Thoughts on Hail Mary, one year later

[LaughingAlex]

In a way, even though CoT is by now pretty much on the way, I still hope google is trying or has succeeded but hasn't announced anything.  Because 2015 november is still a ways away.  But i'd rather play city of heroes any day over champions online or DCUO because of how holy-trinityish they are.  CO barely dodges that core problem with the freeform system, but I know that eventually nerfs may cause the holy trinity being required in any late-game content, which is annoying me.  While DCUO doesn't even bother to hide it, they have apparently implemented a system to try and move away from it(particularly, buffs that are included when there is no one in a particular role), but they have a long ways to go before the trinity is fully abolished to make it an interesting game to me in things other than solo play.

[Ironwolf]

http://www.freep.com/article/20131029/BUSINESS06/310290036/superfly-kids-capes-growth

So a Detroit area store starts selling capes and other superhero stuff and sales - take off as well? Maybe another thing to use as an incentive for someone to buy the game.

[johnrobey]

Let's assume we get the best of both worlds, that City of Titans is a smash success AND that we get City of Heroes back, either with a new publisher or (probably a complete improbable daydream here) as some sort of open source or public domain MMORPG.  In that "pie in the sky" unlikely event, perhaps the two could be wed in some way--e.g. the CoT dimension and the CoH dimension are like Praetoria with respect to one another, only moreso.  I guess what I'm saying is I think there is room for both, and that I expect I'd play both CoH and CoT, maybe on an alternating schedule, assuming I get the chance. 

[downix]

I almost wonder if CoT's success will push NCSoft to restart CoH....

[Arcana]

I almost wonder if CoT's success will push NCSoft to restart CoH....

I would have to assume that anything less than a hundred thousand subscribers or less than six million dollars of annual revenue for CoT would not be enough to cause NCSoft to care any more about City of Heroes, given that they were willing to walk away from comparable numbers without so much as blinking.

And given the costs to restart development and support, I doubt anything less than half a million players or twenty million dollars of annual revenue would even get anyone's attention.  To be frank, if CoT is somehow wildly successful I think its more likely NCSoft tries to figure out a way to sue CoT to get money from it than they try to relaunch City of Heroes to get revenue from that.

[JaguarX]

I would have to assume that anything less than a hundred thousand subscribers or less than six million dollars of annual revenue for CoT would not be enough to cause NCSoft to care any more about City of Heroes, given that they were willing to walk away from comparable numbers without so much as blinking.

And given the costs to restart development and support, I doubt anything less than half a million players or twenty million dollars of annual revenue would even get anyone's attention. 

Indeed.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

To be frank, if CoT is somehow wildly successful I think its more likely NCSoft tries to figure out a way to sue CoT to get money from it than they try to relaunch City of Heroes to get revenue from that.

Sadly this is also disappointingly likely as it's SOP for most corporations.

[Illusionss]

I almost wonder if CoT's success will push NCSoft to restart CoH....

Have thought for a while now that we are most likely to see CoX hauled out of the closet, when we start warming up for the CoT closed beta. I would not be at all surprised to see that happen.

I would go there, but the main focus of my energies will be CoT, since NC is so untrustworthy.

As for lawsuits, that would be amusing. We have already been through all this with the Marvel lawsuit; for all the reasons the Marvel lawsuit failed, a suit against CoT would fail as well. After all, we now have legal precedent. And if you could sue someone else for having a game in the same genre as your game, we would not have 50,000 fantasy games.

NC does not hold the patent on superhero games. That's not even possible.

[saipaman]

NCSoft could do considerable damage to CoT by bringing CoX back at the right moment.  That would be true, perhaps even more true, if it was a limited time engagement.

[downix]

NCSoft could do considerable damage to CoT by bringing CoX back at the right moment.  That would be true, perhaps even more true, if it was a limited time engagement.

Which is why the fact we have multiple projects helps. Valiance Online hits a pre-alpha release in 3 days. For NCSoft to gain any traction, they will need to reopen CoH within 5 weeks else VO will begin chiseling away at the impact from the reopening.

[Kaos Arcanna]

Which is why the fact we have multiple projects helps. Valiance Online hits a pre-alpha release in 3 days. For NCSoft to gain any traction, they will need to reopen CoH within 5 weeks else VO will begin chiseling away at the impact from the reopening.

I'm not well versed in such things, but I'd think that it'd be impossible for NCSoft to bring COH back now even if it wanted to-- let alone in such a short period of time. Matt Miller has said-- more than once I believe-- that COH had such jury-rigged spaghetti code that he didn't believe any other studio could make the game work even if they bought the IP from NcSoft-- especially with the former Paragon Studio Devs scattered to the four winds.

And even if that part were technically possible-- even if they still had the servers-- they'd need a studio to run the game and do tech support.

[saipaman]

GM_Lloyd may still be around.

[downix]

I'm not well versed in such things, but I'd think that it'd be impossible for NCSoft to bring COH back now even if it wanted to-- let alone in such a short period of time. Matt Miller has said-- more than once I believe-- that COH had such jury-rigged spaghetti code that he didn't believe any other studio could make the game work even if they bought the IP from NcSoft-- especially with the former Paragon Studio Devs scattered to the four winds.

And even if that part were technically possible-- even if they still had the servers-- they'd need a studio to run the game and do tech support.

Greetings, I used to work for an outsourcing firm which specialized in doing just this. It would likely be a maintenance mode, no studio to run the game, just basic support at best.

[JaguarX]

I'm not well versed in such things, but I'd think that it'd be impossible for NCSoft to bring COH back now even if it wanted to-- let alone in such a short period of time. Matt Miller has said-- more than once I believe-- that COH had such jury-rigged spaghetti code that he didn't believe any other studio could make the game work even if they bought the IP from NcSoft-- especially with the former Paragon Studio Devs scattered to the four winds.

And even if that part were technically possible-- even if they still had the servers-- they'd need a studio to run the game and do tech support.

It can be done but probably not easily and would take some time. Hell, people are doing it without the actual code.

Unless they view it as a profitable to do so, the likelihood of them doing it is slim.

I'm hedging a bet on that they probably wont bring it back in the past form at least not in the 2014 if ever. But they do still have time.

pre alpha, is still a long ways from beta and live but probably closer than it takes to get stuff up and running. And if they do bring it back they probably wont do it only in maintenance mode nor would a company looking for long term probably want to spend millions on something only to immediately put it into maintenance mode which can significantly slow down the return of investment rate especially in the wake of three new games that are similar hoping that if the best do happen they break even within the first couple of years and still have to figure out how the code works in order to do even basic maintenance. Remember even the devs that worked on it for years had trouble from time to time with fixing stuff without breaking something else which also would slow things down as the new people learn their way around.  But hey, anything is possible.

[Nightmarer]

Even if NCSoft re-launched CoH to take advantage of any of the other projects, can't see them attracting many people, they didn't bother marketing a brand new game back in the day, they wouldn't do so now. At best, they'd get only a part of the previous CoH community and for most of them (or us if you prefer) it would be a very cautious approach and even more cautious at the time of spending any cash on it.

Now, if any of the projects (or all) has drifted as far away from CoH as, let's say CO did, then said project would be in a clear disadvantage against an hipothetic CoH return as far as old CoH playerbase goes, let's not forget we know what we like and what we like is CoH, hence why we are still here but still, said project would be able to fish players who never played CoH hence they don't know what they're missing.-

The only way I see such a move succeeding would be if CoH was still a far better game than all three existing projects plus the SCoRE effort was as full of bugs and server restarts as pretty much any WoW private server around.-

[JaguarX]

Even if NCSoft re-launched CoH to take advantage of any of the other projects, can't see them attracting many people, they didn't bother marketing a brand new game back in the day, they wouldn't do so now. At best, they'd get only a part of the previous CoH community and for most of them (or us if you prefer) it would be a very cautious approach and even more cautious at the time of spending any cash on it.

Now, if any of the projects (or all) has drifted as far away from CoH as, let's say CO did, then said project would be in a clear disadvantage against an hipothetic CoH return as far as old CoH playerbase goes, let's not forget we know what we like and what we like is CoH, hence why we are still here but still, said project would be able to fish players who never played CoH hence they don't know what they're missing.-

The only way I see such a move succeeding would be if CoH was still a far better game than all three existing projects plus the SCoRE effort was as full of bugs and server restarts as pretty much any WoW private server around.-

Yup it will be interesting.

Oh and don't forget the effects of having COX back directly in the form of the private server thing.

Given that neither three projects cant be direct copies, meaning they probably will change some stuff and as varied of what the community's view of what made COX COX to them, the projects seem to also have three different views of what a successor is.  And believe it or not, even within the community there is different views of what the next game they should play, while generally COX was well liked, it was liked on various levels. SOme people felt COX was stale, but there wasn't better choices and now, probably wouldn't lay a direct copy of COX, while others will settle for nothing less than a direct exact copy, other only if everything is the same but reskinned, while others have other factors all the way down to, they are not going to put money into a game that feels like a copy of the game they already played for 8 years much.


But the thtree pojects have to decide and be honest and realistic about their actual target goal. Which part of the community are they aiming for, or if they are truly aiming for all community members (it's something easy to say, but much harder to do), or only a strict part of the community that liked certain features and hope maybe some new people join in, completely new community, or only the people they like and the people that like what they like in the cox community.

[Codewalker]

Matt Miller has said-- more than once I believe-- that COH had such jury-rigged spaghetti code that he didn't believe any other studio could make the game work even if they bought the IP from NcSoft

Matt's a funny guy.

Too bad NcSoft will never sell any of their IP to anyone.

[Super Firebug]

pre alpha, is still a long ways from beta

As I understand it, alpha testing is when the programmers test it themselves, to see if it'll do what it should (so far). Beta testing brings in outsiders, who will try to get the program to do things that the developers might not think of. (And I like to think of people silly enough to buy version 1.0 of a program as gamma testers, especially since Internet access to patches makes it more attractive to push a still-buggy program out the door.)

So VO's pre-alpha isn't even ready for a formal dev trial run. But I still love it. The zone looks so much like areas of Atlas Park, it makes me happy and homesick.

[JaguarX]

As I understand it, alpha testing is when the programmers test it themselves, to see if it'll do what it should (so far). Beta testing brings in outsiders, who will try to get the program to do things that the developers might not think of. (And I like to think of people silly enough to buy version 1.0 of a program as gamma testers, especially since Internet access to patches makes it more attractive to push a still-buggy program out the door.)

So VO's pre-alpha isn't even ready for a formal dev trial run. But I still love it. The zone looks so much like areas of Atlas Park, it makes me happy and homesick.

traditionally yes.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I honestly don't think it will make NCSoft re-open CoH.  Champions Online doesn't make them want to re-open it nor does DCU or Marvel Online(or whatever it is called.)  If NCSoft wanted CoH up and running.  CoH would be up and running.  It isn't a jealousy thing, people don't spend that much money and go back on everything they have done as well as pretend a decent amount of PR didn't happen just because 2 new games get released.  The only reason they would re-open it is to steal customers away from VO and CoT and that wouldn't justify spending the money it would take to re-open the game and hire a new development team because it would barely be able to fill the servers.  If they considered it a loss when we all loved the game and didn't hate NCSoft then would what it be considered now?