Jack Emmert Smack Talking City Of Heroes

[srmalloy]

We should cut Jack some slack.  First, all evidence suggests that when Cryptic was first creating City of Heroes, the dev team was overreaching beyond their abilities farther than a kindergarten class trying to start a space program.  If Jack hadn't come along with the vision he was so reviled for after launch, odds are we would have never had a game at all.  Second, so much of what we blame Jack for in terms of holding back from the players are things the dev team couldn't have delivered on either way.  Who outside Cryptic even knows all the things Jack said we shouldn't have that in fact he knew we couldn't have, because Cryptic couldn't deliver it.

The two bits that were part of the early design of City of Heroes that I hold Jack to blame for are both 'vision' aspects of the game: Jack's conviction that three minions should be the equal of one hero, and his conviction that boss fights where you had to jump into the fight and get defeated again and again before you learned the one trick unique to that boss that would allow you to defeat them was 'fun'. The former flies in the face of the player characters being heroes -- being able to blow through swarms of minions is one of the superhero tropes, after all -- and the latter, at least to my mind, inverts the whole point of the game -- you're not defeating the boss because you're playing your character to the limit of their ability, you're defeating the boss because you found the boss' Achilles Heel that has nothing to do with your playing your character better.

From what I see, though, the former isn't specific to Jack -- it's a common premise underlying many MMOs -- and the latter is often the result of it being so much easier for the developers to make a boss an otherwise undefeatable sack of hit points and massive attacks and program in an Achilles Heel that will let anyone defeat them if they take advantage of it than it is to make the boss a more normal mob that fights better and more intelligently than minions or lieutenants. And even after NCSoft bought out Cryptic, the latter persisted in some of the AVs. Look at Reichsman from the Khan TF, for example -- a quarter of a million hit points, with a rotating nigh-invulnerability to all attacks and a periodic PBAoE nuke that will flatten anyone not paying attention to getting out of the way of it; defeating him doesn't involve much in the way of intelligent employment of the TF members; it's a brute-force tank-and-spank with four interruptions to take down the other AVs as they're released.

[FatherXmas]

Jack's conviction that three minions should be the equal of one hero ... The former flies in the face of the player characters being heroes -- being able to blow through swarms of minions is one of the superhero tropes, after all

But at the time in other MMORPGs taking on more than one critter at a time was a near death sentence, even at lower levels where leveling (talking MMORPGs in general) was suppose to be quick and easy to hook the player.  I don't fault him for that.

[Thunder Glove]

Yeah, "one hero = three equal-level minions", while far less than what a CoH character could eventually handle, is still far better than most other games in the genre.  In many games, you're lucky if "one hero = one lower-leveled minion, maybe."

"One hero = one equal-level boss" is even a radical concept in most games to this day (where the ratio is usually "a full team = one equal-level boss", or even "a full raid group = one equal-level boss")

[Arcana]

But at the time in other MMORPGs taking on more than one critter at a time was a near death sentence, even at lower levels where leveling (talking MMORPGs in general) was suppose to be quick and easy to hook the player.  I don't fault him for that.

Not to mention the fact that at launch with the 2000 era hardware they had, and the 1990s software they had, designing the game to make the average character played by the average player require significantly more than three entities to pose a significant threat would quickly outstrip the ability for the servers to handle full teams of players.

I believe the devs always wanted us to be more than 1v1 like the standard MMO designs tended to reflect, but there are two practical limits to that which the devs could not trivially dismiss.  Balancing critters becomes much more complex (given the tools and methodologies in use at the time) and it requires far more hardware to support larger scale fights.  Three was the compromise number.

Plus, people need to understand what the equals sign means in one hero = three minions."  That doesn't mean three minions was the literal equal of a player.  If that was the case, you'd have about a 50/50 chance of winning such a fight.  In actuality one hero >>> three minions, because the probability of winning that fight was intended to be extremely high.  One hero = three minions means when the mapserver saw one player on the map, it spawned three minions of threat per spawn point.  One hero equals three minions.  That level of threat was supposed to be high enough to be interesting, strong enough to take a meaningful bite at the player, but not actually beat the player outright.  Otherwise average players with average characters would never finish missions.

[Hyperstrike]

Okay STO is bigger than CoH ever was.  Good for STO.

1: They had a larger community coming INTO the game (the zillions of Trek fans).
2: They have recognizable IP.  CoH basically had to create their own IP and recognition for it.  Mainly they got by with being "the only superhero MMO" then "the first superhero MMO".
3: STO gets advertisement in a way that CoH never, EVER had a chance of.  Every new Trek film, or series or Trek convention is a free ad for the game!
4: Yes.  Going F2P is also going to bring more people than subbing ever would.
5: And the kicker.  STO isn't, in and of itself, a bad game.  It's not everyone's cup of tea.  But it's eminently playable and at least mildly amusing.  That it doesn't actively SUCK like some other Trek games has its advantages.

STO is flourishing because it has all these things.
CoH flourished DESPITE having essentially none of the first four.


And Jack was a subscription diehard until Cryptic actively and regularly started stepping on their dangly-bits with their last few games due to financial pressures from their owner/publisher FORCING them to put out half-baked product.

Going F2P means there's less money that irate customers can legitimately demand back.
It also means its in their best interest to nickel and dime you with trinkets and lockboxes.

[Colette]

I really think it is in our best interests, as a community, to bury the hatchet with Jack Emmert. The only thing I have against him is he sold CoH to the hated NCSoft. And how could he have known?

Without Mr. Emmert, CoH prob'ly would never have existed, and we'd all be playing DCU right now... or not playing it. He did what he thought was best long-term for the game, despite shortsighted community outcries. For example, the I-5 "Enhancement Diversification" steps he took raised a huge outcry, but in the long term proved a perfectly fine game mechanism.

Mind, I don't like CO, and if that's the "vision" Mr. Emmert had, I think it's misguided. But that doesn't make him a bad guy. His in-game character was a very "Marty Stu" cross between Thor and Superman. Makes him a bad writer, not a bad guy.

Brutally closing a game, selling new stuff three days before that closure, tossing out your employees in a Gestapo-esque raid, that makes for bad guys. Mr. Emmert had nothing to do with that.

Perhaps his judgment has been questionable, but I'm not seeing how that justifies villification. Y'all feel free to correct me.

[Primantis]

The only thing I have against him is he sold CoH to the hated NCSoft. And how could he have known?

Well NCSoft wasn't so hated back then..

I think Jack selling the game was in CoH's best interest really.. I have a nagging feeling it would have been left out to try while all the funds went into CO (and later STO) if he hadn't.

NCSoft might not have been the best choice, but we can't fault Jack for that. Things were different back then and NCSoft was all gun ho in their "western expansion" thing.

[Primantis]

He's long moved on, and its long past the time we should let go of his shadow.

Never! Who would we use as a scapegoat for all of our problems then? The Devil is so cliche...

[Arcana]

Never! Who would we use as a scapegoat for all of our problems then? The Devil is so cliche...

Once the Phoenix Project and Heroes and Villains teams start rolling out code, we'll have a completely different set of people we can blame for having the audacity to give us a game we'll never stop complaining about.

[JaguarX]

Without Mr. Emmert, CoH prob'ly would never have existed, and we'd all be playing DCU right now... or not playing it. He did what he thought was best long-term for the game, despite shortsighted community outcries. For example, the I-5 "Enhancement Diversification" steps he took raised a huge outcry, but in the long term proved a perfectly fine game mechanism.

Oh yeah people was pissed over that royally. Almost as much anger show then about ED as now about closing the game. Yet, after it all died down and people seemed to got used to the change, it was nothing.

When COH was wholly sold to NCSoft it was different times but many were heated about Atuo Assault closing. yeah, there were players that didnt like NCSoft much even years ago at least since 2007 when they closed down Auto Assault and sold COH/COV to NCSoft, but those people that talked bad about NCSoft then  usually was flamed and jumped all over and shouted down. Some by the very same people that are now wholly against NCSoft the same way and some saying the exact same thing as the person they flamed and jumped down their throats was saying back in the times between 2007 and 2009. Times has changed it seems.

[dwturducken]

Once the Phoenix Project and Heroes and Villains teams start rolling out code, we'll have a completely different set of people we can blame for having the audacity to give us a game we'll never stop complaining about.

WIN!

[Arcana]

Oh yeah people was pissed over that royally. Almost as much anger show then about ED as now about closing the game. Yet, after it all died down and people seemed to got used to the change, it was nothing.

When COH was wholly sold to NCSoft it was different times but many were heated about Atuo Assault closing. yeah, there were players that didnt like NCSoft much even years ago at least since 2007 when they closed down Auto Assault and sold COH/COV to NCSoft, but those people that talked bad about NCSoft then  usually was flamed and jumped all over and shouted down. Some by the very same people that are now wholly against NCSoft the same way and some saying the exact same thing as the person they flamed and jumped down their throats was saying back in the times between 2007 and 2009. Times has changed it seems.

An objective difference between the two situations was that City of Heroes was a successful game; it had more players than most MMOs that get shut down and it had sufficient revenues to be easily profitable, nit-picking about Paragon development costs aside.  Auto Assault was, at least as I recall, not a profitable game at shut down.  It had a loyal core of players, but that core was very small.

Something that wasn't really discussed when CoH was shutdown is that a publisher cannot simply give its IP away to its development team.  There were posters analyzing that situation completely wrong.  They assumed that if the property was losing money, then it wasn't worth anything by definition.  But that's not true.  If you set the precedent that a game that isn't making money is thus worth nothing, you create the opportunity for an unscrupulous development team to use a publisher to fund the majority of its development work, then take the property away when it "fails" and go off and make money on it owning it in full.  That cannot be allowed to occur.  I have no idea what sort of money the Auto Assault team put on the table to buy out the IP, but it had to be enough to compensate NCSoft for the full dev costs of the title and then some, or it would be dangerous to let the property go.  I cannot speak intelligently to how that went down, because I have no inside knowledge on that situation, but the shutdown occurred so soon after launch that its not unreasonable to assume that NC hadn't even recouped its dev costs yet, and thus had to hold out for a substantial amount in any buyout.

That was not the case for CoH.  NC had made its money on CoH several times over.  The devs had no specific motive to tank the title just to acquire the property.  Most importantly the title was still making money.  In this situation, if NCSoft didn't want to maintain the title it could have chosen to sell the property using normal ROI calculations in situations like this.  My best estimate is that NCSoft could have legitimately sold CoH for something between $6M and $15M while setting no dangerous precedent for future game development.

I believe that amount of money was on the table, but NCSoft balked, for reasons not directly related to a pure accounting calculation.  And because I'm more familiar with the situation on top of the fact the situation is fundamentally different in terms of precedent, my feelings are thus different for objectively different reasons.

Although not too different: I believed then that Auto Assault, while *extremely* flawed as a game, was worth spinning off and letting the dev team see what they could make of it.  I just wasn't sure if they could have pulled it off.  All investors want is a reasonable risk-adjusted return on investment.  The Paragon team had the numbers to demonstrate they could do that.  The Auto Assault team did not: they were a much higher risk.  So its unclear how much money they could have put together to attempt to buy the property.

[JaguarX]

An objective difference between the two situations was that City of Heroes was a successful game; it had more players than most MMOs that get shut down and it had sufficient revenues to be easily profitable, nit-picking about Paragon development costs aside.  Auto Assault was, at least as I recall, not a profitable game at shut down.  It had a loyal core of players, but that core was very small.

Something that wasn't really discussed when CoH was shutdown is that a publisher cannot simply give its IP away to its development team.  There were posters analyzing that situation completely wrong.  They assumed that if the property was losing money, then it wasn't worth anything by definition.  But that's not true.  If you set the precedent that a game that isn't making money is thus worth nothing, you create the opportunity for an unscrupulous development team to use a publisher to fund the majority of its development work, then take the property away when it "fails" and go off and make money on it owning it in full.  That cannot be allowed to occur.  I have no idea what sort of money the Auto Assault team put on the table to buy out the IP, but it had to be enough to compensate NCSoft for the full dev costs of the title and then some, or it would be dangerous to let the property go.  I cannot speak intelligently to how that went down, because I have no inside knowledge on that situation, but the shutdown occurred so soon after launch that its not unreasonable to assume that NC hadn't even recouped its dev costs yet, and thus had to hold out for a substantial amount in any buyout.

That was not the case for CoH.  NC had made its money on CoH several times over.  The devs had no specific motive to tank the title just to acquire the property.  Most importantly the title was still making money.  In this situation, if NCSoft didn't want to maintain the title it could have chosen to sell the property using normal ROI calculations in situations like this.  My best estimate is that NCSoft could have legitimately sold CoH for something between $6M and $15M while setting no dangerous precedent for future game development.

I believe that amount of money was on the table, but NCSoft balked, for reasons not directly related to a pure accounting calculation.  And because I'm more familiar with the situation on top of the fact the situation is fundamentally different in terms of precedent, my feelings are thus different for objectively different reasons.

Although not too different: I believed then that Auto Assault, while *extremely* flawed as a game, was worth spinning off and letting the dev team see what they could make of it.  I just wasn't sure if they could have pulled it off.  All investors want is a reasonable risk-adjusted return on investment.  The Paragon team had the numbers to demonstrate they could do that.  The Auto Assault team did not: they were a much higher risk.  So its unclear how much money they could have put together to attempt to buy the property.

This is all true, but didnt seem to stop of was considered with the NCSoft serial MMO killer memes but still, there was fans in each of those games I mentioned and people who lost their homes and they wasnt greeted as kindly and with understanding when they hurt by their loss as we demand to be greeted and understood. 

So if NCSOft had reason to shut down each game then it seem moot to label NCSOft as an MMO killer and their past closings shouldnt even be part of the equation in their reputation and thus thier reputation should be considered proper and just if that is the case of each other game besides COX ncsoft had proper excuse to close. But then again, it depends on the view. Even though most of those games were closed for financial reason depending on the view some could say that NCSOft had logical reason to close down COX too. I'm sure many here, and as many expressed in the past so not want to hear that, especially the term it was merely a business decision, but some dont and did not take account into the feelings of the past players of the other games NCSoft shutdwn and pass it off merely as ncsoft had good reason to shut the game down. Why is it easy and proper to treat other community player that lost their home as brushing it off as just business but it's a sin to do so for the closing of this game. How can we expect people to be understanding of our loss and cause if we cant even find it in our own hearts to be as equally understanding about the loss of the other communities destroyed by NCSoft? If the goal is to stop "evil" corporations from pushing players around then we have to get out the mindset that it's only about and should only care about COX.

[FatherXmas]

NCsoft shut down four MMORPGs in NA, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners and City of Heroes.

Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa and Dungeon Runners were clear failures financially.  The other two MMOs listed on Wikipedia were shut down in Korea but they were licensed titles, NCsoft was just their publisher in Korea.  Those two games are still going strong in other parts of the world including NA (unclear if they got another publisher in Korea).

Exteel wasn't an MMORPG and it was closed world wide.

[Surelle]

In an interview published earlier today, Jack Emmert was talking about Neverwinter and free-to-play. As he often does in these interviews he went on to throw one of his previous products under the bus. This time it was City of Heroes.

"I was a subscription die-hard who had choice words for F2P, but the methodology behind quality free gaming design totally converted me. I see what it's done to Star Trek Online and, believe it or not, 'that game is much bigger than City of Heroes ever was at its peak! And that's due entirely to how we approach free-to-play gaming -- how we commit to providing an option for players who don't want to pay, period."

I saw him disparage Star Trek Online in an interview some years back when he was talking about Neverwinter. It just makes me wonder if he loses interest in the old games and then likes to smack talk them, as so many people seem to like doing, or if he just throws these one-liners out without thinking about what he's saying.

The thing is, though, that purely free players do nothing but cost money, and add lag and queues, without giving anything in return.  The *real* question here is, "Which one rakes/raked in more money at its peak?"

[FatherXmas]

Nexon's revenue model on F2P, and I've seen similar metrics from other F2P companies, that they only need 10% of the active player base to buy $15 worth of stuff from the item store every month to be acceptably profitable.  Note it doesn't need to be the same 10%.

[Arcana]

Even though most of those games were closed for financial reason depending on the view some could say that NCSOft had logical reason to close down COX too. I'm sure many here, and as many expressed in the past so not want to hear that, especially the term it was merely a business decision, but some dont and did not take account into the feelings of the past players of the other games NCSoft shutdwn and pass it off merely as ncsoft had good reason to shut the game down. Why is it easy and proper to treat other community player that lost their home as brushing it off as just business but it's a sin to do so for the closing of this game.

I'm not sure what precisely you mean by "brushing off" but there's a difference between being understanding about a shutdown, and nevertheless realistic as to the financial reasons compelling that shutdown.

Now, if there are people that believe the CoH shutdown was similarly financially motivated, they would have a similar reason to act accordingly.  However, they would also be wrong.  And while there are people who believe there exists a fundamental right to be wrong, I'm not one of those people.

[Knightslayer]

Oh yeah people was pissed over that royally. Almost as much anger show then about ED as now about closing the game. Yet, after it all died down and people seemed to got used to the change, it was nothing.

Those that stayed, I still occasionally see some that claim ED is what REALLY killed the game. 
When the shutdown was announced there were some like that on the official forums too.

[Ironwolf]

I would be one of the ones who believe ED killed the game.

It wasn't just the change that was the issue - it was making the change and saying well you didn't lose anything and if you did - tough go ahead and leave because people always come and go in MMO's. They could have implemented the IO's changes at the same time as the ED nerf and it would have been a far better solution. You took something away from people and then said - we don't care if you like it or not.

It was more the asshattery of Jack Emmert than the actual changes that made people extremely angry. I had a full (at the time) SG of 52 players and within 2 months we had 7 left. It really, really hurt and some people never came back after that.

[JaguarX]

I would be one of the ones who believe ED killed the game.

It wasn't just the change that was the issue - it was making the change and saying well you didn't lose anything and if you did - tough go ahead and leave because people always come and go in MMO's. They could have implemented the IO's changes at the same time as the ED nerf and it would have been a far better solution. You took something away from people and then said - we don't care if you like it or not.

It was more the asshattery of Jack Emmert than the actual changes that made people extremely angry. I had a full (at the time) SG of 52 players and within 2 months we had 7 left. It really, really hurt and some people never came back after that.

Yeah the tone of "tough go ahead and leave" is never good for business. Well, kind of like the end result.

I noticed that in four SG (most of my toons didnt join the same SG) I joined many was on their way way out because of ED. One SG had max people, we couldnt even invite anymore then the next day, it only was about ten people including the 4 that joined that day. I guess some people took it literal and actually left. Sad. Then i13 seemed to be the nail in the coffin for the rest of the SGs I was apart of besides two on virtue. After I14, I think only one had more than 10 people including the ones that havent logged in a couple of years, while some I logged into some characters to realize I was the only one in the SG.

But hindsight is 20/20. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time to someone, and some were especially the ones that left were extremely upset at Jack.