Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by ethion

I don't think it will survive.  The game has pretty cute quests but the powers and design are rather weak and unbalanced.  Progression is really too fast and they don't have enough content to really slow it down.  I think it will get a bad rep based on lots of SWG like changes and it will be lucky to have 50k.  Cryptic needed 100K to be successful and I believe Atari had some performance requirements which they are gonna fall far short of.  

Much as it pains me I don't think we will ever see Star Trek and I think Cryptic will be shut down in a year or less. :(

I think that DC Online will kill this game completely when it comes out.   SoE may have done a bunch of bad things in the past but they have a ton of experience and seem to be taking their time with DC Online.  I really think they will be releasing a polished game which might not be to everyones liking but I think it will be a solid game.

Doom and gloom... doom and gloom.  That is all this is.  Nothing substantative to back up any of these "this game will die" statements.  Thus, this is all just hate.

This game will survive.  It won't be hugely popular (cause nothing is except the 800 lb gorilla WoW), but it won't die as a lot of the haters state it will.  Cryptic will continue to develop this game and will make it better.  The main problem is, Cryptic needs to kick their current devs in the rear to keep them from making blatant oversight errors... like having the power tooltips say that one stat effects it (or no stats) but in actuality a different stat affects it.

But, bugs and oversights are nothing new for launching games.  Hell, the 800 lb gorilla WoW had many, many, many issues when it first launched.  Especially lack of content that seems to be waved around here by the haters to bash CO with.  Yet, it is the most popular MMORPG in history.

Now, I'm not suggesting that CO will become a "WoW killer" or anything.  However, I think that people that continuously spout "CO will DIE" and "Cryptic will DIE" are just haters who are going about with their hate-filled, trollish agendas.  I think CO will be a niche game, as is CoX.  However, when Cryptic gets many of these bugs ironed out and starts adding content, it could be much more popular than CoX.  Reason being is that people aren't pigeon-holed into classes like they are with CoX.

What I find ironic ethion is that you played 32 hours of CO (x-fire stats) yet you claim that "CO will die" and "Cryptic will be shut down in a year or less."  It took  you that long of play time to come up with that conclusion?  Or, did you come in the game with a pre-conceived notion of hate for Cryptic and Atari and used that instead of actually appraising the game?  I vote for the later.
 

Don't know if you really know this or not but Ethion isn't a hater, he's been playing the game.. he actually paid for it and I actually see his opinion as being worth something.  I doubt that Cryptic or CO will die right out... especially with ataris bankroll... hell D&D is still alive...  this game would go F2P with microtransactions before it dies.

I do know that this game just doesn't have the content it needs to keep an extended playerbase.  The CoHers of the world may stay to roll and reroll and re-reroll for new costumes and characters... but because the power system is so open, you really don't need to do that to try all the different powers.. you can spend a day in the PowerHouse at max level with tons of cash and do that... so the only real reason to reroll is for roleplaying and costume creation.

CO it wil stick around in IMO.  This game was never released to be a WOW killer or to have huge subscription base i do beleive that they planned to have 100k to 150k base kind of like COX.  I'm playing it with my buddies from work and we are enjoying it because it is different.  I really cant say how many people will drop it when DCU comes out but it will be around just because its not another standard fantasy MMO and honastly i do beleive that it will oulast Aion in US. And do to the fact that they are releaseing STO and you know that no matter how bad the game is there is alot of hard core Trekkies out there that they will keep playing it just because it is star trek. You know that some of that sweet STO money will make its way into dev of CO.  To say again this is still just my opinion

biggest fail thread this week, grats. Like haters and fanbois can make rational guesses. Also most people voting wont have played the game...

If I were to guess then Id say a steady 100-200k population CO gets so much shit from certain people youd think it was DF or something. Ive played CO and the game is good, not astonishing or perhaps even great, its good, good enough to pay and play prolly round 2-3months then the content runs out.

So it can't have between 50k and 300k? Not a great poll really.

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by ethion

I don't think it will survive.  The game has pretty cute quests but the powers and design are rather weak and unbalanced.  Progression is really too fast and they don't have enough content to really slow it down.  I think it will get a bad rep based on lots of SWG like changes and it will be lucky to have 50k.  Cryptic needed 100K to be successful and I believe Atari had some performance requirements which they are gonna fall far short of.  

Much as it pains me I don't think we will ever see Star Trek and I think Cryptic will be shut down in a year or less. :(

I think that DC Online will kill this game completely when it comes out.   SoE may have done a bunch of bad things in the past but they have a ton of experience and seem to be taking their time with DC Online.  I really think they will be releasing a polished game which might not be to everyones liking but I think it will be a solid game.

Doom and gloom... doom and gloom.  That is all this is.  Nothing substantative to back up any of these "this game will die" statements.  Thus, this is all just hate.

This game will survive.  It won't be hugely popular (cause nothing is except the 800 lb gorilla WoW), but it won't die as a lot of the haters state it will.  Cryptic will continue to develop this game and will make it better.  The main problem is, Cryptic needs to kick their current devs in the rear to keep them from making blatant oversight errors... like having the power tooltips say that one stat effects it (or no stats) but in actuality a different stat affects it.

But, bugs and oversights are nothing new for launching games.  Hell, the 800 lb gorilla WoW had many, many, many issues when it first launched.  Especially lack of content that seems to be waved around here by the haters to bash CO with.  Yet, it is the most popular MMORPG in history.

Now, I'm not suggesting that CO will become a "WoW killer" or anything.  However, I think that people that continuously spout "CO will DIE" and "Cryptic will DIE" are just haters who are going about with their hate-filled, trollish agendas.  I think CO will be a niche game, as is CoX.  However, when Cryptic gets many of these bugs ironed out and starts adding content, it could be much more popular than CoX.  Reason being is that people aren't pigeon-holed into classes like they are with CoX.

What I find ironic ethion is that you played 32 hours of CO (x-fire stats) yet you claim that "CO will die" and "Cryptic will be shut down in a year or less."  It took  you that long of play time to come up with that conclusion?  Or, did you come in the game with a pre-conceived notion of hate for Cryptic and Atari and used that instead of actually appraising the game?  I vote for the later.
 

I don't run the game so I can't give you anything factual only my opinion based on what info I see and based on my own experiences.

In my opinion something just ain't right with this game.  It was released too early.  The powers and the power trees in the game are again in my opinion not balanced, exploitable, and poorly designed.  Poorly designed is too harsh I think.  I think they just haven't been polished, played and designed to work properly.  So now what is gonna happen is there will be huge changes that break the game for some people making things way more difficult making some powers near useless and other powers better.  Or they may completely change the powers or worse find that they don't have any way to change them without completely changing the game.  This is of course going to take the small player base that is likeing the game and drive them away.  Like SWG this will put a stink around the entire game giving it a bad rep and then there probably won't be much that can be done to really save it. 

Probably just as the game is getting to the point where it could turn around DC Online is gonna come out and probably will be a reasonably good game.   SoE for all there faults have done a number of games and have quite a bit of experience.  Seems to me like they are taking their time with DC Online.

So am I a hater? Not at all.  I've bought the game and as you point out I've played it quite a bit.  I try not to get to slanted based on general hate flying around and form my own opinions from actually playing the game.  Most times there is some truth in both the haters and fans.  People complain about xp nerf and not enough content to level up.  Well so far I don't have that problem.  I'm lvl 25 and almost 26.  Content for me around 24/25 was getting thin and I had to do a couple lvl 26 quests.  Actually one of the lvl 26 quests unlocked a chain of lvl 25 quests...  I've almost completely explored all the maps in canada, desert and millenium city zones.  I've made my henchmen and did my first henchmen quest.

The question is will I be playing this game in 30-60 days?  At this point I pretty much doubt it.  Frankly I'll be playing the game probably longer then many people will, as I'm fairly tollerant of changes. 

Anyway I find the whole thing rather frustrating.  I wanted this game to do well if for no other reason then I'm totally dying to see a good MMO with Star Trek.  I REALLY want them to be able to make a great Star Trek game.  So I guess in light of what I'm seeing in CO I'm becoming a bit cynical.  I really was hoping it would be better...

Originally posted by ethion

I don't run the game so I can't give you anything factual only my opinion based on what info I see and based on my own experiences.

In my opinion something just ain't right with this game.  It was released too early.  The powers and the power trees in the game are again in my opinion not balanced, exploitable, and poorly designed.  Poorly designed is too harsh I think.  I think they just haven't been polished, played and designed to work properly.  So now what is gonna happen is there will be huge changes that break the game for some people making things way more difficult making some powers near useless and other powers better.  Or they may completely change the powers or worse find that they don't have any way to change them without completely changing the game.  This is of course going to take the small player base that is likeing the game and drive them away.  Like SWG this will put a stink around the entire game giving it a bad rep and then there probably won't be much that can be done to really save it. 

Probably just as the game is getting to the point where it could turn around DC Online is gonna come out and probably will be a reasonably good game.   SoE for all there faults have done a number of games and have quite a bit of experience.  Seems to me like they are taking their time with DC Online.

So am I a hater? Not at all.  I've bought the game and as you point out I've played it quite a bit.  I try not to get to slanted based on general hate flying around and form my own opinions from actually playing the game.  Most times there is some truth in both the haters and fans.  People complain about xp nerf and not enough content to level up.  Well so far I don't have that problem.  I'm lvl 25 and almost 26.  Content for me around 24/25 was getting thin and I had to do a couple lvl 26 quests.  Actually one of the lvl 26 quests unlocked a chain of lvl 25 quests...  I've almost completely explored all the maps in canada, desert and millenium city zones.  I've made my henchmen and did my first henchmen quest.

The question is will I be playing this game in 30-60 days?  At this point I pretty much doubt it.  Frankly I'll be playing the game probably longer then many people will, as I'm fairly tollerant of changes. 

Anyway I find the whole thing rather frustrating.  I wanted this game to do well if for no other reason then I'm totally dying to see a good MMO with Star Trek.  I REALLY want them to be able to make a great Star Trek game.  So I guess in light of what I'm seeing in CO I'm becoming a bit cynical.  I really was hoping it would be better...

Color-coded responses:

K.  You basically have described every MMORPG in existence.  All MMORPG's continually change their games to attempt to balance.  I cannot count how many times my class (or classes) were "nerfed" or "buffed" in DAoC, WoW, EQ2, LoTRO, and Pre-CU SWG (well, skills in that game).  It's just the nature of the beast.  Now, seeing as how powers,stats, and respecs are done in this game, I do think they need to offer a free retcon everytime they fundamentally change a power or stat.  Especially since respec costs are outrageous atm.  However, again, wild changes are nothing new in MMORPG's.  Players need to learn to cope with these changes or just stop playing MMORPG's altogether.

I disagree on the "small player base" claim.  From what I've seen, it's quite large.

You apparently have more faith in $OE than A LOT of other players do.  It's common knowledge that $OE has done quite a bit of alienating their previous fanbase.  Thus, there is a lot of gamer hate towards $OE.  Now, I don't know how well DC Online will do, nor do I want to guess.  But, from what I've read and seen, I'm not interested in the game at all.  However, I do know that there is a lot of players that hate $OE for all the things they have done in the past... mainly the NGE of SWG.  And, this hate will affect the availability of possible players (more that hate the company = less overall subscriberbase to choose from).

What is quite large?  I'm estimating they have around 100k is that large?  I think it is pretty small and no game I know has ever kept even 50% of the initial base?

But hey I'd love for things to turn our differently.  Like I said I'm just cynical and bummed cause the game I REALLY want to play is dependent on this one being a success.  That is STO...

I'm going to just speculate that while it may not skyrocket, it will achieve a solid number somewhere around 200k subs. While I've never given one flying fuck about how many subs a game has, I feel CO will need around 200k to be a real contender...

Beta tested it and that game was not ready for Live. I was at GenCon and I walked right past  Bill Roper and wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but didn't because he was in the middle of a demo. When Open Beta began that game still needed over a month or more of beta testing. It was not ready. It had tons of bugs and issues with powers. It was just not ready.

I am a huge fan of the Champions PnP game. I really had high hopes for the game, but maybe it will all get sorted out in time. Roper and his crew did some bonehead moves with the patch right before letting the Early Adopters in. They had tons of issues with their server and a lot of emergency maintenance. It's to be expected for a launch, but it still irks me that the Devs did not listen to those of us who said there was still issues with the game. I also know that Atari likes to push companies into releasing stuff even when it's not ready. Atari did the same thing to Bioware with NWN1 patches and expansions. So, there could be a lot of issues why it was released in the state it was in.

I thought the graphics were "ok". Gameplay was "fair" and the pvp was kinda fun. My biggest gripes other than the bugs was the way they had their "zoning" set up. You would have to pick servers to goto train and for everything else. It was just annoying when trying to get your friends on the same section of the game. Not something that was massively annoying, but I thought it was just done wrong.

Hopefully, the game takes off in the future, but I won't play it. I hope Cryptic learned a lot from this launch and don't screw up Star Trek online like they have with champions.

Originally posted by Comnitus

Not much middle ground, is there?

I expect a little higher than 50k but certainly no skyrocketing. Perhaps somewhere between 80k-125k. It's not going to be a smash hit, simply because it could use more content and the graphics are pretty demanding, but I think it'll do well overall.

Those choices are kind of bad. I  would guess about 300,000, but I expect it to drop if they pull a Tabula Rasa and wait 6 months to put any actual end-game content out, but I don't think that will happen.

No enough option BTW. I say, the box will cost around 50$ and after that, it will be free like guild wars.

Originally posted by Tokken

Been a good game so far.  Lots of people are playing I see.

Quoted for truth.

TEST FOR FAILURE:

1. Log into COH, pick any of the servers besides the two active = ghost town
2. Consider the number of users on the two active servers on COH
3. Compare to CO.

Hmmm.......seems kind of active to me. People playing the game seem to be having a blast. I haven't seen one grognard who was like "THIS SUCKS!!!!"

So far, everyone just seems to be enjoying. Its been a week out of the box and in retail, and its going pretty well I think. I am having a blast and reading all the negativity here gets dull. I'd love to TALK About this game, but not to just read rant after rant of people who have waited one week and declared it DOA.

Originally posted by Malakhon

Originally posted by Tokken

Been a good game so far.  Lots of people are playing I see.

 

Quoted for truth.

 

TEST FOR FAILURE:

1. Log into COH, pick any of the servers besides the two active = ghost town
2. Consider the number of users on the two active servers on COH
3. Compare to CO.

 

Hmmm.......seems kind of active to me. People playing the game seem to be having a blast. I haven't seen one grognard who was like "THIS SUCKS!!!!"

So far, everyone just seems to be enjoying. Its been a week out of the box and in retail, and its going pretty well I think. I am having a blast and reading all the negativity here gets dull. I'd love to TALK About this game, but not to just read rant after rant of people who have waited one week and declared it DOA.

 

 

Well it seems active of course, thats the way the servers are setup.  Each zone of course has a player cap of .. I think they lowered it to 100 now?  That means you'll never actually see how many servers aren't in use.  So techincally you could be playing with 1000 players or 100,000 and you really wouldn't be able to tell the difference in your 100 player instance.  Not bashing it, just saying that its the system that makes it look the way it does.

No, it SEEMS active because there are people playing, talking and laughing.

The fact that they didn't hamstring us by dividing up servers doesn't mean I can't get a sense for how many people there are.

Take the two ONLY populated servers on COH. get a guess of how many users are on. Compare to ALL the active instances of CO. Seems Like CO is doing good. Thats not a Bill Roper Jedi Mind Trick. People are playing the game.

Which is what I will do after I finish my lunch.

Originally posted by Malakhon

No, it SEEMS active because there are people playing, talking and laughing.

The fact that they didn't hamstring us by dividing up servers doesn't mean I can't get a sense for how many people there are.

 

Take the two ONLY populated servers on COH. get a guess of how many users are on. Compare to ALL the active instances of CO. Seems Like CO is doing good. Thats not a Bill Roper Jedi Mind Trick. People are playing the game.

Which is what I will do after I finish my lunch.

I didn't say people weren't playing the game... but I don't think you understand my post.  It doesn't matter if theres 200,000 players in the game... the only people you will see are in that maximum capped 100 player instance.  People could laugh and talk and joke all they want.. that doesn't mean that the game is doing any better or worse because the people you play with enjoy themselves.

Thats like saying I can go to a party for a friend and spend time in 1 room with 10 people and think because that 1 room is full of people that this party must be excellent.  For all I know there could be 15 other rooms in the house with no people in them.. but that wouldn't matter to me if I was in the room with 10.