Johnny_Butane

Indeed.

My list of 'Ideal Outcomes That Will Probably Not Happen' in order of most ideal:


1. NCSoft sells the IP to what remains of 'Paragon Studios'. They reform with as many of the old devs as they can. They work on getting i24 out the door. Then they crunch hard to make i25 the 'sunset' issue; wrap up everything as nicely as they can and then CoH goes into 'maintenance mode' supported by VIPs who continue to pay a monthy fee for..well something. The ability to ride other players and the I Win Button. Whatever.
The servers stay up as long as income covers the cost of keeping the boxes online but no more development is made to the game. Instead, they get their butts in gear on City of Heroes 2.

2. NCSoft will not budge on selling the IP to anyone. What remains of Paragon Studios reforms and ditches CoH and instead develops a new superhero IP and game and never speaks of NCSoft again. CoH becomes a happy memory and hopefully we have a new game to look forward to in the future. Zwill returns with new hats!

3. Someone else entirely develops a new superhero MMO, all the devs find great new jobs, some of them with this studio. Valve swindles NCSoft in a buyout deal and NCSoft finds themselves having paid billions for an actual steam valve. NCSoft upper management take the honorable exit. The end!



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Stop and think for a second.

Why would NCSoft pay good money to quash efforts to save CoH? They are presumably not mustache twirling fiends who shut the game down for teh evuls. If the people over at Titan really think that, why are they even trying to deal with them at all?

Do you honestly think ignoring efforts to save CoH is hurting NC in some way that rather than give people what they want and take their money or just ignore them and shut down the game down anyways, they need concoct a scheme that's costs them money to silence them?

"We'll show them what we do to those who try to convince us to continue taking their money! Send in the forum SPIES!"

Or perhaps:

"Ug! We cannot throw the switch to shut down the servers until we break their spirit, otherwise the Power of Love will keep them spinning!"


Now, if you're trying to imply that true, unaffiliated trolls have come out just for the trolling because the misery at the game shutting down is like blood in the water to them, then I'd agree that's probably the case. But to imply they're on somebody's payroll and that it's part of an astroturfing scheme, that's just both paranoid and delusional.

Unless...I'm also an astroturfer!



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That was the final "jump the shark" moment for me. I'm almost tempted to register there, be myself and wait for her to accuse me of working for a PR firm in NC's employ.


Well, one historically popular way to 'create a united front' in a community is to separate out the parts you don't like and convince the rest that those individuals are not really a valid part of the community and need to be stomped out.

I wonder if I weigh more than a duck?



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Ding ding ding!

Exactly. And, just because someone is a famous author doesn't mean their second hand information is any more reliable than the next person's. Unless someone who is actually in the negotiations says they're still ongoing or confirms/denies what is being rumored, then those rumors hold no more weight than some random one-post-wonder crackpot on the forums. Because they can be just as easily misinterpret, exaggerate or just plain fabricate as the next person. Without reliable confirmation, take everything with several grains of salt.


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I'll bet that's what the people who played those games thought too.



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As team leader, I'm saying this mission is bugged and not completable. We all filed bug reports, so let's go see about putting a group together to run the new TF.


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There's plenty of reason to be happy and to have hope. We should be happy CoH had such a good run. Eight years for a MMO is amazing. It knocked down two younger potential competitors effortlessly and the developers maintained an enviable level of support and commitment even in the bad times. We should have hope because no matter what, life after CoH goes on. One chapter ending just means another begins. Maybe the former CoH developers will reform to give the super hero MMO another shot. Maybe members of the community will. Maybe someone else entirely.


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I take no joy in the game having been ripped away from all of us. I would like nothing more than for someone to press the 'undo' button.

But I'm not going to put my faith in information that's coming second hand about vague negotiations that may or may not have anything to do with saving the game, let alone with no word on how they're going and if they'll turn out to be fruitful or not.

Especially since, given the track record, NCSoft would rather let their IP rot than let someone else at it.

There's also the fact that the game shutting down is inevitable. It was getting long in the tooth. Given my druthers, I'd rather CoH end on a semi-high point with some dignity than be driven into the ground or have it bleed dry. Honestly if the choice was down to getting this game a reprieve of a few years just for it to be shut down again or clearing the decks to allow a proper successor, spiritual or otherwise, I'd be leaning towards the latter option.

So to me, it really depends on what they're negotiating for and why. Do they plan to just leave the servers on and prop the game up 'Weekend at Bernie's' style? That would be a horrible fate for the game IMO. Some may want to return to the status quo, no matter how fleeting. That's just not sensible. We need to think long term.



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Having your news depend on someone who's job it is to imagine fantastical stories doesn't strike me as the best idea.

To the OP: there are no more "Devs" left; officially, nobody is developing anything CoH related anymore.



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Source please?

Also, when I saw the flowing hair in GW2 I thought of you. Just another CoH-ism I'll miss.



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Hardly. Let's say Positron and Co. decided tomorrow to do this. New studios can be, and often are, set up in a couple of months. I know, I've been there. Nobody makes their own engines from scratch these days. Once funding was secured they would acquire a license for Unreal tech or the like; maybe even continue with Cryptic's engine. You're looking at around three to four years for development, not seven, and we'd be hearing about its production long before then with a web site set up to begin building hype and awareness and keeping the momentum. We'd probably be on their forums arguing about the game by next Summer. In the mean time, you'd be playing other games.



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There's a great deal more we can do on that front. Saving CoH was always dependent on getting NCSoft to budge on their decision or sell the IP. There's very little a small group can do to influence and reverse a corporate decision once it has been put in motion. There was only one path to success and NC was right in the middle of it.

Conversely, there are many paths to a spiritual successor to CoH. For starters, many people in this community work in the game industry. They have skills that can be applied directly to forming a studio and creating a game. That is not inconceivable considering how many players were in turn hired by Paragon Studios. Such endeavors are already being discussed.

Then we have the former developers at Paragon Studios. Not all of them have taken jobs right away and although they may not yet have publicly commented as such, they may want to take another run at a superhero MMO. It's important for us to continue to support them and remind them of the great community they'd be making a game for. Show them and anyone potentially backing them that it there is an audience in place waiting in anticipation for such a title.

In that same vein, there is the simple fact that the more we demonstrate our fervor for the game, the more we show other studios who may be contemplating what their next project should be that there is a vacuum in the MMO space for a high quality super hero MMO cut from the same cloth as CoH that people long to be filled.


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A spiritual successor to CoH. A worthy sequel in everything but name.



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Stop and think for a second whom you are speaking to.

I lobbied non-stop for five years, more or less alone, for what is admittedly a ludicrous cause for most people. Uphill, against pretty much everyone.

I don't give up easily. If there is one person on these forums who knows about the relentless pursuit of the impossible, about bull-headed cussedness, I dare to say it's me.

I know when there is still a fight to be fought, and I know when there isn't.

Based on all available information, which I freely admit we may not have all of, the fight for CoH is done. Until information comes to light to contradict that, spending energy working to that end or giving people false hope doesn't help anyone. From what I gather, TonyV thinks the same based on his latest Titan address.

We need to focus on moving forward while we still have momentum. The dinner for the devs was probably the best single thing the SaveCoH movement could have done even though it would in no way result in CoH being saved. It got major attention in the gaming press because it wasn't something that could be spun as a selfish tantrum by children who were going to have their toy taken away, which is how the Atlas gathering was spun by many. You can't buy good publicity like that. Further, it cemented our dedication to the former dev team and hopefully planted a seed that they may want to pick up and start over on another game.

Again, we have to look towards the future. Until there's a press release that says otherwise, CoH is done.



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It's more that they have common sense.

There is no logical reason NCSoft would sell or license the game/IP.

They would in no way support something that would essentially be competition for their games, and any MMO they don't own could be viewed as such.

Nor would they want any title with their name still associated, which it would be even if they licensed the game to a 3rd party, to be outside of their sphere of control. If the game did something to make them look bad (Issue 30: Naked Statesman attacks South Korea!) they would have no way to stop it.

And ultimately, if they wanted a situation where they received a tidy stream of income for the game to continue while someone else managed it semi-autonomously, they would would have kept things going like they were with a few adjustments because that is essentially the set up they had, or at least would have been easier to transition to.

Instead, not only did they shut the studio down with little notice while they were about to release a new profit generating issue, they proceeded to dismantle everything as fast as they could, did everything they could to scatter the developers and get them into place at other studios and essentially salt the earth as far as possibilities for the game being able to continue.

Which makes no sense unless someone in NC corporate has a major hate on for the game and the decision to kill it was personal/politics and not business, which everything that's happened seems to point to IMO. Which means they'd never seriously play ball with anyone trying to buy it/save it.

At this point, there is next to no hope for CoH; the game and franchise. It's dead Jim,

Efforts should be focused on getting someone to make a spiritual successor, be it a few ex-Paragon Studio devs or TonyV's efforts or someone else. Nothing would make me happier at this point than for Positron and others to confirm they even still want to work on a superhero-ish MMO and that there's been talk of getting the band back together.
But they haven't, so there is very little reason to be hopeful of anything at this moment.


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That was posted two weeks ago. I don't know how long negotiations take, but the fact there's no actual news, besides even more people saying their goodbyes, isn't encouraging to me.



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Forget it, Jake. It's marketing.



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You know, hopeful rumors are fun to spread, but there is nothing to prove this. Anyone not actually at those supposed negotiations can't say for certain if they are, in fact, happening or not. Coming third-hand from anyone else, no matter how many books they've published, the rumors are just that, rumor. Sci-fi authors are only human, and are as prone to misinterpreting, misunderstanding, exaggerating or just plain making up information as much as anyone else.

And at this point we've had so many people talking out of their butts and nothing but let downs that I've grown callous. Everything from people telling outright lies that SOE was in talks to buy the game/studio to flights of fancy about Valve riding in to save the day. In the end it's all just trolls and desperate fans spouting drivel and BS. Putting people on an emotional roller coaster isn't doing a service to anyone, so until there's actually something concrete, I'd rather people kept it under their hat then repeat it ad nauseum.

It's got nothing to do with me trying to protect anyone or temper expectations or drown spirits. I'm just sick of seeing the BS. While I don't have to look, it's hard to escape and I'd rather not be essentially chased off the forum in its final days.

So have some consideration. Thanks.




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If they did it like they did in GW2, they wouldn't give you trouble.

Sure, when you enter a low level area you, and your base stats, get scaled to that level, but your gear doesn't. And you keep all your powers they you've unlocked.

A level 6 Boar isn't much of a challenge to my 80, but it isn't an utter joke like a grey con Hellion versus a level 50. It's a much easier fight than when I also was level 6 to be sure, and demonstrates I've grown in power, but it keeps a certain level of threat and thus a certain level of reward can still be given.

Which to me makes more sense. If a tommygun wielded by a guy in Independence Port can't really hurt me AT ALL, why would it in Peregrine Island? If anti aircraft cannons in Striga can't scratch me, why would any conventional firearm that Malta carries?

Of course, where both games drop the ball is that they don't always have the enemies graduate from tommyguns in the high levels. CoH had it's rock slinging Praetorian citizens, and GW2 has it's rusty shovel swinging zombies.



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He wasn't a good inventor. He didn't even invent the light bulb. He was a pancake who took credit for other people's work, figured out ways to sell that work for profit and tried establish a total monopoly. When other people could outdo him for less, he attempted to destroy them. And your reward for working with him was you got to have both arms amputated and die from cancer.



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As someone who has criticized COH heavily for what I perceive as generic fantasy elements in its design that have displaced the comic book/super hero tropes that should have been in mind instead, I don't get that impression from DCUO at all.

In my analysis, if any one thing is the problem with DCUO's devs is that they seem to come from a console oriented way of thinking. The game was designed to be a console title and reflects that. I see some of that in CO too.


I am less enthusiastic about the backstory and origin of the player character's power in DCUO. As I interpret it, the player character's power comes from, essentially, mechanical dust mites sent by Brainiac that fed off of the Justice League's skin cells. We are, quite literally, their castoff waste. That is several orders worse than anything the Well did in this game, in my opinion.



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*flips switch*

"So, Tankers..."




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I think I'm going to retire Johnny Butane and become someone else for the next great super hero MMO, on the slim chance there is one.

Arcana's involvement or not, I think a month or two after CoH shuts down, most of the people on these forums are going to be climbing the walls for a spiritual successor no matter who it's being offered by.



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Now that we can talk about this stuff freely...

My big issues with CO are the art design/graphics, the total lack of content updates and commitment from their devs. Secondarily, there's the lack of an end game, lack of any teaming, lack of synergy when teaming and the general 'sameness' to characters both in how they look (they all share the same face and it is terrible) and how they play (everyone, no matter how they're built, is a ranged or melee Scrapper). Third is that despite the fact environments are arguably more varied than in CoH, their world is smaller both in scope and geography. The entirety of their crown jewel, Millennium City, could fit inside Atlas Park, is limited to only three distinct areas and covers a level range from, IIRC, 1-20something.

DCUO shares similar issues: ugly artwork and graphics, lack of content, small game world. And it suffers further from a pathetic costume creator, terrible powers system, terrible attack animations and a community that's only a half notch above a Madden/Halo XBox player convention.

And despite the fact both games have something (or at least half of the equation) I've wanted forever in CoH; environmental weaponization and interaction, they both execute it so poorly and to such a shallow degree that it's not even worth being in the game.



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