Johnny_Butane
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I'm sure your apparent contributions from such an early stage must have helped it become the game it is today. With such stellar enthusiasm and attitude, it's no wonder they aimed so high. You're just so darn motivational and encouraging.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
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.
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Quote:[peers coldly over the top of his glasses]Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If you like this game except for, advocate to change that.
Really. Because trying to change the existing game's status quo works so well.
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Quote:It's still to early to care about something that's three to four years out. And if it's not that far out, I won't care for certain. Because if it's another two years and shove out the door like those other two super hero MMOs, I'll be passing on it.Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
For what it's worth, during today's Ustream, Zwil introduced us to a new team member (whose name I regretfully cannot recall) who replaced The Television. Why? Because The Television has been moved from CoH to Paragon Studios' "upcoming project".
Ain't saying it's CoH 2, but you never know ...
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Stuff I want in a super hero MMO, that just aren't feasible outside of a sequel:
-Total graphics overhaul to characters and environments. Fingers. Detail in faces. Non-static hair. We really can't do them without re-doing every animation in the game. If it comes down to that, you may as well be starting over. Same with ditching the old costume pieces and zone models.
-Destruction and environmental interaction. I want to punch people through walls. I want to rip a lamppost out of the ground and swing it at some one. I want collateral damage you'd expect from a super powered battle. I WANT TO THROW A CAR.
To do it right and not half-***, you'd have to redo every zone and map in the game, so again you may as well be starting over.
-A more flexible power and AT system. Deadpool, Ironman. You can't do characters like that who mix ranged and melee attacks. Even gadget guys like Batman, you're limited to their hand to hand capabilities only for the most part. Could be solved with Pool/Epic powers, if they were rolled them together and the devs created more of them and they were treated more like a Tertiary power set. But that's not likely from what I've seen.
-An extensive revamp to enemies AI and mission design. More elaborate missions that can be approached by a variety of play styles.
You get a mission that someone had been kidnapped and is being held in a warehouse.
Now:
You go to the mission door, click it. You enter into an instance of a stark warehouse map by the front door, all the enemies are standing around in neat little groups waiting for you to engage them one on one. The Boss is standing in the last room. The hostage stands there while you grind the boss down and then you lead the hostage out. End mission.
BORING.
What I'd rather see as an approach:
You go to the warehouse, gain entry via an unguarded skylight. Inside you sneak through the vents, making your way to the security room. You quietly take out the thug watching the security cameras and disable the alarms. From the security monitors you find out where the hostage is being kept. Then you make your way through the warehouse, avoiding detection or taking out anyone before they can alert others to your presence. You get to the boss, catch him unawares and fight them and the free the hostage.
Or, you could do the exact same mission with another approach:
You go to the warehouse and crash through the wall. Immediately the enemies start to swarm you amid alarms going off. You cut your way through the crowd and topple some machinery to block more from arriving. You free the hostage but the boss is trying to make a run for it in a delivery van. You block his exit, grab and flip the van onto it's roof and pull him out.
Now likely neither of those can be realized in an online MMO yet, but they should be what the devs aim for. The kind of complex and thrilling action you find in comics.
Guys standing around in static warehouses, waiting to be systematically defeated while you navigate a static maze of corridors (with occasional ambush) never screamed 'super hero action' to me. Neither do the current Trials, which are more like nonsensical dances; a series of hoops you must jump through to receive food pellets.
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Quote:There is some appeal in sequels. The fact that a game/movie did well enough for a sequel to be produced is incentive for some people to become interested and pay attention.Originally Posted by Chris_Zuercher
For all of you saying that a City of Heroes 2 would only attract people from the current player base, you're wrong. You're not "Dominatrix serves Tyrant" wrong, but you're 2 + 2 = 3 wrong. I keep one Twitter feed for all mentions of City of Heroes, and when the news got out that "City of Heroes 2" had been copyrighted it just EXPLODED! It got a whole lot of people exicted, and that's a whole lot of people who don't currently play the game.
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I don't honestly think CoH 2 will ever happen, and if it does, I doubt it will be any good.
Games just aren't made the same way today they used to be. You won't get the same kind of content commitment at launch and sustained support that CoH had. Development is just too bloated and expensive nowadays for that, and the NCSoft would surely have their hands in the pot.
Case in point: that other super hero game had just as many people who worked on CoH working on it as CoH 2 would, and you see how that turned out.
Not to mention if the Incarnate system content is any indication of what the devs will do with something brand new, I don't think I'd want to play that. I don't honestly think our devs truly get why we like this game, and even if they did, I don't think they would prioritize that over trying to attract new players.
The end result would be just another generic 'modern' action MMO clone with less features and content than we have now, and slightly better graphics.
But the point is probably moot. CoH is in decline. We're not DOOOM(TM) but we're also not growing. GR didn't attract and retain the numbers they'd hoped. The conversion to the Freedom pay model didn't look like it did much either from the initial numbers released, but the jury is still out until the next quarterly stats are released. From a business perspective, I can't see NCSoft putting up the money to get a proper sequel out the door. They didn't strike while the iron was hot and now it's cooling down fast.
They can feel free to prove me wrong on all of this. The fact is, I'd be very happy to be wrong on all counts, but I don't think I am.
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Quote:Other games seem to, or at least they used to, be designed around allowing players to spend the most time as possible accomplishing as little as the players would tolerate. In other words, a time sink.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
This is something I agree that other MMOs should learn fom City of Heroes. Not the travel powers specifically, but that ease of gathering affects willingness to do it.
When you bill someone for time, as is the case with monthly subs, this makes sense from a money making perspective. Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer calls the sports tips 1-900 number, and the recording rambles very, very slowly.
This is what some games essentially do by having your character slowly waddle across the landscape on fetch and deliver quests. Travel speed is a way of keeping players from blowing through content, leveling too fast and in short, doing too much and growing bored.
CoH has thankfully avoided this approach to design for much of the game, and many of the parts they didn't originally have been removed or reworked over the years with QA changes.
Hour for hour, still I think you can do more in CoH than in the 900lbs gorilla. Modern titles have gotten away from being as time-sinky too, so that just shows one way CoH was progressive.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Well we all know how well Batman keeps the murder rate in Gotham down by ki--
Oh wait.Quote:Batman: You don't understand. I don't think you've ever understood.
Jason Todd: What? What, your moral code just won't allow for that? It's too hard to cross that line?
Batman: No! God Almighty, no! It'd be too damned easy. All I've ever wanted to do is kill him. A day doesn't go by when I don't think about subjecting him to every horrendous torture he's dealt out to others and then... end him.
Batman: But if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place, I'll never come back.
Pretty sure Bruce is saying there, if he started using lethal force, the murder rate would skyrocket.
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Quote:It would be cool if you could go into how you're planning on replacing him.Originally Posted by Positron
Just to be clear:
The actual removal of Statesman from the game content will come at a later date. It's a big effort that is better tied into a full issue release due to the number of bugs and edge-cases it can cause.
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Quote:Look harder. He suspends Manticore for murdering Protean and then suggesting they lift the Phalanx's "no lethal force" policy to make it OK.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Looking at the comic right now; States gets called out because he kicks Manticore out of the Phalanx for voicing his opinion and suggesting they do something out of the norm.
And yes, it was a murder in cold blood. The first two arrows had already disabled Protean. The kill shot was made after he was away from Back Alley Brawler, and it was made with an arrow designed specifically to kill Protean, as opposed to subdue him.
As opposed to the Mary Sue of Batman, who's every plan always works when it counts, every batarang finds its mark, and is the best at doing pretty much whatever he does and treats everyone around him like crap while doing it. My parents are dead too, so cry me a river, Brucie.Quote:I'm not doing anything of the sort. I hate Statesman for the same reason I hate Superman: The characters take the Mary Sue power, run with it, and do little to nothing until they get over their own moral conflict.
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Quote:And yet, all Manticore does is in the comic antagonize people and get in over his head, when he's not comatose that is. Vanguard, Statesman, Positron, Synapse. Everyone yells at him, but only Statesman is called on it.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Read the novels/comics? I kid you not, the dude literally spends more time yelling at Manticore than he does saving people.
The Web of Arachnos novel, Statesman is a gentleman rogue turned hero. Very likeable and interesting protagonist.
The Freedom Phalanx novel, he's acting like everyone else because of the emotion control going on. Oh, and a little thing like watching his wife die slowly may also have contributed to that. Just a teeny bit
By the end, he's got his groove back.
I'm looking at the comics now, all the way back to the first promo comic with Thunder Head, Apex and War Witch, and nobody but Manticore and Prometheus (and a whining Ms. Liberty one issue) thinks poorly of him. At we all know how balanced Prometheus is.
At worst, he's inscrutable; keeping his teammates at arms length because in 70 years a lot of people have come and gone.
In game, he barely speaks, let alone has a personality.
The whole 'Statesman is a jerk' is baseless. People pull an example from the worst week in his life, a few scenes with him dealing with an insubordinate team member and ignore the rest.
Really, players are projecting their feelings about Emmert onto the character and their feelings about player characters being treated as inferior to all NPCs.
EDIT: Oh sorry, forgot. Dark Watcher is mad at Statesman too, for completely irrational reasons like not being able to find him in an infinite number of Earths he might be on when DW was really the only one of the Phalanx who could even travel between dimensions.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Oneirohero
Prometheus is a cruel reminder that the character scale sliders don't go nearly far enough for some of our characters :<
I'm disappointed he's not taller. And that his skin is just a shade of blue instead of the nebulous reflection effect it had in the comic.
He reminded me of Eternity from Marvel, but with clouds instead of the cosmos.
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Quote:I didn't say that it would. I was just clarifying that it can go live without a patch or downtime.Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
That's true; the other SSA arcs have gone live without downtime. However, if SSA 5 was going live today, it would've done so at around midnight Pacific if precedent were to be followed. Not saying that it still isn't possible; it's just not likely.
I agree, if it's not up by now, we're likely looking at next week.
However, as of me typing this, the Winter Event is still active, so go figure.
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Quote:They tried to give us three more enhancement slots an issue ago, likely with the intent to allow is to buy them in the market like extra costume slots. It broke the entire respec and power system so they sidelined it indefinitely until they could get the bugs worked out.Originally Posted by Rangle M. Down
So, you say 3 more slots next issue? 0.0 Where did you see that?!?!?!?!?! LINK PLEASE!!!!
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Quote:Both of those may be true, but there's a third thing to mention. They don't always have to bring the servers down and patch to activate contacts that are already in the build.Originally Posted by DarkGob
They usually tell us ahead of time when the servers are going down for a live publish. Also, I believe it's been said by a dev in-game that it's not going live today.
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Quote:Exactly. If Prometheus didn't want Positron to have the power, he would have taken it back.Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
He ends up with it, one way or another. Though I suppose if Prometheus is that bada**, he could have made sure Manticore ended up with the Flame somehow, regardless of Positron's intervention.
Examine what Positron did there. He literally made a grab for power, and was rewarded with more power for it because that made him worthy. Sound familiar?
Here's a hint: that's the exact same M.O. as the Well.
That supports the theory that Prometheus is a former champion of the Well.
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I suspect we'll see:
-A powerful ST attack, possibly melee.
-An AoE aura that builds over time, like Lady Winter's Crystallize and Anti-Matter's Systemic Decay. Likely will come in damage, mez and debuff flavors.
-A constant team buff, like super Leadership.
-Possibly new travel powers at some point.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Premonitions
The episodes with the Turtle Titan and Silver Sentry, and the episode that had the alternate dimension with the turtles in costumes with powers, were about taking Michelangelo out of the typical milieu the Turtles operated in and dropping him into one of comic book super heroes. That kind of proves the point that the Turtles aren't superheroes in the traditional sense.
If the turtles were superheroes, the "super hero" alternate dimension of them would have been exactly the same as their regular dimension, would it not? I mean, you can't put a super heroic twist on them if they're already superheroes, can you.
The differences that exist are what makes the Turtles one thing (you can to call it sci-fi, urban fantasy or whatever) and superhero fiction another. The episodes were to written to contrast what the Turtles were normally (if you want to call them Urban Fantasy or whatever) with more traditional super hero tropes.
In fact, if you go way back to the original animated series, you have Michelangelo obsessing over Bug Man, a hero he read about in comics, who turned out to be real. The other turtles dismissed his claims stating how outlandish the idea of superheros were and how they couldn't possibly really exist.
So, not even the turtles themselves think of themselves as superheroes.
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Quote:I can even come up with a zone/storyline to support that.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
We're Incarnates and now we have to fight an invasion by Malta troops of a small town somewhere in the country.
Basically, you have one of these happen in Smalltown USA:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...mpoweringEvent
Government declares a state of emergency to get a handle on a buttload of people suddenly granted powers and Malta sweeps in to grab up the super noobs like preteen girls at the site of an overturned cargo truck of Justin Bieber CDs.
Until now, we've just seen super heroics in the city. This gives us the rural/suburban zone people have long asked for.
It could contrast nicely because Paragon and the Isles have the infrastructure and policy in place to accommodate supers. Instead of a place where super humans are common and routine, you've got a bunch of people suddenly coming to grips with new powers against the backdrop of dealing with the destruction caused by the event (and further destruction caused by their untrained powers).
You've got potential for super-looters, crazy cults that spring up, dealing with the fact the local town drunk and hot head can now lift a house and is out to settle old scores. Also mutated livestock and wildlife.
Plus, you could get really dark and have some people's empowerment turn out to only be temporary, so after a while you've got would-be superheroes suddenly falling out of the sky when their flight gives out.
Oh yeah, way too much potential.
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Here's an idea I just dreamed up.
Give Tankers an inherent click that functions like Burnout.
-But it only works on their Secondary power set and excludes Build Up and Rage type powers.
-Has a fixed recharge of 1 minute.
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Quote:If you can buy it at a ren faire or out of the trunk of some guy named Rico out by the airport, it's not a super power. That's what I say.Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Sorry, but going by the expansion that you put into the 2nd part these are powersets that are not classified as "super" enough:
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Quote:His stick is exactly like the rudimentary bow attacks that Ninja MMs get, or the pistol attacks of Thug MMs.Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
I would argue that Mole Man is a Mastermind not a Scrapper, and has the Fighting power pool with the cosmetic effect of it looking like bojutsu. His villainous threat to the surface world is in his armies of subterranean followers (and the special technology at his disposal), not his stick fighting skills.
Those things do no make them Archery or Dual Pistol specialists respectively.
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There's also the Cape Radio and their New Years show.
http://www.thecaperadio.com/
They're the oldest I think, running continually since like, the first month CoH launched?
They've got like 30 DJs at this point so its pretty much always doing live shows whenever you look.
The thing is, they're exclusively the Virtue server.
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Things are different in the CoH universe. Super beings are so ubiquitous it changes the dynamics a bit. When Venom targets Pete's friends and family, who can he turn to for help? The police?
In CoH, he could call a number of people or agencies.
It would get around that such tactics aren't as effective, especially since any methods a villain used to uncover and locate a hero's family could and would be used to go after the villain's family and associates, ether by rival villains or by a vengeful hero turned vigilante psycho.
It would still be a problem for higher profile heroes and villains by sheer number of enemies they've made, but they'd ostensibly have more super friends and resources to discourage that.
More than anything, super villainy in CoH is a business. You don't make money or amass power for taking things personally. I mean, the mob just doesn't walk into police precincts and shoot up the place as standard operating procedure. That would draw unwanted attention.
There's something to be said for being smart enough to manage your own heat, and as satisfying as shooting Lois Watson in front of Unbelievable Man may be, it's not the smartest move.
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Quote:The question is, is that really a problem? In PvE at least?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But there's a catch. In most MMOs the notion of significant travel and movement ability doesn't exist. In City of Heroes, we can superspeed at 70 miles an hour to a target, attack it, and then zip 70 mph in the opposite direction and hit a different target
Hit and run hardly seems like the most efficient way to deal damage. Even if you could play that way, would you? Yes it may be safer, but that comes at a cost of lowing your damage output. I don't necessarily see a problem there.
I almost feel like it's one of those holdovers that don't make as much sense today as they once did.
To me, it really runs counter to what they've been trying to do in trials; getting people to do more than stand there and cycle attack chains until all the enemies are dead.
They want people moving, they want things to be more dynamic, but the old mechanics and limitations beat that out of players.
I honestly don't see any unconquerable problems if they did let players move around more freely, and I think it a little hypocritical to punish players in trials for doing what the game levels 1-50 has spent the last eight years reinforcing. If it was my call, it'd ditch rooting and suppression.
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