f13.net

Coming to your CoX this summer! (http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/archives/2008/04/bringing_option.html)

I wondered when they would get around to this. Most of the time I don't even notice the exisiting billboards but there are a few that draw my attention (one looks like it could be a Cirque de soleil ad and another is for a lawyer) and I always thought a real ad in their place would have the same visual effect, unlike in some games like PlanetSide.

And I am going to be paying a $15 sub? fuck that.

If it adds new and interesting content, bring on the Nike ads!

I *hate* ads but as long as I have the option to turn them off they can do whatever they want.  I'll just flip the switch and go about my business.

According to the article that was linked in the OP, players can opt out.

I hope the ads are consistent with the current fake in-game ads, graphically speaking.

If they're too loud they'll be distracting.

Isn't the point of good advertising to be distracting?  They want you to see them, else they have no reason to be there.

My guess is that they are more focused toward the trial accounts if players can opt out.  Perhaps there is a free-to-play option on the horizon?

The point of good advertising is to get people to buy the product. This means you don't want the players to opt-out. I can't speak for anyone else, but a bright, glowing, attention-grabbing ad will just annoy me. If I get annoyed enough, I might just opt-out. Annoyance can also affect one's thought process when deciding whether to stay subscribed to a game.

The ads should look like they belong in the game world. If the ad-makers are really smart, the billboards and signs will continue to look banged-up in places like King's Row.

The ads need to blend in.  I've checked out every billboard in game I've come across, and frequently enough look at them again just because I liked how they were done.  I would respect ads that 'get' the game world and enliven it.

It would be nice if there was a discount option for leaving the ads on.  Take the ads and get $5 off your subscription.  Even for $2 I would probably do it, and if they make that large a difference to the functionality of the team, they can probably afford giving their players the additional option.

I prefer to see it as a case where the devs are getting extra development money without having to raise subs on a small-to-moderate sized player base. Thus far NC^2 have said all the right things to make me think they want this arrangement to work right rather than just work.

I'm frankly offended by their assertion that this is so they can afford to add features, and therefore it's really in the players' interests that they do this.

Codswallop. You're already getting my $15 a month to pay for new features.

If they really need the money, perhaps they could take a page from indie board gaming instead of pimping out my eyeballs. Players want a feature? They should pledge money to pay for it. When pledges reach the break-even point in dev costs, they're collected and development begins.

But maybe I've lived too long in Canada. Obviously cutthroat capitalism is the only viable system. *grumble*

Actually I believe them when they say that. The game was basically on "maintenance mode" for the longest time thanks to Cryptic cutting back the staff after CoV was released and not particuarly caring about the game (they were focusing on MO). Yes they were making regular Issue updates but a lot of stuff players and the devs themselves wanted to see implemented weren't because the bigwigs at Cryptic said no and weren't giving the few devs still working on the game the resources they needed.

NCsoft clearly believes they can revitalize the game, otherwise they wouldn't have bought it from Cryptic. Unfortunately thanks to the  boondoggle that is Tabula Rasa NCsoft can't just dump a ton of money into CoH/CoV upfront (beyond what they paid for the rights) so they've been doing other stuff like paid server transfers and character renames, the Wedding pack, and now in-game ads to generate the extra money they need to beef up the staffing and resources so they can go beyond what Cryptic was doing with the game.

As for your idea about collecting money for a feature that's actually what the Wedding pack did. It sold well enough that they were able to hire people to help work on the powers with Castle which meant that powerset proliferation got moved into I12 instead of I13.

I'm not sure they think they can revitalize the game (in the sense that it can draw a significant number of new customers), but they clearly believe it can still profit if they work to retain their base.  The best way to retain that base is to continue adding content- new missions, archetypes, powers, zones, whatever.  This is like the later seasons of a TV show like Lost or Buffy before it goes into syndication- you're not going to draw new people, but you can keep the sizable audience that you already have.

I think it's a smart move.  There's no reason to abandon CoH yet.  There's life in the old gal yet.  Given enough of the right type of content they may draw back some of those who left for one reason or another.  Hell, I almost resubbed just recently and would've if I hadn't just sworn off MMOs until I meet certain goals.

The was already what Cryptic was doing with the game (the player base has been stable for a long time now). If NCsoft was happy with the status quo they wouldn't have bought out the Cryptic's portion of the rights unless Cryptic was dumping it for a song (which presumably they didn't).

I don't think so.  Cryptic had, as you said, put it on maintenance.  It felt sort of like early retirement.  A lot of stuff that players wanted to see just wasn't going to happen.  I think they were bleeding subs.  Hell, this period is when I finally canceled after being subbed since release, along with all my friends- who'd also been subbed from release.

I think NCSoft's goal is to breathe some life back into the game, work on getting to that content that everyone wants to see, maybe bring back some old players, but basically keep the ones they have happy.  As it was, that wasn't happening.

The subs they were losing were offset by the new players joining the game. If you go to the site which shall not be named or download NCsoft's quarterly earning reports you can see their subs have hovered around the 150K line since the beginning.

CoH/V has been bleeding subs, but generally pretty slowly. Last I remember they are down to 141 k players. CoH/V is a MMO with massive player retention rates.

However, make no mistake - NCsoft wants to see CoH/V grow. That's what the reinvestment is about. I12 isn't going to do it, but there's a lot of hype about exactly what I13, where the dev team should be up to about 30 people (from 15), is going to contain. NC^2 is laying the groundwork to take ChampO head on.

It will be interesting to see if it works. NCsoft has had a very rough ride recently - CoH/V needs to do well or else it is possibly faces seeing all its new toys being taken away.

This doesn't feel to me like a "last gasp attempt" for CoX.  This feels like someone has decided that subscriptions + RMT items + advertising could be a decent hybrid MMO business model with their current subscription base.  If they increase the pace of content a bit, they might ever start to show some sub growth.  On top of that, double xp weekends and/or special events + increased advertising rates during those times = $$

Honestly I think they would have been stupid to not inject some modest amount cash into the game at this point.  They have an passionate (remaining) fanbase that has shown it's willing to pay cash for costume pieces and isn't bitching excessively about in-game advertising - for the MMO's business, it seems like a very low-risk way to realize some profit on your investment and the fact that they now have three streams of revenue (the aforementioned subs, rmt items and advertising) makes it even more of a sure thing.

 :star:

I think they're managing this game in a very smart way.

It'll be interesting to see if CoH/V CAN draw players back / new players in.

I think there is a lot of potential to reinvest in existing games to try to open them up to a new audience - it's certainly much cheaper than building a whole new MMO to try and get players in.

We'll know in about a month whether or not the supposedly record concurrency numbers from the last 2x weekend are matched by an increase in subscriptions.

Hopefully these ads and being able to purchase extra slots will give them enough revenue to pay for content that actually makes the game more interesting.

What sort of content would that be, anyways?  More involved missions?  More art?

I don't know.  More stuff!  Tile sets, different sorts of quests, powers that are really different from each other, mini-games... STUFF!  Things that will make it last longer.  I love CoX and I've been subbed from the start with just a few cancellations but I can only play for a month, maybe a bit more, at a time because it gets to be the same thing, the same look, over and over.  It gets tedious, especially with the grind. Then I take a break, (usually without un-subbing, for several months at a time.  I'm looking forward to the next super hero MMO if there's going to be one. 

I've been subbed for 45 months now (will hit 48 in may), and I do it lightly that keeps me from burning out.  But to be fair I do that with WoW and other games, where I get on a streak, then quit for a while.
Ideas:
Fishing--let me go and fish off the dock or ponds and make it so I have to have a liscence and have game wardens come check and have it also pull up random stuff and random monsters sometimes or start quests.

VEHICLES!!!!--  I want a motorcyle, one-man helicoptor, or cool armor that lets me transform from robot-to car-to jet plane.

Maybe make apartments with stuff you can place on them and have people come over and see your pad, and could make it so you could have missions (like some villians raid your apt looking for something and then you have to go get it back...etc...)

New bad guy groups to fight and take out, I love Croatoa and the story arc there, maybe more like it.

Start looking at PvP and start adjusting a bit and make the rewards from it nicer... (I have built a character to 30 just for PvP @ that level since it is a fun zone)

If you can't afford to make regular and significant changes to your game with a revenue of 2 million a month, you deserve to fail. This blatant attempt to squeeze players is expected, but don't insult us with hand-to-mouth sob story.

I just want to see ideas, btw, I'm not detracting from the idea that the game can use more variety.  I have a bunch of ideas for enemy groups using different mechanics that would add value to currently underused powers (likes fears and knockbacks- just make an enemy group that you WANT to scatter), and a ton of mission ideas I'd like to see, but most of my ideas are limited to the game mechanics as they exist.

Fishing, for instance, wouldn't have occurred to me.  I'm not sure it's an idea that works for CoH, but I'm interested to hear more.  What kind of rewards should it offer?  How does it progress, if at all?  Is there maybe another action that could encompass the same mechanics but fit the superhero genre a bit more (given that I rarely see superheroes fishing)?

Some worldy/persistence thingees.  I'd like to see them mess around with faction.  For instance they could track what types of villains heros are beating up on/not beatin up on, and modify world spawns and police missions based upon that.  Want to see fewer clockwork?  Start kicking some clockwork ass!

More dynamic world-spawns.  Instead of cars on rails that you cannot interact with, have a car spawn that is a getaway car that you can interract with.  When you blast/punch/etc the car, mobs pop out that you have to fight.  If they make it all the way to their hideaway (let's say it was a bank-job), the door to that house becomes active and you can go inside to passify them (i.e. you get a "arrest the bankroobers" mission).

I like the getaway car idea, though it would seem to almost punish the heroes for catching the robbers before they got away.

Ultimately having more property destruction within CoH/V would be a good thing - I like Mayhem missions for this reason, but it only appears in one small part of the game.

More work appears to be going into SG bases and more dynamic missions... or at least that's my read on it.

Rebuilding the low-level experience would also be a big step forward - it's a recognised weakness.

I'm interested what I13 holds for CoH/V - as I've said, that's the issue where the devs start to show their hand about how CoH/V is going to justify all the new investment.

They've been working with a crew of 15 people (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=general&Number=10566478&bodyprev=#Post10566478) since just after the launch of CoV. One artist, one animator, one powers coder, one zone designer, one modeler, a few community reps, etc etc.

How much money went into the game vs. how much went to NC for QA/support/contractual payments vs. how much got plowed into developing MUO we may never know, but the game itself has produced all new content since CoV essentially on life support.

In this case "under new management" may actually turn out to mean something.

I've got a hunch - backed up by nothing more than impressions - that NCsoft probably got a very good deal when they signed up CoH all those years ago. The lion's share of revenue undoubtedly goes to NCsoft.

if they actually lowered the sub from adding this in, I wouldn't mind at all. But I see very little benefit to the players till they actually 'cared' about adding secondary re-specs instead of re-grinding frm lvl 1-30 just to see how a new pri/sec combination works out before I get bored with it within a week.

I'd actually like more than just secondary powerset respecs.  I have a dark/inv scrapper I originally wanted as a tank.  It'd be nice to not have to remake her (and the badges aren't exactly replacable).

oh yes, that too. Badges. ffs. I tried going for one of those and decided what's the point really.

In-game ads are live. Currently the reports are of pictures of shoes.

(http://pandadesigns.com/f13/coh_ad_jeter_clutch.jpg)


That's pretty unobtrusive as ads go. No Nike logo branding, no URLs, etc.

I have no problem with that type of ad.  If there are loading screens in a game, I could stomach advertising if it was off-center (bottom left or right) and limited to a corporate or product logo.

I'll actively not play a game that halts game play to make me watch a advertisement.

Consumer whores that we are, some boardians have taken to remixing this ad to make it more "in world".

Here's my attempt.

(http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk93/Glazius_bucket/CoHJeterAd.jpg)

 :awesome_for_real: