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City of Heroes or Villains or Rogues

1679111274

Posts

  • CorvusCorvus . VancouverRegistered User regular
    edited September 2012
    So, hey just to follow up my previous post, it was a blast playing with all of you guys. I'd never played an MMO before, and the community that PA maintained was amazing. For those who don't remember, I'm @Dysmal in CoX.

    Thanks especially to the guys I spent a ton of time with early on, in the days when the world was young, Dark Miasma sucked, and setting nazi werewolves on fire in dumpsters was high art. @Accualt, @Scooter, @Ghostalker, @Harsh Language, @Gear Girl, Jeepguy, Crim, Bitstream, Duck, and everyone else, you guys were awesome people to hang with.

    Several years of being an admin, and I think I only ever kicked one person out of the chat channel!

    Oh yeah, and Titan Network has a character data exporter up:

    http://cit.cohtitan.com/sentinelplus/

    Edit:

    This is for @Accualt , this always makes me crack up.

    heh.jpg

    Corvus on
    :so_raven:
  • Gear GirlGear Girl More class than a state university Registered User regular
    Dys why do I not have you on Steam or something?

  • CorvusCorvus . VancouverRegistered User regular
    I haven't logged in to Steam in like a year. I think I only got it to play Torchlight! Lets see what my steam ID is.

    Ah, there we go Corvus[PA]

    You know, I haven't used the @Dys name outside of CoH for whatever reason.

    :so_raven:
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Good lord the event system in GW2 would be dynamite.

    Beating up some random Clockwork, when suddenly an explosion goes off and you gotta stop a Hellion robbery down the block.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • CorvusCorvus . VancouverRegistered User regular
    Oh man, I found my original screenshots. I still have screenshots from beta. If I get around to converting the old .tga format ones to jpeg, you guys will be treated to some truly horrible quality screenshots from my piece of crap old PC.

    :so_raven:
  • WeX MajorsWeX Majors 8th Floor, MegashipRegistered User regular
    Dude, it's Heroes. We're kinda *used* to it looking like shit by this point.

  • DysDys how am I even using this gun Registered User regular
    Corvus wrote: »
    I haven't logged in to Steam in like a year. I think I only got it to play Torchlight! Lets see what my steam ID is.

    Ah, there we go Corvus[PA]

    You know, I haven't used the @Dys name outside of CoH for whatever reason.

    Bwuh?

  • AccualtAccualt Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    Corvus wrote: »
    This is for @Accualt , this always makes me crack up.

    heh.jpg


    Ha! I almost forgot how much fun I had just chatting with the super group. The members of Power's Allegory were the main thing that kept me playing for as long as I did, I only left for so long because of the Navy. I really enjoyed the old crew, we had a great dynamic. I still giggle when I think about how, as a Defender, I got excited when people died because it meant I could use VENGEANCE! And how Crim would always volunteer to die so the rest of the team could get the buff. Classic. All of our awful, wonderful costumes. People complaining about purple and red for the SG (I got a new monitor eventually and realized it did look awful but STILL not as bad as Ketchup and Mustard). When we first got a super group base. The CoV announcement and how amped we all were about it. How worried I'd be when there was the smallest little fight in SG chat between people because I believed so much in Power's Allegory. Being 100% honest to god angry with Brushfire and kicking her/him right out. Fulcrum Shift crippling people's computers with a line of buffs filling the screen. Putting flight on auto-run to get a drink and finding myself in a wall like 1,00o yards away from the mission entrance. How the SG chat felt exactly like the Cheers...with more cursing inappropriateness. The dance club! Terrible.

    If anyone told me they had great memories of great friendships with people who's faces they never even saw because of a video game I'd think they were nuts...but it turns out, I'm one of them. Thanks everyone.

    Accualt on
  • CorvusCorvus . VancouverRegistered User regular
    Dys wrote: »
    Corvus wrote: »
    I haven't logged in to Steam in like a year. I think I only got it to play Torchlight! Lets see what my steam ID is.

    Ah, there we go Corvus[PA]

    You know, I haven't used the @Dys name outside of CoH for whatever reason.

    Bwuh?

    Well, I was @Dysmal. And the guys just refered to me as Dys. And then we got Dyscord, and Dysc and things got all sorts of confused.

    :so_raven:
  • Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    Corvus wrote: »
    So, hey just to follow up my previous post, it was a blast playing with all of you guys. I'd never played an MMO before, and the community that PA maintained was amazing. For those who don't remember, I'm @Dysmal in CoX.

    Thanks especially to the guys I spent a ton of time with early on, in the days when the world was young, Dark Miasma sucked, and setting nazi werewolves on fire in dumpsters was high art. @Accualt, @Scooter, @Ghostalker, @Harsh Language, @Gear Girl, Jeepguy, Crim, Bitstream, Duck, and everyone else, you guys were awesome people to hang with.

    Several years of being an admin, and I think I only ever kicked one person out of the chat channel!

    Oh yeah, and Titan Network has a character data exporter up:

    http://cit.cohtitan.com/sentinelplus/

    Edit:

    This is for @Accualt , this always makes me crack up.

    heh.jpg

    So many fond memories! I miss you guys, and I really enjoyed playing with you, Dys.

    (I'm jeepguy by the way!)

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Narbus wrote: »
    They addressed a lot of this in that video. In that official video, that actually features official people who know what's going on, Zwill said NCSoft and several other studios have been holding job fairs for the former employees, so I'm not sure how much time they have to spend trying to buy out the IP. Along with Positron's post asking for lore questions, where he points out that most the staff is spending a lot of time networking, updating linkins, etc.

    Zwill also pointed out that Kickstarter only works for brand new projects, so one to buy out the studio wouldn't really work, without some really odd shenanigans.

    Zwill then pointed out that the development costs for a new MMO are in the tens of millions, so it's a bit questionable if a Kickstarter could work at all for a new MMO, and even if it did, the natural life cycle of MMO development means that there just aren't jobs for several of the people who were working on CoX. Zwill mentioned that his job, in particular, only really matters once the game is up and running and has a real community to work with, so that's a year or two at least of nothing for him to do.

    I get that this whole "shutting down an awesome game" is entirely lame. I really, really, annoyingly do. But all this "I heard that Mercedes Lackey was founding a game studio just to buy the game!" rumor-mongering isn't doing anything except making this suck more.

    The idea of a Kickstarter doesn't have to be a silver bullet solution though. It could supplement the studio getting hired by another company willing to fund the studio's work normally. Which would be against the "spirit" of Kickstarter in a small way, but less so than the PA "no ads" one, since it's still funding a project that's coming up.

    My worry of such a thing comes down to art assets for character creation being limited. City of Heroes and Villains had such a huge variety, which is all under the ownership of NCSoft now. Very specific texture designs could be redone easily enough, but a lot of the basic stuff could cause an issue if NCSoft decides to be less than honorable about it (i.e. "Oh a circle as a chest emblem? LAWSUIT").

  • ArchArch Neat-o, mosquito! Registered User regular
    I...didn't Champions online do the dynamic event thing?

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure I'm interested in playing another super-hero MMORPG that isn't City of Heroes even if it's made by the same dudes.

    I love the CoH lore. I really do. I like Paragon City, I like the setting and the characters and the story. For me, they were why I played the game. I actually liked Champions Online's gameplay a lot better than CoH's and when Champions was in beta I was a huge promoter of that game.

    However, once I really sunk my teeth into Champions after launch, I came to realize that the lore of Champions Online is retarded. It's all dorky puns and pop culture references and goofy characters.

    City of Heroes played itself to the perfect level of seriousness for me, where it wasn't too serious (it is, after all, a superhero game) but not fuckin' dorky camp bullshit like Champions Online.

    CoH was comparable to Batman: The Animated Series or Justice League Unlimited. Champions Online is comparable to Adam West's Batman series.

    CoH had such a great setting that I don't know they could ever really nail again without basically making the same setting with the serial numbers filed off.

    The only way CoH is really coming back is if NCSoft decides to sell the entire IP to someone else, because they own 100% of it. That was part of the deal they made when Cryptic left. They own the CoH intellectual property in its entirety and unless they're willing to part with it, whatever the guys at Paragon Studios try to do next it won't be CoH or CoH 2.

    It would be something else. Some other superhero MMORPG. I don't think I'm in for that.

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    Not even if they established the same sort of rapport that CoH had with its lore and setting? I mean, I kinda feel the same way. I'm really lacking in knowledge of this game's universe but I was liking what I saw. I guess I don't feel as burdened at the idea of having to learn a whole new setting.

    My first taste of CoH was actually CoV. I was immediately exposed to Arachnos, and while the organization is based on one of my phobias, goddamn it is that a cool super villain group. When I was choosing a villain to have as my Patron, I went with Scirocco because I
    was made aware of his motives to break out of villainy. It wasn't a dumb play for power, it was, "Fuck this shit, I want out." Though I kinda felt like a dick when the story ends up having you betray him in a pretty big way.
    I almost went with Ghost Widow though because of the history you learn early on in the game through the arc of that one Huntsman trying to 'kill' her. Ended up reading it via wiki pages, it's good stuff.

    The only thing I kinda had no interest in was the Circle of Thorns, which seemed to be built on a lot of long, vague history.

    Edit - Oh, I also went with Scirocco as a Patron because he's the one villain who would show up and wasn't a massive jerk about everything.

    Henroid on
  • ScooterScooter Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure I'm interested in playing another super-hero MMORPG that isn't City of Heroes even if it's made by the same dudes.

    I love the CoH lore. I really do. I like Paragon City, I like the setting and the characters and the story. For me, they were why I played the game. I actually liked Champions Online's gameplay a lot better than CoH's and when Champions was in beta I was a huge promoter of that game.

    However, once I really sunk my teeth into Champions after launch, I came to realize that the lore of Champions Online is retarded. It's all dorky puns and pop culture references and goofy characters.

    City of Heroes played itself to the perfect level of seriousness for me, where it wasn't too serious (it is, after all, a superhero game) but not fuckin' dorky camp bullshit like Champions Online.

    CoH was comparable to Batman: The Animated Series or Justice League Unlimited. Champions Online is comparable to Adam West's Batman series.

    CoH had such a great setting that I don't know they could ever really nail again without basically making the same setting with the serial numbers filed off.

    The only way CoH is really coming back is if NCSoft decides to sell the entire IP to someone else, because they own 100% of it. That was part of the deal they made when Cryptic left. They own the CoH intellectual property in its entirety and unless they're willing to part with it, whatever the guys at Paragon Studios try to do next it won't be CoH or CoH 2.

    It would be something else. Some other superhero MMORPG. I don't think I'm in for that.

    I think you'd probably come around if they actually made one.

    Champions failed (I assume) because they thought they would be able to use Marvel's story and characters for everything. Then that failed and they didn't want to go hire actual writers themselves, so they just had the programmers come up with whatever lame shit they could use to fill in.

  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    The lore has been interesting to me, in the exact same way that the lore of House, or the Wheel of Time books is interesting to me: I care just enough to look it up on a wiki somewhere. In CoX this is largely due to the overwhemling inability of the dev team to get me to give even the tiniest of shits about the lore for like...four issues now. Maybe five.

    Most of the lore has been given out in text dumps via Prometheus, which was terrible both because text dumps are stupid and also because they hid the text behind a really godawful series of menu choices. I spent no small amount of time copy-pasting that shit for the old thread, and I'm still not sure that I got it all. Then there's these "huge" events, going back all the way to the second Rikti war with Issue 9, then Ouro showing up, then the return of Reichsman, the Praetorian invasion, Dark Astoria "waking up," all this stuff and it's ACTUALLY popped up in one arc, one task force, or just a few trials. When they rolled out newspaper missions I was expecting them to update every now and then. I was honestly really surprised they didn't just throw in a text edit on some of those newspapers for the Rikti Invasion about "With all these aliens, it'd be a great time to rob a bank!" or something. Little shit like that, that actually made me think that things in the game were changing.

    Then with tips, especially when they rolled out new ones in Issue 18, I was SURE they'd be rolling out a few news ones each issue, possibly tied into the stories in that issue. Maybe a CoT mage has gone insane "for some reason" (rogue death god stirring) in a tip, and you can either save the people nearby or kill the mage. Or perhaps all these Praetorians suddenly running around means a few new targets to fleece, if you're all roguish enough, or maybe it means there's a few saps out there to pin your worst crimes on if you're feeling rather evil today. Whatever.

    Reichsman came back, and in the NEXT issue we got a few fist fights between Council and Fifth Column in a few zones, that's it.

    They killed off TWO of the Phalanx and nothing changed. That was so incredibly dumb.

    A dark slumbering god woke up just outside Talos, the agent of the immortal Furies began to invade the world, and again. Nothing changed.

    The devs did get pretty good at putting story arcs together, but man they sucked hard at actually tying those arcs into the overarching world of the game. Everything existed in its own little corner, while simultaneously being THIS HUGE DEAL that had WORLD SHATTERING CONSEQUENCES.

    The Wards are pretty prime example of this too. Once you do the arcs, that's it. Zone over! And I like to dream that they were going to expand on some of these great new zones, then I remember Striga and Croatoa exist.

    Also it was really dumb that for the two or three weeks leading up to the announcement about new DA that all fortunes were not set to automatically be "Death." Man I woulda eaten that shit UP.

    Narbus on
  • WeX MajorsWeX Majors 8th Floor, MegashipRegistered User regular
    ...Jesus Fucking Christ. *ALL* of that is fucking correct.
    There you go guys. That's the *best* explanation you're ever going to get for why this game failed. And it's coming from NARBUS, so it ain't like it's Sour Grapes or anything.
    I said every single one of those points when they came up, but ignored it because I was having fun with the new powerset/character/pun of the week.
    I just recorded a playthrough of the AE Arc "Astoria In D Minor" which actually ended up getting a Dev's Choice, and there's a reason. The entire arc acts like what Narbus wanted for the upcoming DA change, signalling that something big was about to happen, but smoothly and naturally.

    But unfortunately, this isn't just a CoX problem, as I feel like it's part-and-parcel of an MMO in general. The game will stay the same for most of the entire lifespan, except for maybe something akin to a Cataclysm-Like Event that won't actually change much anyway. Shame more games don't attempt to do something about this.
    (and I LOOOOVE the idea of all of the Tarot Buffs that fly through the game normally suddenly coming up as Death for the two weeks before DA2 premiered)

  • poshnialloposhniallo Registered User regular
    WeX Majors wrote: »
    ...Jesus Fucking Christ. *ALL* of that is fucking correct.
    There you go guys. That's the *best* explanation you're ever going to get for why this game failed. And it's coming from NARBUS, so it ain't like it's Sour Grapes or anything.
    I said every single one of those points when they came up, but ignored it because I was having fun with the new powerset/character/pun of the week.
    I just recorded a playthrough of the AE Arc "Astoria In D Minor" which actually ended up getting a Dev's Choice, and there's a reason. The entire arc acts like what Narbus wanted for the upcoming DA change, signalling that something big was about to happen, but smoothly and naturally.

    But unfortunately, this isn't just a CoX problem, as I feel like it's part-and-parcel of an MMO in general. The game will stay the same for most of the entire lifespan, except for maybe something akin to a Cataclysm-Like Event that won't actually change much anyway. Shame more games don't attempt to do something about this.
    (and I LOOOOVE the idea of all of the Tarot Buffs that fly through the game normally suddenly coming up as Death for the two weeks before DA2 premiered)

    You say 'this game failed'.

    But the game wasn't failing, it was doing well by every report I've heard.

    I figure I could take a bear.
  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    edited September 2012
    Yeah, as much as we would have liked to see the narrative evolve quicker than it did, it just couldn't. Though I am SOOOO glad I was around to see the take over/coup of the Council. Seeing these huge mobs of both factions spawn in the streets of Steel and start fighting each other, give me the insperation I needed to fill out NanKnight amnesia based backstory.

    Hell, wasn't the first major story event Shalice waking up and them changing IP's TF?

    Edit: my most memorable moment is CoX is this: A bunch of people are milling about in front of Ms Liberty (as about 1/5 the activate population of Virtue is wont to do) when the skies suddenly darken. Air Raid sirens start going off, Local/Broadcast goes silent as everyone suits up either into Vanguard uniforms or from civilian to heroes outfits using emotes, Controllers and Masterminds summon their pets and status buffs start flying.

    By the time the first Rikti land, we had already formed battle groups and were dropping them as fast and they were coming in.

    Nocren on
    newSig.jpg
  • ScooterScooter Registered User regular
    poshniallo wrote: »
    WeX Majors wrote: »
    ...Jesus Fucking Christ. *ALL* of that is fucking correct.
    There you go guys. That's the *best* explanation you're ever going to get for why this game failed. And it's coming from NARBUS, so it ain't like it's Sour Grapes or anything.
    I said every single one of those points when they came up, but ignored it because I was having fun with the new powerset/character/pun of the week.
    I just recorded a playthrough of the AE Arc "Astoria In D Minor" which actually ended up getting a Dev's Choice, and there's a reason. The entire arc acts like what Narbus wanted for the upcoming DA change, signalling that something big was about to happen, but smoothly and naturally.

    But unfortunately, this isn't just a CoX problem, as I feel like it's part-and-parcel of an MMO in general. The game will stay the same for most of the entire lifespan, except for maybe something akin to a Cataclysm-Like Event that won't actually change much anyway. Shame more games don't attempt to do something about this.
    (and I LOOOOVE the idea of all of the Tarot Buffs that fly through the game normally suddenly coming up as Death for the two weeks before DA2 premiered)

    You say 'this game failed'.

    But the game wasn't failing, it was doing well by every report I've heard.

    Yea, I really doubt NCsoft pulled the plug because some exec was pissed off that they weren't adding new tip missions.

  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular
    Well, I 'unno.

    For this game to really succeed* as f2p, it needed customers. WoW and it's varied clones have a gameplay model involving grinding one instance over and over and over for a year, so once that instance is built and launched, the dev team has done good. CoX, even with trials, didn't have that model (in fact, trials really went against the grain of the entire rest of the game, and I think they would have had better retention if they had tried to fold the endgame system more into the existing gameplay systems than they did, but that's another post). CoX had a model of doing content, which meant the dev team had to pump out new content faster than other MMOs do. I would argue that some of the most done content was all the repeatables: newspapers, tips, and the hazard zone repeatable contacts. None of the repeatable contacts have ever changed; newspapers/radios haven't changed since Issue 7, and we haven't gotten new tips since Issue 18.

    In a game that relies this heavily on people replaying existing content, not keeping up with the existing content they run the most often is a terrible way to keep people playing the game and thus throwing money at the store.

    *Financially speaking, pulling in 1-2% of total revenue even after going f2p is not really a success. The idea that "is turning any profit whatsoever = good product that we should keep working on" is not an accurate one. At all.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    I dunno, I always thought CoX had a good F2P model; the SSAs are a perfect example of something they can do that wouldn't necessarily make sense for a WoW-type. Plus the virtually endless vanity stuff.

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular
    Nocren wrote: »
    Yeah, as much as we would have liked to see the narrative evolve quicker than it did, it just couldn't. Though I am SOOOO glad I was around to see the take over/coup of the Council. Seeing these huge mobs of both factions spawn in the streets of Steel and start fighting each other, give me the insperation I needed to fill out NanKnight amnesia based backstory.

    Hell, wasn't the first major story event Shalice waking up and them changing IP's TF?

    I'm not saying they needed to pump out content faster, I'm saying they needed to work harder to tie the new MAJOR STORY EVENTS into the game so that they actually were major story events. Take the Fifth Column reappearing, for example. In the actual game, we got one new task force for each side (both of which were horrible, but well), and then an issue later we got fist fights between the Council and the Column in a few zones*. Why not put in a few new radio missions? The Fifth never even showed up in the radio/newspapers. I don't need new mechanics, just a "The Fifth Column are back in town, and that means a lot of evil doers looking to make a name for themselves. Archon Dubstep of the Fifth Column is one such evil doer, and it looks like he has raided a nearby warehouse. You should put him down before he becomes an even bigger threat!" There. I wrote that in 2 minutes. But it actually makes it feel like the Fifth is really back, and not just as window dressing. I did like that we got a handful of tips that involved the Fifth, but that was several issues later and then we got nothing else at all after.

    As it stands everything that ever happened was a MAJOR STORY EVENT because it had MAJOR STORY EVENT as one of its tags, not because it actually affected the overarching story in any meaningful way whatsoever. Statesman dying got a press release, a huge push from the dev team, like a billion posts on the official boards, and not a single, solitary "with Statesman dead villains are acting up! Save people/kill villains!" tip. We got a few minor nods in the new SSAs. That's it. MAJOR STORY EVENTS were in name only.

    And the first "major" event that I can recall is actually the Council overthrowing the fifth. The fan reaction was not good, as you may recall, largely because it happened by dev fiat. They said it happened, and then it did. By all reports it was something that had been planned since the start (not something to do with Germany), but there was no in game lead up, no anything. Which means that all these problems have been there since launch.
    Nocren wrote: »
    Edit: my most memorable moment is CoX is this: A bunch of people are milling about in front of Ms Liberty (as about 1/5 the activate population of Virtue is wont to do) when the skies suddenly darken. Air Raid sirens start going off, Local/Broadcast goes silent as everyone suits up either into Vanguard uniforms or from civilian to heroes outfits using emotes, Controllers and Masterminds summon their pets and status buffs start flying.

    By the time the first Rikti land, we had already formed battle groups and were dropping them as fast and they were coming in.

    Before they put in drones, it was possible and popular to drag the giant DE monsters from the island north of Peregrine into the center of the Portal Corp complex. While it angered some people, I loved the shit out of it, because all of a sudden broadcast was "GIANT MONSTERS ATTACKING PORTAL CORP! COME HELP!" And then like, two dozen heroes descended and fought off the horrible invasion and man it was great and kinda vaguely a dynamic event and I felt a little bit like "I must be ever vigilant against such threats!" But a handful of bitchy level 11s who had been spamming broadcast with "PL TEAM PLZ" got stepped on and got debt so they cried and cried and cried so drones went in and my joy was ruined.


    *Of some note is the fact that this actually made the existing Numina TF harder: The TF was never updated to include the Fifth as acceptable targets for the Boomtown hunt mission, and since the Fifth were more dangerous than the Council, this meant a lot of time flying around Boomtown actively racing the Fifth for killshots. So, well done, kids.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    It's a shame, I had good memories of City of Heroes. The Rikti events were cool, and a lot of the story arcs and TFs were very enjoyable. Event went on a few Hamdion raids.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    numina was always a giant pain in the ass. Like, okay, need to kill five guys in FF. Oh wait, somebody just finished an LGTF. So much for that!

    really all the launch TFs were awful

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular
    Someone posted some of their pigg diving results on the offical boards. Wind Control looked really neat.

    Now I'm all sad again.

    Stupid game.

  • DacDac Registered User regular
    I think I've seen more stuff added to the game since it went freemium than the previous four years combined. End-game content, evolving story arcs, incarnate fun, all kinds of new power-sets and costume items being pumped out. CoH had been at death's door, but the new model gave it a second lease on life. It's complete ass to see a game that's survived as long as CoH has, that's dodged the metaphorical bullet as much as it has, cut down in the midst of its renaissance to pay for someone else's failings.

    After everything CoH has gone through and done, after all the years people have invested in it - both in game and out - it deserves better than this.

    Steam: catseye543
    PSN: ShogunGunshow
    Origin: ShogunGunshow
  • WeX MajorsWeX Majors 8th Floor, MegashipRegistered User regular
    edited September 2012
    A very good example of what Narbus is talking about, is Striga Isle. If you haven't checked out the Striga Isle section of the Leaked Bible posted earlier, I'd highly advise you to go check it out. Striga is actually supposed to be this Big Damn Deal, as clearly evidenced from the massive section on it. New code, new graphic elements, an entire zone created out of a ton of new elements. This was supposed to serve as A big Damn Deal, and was supposed to show off why the council was able to take over the 5th so easily.
    Except, even right in the design doc, it was showing off the problems the game has right off the bat:

    "Each Striga Contact will have-

    an ungated Introductory Task,
    a 4- or 5-mission Story Arc that is exclusive to Technology and Natural heroes,
    an ungated 1- or 2-mission Story Arc that wraps up the Contact’s story.

    Magic, Mutant, and Science heroes will be skipped over the middle arc entirely."

    This of course, would not be known at all to a player who just decides to go through the content with a Science hero. So in order to see *everything* they'd either have to be lucky enough to pick their Tech/Natural hero, or play through the content twice. What a terrible idea.

    And then of course, we get to the Big Reveal of the zone, and probably the entire reason for it existing. The Giant Robot.
    Did anyone seriously *not* know about the giant robot first? Was it a shock to *anyone* to find out that the volcano wasn't a real volcano, but was just a front to hide the Megazord?
    The game trains you, as soon as you start the fucking game, that there's going to be massive structures and that it's possible to reach the top of them by Travel Powers. Everyone knows about the Atlas Badge. So if you enter the zone for the first time at level 20, why *wouldn't* you fly to the volcano, see the door on top and all of the tech parts attached to the mountain? It doesn't take an extra 9 levels to figure out that ain't a real volcano.

    "So What?" I hear you asking. Well that's because the design document specifically says that the only way you can begin the TF where you Find This Shit Out, is if the leader of the team has advanced through the zone and gotten through the 4th contact of the entire thing. This might make sense story-wise, but it also means that you're physically limiting the amount of characters that can ever even run the thing.
    Now I think most of us here *have* run the thing before, and we know that in the end, it's not really that big of a deal. The mech never shows any signs of life, the lava doesn't hurt you or the enemies you ragdoll down into it, and it's kind of a bleh thing. Well the thing is, when they were originally designing this thing, they went with the idea of "Go Big Or Go Home". That mech was *way* more active in Pre-Pro:

    "If the boss makes it to the hatch before the players take him down, the hatch will close
    and a count down will start- the head of the robot now becomes a villain, which the
    players can attack. Should they destroy the head before the timer runs out (Tunable timer,
    so we can test and adjust for gameplay balance) the hatch will open and the head model
    will get swapped out with a destroyed version. The Villain will come out and fight the
    Heroes.

    If the players do not meet any of the above goals, and the timer runs out, the head, or
    possibly the entire robot will take off through the roof and the mission will be failed.

    Mission failure must start over at the beginning.

    Mission win! Players will receive some cool stuff, ( TBD)

    Alternate Mission Failure

    Players are sent to an instanced Destroyed city zone. This could be anyplace Paragon
    city; the Giant Robot is marching through the ruins. This is a result of our heroes not
    being able to stop the robot in time. Other Mek men are climbing through the rubble and
    in the streets while pedestrians run away in terror!

    Players must fight and destroy the giant robot to complete the mission. This mission
    completion will give different cool stuff from winning while on the island."

    You were going to get to fight the mech if you failed.
    So even though the entire zone is technically leaps and bounds more advanced than any zones available to you, it gets almost universally ignored. A Shame really.

    WeX Majors on
  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    every mmo created is a failure

    it's just a question of how long it takes them to fail

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    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular
    That is entirely not true. "Failure" and "Ran its course" are two different things.

    WoW is a success. That it will, at some point in the future, run its course and no longer generate enough profit to stay around does not mean that it failed.

  • poshnialloposhniallo Registered User regular
    Narbus wrote: »
    That is entirely not true. "Failure" and "Ran its course" are two different things.

    WoW is a success. That it will, at some point in the future, run its course and no longer generate enough profit to stay around does not mean that it failed.

    Are you defining successful as 'equal to WOW, one of the most surprising and amazing business successes in recent memory?'

    How are you defining success and failure anyway? I can't see any consistency at all.

    Anyway, even if COX was shut down due to sensible financial concerns, they were still not communicating with their customers to an acceptable level. Every other game i've encountered in this situation has had a gradual decline and plenty of warning. People were buying points and testing beta content until this announcement.

    I figure I could take a bear.
  • AstaleAstale Registered User regular
    Most people I know who played it tend to agree it was an understandable decision (whether they agree with the actual decision or not) to shut it down, now that we know more about the financial state/company position leading up to now.

    It's the "how they went about it" once the decision was made that is so infuriatingly bad.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    See, again

    this is why I don't want to see the Paragon Studios guys make another MMO

    why not make, you know

    a create-your-own-superhero single-player RPG with co-op and versus multiplayer?

    i mean that game doesn't exist.

    that's a huge, untapped potential!

    it galls the shit out of me that there have been three super-hero mmorpgs where you make your own dudes and zero single-player/co-op/versus ones

  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Mostly because of the expense of making all those costume parts.

    You could easily make one with more limited character creation though.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    MuddBudd wrote: »
    Mostly because of the expense of making all those costume parts.

    You could easily make one with more limited character creation though.

    The way I see it, Saints Row 2 and the various WWE games manage to have pretty god damn extensive character creation options (seriously try out the "Create a Wrestler" function in most rasslin' games, it's pretty nuts) and I don't see why a single-player superhero RPG couldn't.

  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    I could give two shits about the lore if I knew I could play my toons with other people's toons like I have been doing for the last 8 years.

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    Well Freedom Force and its sequel Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich was a single-player RPG where you could create your own hero and had versus multiplayer.

    However I understand what you're saying. I mean how many create-your-own-adventurer single-player RPGs are there? Tons (though sadly very few co-op ones :(). Superheroes just don't get the same love. Which is weird really. Whether it was comics, cartoons, movies, or all three most people grew up with superheroes.

    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • Al BaronAl Baron Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    Pony wrote: »
    a create-your-own-superhero single-player RPG with co-op and versus multiplayer?

    i mean that game doesn't exist.

    that's a huge, untapped potential!
    Freedom Force is the closest game to what you want.

    I would love for another Freedom Force game to happen, but I'm not sure that part of Irrational Games exist anymore.

    Al Baron on
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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    If people quit MMOs over lore, then I think WoW would have gone under in 2007 or so.

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  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    I hate when the concept of "failure" comes up on the topic of MMOs, because there's way too many definitions and people seem to apply it willy-nilly regardless. A failed MMO is one that shuts down within its first year, as far as I'm concerned. Even if the money made is just enough to stay afloat, that at least give room for them to build on the game and increase profits, because you're not developing new content when you're losing money. By my definition, very few MMOs have actually 'failed.'

    Shutting down isn't failure, it's just inevitable. The developers will have gained a reputation, people have fond memories, and that's all positives.

    City of Heroes / Villains is far away from failure status. That it's suggested it was a failure is pretty thick-headed as far as I'm concerned. It certainly was a failure in the Korean market, if you want to split hairs. But globally it had the support from users to carry on proudly.

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