Chase_Arcanum

City of Anime?

The pet class is the stereotypical "harem guy", quite different from the mastermind because the harem runs roughshod over him. Most of the gameplay challenge is getting them to do something that's not equally destructive to you or each other.

"Hammerspace" brings a stalker/brute hybrid. First strike does extra crit damage like a stalker's assassin strike (where'd she pull THAT out of?) but that's just the start of the brutelike carnage.

The brute will change, though. rather than build up fury the more you take/deal damage, here your fury meter grows the longer you stand still and intensely stare at your foe. The hair-color-change-at-max-power may prove a bit controversial to the CoH playerbase, though.

The "fanservice girl" is a combo tank/controller. No matter how much she's attacked, only her costume ever appears to take damage. Her mezz powers affect virtually any NPC (and many PC's) with line of sight. A "fanservice guy" is planned in the future, but they haven't completed the requisite "sparkle stare through hair draped over eyes" effect yet.

Titan weapons port over completely unchanged.

Roleplaying in an MMO has always dealt with this.

Many MMO's imply a constantly-progressing story as you level up. Your character may have encountered the RWZ when it came out 3 or 4 years ago when it first came out. To my newly-rolled fresh enlistee for Vanguard, he just did those events this week.


Great roleplaying is at its core a form of collaborative storytelling. We express our part and react to the part that others provide. Sometimes the story doesn't go where we expect it to or particulary want it to go. Sometimes you have stellar nights that really inspire you to take your character a direction you hadn't thought of before and sometimes you need to hand wave it all away to salvage what made your character interesting to you in the first place. Sometimes real life makes you miss an event that you'd really wish to write your character into. Flexibility is key- "conflicting" moments appear in roleplay all the time. if you're too rigid, you waste more time wrangling over these barriers instead of enjoying each other's contributions to the story.

The same goes for reacting to dev-provided content. Perhaps doubly so.

I disagree. There are few legitimate complaints here. Lots of complaints, but very little legitimacy.

Paragon Studios created this item. They have the right to produce or not produce, share or not share, sell or not sell at their discretion and on their own schedule. They did not break promises or obligate themselves in any way to any party.

Debate baiting? Yes, there are troll posts. You may even consider this to be one, but if you're going to vent your angst on a public forum, expect people that think differently to speak back. If you don't want public discourse, send the devs an email.

Thanks for the update. The last few listings I'd seen omitted mentioning "MMO", referring to "game." Made me wonder.

"New IP" though.... that's really interesting.

The surprise feature?

See that big red delete button?



It doesn't JUST delete the server from the app list. Once enough people click it, poof!


Kitsune does play villains, after all....

In the interest of full-disclosure on the accuracy of my prophecies, so many years ago, I was caught saying something like this at a local gaming shop:

"The lore is razor thin and poorly contrived to cater to the original game's RTS mechanics. Sure, that game was well-done, and what WAS there was cleverly-presented, but the world itself is a third-rate D&D clone, so who'd really want to play in a World of "Warcraft"?

Yeah, I was rather surprised to see it listed that way, personally, as alpha teams like that are usually tightly NDA-driven, ( I'm told: my closest eqivalent project was also DoD related so the NDA I was under included prison time... so I might just be overly-sensitive to such things). I consider it just a scrap of evidence for us conspiracy-theorists to salivate over and sometimes suspect that some people intentionally put out red herrings to see how much of a frenzy they can put us in.

If you do ask, say "Hi" for me

Bad Assumption #1: they're working on another IP. They've publicly stated that they're working on a new project. They have also stated that when Paragon Studios launched, it would be dedicated to the City of Heroes franchise. These statements are not necessarily contradictory. There's nothing saying that the new project doesn't fall within the "City of..." franchise.

Bad Assumption #2: They haven't been working on something right now. As noted, the months preceding BaBs' linkedIn page his (and 1 or 2 other people released during that time) had noted that he was working on a DirectX11 next-gen MMO title. It could be that they had alpha teams testing concepts that never panned out or it could have been something in early production. It could be that the project was terminated and the team released, or it could still exist and change direction.

Bad Assumption #3: Making a new product follows the same production schedule and timetable as making a new IP. Don't get me wrong- it's going to be a long process, but much of the lore is established for the IP, many of the design goals have been hashed out through the "if we could do it over" after-action-reviews. They'll have thought and rethought many concepts during regular production that can be channeled over for 2.0 consideration. The design process will be much more streamlined in some places and much more problematic in others.

Heck, they might be looking at mitigating costs by utilizing code from their sister studios. Why develop an updated mapserv, chatserv, or authentication system if one made with modern coding standards was made for GW2 or Wildstar? In that case, maybe GW2's long-delayed development had delayed critical start points in CoH2's own planning...

All of these can accelerate development.

Bad Assumption #4: We do not have ANY understanding on what the timetable should be for an MMO sequel.
Really. How many have there been? Is there even enough to determine what a "best practice" is?

(Bad Assumption #5: Not made by Johnny_Butane, but by others in this thread: There's also nothing stating that said project was necessarily an MMO or a PC game for that matter. While I posted my iPad comment in jest, this IS a scary time for any studio to try a multimillion-dollar PC title. PC sales are flat and PCs that would handle a high-end DirectX11 title well are not entering the market fast enough to match the growing costs of developing these high-end titles. You may want to mitigate costs by developing cross-platform, lowering system requirements so it works across a wider array of PCs, or keep your IP alive by developing products with your IP in alternate markets until things seem less stormy.)

Neg. That reference was up on his Linkedin page several months before the unfortunate event when he left Paragon. It was a Paragon studios project.

Yeah, but they scrapped that due to the trend away from high-end PC's. CoH2 is gonna be iPad exclusive, competing in the same market as Angry Birds and Ninja Rope.

Get the cheongsam. We'll threaten to send them reference pictures unless they show progress ASAP.

St. Martial is a great example.

Imagine the difference in first impression if rather than leaving the Ferry to emerge into the Arachnos stronghold for the zone, it docked against a boat launch by the Golden Giza.... or even a small marina next to one of the neon-lit avenues filled with Family casinos. You wouldn't have to change the zone much to really change peoples' perceptions.

Not even that.

Arachnos is a hierarchy comprised of people seeking power and trying to use the power that they've amassed over others. When talking to others, they're going to TRY to be the ones pulling the strings. They're going to present themselves as the ones in charge.

And in virtually every instance, the overarching story has you rising far above them.
Actions speak louder than words.

I use my tabs more to filter stuff.

My General-use tab: most chat, in-game npc, chat, etc, including globals.
My Antisocial tab: as above, but with global removed. used when the chatter in those channels gets too distracting or causes the chat to scroll too fast to follow what I'm doing
My Ignore-the-game tab: all system, game & npc messages removed. used rarely, but helps follow global chat easier when needed.
My I-hate-myself tab: the help channel. Used when I really really desperately need self-abuse.

Wait, so everyone in Paragon-- all the other players' characters-- are just creations of Medicat's delusional mind?

::Looks around at a random sample of characters

That's one sick cat.

That works as well

The key for me is imagining some kind of "how this could go down" method that fits my characters personalities and capabilities, much as you're doing here. That's something the devs can't really include in their storytelling, obviously, and I don't fault them for it. Its what *I* can bring to my part in the story-telling, though.

While I used the 'critical vulnerability' example, I'm not above brute force tales myself. Heck, the main "pair" of my wife and I are a /kin controller and a fire blaster that's practically damage incarnate after a good fulcrum shift. With the way that duo's mechanics compliment off one another, melting a hole through the friggin titan (and the building behind it) seems somewhat mundane.

There's a reason why Chase's battle cry is "... don't make me get my wife."

Too early for that. The "Superhero death" law requires we have several issues worth (1-4 SSA's) dedicated to a "Battle for the mantle" storyline, where contenders battle to see who is most worthy of filling aforementioned hero's void before we can have a "Return arc."

*Note, this requirement doesn't cover "same hero from alternate reality assuming the mantle" or "undead hero returns from the grave to terrorize" themes. Also keep in mind that all these rules are overridden by subsection DD, whereby any male hero may be replaced/substituted/supplanted/accessorized with a female variant of similar (but skimpier) costume design at any time without warning.

An alternative thought was to get a small group of people to try to run content together with this. The "Three Marketeers"