Titan Network
Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: Kaos Arcanna on April 15, 2013, 01:36:13 AM
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Here's a thought and one I've been thinking about off and on today.
Jack's said that there's no real effort going on at Cryptic to contact NCSoft to try to buy COH, but what if we asked them to consider making a new game that's closer to COH than CO is? (No, I wouldn't want them to remake CO closer to COH's style as I like CO just
fine as it is, but I would certainly like a game a bit closer to COH in spirit if not an exact duplicate of the IP.)
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Unfortunately, as it is, CO players are fed up to the gills with the lack of attention CO's been getting these days. I'm afraid that IF (which I don't think will happen BUT) a more CoH esque game gets developed, that it will draw no small amount of ire from the CO player base. A good number of them are unsupportive enough as it is.
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Well this is my personal opinion.... Jack Emmert left City of Heroes to go and be the CEO of Cryptic Studios to be honest if Jack actually cared about the game... he would call ncsoft himself and be like hey can we work out a deal? Neither NCsoft nor Cryptic has any interest in keeping the game up.... What we need is A studio who cares about there fans now on another note
Unfortunately, as it is, CO players are fed up to the gills with the lack of attention CO's been getting these days. I'm afraid that IF (which I don't think will happen BUT) a more CoH esque game gets developed, that it will draw no small amount of ire from the CO player base. A good number of them are unsupportive enough as it is.
CO is not even close to being close to being a good game lets admit it 90% of people would choose CoH over CO even after CoH was ruined when they decided to bring in Architect Entertainment that's when everything started going wrong not because any other MMO came out
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CO player base. A good number
Does not compute.
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....do what again? :roll: .....I must have missed it.
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CO is not even close to being close to being a good game lets admit it 90% of people would choose CoH over CO even after CoH was ruined when they decided to bring in Architect Entertainment that's when everything started going wrong not because any other MMO came out
A couple of points of disagreement ...
- I'm not debating which game is better or worse, because all of that is subjective IMO
- I think you'll find that there are hard core CO players just as there were (and are) hard core CoH players. They won't choose CoH over CO. And because CO has been neglected by the studio, in the eyes of the players, if Cryptic/PWE put CoH under their banner too, there'd be a world of backlash.
- I disagree with the sentiment that AE ruined CoH. IMO AE was one more groundbreaking thing they did. I can't tell you how awesome it was for me to be able to tell my characters' stories my way, and advance their lives by doing something -more- than the standard content (vast as it was). I was able to make things personal, which grew the RP exponentially.
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AE added much more to CoH than it took away- unfortunately over time all the creative stuff got smooshed under the farms. Paragon Studios were working on a number of fixes for the search interface and rating system, as well as a map builder, enemy scripting, and player-made cutscene stuff, so we were potentially on track for the AE to make a big, triumphant return.... and then got shut down. Whoops.
As for CO, it's a seed for a good game that's never gotten properly watered or fertilized. It's whole growth has been weird, stunted, and unpredictable. Atari is mostly at fault here, as it forced Cryptic to ignore CO in favor of STO and NW immediately after launch, but Cryptic hasn't managed to do much better under PWE with CO. STO has flourished, NW looks great, but CO... vehicles sounded like a cool addition, but ended up being underwhelming. New content has been significantly lacking in terms of scope and frequency, the Alert system has done worse things in terms of enabling new players accidentally reaching the level cap than CoH's AE farms ever did, and the freeform system lends itself to everyone being tanky DPS or DPSy tanks and basically nothing else. But this stuff is all fixable. If Cryptic had the time and resources, they could just go "okay lets make CO work better, have more diverse builds, put in some content for max level players, etc etc etc", but they don't right now. Neverwinter is a beast that's eaten everything STO hasn't. (though Neverwinter seems pretty good imho) Maybe CO will get some love eventually.
But, regardless of CO's performance or the choices made about the game's content or playstyle, Cryptic just doesn't seem to have the resources to make a FOURTH MMO. Asking them to do so would be crazy. Name another studio that's got three active MMOs, let alone four. Buying up CoH is different, they could stick a small team on that to generate new content(probably similar to how CO's being run- but with the difference being that CoH already has enough content to play and stuff to do at the level cap) and wouldn't have to worry about making that huge initial development team investment like they would with a wholly new title.
It's like a 5% chance that NCsoft will ever sell CoH off though, so uh. I'd just bet on nothing happening rather than Cryptic magically announcing a new superhero MMO.
If anything, they might shift some people from Neverwinter or STO to CO at some point, probably after Neverwinter launches and STO's Romulan faction content is basically finalized. But they won't be making a new game.
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AE added much more to CoH than it took away- unfortunately over time all the creative stuff got smooshed under the farms. Paragon Studios were working on a number of fixes for the search interface and rating system, as well as a map builder, enemy scripting, and player-made cutscene stuff, so we were potentially on track for the AE to make a big, triumphant return.... and then got shut down. Whoops.
As for CO, it's a seed for a good game that's never gotten properly watered or fertilized. It's whole growth has been weird, stunted, and unpredictable. Atari is mostly at fault here, as it forced Cryptic to ignore CO in favor of STO and NW immediately after launch, but Cryptic hasn't managed to do much better under PWE with CO. STO has flourished, NW looks great, but CO... vehicles sounded like a cool addition, but ended up being underwhelming. New content has been significantly lacking in terms of scope and frequency, the Alert system has done worse things in terms of enabling new players accidentally reaching the level cap than CoH's AE farms ever did, and the freeform system lends itself to everyone being tanky DPS or DPSy tanks and basically nothing else. But this stuff is all fixable. If Cryptic had the time and resources, they could just go "okay lets make CO work better, have more diverse builds, put in some content for max level players, etc etc etc", but they don't right now. Neverwinter is a beast that's eaten everything STO hasn't. (though Neverwinter seems pretty good imho) Maybe CO will get some love eventually.
But, regardless of CO's performance or the choices made about the game's content or playstyle, Cryptic just doesn't seem to have the resources to make a FOURTH MMO. Asking them to do so would be crazy. Name another studio that's got three active MMOs, let alone four. Buying up CoH is different, they could stick a small team on that to generate new content(probably similar to how CO's being run- but with the difference being that CoH already has enough content to play and stuff to do at the level cap) and wouldn't have to worry about making that huge initial development team investment like they would with a wholly new title.
It's like a 5% chance that NCsoft will ever sell CoH off though, so uh. I'd just bet on nothing happening rather than Cryptic magically announcing a new superhero MMO.
If anything, they might shift some people from Neverwinter or STO to CO at some point, probably after Neverwinter launches and STO's Romulan faction content is basically finalized. But they won't be making a new game.
This.
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Having only just gotten into CO, this talk disappoints but does not surprise me. I played STO up to cap after trying it out on Launch Day (The game sucked back then) and by and large had fun with the game...it's just once you are at the cap there's nothing to do but grind and that doesn't appeal to me. Sounds like CO suffers the same problem.
This, I think, was one of CoH's unsung successes - the Lateral End Game Content. While things like the Shadow Shard or Rikti Warzone weren't as popular by the time of shut down, they were still viable and acceptable content. By the time CoH shut down, there were a ton of things to do, most of which didn't require significant up front time investment and could be completed at a relatively leisurely pace.
Compare that to STO, where you hit the Level Cap and while there's still the story missions you can run through, if you want a Ship Upgrade you have to Join a Fleet and proceed to basically dump your entire life savings into that Fleet for several months just to be allowed the Fleet Resources to buy a new ship which is only a very slight upgrade unless you've dumped even more resources into the Fleet.
And if you want the high end gear? ...I'll be honest, that's what made me drop STO like a hot potato. Bad enough that I have to expend resources and time in Farmville-esque style Unlock "Missions" that only give me the option to BUY said items via more resources...but the fact I have to utilize Tokens - which are given out in paltry sums for doing Instanced Missions with other players - that killed it for me.
We're talking 20 to 30 minutes in order to obtain maybe around 5ish Tokens. When the unlock requires 20-30...and once it unlocks? We're gonna need about 50 - 100 Tokens just to buy that item.
Yeah, if that's the CO end game...it's probably a good thing I'm a rampant Altaholic.
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That's not the CO endgame, because CO has no endgame. You can grind missions for some champion merits to unlock extra costume bits or gear, or you can fight Gravitar to earn Questionite. That's it, there's nothing else. Everything else you can do at the level cap is stuff you could be doing at any level.
It's like CoH was back when there was the Hamidon raid and nothing else, but pretend Hamidon didn't even give Hami-Os, just like 2 Paragon Points per raid. It's a slog.
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....do what again? :roll: .....I must have missed it.
Hahahaha. Okay, I admit it, you just gave me my best laugh of the day there. ;D
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AE added much more to CoH than it took away- unfortunately over time all the creative stuff got smooshed under the farms. Paragon Studios were working on a number of fixes for the search interface and rating system, as well as a map builder, enemy scripting, and player-made cutscene stuff, so we were potentially on track for the AE to make a big, triumphant return.... and then got shut down. Whoops.
Wait.... we were going to get those kind of AWESOME tools?! *swears. a lot.* I personally really enjoyed the story arcs players made. I never got around to revising and adding more detail to mine. A more user friendly interface and way to store info would have been nice--but knowing Paragon, that'd have been worked on eventually....
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IMO, the game got waaaay better after Jack was given the boot. So no thanks.
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IMO, the game got waaaay better after Jack was given the boot. So no thanks.
Yes it's not like Jack is a CEO instead of a developer now or like he's learned anything in the past eight years from working on four different MMOs, obviously he would just make "Enhancement Diversification Online: I Played My Gameboy On The Plane Once" and everyone would hate it.
Oooooooooor he could have gotten much better at handling things since CoH was his first experience with a game, period? And be too busy to work on things directly anyway?
The hate people have for Jack still makes no sense to me. He's just one dude. It's not like he was the only person working on the game, and it's not like everything he touches is garbage. Dude is not a monster or a horrible person. He's just a guy.
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I have to counter and say that I have played the games Emmert has headed since leaving CoH and was not impressed. I gave them fair shots of 3 months each. I don't have (and wasn't expressing) any "hate," I was just pointing out my opinion. Please do not put words in the mouths of others because they are saying something you disagree with.
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Jack's been pretty hands-off with both CO and STO(and Neverwinter). Those games were done primarily under other leads. I'm not saying you can't dislike them, but "blaming" that on Jack, who is a CEO of a company full of dozens of people who are working on all of these games, is not only disrespectful to the rest of the studio and all the work they've put into those titles, but inaccurate.
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If you give the CO forums a good read, which I have in looking at their reaction to Jack's comments at PAX, you will see a very disgruntled community. The game is in what they consider to be maintenance mode, and they can't understand why they are expected to pay top rate subscription fees (or, worse, they bought a lifetime subscription) for second or third rate content. There are numerous threads that are, at best, desperate attempts to garner a response, if nothing else, from the developers on any of a long list of grievances.
Look at that for a second, though. Thread after thread of griping and discontent. Much of the discussion is by the same group of players, not unlike here. And they keep doing it. They know that none of the prior attempts have gotten the desired result, but they keep trying. I'm not saying that CO is our lifeboat, but it has the same dedicated following that you see here. I definitely won't be switching my favors over to CO, but there must be something there to illicit such a following. The trouble is, is it enough?
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If you give the CO forums a good read, which I have in looking at their reaction to Jack's comments at PAX, you will see a very disgruntled community. The game is in what they consider to be maintenance mode, and they can't understand why they are expected to pay top rate subscription fees (or, worse, they bought a lifetime subscription) for second or third rate content. There are numerous threads that are, at best, desperate attempts to garner a response, if nothing else, from the developers on any of a long list of grievances.
Look at that for a second, though. Thread after thread of griping and discontent. Much of the discussion is by the same group of players, not unlike here. And they keep doing it. They know that none of the prior attempts have gotten the desired result, but they keep trying. I'm not saying that CO is our lifeboat, but it has the same dedicated following that you see here. I definitely won't be switching my favors over to CO, but there must be something there to illicit such a following. The trouble is, is it enough?
I like Champions.
There are things that it does very well. Freeform is a wonderful concept. There are some neat powers in the game. I enjoy some of the content a lot. I think with some more Dev love, the game could be great.
There are also things that it does less well, even badly.
Teaming is clunky. Sharing missions is horrible. Bugs tend to go unfixed. (Apparently it took them YEARS to fix a bug where an item would disappear when you picked it up.) There has apparently not been any significant amount of content added in years.
It's not COH, but then nothing is.
But on its own merits, it lets me scratch my super hero itch. :)
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(Apparently it took them YEARS to fix a bug where an item would disappear when you picked it up.)
To be fair, that bug was introduced not long after the shutdown announcement for CoH and fixed about a month ago if I recall correctly. So, months rather than years. And this was a purely cosmetic bug, everything still worked. You could still pick stuff up and throw it to do damage, whatever you picked up would just be invisible while you were holding it. As bugs go, that's relatively minor and honestly I can forgive them for taking a while to get to it especially given the apparent skeleton crew they're being forced to operate with.
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(https://i1094.photobucket.com/albums/i451/BlueDalek/Jack_zps92744dec.jpg) (http://s1094.photobucket.com/user/BlueDalek/media/Jack_zps92744dec.jpg.html)