New efforts!

[PSI-on]

I think they have investors now - and likely if the purchase is completed they will have more. I leave that up to them :)

I don't know. Though investors can be important, that kind of makes me worry. A producing company like NCSoft basically invests, gives them the money to make the game and keep it going as well as taking care of producer stuff like ads and press. I hope they will be careful with whom they have investing so that they won't end up oweing the game to anyone like before (I'm aware that eventually Cryptic sold it all to NCSoft straight up, but had that not happened NCSoft still could have pulled the plug like they did to their other 4 games, just saying like everyone here I want to never lose it again as much as I want it back now, ya know?)

[PSI-on]

Which is why the owners of CO should have bought out CoH.  Tha would have been the smart business move IMHO.

(This might be late of me)

Well, I remember Jack at one point saying at a con something to the effect of: "Have NCSoft give me a call and we'll see about getting the game back home where it belongs." I'm taking that never happened, though maybe for the better cause just look at how much....better....STO and CO turned out in Perfect Worlds hands....and what a gem NW turned out to be....*shudders*

[PSI-on]

The Dev wasn't looking for a job - he wanted to give a little background on how the game was administered and other stuff from what I was made aware of the conversation.

I don't think it would violate any promise to say that it was Dark Watcher. He didn't ask me to keep it secret or anything.

Aww, that's so awesome. Our devs really did care *pulls out a tissue* oh god, I am tearing up v_v;

[LaughingAlex]

(This might be late of me)

Well, I remember Jack at one point saying at a con something to the effect of: "Have NCSoft give me a call and we'll see about getting the game back home where it belongs." I'm taking that never happened, though maybe for the better cause just look at how much....better....STO and CO turned out in Perfect Worlds hands....and what a gem NW turned out to be....*shudders*

Considering the problems Jack Emmerit put CO through in it's first year, I feel that probably better he not be given the reins back imo.  He can come up with good ideas but often fails in the long run I feel, he frequently fails to communicate with players.  He's CEO of cryptic I recall anyhow, doesn't directly touch games anymore.

[PSI-on]

It wasn't pointed towards any one individual was just relating to dealing with the slow speed of the huge Corporate machine. I doubt that any of us can say we never had this sort of reaction to dealing with people in large companies/government. This was at the beginning of the deal - I did reply a couple of times that this is what big companies do and to hang in there. It is past all these hurdles and lawyers at the lower level and in the hands of the folks making the deal.

I don't think it is insulting - rather frustration with getting past the lower rings of hell in a corporate situtation.

I think you quoted the wrong post buddy.

[PSI-on]

I am not at liberty - yet - to say who is involved. Once you know - you will understand why it would make things more complicated. to deal with all the questions at this stage for the team.

The other things we don't know yet - but I am sure City of Titans will continue! I actually look forward to trying all 3 games being made by the community.

When you say "Once you know - you will understand why it would make things more complicated." that makes me worry that it's a bad thing...it's not Cryptic is it? Oh god please tell me this game isn't going into lockbox and microtransaction hell that is Perfect World...

[PSI-on]

Missing Worlds Media has stated clearly on their forum that development of CoT will go ahead regardless.  Leaving aside their legal obligation to fulfil the Kickstarter terms, they are already full speed into development of a game that will be similar to CoX but with significant additions.

I assume the other "Phoenix" games in development will continue as well.

Won't it be wonderful if we will have a selection of games to choose from, all of which are as much fun as CoX was to play?

Especially if those games are all of the same fun, high quality, and tender loving care that CoX is, rather than the...neglected feeling or not quite good enough/the same as feeling everything seems to have given most of us.

[Von Krieger]

When you say "Once you know - you will understand why it would make things more complicated." that makes me worry that it's a bad thing...it's not Cryptic is it? Oh god please tell me this game isn't going into lockbox and microtransaction hell that is Perfect World...

Then again it could be the other way around and the company behind the thing might be Valve or something that would have us squeeing with glee instead of filled with utter terror.

[Battlechimp]

(This might be late of me)

Well, I remember Jack at one point saying at a con something to the effect of: "Have NCSoft give me a call and we'll see about getting the game back home where it belongs." I'm taking that never happened, though maybe for the better cause just look at how much....better....STO and CO turned out in Perfect Worlds hands....and what a gem NW turned out to be....*shudders*

That I think was just Jack being Jack.  He does tend to say what's going on in his head without thinking things through fully. Which if he was just some fan or gamer that'd be fine. But as a head dev, not so much.  He really needs a PR guy to filter him.

But he is actually a very cool guy if you get to sit and talk to him.  Got a a chance to talk to him a bunch at Gen Con once back before STO launched.  During the STO Q&A my friend and I were the only ones asking questions about the actual game and not just Trek fan boy questions :). We stuck around a reward a talked to him about lots of stuff.

But I think his biggest fault, and this is where he rubs most people the wrong way, is that in his attitude towards fandom  and gaming in general is that he feels that there /is/ a right way to be a fan and there /is/ a right way to enjoy a game and if you don't share his viewpoint, you're doing it wrong

[PSI-on]

CoH was profitable, and had already been making moves to the sort of money strategy PWE favors with those miserable random virtual card pack things (1 in 500 change to get a black dog! Woohoo!). And if you look at their full list of games redundancy isn't to huge an issue for them. So I could have seen them keeping both games around and just expanding the card stuff further... and maybe even adapting that functionality in their other games if it proved as reliable for revenue as the lockboxes apparently are.

I don't know if I'd jump so quick to say that about CoX. In their defense at least those cards, like what TOR has, were completely optional. They weren't dropped on top of you instead of normal rewards and held ransom with a pay wall for a key. They were also slightly easier to get. You bought them yourself, needed only the card pack, and could be bought with vet tokens at what? 5 per token once you were at the top tier with nothing to spend on. I also found them to contain for more useful items than PW lockboxes as well as a nicer drop rate (I found I got at least one costume piece or two every one or three boxes where I might not get that some sort of result in cryptic games after even 30 boxes).

Personally I always thought CoH handled it perfect. They kept giving us new regular content and updates without focusing 98.9% on the store (so far any new CO content has either been in the store, a lockbox, or the drifter store WHICH is slaved to the lockboxes and anything else they added save for the new alert and alert revamp as been tided to and a glorified advertisement for the lockbox flavor of the month. Meanwhile our devs gave us free powersets every so often, especially proliferated ones, kept updating zones and giving new free content, some updates even came with full costume sets for free (noted some of these "free" required a sub to have free but subbing just felt normal to me since that's what it was to begin with), and what the store usually had was just little stuff until they added IO's (unlike the $5.00 tshirt I once saw in Lineage or Aion or the I win button vechiles were in CO at first, or some of the store star ships in STO.) I can see where they drifted that way, but it was slow and I feel like our devs actually valued our input and feelings, unlike cryptic who only respond to praise.

[Thirty-Seven]

; _ ; in all my years of playing, I could never EVER find a team who could finish a Reactor trial without failing. I even ran into a team leader who got us that far and kept pushing us at the end out of shear amusement of watching us get our butts kicked until we each left one by one after laughing at us and wasting all that hard work and time....I gave up on ever getting those badges and never even tried villain side.

The leagues I ran routinely succeeded at the Keyes Trial.  Between me and Kelara (IIRC the spelling correctly), we got all the badges but Green Stuff pretty easily.  Green took weeks of trying.

Finally, I managed to snag it, but the run was glitched.  For some reason, there weren't ANY patches spawned throughout the entire final battle.  I could never replicate the the circumstances though.

[LaughingAlex]

I don't know if I'd jump so quick to say that about CoX. In their defense at least those cards, like what TOR has, were completely optional. They weren't dropped on top of you instead of normal rewards and held ransom with a pay wall for a key. They were also slightly easier to get. You bought them yourself, needed only the card pack, and could be bought with vet tokens at what? 5 per token once you were at the top tier with nothing to spend on. I also found them to contain for more useful items than PW lockboxes as well as a nicer drop rate (I found I got at least one costume piece or two every one or three boxes where I might not get that some sort of result in cryptic games after even 30 boxes).

Personally I always thought CoH handled it perfect. They kept giving us new regular content and updates without focusing 98.9% on the store (so far any new CO content has either been in the store, a lockbox, or the drifter store WHICH is slaved to the lockboxes and anything else they added save for the new alert and alert revamp as been tided to and a glorified advertisement for the lockbox flavor of the month. Meanwhile our devs gave us free powersets every so often, especially proliferated ones, kept updating zones and giving new free content, some updates even came with full costume sets for free (noted some of these "free" required a sub to have free but subbing just felt normal to me since that's what it was to begin with), and what the store usually had was just little stuff until they added IO's (unlike the $5.00 tshirt I once saw in Lineage or Aion or the I win button vechiles were in CO at first, or some of the store star ships in STO.) I can see where they drifted that way, but it was slow and I feel like our devs actually valued our input and feelings, unlike cryptic who only respond to praise.

CoH didn't force the superpacks on you like CO forces lockboxes on you though.  In CO unfortunately I will just say this, the economy even not considering vehicles now is tied to heavily to the lock boxes.  Even getting questionite is done best by opening a few by buying keys on auction using globals instead of just earned the normal way, which kind of sucks(and takes a lot of time now to get the globals to buy a key...).  One q-box crate gets ya 25-50k.  Granted if you bought zen directly then you were better off just buying the q direction with that but still, kind of bothersome.

No, not buying zen with money anymore.  Stopped doing that a while ago.

Edit: How'd I explain it?

Silvers can only have 250 globals on one character.  So they cannot hope to get much through the auction directly as many items cost more then 250 globals.  But keys are often 125-150 globals.  For say a Silver to get zen for free, they have to get questionite.  But just getting it via normal drops can be tedious.  So they'd have to get crates of questionite, either by obtaining 2-3 keys from the auction and then trading 2-3 keys per box of questionite, or open the stupid boxes and get them that way.  This is the global to zen tactic.

For big purchases they have to trade keys directly for anything that costs more then 250 globals.  So if a silver wants say, a peice of legion gear that costs 700 globals, they need 7 keys.  Again, they can buy keys through auction, so alot of them do that.  If a silver player has a bike or a vehicle, he may have just used his global supply to buy keys and then traded that way.

For golds, they only need globals and can earn things easier that way.  They are not capped.  They can easily make trades over 5k globals.

It's extremely unfortunate but, CO is in some ways, very similar to eve online, because of that :S.  One global = one cent to one and a half cents :S.  But using globals to get questionite and zen is randomly inefficient.  50k questionite gets about 150 zen atm, at around 320 questionite per zen.  25k only gets 75 zen. :/

[Taliseian]

Here's the status of at least some of the old Devs, according to LinkedIn and other sources:

Matt Miller (Poistron): Staff Designer, Cryptic Studios, working on STO
Melissa Biano (War Witch): VITAS Healthcare, Patient Care Secretary
Christopher Bruce (Back Ally Brawler): Senior Animator, Cryptic Studios
Andy Belford (Zwillinger): Global Community Manager,  Waystone Games
Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon): Content Designer, Cryptic Studios, working on STO
John Hegner (Protean): Game Designer, Trion Worlds, Inc.
Hosun Lee (Black Pebble): Product Marketing Manager, Epic Studios, marketing Infinity Blade
Phil Zeleski (Synapse): Systems Designer, Cryptic Studios, working on STO
Keetsie Braz da Cunha (Tunnel Rat): Senior FX Artist, Toys For Bob
Leo Braz da Cunha: FX Artist, Gazillion Entertainment
Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion): Senior Designer, Schell Games
Jeff Hamilton (Arbiter Hawk): Systems Designer, Cryptic Studios, working on STO and Neverwinter
Joe Morrissey (Hero 1): Game Designer, Sucker Punch Productions, working on Infamous: Second Son
David Nakayama (Noble Savage): Senior 2D Concept Artist, KIXEYE and freelance artist/illustrator

Jake: We're putting the band back together.

Mr. Fabulous: Forget it. No way.

Elwood: We're on a mission from God.


T

[PSI-on]

...Killer Klowns?

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=home.swipnet.se%2F%7Ew-28870%2Fmainkill.jpg

;  __  ;

[Joninator]

The leagues I ran routinely succeeded at the Keyes Trial.  Between me and Kelara (IIRC the spelling correctly), we got all the badges but Green Stuff pretty easily.  Green took weeks of trying.

Finally, I managed to snag it, but the run was glitched.  For some reason, there weren't ANY patches spawned throughout the entire final battle.  I could never replicate the the circumstances though.

I believe they were talking about the respec trials, not the incarnate trials. Early on, those two trials WERE a pain in the rear, but after some reworking they were easy. Well, the hero one was, I never ran the villain one after it was fixed. But from all the chatter I saw, the villain one was doable in like 10-15 minutes where the hero one you were stuck in the reactor for at least that long, not counting the missions leading up to it.

[Scendera]

I am not at liberty - yet - to say who is involved. Once you know - you will understand why it would make things more complicated. to deal with all the questions at this stage for the team.

I have a feeling I know...and that person would be one of the more motivated folks I can think of, if I'm right. But I'm going to keep that speculation to myself for now...

[Minotaur]

The best killer clown.

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=deluxevideoonline.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F10%2Fit-laugh.jpg

The biggest killer among clowns ? https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.lowdensitylifestyle.com%2Fmedia%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F02%2FRonald-McDonald-61.gif

[Benchpresser]

Jake: We're putting the band back together.

Mr. Fabulous: Forget it. No way.

Elwood: We're on a mission from God.


T

I think we just hit epic 9000 level!

[PSI-on]

Considering the problems Jack Emmerit put CO through in it's first year, I feel that probably better he not be given the reins back imo.  He can come up with good ideas but often fails in the long run I feel, he frequently fails to communicate with players.  He's CEO of cryptic I recall anyhow, doesn't directly touch games anymore.

Agreed, I was just saying to the one I was commenting at that the company responsible for CO had at one point made a passing interest in buying it when it was closing, that being said if there's one thing I can say about the Cryptic of today it's that they have lots of potential.....loads of it.....but they squander it in every which way. Bad directions, ignoring customers, lack of focus, and even simply halfassing or half implementing a idea that had promise. I play STO, CO, and NW, I just wish they'd let me enjoy them more by putting in the same TLC and hard work they did with CoX, it wasn't perfect and there were missteps, but with these three it's almost all the time, and mark I've been with both STO and NW since their beginnings.

[HEATSTROKE]

; _ ; in all my years of playing, I could never EVER find a team who could finish a Reactor trial without failing. I even ran into a team leader who got us that far and kept pushing us at the end out of shear amusement of watching us get our butts kicked until we each left one by one after laughing at us and wasting all that hard work and time....I gave up on ever getting those badges and never even tried villain side.

You mean the Respec task force ??? Thats was our SG favorite to run on 2xp weekend..