Combat

Leasing might be a viable option, but for now simply getting into talks with NCSoft is the goal. However, I think the playerbase will focus on a total acquisition of the IP for a couple reasons (first, because NCSoft will make more money selling it than leasing it, and they'll likely want to do what is best for their pocketbooks). I also feel that a lot of playerbase would have VERY low confidence of a lease from NCSoft simply because of the way they handled this.

My basic wants would be simple:

1. High resolution, nice looking costumes
2. True powerset costumization (location, animation, FX, color)
3. More power pools for concepts (weapons, ESP, "spidey-sense")
4. FINGERS!
5. Shape-shifting in some form not available today
6. Asymmetric costumes
7. More detailed costumes (Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm, Hand, FINGERS!)

And that's about it. I really don't have a lot of qualms about the rest; I like the game as is. I do think I get more people to like the game with a few changes, but the above is what I would like to see.

This sort of stuff is great. It is unlikely (except maybe the BBC thing above) that we'll get major interest, but these sorts of sites are exactly the right people to spread the word. However, it is estimated that 9 million people have played this game, so I'd guess that if we can get enough 5% of those to voice their concerns we could really cause NCSoft to at least rethink about selling the IP.

Anyone thought about translating these sorts of stories for a broader audience? I'm concerned that some of our European fanbase may be left out of the loop do to the language gap (admittedly, there aren't many European/Asian players that can't speak English, but I'd guess that quite a few read non-English sites more frequently than English ones). This might be especially important because NCSoft is planning on shifting to a different market, and may take more heed if we can get some help from media sources in that market.

I can't edit thread titles, so forgive me because the information is basically the same as a prior thread. Basically, I'm 90% sure that the secret projectParagon Studios was working on was CoH2. From Tic-Toc/BABs:

Right now, the community's focus should be to restore CoH. TonyV and the guys at Titan Network are doing an amazing job, so please fully support them. But they fail to either acquire the IP or get the game sold to another company, we need to have a plan B (or C, D, etc.). That plan B should be a new game with all of the wonders of Paragon City and the benefits of 8+ years of development. As far as I'm concerned, there a few absolutely essential keys to making a new game work:

Backstory:
Hire good writers, perhaps those that worked on CoH, before we even conceive of actually putting the game into action. Believe or not, but CoH actually had a tremendously well thought-out backstory, and each individual group had a ton of background before they were ever put in the game. Before we could put our characters into the new universe, we need to create that universe.

However, one of the great things about CoH was that it didn't force-feed you its story and allowed you to work within your own creative realm, to an extent (EATs, Incarnates being the exception). The important difference is that the story AROUND our character can be fully realized (aka, the contacts, missions, enemies, maps), but the story should never dictate what the character does or how they were created.

Comic book stories are great because they are both adaptable and simple enough for the same basic storyline to be used many times. For instance, a new game could include a lot of the basic enemy types found in CoH:

Street gangs
Alien invaders
Nazis
Evil Corporations

All of those gangs could take inspiration from their counterparts, both in comics and from CoH.

Costumization:
In my mind, any new game needs to learn a few lessons from its predecessors, and the first thing it needs to learn from CoH is costumization. The minimum I personally would accept from a new superhero game would be:

• Asymmetric costume options: Left/Right options at a minimum
• Slightly more defined options: "Upper Arm, Lower Arm, Hand, Fingers"
• Powerset costumization: Not only recoloring, but also some animation options and the ability to relocate power origin (possibly from weapons as well)
• Aura/Capes/Wings: From level 1, no unlock
• FINGERS!

And that is just from costumes. Simply put, a new game should be explicitly designed around those options, so it should be easier to put in than the shoehorned method we've had to employ to add stuff to this game. Of course, I'd also like a difficulty slider, and base building/mission building options like we have in CoH.

Social Networking
And I don't mean Facebook or Twitter. Simply put, one of the joys of CoH is the ease of getting into groups and talking with your friends. I think that an improved team-finding interface would be great, along with a fixed version of the Team-Up Teleporter. How awesome would it be to log into a MMO, click "LFG," and automatically get connected and teleport to a group LFM?

Teaming aside, CoH's successor needs to learn from CoH's chat system. At some point, I think we got over saturated with chat channels, but I believe that over saturation is infinitely preferable to under saturation. We needs /tell, /team, /local, /supergroup, /lfg, /friend, and /global channels at a minimum (arguably supergroup channels could work better as an automatically created global channel, but that's another argument), along with all the game chat channels like NPC talk and combat logs. Perhaps even adding a chat channel that connected to Twitter would be a good idea, letting you talk to friends outside the game while playing (wouldn't that be a good way to bring people in?)


Combat
CoH had pluses and minuses when it came to combat, and a new game should learn from its failures as well as its successes. A lot of gamers felt that CoH was slow and/or cumbersome, and I think it really boiled down to two factors: Slow animations, and rooting. I think that slow animations (Total Focus, I'm looking at you) are mostly a by product of the early developers underestimating the importance of animation time. Regardless, I think the real difference we could make would be the elimination of rooting from animations (or really, the creation of a system that didn't require rooting). In CoH, the odds of that happening are slim to none due to the tremendous amount of work it would require, but a new game could be designed around faster combat.

However, I think CoH definitely had some things decidedly right when it comes to combat. The ability of a level 50 character to face more enemies than a level 1 character creates a much better since of power progression than most MMOs on the market, and generally the game had a more kinetic sense of combat than most MMOs. The priority shouldn't be on creating a traditional MMO structure, but a proto-CoH system that emphasized steam-rolling and the feeling of power. Additionally, the holy trinity should not be a part of this game, because it doesn't have any background from a comic-book prospective.

I do believe, however, that the scale can be improved. CoH had a clumsy system that prevented excessively large or small enemies (very large enemies would be impossible to target with melee attacks), and I think that sort of limited it from a superhero prospective. The one thing I missed from the game was the ability to attack a skyscraper tall giant robot, and a new game designed from the ground up should recognize this. No offense, Babbage, but most CoH GMs aren't really scaled up enough to make suitably intimidating. However, scale works the other way as well, and I'd like to see larger numbers of creatures as well. Sure, it is nice to beat up 16 creatures at once, but it feels like you hit a wall when a team is forced to face the same number of enemies as a single player.

Non-Combat Systems
CoH at Issue 0 basically had no out of combat systems. A new game launching with that impairment would fall on its face. Therefore, some sort of OOC development should exist, though it certainly should not be of the form found in most fantasy MMOs. I think that a system like our enhancement system would work best, though I would suggest the following to make it easier to understand (all terms based off CoH enhancements):

1. Change the way leveling adds slots:
Basically, we get slots before we need them, because of the way enhancements work. Instead of alternating between powers and slots, simply give each power the same number of slots, somewhat equivalent to a 5-slotted power now. That way, new players are not confused by having to learn both the enhancement system and how to slot powers effectively.

2. Remove TOs/DOs/SOs
This may sound like blasphemy, but I think they are not necessary and are basically just annoying. I believe the original reason for the degradation of these enhancements was to simulate the wearing of equipment in fantasy MMOs, but ultimately I don't think it is necessary in the modern game. Also, the idea of origin specific enhancements is another "innovation" that I believe can be attributed to the earlier MMOs (basically, class-specific enhancements).

3. Replace those enhancements with Basic IOs
So now we simply have two types of IOs, basic and set, along with the possibility of special enhancements like HOs or ATOs. Because basic IOs will officially take the place of the earlier system, and because of the annoying clutter they cause now, I propose a couple changes to the way they function:

a. Ability to craft Basic IOs anywhere
b. Removal of salvage cost from Basic IOs
c. Remove cap limit on Basic IO recipes
d. Separate Basic IOs from Set IOs (to prevent clutter)

4. Remove levels from enhancements
This goes with #2. In order to simplify the game, we remove the individually leveled enhancements, though enhancements would still have minimum and maximum ranges. This would eliminate unnecessary extra enhancements and clutter on things like the marketplace.

Other than those 4 things, the basic systems CoH has in place are probably fine. Sets will be familiar to anyone who has ever played an MMO, and the market will make sure that a player economy exists from day one. Badges and other achievements would be nice to have at launch as well (perhaps integrate badges into the planned OOC system that Inventions were supposed to be).

Misc.
The other common complaint I've heard about CoH is that it seems desolate, because everyone is constantly separated in an instanced mission. This seems to be easy to solve, but needs to be done in such a manner so as not to make CoH feel like the average fantasy game still running on pre-2000 style missions (Go Hunt X number of Y).

I believe that the best way to do this is to create a very interactive world, giving players reasons to leave their missions. There are two easy ways to do this: Instant missions from non-contacts, and large numbers of zone events (A Giant Monster is attacking Atlas Park!). By the first, I mean adding small things to CoH from the people walking around, for example "Help, Fluffy is stuck in a tree!" The balance is finding making it so that these smaller missions are both rewarding, and aren't constant enough to be annoying. Other examples of this type of mission would be:

"Stuck that robber before he gets away from the police!"
"Defeat the robbers around the armored car!" (or for villains "Take advantage of the situation to steal from the car!")
"Save the people from the fire!"



Basically, if we have to create a new game, let's do it right. These are just suggestions, not a concrete blueprint, and I think having a well thought out backup plan is absolutely critical. In your replies, please try and think about these questions:

A: What made CoH great, and how can we use those factors to make a new game even greater?

B: What problems did CoH have that prevented it from having more success, and what solutions do you propose? (Try and make sure the solutions aren't worse than the problem!)

Again, I'd just like to say that the playerbase should be focused on keeping CoH alive, but if that is impossible, we need to at least keep the lessons we learned from it alive.

Someone should contact Richard Garriott (creator of Ultima). He has an "interesting" relationship with NCSoft, and is a game designer. More specifically, he sued NCSoft after they terminated him (claiming he left voluntarily), which caused his stocks to expire, costing him millions. He won the lawsuit, worth about $32 million.

Garriott is probably more known by his altar egos, Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa. He founded the game design company Portalarium, and is currently working on the spiritual successor to Ultima (perhaps even Ultima 2 if he gets the IP).

Getting him to help would be a long shot, but all we have is long shots. Given his past history with NCSoft, he may have some sympathy for us, even if we don't get taken under the wings of his game company.

Solo everything possible. Only thing really left are the Statesman (or whatever they changed it to) and Lord Recluse TFs. I think some of my characters could do it now. And I'm not talking perma-sleeping the AVs.

How did City of Heroes stay around for 8 years? By being ahead of the game. It was, and still is, one the most advanced MMOs on the market, in terms of features. No game has improved as much as CoH has over the last 8 years. A short of the game's huge advancements:

1. A real character creator. Something the majority of MMOs STILL lack. And a place for a biography to go with it. Those few paragraphs and the costumes add so much to player-character interaction it is hard to state in words.

2. A chat system that is truly global. For some reason, the global chat system has never caught on in other MMOs, but it is truly revolutionary. Simply put, it turns the game into a social network.

3. The ability to respec your character nearly completely, without a huge cost. And because the abilities are so varied, it is easily possible for two characters with the same AT, primary, and secondary to be have completely different playstyles.

4. Sidekicking. Oh sidekicking, I might miss you most of all. How can people play other MMOs when even a minor level difference makes playing with friends impossible?

And so many more things that are still hardly found in most MMOs. Not even including the best community and developers in the business. Maybe 5-10 years from now some game will have the features this game had back in 2004.

The most exciting possible solution for me is either CoH2, or a totally new game with a new IP with a grander scope. Ideally, made from a combination of devs new and old, maybe with a company like Valve instead of NCSoft.

A game like that would have everything we loved about this game, and more. More customization, player created missions with a better system than MA, improved bases and PvP, etc. Of course, even getting CoH1 now would be great.

The game didn't wrong; the marketing did. And this started even before the game was released. The real problem of the game is that it was a well-kept secret, which is a hard way to run an MMO. The only reason it stayed around for so long was because of the loyalty of the fanbase, because it did too little to get itself in the hands of new players.

I didn't cry about losing City of Heroes. After all, I've unsubscribed several times over the years, and I've been away for up to a year at a time (May 2004 was my first subscription).

Losing "it" didn't matter. It was losing "us" that hurt. As a game, it was merely a decent timesink, but as a community it was practically solid gold. The developers and players were unique. It still hurts to think that I have to say "were" instead of "are."

CoH is a game, but it is much more than that. It was a social outlet, a creative medium, and a community. It was a place that people raised their kids and a place where people married. In times of trouble, it let us feel like superheroes.

So yes, I cried. Not just for losing the game, but for losing the people. And that includes not only the players but the best developers and mods in the business.

That is all.