Arcanaville

I wouldn't go that far: the game's still alive and as far as I'm aware still profitable as an individual game. The problem is that I don't know what made J_B think he understood Jack's philosophy on how to implement tankers or anything else, when its always been clear Jack doesn't have a philosophy on how to implement anything. Jack's a concept man, and he thinks in very broad terms. He was sufficiently divorced from the implementation of this game that the documentation he wrote for Defiance didn't match how it actually worked at all. I was told it never worked that way (and I now know it essentially couldn't have at the time) and the description in Jack's documentation almost certainly came from an early brainstorming session.

It was obvious during CO beta that the design of the system was being iterated and shuffled so fast that no one's original vision could have possibly survived the process, and honestly by the time CO code hit cpus Jack was almost certainly already looking to STO. He admitted as much after STO launched.


If there's a lesson there regarding CoH2, its that anyone thinking they have *any* idea what this dev team would create if given the chance to make a CoH2, much less some alternate team assembled from new hires we don't even know, is almost certainly incorrect. Even if there were not compelling reasons to make something completely different, it would be completely different anyway just because no dev team has the same design vision.

I would think by now you'd stop being sure about anything. Your certainty about CO was a source of significant entertainment to the CoH players in the beta.

I can throw things! It will be awesome! And Jack understands Tankers!

I could see the IP itself being used in a different game. There's all sorts of crazy things you could do. You could make a RTS game involving the Rikti War, for example. But RTS games require very precise balancing in a way the current dev team doesn't in CoH, meaning there isn't a lot of existing tools and skills to leverage there. A Leisure Suit Larry with Lightsabers MMO like TOR is would be a massive content writing undertaking, and I doubt something that big would be in play at Paragon. A mobile conversion would be a possibility; they might want to stretch their MTX legs a bit.

I think that is all unlikely, but possible.

1. Sequels to MMOs are the exception, not the rule.

2. They optimized the server code for more users. They rewrote the game client for Ultra Mode. They've added by my mental count over twenty new game mechanics or technical features since 2007. Critter AI is different. Newer zones are designed differently. Mission technology is different. I cannot think of a game feature that couldn't be added to this game because of technical limitations.

3. Related to the above, many things are impractical without huge amounts of work specifically to preserve the existing work in existing resources. Changing the animation rig in this game, for example, is not difficult: they've added animation rigs in the past. The problem is it orphans existing resources which either have to be redone or abandoned. A new game doesn't have that problem simply because it abandons everything from the start. We could do that. Just throw out all the weapons, costumes, textures, etc, and start from scratch. I'm sure the players will wait.

If you make a game targeted at the same players with a similar overall design, you will *definitely* split the existing playerbase between them, but only possibly attract enough players to fill the gap. You'll double your dev costs, incur huge startup development costs, and eventually be sold by Atari, even if both games are individually healthy. I mean NCSoft.

If you think its hard to get one thing changed in an existing game, try getting everything you want simultaneously in a game that's coming up from scratch.

It was somewhat amusing, and somewhat sad, to see people actually think that was possible during the CO beta period. The discussions about what was possible with a blank slate was truly something I wish I could have preserved and studied over time. I can tell you the disappointment from pre-pre-pre-beta through beta was large enough to have its own gravitational field.

As I recall you had high hopes for CO given what you thought you knew about Jack's views on various things. How'd that work out for you?

None of those things are infeasible to add to this game. They are infeasible given the resources available to the developers to add to this game. The only reason its "feasible" to do in a new game is the presumption that a new game will start with a huge amount of resources in initial development costs pre-allocated. Where is that going to come from?


There are some pros and cons to making a sequel, but there are some absolutes that people can argue with, if they want to argue with reality. Any sequel or pseudo-sequel of City of Heroes will fall within these parameters. Not should, or would, or is likely to. Will, as certain as the developers will continue to obey gravity.

1. No one spends huge amounts of money to reimplement the same game with different technology. CoH2 will not be CoH1 but with better technology.

2. No dev team wants to reinvent the same wheel. CoH2 won't just be not the same thing as CoH1, it will be completely different in as many ways possible.

3. CoH2 will not be an extension of CoH1. That would be targeting two games at the same group of players. No, period.

4. No MMO launches with every feature originally slated for launch. CoH2 won't even have all the features of CoH1 that the devs *want* to be in CoH2.


I've heard some stuff about what MUO would have looked like. It looked nothing like CO at all: when Cryptic restarted, they ended up in a completely different place. I was in the CO beta from before there was an actual beta, and the launched game bears no resemblance to what the devs were first thinking, just from the beta discussions about mechanics and what changed over time (the game's combat and powers design changed in fundamental ways at least three separate times during beta). I've even had off the record hypothetical discussions about what a CoH2 would be like, if certain devs over the years had the chance to start from scratch, and it would look nothing like this game in lots of ways.

Every developer - and every player - has their own ideas for what really works in existing games, what doesn't work, and what hasn't been done yet in quite the way they envision that they want to try. Anyone who thinks that the reason why a sequel to this game would be a good idea is because this game is good EXCEPT for FILL IN THE BLANK and a sequel would provide an opportunity to fix that, is frankly holding out for something that will never happen. The one thing that definitely will never, ever happen is Paragon Studios deciding to spend tons of money on a game that is just like City of Heroes except for.

I don't care if Bill Gates decides to fund the effort personally and Israel and the Palestinians commit to a peace treaty if they get to play the game for free. Never ever ever will that happen. If you like this game except for, advocate to change that. Hoping for a new game that preserves what you like but fixes what you don't like would be like hoping to win every lottery on earth simultaneously on the same day, except at least with that you can always pray for a miracle. No miracle generates a CoH2 that is just like CoH1 except for. Especially because everyone's "except for" list is different, and often incompatible. Its not just infeasible, its impossible, except for one person's except-for list, that person being the lead developer.

I should point out that while it is in fact mentioned in-game in her bio which makes it canonical (at the moment), the mere fact that Dominatrix is the obvious Praetorian doppleganger for Ms Liberty does *not* automatically mean they have the same corresponding background. Praetoria isn't specifically intended to be a purely "mirror" universe of Primal Earth, and it can contain variations. So just because Ms Liberty is Statesman's granddaughter doesn't *automatically* mean Dominatrix is Tyrant's granddaughter.

They're always doing something there separate from CoH. This confirms that whatever it is now involves actually writing code.

That was back around the time of the Cryptic 15: knowing something was coming was totally irrelevant to knowing when it would come. God couldn't have told you when the invention system was coming. In fact, I don't even know who originally worked on it, but I can tell you the original system was started sufficiently early that by the time it was handled to Castle the original person that worked on it wasn't there anymore and had not been there for quite some time. Castle couldn't answer most of my questions about the thought process behind the invention system because he literally had no idea at all what that was.

It didn't help that Jack was not a numbers person, and did not have the intuitive grasp of what was going on that would prompt him to make specific statements like that. Honestly, not many of the devs talking to us at the time did. By his own admission, Castle didn't even have an intuitive grasp on how accuracy and tohit worked at the time of ED and was not in a position to question anything. In a response to one of my posts complaining that under "enhancement diversification" Super Reflexes had nothing else to slot for besides defense anyway Positron said that was an advantage of SR because it didn't "need" slots and could use them on offense. How I emerged from Issue 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 with a reputation as a "dev-apologist" confuses me to this day, as I was one big facepalm throughout 2005 through 2007.

I can say what the purpose(s) of ED was, but that's informed judgment and extrapolation from talking to people at the time and over time. The "smoking gun" for the true proximate reasons for initiating ED doesn't exist anymore in any public record. However, I can say it wasn't a single reason, but a confluence of them that combined with an opportunity that existed with the development of City of Villains.

Given the odd way issues 18, 19, and 20 were beta tested and then released, I wouldn't be making any bets on what comes after issue 22 anyway.

Also, another possibility is the devs don't like to count too much higher than 20, and start designating issues after names of fruit.

What I meant though is that there are lots of relatively mundane parts of a game I would not put in an advertising video, but are nonetheless things the players generally appreciate. I don't think its a good design rule to only make what is visually marketable, which the quote I was responding to seemed to be implying.

There are levels of hypocrisy, yes. However, my original point was not about Bug Hunter itself, but about the fact that the argument that if someone can get a badge there must be no problem with it is a bad argument. Its not even an argument so much as it is random handwaving.

In any event, nobody goes through the derivations from scratch anymore except as a learning process. We do this 3d stuff with matrix-based transformations now. That type of 3d code is more transferrable to accelerated graphics APIs.

But for something as straight-forward as this, I'd stick with the simple linear transform: touch.y = 640 * [500 / (z + 500)]


Incidentally, I just have to shoot out there that this is basically the math for Duration-based resistance:

NetDuration = BaseDuration * [1 / 1 + Resistance]

The 500 values are constants that scale the math, but its the same math. Lots of MMOs use similar math for various linear scaling or diminishing effects. Imagine replacing the 500s with 100s:

touch.y = 640 * [100 / (z + 100)]

That's actually the Duration-based resistance formula, scaled for 100 percent. When Z is 100 (resistance = 100%), the factor in the brackets becomes 1/2, and the touch point becomes half of the original y plane coordinate. In other words, the puck's distance from the center of the screen is cut in half. Like a Mez duration that starts at 640, and is then cut in half to 320.

The other thing is never over-optimize calculations. That's what the computers are for. Unless you have a specific performance issue, algorithmic simplicity is better than overoptimized calculations. Its easier to debug code that is algorithmically transparent.

I don't understand how that is relevant to what I said. What I said is true regardless of how the enemies are designed, so its therefore irrelevant whether there are generic enemies or not, nor do I rely on that assumption.

Here's the only point of reference we have. Back before D2.0, a lot of people asked the same question, and *many* players stated that there was basically no chance blasters were underperforming compared to, say, defenders or tankers, or stalkers. Turns out according to datamining which prompted the Defiance 2.0 changes:

1. Blasters were underperforming everything.

2. That included all blaster primary/secondary powerset combinations, not just the ones people thought were the worst.

3. Every such powerset combination underperformed the average of all players by a substantial enough margin to prompt the devs to look at blasters as a priority.

4. You could not say this about *any* other archetype at the time. In other words, for no other archetype was it true that all of its powerset combinations underperformed the average by a substantial margin.

5. This was true at basically all combat level ranges, and in the three separate cases of soloing, small teams, and large teams. In other words, always.


If you think blasters *aren't* underperforming now, you have to believe the change in Defiance alone singularly changed that, *and* you have to assume that of all of the changes since then to Dominators, Kheldians, Tankers, Stalkers - none of them significantly improved everyone else's performance

OR

Blasters are matched perfectly against the content, but the devs don't mind if everyone else sails above it, so much so they don't mind buffing things that are already too strong compared to the content.


I have an idea what the target is, but I don't think its my place to state that. I can say that if Blasters were datamined on average to underperform everyone else (the average of everyone else) by 50% (such that average performance was twice that of the average blaster) that would definitely be way way too high a gap. D2.0 was triggered by a smaller performance gap.


Also, interesting theory on Incarnate trials. Here's an interesting data point. Blasters were datamined as underperforming even in teams. How can you underperform in teams when everyone shares the same XP more or less (assuming on average Blasters were not sidekicked any more than anyone else)? Answer: they were dead more often, and therefore had more debt on average.

Question: do you think Blasters have a better chance of dying less often relative to everyone else in iTrials than in normal content?

Not sure that's 100% true. Scanner missions were considered a godsend to casual players and content farmers alike in that they were ways to informally team with people, level out of content gaps, or just do a few quick and dirty missions when time was limited. They are by design very simple (simplistic really) and not the sort of content I would hold up as representing our game well, but its a necessary evil of sorts that the players generally appreciate.

True story: I heard this at least a dozen times while playing a recently released MMO set a long time ago in a galaxy far far away:

When do we get sprint? lol

Answer: around level 15.

Gets better: you first get something resembling an actual travel power around level 30ish. And its a vehicle and you have to buy it. And its not cheap.

It takes somewhat longer to get to 30 there than here. So its not an insignificant amount of time without travel. If the devs did that to us the players would set fire to Zwillinger's hat while his head was still occupying it.

Here's another one that's actually a be careful what you wish for one. The unnamed lightsaber game, like many MMOs, have progressive missions: you do X, and then that leads you to Y, and then that leads you to Z, all as part of a single mission. The problem is that chain cannot be shortcutted. So if you are doing a multipart mission and your team has already done X and Y, and then you invite a friend, he might not be able to get any credit for anything while you guys do Z.

Heck, the idea of progressive missions sounds great: I love them. But think about missions like the Praetorian one where you have to pick roses for Agent White. Those roses don't turn into blinkies *until* you get that mission. Suppose it had a prereq. You do the prereq, then invite a friend. Now, imagine if you saw and could click the blinkies, but he couldn't. Furthermore, because he can't click them, he can't make progress on that mission. So when you do, you get part B, and he doesn't, and then while he can still team with you, he's no longer getting credit for anything that happens (he gets XP and drops, but no mission credit).

That actually happens in unnamed lightsaber game. So much so I've been on many teams that invite someone and then backtrack specifically to let the new guy catch up, so they don't leave him behind, which means hunting the same things again, or redoing other tasks again for his benefit.

And sometimes you can't even see those task objectives highlighted anymore, so you either have to let him lead - even though he might be new and not exactly know how to do the tasks you just did efficiently - or you have to have memorized the tasks so you can lead him back to them.

By our standards, this isn't just hostile to teaming, this is a deliberate attempt to assassinate teaming. But that's what passes for teaming in other MMOs: its practically medieval by our standards. Its genuinely amazing how different casual teaming is in CoH compared to many other MMOs. Its actually easier to jump into our end game than it is to get onto any normal team in some MMOs.

I'm putting everything into the trees and embedding them head first into the walls. In exchange, I'm offering some nice screenshot macros.

To a point. The problem is that those choices cannot really have consequences beyond the story arc itself, because the game cannot factor such decisions into the ongoing story long term. Praetoria had some factors that made it easier for the devs to do this sort of thing. First, many of the choices lead to morality decisions which ultimately connect to the alignment choice you make upon leaving Praetoria. This is one of the rare choices you can make that in effect "changes the world" for the player, because it puts you into a different faction. Its the primary bifurcation within the game as a whole.

The second thing is precisely because you must leave Praetoria, they could write in consequences for your actions that had no major repercussions on the future stories your character would face, because your character would leave Praetoria behind. So there were less strings attached to those options, less chance of having to retread past decisions.

I wouldn't say the devs were moving along this path and then stopped. I think this sort of thing was always something that worked logistically better in Praetoria, so the devs tended to focus that sort of thing within Praetoria.

500%

Edit: I should point out that just a bit beyond sniper range is normal visual range, so boosting beyond that point has the problematic issue that you can't see to target anything at that range. But I did once do an experiment with a friend where we unteamed (so we didn't share aggro) and then I targeted through her to a +7 boss at range-boosted sniper range and for a while the target just stood there getting hit because it had no idea where the damage was coming from. Then it began running in random directions. So long as she kept it in visual range and I kept at extreme range I could continue to fire through her targeting and hit the target from what was essentially another dimension.

That is irrelevant to the issue being discussed. That is why you don't like it. That does not bear on whether I got it using methods anyone else could have used. I have my own reasons for objecting to the design of other badges, which you are equally free to debate. But if you specifically choose to use the argument that if you can get it everyone else should, my assertion stands that this badge is not an exception.