New efforts!

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I'm in entire agreement. I myself have no problem with how City of Heroes looked, but I remember showing it to lots of people who were arrogantly saying that it looked crappy and how Crysis and stuff looked so much better. It's like "Well, yeah I can't argue with that but because something looks better doesn't mean something else looks bad".

I can also sympathize. I only got my new computer very late 2011, where I spent most of its time on SWTOR rather than experiencing CoH in Ultra. How foolish I was!

i played SWTOR for a while, but honestly, even with the brighter colors that were added a little while back, i found it to be rather bland and same-y after a while; especially many of the cash shop costume pieces. And the animations and environments in SWTOR tend to leave me cold. Despite the higher resolutions and somewhat fancier effects the engine has issues with pop-in and clunky animations.

Personally, I think the only graphics that looked dated in CoH were the environment and some of the GUI controls.

I always loved the character models and felt they were as good or better than anything I've seen since.  Sure, some newer games make their models
look more lifelike... but this is a comic book based game.   We could use better faces, hair, and hands - but everything else is fine.

The combat animations in CoH beat everything else hands down.  Just take a martial arts character for example.   Not even a contest.

The power effects in CoH also beat everything else I've seen.  Man, I miss my Plant/Storm troller....

Agreed on the combat animations. And i really, really miss the disturbing noise my Carrion Creepers would make as they followed me invisibly from spawn to spawn.

[The Fifth Horseman]

At this stage - I don't know what the purchase might consist of. The CoH engine is old and described as a cobbled together spaghetti mess by anyone who worked on it. NCSoft may now be aware of this and so the "engine" may be fairly worthless on its own. Not to be discouraging or to insult our beloved game but how much should someone pay for a 10 year old cobbled together mess that has been out of service for 16 months?

Worthless with regards to continued development. Worthwhile with regards to putting the game out there (read: getting income immediately) until you can replace that cobbled mess with your shiny new version.

[Solitaire]

Oh, at this stage I don't think you will need me.

Another group is moving forward and they have the contact at NCSoft needed and the price to purchase the game. Now I don't know what "purchase the game" entails.

I know in early conversations the group expressed interest in the IP only - not the actual game engine - now as some have said here it may be not easily possible to divorce the code from the engine or the price may be inclusive. Those are not things we knew about in the earlier talks. The discussions I was involved with were - will NCSoft talk to anyone?

Yes, all the information I had on any offers made was that NCSoft did talk and listened to the offer. Once that was resolved the problem was some of the rumors that had gone around. The $80 million price tag tied to the Texas state sales tax increase - was proven not to apply. It was calculated at that price if all game sales for NC Interactive had to be tied into the purchase of the IP - they don't.

At this stage - I don't know what the purchase might consist of. The CoH engine is old and described as a cobbled together spaghetti mess by anyone who worked on it. NCSoft may now be aware of this and so the "engine" may be fairly worthless on its own. Not to be discouraging or to insult our beloved game but how much should someone pay for a 10 year old cobbled together mess that has been out of service for 16 months?

Consider NCSoft paid $8 million originally to Cryptic and a period of profit sharing. There was development true but the core is still the 10 year old engine with custom bolted on graphics updates. I won't guess any more on what is on offer - we hopefully will find out soon enough!

Here's hoping there is some good news from PAX East this weekend...

[Solitaire]

Worthless with regards to continued development. Worthwhile with regards to putting the game out there (read: getting income immediately) until you can replace that cobbled mess with your shiny new version.

This would make perfect sense, getting the community back who would be able to spread the word that the game is back, with upcoming improvements in the pipeline... While using the money that you make from the players to make those changes possible.

[Triage IV]

The power effects in CoH also beat everything else I've seen.  Man, I miss my Plant/Storm troller....

I had a friend in-game suggest trying Plant/Storm.  I was hesitant at first, but, after I gave it a try...MAN, was that toon crazy fun.  I feel that combo is one of those "YOU GOTTA TRY THIS!" combos.  Surprisingly, GREAT fun.

The game closed its doors just as I had decided to try making all types of Masterminds with Storm secondary.  I think I had gotten a Ninja/Storm up somewhere in the mid 20s.

[alphajaybo]

Oh, at this stage I don't think you will need me.

Another group is moving forward and they have the contact at NCSoft needed and the price to purchase the game. Now I don't know what "purchase the game" entails.

I know in early conversations the group expressed interest in the IP only - not the actual game engine - now as some have said here it may be not easily possible to divorce the code from the engine or the price may be inclusive. Those are not things we knew about in the earlier talks. The discussions I was involved with were - will NCSoft talk to anyone?

Yes, all the information I had on any offers made was that NCSoft did talk and listened to the offer. Once that was resolved the problem was some of the rumors that had gone around. The $80 million price tag tied to the Texas state sales tax increase - was proven not to apply. It was calculated at that price if all game sales for NC Interactive had to be tied into the purchase of the IP - they don't.

At this stage - I don't know what the purchase might consist of. The CoH engine is old and described as a cobbled together spaghetti mess by anyone who worked on it. NCSoft may now be aware of this and so the "engine" may be fairly worthless on its own. Not to be discouraging or to insult our beloved game but how much should someone pay for a 10 year old cobbled together mess that has been out of service for 16 months?

Consider NCSoft paid $8 million originally to Cryptic and a period of profit sharing. There was development true but the core is still the 10 year old engine with custom bolted on graphics updates. I won't guess any more on what is on offer - we hopefully will find out soon enough!

So IronWolf. Does that mean that they are actually getting to a stage where they are preparing ot buy it"?

also may I just say, thank you for picking up the dim yet still active torch. And to the people currently fanning the flame!

[Thunder Glove]

I had a friend in-game suggest trying Plant/Storm.  I was hesitant at first, but, after I gave it a try...MAN, was that toon crazy fun.  I feel that combo is one of those "YOU GOTTA TRY THIS!" combos.  Surprisingly, GREAT fun.

The game closed its doors just as I had decided to try making all types of Masterminds with Storm secondary.  I think I had gotten a Ninja/Storm up somewhere in the mid 20s.

My first MM was Bots/Storm, and he was great fun.  When I think about the game, he's one of the images that comes to mind, along with my namesake Elec/Invuln Brute.   (Those were the first two characters I tried to re-create in Champions Online.  They weren't the same at all)

I never got to try Plant Control, much to my regret.  I didn't really start getting into control sets until the end.  Two of the last characters I created after the shutdown was announced were a Dark/Dark Controller and an Earth/Ice Dominator.

[The Fifth Horseman]

This would make perfect sense, getting the community back who would be able to spread the word that the game is back, with upcoming improvements in the pipeline... While using the money that you make from the players to make those changes possible.

Not with "upcoming improvements" but "upcoming replacement".
I do not have to see the original codebase to agree with the developers' comments that it may be pretty awful after several dev teams and tons of hacks and patches (and patches to hacks and hacks to patches and hacks to hacks and patches to patches and possibly even more levels of hacks and patches on top of that) meant to implement features that were not in the scope of the original design. Such is the fate of any codebase unless specifically designed with future extensibility in mind (but that has to be done from the very beginning).
Thus, the sensible thing to do - IF the original code is part of the deal to begin with, of course - is to put the game back online as is, with no updates or further work on the codebase or assets and then work on creating the successor property. This achieves several goals, including maintaining some interest in the potential customer base for the new product.

[Triage IV]

I know we're not supposed to be getting excited, but, a question for anyone with any techie-sense:  If this whole deal goes through, what might be a best-case scenario of when the game "could" be up and running (this is with no glitches or anything getting in the way)?  Could it be measured in mere weeks or months?

And, still going with the assumption that it WILL be going through, now, being more realistic, what might the other side look like (not being as optimistic as the above guesstimate)?   Like months to years?  As in, we're more likely to see one of the spiritual successors come out before the game could return?

I know I'm asking a HUGE "What If" here...but, not being techie-minded at all, I was wondering how something like this would work.

[BenshowSly]

I know we're not supposed to be getting excited, but, a question for anyone with any techie-sense:  If this whole deal goes through, what might be a best-case scenario of when the game "could" be up and running (this is with no glitches or anything getting in the way)?  Could it be measured in mere weeks or months?

And, still going with the assumption that it WILL be going through, now, being more realistic, what might the other side look like (not being as optimistic as the above guesstimate)?   Like months to years?  As in, we're more likely to see one of the spiritual successors come out before the game could return?

I know I'm asking a HUGE "What If" here...but, not being techie-minded at all, I was wondering how something like this would work.

Well, since no one knows what is going on right now, the WHAT IF questions would come out with MAYBE answers which worth pretty much nothing at all at this point.

And sadly, those MAYBE answers would lead to tons of theories, some good, some plain strange, and at the end, I think it would be difficult to, once again, keep the difference between the truth and the speculations.

It was already difficult enough to finally come to a kind of agreement about the engine vs IP thing. I'm not sure I would like to have answers to the WHAT IF questions and to make me even more confused that I was before.

I understand your excitement however because I have tons of WHAT IF questions too but I prefer to stay informed of facts instead and just watch the ship sail, hoping it won't end up in a wreck.

[HEATSTROKE]

I need to temper my excitement..

[Tyger42]

I'm in entire agreement. I myself have no problem with how City of Heroes looked, but I remember showing it to lots of people who were arrogantly saying that it looked crappy and how Crysis and stuff looked so much better. It's like "Well, yeah I can't argue with that but because something looks better doesn't mean something else looks bad".

I can also sympathize. I only got my new computer very late 2011, where I spent most of its time on SWTOR rather than experiencing CoH in Ultra. How foolish I was!

Yeah, well, some folks are too fixated on the pretty shinies. Pay them no mind. They're easily distracted anyway. Don't tend to be the long term players of any game.

[Nebularian]

I do agree on the washed up game engine bit. With the rose colored glasses off, City of Heroes would look very shoddy to the average gamer.

Thank you for your efforts. Now all we can do is wait.

Hmmm...  I look at CO  and think COH was MUCH better.   Now DCUO...yeah..the graphics are a bit better....but the game play and ability to customize your toon?  not so much.  Again...COH was better.

Personally....I would like to see COH back as it was... and THEN I would like to see a newer, updated COH 2 that builds upon the good of COH.

[Styrj]

Hmmm...  I look at CO  and think COH was MUCH better.   Now DCUO...yeah..the graphics are a bit better....but the game play and ability to customize your toon?  not so much.  Again...COH was better.

Personally....I would like to see COH back as it was... and THEN I would like to see a newer, updated COH 2 that builds upon the good of COH.

Amen to that!

[Cobra Man]

Hmmm...  I look at CO  and think COH was MUCH better.   Now DCUO...yeah..the graphics are a bit better....but the game play and ability to customize your toon?  not so much.  Again...COH was better.

Personally....I would like to see COH back as it was... and THEN I would like to see a newer, updated COH 2 that builds upon the good of COH.

I agree with all of this.

The gameplay and combat systems were far better than any comparable game and although it did benefit from Ultra settings there were still large parts of the game that looked creaky.

[Tyger42]

I agree with all of this.

The gameplay and combat systems were far better than any comparable game and although it did benefit from Ultra settings there were still large parts of the game that looked creaky.

CO wasn't terrible, but it is a disappointment. My biggest beef is the graphics are so badly optimized. They shouldn't put as much demand on a system to run well as they do. Overall, though, the "feel" of the game is just off. I can't pin down all of it, but part of it is that it's kinda like if CoH had been 90% street sweep missions. Bleh.

DCUO just fails completely, IMO.

Marvel Heroes is kinda fun, but only when you stop looking at it as something to fill the gap left by CoH. It's sort of Diablo-ish gameplay wise.

[Triage IV]

I agree with all of this.

The gameplay and combat systems were far better than any comparable game and although it did benefit from Ultra settings there were still large parts of the game that looked creaky.

The only times I felt the graphics needed a little tweaking, were when I was fighting Council or Freak Show...the Council War Wolves and Freak Tanks, at certain angles (especially in the hand areas), appeared too angular...too triangular.

But, beyond that, I loved how everything else looked graphically.

[Cobra Man]

The only times I felt the graphics needed a little tweaking, were when I was fighting Council or Freak Show...the Council War Wolves and Freak Tanks, at certain angles (especially in the hand areas), appeared too angular...too triangular.

But, beyond that, I loved how everything else looked graphically.

It was some of the environment art that caught the eye such as building rooftops in Steel Canyon that were basically small parts expanded in size. The net result was a very blurry look. Most buildings were fine and some were very well done.

The sad thing is that even with these minor things the game was still miles better than CO and DCUO.

[Solitaire]

Hmmm...  I look at CO  and think COH was MUCH better.   Now DCUO...yeah..the graphics are a bit better....but the game play and ability to customize your toon?  not so much.  Again...COH was better.

Personally....I would like to see COH back as it was... and THEN I would like to see a newer, updated COH 2 that builds upon the good of COH.

Having tried both CO & DCUO, I can say from my point of view they have nothing on CoH, you seem very limited with choices on the other two games were as CoH there was so many options from character design to gameplay.. Team play, solo play, explore, badge hunt, chat in Atlas, lowbie races to PI Spend hours in Icon! Etc...

[ShadowMokadara]

Having tried both CO & DCUO, I can say from my point of view they have nothing on CoH, you seem very limited with choices on the other two games were as CoH there was so many options from character design to gameplay.. Team play, solo play, explore, badge hunt, chat in Atlas, lowbie races to PI Spend hours in Icon! Etc...

Have to agree here. Wasn't a fan of DCUO's graphics as everything looked like it was the same texture and CO is just ugly in general.