a big market person, but I assume it worked on the principle of supply and demand.   Purple recipes were already rare....imagine how a seller could hold out for ridiculous money with a "fresh" market?    Those will instantly become "insanely rare".   That's not going to drive prices down, is it?   (and there will be people will money to spend in the market pretty quickly I predict)

A lot of people don't really understand economics.  The people you are talking about probably have a fantasy that sellers will know that most people don't have much inf in a start-over situation, so they will set their prices low.  Of course, if they scored a purple they'd want top dollar, but a lot of folks don't connect those two facts.

[Serpine]

Purple recipes were already rare....imagine how a seller could hold out for ridiculous money with a "fresh" market?

Well, since in that situation the market wouldn't yet be flooded with rich buyers, the seller would have to face the opportunity cost of sitting on the item set to an unrealistic price versus selling it quickly for a reasonable price and reinvesting the funds. So it can be mildly self-correcting until the point that super-rich characters with insufficient money syncs become the norm.

I make a lot of money in several MMOs by frequently turning over products at a lower rate then other people. So just buy from me and all will be well. :)

[Super Firebug]

And all this stuff happened while I was away from my PC....  ;D



So things from me on this:

1. Regardless of whether or not COH comes back, I will still play the "successor games" if they make it to publication. If there's one thing the shutdown taught me, is that we need more options because no game can last forever, even with the best of intentions.


2. In some ways, I think everyone starting over would be fairer and more equitable for everyone involved. If we want new blood-- and I think everyone agrees that COH will need new players in addition to returnings vets-- then having everyone on an equal footing at start up would be a good thing. IMO, at least.

3. I fully acknowledge The 'Ko as the Supreme Queen of COH videos, but with all due respect I think the perfect video for a COH return has already been made. It would just need an announcement of COH as an end credit:


"Unity" by Angelis Animi.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc

I totally agree with you and WolfSoul (and whoever else seconded). This should be The Official Video of the Return to Paragon City.

[Harpospoke]

It will have to involve real world identification of some sort, not just some files that are easily copied and passed around.

That's another sub-group of players which would be vanishingly small.   I'm wondering how many people would want to pass out free copies of their characters.   Sounds like the opposite expected behavior from a person who thought so much of their characters that they bothered to save them to Sentinel files, no?

[LaughingAlex]

Is that how you see the game as it was at shut-down?   A community of haves and have-nots?   If so, that situation was created by time/effort and money....and any "equal footing" will go away extremely quickly for the exact same reasons it went away the first time.   Some people play more, some people play faster.   An interesting bet would be how soon we would see the first lvl 50 toon.   I'm going to say it will happen within the first couple of days.

I just saw someone post on the facebook page that they wanted everyone to start over from square one to make everything "equal" again.    And another person thought that would make the market awesome.   Those people have a big surprise coming.   :P

I'm not a big market person, but I assume it worked on the principle of supply and demand.   Purple recipes were already rare....imagine how a seller could hold out for ridiculous money with a "fresh" market?    Those will instantly become "insanely rare".   That's not going to drive prices down, is it?   (and there will be people will money to spend in the market pretty quickly I predict)

They aren't talking about everyone remaining equal but everyone STARTING on equal footing, there is a difference there.  Granted those of us who know how to get lots of influence and rares and whatnot, will be doing so anyhow.  It'd only be a matter of time to me, but I'd still prefer if we had to start over fresh everyone started off on the same footing.  Would it help the economy in the game?  Actually it would as alot of prices were over-inflated due to, right off the bat, even, to much influence being in the market.  But later with AE the influence prices were very insane due to the exploits pumping so much excessive influence back in.

Regardless though, a start over would only really mean less influence would mean more earlier on, as influence counts get higher prices will inflate.  It's rares/very rares that determine wealth in the long run in the game, not influence.

[Scendera]

That's my gig as well. Any MMO I start actually selling on, I turn into a buyer's market very fast because I'll price everything lower than the next guy to get it out the door.

Ever made lasting changes to an economy in a game? We did. Some of the shenanigans we pulled on one of the WoW servers we played on still were obvious after a 6 month (forced) break.

EQ2...I match guild, anyone else I'm undercutting. By a stupid amount, if the other guy is insane with his pricing to begin with.

Money in my hand is better than dreams of what I could do with riches, after all!

[Harpospoke]

It'd be unfair to those who didn't have or know about it though.  Are you going to punish people for missing out?  They'd be rather annoyed, at least, it wouldn't help the game coming back imo.

It works both ways on that.   Those who did save all their characters to Sentinel files and then were told they wasted their time would be punished.

So which group gets "punished"?

[Harpospoke]

It'd only be a matter of time to me, but I'd still prefer if we had to start over fresh everyone started off on the same footing.

This is the type of thing I was talking about before.

Forgive me if I misunderstood what you just said there.  But it sounds like you want me to lose everything I ever built in the game because you would like it better that way.   I noted the "we" there.

[The Fifth Horseman]

You just did. That said. No, I am Spartacus!

I! Am! Spartan!

[LaughingAlex]

It works both ways on that.   Those who did save all their characters to Sentinel files and then were told they wasted their time would be punished.

So which group gets "punished"?

Hate to tell you reality man but majority matters in things like this.  Most players would be bothered that a select few got to start ahead of everyone else with hundreds of millions of influence, every IO and everything else.  They'd be setting prices and imposing things in things like the incarnate trials, I wouldn't be happy if suddenly elitists said because I couldn't start with any +3s that I shouldn't even be allowed into a BAF incarnate trial, i'd have to get all the "have nots" together just to get back to where I was in CoX.  I wouldn't have gotten to save my characters myself due to crap like losing my data anyways, nore did I see a reason to use sentinel when I had already figured at the time character accounts at least would be preserved.

I'd be a little unhappy, but a lot of people being unhappy, a majority, would have a negative impact on the games viability right away.  I wouldn't want the majority feeling punished.  And I wouldn't want to get in a "left out" category for any reason of not having had advantages right off the bat.

[LaughingAlex]

This is the type of thing I was talking about before.

Forgive me if I misunderstood what you just said there.  But it sounds like you want me to lose everything I ever built in the game because you would like it better that way.   I noted the "we" there.

If I had to lose everything but someone else didn't, how'd i feel about it?  How would you feel about it if things were suddenly reversed and I got to get all my characters back and suddenly you cannot get yours back for some reason?  It'd suck, big time and you'd be very mad about it.  Honestly it's kind of selfish you'd get to start ahead of everyone else like that.  I didn't use sentinel as I figured, everything done properly we'd have our characters back legitimately.  I don't want anyone losing everything but I'd rather we all had to lose everything or none of us lost everything, not "Oh, this small group, minority,gets to keep everything but everyone else has to start over".  People would take that very, very badly.

Edit: This is coming from someone who had a perma-mind link fortunata(with quite a few purple IOs), double and a half fulcrum shift kin defender and alot of characters fully orange IO'd out.  And that same fortunata also had 2-3 different incarnate powers for each and every incarnate slot.

Another Edit: Put a key view of mine in bold.

[Super Firebug]

I've long maintained that: "Until the day when my avatar can, once again, stand in Atlas Park and flatten a Hellion's nose, NCsoft and I have nothing to talk about." I'm just excitedly looking forward to the day when that quote fades into the past. I'll play whatever hand is dealt me. I wouldn't give a flying rip if I were the ONLY one who had to restart from scratch; I'D GET TO PLAY AGAIN. Those who want to do so can gripe about what's still lost to them; I'll exult in what we've regained.

To the Team (including Ironwolf, of course!): profoundest gratitude and abundant blessings to you all. In my eyes, YOU are the initial team in the "Unity" video, leading the charge.

[Thirty-Seven]

It works both ways on that.   Those who did save all their characters to Sentinel files and then were told they wasted their time would be punished.

So which group gets "punished"?

In realistic terms, Sentinel+ is useless.  Period.

But, since you're off in fantasyland anyway, let's assume we can use Sentinel+ data for recreating character data in the new game.  The group, IMO, that should get punished (I find that a poor word choice, but whatever) should be whichever group is smaller.  Which, I suspect, is the group that used Sentinel.

Forgive me if I misunderstood what you just said there.  But it sounds like you want me to lose everything I ever built in the game because you would like it better that way.   I noted the "we" there.

Interesting, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any control over what happens to you or your characters.  However, it goes without saying that whatever option someone prefers is the one that they think should apply to everyone.  So it seems to me that you are being excessively polarizing and combative about something none of us has control over, hell the team buying the game may not even have any control over it either by all reports.

[FloatingFatMan]

Losing all our account data is beyond sobering, it's my worst fear realized if the game should return. I bought near everything. Even if they could import  character data, I couldn't use them with everything purchased locked out.

Well, y'know.  It's not like you can use them NOW either, is it?

[FloatingFatMan]

NCsoft didn't want to push I24 live, as any bugs in it might have hindered our enjoyment of the sunset period.

Yeah, like anyone there actually cared one tiny little damn about us enjoying the game...

[Serpine]

Ever made lasting changes to an economy in a game? We did. Some of the shenanigans we pulled on one of the WoW servers we played on still were obvious after a 6 month (forced) break.

Me... probably not: I only have the patience to make some immediate profit. My wife on the other hand enjoys trying to shift economic trends and such (particularly trying to get stalled economies on certain items in motion, which benefits anybody). She would have been seriously dangerous if she wasn't far more obsessed with RP then fund building. :)

[LaughingAlex]

Me... probably not: I only have the patience to make some immediate profit. My wife on the other hand enjoys trying to shift economic trends and such (particularly trying to get stalled economies on certain items in motion, which benefits anybody). She would have been seriously dangerous if she wasn't far more obsessed with RP then fund building. :)

I know how to get from having almost nothing to having alot in CoX.  Merits and especially alignment merits and the merit system made it very feasable for any character to do it, you didn't need a dedicated farmer to get everything.  And I enjoyed soloing them on 8x mode.

[Serpine]

Those who did save all their characters to Sentinel files and then were told they wasted their time would be punished.

I pretty much knew the files were wasted hard drive space except possibly for convenient costume rebuilding (which I took extensive screenshots to provide for anyway). The odds that an independent utility from people unlikely to be the eventual owners would be used for any sort of real account recovery, especially when it became clear any deal would not be immediate, is beyond optimism. Not to mention since the use of the utility was not universal it just didn't feel like it would be useful wide-spread solution, meaning something else (or nothing) was far more likely to be deployed.

I appreciate the efforts of those who developed Sentinel, as it was one of those "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks" solutions that proved how dedicated a community we had. But a checksum in a small file that only some of us had was just not a good long term solution to the issue. That is not punishment, just a reality.

Now, can we get back to dreams of playing Hellion knockback soccer again? I long to summon random forklifts and gargoyle statues to hurl at my foes once more. And create icons out of emotes and binds (because I really hate typing out chairsit).

[LaughingAlex]

I pretty much new the files were wasted hard drive space except possibly for convenient costume rebuilding (which I took extensive screenshots to provide for anyway). The odds that an independent utility from people unlikely to be the eventual owners would be used for any sort of real account recovery, especially when it became clear any deal would not be immediate, is beyond optimism. Not to mention since the use of the utility was not universal it just didn't feel like it would be useful wide-spread solution, meaning something else (or nothing) was far more likely to be deployed.

I appreciate the efforts of those who developed Sentinel, as it was one of those "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks" solutions that proved how dedicated a community we had. But a checksum in a small file that only some of us had was just not a good long term solution to the issue. That is not punishment, just a reality.

Aye, better way of saying it then what I had.