New efforts!

[LaughingAlex]

Personally I liked being able to use Merits gained from SuperPacks to get the enhancements I wanted.. and sometimes when they went on sale in the store I just bought them outright. Me purchasing items supports the game.. and makes it more fun for me.. which keeps me playing..

So IMO the whole Pay2Win thing was silly.. when I paid.. they game made money.. and they developed and released more content.. so in that respect.. YES.. I won..

I'll be honest I didn't think the game was really pay to win, alot of people think that due to the incarnate system and IO's being locked behind a fee but, on the other hand, IO's were in the game BEFORE free to play.  I do worry people would mistake IO's as pay to win as they do freeform in CO(even thinking AT's are the way the game was originally designed when AT's were made for free to play CO).  Thing is you didn't even need IO's to make a tough character, only some AT's really needed them to become overpowered(particularly dominators, and maybe some powersets on different AT's, but there were a good number of powersets that were very devastating in the right hands and very powerful defensively to, you'd just need to allocate the slots differently if you were using SO's).

Was the incarnate system needed for everything else?  No, not at all.

Edit: Even the boosts from IO boosters were incredibly slight.  At best, one could get slightly more endurance cost reduction, but with ED mechanics, anything else generally when it came to IO's was already soft-capped.

[ag88t88]

I'll be honest I didn't think the game was really pay to win, alot of people think that due to the incarnate system and IO's being locked behind a fee but, on the other hand, IO's were in the game BEFORE free to play.  I do worry people would mistake IO's as pay to win as they do freeform in CO(even thinking AT's are the way the game was originally designed when AT's were made for free to play CO).  Thing is you didn't even need IO's to make a tough character, only some AT's really needed them to become overpowered(particularly dominators, and maybe some powersets on different AT's, but there were a good number of powersets that were very devastating in the right hands and very powerful defensively to, you'd just need to allocate the slots differently if you were using SO's).

Was the incarnate system needed for everything else?  No, not at all.

Edit: Even the boosts from IO boosters were incredibly slight.  At best, one could get slightly more endurance cost reduction, but with ED mechanics, anything else generally when it came to IO's was already soft-capped.

But buying IOs was a short cut, you could earn them all in the game regardless. Incarnate content was only paid for if you didn't have a sub, so that's not really "pay 2 win" since it was available to the player base at large if you had a sub.  The idea that it was "pay 2 win" is silly, it was much closer to "pay to have a short cut to certain IOs"  and that was about it.  And the game was well balanced enough that none of the IOs, even if you bought them, were going to break the game and make it uber easy for you just from slotting a few of those things, even the Ultra Rares wouldn't make you godly, you still had to know enough about the game to slot them right and get the best use out of them.

I get that some people didn't like the "freedom" upgrade and everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I just don't get the argument that the game became "pay 2 win". 

[LaughingAlex]

But buying IOs was a short cut, you could earn them all in the game regardless. Incarnate content was only paid for if you didn't have a sub, so that's not really "pay 2 win" since it was available to the player base at large if you had a sub.  The idea that it was "pay 2 win" is silly, it was much closer to "pay to have a short cut to certain IOs"  and that was about it.  And the game was well balanced enough that none of the IOs, even if you bought them, were going to break the game and make it uber easy for you just from slotting a few of those things, even the Ultra Rares wouldn't make you godly, you still had to know enough about the game to slot them right and get the best use out of them.

I get that some people didn't like the "freedom" upgrade and everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I just don't get the argument that the game became "pay 2 win".

I was refering to the system being unavailable for pure free players outright.  You could earn them in game but couldn't use them without the invention system in the game to my knowledge.  There were three licenses you needed, each with a 2 dollars month fee, for IO's, auction house, and the invention system.

Edit: Note that I said you didn't need them at all to do really well with the right setup though.

Another Edit: They were a customization feature that was in the game before the game went free to play, go figure.

[kiario]

Are we there yet ;) Just kidding. Until then I recommend playing Marvel Heroes. Lots of extra goodies this anniversary weekend.

Till then, "simma lugnt" as we say in Sweden.

[ag88t88]

I was refering to the system being unavailable for pure free players outright.  You could earn them in game but couldn't use them without the invention system in the game to my knowledge.  There were three licenses you needed, each with a 2 dollars month fee, for IO's, auction house, and the invention system.

Edit: Note that I said you didn't need them at all to do really well with the right setup though.

Another Edit: They were a customization feature that was in the game before the game went free to play, go figure.

I see what you are saying and I didn't quite realize that you were talking about purely free players.   That being said, I am not entirely sure that I would consider that the best perspective to take on the subject of "pay 2 win" since the game was a subscription game that got changed to a hybrid very late in its life.

That being said, I still agree with that you were saying, neither the recipes nor the incarnate systems were crucial to "winning" in the game and players could do well without them.  Incarnate powers came with incarnate content, which was the only time they'd "required" and the IO system was an entire invention system to participate in, not just "ohh I have this IO I can cruise to level 50 on snooze." In both cases I think it's more about the systems and content than it would be about just having an "advantage" of some sort.   

[LaughingAlex]

Are we there yet ;) Just kidding. Until then I recommend playing Marvel Heroes. Lots of extra goodies this anniversary weekend.

Till then, "simma lugnt" as we say in Sweden.

Mostly playing Skyrim, and sometimes champions online.  Yeah, still play the later game of those two, just not anywhere near as often as Skyrim.  Still getting alot out of skyrim redone, surprisingly, as I decided to make a Khajiit....the guy just rips everything apart as Skyre makes unarmed a viable style of play thats, worringly overpowered.  Also starting to use the Seasons of Skyrim Project, plan to install the winter edition soon.  Winter edition in summer, funny.  But then, I am playing a high elf with the summer edition to....

[kiario]

I have been thinking about if the game goes  live again, is there a possibility for EU servers?
Since I started playing the game back in July 2004 there were no EU servers and I actually continued playing in Pinnacle when the EU servers came.

I had a ping of 200 approx. It was a noticably little delay when activating powers. Testing the EU server there was no dealy.
Pinnacle was east coast so I was perfectly fine with that. However, I wonder where the new servers would be located if the game is rereleased?

West coast servers would mean more latency for EU. I guess it should be OK if the delay is not too big. But with a new company there is perhaps the risk of limited bandwidth.

[Minotaur]

I was refering to the system being unavailable for pure free players outright.  You could earn them in game but couldn't use them without the invention system in the game to my knowledge.  There were three licenses you needed, each with a 2 dollars month fee, for IO's, auction house, and the invention system.

Edit: Note that I said you didn't need them at all to do really well with the right setup though.

Another Edit: They were a customization feature that was in the game before the game went free to play, go figure.

As a new free player yes, I could have played completely free at the time the option became available and had all those things due to veteran time.

[blue storm]

I -for one- will wait for as long as I have to get the game back in one form or another. If that form can be I23+ with my characters back. then I will be very, very happy !

Kudos to the initiative, may it succeed !

[Felderburg]

If the new team wants to see money coming in right away I'd rather see them offer us something like a rebirth cape ($50)or something along those lines when they launch the game. How about a selling us a limited edition t shirt for $50 or a$100(numbered) I'd rather do that than pay for my data.  I'm sure other have better ideas. Just off the top of my head.

I would buy a Freem! shirt immediately! I somehow missed them at ComiCon, and have regretted being oblivious ever since.

My big issue, not that it will stop me from subbing up again, is that I bought EVERY single booster pack and powerset that they released. Heck, I never did get a chance to actually make a water blaster, but I bought the power on day one. If we get the game back, I hope that I don't have to repurchase all of those add ons. Especially if the relaunch is to just hold us over for CoH2.

Assuming that account info is lost, my preferred plan would be to release as much of the limited edition stuff as possible for free, either to new characters right off the bat, or as very early veteran type rewards, or even possibly as rewards to people who join the beta (that I assume will happen to make sure the game runs). That way, old COH players don't have to pay to get that sort of stuff back, and the new devs can work on developing other cool new stuff to sell / reward players with.

The Pay to Win argument IMO is silly..

I paid.. Ive yet to WIN anything..

So IMO the whole Pay2Win thing was silly.. when I paid.. they game made money.. and they developed and released more content.. so in that respect.. YES.. I won..

I never thought about p2w in that way. The problem is for games like, for example, Star Trek Online, where items sold in the store for PvE and happy fun times slaughtering thousands of NPCs get into PvP, and are essentially "I win" buttons. So you can literally "pay to win" at PvP matches. Which is an argument for splitting PvE and PvP powers. It also leads to an artificial division between PvE and PvP players, who are constantly arguing over the power levels of items. Devs release a paid item into the store. PvE people buy it, and enjoy because it's fun. PvP people buy, and become unstoppable, leading for calls that it be "nerfed" - which in reality means brought down to a level where it's fair for people to use in PvP without being an automatic "I win". PvE players get angry at PvP players, since they pushed for a nerf to their shiny new item. Etc.

[Codewalker]

When I talk about "Pay 2 Win", I'm not talking about free-to-play or IOs or Incarnate powers. I'm talking about things that a paying subscriber could only get by paying more on top of their subscription and would put them at an advantage when compared to someone who didn't.

Off the top of my head:

• Enhancement Boosters. Can only be bought in the store or via super pack. Whoever came up with them is just plain bad at math. They're ridiculously overpowered and using them can completely change a build due to how much more efficiently you can slot it.
  
  
• Team Transporter. Almost completely eliminated travel time, making some taskforces completable in as much as 33% less time (maybe even 50% for something like Dr. Q) than people without them. That translates directly to an increased rate of earning rewards.
  
  
• Buyable travel powers that free up a slot in your build for a combat power. Hope you didn't have a character concept or anything, but feel free to gimp yourself if you do.
  
  
• XP Boosters. Besides the obvious application of leveling faster, also boosted influence gains for farming/TFing at level 50, giving people who had them an advantage at bidding for IOs and other shiny things.
  
  
• Though they weren't very popular outside of super packs due to the price point, team inspirations were really, really brokenly good. Might as well put some I win buttons in the package.
  
  
• ATOs at first, though they eventually relented and made these buyable with Reward Merits. The procs and special ATOs are game changing for some archetypes.
  
  
• In I23, store-bought enhancements often had better proc rates than the crafted versions. Fortunately, this was changing in I24.
  
  
• I'd put some of the vet rewards in this category, since post-freedom you could buy your way into them. Return to Battle is a very big one. There was a second self-rez from the holiday pack that fortunately never made it live, because it would have been just plain ridiculous to have 2.
  
  
• There are indications in the client files that they might have been about to start selling accolade powers (Atlas Medallion, Task Force Commander, Portal Jockey, etc. etc) in the store as well. Can't say for certain if that would have happened, but the pieces were definitely in place for it to.
  
  
• I can't think of a team I was on in the last year of the game where everyone didn't have a mystic fortune buff and many people had secondary mutation.

Some of those could eventually be acquired with the point stipend if you were patient enough, except that you couldn't really because the game closed before there had been enough time to get them all that way. Even then, it's an additional metagame step that you had to do in order to keep up with people who bought the items from the store.

Even things like inventory increases that are arguably strictly a convenience thing make a big difference.

Regardless of what this group does, when there are private servers that unlock all the microtransaction stuff for everybody, hop on one and try it out. The haves were playing a completely different game than the have-nots. I say that as a 'have' who bought almost everything because I wanted to support the studio even if I didn't fully agree with their direction.

[mrultimate]

One change on store bought items I think would be good would be the ability to gift them to anyone you wish.

[MWRuger]

You're not wrong Codewalker in particular but I'm not sure you're right in a general sense

I was a paid sub and I bought a ton of stuff. Just the reward merits from the superpacks coudl really skew things. No need to do task forces to get reward merits when you can easily get hundreds by buying super packs.

But as counterpoint, unless it is PvP centric, does it matter if people who spent money were playing a different game from those who didn't?


As someone who played odd hours and often didn't team, for me the XP boosters leveled the field a little.

Certainly making it too easy to level and reach endgame could reduce the amount of time that someone casual is to play, but with Freedom, that wasn't issue anymore since they didn't have to sub. Travel time is a similar thing to me. When you have to pay to sub you want leveling and getting around to take a while so that people are encouraged to stay subscribed longer.

Vet badges were just such an effort to tempt people into staying subscribe to get the rewards. You can just as easily argue that this created two seperate class of players, the one's who played forever and constantly had powers no new player could ever get and newbies who could just look and know that it would be YEARS before they could get them. At least with the pay store, anyone who wanted them bad enough could get them. This was incredibly handy for my second account.

Someone will always find a way to abuse any system that is put into place, but who do you design for? Is it the tiny percentage that exploit every advantage for the general player who just wants to play and is willing to pay for the priviledge.

[Scendera]

i was a big fan of the Freedom model as well. i subbed from May '04 to shutdown, but i saw the most new shinies for me to play with after Freedom launched. The few temp powers that could almost be pay-to-win i generally hoarded or only used for my own amusement. Like summoning signature heroes just to have them wander around AP.

I know this won't make me popular, but I was a close to pure free player. My Khelds were the only money I'd spent. Not out of some dickish desire to screw the company, but because I'm broke as a joke. I had something like 10 accounts for the character slots.

If money gets better, I'm likely to throw in when I can and buy up things like ATs and character slots.

If it comes back as pure sub...well, that'll make for some tough choices that come down to "When I can, and at least it's back for others".

Still getting alot out of skyrim redone, surprisingly, as I decided to make a Khajiit....the guy just rips everything apart as Skyre makes unarmed a viable style of play thats, worringly overpowered. 

That's a Khajiit thing. Check out your racial...it's a claw powered boost to melee.

[Harpospoke]

And for the love of God.  Can I have an offline server for the 'just in case' scenario. 

I don't want to lose this game again.

Azrael.

Yeah....that thought has popped into my head from time to time as well.   Wouldn't hurt to plan for a "just in case".

[Harpospoke]

So IMO the whole Pay2Win thing was silly.. when I paid.. they game made money.. and they developed and released more content.. so in that respect.. YES.. I won..

That's a great way to look at it.  :)

[Harpospoke]

When I talk about "Pay 2 Win", I'm not talking about free-to-play or IOs or Incarnate powers. I'm talking about things that a paying subscriber could only get by paying more on top of their subscription and would put them at an advantage when compared to someone who didn't.

Off the top of my head:

• Enhancement Boosters. Can only be bought in the store or via super pack. Whoever came up with them is just plain bad at math. They're ridiculously overpowered and using them can completely change a build due to how much more efficiently you can slot it.
  
  
• Team Transporter. Almost completely eliminated travel time, making some taskforces completable in as much as 33% less time (maybe even 50% for something like Dr. Q) than people without them. That translates directly to an increased rate of earning rewards.
  
  
• Buyable travel powers that free up a slot in your build for a combat power. Hope you didn't have a character concept or anything, but feel free to gimp yourself if you do.
  
  
• XP Boosters. Besides the obvious application of leveling faster, also boosted influence gains for farming/TFing at level 50, giving people who had them an advantage at bidding for IOs and other shiny things.
  
  
• Though they weren't very popular outside of super packs due to the price point, team inspirations were really, really brokenly good. Might as well put some I win buttons in the package.
  
  
• ATOs at first, though they eventually relented and made these buyable with Reward Merits. The procs and special ATOs are game changing for some archetypes.
  
  
• In I23, store-bought enhancements often had better proc rates than the crafted versions. Fortunately, this was changing in I24.
  
  
• I'd put some of the vet rewards in this category, since post-freedom you could buy your way into them. Return to Battle is a very big one. There was a second self-rez from the holiday pack that fortunately never made it live, because it would have been just plain ridiculous to have 2.
  
  
• There are indications in the client files that they might have been about to start selling accolade powers (Atlas Medallion, Task Force Commander, Portal Jockey, etc. etc) in the store as well. Can't say for certain if that would have happened, but the pieces were definitely in place for it to.
  
  
• I can't think of a team I was on in the last year of the game where everyone didn't have a mystic fortune buff and many people had secondary mutation.

Some of those could eventually be acquired with the point stipend if you were patient enough, except that you couldn't really because the game closed before there had been enough time to get them all that way. Even then, it's an additional metagame step that you had to do in order to keep up with people who bought the items from the store.

Even things like inventory increases that are arguably strictly a convenience thing make a big difference.

Regardless of what this group does, when there are private servers that unlock all the microtransaction stuff for everybody, hop on one and try it out. The haves were playing a completely different game than the have-nots. I say that as a 'have' who bought almost everything because I wanted to support the studio even if I didn't fully agree with their direction.

Some of that stuff I had and some I didn't. (vet rewards took care of a lot of it)   I have to admit I never noticed being behind other players because of not having certain things.   Maybe I didn't pay close enough attention.  (a real possibility)   But I would think if it was dramatic, I couldn't help noticing.

[Goddangit]

And for the love of God.  Can I have an offline server for the 'just in case' scenario. 

I don't want to lose this game again.

Azrael.

Hear, Hear!  This!  Very VERY much THIS!  I will never feel my characters or the entire city are really safe again until this happens.

[Golden Girl]

Hear, Hear!  This!  Very VERY much THIS!  I will never feel my characters or the entire city are really safe again until this happens.

I think that an off-line version is pretty unlikely - but another benefit of getting the game back would be that it'd be a lot easier for the emulator/reverse engineering projects to harvest data as a backup for another shutdown.

[LaughingAlex]

When I talk about "Pay 2 Win", I'm not talking about free-to-play or IOs or Incarnate powers. I'm talking about things that a paying subscriber could only get by paying more on top of their subscription and would put them at an advantage when compared to someone who didn't.

Off the top of my head:

• Enhancement Boosters. Can only be bought in the store or via super pack. Whoever came up with them is just plain bad at math. They're ridiculously overpowered and using them can completely change a build due to how much more efficiently you can slot it.
  
  
• Team Transporter. Almost completely eliminated travel time, making some taskforces completable in as much as 33% less time (maybe even 50% for something like Dr. Q) than people without them. That translates directly to an increased rate of earning rewards.
  
  
• Buyable travel powers that free up a slot in your build for a combat power. Hope you didn't have a character concept or anything, but feel free to gimp yourself if you do.
  
  
• XP Boosters. Besides the obvious application of leveling faster, also boosted influence gains for farming/TFing at level 50, giving people who had them an advantage at bidding for IOs and other shiny things.
  
  
• Though they weren't very popular outside of super packs due to the price point, team inspirations were really, really brokenly good. Might as well put some I win buttons in the package.
  
  
• ATOs at first, though they eventually relented and made these buyable with Reward Merits. The procs and special ATOs are game changing for some archetypes.
  
  
• In I23, store-bought enhancements often had better proc rates than the crafted versions. Fortunately, this was changing in I24.
  
  
• I'd put some of the vet rewards in this category, since post-freedom you could buy your way into them. Return to Battle is a very big one. There was a second self-rez from the holiday pack that fortunately never made it live, because it would have been just plain ridiculous to have 2.
  
  
• There are indications in the client files that they might have been about to start selling accolade powers (Atlas Medallion, Task Force Commander, Portal Jockey, etc. etc) in the store as well. Can't say for certain if that would have happened, but the pieces were definitely in place for it to.
  
  
• I can't think of a team I was on in the last year of the game where everyone didn't have a mystic fortune buff and many people had secondary mutation.

Some of those could eventually be acquired with the point stipend if you were patient enough, except that you couldn't really because the game closed before there had been enough time to get them all that way. Even then, it's an additional metagame step that you had to do in order to keep up with people who bought the items from the store.

Even things like inventory increases that are arguably strictly a convenience thing make a big difference.

Regardless of what this group does, when there are private servers that unlock all the microtransaction stuff for everybody, hop on one and try it out. The haves were playing a completely different game than the have-nots. I say that as a 'have' who bought almost everything because I wanted to support the studio even if I didn't fully agree with their direction.

I'll say this about enhancement boosters.  You weren't going to get a big difference out of them due to things like ED.  At the most you'd get a small boost in accuracy/endurance reduction, the former of those two being nearly useless, since if you have IO's to begin with, your likely to have 30-40% extra accuracy on top of like 45-50% accuracy anyways.  The endurance reduction would also be very, very slight.  If you were going for recharge, any powers you were doing that with were already at the ED soft cap, so that .1% or so would be very pitiful at best.  At best, your looking at like 1 slot saved, not a big deal(unless you have that extreme black and white min max view which, even as a min maxer, I think is pretty silly).

The travel powers thing, that was in the game even before freedom, but even then what are you going to do with that travel power slot?  Did you know people had made travel-less characters before?  They used hurdle with like 1 or two extra jumping slots in it.  Hurdle was fast as heck.  The arguement is like the whole inherent fitness allowing alot more powers, many felt that the new power slots they had weren't actually that useful.  Indeed you need to slot that extra power, if you don't have the slots to really do much with it, then it's likely hurting your more than helping you.  No power can be adequetly slotted late game with just 4 enhancements.  If your using SO's, it'll be horribly underpowered(you need 5, in a few cases you need SIX), if your using IO's you need 5 minimum for +recharge, SIX for +defense IOs.

XP boosters were not necessary I leveled up fast without em on my characters.  Just a convenience thing.  This is coming from a have not at the time.

The veteran rewards being accessed in the market was a reward for spending money on CoX.  I actually felt bad for people just starting as someone who had three years worth of vet badges for quite a few reasons.

The Store bought enhancements, I agree but that was likely an oversight when they were originally entered into the game.

And Secondary mutation, seriously?  I almost forgot I had that and almost never used it, I had it because I loved the armor sets!  I mean it's as if your looking at the most SLIGHT of bonuses as total game breakers when the extent of those bonuses are so small that I don't even see the difference AS A MIN MAXER MYSELF THAT HAS MADE SOME CHARACTERS OVERPOWERED MYSELF.

Oh yeah, forgot to ,mention about influence boosters.  Influence drop rates were USELESS for trading purposes.  I didn't get 99.999% of my influence from influence drop rates even at 50.  I got it from selling purples on the auction that dropped.  So boosting that was a pretty futile thing.  If I recall people used windfall for the boost to drop rates for other things, like recipies that you needed to sell things.  Recipe drop rates being increased in that way was actually GOOD for the in game economy as more recipe's= more on the market = lower prices for everyone.  I always said using the AE for drops was bad for a reason, as it simply gave to much influence to quickly and to easily as that drove prices up since more influence in the market but less supply of things bought with it meant far higher prices.

The only thing I agree with were team inspirations :/ for the most part, which I felt was a silly thing to have there.  As for the accolades, I do think earning them was something everyone would have done anyways as the badges were actually quite easy to get.  I mean you could destroy 100-200 werewolves and vampyre pretty quickly in the right zone at 50 and the level you got them didn't matter anymore.

Edit: Do note, I don't disagree with everything, just felt there were some oversights in your arguement here.  The extra power slot one was a big one since, well, besides using that extra power you still needed to slot it :/.