City of Titans Kickstarter oversubscribed

[ahmpizzedoff]

I mainly soloed or played with members of my SG. I did enjoy, on many an occasion, teaming with new people just to get to know them and their toons. I, being retired, would literally sit and play for hours getting up only for the occasional "bio" or to get something to eat. I used to get a kick when playing my toon Older'n Dirt when someone would always say "Bet I'm older than you are!"  I'd say "Bet your not," and they'd tell me, " I'm XX years old," and I'd usually be 15 - 20 years older. Then one day I had this conversation with a friendly female player: "Just how old is Older'n Dirt?" she says. I replied, "Probably old enough to be your grandfather," sat back and laughed. The reply I got back made me laugh so hard I almost fell out of my chair, "Well you must really be Older''n Dirt cause I'm 75 years old!" All I could say was, "Well, finally I have someone to look up to!"
I really enjoyed the 7 years I'd played CoH and miss it terribly. My most memorable times playing CoH is when my 2 year old grandson would sit on my lap and first started to "play" by hitting the space bar to make my toons jump! He too now misses our toons and the game and once in a while will ask, "Is City of Heroes going to come back grandpa?" Someday, we hope, Someday!

[Tahquitz]

If it gets enabled 6 months down the road... My thought was a separate "server kit" made for private development/play (A mapserver kind of program that a user can host, with some artificial limit to make the actual game attractive... not as hamstrung as Free Ventrilo Servers at 5 people, but past 15 connections seems improbable for Home use let alone 64) with a single client update done after the Server Kit release that lets the game client point to a different server other than the MWM Production Server, I'd be fine with that and maybe even give it a spin, even if the Server Kit is at a premium cost.

But it's not in my "launch priorities".  Especially if doing this makes things delayed...  And we should give the game a chance to make it on it's own, too.  If it was available as a private server at launch, I'd fear that past the initial purchase the game would be suffocated by it's own players by paying for the game, then using it "offline" and not participating with MWM.  (And it's easy to say "I'd never do that", but we the enthusiasts can't speak for the player base as a whole.)

Just my two cents.

[JaguarX]

If it gets enabled 6 months down the road... My thought was a separate "server kit" made for private development/play (A mapserver kind of program that a user can host, with some artificial limit to make the actual game attractive... not as hamstrung as Free Ventrilo Servers at 5 people, but past 15 connections seems improbable for Home use let alone 64) with a single client update done after the Server Kit release that lets the game client point to a different server other than the MWM Production Server, I'd be fine with that and maybe even give it a spin, even if the Server Kit is at a premium cost.

But it's not in my "launch priorities".  Especially if doing this makes things delayed...  And we should give the game a chance to make it on it's own, too.  If it was available as a private server at launch, I'd fear that past the initial purchase the game would be suffocated by it's own players by paying for the game, then using it "offline" and not participating with MWM.  (And it's easy to say "I'd never do that", but we the enthusiasts can't speak for the player base as a whole.)

Just my two cents.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah it's easy to think everyone wants to team be surrounded by friends every log on, and do more socializing instead of playing. Which is true...among the group that does that. But player base as a whole. Many would do a sigh of relief and might take it and run.

Maybe later after things get settled in good. But probably shouldn't wait to long, aka 8 years then people will start leaving all that is left is the few groups of hard cores while rest moved onto something else which by then, might have scratched the itch a bit better.

[Segev]

Note, this is NOT a model we're actively considering (though it has never been rejected):

It could be possible, with our cheap-to-free client, to let that stay cheap-to-free, and have the "stand-alone" version of the game that lets you be your own server be priced like a AAA game or something.

There are a number of potential issues with this, but it would be one feasible way to answer the "but the majority might 'take the game and run' after the one-time purchase" concern. If a AAA game can recoup its costs just selling the boxes for stand-alone use, letting those who want to use it purely stand-alone buy it at that price would hopefully off-set any losses from them not participating in the game.

Like I said, there are issues with this and I'm not sure I like the idea, but I thought I'd mention it just to see if it sparks any better ideas from anybody else.

[blackjak]

Releasing the ability to run private servers is at least on the table for a worst case scenario such as MWM not being able to continue to run the game. It has also been talked about in other ways like Segev has said. Since our philosophy is that the game will never die, there will at least be private servers if catastrophy happens.
Also, Segev is more into the tech side than I  am (I'm just in sound design and writing some) ,so if he says there are fuzzy areas there be assured there definitely are.

[Segev]

At the moment, my involvement is actually mostly on the financial side. I'm the treasurer. I do keep in touch with the creative and tech sides (mostly content on the former), but I do not speak for either of them. Monetization strategies, however, are an area in which I am involved because, well, finances. ^_^

As things develop, I'll be getting a bit more into the tech side again because some of the meta-controls (things that help maintain certain kinds of balance in the economy, for instance) will likely be CI-based. But elaborating on that is likely to bore people, as I'll nerd out over my professional area and probably get lost in minutia. ^^;

[JaguarX]

At the moment, my involvement is actually mostly on the financial side. I'm the treasurer. I do keep in touch with the creative and tech sides (mostly content on the former), but I do not speak for either of them. Monetization strategies, however, are an area in which I am involved because, well, finances. ^_^

As things develop, I'll be getting a bit more into the tech side again because some of the meta-controls (things that help maintain certain kinds of balance in the economy, for instance) will likely be CI-based. But elaborating on that is likely to bore people, as I'll nerd out over my professional area and probably get lost in minutia. ^^;

Actually I'm kind of interested in what kind of works, like meta-controls are in the works. To me, that is part of watching a game being built. All of it wont be action movie exciting but still interesting to know.

Better than learning about it after it goes live then seeing things that could be improved but cant because it would take major rewiring of the system and thus stuck with it.

[Segev]

I'll try to expound upon it a bit more in the future, then. ^_^

[Triplash]

As things develop, I'll be getting a bit more into the tech side again because some of the meta-controls (things that help maintain certain kinds of balance in the economy, for instance) will likely be CI-based. But elaborating on that is likely to bore people, as I'll nerd out over my professional area and probably get lost in minutia. ^^;

I kinda dig learning the reasoning behind decisions like item pricing. The wannabe game designer in me enjoys seeing how single threads weave together to make the bigger picture. I don't know if I could add much to that discussion, but I definitely wouldn't be bored

[Twisted Toon]

See? Next, I'll be calling my kids by the wrong name when they're acting up!

My parents did that to me and my two brothers a LOT while I was growing up. All three names with a boy-kid-thing tacked on to the end.

In fact, thirty years later my mom still does that...

[Segev]

My Mom still will rattle through all my younger siblings before getting my name out, sometimes. Often ending with a half-joking "I know you're one of mine!"


Item pricing, if I can pull off the CI learning and adaptation algorithms, will be market-driven on all fronts, with the vendors both serving as convenient retailers, quest-giving sources of items they normally stock but which are too rare right now, and as stabilizing influences on the market.

[silvers1]

I'd say a standalone version would probably not hurt anything, provided:
1.  There is no standalone to server transfer of items/currency and vice/versa.
2.  There is no transfer of standalone characters to the server.  The reverse probably wouldnt hurt.
3.  There is no change to task forces or trials to make it soloable in standalone mode ( i.e. this would be the incentive
to pay for online access )

[Triplash]

My parents did that to me and my two brothers a LOT while I was growing up. All three names with a boy-kid-thing tacked on to the end.

In fact, thirty years later my mom still does that...

Heehee. I have two sisters and four brothers, and I came along almost nine years after the rest. So mine was the LAST name on the list. Shoot, I even got called the girls' names if she was really frazzled

[Twisted Toon]

Heehee. I have two sisters and four brothers, and I came along almost nine years after the rest. So mine was the LAST name on the list. Shoot, I even got called the girls' names if she was really frazzled

My mom always used the same order of names (oldest, middle, and youngest (with boy-kid-thing thrown on the end)) , no matter who was in trouble. Funny enough, we always knew who she was talking to. 

Now the interesting part is that my oldest brother lives in the same town as my mom, and the middle brother and myself live halfway across the country. And she still gets all the names in there when she's talking about one of us. We just tack on the boy-kid-thing for her now...

[JWBullfrog]

I get this between myself and my nephew. Usually it ends with 'you know who you are!"

[nightshade001]

It is great to see how well this is being received, however when things do get started with the development process, for any game trying to be CoX's successor is to make the game unique with its own vision. 

Homages and paying tribute to a game like CoX is great, however direct copies or clones of games rarely work. For a game like this to do well it will need to take what worked well for CoX, as well as what is working for CO and DCUO, and improve upon those concepts while at the same time doing something unique with the concepts.

While also looking at what didn't work and figuring out why, or abandoning those concepts all together.   City of Titans, Valiance Online, or any other game that might be in the works need to have their own identity, something to set them apart from being just a copy of City of Heroes.

[Aggelakis]

It is great to see how well this is being received, however when things do get started with the development process, for any game trying to be CoX's successor is to make the game unique with its own vision. 

The development process has already begun - more than a year now - and Titans definitely has its own flavor. There's no way to simply remake City - that ship has sailed.

[JWBullfrog]

The development process has already begun - more than a year now - and Titans definitely has its own flavor. There's no way to simply remake City - that ship has sailed.

The idea is, and always has been stated to be, to take the best of what we loved about CoH and use that as a template. The idea behind CoH, the feeling of community, the inclusiveness, the spirit of adventure, the feeling of power, all those things that made Paragon what we loved, are what Titans is trying to preserve. They know that they cannot just build a clone and call it done. There are far too many reasons why that is a bad idea and those have been talked to death.
 

[Twisted Toon]

I know one thing that CoH did that really spoiled me, and I really miss playing other games: Sidekicking/Explaring. And to a lesser degree, having teams of 8. What nut-job decided that a team size of 4 was "big enough" for a "team oriented" game like Star Wars?

[Zombie Man]

City of Titans is also making sure we're safe from claims of IP infringement that could possibly come from a thinly veiled reskinning of CoH. If you take CoH and simply rename all the powersets but keep them exactly the same, or copy the GUI, or copy all the costumes... well that could be a big ol' lawsuit waiting to happen.

We're keeping what we all loved (at least, the general idea, not the specifics) and ditching what was not loved and adding new stuff that one sees from other modern MMOs and some unique stuff... you know, what every MMO does. But, it won't be a clone. That way lies litigious madness.

It's highly doubtful that CoH2 was going to be simply a clone, but a next generation. And that's what we're doing.