New efforts!

[Golden Girl]

A single path is nowhere near enough to cover the vast variety of content a comic book universe can contain - but multiple paths need to be flexible, and not lock people in to just one type of content all the time.

[MWRuger]

Sorry for the out of sync posts. I have to agree with this, going from 10 to 1 contacts was not a good idea and leads to faster burnout and less incentive to "alting". It encourages PLing instead of doing the same old missions *again* There should be more goodies to running low level arcs because I think it keeps people coming back to try more stuff. Alting is good.

It was not 10 contacts. It was 5. The ones in Galaxy handed out the same missions, literally the same missions, as the ones in Atlas.

Second, they all handed out the exact same kind of missions with no story or resolution. They just stopped spamming warehouse missions when you reached a certain level. The "story" was Hellions are getting artifacts. Well, guess what? Never resolved. Never mentioned again. All of them were like that. Oh The Vaz. Oh the Council. They are up to no good but you find out more later because this story just stops. Oh wait, no you don't because none of it's ever referenced again.

You don't get to fight any super villains, you don't do anything that has any consequence, you don't save a man's missing wife and get to see her next to him every time you visit Atlas. have you forgotten that there are multiple paths within that arc? Also that you get to make actual choices in how it concludes?

Did none of you actually play the original 5 arcs but me or do just not remember how "nothing happens at all" these missions were?

I would rather have 1 good story that 5 near identical crappy ones.  But hey, just add them as an additional contact when you get off the helicopter if you must visit the burning warehouse and fight hellions. Or maybe just walk across the street and street sweep. Oh yeah that is one of the engrossing missions. "Go arrest 5 Hellions" the ever popular "Patrol Atlas Park" or maybe "Visit Galaxy Girl/Atlas plaque".

[gypsyav]

* Likewise mesh coordinates and textures... Maybe you can extract the raw numbers, but you'd have to figure out how to get them converted to a form the new engine recognizes. I seem to recall that textures anyway could be extracted pretty readily, and there are many people that seem adept at yanking / swapping meshes from games, so this may be less of a task then gathering quest/power data, and as there is no external data source like wikis or character creators, might be where the "reverse engineering" resources actually would have the greatest benefit. Having all the baseline graphical objects to use as the initial structures when building higher resolution versions would seem a worthwhile haul...

The textures seem to fairly easy to extract/replace. I've seen tools for everything from changing the map overlay to changing what a character's costume looked like. All of it was only usable on your local copy but that just shows you don't have to have the code to make changes.

[Mageman]

I was thinking of that as I typed, but I wasn't sure where to go with it. This makes sense. Perhaps if the new tutorial, that allows you to go hero or villain, had been in place from the beginning, things would have been different.

If there had been a choice in the character creator of choosing Hero or Villain, I wouldn't have ventured into Praetoria!

[HEATSTROKE]

 honestly.. I went as fast as possible to 22 so I could start slotting SO's

[Ouul]

honestly.. I went as fast as possible to 22 so I could start slotting SO's

I'd often do this depending on the character, if it was a late blooming powerset combo, or a purely gameplay character, sure. If it was a character with a concept/RP capability, it was fun to get in it's head to see it's reaction to the content as it happened :D

[hejtmane]

It was not 10 contacts. It was 5. The ones in Galaxy handed out the same missions, literally the same missions, as the ones in Atlas.

Second, they all handed out the exact same kind of missions with no story or resolution. They just stopped spamming warehouse missions when you reached a certain level. The "story" was Hellions are getting artifacts. Well, guess what? Never resolved. Never mentioned again. All of them were like that. Oh The Vaz. Oh the Council. They are up to no good but you find out more later because this story just stops. Oh wait, no you don't because none of it's ever referenced again.

You don't get to fight any super villains, you don't do anything that has any consequence, you don't save a man's missing wife and get to see her next to him every time you visit Atlas. have you forgotten that there are multiple paths within that arc? Also that you get to make actual choices in how it concludes?

Did none of you actually play the original 5 arcs but me or do just not remember how "nothing happens at all" these missions were?

I would rather have 1 good story that 5 near identical crappy ones.  But hey, just add them as an additional contact when you get off the helicopter if you must visit the burning warehouse and fight hellions. Or maybe just walk across the street and street sweep. Oh yeah that is one of the engrossing missions. "Go arrest 5 Hellions" the ever popular "Patrol Atlas Park" or maybe "Visit Galaxy Girl/Atlas plaque".

I ran the ITF 100's of time I do not even know what it was about. Original Posi I ran a ton including solo no clue what the story was about

Kill Skulls  ;D worked for me

[Wyrm]

honestly.. I went as fast as possible to 22 so I could start slotting SO's

Well, there is that.  I think I ran Habashy once and then tended to run new alts through sewers.  Leveling was so stupid-fast for the first 10 in particular (once you'd done it a few times) that I have little recollection of those levels on most alts.

As it should be, frankly.  It's important to have an interesting and engaging story to capture new players, but the early levels with few powers and little to no slotting, where you may not have a good means of travel and have to run down the middle of the road to keep from getting gacked by random Hellions, ought to be ones where players aren't forced to linger.

I would support more options, recognizing that I myself really dislike feeling under-powered and will tend to choose the option that gets me up to "Task Force" levels most quickly.  But having good options for those who want them is fine by me.

[Ohioknight]

... you don't do anything that has any consequence, you don't save a man's missing wife and get to see her next to him every time you visit Atlas. have you forgotten that there are multiple paths within that arc? Also that you get to make actual choices in how it concludes?

Did none of you actually play the original 5 arcs but me or do just not remember how "nothing happens at all" these missions were?

I would rather have 1 good story that 5 near identical crappy ones.  But hey, just add them as an additional contact when you get off the helicopter if you must visit the burning warehouse and fight hellions. Or maybe just walk across the street and street sweep. Oh yeah that is one of the engrossing missions. "Go arrest 5 Hellions" the ever popular "Patrol Atlas Park" or maybe "Visit Galaxy Girl/Atlas plaque".

The other side of this is that once you've done that "one good story" it gets a bit disturbing to run it over.   You save a man's missing wife, but your next hero meets the SAME man and his wife is missing AGAIN!  What the heck is wrong with that chick? 

I mean, I fully accept that Frostfire's lawyers have him out of the revolving-door Paragon criminal justice system faster than you can cross the Hollows on foot -- (maybe if we spent a little more time gathering evidence and following criminal justice procedures...) but C'MON -- Man, that guy's wife is worse than Fusionette.

On the other hand, arresting 5 Hellions seems a perfectly sensible first mission for an aspiring first-level super-hero.

[Golden Girl]

The other side of this is that once you've done that "one good story" it gets a bit disturbing to run it over.   You save a man's missing wife, but your next hero meets the SAME man and his wife is missing AGAIN!  What the heck is wrong with that chick? 

I mean, I fully accept that Frostfire's lawyers have him out of the revolving-door Paragon criminal justice system faster than you can cross the Hollows on foot -- (maybe if we spent a little more time gathering evidence and following criminal justice procedures...) but C'MON -- Man, that guy's wife is worse than Fusionette.

On the other hand, arresting 5 Hellions seems a perfectly sensible first mission for an aspiring first-level super-hero.

That's hard to avoid in any game that encourages alting, and lets palers have as many slots as CoH did.

[wyldhunt]

But...but...it doesn't rhyme!

I would play CoX regardless of rhyme!
I would play CoX regardless of time!

And there's no mention of a fox or a box!

I have played CoX with a fox! (my wife)
I still have my CoX Collector's DVD Edition box! (both of them, with all the figs and such)

I do so like City of Heroes, TonyV, Codewalker, Ironwolf, and all others pulling for its future!

[Zombie Hustler]

I would rather have 1 good story that 5 near identical crappy ones.  But hey, just add them as an additional contact when you get off the helicopter if you must visit the burning warehouse and fight hellions. Or maybe just walk across the street and street sweep. Oh yeah that is one of the engrossing missions. "Go arrest 5 Hellions" the ever popular "Patrol Atlas Park" or maybe "Visit Galaxy Girl/Atlas plaque".

I am in total agreement with you. While I definitely enjoyed being able to pick from different origin contacts pre-Freedom, the missions were effectively the same, and didn't have much (if any) arc to them. I'd love to see them restored to some degree- maybe retool them into bigger, more cohesive storylines, rather than completely ignoring them or creating all new story arcs from whole cloth. Salvage as much as possible.

For example, I think Mongoose from the Rogue Isles could easily be reactivated. His snake missions were already pretty coherent (much more so than the early Hero contacts), and with a little bit of retooling, they could be fit into a bigger storyline that goes beyond his early levels, and gives an alternative to just doing the Mercy Island arc over and over (or- ick- Dr. Graves). If you could incorporate some alignment changing, a la the Praetorian missions- even better. Mongoose lends himself perfectly, IMO, for a villain switching it up to Rogue.

Then do the same with the Hero side origin contacts from pre-Freedom. While I still think the idea of having origin specific contacts is cool (origin specific anything, really; the origins really don't mean much sadly, though there is a lot of room for them to have some significant impact storywise), I think it is fine to just try and retool one or two alternatives to the Habashy arc. Tie some of those disparate missions together into a cohesive and interesting story. What does go on with the Hellions and those artifacts (to use an example you mention)? What if the Hero is faced with the choice of arresting them or ending them permanently and becoming a Vigilante?

[opprime2828]

I always thought a GREAT way to do CoH2 would be to make it an alternate universe in the style of Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Have one of the major story lines in endgame CoH finally tie the Praetorian/Well/Hamidon/Ouroboros stories together, where your hero/villain finally reaches that point hinted at in the side switching story lines, and you basically become your own well.  You end up realizing the only way to save Paragon from the "Coming Storm" that devours wells is to work with the Praetorian Hami, Ouroboros, the last of the Khelds, and the Heroes of Paragon to basically absorb and then exhaust all of the powers of all of the Wells and completely separate the Universes, isolating the Coming Storm into its own universe with no more wells to devour, and Paragon universe Prime into it's own as well. In the aftermath, everyone believes that you actually drained all of the wells, and new heroes in Paragon are now in danger of losing their power once the lingering energies of the wells fully fade.  In reality, you, The Midnighters, and Hamidon combined all of the wells power into one uber-Well, and with the Midnighters, Ouroboros, and Hami's help, created a new universe for it to be safely hidden in. The midnighters learned their lesson from the Shadow Shard and didn't want to send that kind of power into existing universe, Hamidon knows how to create life and finally had his chance to create a new Eden, and Ouroborus has knowledge of how to manipulate time to help with this necessary "big bang" for the new Universe that will house the Well.

This, or some much more polished version of the story line, would give us two things:

A new endgame story line where CoH heroes try to find another stable source of power for their characters, unlocking even more powers and abilities along the way (can someone say "space missions"?!), and also, an entirely new world of heroes to explore in CoH2, with even better possibilities thanks to their unknown access to the Uber-well.     

Coh2 could have entirely new mechanics, powers, etc. and it would make total sense. And it could work as a "sequel" to Coh, a standalone game, or be completely ignored by CoH players who want to stay in CoH. 

[Cailyn Alaynn]

My theory is that with some effort things that amount to pure data could probably be extractable, but not the code of how that data is interpreted. And even if the code could be extracted it would likely be totally useless in a new engine so there is no worth to extracting it. As to what can likely be and worthwhile to dredge out.

Paragon Wiki, and Mids are both freaking treasure troves for any effort to re-build CoH content in a new engine. Why try and dig the numbers and details out of the original...when they're already there in plain format? :D

I haven't gotten far enough to take advantage of Mids, but I have taken advantage of Paragon wiki a couple times while working on Revival.

* Likewise mesh coordinates and textures... Maybe you can extract the raw numbers, but you'd have to figure out how to get them converted to a form the new engine recognizes. I seem to recall that textures anyway could be extracted pretty readily, and there are many people that seem adept at yanking / swapping meshes from games, so this may be less of a task then gathering quest/power data, and as there is no external data source like wikis or character creators, might be where the "reverse engineering" resources actually would have the greatest benefit. Having all the baseline graphical objects to use as the initial structures when building higher resolution versions would seem a worthwhile haul...

It's not as difficult as most people imagine, TBH. It's where a lot of the meshes I use in Revival came from. -shrug- The most time consuming piece is re-mapping their texture...because every mesh ends up loosing the information that tells it how the texture appears on it. (The UVW mapping, for those who know such terms). Alternatively, with some models/textures...It's trying to take it and make it look like it wasn't done 12 years ago, lol.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

No, it isn't as easy as that. Unreal 4 would provide the base graphics and some manipulation mechanics. There are others who know more than me but my impression is that the game engine tells unreal 4 what to render, Unreal does that, but the game engine resolves all the mechanics, like powers, combat and so forth telling Unreal engine what to display.

Unreal Engine 4 is a complete game engine. It handles everything from graphics to gameplay to User Interface on it's own.

[sindyr]

honestly.. I went as fast as possible to 22 so I could start slotting SO's

12 and IOs for me...

[Ouul]

The thing that has me the most antsy about migrating to UE4 is the specifications that would be require to run the game at an optimal level. I'm still using the gaming laptop I bought 5 years ago (specifically this one) which runs CoH Ultra Mode just fine, and cannot afford to upgrade for a while yet. How forgiving would this new engine be on older PCs?

[AlienOne]

The thing that has me the most antsy about migrating to UE4 is the specifications that would be require to run the game at an optimal level. I'm still using the gaming laptop I bought 5 years ago (specifically this one) which runs CoH Ultra Mode just fine, and cannot afford to upgrade for a while yet. How forgiving would this new engine be on older PCs?

Well...

1. The Unreal engine has always been known for catering to lower-end systems, since the "ultra graphics" are more about having baked-in amazing textures that have the illusion of many polygons, when in fact, the actual map/characters have far fewer polygons than their appearance suggests.

and

2. Let's assume they get the game in August (I think it'll be later, assuming it takes them as long as any large corporation or government takes to do ANYTHING paperwork related), and then spend until December getting CoH 1 good to go. They then START working on CoH 2, which will most likely take at LEAST 2 years of development (if we're lucky, we'll have a public release before the end of year three, depending on exactly how large this development team/studio is). This means we're talking about anywhere from 2.5 to 3 years before you "have" to invest in a new system.

If you start saving now, I'm pretty positive you'll have enough to get whatever you want by the time CoH 2 is released. :)

[Cailyn Alaynn]

The thing that has me the most antsy about migrating to UE4 is the specifications that would be require to run the game at an optimal level. I'm still using the gaming laptop I bought 5 years ago (specifically this one) which runs CoH Ultra Mode just fine, and cannot afford to upgrade for a while yet. How forgiving would this new engine be on older PCs?

The base requirements would, of course, end up being higher than CoHs. If you could run Ultra Mode well, then you're prolly good.

In the end, the base requirements depend greatly on the skill, and time put in by who ever's lucky enough to get "CoH2" and the level of optimization done.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Well...

1. The Unreal engine has always been known for catering to lower-end systems, since the "ultra graphics" are more about having baked-in amazing textures that have the illusion of many polygons, when in fact, the actual map/characters have far fewer polygons than their appearance suggests.

Normal Mapping FTW. lol.