New efforts!

[Thunder Glove]

This topic always erupts while I'm sleeping.

So have more REM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7_xzAWLv-g

[NinjaWeazel]

Wasn't he that ranger guy on Babylon 5?   ;)

"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

[Des_Tructive]

With all the "Why is NC nervous" questions, I kinda looked back at the events around shutdown, and tried to look at it from a different perspective.

I'm not with NC, or "In the know." So this is all guesswork, based on common sense and having run and worked in small businesses. A lot of the noise SaveCoH made, could be considered harmful by the company involved with the shutdown:

- E-Mail campaigns, even with "nice" content like "Please reconsider closing down our game.", are still hundreds or thousands of e-mails hitting a mailserver.
- Snail-mail campaigns do the same: They bog up the inbox, with the additional drawback of needing to be opened and sorted manually.
- Sending them packages is even worse. They most likely got delivered, and, depending on how they were sent, required someone to sign tons of receipts.
- Let's not forget that all the noise got numerous journalists, bloggers, etc. involved, who were all interested in getting "official" statements from NC.
- Celebrities weighing in just increased the public interest and noise.

According to wiki, NC has ~3k employees. We know NC laid off/redistributed the main team responsible for anything CoX. I'd don't know the numbers, but I'm guessing there weren't more than ten or twenty people involved with CoX in the main offices at that time.

I don't know how NC is structured, but it's totally imaginable that those few people aren't in the main office, where all the mail, enquiries and packets were being sent to. If I remember correctly, most of the stuff was adressed to the CEO directly. Let's just assume that we're talking about 5k emails with various topics, 2k phone calls, 1k snail mails and 500 packages.

Damn, that's a ton of logistics involved in sorting out that mess. That costs time, money, and a lot of nerves. Even though the general content from these campaigns was more of a friendly, inquisitive nature, it's still massive spam. And we still haven't considered feedback on social media outlets like Facebook. I'm assuming their Facebook team was completely locked up due to having to filter and reply to it all. Heck, even today, you can open up the comments section on the NC page site and find a CoH themed response in almost every post they make.

And that was while we were still being friendly. Let's not get in to the hate mails, threats, and all the other stuff. And let's not forget that some people have a knack for finding things out. Let's say, finding out private adresses and phone numbers. It's not a large step from an overzealous campaign turning in to Anonymous level harassment.

I, for one, can imagine the huge amount of stress that caused, and can also image a lot of this stress was passed off to PR and the small group of people responsible for CoX. Something of the line of the boss, or any other people affected by it, calling them up and pestering them to stop the mess, somehow.

So yes, I can easily imagine NC being extremely anxious about hearing the CoX community is getting excited again.

Ask yourself what you would do, if you were sitting at a bargaining table with one of the people responsible for that mess.

Again, I'm stressing that I don't know anything about what really went down, and i could be wildly wrong.

But I, for one will be extremely quiet towards NCSoft until this Trial succeeds, and I have my fingers on my epic loot...
...and then, I'll just as silently buy a random NCSoft game, unsubscribe it after a month, and add a "I only played this to thank you for bringing my City back." to the questionaire.

[Fridgy Daiere]

I like your "thank you" to NCSoft.

This is a very well-articulated possible perspective.  Perhaps this should be posted on offending Facebook pages?

[Ironwolf]

I did explain here that after looking through the various information - NCSoft did not close CoH due to malice.

It was exactly what they said - a business decision. It was done to free up resources to merge Nexon - 2 multi-billion dollar companies. CoH was just caught it the crosshairs as the game making the least amount of money for the company at the time. It should say something about the company that they have listened to all offers. They may not make it through to the man who finally decides - but they listen.

We caused a lot of pressure on the first sale effort and that pressure hurt the negotiations. The team now is saying this is what NCSoft does not want to happen again. It doesn't matter whether we agree or not - NCSoft holds all the cards. For them doing nothing is the easiest thing. I get the whole freedom of speech thing and love that freedom. I guess ask yourself, is having your say worth them not dealing with us as a community again?

[Triplash]

Mods've got your back.

http://ftbwiki.org/Cooked_Meat_Ingot

Ha! That's awesome!  :D

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

This topic always erupts while I'm sleeping.

So have more REM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7_xzAWLv-g

Wasn't it you who was the one having R.E.M.?

Anyway, one of the things i'd always hoped to see was Gravity Control getting a power, let's say Crushing field, changed so that used the ForceMove command to pull all mobs within its radius together. i know, Cottage Rule and all that, but i always wanted a power that worked like a massive gravity field and dragged enemies towards a focal point. Even though it would be more for aesthetics than a change in function it would be a cool looking addition to Wormhole's animation to see the mobs get dragged into the center of the wormhole before being launched.

I did explain here that after looking through the various information - NCSoft did not close CoH due to malice.

It was exactly what they said - a business decision. It was done to free up resources to merge Nexon - 2 multi-billion dollar companies. CoH was just caught it the crosshairs as the game making the least amount of money for the company at the time. It should say something about the company that they have listened to all offers. They may not make it through to the man who finally decides - but they listen.

We caused a lot of pressure on the first sale effort and that pressure hurt the negotiations. The team now is saying this is what NCSoft does not want to happen again. It doesn't matter whether we agree or not - NCSoft holds all the cards. For them doing nothing is the easiest thing. I get the whole freedom of speach thing and love that freedom. I guess ask yourself, is having your say worth them not dealing with us as a community again?

Yeah, if i see any others slagging NCsoft about CoH i'll try to direct them to this post. That said, i don't exactly make a point of actively reading most groups. If they happen to show up in my feed when i'm looking at Facebook i might see the posts, but otherwise i miss most of the chatter.

[r00tb0ySlim]

It should say something about the company that they have listened to all offers. They may not make it through to the man who finally decides - but they listen.

With the above being said and the below previous post #2729 update, it appears that this effort has made it through to the man who finally decides.  We all want that "final guy" to sign  ;D

UPDATE

Hold on a bit - looks like for once I read a bit too much into the email!
It is in the hands of the final guy but they are still working to get the best deal with the most stuff in it - for the best price. I thought it was at the peak - my fault entirely - but it is at the final stage and now the serious deal making is on and we are 1 signature away again.

[Von Krieger]

Well using words like "hugbox" makes me think of him in a silly light considering it's a pretty absurd term i haven't heard or seen before. "Carebear" i've heard of, but not "hugbox". Maybe it's a MOBA or FPS term? Regardless it's goofy and silly and pointless in a way that "carebear" wishes it could be. "Hugbox. Hugbox. Hugbox. Hugbox. Hugbox." It gets sillier, and possibly vaguely inappropriate, the more i use it.

No, it's a generally insulting term. A hugbox is a device used to calm hypersensitive people via simulating a hug-like pressure. Usually it's used to treat SEVERELY autistic individuals. And the usage has leaked into internet terminology as another way to say retarded basically.

[steveharp]

With all the "Why is NC nervous" questions, I kinda looked back at the events around shutdown, and tried to look at it from a different perspective.

I'm not with NC, or "In the know." So this is all guesswork, based on common sense and having run and worked in small businesses. A lot of the noise SaveCoH made, could be considered harmful by the company involved with the shutdown:

- E-Mail campaigns, even with "nice" content like "Please reconsider closing down our game.", are still hundreds or thousands of e-mails hitting a mailserver.
- Snail-mail campaigns do the same: They bog up the inbox, with the additional drawback of needing to be opened and sorted manually.
- Sending them packages is even worse. They most likely got delivered, and, depending on how they were sent, required someone to sign tons of receipts.
- Let's not forget that all the noise got numerous journalists, bloggers, etc. involved, who were all interested in getting "official" statements from NC.
- Celebrities weighing in just increased the public interest and noise.

According to wiki, NC has ~3k employees. We know NC laid off/redistributed the main team responsible for anything CoX. I'd don't know the numbers, but I'm guessing there weren't more than ten or twenty people involved with CoX in the main offices at that time.

I don't know how NC is structured, but it's totally imaginable that those few people aren't in the main office, where all the mail, enquiries and packets were being sent to. If I remember correctly, most of the stuff was adressed to the CEO directly. Let's just assume that we're talking about 5k emails with various topics, 2k phone calls, 1k snail mails and 500 packages.

Damn, that's a ton of logistics involved in sorting out that mess. That costs time, money, and a lot of nerves. Even though the general content from these campaigns was more of a friendly, inquisitive nature, it's still massive spam. And we still haven't considered feedback on social media outlets like Facebook. I'm assuming their Facebook team was completely locked up due to having to filter and reply to it all. Heck, even today, you can open up the comments section on the NC page site and find a CoH themed response in almost every post they make.

And that was while we were still being friendly. Let's not get in to the hate mails, threats, and all the other stuff. And let's not forget that some people have a knack for finding things out. Let's say, finding out private adresses and phone numbers. It's not a large step from an overzealous campaign turning in to Anonymous level harassment.

I, for one, can imagine the huge amount of stress that caused, and can also image a lot of this stress was passed off to PR and the small group of people responsible for CoX. Something of the line of the boss, or any other people affected by it, calling them up and pestering them to stop the mess, somehow.

So yes, I can easily imagine NC being extremely anxious about hearing the CoX community is getting excited again.

Ask yourself what you would do, if you were sitting at a bargaining table with one of the people responsible for that mess.

Again, I'm stressing that I don't know anything about what really went down, and i could be wildly wrong.

But I, for one will be extremely quiet towards NCSoft until this Trial succeeds, and I have my fingers on my epic loot...
...and then, I'll just as silently buy a random NCSoft game, unsubscribe it after a month, and add a "I only played this to thank you for bringing my City back." to the questionaire.

I need to reply to this. Ncsoft brought all that on themselves, i would be gutted if this fell through because of a little fan pressure but lets be realistic, if a company as big as nc gets gittery from some letters and emails it just shows how (edit the nasty) the people running that company are. I get why people are all of a sudden giving nc some slack....you want the game back, so do I but let us not forget the reason we are in this situation, them, and sale or no sale they are not gonna be redeemed.....  ever!

[Davy]

I need to reply to this. Ncsoft brought all that on themselves, i would be gutted if this fell through because of a little fan pressure but lets be realistic, if a company as big as nc gets gittery from some letters and emails it just shows how weak, pathetic and incompetent the people running that company are. I get why people are all of a sudden giving nc some slack....you want the game back, so do I but let us not forget the reason we are in this situation, them, and sale or no sale they are not gonna be redeemed.....  ever!

This sort of thing isn't helping.

[Wyrm]

This sort of thing isn't helping.

+1

Do I think the President and CEO of NCSoft are reading this thread?  No.

Do I think that there might be an entry-level employee assigned to monitor communications relating to NCSoft who provides "digest" updates to be used in gauging the likely success/failure/impact of a sale of the property to a new studio?

I'm not counting that out.  Not at all.

[kierthos]

Concerning Gravity Control: That was a powerset that I had a blind spot on. By that, I mean, I could never see a way to make a character who had it, that wasn't a "Technology" or "Science" origin. I just could not wrap my head around a way to have it on a "Magic" origin character, for example.

And it was almost the reverse with Earth Control. I had the devil's own time trying to come up with a character that had Earth Control that wasn't a "Magic" origin character.

[GN2]

No, it's a generally insulting term. A hugbox is a device used to calm hypersensitive people via simulating a hug-like pressure. Usually it's used to treat SEVERELY autistic individuals. And the usage has leaked into internet terminology as another way to say retarded basically.

"Hugbox" is a pretty common internet term now days, and it is used to refer to an environment of overbearing and excessive positivity, to the point where even the most benign and constructive forms of criticism are shouted down and ignored as being things said by "haters". 

It's my observation about how the majority of the CoX community operated for most of the game's lifespan, and I still believe it's an accurate one. Passive-agressive comments like the one you made in reply to my earlier post are a pretty common response, as well as taking personal offense at broad statements.

You can even see some of that attitude in this thread, with people talking about how the nasty elitists were keeping them down by critiquing their builds. I witnessed a lot of this, and 8 times out of 10, the supposed elitists were genuinely trying to help, and often offering very minor suggestions that would have had little to no impact on the "theme" of the character.

To be fair, the opposite extreme also existed (My favorite was the people who insisted on only taking +3s to BAF and such for casual runs), but it was always quite rare compared to the hostility displayed should you dare to say anything critical about Paragon, someone's character, or the game in general.

Concerning Gravity Control: That was a powerset that I had a blind spot on. By that, I mean, I could never see a way to make a character who had it, that wasn't a "Technology" or "Science" origin. I just could not wrap my head around a way to have it on a "Magic" origin character, for example.

And it was almost the reverse with Earth Control. I had the devil's own time trying to come up with a character that had Earth Control that wasn't a "Magic" origin character.

One of my deepest regrets about the game shutting down is I never got to really make a good Gravity Control character. It was one of my favorite sets thematically, however, for much of the game's lifespan it was generally pretty bad to play due to various issues (Mainly the atrocious animation times) , and after it got fixed I just never got around to making one.

[Baaleos]

Concerning Gravity Control: That was a powerset that I had a blind spot on. By that, I mean, I could never see a way to make a character who had it, that wasn't a "Technology" or "Science" origin. I just could not wrap my head around a way to have it on a "Magic" origin character, for example.

And it was almost the reverse with Earth Control. I had the devil's own time trying to come up with a character that had Earth Control that wasn't a "Magic" origin character.

With exception to the Kheldian archtypes, I believe the idea was to take the powerset, and then imagine you having some sort of base power, that you just manipulate to perform the effect you are using when attacking.

Eg: It may be called Gravity Control, but you could also imagine it being a telekinesis type power too, or space time manipulation.
Using that idea, you end up with more unique back stories to heroes/villains, instead of 4,000 characters all with the same gravity control power.

Same for Ice and Fire powers:
An Ice blaster might slow molecules to create cold, or actually absorb heat to gain power and the side effect is the ice.
Fire blaster might super charge particles to make heat, or conjure it from an outer dimension.

Gravity Control for me was where my character was able to bend the laws of nature with his mind, increasing the mass of the reality around him, creating walls of force.
I get what your saying though, its hard to imagine a magical amulet that would grant gravity control specifically - cause popular shows and games just havent done that yet.

But if you use your secondary powerset, you can then try to use it to support the reason for having gravity control.

Energy Assault - was my fav secondary for Gravity Dominator
Controlling energy, just seems to go hand in hand with controlling gravity.

One of my deepest regrets about the game shutting down is I never got to really make a good Gravity Control character. It was one of my favorite sets thematically, however, for much of the game's lifespan it was generally pretty bad to play due to various issues (Mainly the atrocious animation times) , and after it got fixed I just never got around to making one.

Gravity control was very good for PVP.
Siren's Call -> Top of skycraper, see a person flying? Wormhole them, they fall to earth, lose 80% of their health, confused/disoriented, and then you finish them off.
Great for pulling them out of bases too.

[Von Krieger]

Was not aware that the use of the term hugbox had grown that so bloody popular. :P

And my comment was meant more that "If you're trying to endear yourself to a community, insinuating that they're a bunch of socially inept mental deficients is not the way to go about it."

[kierthos]

With exception to the Kheldian archtypes, I believe the idea was to take the powerset, and then imagine you having some sort of base power, that you just manipulate to perform the effect you are using when attacking.

That was my problem. I couldn't imagine a way for it to be a "Magic" powerset. (Sometimes, I'm not that imaginative.)

[Baaleos]

I've skimmed about 30-40 pages last night and today, and it seems that there is some issues regarding Facebook posts?

Is it specifically mis-information that is being spread on Facebook that is the issue, or the fact that it is being shared on Facebook at all?


If it is the latter, my argument would be that once the news is out on any website, its in the public domain - you cannot ask people in good faith to keep it to themselves while allowing people to discuss it in a publicly visible location - eg: this site.

[Baaleos]

That was my problem. I couldn't imagine a way for it to be a "Magic" powerset. (Sometimes, I'm not that imaginative.)

I dunno about that.
I've often done some pen and paper / story telling roleplaying, and have often tried to imagine modern day settings where God's could exist.
Lets be honest- who wouldnt want to be a god in todays world.

I've imagined scenarios where I had god like powers, and I could actually lift an entire ocean of water with my mind (gravity control) and make it swirl around me into a large sphere, and make it hover over a bustling city.
Its gravity control, but im able to do it because im a God. Not using technology.

Then the story progresses and the military start scanning the sphere, sending dive teams in to investigate the centre of the sphere, and then they find me!!!
<TBC>

[GN2]

That was my problem. I couldn't imagine a way for it to be a "Magic" powerset. (Sometimes, I'm not that imaginative.)

"My character is a [Wizard/witch/warlock/sorcerer/magus/whatever you prefer]. The school(s) of magic they specialize in are [powerset(s)]."

Though I understand if you were having trouble because you wanted something a bit more meaningful then that.