New efforts!

[Vee]

Was considering kicking in 10 grand, but 18 months of vet credit seems low. Maybe if it were 24 months, and I had a spare 10 grand.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

No they're leveraging a fully professional development line (or lines) using agile-iterative development with an experienced management team.

 They're taking good advantage of the power of UE4 development tools and they're buying and customizing chunks of available assets to speed up development to delivery.  A lot of people don't appreciate just how fast you can advance a project taking full advantage of those kinds-of processes. 

That said, they still have a long way to go to get something in our hands.  I kicked them in a bit more than 100$.  That's about double what I'd kicked to CoT because I was concerned at the CoT KS that I didn't see a clear single decision structure in that project (which in my personal opinion is the single most important feature of a project, somebody who can say "yes" or "no") -- I do see that here.

i've been impressed with how far they've come since the somewhat embarrassingly crude concept art that was on display when Ship of Heroes was first announced. Unfortunately their Kickstarter is happening right when i have a bunch of much higher priority expenses to take care of, but i'll toss in whatever i can justify by the end of the Kickstarter. So far i've been pretty lucky when backing projects.

[Sinistar]

Has anyone else had the weird thought that the SoH folks seem noticeably farther ahead than the other spiritual successors, and yet they're the newest? I can't help but wonder if their entry could be the result of a somewhat successful negotiation with... that company... that no one's allowed to talk about. Yet. Am I crazy, or does that make an odd kind of sense?

Ship of Heroes relatively recent but they have prior experience and they waited until they had something substantial to show fans that yes they could be the CoH successor we have been waiting for.

Again, I do hope that CoT and VO get online as well, but SoH so far appears to have more development.  Also there is Heroes and Villains and another one was announced called REDSIDE, a successor to CoV.

[Sinistar]

Well I've made my donation to SoH kickstarter.   Looks like at the moment they are near the 30k mark, not bad for a first day.

Here's hoping.

That being said, should CoH be sold by NCSoft, I would hope that the new CoH owners could talk to SoH about integrating the two.

Via Ouroborus, CoH character can enter the SoH era and SoH characters can time warp back to CoH.

That would be fantastic.

[Arcana]

Has anyone else had the weird thought that the SoH folks seem noticeably farther ahead than the other spiritual successors, and yet they're the newest? I can't help but wonder if their entry could be the result of a somewhat successful negotiation with... that company... that no one's allowed to talk about. Yet. Am I crazy, or does that make an odd kind of sense?

More likely it is just that unlike the other projects, they don't seem to be starting from scratch.  The other projects seem to be learning as they go, learning how their dev tools work, learning what the limitations of their dev tools are, even learning the most efficient development path for their game.  They sometimes seem to be relearning things I would have thought a City of Heroes player would already know, but when you're developing your own project often every lesson has to be learned yourself.

These guys *seem* to know more or less exactly what they want to create, and taking a relatively straight line to it.  It is hard to judge from the outside, but remember that City of Heroes itself was created in less than two years from the time its design was "refactored" circa 2002 with Jack at the helm, and most of that time was spent making content not the actual game itself, and in all honesty Cryptic knew less about how to make City of Heroes then than I do now.

It is not at all unusual to me to see people with prior professional experience get an MMO off the ground and into alpha in only six months or so.  It will be interesting to see if they can sustain that development pace, and to what degree they can develop content at a similar pace.

[Arcana]

No they're leveraging a fully professional development line (or lines) using agile-iterative development with an experienced management team.

 They're taking good advantage of the power of UE4 development tools and they're buying and customizing chunks of available assets to speed up development to delivery.  A lot of people don't appreciate just how fast you can advance a project taking full advantage of those kinds-of processes.

Eh, I think Agile makes sense in some parts of MMO development - particularly what a Paragon developer might have called the content/tech feedback cycle - but I'm not a fan of it when it comes to things like fundamental engine design.  In my opinion you'd end up with organically-architected goo for mechanical systems instead of rationally designed ones.

I think when you are building the fundamental scaffolding of what will have to support something like an MMO environment, it is better to use a modified agile-fed waterfall.  Use agile techniques to generate useful feedback to better inform the hard design of the engine and the supported mechanics.

The biggest problem I think an agile-designed MMO combat and mechanics engine will almost always suffer from: unexplainable mechanics.  You get caught up in implementing the good ideas that come from the iterative process, it is easy to tunnel-vision into implementing things that work for the game development process itself, but are opaque to ludicrous from the outside.  To make a game that doesn't require a math degree to understand, you need to impose some rigor to the development process that agile would want to rip up constantly.

[eabrace]

I think when you are building the fundamental scaffolding of what will have to support something like an MMO environment, it is better to use a modified agile-fed waterfall.  Use agile techniques to generate useful feedback to better inform the hard design of the engine and the supported mechanics.

That analysis is appropriate for sooooo many software environments. 

[downix]

Today, thanks to the Unreal Marketplace, it is now much easier for game developers to produce finished looking products without significant development time. With starter kits, even an MMO can be brought to a rough Alpha State as quickly as you can assemble a map to play in. I know this, because CoT did that, two and a half years ago. The problem comes in going past this point. This low level work and premade assets can only carry a game so far. The Lions share, years of work, still has to be done. This is, I suspect, why Ship of Heroes is listing their Alpha for the end of this year, but launch in 2019/2020.

It is a different world today than it was in 2012. What is available for game developers is far cleaner, far more production ready. Shoot, we now have what are called Asset flippers on Steam Greenlight who take these premade kits and just dump them onto the market for a quick buck. They did not even make anything, just used these alpha play kits as/is. (Look up "Uncrowded" sometime for a great example of this)

This makes me very glad to see that the folk behind Ship of Heroes have a realistic timetable, because that tells me that they are serious about making this game. I will admit, I was disappointed at their first day turnout. I was hoping for them to make at least $150k on their first day, because their hearts are in this. Still, they did have a respectable result, and I hope will build on it.

We are a lucky community, to have not one, but several groups willing to sacrifice time for this. Each of us brings something different to the table. And the folk who win, is all of us.

[Matt Bold]

When downix breaks a long silence but doesn't address the elephant in the room.



Anyways, I am supporting SoH as well, I hope it builds more steam so they reach their goal!

[Surelle]

When downix breaks a long silence but doesn't address the elephant in the room.

Anyways, I am supporting SoH as well, I hope it builds more steam so they reach their goal!

Er, I think he has said in the past he was only the person who introduced the Hail Mary team to a certain contact at NCSoft 4 years ago or so.   Who knows if that contact is even still there now or not?  He may not know anything much nowadays.  At this point, all he really seems focused on here and in posts on Massively is CoT, which is what his team is making so that makes sense. 

[Matt Bold]

Er, I think he has said in the past he was only the person who introduced the Hail Mary team to a certain contact at NCSoft 4 years ago or so.   Who knows if that contact is even still there now or not?  He may not know anything much nowadays.  At this point, all he really seems focused on here and in posts on Massively is CoT, which is what his team is making so that makes sense.

Ah, didn't realize that.  I thought he was involved in both simultaneously.

[downix]

Ah, didn't realize that.  I thought he was involved in both simultaneously.

With what time? I spend up to 18 hours a day on CoT some days.

[Brigadine]

With what time? I spend up to 18 hours a day on CoT some days.

Time traveling back and working on something in the same timeframe with two of yourself simultaneously doesn't count!

[downix]

Time traveling back and working on something in the same timeframe with two of yourself simultaneously doesn't count!

I was banned from that after the Biggun incident.

[downix]

Ok, here's a question for you: What would be needed in order to play a relaunched/reborn CoH still in NCSoft's stable?

This is just me wondering something that struck me after the whole Statesman in Master x Master announcement.

[Angel Phoenix77]

Ok, here's a question for you: What would be needed in order to play a relaunched/reborn CoH still in NCSoft's stable?

This is just me wondering something that struck me after the whole Statesman in Master x Master announcement.

The simplest answer would be the game client and server on which the game is on.

[Golden Aurora]

Ok, here's a question for you: What would be needed in order to play a relaunched/reborn CoH still in NCSoft's stable?

This is just me wondering something that struck me after the whole Statesman in Master x Master announcement.

Needed by whom? Needed by the players I am assuming?
Honestly, not very much. I'd pick it up in a heart beat.
I'd probably forgive NCSoft too, but I wouldn't forget.

Love of CoH > Hate of NCSoft

Actually thinking about it, there are two things NCSoft could have done better.

• More than three months worth of warning before shut down.
• Maintenance mode instead of shut down.

I'm all for closing games nobody cares about or that are bleeding money.
When people still care and are currently in the middle of dumping their money into it, it's kind of insulting to pull the rug out from underneath of you.
I know it's all business, but I'd rather have stopped caring about CoH and having moved on than be left with this feeling like a family member died from it.

Hope that helps?

[MegaWatt]

if my account is gone but i still have CoH/COV/GR CD Keys......all the content i paid for and some kind of 'oh this person has all three, lets give them X amount of Veterans tokens' so i dont have to wait a lot more years in order to get my stuff back.....and a claimable prestige grant for my base building once i have people/alts loaded into my VG (or an option to select 'Non-PvP' and be able to build for free but not be able to open the base up for PVP).



is that too much to want ? yes probably but.....i like things !

[AmberOfDzu]

I was reading a post in the Paragon Chat Development Roadmap and Wishlist, and a "Wish" came to mind that is maybe a bit out of scope for the Chat, so I'll mention it here.

I occasionally play Cities: Skylines which is a Sim-City clone that I like. Here, I fantasize about a successor game that would use a city simulator on the back end to rationalize the pedestrian and vehicular traffic (and maybe other things, like neighborhood qol & street crime, building fires, demolition by super-powered fights, villains, or giant monsters, etc).



In Skylines, I can click on a pedestrian or vehicle, and it has fairly convincing info about who they are and what they're doing. Buildings have residents or activities; and so on. When a house catches fire, or a crime vent occurs, police and fire vehicles dispatch and try to navigate to the event location, and once there' try to handle it. I can even zoom in down to street level, and it's eerily like being back in City of Heroes.

Here's a short video sample of street-level activity in Skylines: Cities: Skylines - Street Level Footage

It would be fun to play a superhero in a city that wasn't a static backdrop, even if the impact my heroic/villainous activities was fairly muted. But if I break into a jewelry store and start robbing it, the police would react. Maybe my accomplices outside could ambush them on arrival. Or maybe the alarm wouldn't just ring in the station, but on a hero's police radio.

[nicoliy]

Ok, here's a question for you: What would be needed in order to play a relaunched/reborn CoH still in NCSoft's stable?

This is just me wondering something that struck me after the whole Statesman in Master x Master announcement.

For me, simply open it back up. I could care less about the fact that I lost my characters and vet rewards. I care that I can roll a new character with others and have fun.