Hero Fireteams HQ

In the post-Rikti crisis, many many heroes have emerged to fight evil. Most gather in large groups to counter equally large groups of villains. But many problems are best solved with precision and economy of force.

Our Charter

Hero Fireteams HQ is organized as a supergroup under the revised Paragon City charter, but we are different from most supergroups. Our membership is diverse in powers, in security level, in patrolling patterns. What we share is a commitment to the idea that small groups with good tactics can outperform large, less organized groups in most situations. Sure, once in a while, a huge threat comes along, and one of the city's signature heroes must organize a Task Force. But for day-to-day countering of evil, a fireteam of heroes is both more effective ((and more fun)) than a whole squad.

The defining vision of Hero Fireteams is that no matter how large our membership grows, we will prefer small teams (two to four, or maybe five members), and we prefer some tactical sophistication in combat. We are interested in the unfolding story of the salvation of Paragon City, and prefer well-defined missions to ad-hoc area patrols. The group exists primarily as a clearinghouse for forming these small teams, a resource pool of other heroes who share the same beliefs and whose suitability for small teams has been demonstrated.

Membership in Hero Fireteams is by invitation, and is generally extended to heroes who have engaged in at least a few small team missions with existing members. Ideally, the prospective new member will have worked with more than one distinct combination of other members, but this is not a requirement.

((If you play on Pinnacle and are looking for members for a small team, check to see if any of us are online. That's the whole reason the group exists!))

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

NCsoft's take on "packaged" MMOs

An NCsoft VP posted some thoughts on forums about whether NC Soft would offer a "package" deal as SOE does for those who play multiple MMOs published by one company. NCsoft has a lot of upcoming MMORPGs (Guild Wars, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa) on top of City of Heroes and the Lineage games:

We're looking at the potential of package deals for PlayNC products, but want to have a bunch of titles in the lineup first (so it's a better value).

GuildWars has a different revenue model (no sub fee) so it probably doesn't fall under a package - it would be for subscription games only if we did it.

There's a number of reasons for and against the model - one of the trickier issues to deal with is that we have to pay royalties to our 3rd party companies (Cryptic Studios, NetDevil, etc.) and if someone's paying a package rate for a bunch of games it turns out to be quite tricky to properly assign royalties. Sony hasn't done a lot of 3rd party products so they don't have that issue as much (Galaxies? Is that part of Station now?) - but about half of our upcoming games are from outside developers.

(Yes, someone will say "just do it by time played" - but then you're incentivizing developers to do things like design their game so it's beneficial for you to stay logged on all night so they get more royalties).

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