New efforts!

[Noyjitat]

So question...
but im nearly 30 now, and soon I will be too old to play games and admit it. :-/

I'll be 30 soon and I promise you I won't stop playing games even when I double or triple that number. But I share in your frustration in the fact that nothing seems to be happening in regards to getting the game back. Nothing at all since the 3rd update anyway.

That was nearly a year ago I think... Seems like by now we would of heard something.

Timeline of significant events:
.

The bold comments are direct communications from the team. I have edited them slightly to remove names and such.

Timeline:
March 6 - I get the information and start working on a way to possibly open source CoH.
March 12 - got letter back from Chris Chung - it showed that is WAS possible to buy the game.
March 13 - the team makes its first contact with me and says this: You are an evil, evil man. I'd given up hope after learning of the tax issue. Now here I am now grinning from ear to ear. Likely going to lead to heartbreak, but damned the torpedos. Full speed ahead.
March 21 - Honestly, we had given up hope. Now, you've given us hope, so we're discussing it.
March 28 - We have been reaching out and putting the proposal together. The concern has been the "Golden Handcuffs" option, being shackled to NCSoft again and having the sword of damocles once again hanging over our heads but this time knowing it is there.
April 5 - Made some headway. Now we know who we need to talk to, and a general idea of price. It is very doable.
April 16 - At the end we'll announce it one way or the other. For now it is just this silly business dance in order to reach [Redacted contact]
April 18 - Second studio expresses interest in the game
April 21 - investor expresses interest and is passed to the team
May 1 - third studio expresses interest in the game.
May 21 - I ask how the talks are going and if they are making the team jump through hoops:Stupid. Stupid amounts of hoops, as far as I know.
June 19 - Slow but not dead. Not a big deal, we were focusing on August anyhow.
June 24 - former paragon Dev contacts me and is forwarded to the team
July 3 - Yesterday, we were directed to the man whose signature is needed.
July 3 - after MY reading WAAAY too much into the first message - Er... we're not days away from anything. We're just now in direct contact, which means we're past another hurdle. We still have at least two months of negotiations left ahead of us, at best. This is where the monsters truly do lie.
July 7 - another investor/studio contacts me and is forwarded to the team
July 11- the fifth studio contacts me and is forwarded to the team
July 24 - Direct quote: "we're working very hard on something to show someone. things will be quiet for a bit."
August 13 - Direct quote: Things are moving along. We should have things worth showing fairly soon, made a great leap forward yesterday.
September 1 - Nate Downs announces he's heading the efforts. They're actively in talks. It's going to take a while. Be patient.

[ivanhedgehog]

What HE said! :)

I've tried other MMO's and they all come up lacking in the fun department compared to CoH.

As to the shiny new graphics, that is no big deal. Doesn't matter how shiny the game is, if it ain't fun then it isn't worth playing.

besides, with what irish girl is working on, we will have the shinies in our game if the deal goes through

[Paragon Avenger]

It pains me to say this, but we all have to be patiant, or how ever it's spelled.
They are under the thumb of the National Diary Association.  If they so much as sneeze 'the-talks-are-going-good', those milk farmers will have THeMs hides.  My guess is that the THeM is holding out for NCSoft to reliquenish full control over the game.  NCSoft could shut it down again if THeM don't get that.  And of course, NCSoft isn't a willing seller.  So things are going to take time.  Look at it this way, the game is gone, but their are people working to get it back.


Yes, I know NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement, but thinking that a powerful lobby of milk producers is somehow involved is silly and pleasing to my warped mind.

[Matt Bold]

It pains me to say this, but we all have to be patiant, or how ever it's spelled.
They are under the thumb of the National Diary Association.  If they so much as sneeze 'the-talks-are-going-good', those milk farmers will have THeMs hides.  My guess is that the THeM is holding out for NCSoft to reliquenish full control over the game.  NCSoft could shut it down again if THeM don't get that.  And of course, NCSoft isn't a willing seller.  So things are going to take time.  Look at it this way, the game is gone, but their are people working to get it back.


Yes, I know NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement, but thinking that a powerful lobby of milk producers is somehow involved is silly and pleasing to my warped mind.

From my understanding, any mention of the deal could jeopardize it, so the fact that we have not heard anything still means the deal is on the table and ongoing.  If the team really felt it wouldn't have gone through, wouldn't they have said something by now?

[Solitaire]

besides, with what irish girl is working on, we will have the shinies in our game if the deal goes through

Shinies would be good, but at this point I would just like to have the game back as it was when they shut it down, like most people here I miss the game a lot.

• Miss teaming with friends from a round the world
• Miss badge hunting
• Miss soloing
• Miss PUGs
• Miss TFs/SFs
• Miss yearly events
• Miss story arcs
• Miss so much more....

[Flickershow]

I have a team of nine characters all planned out in Mids waiting in a folder labelled Resurrection Builds.

Here's hoping they don't have to stay there forever!

Flickershow

[darkgob]

What HE said! :)

I've tried other MMO's and they all come up lacking in the fun department compared to CoH.

As to the shiny new graphics, that is no big deal. Doesn't matter how shiny the game is, if it ain't fun then it isn't worth playing.

You'll note that I never once mentioned other MMOs since they're pretty much universally all trash.

[Brigadine]

What HE said! :)

I've tried other MMO's and they all come up lacking in the fun department compared to CoH.

As to the shiny new graphics, that is no big deal. Doesn't matter how shiny the game is, if it ain't fun then it isn't worth playing.

They are all too progression focused. This is why the only tolerable games I have found are sandbox MMO's because at least you have some control. I honestly think this is why Star Citizen is so appealing. If it is even half of what it claims it will be more entertaining than many recent MMO's combined.

[Arcana]

They are all too progression focused. This is why the only tolerable games I have found are sandbox MMO's because at least you have some control. I honestly think this is why Star Citizen is so appealing. If it is even half of what it claims it will be more entertaining than many recent MMO's combined.

That depends greatly on which half.

[Golden Aurora]

What I miss the most about CoH is the way it was challenging enough to solo but still challenging as a team. It welcomed team play in a way no other MMO I've ever played before or after has.

The side kick/exemplar system was one of the finest things I've ever seen implemented to facilitate people playing together. I remember my very first week playing when I was a level 7 blaster on Justice in 2004, I was brought to side kick to someone standing beside the train in Brickstown. Some other person started herding and gathering mobs, then slaughtering them.

The xp just started coming in. Meanwhile my mentor and I were heading towards there the killing zone was to join in the fun. I remember being bewildered why my mentor did so much more damage than I did. I figured it all out in time of course, but think about how other MMOs handle playing together.

Champions Online: Teamplay is a mess. The game penalizes you for playing in a team. You gain less xp in a team than just soloing. Mobs are too easy even solo and in a team they do not scale up in number or difficulty. The sidekick system works, but to what end? The missions with clickeys are never shared. Everyone has to click box X waiting Y seconds for it to respawn. On harder (longer timed) drops it makes playing in a team agonizing. I have a friend with close to 120 lvl 40s (max level). She solos them exclusively because she says team play makes it take 30% longer to gain a given level due to the way she does things. The only content in the game which requires teamplay is the alerts and rampages. It's like radio missions, but worse. It doesn't encourage you in any way to preform teams. You join a queue and rinse repeat. Generic teaming experience. Much, much worse. The rampages can be fun but they are the only time in the game a healer can be required. Guess what? You can't target the other team! So you see people dropping on the other team in the rampage and there's nothing you can do but spam click on the screen to try to target and heal them. That or make an aoe heal build and pray. It makes me sad. The game could have been so much better if they implemented it even a tiny bit closer to the way CoH was done.

GW2: I played this and it felt solo heavy and Team Light. Basically the only times I had to team were on harder mobs, or event areas. The teams were auto generated and going from 1 to lvl 6o something not a single person ever wanted to friend me or play with me outside of those auto events. The main thing I hate about GW2 is how everyone has the same cookie cutter crap skills. Your weapon determines what abilities you have with the side weap granting one extra skill. Just by seeing what weap they have you automatically know 90% of their abilities.. spam 1,2,3.. press 4 (20 sec cooldown). Rinse repeat. Boring.

Long post but I miss a MMO that made me feel like I was capable of playing solo, but also capable of having 5x as much fun if i reply to that /b Lvl 25 Radio team LFM! Need 3 more.

For being MMOs, simply seeing your avatar on the screen isn't enough for me to consider it worthy of my time. I could play quake 3 with bots and see the exact same crap. Come on game devs, realise that 70% of what makes a game fun is the social aspect. Give us reasons to play together. Don't make it some god awful grind with long times. Don't make it agonizingly hard or stupidly easy right out of the gate.

Mat Miller needs to open an MMO academy for designers. Seriously.

[Thunder Glove]

Let me just amend one thing about your CO commentary:

The mobs are way too easy, until suddenly they aren't.  I was painfully reminded of this when I was playing it the other day (thanks to that free Freeform slot they gave away a week ago).  I'd easily tear through most enemy groups without getting scratched, but then I'd face another group, seemingly no different from all the others, and they'd suddenly be able to tear through me just as easily (even with the Nanobot healing passive and two fully-upgraded Support Drones focusing their healing on me).

I don't know how that works, exactly, but it happens every time.

[LaughingAlex]

Champions Online: Teamplay is a mess. The game penalizes you for playing in a team. You gain less xp in a team than just soloing. Mobs are too easy even solo and in a team they do not scale up in number or difficulty. The sidekick system works, but to what end? The missions with clickeys are never shared. Everyone has to click box X waiting Y seconds for it to respawn. On harder (longer timed) drops it makes playing in a team agonizing. I have a friend with close to 120 lvl 40s (max level). She solos them exclusively because she says team play makes it take 30% longer to gain a given level due to the way she does things. The only content in the game which requires teamplay is the alerts and rampages. It's like radio missions, but worse. It doesn't encourage you in any way to preform teams. You join a queue and rinse repeat. Generic teaming experience. Much, much worse. The rampages can be fun but they are the only time in the game a healer can be required. Guess what? You can't target the other team! So you see people dropping on the other team in the rampage and there's nothing you can do but spam click on the screen to try to target and heal them. That or make an aoe heal build and pray. It makes me sad. The game could have been so much better if they implemented it even a tiny bit closer to the way CoH was done.

GW2: I played this and it felt solo heavy and Team Light. Basically the only times I had to team were on harder mobs, or event areas. The teams were auto generated and going from 1 to lvl 6o something not a single person ever wanted to friend me or play with me outside of those auto events. The main thing I hate about GW2 is how everyone has the same cookie cutter crap skills. Your weapon determines what abilities you have with the side weap granting one extra skill. Just by seeing what weap they have you automatically know 90% of their abilities.. spam 1,2,3.. press 4 (20 sec cooldown). Rinse repeat. Boring.

Long post but I miss a MMO that made me feel like I was capable of playing solo, but also capable of having 5x as much fun if i reply to that /b Lvl 25 Radio team LFM! Need 3 more.

For being MMOs, simply seeing your avatar on the screen isn't enough for me to consider it worthy of my time. I could play quake 3 with bots and see the exact same crap. Come on game devs, realise that 70% of what makes a game fun is the social aspect. Give us reasons to play together. Don't make it some god awful grind with long times. Don't make it agonizingly hard or stupidly easy right out of the gate.

Mat Miller needs to open an MMO academy for designers. Seriously.

What annoyed me most about CO's rampages was the fact that healers became required more because the developers never had good teamplay mechanics or powers in CO to begin with.  There are no effective buffs(and the only one even close cannot be stacked more than once).  There is no effective crowd control nore was there ever any debuffs that'd cut the need for healing down when the rampages showed up.  So healing was the be-all-end-all of support as it tended to be in other boring mmorpgs and bad rpgs in general.  Teamplay has no strategy in CO as it lacks strategy in other mmo's(if holy trinity is the only strategy then there is no strategy, sorry, but need variety for there to be strategy).

Which makes teamplay boring, hell CO solo was boring because enemies were most of the time weak as hell, the few moments where your facing dangerous mobs just having self healing was enough(which most archtypes lacked, causing them to generally be very gimped and underpowered).  In fact i'd even say healing was sadly close to being the true be-all-end-all in CO.  Which is why regeneration in it was always good for solo.

GW2 I am not surprised to see people speak of it that way.  Guild wars one always had the same issue with cookie cutter builds due to gamers generally being very complacent in trying things; if they don't win right away they rather not study the abilities and come up with something of their own.

I think mmorpgs just tend to, as someone mentioned, to focused on progression of levels and power but never on strategy or tactics.  Let power and progression be a result of strategy/tactics, not the other way around and you end up with a very fun game.  If tactics are only something unlocked from leveling and are something you can ignore cause you could get that far with em, then there isn't any need for it in the first place.  Like that ultimate weapon for your main character in a JRPG: Sure, it's the best in the game but if you could get it then was it even important to bother getting it?  Or that slow enemy debuff that only showed up at the very end of the game that you never use.

Or maybe even the plasma rifle in deux ex human revolution, sure it's super powerful but you were at the VERY END OF THE GAME WITH ALMOST NOTHING TO USE IT ON SO THUS IT WAS USELESS.

So they end up later resorting to carrot on a stick business tactics to keep people payin to play :/.  They pray on the munchkin mindset of people only caring about how powerful but don't care about strategy or tactics.  People who like strategy or tactics tend to play single player based rpgs and rts's, because they tend to focus on the "strategy and tactics wins, power comes later" mindset.

[LaughingAlex]

Let me just amend one thing about your CO commentary:

The mobs are way too easy, until suddenly they aren't.  I was painfully reminded of this when I was playing it the other day (thanks to that free Freeform slot they gave away a week ago).  I'd easily tear through most enemy groups without getting scratched, but then I'd face another group, seemingly no different from all the others, and they'd suddenly be able to tear through me just as easily (even with the Nanobot healing passive and two fully-upgraded Support Drones focusing their healing on me).

I don't know how that works, exactly, but it happens every time.

This, this is why archtypes in CO always sucked :).  And regeneration healing such a huge amount is considered balanced :/.

[Aggelakis]

Remember, CO has its own forum so if you want to continue this, please head over there. The occasional mention here is fine, but let's keep the deeper discussion contained. :)

[Golden Aurora]

Agreed Aggy. The point just was that I've been around the block and in fact am actively looking for something to fill that CoH hole. That includes TSW, AoC, Rift, Tera, CO, Marvel Heroes, and GW2. They really had a magical combination with CoH.

On a side note! I bought the new Dragonquest Heroes last night on steam. It brought back total NES Dragon Warrior nostalgia. 20Gig download and can play it on maxed settings on my 880m gtx. It had all the oldschool nes music and man... totally looking forward to it after work today.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/410850/

I also bought the CoH collectors dvd editon off amazon for $20. I know I can't play it but I want a souvenir. My old installation disks were lost years back.

[MM3squints]

I also bought the CoH collectors dvd editon off amazon for $20. I know I can't play it but I want a souvenir. My old installation disks were lost years back.

O.o how did you manage to find a vendor that sells one of those (I was looking to get one after buying the Pipboy Edition make a game collection with the Box in tact) All I can find on Amazon was City of Heroes mousepads and older model but not the collector edition.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=city+of+heroes+game&rh=n%3A541966%2Ck%3Acity+of+heroes+game

[Aggelakis]

I got all the boxes from Amazon literally 2 days before the announcement. I was going to apply them to my second account for "free" game time and stuff. Then the announcement happened and then they turned off adding codes to your account. So I have six unopened boxes sitting in a big Amazon box in my game room closet. If I had space, I'd display them alongside my CoH art & goodies, but those are all packed away too. I need a bigger house. ^_^

[MM3squints]

I got all the boxes from Amazon literally 2 days before the announcement. I was going to apply them to my second account for "free" game time and stuff. Then the announcement happened and then they turned off adding codes to your account. So I have six unopened boxes sitting in a big Amazon box in my game room closet. If I had space, I'd display them alongside my CoH art & goodies, but those are all packed away too. I need a bigger house. ^_^

Boo~~-.- I heard the Collector Edition besides that VIP Badge game with little Figurines or is that another version?

[Aggelakis]

CoV collector's comes with seven HeroClix game figures (Posi, States, GW, Black Scorpion, Lord Recluse, Cpt Mako, and Manticore). CoV regular comes with one (random). CoH didn't include any figures in either regular or collector's.

[MM3squints]

CoV collector's comes with seven HeroClix game figures (Posi, States, GW, Black Scorpion, Lord Recluse, Cpt Mako, and Manticore). CoV regular comes with one (random). CoH didn't include any figures in either regular or collector's.

Damn now I need to buy another collector edition. Good thing I did find the CoV Collector Edition:D Also the CoH Collectors (2 left apparently)

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=city+of+villians+collector+edition&rh=n%3A541966%2Ck%3Acity+of+villians+collector+edition