Positron found some nice work!

[Empyrean]

Any work Posi does in this industry will improve the industry, and I'm really glad he's found gainful employment, times are a bit skinny for lots of folks right now.  I couldn't think more highly of the guy .  There was a big, though only wistful, flurry of conversation on the CO forums about getting Matt Miller on Champions.  Oh what a wonderful world that would be.

By the way, I would like to address some of the comments about Champions on this thread.  I just don't understand why some in this community want to treat Champions like the enemy.  If it is a dead horse (and it amazingly isn't yet, there are lots of people playing and they desperately WANT more), then it's only because either Perfect World or Cryptic or both--I'm not sure which--is neglecting and starving it to death quite blatantly and shamelessly.

I know some here don't like the look and feel of the game, which is fair enough, but I think it's getting confusingly strong hate from some seemingly because it's not CoH, which isn't really fair.  And, quite frankly, it's gone so undeveloped that if it ever got a dose of good development (say, from MATT MILLER , and some good artists), they could go just about any direction that they wanted with it, because so little has been done that it is still a fairly blank slate.

Anyway, Champions is a time-honored IP, it is in many real ways the father of City of Heroes, and I hate to see it treated so badly by Jack, Cryptic, Perfect World, and even some of the forumites here.  There is still real potential in that game, but, at this point, it does look like there's about a .01% chance it'll ever be developed at all, for good or bad.  It's not a dead horse, it's a perfectly good horse that is slowly being killed by intentional neglect.

[Sophronisba]

I like the Champions lore and I think Vibora Bay is fabulous. The comic series and adventure packs are also really well done. But they seem to be going down a lockbox/alert path that just doesn't appeal to me.

I still check in from time to time and I was encouraged to see the telepathy changes. If they added a full-blown powerset (nature, staff, water, etc.) or a new comic series or (be still my heart) a whole new zone I'd definitely resub for a bit.

[Thunder Glove]

I don't consider CO the "enemy".  I consider it the game that could have replaced CoH in my heart if only the company who ran it gave a damn.  They could have had tens of thousands of new permanent subscribers (including me) when CoH went down if they'd spent the months between August 31 and November 30th gearing up for it, introducing new zones and new content (particularly new low-level arcs for all the altoholics) and filling in gaps in the existing powersets and such.

But they don't.  And that's tragic.

There's so much potential there, but while I still hadn't run out of things to do in CoH when the game shut down, I felt I'd gotten all I could out of CO in only two months.

[Mazz vs The World]

I agree Thunder, I gave CO a chance and it was fun for about a few months but I got bored with it and just wanted COH back. I honestly feel that NCsoft has some secret plan behind the closure of COH cause it makes no sense to me. I think that one day we'll look up and see a new COH type game, who knows maybe from NCsoft, the probelm is will we care to play or invest time in it. For me....probably not!

[Empyrean]

I agree with both of you, but my point is that it is because it is...  well, not even just an unfinished game, more like a barely begun game.  With the right love and attention, it could could still be worthy of the hoary IP it comes from.  Man, if there were only a way to make that happen.

I will say I started a toon at lvl 6 and DIDN'T use Alerts to fly through levels, and I was surprised how much good leveling content there was when you actually just leveled the old fashioned way.

It's baffling how the whole industry is treating the Superhero niche right now.  There isn't any doubt that the potential is there, but they don't want to take the road less traveled, just churn and burn the same old stuff.  It's like they're scared to touch it.

[LaughingAlex]

I agree with both of you, but my point is that it is because it is...  well, not even just an unfinished game, more like a barely begun game.  With the right love and attention, it could could still be worthy of the hoary IP it comes from.  Man, if there were only a way to make that happen.

I will say I started a toon at lvl 6 and DIDN'T use Alerts to fly through levels, and I was surprised how much good leveling content there was when you actually just leveled the old fashioned way.

It's baffling how the whole industry is treating the Superhero niche right now.  There isn't any doubt that the potential is there, but they don't want to take the road less traveled, just churn and burn the same old stuff.  It's like they're scared to touch it.

I feel that way aobut MMO's in general, rather than just super hero mmo's.  Many seem to fail to realise that it's innovation that wins in game development, all it takes is implementing it right.  Rather then adding fake longevity mmo's should be focused on making quests/missions more entertaining and well paced, instead of slow "kick 150 guys butts" or "collect 20 of this, oh it'll only drop 10% of the time!".  Instead if you focus on keeping quests objective-oriented with good dialogue and the like, it can go much faster and at the same time be just as rewarding.  Alternate level paths with such quests helps even more.