https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/champions-online/news/detail/9131593
At this point, I'm not sure if it's good news or not.
On the one hand, the new Lead Designer was also the Lead Designer of CO at launch (and there's good stuff from the beginning of CO).
On the other, Cryptic North has done a fair amount for CO in the time they were in charge of the game. (No, not as much as STO or NW, but unfortunately CO doesn't make that kind of money either.)
So... I guess we'll see what happens.
Quote from: Kaos Arcanna on April 11, 2015, 02:06:16 AM
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/champions-online/news/detail/9131593
At this point, I'm not sure if it's good news or not.
On the one hand, the new Lead Designer was also the Lead Designer of CO at launch (and there's good stuff from the beginning of CO).
On the other, Cryptic North has done a fair amount for CO in the time they were in charge of the game. (No, not as much as STO or NW, but unfortunately CO doesn't make that kind of money either.)
So... I guess we'll see what happens.
hate to be negative, but this is far too little far too late. To me it seems as though cn did not want to deal with co any more, and clean up the mess made by cryptic/atarii.
I am not one teeny tiny teeny weenie itsy bitsy bit sorry to see Cryptic North go.
Best wishes to them and best of luck to them in whatever they do next.
It's a little late but, it's probably because Cryptic North, while they did do some good things, they did a whole lot more bad things I feel. And one of the people to focus on the games is an experienced mission designer. This to me is probably the best we can hope for right now for CO. Cryptic Studios didn't cause the whole bait and switch fiasco with vehicles, nore did they up the price of existing powersets. Both decisions were horrendous and I didn't enjoy the final steel crusade mission(excluding the timed exclusive).
Lets not forget the especially buggy ending to Fatal Error, or the fire and ice rampage everyone knows I hate very intensively due to how generic a holy trinity encounter it was.
Thing is the game population went from 5 instances in MC to an apparent pitiful one and a half under cryptic north in only 6 months. Given I was optimistic when they took the reins but seeing what happened, I'm kind of glad CO is coming "Back home". And under a developer who worked on city of heroes. I am hopeful that the new developers won't be bogged down by publisher meddling and be able to make some real content. But I do agree it very much may be to little, to late.
Cryptic North ran CO into the ground by listening to some of the dumbest and most self-centered trolls in the CO forums. So it's easy to see why they'd be canned or at the very least CO moved away from them. Hell, they even reverted back some changes that were actually good changes(the AA missile nerf to what it used to be when AA missile was actually worth using after it's buff, actually nerfed to weaker than ever before for example).
List of the good:
Global uncapper
Costume limits reduced for new silver accounts.
Some content in the earlier missions of their archs.
The Mixed:
The vehicle 2.0 update, they made vehicles into slow moving heavy tanks, but at least they made many of the weapons more usable and crappier z-store vehicles could have been made combat-worthy, if they only spent more time testing weapons vs player character performance and actually set a standard(which they didn't, see below)
The bad:
The post-vehicle 2.0 nerfs that made many of those weapons useless, made the last of the useful vehicle mods useless, and left vehicles with only one good weapon left whatsoever with another questionable impractical weapon. (Result, 40% of the player base left to trolling and a perception this game baited and switched)
The price hike(result: more players leave)
The fire and Ice rampage(Result: Some players leave on the perception this game was becoming a holy trinity grindfest, plus the last of it's identity being compromised and potential to be mistaken for any other generic mmorpg)
The last missions of Fatal Error and Steel crusade. The first had a buggy end-encounter no one liked, the later's zero-g mission had the worst gameplay I ever seen, slower than master of orion 3!
I just cannot speak positively for cryptic north, I wish I could, but I can't.
As I said in the forums in a post that got deleted. "Do you feel competent yet?". Just as I asked the trolls who were feeling really good about screwing so many players over "Do you feel like a hero yet?".
I seriously hope the new developers previous experience will finally get this game out of the casket that CN's devs had drove so many nails into.
Edit: And a little bird already told me that the same trolls who derailed CN into killing CO are at it again, sigh.
Heres a tune, ripped from bad boys and also spec ops the line:
"Oh what you gonna do, oh what you gonna do yeah troll gonna die when they come for you. Wanting players and devs and things like tools. Oh what you gonna do when they come for you. Oh, trolly trolly trolly."
(changed to avoid singling any particular troll out).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyqbrpCtpkM
Last Edit: I also read that, it's the guy who was originally on the first CO dev team, so yeah, we'll have to see.
I'll quote a thing John Romero said in an interview once. I think he said it in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUU7_BthBWM .
Actually I would just listen to it. He gives some hell of a good insights about good level design. I do remember reading or hearing somewhere that he liked to design the first missions in a game LAST, because then he knew everything he could do when designing it.
Edit: He also did lots of rough drafts of those maps. Including E1M1.