If we start with no user data

[Fridgy Daiere]

*sigh*
I hate you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJusMpZu-eM

 

[MWRuger]

One of the things I would like to see is City of Heroes redux on Steam as soon as possible. If it is FTP with a sub option it would fit right in and you could even sell the starter packs through steam. That way you could offer them right away even if you haven't quite worked out all the bugs in a returned paragon market.

It also has a HUGE installed base of users, the perfect place to recruit!

[Triplash]

*sigh*
I hate you.
 

 

[Felderburg]

I would say that a certain amount of items should be added to the game, for free. I'm not sure exactly what those would be, but a certain amount of items from stuff people had to purchase, like the jump jets from the good vs. evil edition, maybe some ATs or power sets. Most anything else that they decide to continue to charge for should be heavily reduced in price for the start of the game, other than consumables. Consumables like extra tailor tokens or inspirations, things like that, can be full price from the start.

If there's a way to use Sentinel data, it should be pursued. Even if that just means restoring a name, AT, and power sets, it would be nice to get something from them. Doesn't have to be Inf and purple IOs or what have you, but at least something.

[Tyrannical]

One of the things I would like to see is City of Heroes redux on Steam as soon as possible. If it is FTP with a sub option it would fit right in and you could even sell the starter packs through steam. That way you could offer them right away even if you haven't quite worked out all the bugs in a returned paragon market.

It also has a HUGE installed base of users, the perfect place to recruit!

I second this. CoH isn't the first MMO on Steam, so it's certainly doable, and heck, it's a good avenue for advertising.

[MWRuger]

I second this. CoH isn't the first MMO on Steam, so it's certainly doable, and heck, it's a good avenue for advertising.

I still have it in my Steam account. I refused to delete it and since I bought it from them it still shows up. It stopped recording the hours I played early on but if the 950 games I have on Steam it is listed as my all time favorite.

See here: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197975327907/

[Illusionss]

CoX Legacy:

1. Subscription, to fund further efforts and pay the new developers for work on that game.

2. The subscription should include all the bells and whistles, except things you get by unlocking; that stuff should stay the same. The bells and whistles soften the blow given when people's old alts were consigned forever to the dustbin of gaming history. Which, right now, I would guess is 90% probability of what's going to happen.

SoAs and Kheldians should be included in this, definitely.

3. At least ten character slots open at launch, with the option to buy more.

4. I would like the option to buy a disk or disks, I know a lot of people like Steam but I despise my computer being monitored by an outside party. I would happily pay for these disks, just like I did all my CoX disks.

Then while all this goes on and people are happily reunited with their alts, CoX 2 goes into production.

[Peerless Girl]

I second this. CoH isn't the first MMO on Steam, so it's certainly doable, and heck, it's a good avenue for advertising.

It also makes a really good avenue for patching. When I was Beta Testing Marvel, they used a horrible client called BitRaider (I'm sure some of you have had previous experience with it). Eventually they offered the option to install over Steam. Later on they ditched BR and now have their own client system of some other sort (I don't know because I use Steam). Somehow Marvel worked it out with Valve, and the game actually patches through Steam, which is great because as long as Steam's running, my game is patched up. Other MMOs on Steam (Champions and Star Trek) you still have to open the standard launcher to patch up, just like normal. Once you've gotten used to Steam doing it, you kind of get spoiled by that. I'd advocate for that sort of system as an option (probably not the only one) for installing and patching.

[Scendera]

Character data needs to happen. Even if account purchase data is lost, character data could be tied back to login names and authentication hashes if you remember the password.

That would be perfect.

[MWRuger]

CoX Legacy:

3. At least ten character slots open at launch, with the option to buy more.

4. I would like the option to buy a disk or disks, I know a lot of people like Steam but I despise my computer being monitored by an outside party. I would happily pay for these disks, just like I did all my CoX disks.

3. I'll need to buy a lot more! Like 30 or so per account.

4. You could run CoH completely outside of Steam even if you bought it through Steam. No reason that should change since they are basically going with the exact same game. All they need is an external launcher.

[Fridgy Daiere]

4. I would like the option to buy a disk or disks, I know a lot of people like Steam but I despise my computer being monitored by an outside party. I would happily pay for these disks, just like I did all my CoX disks.

This.
It's not so much that I'm paranoid, it's just that my foil hat keeps Steam from working properly, anyway.   
Seriously though, I agree with Illusionss and do not like having third party applications running in the background or needing them to launch games, and I would greatly prefer no to go that route.  I do realize that it could be good advertising, but I hope the folks at Enigmatic Studio will try to exhaust all other options first.

All they need is an external launcher.

There's always Tequila.  Perhaps Leandro would allow it to be re-tooled for the new studio's use?  I know it already downloads from a specified repository, verifies all files and replaces them as necessary...

[Codewalker]

There's always Tequila.  Perhaps Leandro would allow it to be re-tooled for the new studio's use?  I know it already downloads from a specified repository, verifies all files and replaces them as necessary...

Or Island Rum, or Multipatch, or even the old COH launcher from back before NCSoft forced the use of theirs. There is no shortage of patchers/launchers available (though Tequila/IR lean more toward downloaders rather than patchers).

[MWRuger]

I'm pretty sure they will make an external launcher although to save money and time they might not do disks.

But I am sure that they will prefer you to buy direct from them so they don't have to split any money with Steam.

Steam is still a good idea because there is a vast audience there and plenty of people who like to play everything they can through Steam.

I haven't bought any EA games lately because of Origin, who basically didn't like the Steam strategy of selling games cheaply using sales, especially theirs. But really, they just didn't want to pay steam for anything, especially DLC. The publisher works with Steam to offer sales. It's not arbitrary.

[Fridgy Daiere]

Or Island Rum, or Multipatch, or even the old COH launcher from back before NCSoft forced the use of theirs. There is no shortage of patchers/launchers available (though Tequila/IR lean more toward downloaders rather than patchers).

I didn't realize there are that many options...good to know!

[Von Krieger]

As I have the attention span of a goldfish, I wouldn't be too terribly put out by not having my old characters. The ones I want to re-make were ones that leveled quickly anyway.

And though I did purchase literally every single account upgrade there was, I don't think I could buy everything all over again should the prices remain the same and having to buy all the way up to Tier 9.

I'd say give out the vet rewards to everybody.

Or everything to everybody by selling a "box" of all the stuff that was in the store that wasn't a consumable for like $25.

[PSI-on]

Or Island Rum, or Multipatch, or even the old COH launcher from back before NCSoft forced the use of theirs. There is no shortage of patchers/launchers available (though Tequila/IR lean more toward downloaders rather than patchers).

I'd be set there, I'm stubborn enough to still have that original launcher on my computer to this day. The City of Heroes files is one of two important reasons I can't switch over and use this 3TB HD I bought and start my computer fresh.

[Codewalker]

You can copy the client to a new disk as-is. It hasn't ever needed to be "installed" per se, except maybe for the NCSoft launcher to work. The old launcher needed a registry key to know where the game was "installed", but it would create it the first time you ran it.

I went through several computers and I can't remember the last time I actually ran the installer from the COH discs. Just copied the files.

[PSI-on]

You can copy the client to a new disk as-is. It hasn't ever needed to be "installed" per se, except maybe for the NCSoft launcher to work. The old launcher needed a registry key to know where the game was "installed", but it would create it the first time you ran it.

I went through several computers and I can't remember the last time I actually ran the installer from the COH discs. Just copied the files.

I'm afraid I've never been very good at computers or programming, I hope that will change this fall when I start towards my BS in Computer Science, heck I've been having massive difficulty with STO,CO,NW since the launch of NW causing those games to crash and keep getting the run around with support. I got a new video card lately, but it only seemed to fix my steam issues. *shrugs* I guess for me I just never wanted to risk losing what little bit I still had of my home for the time being, I haven't even added (not that I would know how) i24, might be the last person lol.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Chiming in late, as usual, which is kind of ironic for a speedster:

In my ideal world:

1)  There would be an email address to send Sentinel+ files to.  Those would be uploaded "by the owners."  There is no way for players to upload their own characters.  Why?  Cuts down on munchkinism.  Although, truth be told, I'm not sure that the Sentinel+ files aren't editable.  I believe they're just XML...

2)  Said characters had to be associated with a previous NCSoft account.  I know, I know... NCSoft probably won't have kept who paid for what expansion, etc.  But, if a method exists of verifying that "Real person X actually owned THAT toon," then that prevents people from camping names.  Perhaps, "The Sentinel+ files have to come from the email address associated with the NCSoft account."  Although I'm not clear how that would work for those who changed email addresses...

3)  It's first come, first served, with names from merging servers.  I'm guessing that there will be fewer servers WHEN the game comes back.  So yes, there will be overlaps with names/complaints/whining.  First come with the Sentinel+ files gets the names.  The others get a rename token.  It's about the best/fairest way to handle it, IMO. 

4)  If you had a previous account, you get special status, possibly a 4-6 month "subscription" or whatever to get people back in the game and let them remember how addictive it was/is.  Let them see the new store, what's available, etc.

5)  People with accounts previously also get a set number of perma-perks.  Things like veteran points for the perk tree, Incarnates unlocked, a set amount of free Paragon Points to rebuild what you had before.

6)  If in any way possible, a way to recapture SG's, or at least give some SG benefits to people that had been around for a while.  The storage bins and crafting tables, the transporters, etc., would be at least nice things to give out as a "welcome back" perk.  Perhaps even SG square footage.  Those would have to go out to the SG owners.  I could not claim my SG as I wasn't the owner. 

7)  Perhaps a "nest egg" of inf to get your toons back up and running (HA!  Speedster humor!)

  After that, unlock the doors, and let us GO HOME!

Failing that, let us buy back at $25-30 a box of "You want it?  You got it!" perks that essentially unlocks all the stuff we had before.

*shrugs*

[PSI-on]

I guess my wishes are mostly the same as others: getting the game back and our characters and perks if we could, so I'll try just adding somethings here. I know I can't keep it from being debated, but I just want to state my thoughts for the powers that be.

First if we have to buy stuff back I can live with that, though getting all my slots back will be killing (I had all but like 4 or 5 on Triumph), but I hope they will consider just releasing all the edition items to us all as part of the base game since there likely isn't a way to redeem the codes even if we could find them all. I'm talking stuff like VIP, Cape of the Four Winds, Arachnos symbol and cape, Prestige Power Slide, a few badges, Alpha and Omega costumes, Valerkye costume, and a few more things. Please just share those with everyone.

Second, I know some people don't like it, but I do. One of the hardest parts of making a character, especially if you care about them and took hours making back stories and costumes and stuff, is the name. It's often hard enough to come up with a decent or good one, but then to find the one you wanted is taken can really mess up your day and set you back and let's face it, we won't likely get back all 16 servers, so names are going to be a war. Just look at how many people have brought up desires at a crack at names they always wanted back in the other forum. I agree that seeing others with the same character name would be annoying and break your immersion a little (or a lot depending on who you are), but it's really all in how you chose to deal with it internally, they likely wouldn't even have the same powers or costume. So my request is, if possible, the implementation that some other games (namely Cryptic) have where they tack on your global handle to the end of your name (hidden preferred) so as to accommodate our returning community....either that or we need our character data and all the servers or it's gonna be frustrating.