CoT, I believe will keep plugging away at the project until they actually do launch something, but I have very little hope that the end product will be sustainable. The market has changed too much, and while there are still a lot of people with good happy feelings about CoH/CoV, I don't think there are enough of us left who would be willing to actually subscribe to a successor product. Especially when such a successor product will be very bare-bones to start, compared to our memories of CoH plus two full expansions and 22-23 major free updates.
VO... I know enough about some of the people who were working on it that I deeply distrust every scrap of information they've released. But I stopped following it a while ago, so maybe they've got their act together and jettisoned enough of the problem contributors to become a productive team. Even if so, I doubt I'd touch it. Their whole deal, lore and class design and everything, seems to be skirting much closer to the line of "How much can we just re-make CoH before NCSoft comes for our heads?".
Desert Leviathan on
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
Honestly, I don't think any game would b able to capture the magic for me like CoX did.
Partly because no matter how good it is, it still won't be CoX. And partly because I'm a very different person now than who I was when CoH first launched.
If you are to make an MMO, you would need it to be something like Destiny, where it's a single player game with MMO aspects. I played most of Destiny before the Dark Below alone or with one or two of my friends who happened to be online. But even without them, I had a blast. I've tried to get back into WoW but my enjoyment of it died pretty quickly, even after the launch of Legion, because it still has so much of this "You need other people to get the good stuff".
Hopefully one of those projects will understand that. I'll give CoT a try since I've been watching their progress and they are good at talking with their future player base, and showing what they have, how far they have come and how far they are going. I wasn't sure if Valiance Online was still going on until I checked it out today, because it's so quite about what they are doing. Hell, their last blog post or any scrap of information is from November, while CoT is pretty much giving weekly updates.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
CoH wasn't my first MMO, hell it wasn't even my third MMO, but CoH was the entire reason I ended up on the PA Forums so it'll always have a special place in my heart. Plus it was super fun too!
And I agree about the current MMO climate. I personally feel like those quasi-MMOs (Destiny, PSO, even the Division to some extent) work best. Not that traditional MMOs can't work I just feel like you really need the right team, right design, and right audience otherwise you'll be DoA.
A super hero quasi-MMO (ala Destiny) I feel like would work fantastically well. You could have a central Hub area, something like the Hall of Justice, and then go out on solo or group missions. It'd go a long way to making your character feel like an actual hero as opposed to one of many bizarrely dressed murder-hobos. And the group play would work well as traditional super hero team ups. Plus you might be able to pull off some seriously fun action combat when you can hand craft each mission.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
CoH wasn't my first MMO, hell it wasn't even my third MMO, but CoH was the entire reason I ended up on the PA Forums so it'll always have a special place in my heart. Plus it was super fun too!
And I agree about the current MMO climate. I personally feel like those quasi-MMOs (Destiny, PSO, even the Division to some extent) work best. Not that traditional MMOs can't work I just feel like you really need the right team, right design, and right audience otherwise you'll be DoA.
A super hero quasi-MMO (ala Destiny) I feel like would work fantastically well. You could have a central Hub area, something like the Hall of Justice, and then go out on solo or group missions. It'd go a long way to making your character feel like an actual hero as opposed to one of many bizarrely dressed murder-hobos. And the group play would work well as traditional super hero team ups. Plus you might be able to pull off some seriously fun action combat when you can hand craft each mission.
I think the problem with MMOs now is the attention span of the average player. A huge generation grew up on fast paced games, especially FPS games so the time and effort required to play an MMO might be a little off putting. Again this is just a personal guess. It just feels like all these new MMOs coming out start with a bang, massive server pops, new servers need to be made, and then a few months later they have to merge a ton of the servers due to low server pop and then if they had a sub fee they go to the free to play with sub fee for extra benefits option.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I think the Division did a good job with having a open world but keeping it feeling like you were alone. Like, once you leave the safe house, you'd see a few players running around, a few random bad guys, but once you got into a quest area, the outside world would "phase out" and you were alone in this zone without having a loading screen, which I would like for a Super Hero game. Sure, you can fly around the city, but jumping into a quest means that the city disappears and it's just you and your select friends.
One of the things I disliked with DC Universe Online is that there were sooooo many quests that were out in the open, and you would have to find endless badguys with everyone at the same time, and you never felt like a comic book hero, like how Spiderman, The Avengers, and X-men all operate in New York but when Spiderman is dealing with Spiderman shit, rarely do you see Iron Man showing up to help him fight Vemon.
CoH wasn't my first MMO, hell it wasn't even my third MMO, but CoH was the entire reason I ended up on the PA Forums so it'll always have a special place in my heart. Plus it was super fun too!
And I agree about the current MMO climate. I personally feel like those quasi-MMOs (Destiny, PSO, even the Division to some extent) work best. Not that traditional MMOs can't work I just feel like you really need the right team, right design, and right audience otherwise you'll be DoA.
A super hero quasi-MMO (ala Destiny) I feel like would work fantastically well. You could have a central Hub area, something like the Hall of Justice, and then go out on solo or group missions. It'd go a long way to making your character feel like an actual hero as opposed to one of many bizarrely dressed murder-hobos. And the group play would work well as traditional super hero team ups. Plus you might be able to pull off some seriously fun action combat when you can hand craft each mission.
I think the problem with MMOs now is the attention span of the average player. A huge generation grew up on fast paced games, especially FPS games so the time and effort required to play an MMO might be a little off putting. Again this is just a personal guess. It just feels like all these new MMOs coming out start with a bang, massive server pops, new servers need to be made, and then a few months later they have to merge a ton of the servers due to low server pop and then if they had a sub fee they go to the free to play with sub fee for extra benefits option.
I just don't have the time or energy to put in 4+ hours and come out with a trinket and deal with assholes doing it.
Culture has shifted too, people back in the day were super friendly in MMOs
Now most are angry and mean spirited.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
CoH wasn't my first MMO, hell it wasn't even my third MMO, but CoH was the entire reason I ended up on the PA Forums so it'll always have a special place in my heart. Plus it was super fun too!
And I agree about the current MMO climate. I personally feel like those quasi-MMOs (Destiny, PSO, even the Division to some extent) work best. Not that traditional MMOs can't work I just feel like you really need the right team, right design, and right audience otherwise you'll be DoA.
A super hero quasi-MMO (ala Destiny) I feel like would work fantastically well. You could have a central Hub area, something like the Hall of Justice, and then go out on solo or group missions. It'd go a long way to making your character feel like an actual hero as opposed to one of many bizarrely dressed murder-hobos. And the group play would work well as traditional super hero team ups. Plus you might be able to pull off some seriously fun action combat when you can hand craft each mission.
I think the problem with MMOs now is the attention span of the average player. A huge generation grew up on fast paced games, especially FPS games so the time and effort required to play an MMO might be a little off putting. Again this is just a personal guess. It just feels like all these new MMOs coming out start with a bang, massive server pops, new servers need to be made, and then a few months later they have to merge a ton of the servers due to low server pop and then if they had a sub fee they go to the free to play with sub fee for extra benefits option.
I just don't have the time or energy to put in 4+ hours and come out with a trinket and deal with assholes doing it.
Culture has shifted too, people back in the day were super friendly in MMOs
Now most are angry and mean spirited.
Yea, I have a hard time sitting here playing an MMO for hours at a time when I have so many other things I want to do. I also just never have RL friends to play MMOs with because none of my friends have a computer they can play them on. I did play FF14 with a friend though that was only because we could play on PS4.
Also, the asshole levels have spiked for sure. I played Legion for about two months and the things that would set off these raging psychopaths was absurd. I genuinely could not believe someone could get mad over this entirely insignificant mechanic or thing in the game. I had to kick a guy from a group because he would not stop trash talking the healer for having the audacity to do some light DPS while still keeping the entire group at full health. We were having no problems at all, the extra DPS was nice but this dude could not grasp it.
Stragint on
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
For me, and most of my friends, it's hard to get a group together that can do something at the same time.
Work, Life, Time Zones, ect, all seem to get in the way.
Like, I'm trying to get a real life Dungeons and Dragons group together and today would have been our first day, except my brother has to work, my friend is super busy because he's a deer processor and it's deer season, and now I'm sick with a cold. So it's being pushed back. Old School MMOs have a lot of content that require groups, and groups that work together, and its hard to get random people to work together well.
So people get real elitism about shit, get butt hurt, and people leave the game. Which is why I think modern MMOs need to be built like a single player game with MMO aspects added in. So you can do most of the game alone, and then when you need friends, it's something that takes maybe and hour or two, requires a small group, and doesn't have crazy mechanics you've not seen or dealt with in the single player parts of the game that people will have to learn as they play. As much as I loved Destiny, my biggest complaint with it was the nothing that you see in the first raid, the Vault of Glass, was ever in the base game. Hell, the first mission of the game had trip wires you disarmed and I never saw those things again.
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StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
For me, and most of my friends, it's hard to get a group together that can do something at the same time.
Work, Life, Time Zones, ect, all seem to get in the way.
Like, I'm trying to get a real life Dungeons and Dragons group together and today would have been our first day, except my brother has to work, my friend is super busy because he's a deer processor and it's deer season, and now I'm sick with a cold. So it's being pushed back. Old School MMOs have a lot of content that require groups, and groups that work together, and its hard to get random people to work together well.
So people get real elitism about shit, get butt hurt, and people leave the game. Which is why I think modern MMOs need to be built like a single player game with MMO aspects added in. So you can do most of the game alone, and then when you need friends, it's something that takes maybe and hour or two, requires a small group, and doesn't have crazy mechanics you've not seen or dealt with in the single player parts of the game that people will have to learn as they play. As much as I loved Destiny, my biggest complaint with it was the nothing that you see in the first raid, the Vault of Glass, was ever in the base game. Hell, the first mission of the game had trip wires you disarmed and I never saw those things again.
I think that is what I liked about The Secret World. It was really easy to play through the whole game solo and the group content was optional. A lot of fun but optional.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I quite enjoy Warframe's take on cooperation. Everyone is so busy being a super-powered magic space ninja and murdering the shit out of everything on the map that communication is primarily accomplished through war-crimes and interpretive dance. Destiny went with much, much more low-key action, but the idea is the same. You and a couple buddies go forth and wreck shit for whatever the cause of the day is.
Megacity Three needs your help, insert name here!
Say, did the devs at DCUO ever stop fucking the dog when it came to char-gen and their wretched mandatory tutorial? Ugly, uninspiring and devoid of charm all the way through. I tried getting into the game proper three times, but that whole section sapped my will to live so efficiently that I gave up in short order after I was free of it.
I quite enjoy Warframe's take on cooperation. Everyone is so busy being a super-powered magic space ninja and murdering the shit out of everything on the map that communication is primarily accomplished through war-crimes and interpretive dance. Destiny went with much, much more low-key action, but the idea is the same. You and a couple buddies go forth and wreck shit for whatever the cause of the day is.
Megacity Three needs your help, insert name here!
Say, did the devs at DCUO ever stop fucking the dog when it came to char-gen and their wretched mandatory tutorial? Ugly, uninspiring and devoid of charm all the way through. I tried getting into the game proper three times, but that whole section sapped my will to live so efficiently that I gave up in short order after I was free of it.
Not the last time I played it. It was still a shit show, but that was... 3 years ago?
The biggest thing that killed my interest in DCUO was having so few costume pieces actually available at character generation. I never had any idea if I was ever going to be able to get my characters looking how I wanted, so I never got invested enough in them to bother logging back in after once or twice.
Also the gameplay was hot diarrhea soup. But mostly, it was about not giving me enough dress-up doll options.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
I managed to make a single character in DCUO that I liked enough to keep playing it past the tutorial. That chargen is so painfully limited, everyone ends up looking the same.
I wish Champions Online clicked with me. I've put a bunch of time into that game (enough to level cap, at least), but it keeps feeling like a hollow CoX copy, rather than a game of its own. And I don't like the art direction at all.
I made a cyborg in DCUO that I was ok with, using the Clockwork chest piece I found. But none of my other characters I liked. I understand not giving out the really good looking, complex looking gear to level ones, but let me have more options to make the basic clothes look good too.
You know, I think I'd be OK with a Hero game having a limited initial character creator, if it still had a really broad and versatile array of Civilian Outfits. And then you do the tutorial, and after you prove yourself a For Real Superhero, you get a voucher from the mayor to go to the Super Costume Place, and get yourself hooked up with your spandex.
Of course It would still need a ton of starting options for mutants and robots and aliens and whatnot, whose look is just who they are, not what they're wearing.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
Start with progression. You can make your first superhero costume out of sweatshirts, sweatpants, really cheap spandex/tights before you get into like the ultra-texture space age materials you'd see a super-pro-awesome superhero has.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited January 2017
I can't remember if it was Champions Online or DCUO that did this, but please don't let me design my hero only to continually give me armor pieces that cover up my look. I know whichever one I am thinking of eventually added an option not to show that stuff, but just don't do it in the first place. Save yourselves the time and resources.
In fact if you want to have items to enhance stats (which I've no problem with) then take a page from The Secret World and make those items something that never appears on your character.
Y'know on paper I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with CO, but IMHO the game just didn't have the heart that CoH had. Maybe because they had to scramble from being a Marvel game to being a Generic Hero game.
edit again- Like everything in CoH came with a wink and a nod. They reveled in their Silver Age comic universe. CO on the other hand had the looks, but seem ashamed of it? I guess?
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
have them just be power enhancers if you're going to do items
9 slots, 3 red, 3 blue, 3 green
make red be damage, blue be defense, green be survivability/healing
make mixes (think like WoW gems) that can be placed in both slots
as you get higher, maybe suits can unlock more with better materials, maybe you only start with 1,1,1 and progress up into like 5,5,5 or something crazy
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah, make those outfits look like Day 1 hero outfits, like Deadpool's first costume in the movie. But still give a lot of crazy options on colors, patterns, ect.
I don't know, I really liked the ability to have a character that started out looking badass in CoH.
No scrounging for shinier rags or anything, just "Hey, I'm a robot that will kill you with cancer beams from my eyes" at level 1. Later, you get some additional options like capes or wings or whatever. Eventually "Hey, now my eyes are permanently glowing with radiation" at whatever level you got auras at.
Of course, you also had the option to wear a tattered shirt or ripped up pants and look like a random hobo or whatever you wanted. Or just wear the monochrome default tights if you where really, really boring.
I'm not against earning new costume bits or options as you level up or fight certain enemy groups or complete in game story arcs, but I think the costumes shouldn't be limited to "You're a newbie, here's your WalStore brand tights and leotards".
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited January 2017
Oh yeah I am like 50/50 on that idea.
On one hand I think it is amazingly awesome.
On the other hand, but I wanna be a lightning shooting space princess robot pirate noooooooow!
edit- And honestly I'd probably be perfectly fine with either option.
edit 2- I picture starting off and gaining access to an NPC that can hook you up with your first real costume ala Netflix's Daredevil and then eventually reaching the pinnacle of Edna Mode designs.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
On the other hand, but I wanna be a lighting shooting space princess robot pirate noooooooow!
edit- And honestly I'd probably be perfectly fine with either option.
edit 2- I picture starting off and gaining access to an NPC that can hook you up with your first real costume ala Netflix's Daredevil and then eventually reaching the pinnacle of Edna Mode designs.
Could just make it a "first time through" thing, and as you unlock the high tech space age shit, it unlocks for all your characters
I dunno, it's not really necessary, just level lock things like capes and travel powers and you're good
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I suppose it'd come down to the overall theme of your game.
Is it a more modern super hero setting? If so then I could see that gameplay loop being perfectly valid. Hell, that's like 60% of the reason I play FFXIV!
Or are you going for the delightfully corny Silver Age style? In that case I'd give everyone access to everything right out the gate.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I think my idea Hero game would have a open city, with a quest entering system like The Division, and each quest is built for different types of approaches, like stealth, smashing, or smarts (mind control characters or hackers or), or shooting and NPCs with different responses to each approach (like everyone going for cover in a shooting and range power approach but are smart enough to switch to kung-fu or melee weapons when someone starts punching, or will check out odd sounds when the player is using a stealth approach. Having a nice starting costume options but nothing that makes you look like top tier amazing, with a ton of customization with those and future outfits. And a Quest Maker, like the Mission Architect that CoX had or like GTAO kinda has. Something where you can choose to subscribe to a quest or quest lines and they show up in your city like normal quests. That would solve a lot of "lack of content" that some games get. Of course, there would be a ton of junk quests, but with the right support, a rating system and Dev's Choice, you would be able to find good quests without too much trouble.
I can't remember if it was Champions Online or DCUO that did this, but please don't let me design my hero only to continually give me armor pieces that cover up my look.
*DCUO, in CO they (for Reasons) limited how many character creation options you saw on a new character.
The added downside to this* is that it almost invariably leads to everyone having roughly the same body shape, because all unlocks now have to fit all characters (as they're quest rewards), so having wildly complex body shapes works against that.
In CoX you just had costume pieces that wouldn't appear with certain options. Fair dues, no problems, character creator had so many it was rarely an issue, just pick a different one.
On the other hand, but I wanna be a lightning shooting space princess robot pirate noooooooow!
edit- And honestly I'd probably be perfectly fine with either option.
edit 2- I picture starting off and gaining access to an NPC that can hook you up with your first real costume ala Netflix's Daredevil and then eventually reaching the pinnacle of Edna Mode designs.
I was thinking about this, and you could have both, kinda, with origins. You would have access to different armor/clothing options depending on if you are a street level hero, sponsored by someone like a company, or come from space, another dimension, ect. You can get the other styles later but you can get really nice, lore friendly pieces from the start depending on what you choose. Like a street level "cyborg" might have exo arms like Jax from Mortal Combat before his arms got ripped off, or something that looks like a junk yard piece, space cyborg will have nicer, but alien armor pieces, which would look different from military cyborgs that look like Mecha armor, or company cyborgs that are more Iron Man smooth.
I wish I was a programmer and/or had time and money to make my own game.
the big selling point in CoH really was just character creation, and to a lesser extent the IP (i.e. you aren't batman's protege or whatever.). The MMO part I'd be willing to take or leave.
I remain pretty surprised that nobody has tried some sort of ARPG or destiny/warframe type of crawl in a non-marvel/DC superhero universe. It's not as though their licensed stuff has lit the world on fire anyway
Somebody make Powers Bureau the video game, basically (yes I know it's tangentially marvel)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I've posted this many times, but:
1. Sell the City of Villains license to Deep Silver
2. Then, they give it to Volition, the team behind Saints Row
3. They make the most fucking bonkers third-person action game they can set in the Rogue Isles
Think about this. The sheer variety of costume options, lore, and settings of CoV, and the ridiculous character creation systems and powers & mobility gameplay of Saints Row IV. Holy shit, it would be game of the decade.
the big selling point in CoH really was just character creation, and to a lesser extent the IP (i.e. you aren't batman's protege or whatever.). The MMO part I'd be willing to take or leave.
In that case, good news, you can get your full CoX experience in the shape of Paragon Chat right now!
For me being able to actually play what you create was crucial. Just making something to look at I find... soulless and pointless. And, as repetitive as the gameplay way, playing the game with a bunch of friends was always a blast, every single time.
the big selling point in CoH really was just character creation, and to a lesser extent the IP (i.e. you aren't batman's protege or whatever.). The MMO part I'd be willing to take or leave.
In that case, good news, you can get your full CoX experience in the shape of Paragon Chat right now!
For me being able to actually play what you create was crucial. Just making something to look at I find... soulless and pointless. And, as repetitive as the gameplay way, playing the game with a bunch of friends was always a blast, every single time.
Half the fun of the game (for me, at least) was running around and seeing what other people had created.
The DBZ knockoffs, the escapees from DC or Marvel, or whatever gloriously hideous abomination they could wrench out of the character creator. There was a lot of fun to be had just wandering around a costume contest and reading origin stories. Granted, there was a lot of mental trauma to be had at the same time, but you take the good with the bad.
I agree it's important to play as your creation, just not in an "MMO" format. Something like the first guild wars with a more developed character creator is basically what I'm picturing
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
CoH was my first MMO, played it for a good year before friends dragged me off to WoW, but it made a lasting impression. Playing with PA groups, creating character designs/concepts and kitting them out, there was so much to do and that game did it pretty well. It wasn't perfect, but I loved it, and now that some friends are neck deep in DCUO, I gave it a shot and couldn't shake the sense that it was just a second rate CoH. Energy might've needed a little manipulation, but you could go into a CoH fight and just lay waste to things with all your powers, starting pretty early in the levels. I didn't just get past the Tutorial, my DCUO character is level 15, and frankly I'm just not really having fun with it.
And that comes back to the nature of the MMO, as discussed above; the raw amount of time necessary to create a character, and then level it (even with some power levelling assistance, this can be a while), and then get a feel for what that class/combination/whatever can do, and there's only so much free time to go around.
I enjoyed so much about CoH, from joining crazy hour long battles in (Perez?) Park, to trying out new powersets that looked like fun, to getting capes and alt costumes and auras for characters, to hitting up a Task Force (because I was a crazy person and not just with alts) and trying to get it done before we started losing people to connection issues/morale problems/'oh god it has been 6 hours I need to go to work soon'.
And that was all just the beginning (or early on), I wasn't around for CoV, or most of the major updates. I remember popping down a month of game time sometime in the late 00's or something, just to look around, and there was just so much stuff I didn't recognize at all (as is the way with a game that runs for something like 8 years and change).
Good memories, and a game that did it well again might draw me in, but yeah, over a decade later (as someone who wasn't there until the end), it still stings. Even if I wasn't playing it, I was glad to know that others were, and were enjoying the things I had so much fun with.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited January 2017
COH was my first MMO, too. I remember sitting by the side of Route 287 in New Jersey that Summer, waiting for an accident to be cleared that had shut down the highway, reading the manual's descriptions of the various families of super-powers. As a teenager I had created my own very complex superhero universe and I adored COH's ability to allow me to create those heroes and later, villains, "for real".
What I didn't adore was CITY's slow pace. It had the early, pre-WORLD OF WARCRAFT slow MMO advancement model firmly embedded in its design and it just seemed to take forever to get my toons to a stage where I felt their powers were starting to come together. This was not helped by my reluctance to stick to advancing just one hero instead of trying to advance all 12 at the same time.
I played text MUDs in college, was uninterested in the first MMOs which were just more of the same plus eye candy (low-poly models or sprites) and a subscription fee (which I was adamantly opposed to, being used to "buy once, own forever" - the dominant model in single-player software at the time). Some others joined the fray, but I wasn't interested in more Extruded Fantasy Product (that, again, you had to subscribe to). Even Star Wars Galaxies failed to grab my interest, mostly because I was grimly aware it wouldn't recapture the magic of the movies, because it would be full of typical MMO players (with all that implies).
Then I started hearing about CoH. It had a long and troubled development (like most games of the period), and it became clear years later, after I'd already started playing, that some of that was because most of the devs didn't have a clue how to make an MMO*. But after some false starts (like a more open, Champions-style character generation that allowed players to make characters truly OP or useless), they eventually launched something. And to most reports from my friends, it was good. It was different - different setting, no raiding (to speak of), no PvP, no gear-grind, a fantastic character-maker ... I held out a few months, from spring to the end of summer, but I finally tied on the cape somewhere around the start of the school year, 2004, and never let my sub lapse until the game was killed, even when I wasn't actively playing, even after it went F2P.
*and when it came to CO, their second effort, they had learned some things... but proceeded to ignore other lessons, and also make all-new mistakes.
So the team behind Paragon Chat have figured out how to edit maps for the game now. They've added a new area to Pocket D, just as a test. Interesting stuff.
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VO... I know enough about some of the people who were working on it that I deeply distrust every scrap of information they've released. But I stopped following it a while ago, so maybe they've got their act together and jettisoned enough of the problem contributors to become a productive team. Even if so, I doubt I'd touch it. Their whole deal, lore and class design and everything, seems to be skirting much closer to the line of "How much can we just re-make CoH before NCSoft comes for our heads?".
Partly because no matter how good it is, it still won't be CoX. And partly because I'm a very different person now than who I was when CoH first launched.
You'd probably want something closer to Freedom Force than WoW.
Hopefully one of those projects will understand that. I'll give CoT a try since I've been watching their progress and they are good at talking with their future player base, and showing what they have, how far they have come and how far they are going. I wasn't sure if Valiance Online was still going on until I checked it out today, because it's so quite about what they are doing. Hell, their last blog post or any scrap of information is from November, while CoT is pretty much giving weekly updates.
And I agree about the current MMO climate. I personally feel like those quasi-MMOs (Destiny, PSO, even the Division to some extent) work best. Not that traditional MMOs can't work I just feel like you really need the right team, right design, and right audience otherwise you'll be DoA.
A super hero quasi-MMO (ala Destiny) I feel like would work fantastically well. You could have a central Hub area, something like the Hall of Justice, and then go out on solo or group missions. It'd go a long way to making your character feel like an actual hero as opposed to one of many bizarrely dressed murder-hobos. And the group play would work well as traditional super hero team ups. Plus you might be able to pull off some seriously fun action combat when you can hand craft each mission.
I think the problem with MMOs now is the attention span of the average player. A huge generation grew up on fast paced games, especially FPS games so the time and effort required to play an MMO might be a little off putting. Again this is just a personal guess. It just feels like all these new MMOs coming out start with a bang, massive server pops, new servers need to be made, and then a few months later they have to merge a ton of the servers due to low server pop and then if they had a sub fee they go to the free to play with sub fee for extra benefits option.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
One of the things I disliked with DC Universe Online is that there were sooooo many quests that were out in the open, and you would have to find endless badguys with everyone at the same time, and you never felt like a comic book hero, like how Spiderman, The Avengers, and X-men all operate in New York but when Spiderman is dealing with Spiderman shit, rarely do you see Iron Man showing up to help him fight Vemon.
I just don't have the time or energy to put in 4+ hours and come out with a trinket and deal with assholes doing it.
Culture has shifted too, people back in the day were super friendly in MMOs
Now most are angry and mean spirited.
Yea, I have a hard time sitting here playing an MMO for hours at a time when I have so many other things I want to do. I also just never have RL friends to play MMOs with because none of my friends have a computer they can play them on. I did play FF14 with a friend though that was only because we could play on PS4.
Also, the asshole levels have spiked for sure. I played Legion for about two months and the things that would set off these raging psychopaths was absurd. I genuinely could not believe someone could get mad over this entirely insignificant mechanic or thing in the game. I had to kick a guy from a group because he would not stop trash talking the healer for having the audacity to do some light DPS while still keeping the entire group at full health. We were having no problems at all, the extra DPS was nice but this dude could not grasp it.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Work, Life, Time Zones, ect, all seem to get in the way.
Like, I'm trying to get a real life Dungeons and Dragons group together and today would have been our first day, except my brother has to work, my friend is super busy because he's a deer processor and it's deer season, and now I'm sick with a cold. So it's being pushed back. Old School MMOs have a lot of content that require groups, and groups that work together, and its hard to get random people to work together well.
So people get real elitism about shit, get butt hurt, and people leave the game. Which is why I think modern MMOs need to be built like a single player game with MMO aspects added in. So you can do most of the game alone, and then when you need friends, it's something that takes maybe and hour or two, requires a small group, and doesn't have crazy mechanics you've not seen or dealt with in the single player parts of the game that people will have to learn as they play. As much as I loved Destiny, my biggest complaint with it was the nothing that you see in the first raid, the Vault of Glass, was ever in the base game. Hell, the first mission of the game had trip wires you disarmed and I never saw those things again.
I think that is what I liked about The Secret World. It was really easy to play through the whole game solo and the group content was optional. A lot of fun but optional.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Megacity Three needs your help, insert name here!
Say, did the devs at DCUO ever stop fucking the dog when it came to char-gen and their wretched mandatory tutorial? Ugly, uninspiring and devoid of charm all the way through. I tried getting into the game proper three times, but that whole section sapped my will to live so efficiently that I gave up in short order after I was free of it.
Not the last time I played it. It was still a shit show, but that was... 3 years ago?
Also the gameplay was hot diarrhea soup. But mostly, it was about not giving me enough dress-up doll options.
I wish Champions Online clicked with me. I've put a bunch of time into that game (enough to level cap, at least), but it keeps feeling like a hollow CoX copy, rather than a game of its own. And I don't like the art direction at all.
Of course It would still need a ton of starting options for mutants and robots and aliens and whatnot, whose look is just who they are, not what they're wearing.
In fact if you want to have items to enhance stats (which I've no problem with) then take a page from The Secret World and make those items something that never appears on your character.
edit- @Glal
Y'know on paper I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with CO, but IMHO the game just didn't have the heart that CoH had. Maybe because they had to scramble from being a Marvel game to being a Generic Hero game.
edit again- Like everything in CoH came with a wink and a nod. They reveled in their Silver Age comic universe. CO on the other hand had the looks, but seem ashamed of it? I guess?
9 slots, 3 red, 3 blue, 3 green
make red be damage, blue be defense, green be survivability/healing
make mixes (think like WoW gems) that can be placed in both slots
as you get higher, maybe suits can unlock more with better materials, maybe you only start with 1,1,1 and progress up into like 5,5,5 or something crazy
No scrounging for shinier rags or anything, just "Hey, I'm a robot that will kill you with cancer beams from my eyes" at level 1. Later, you get some additional options like capes or wings or whatever. Eventually "Hey, now my eyes are permanently glowing with radiation" at whatever level you got auras at.
Of course, you also had the option to wear a tattered shirt or ripped up pants and look like a random hobo or whatever you wanted. Or just wear the monochrome default tights if you where really, really boring.
I'm not against earning new costume bits or options as you level up or fight certain enemy groups or complete in game story arcs, but I think the costumes shouldn't be limited to "You're a newbie, here's your WalStore brand tights and leotards".
On one hand I think it is amazingly awesome.
On the other hand, but I wanna be a lightning shooting space princess robot pirate noooooooow!
edit- And honestly I'd probably be perfectly fine with either option.
edit 2- I picture starting off and gaining access to an NPC that can hook you up with your first real costume ala Netflix's Daredevil and then eventually reaching the pinnacle of Edna Mode designs.
Could just make it a "first time through" thing, and as you unlock the high tech space age shit, it unlocks for all your characters
I dunno, it's not really necessary, just level lock things like capes and travel powers and you're good
Is it a more modern super hero setting? If so then I could see that gameplay loop being perfectly valid. Hell, that's like 60% of the reason I play FFXIV!
Or are you going for the delightfully corny Silver Age style? In that case I'd give everyone access to everything right out the gate.
The added downside to this* is that it almost invariably leads to everyone having roughly the same body shape, because all unlocks now have to fit all characters (as they're quest rewards), so having wildly complex body shapes works against that.
In CoX you just had costume pieces that wouldn't appear with certain options. Fair dues, no problems, character creator had so many it was rarely an issue, just pick a different one.
I was thinking about this, and you could have both, kinda, with origins. You would have access to different armor/clothing options depending on if you are a street level hero, sponsored by someone like a company, or come from space, another dimension, ect. You can get the other styles later but you can get really nice, lore friendly pieces from the start depending on what you choose. Like a street level "cyborg" might have exo arms like Jax from Mortal Combat before his arms got ripped off, or something that looks like a junk yard piece, space cyborg will have nicer, but alien armor pieces, which would look different from military cyborgs that look like Mecha armor, or company cyborgs that are more Iron Man smooth.
I wish I was a programmer and/or had time and money to make my own game.
I remain pretty surprised that nobody has tried some sort of ARPG or destiny/warframe type of crawl in a non-marvel/DC superhero universe. It's not as though their licensed stuff has lit the world on fire anyway
Somebody make Powers Bureau the video game, basically (yes I know it's tangentially marvel)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
1. Sell the City of Villains license to Deep Silver
2. Then, they give it to Volition, the team behind Saints Row
3. They make the most fucking bonkers third-person action game they can set in the Rogue Isles
Think about this. The sheer variety of costume options, lore, and settings of CoV, and the ridiculous character creation systems and powers & mobility gameplay of Saints Row IV. Holy shit, it would be game of the decade.
For me being able to actually play what you create was crucial. Just making something to look at I find... soulless and pointless. And, as repetitive as the gameplay way, playing the game with a bunch of friends was always a blast, every single time.
Half the fun of the game (for me, at least) was running around and seeing what other people had created.
The DBZ knockoffs, the escapees from DC or Marvel, or whatever gloriously hideous abomination they could wrench out of the character creator. There was a lot of fun to be had just wandering around a costume contest and reading origin stories. Granted, there was a lot of mental trauma to be had at the same time, but you take the good with the bad.
As I've mentioned, it was basically the last large mmo that had honest-to-God support classes.
And it didn't care about balance at all because almost no one ran damage meters and 'raids' weren't about DPS but execution.
And the raids that came near the end were hilarious stomps of mass heroes maxing defense and resistances and damage boosts.
And like bi-weekly releases of 'issues' making storylines, player-made custom missions.
Badge hunting.
Costume contests.
And of course, an amazing community - the best community for any online game I've ever been a part of.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
And that comes back to the nature of the MMO, as discussed above; the raw amount of time necessary to create a character, and then level it (even with some power levelling assistance, this can be a while), and then get a feel for what that class/combination/whatever can do, and there's only so much free time to go around.
I enjoyed so much about CoH, from joining crazy hour long battles in (Perez?) Park, to trying out new powersets that looked like fun, to getting capes and alt costumes and auras for characters, to hitting up a Task Force (because I was a crazy person and not just with alts) and trying to get it done before we started losing people to connection issues/morale problems/'oh god it has been 6 hours I need to go to work soon'.
And that was all just the beginning (or early on), I wasn't around for CoV, or most of the major updates. I remember popping down a month of game time sometime in the late 00's or something, just to look around, and there was just so much stuff I didn't recognize at all (as is the way with a game that runs for something like 8 years and change).
Good memories, and a game that did it well again might draw me in, but yeah, over a decade later (as someone who wasn't there until the end), it still stings. Even if I wasn't playing it, I was glad to know that others were, and were enjoying the things I had so much fun with.
What I didn't adore was CITY's slow pace. It had the early, pre-WORLD OF WARCRAFT slow MMO advancement model firmly embedded in its design and it just seemed to take forever to get my toons to a stage where I felt their powers were starting to come together. This was not helped by my reluctance to stick to advancing just one hero instead of trying to advance all 12 at the same time.
Then I started hearing about CoH. It had a long and troubled development (like most games of the period), and it became clear years later, after I'd already started playing, that some of that was because most of the devs didn't have a clue how to make an MMO*. But after some false starts (like a more open, Champions-style character generation that allowed players to make characters truly OP or useless), they eventually launched something. And to most reports from my friends, it was good. It was different - different setting, no raiding (to speak of), no PvP, no gear-grind, a fantastic character-maker ... I held out a few months, from spring to the end of summer, but I finally tied on the cape somewhere around the start of the school year, 2004, and never let my sub lapse until the game was killed, even when I wasn't actively playing, even after it went F2P.
*and when it came to CO, their second effort, they had learned some things... but proceeded to ignore other lessons, and also make all-new mistakes.