Nechevo

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And as far as their other initiatives that, frankly, they've wasted money on, or that they've given an ADHD, "OK, we're bored with it now" attitude with -
Remember the COH RPG? No, I don't remember seeing it in stores either. I did see a PDF of it once, but I never remember seeing it in stores despite their hype of it. Wait, the PDF was a quickstart pack which typically isnt' the full book... which was, as far as I can tell, never finished. (Last update 6/5/06, and it's not listed in their store.)

How about that trading card game! Wait, I think I saw three packs on clearance a year and a half ago.

Yay for the Prima binder... that they dropped after the issue 7 update. After it was released for issue 6.

To this we can now add the end of the second publisher's comic run!

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The CoH RPG not coming out isn't Cryptic's fault (well other than they chose the wrong RPG publisher to do it), it's the company (Eden Studios) that has failed to deliver the RPG. Eden Studios is a small company that never has been all that good at putting out their games quickly. This is a problem that many RPG companies have unless it company is one of the big ones which have the resources to produce product on a consistent basis. Most RPG companies are run by 2 or 3 people who have real jobs to pay their bills and the RPG company is just a hobby. Hell even some of the big companies are 3 or 4 person companies staffed by people who have to have real jobs in order to make a living wage. Don't blame Cryptic for the failings of the RPG company. They licensed the rights to a company to do the RPG and after that it's in the RPG company's hands. Depending on how the licensing agreement was phrased Cryptic probably has little to no control over the RPG other than telling Eden Studios "hey why don't you hurry up and put the game out already?" or perhaps pulling the licence away from them and selling it to someone else. From the sounds of it Eden Studios hit some money problems which delayed the printing of their new products and once (if) they can afford to, they will send their stuff to the printers. It costs a lot of money for a company to publish their works and if they don't have the money to do it, they can't do it.

Was it a mistake for Cryptic to go with Eden Studios instead of a bigger, more reliable company? In retrospect sure looks like it. In fact at the time I was hoping they had sold the rights to the RPG game to AEG since I like AEG's RPG systems. But then again AEG's RPG lines hit a bit a snag the past couple of years as well so who knows if they could have done much with the COH RPG. But I don't know what sort of deals Cryptic had available to them. So perhaps Eden Studios gave them the best offer, or perhaps they just liked Eden's existing products and thought they would produce a good COH RPG.

Besides other than a small percentage of the COH player base, I don't think that many people were all that interested in the COH RPG anyways. It was probably doomed to fail from the get go. Or at best have moderate sales (and in the RPG industry moderate sales are shockingly low). Licensed RPGs like this rarely do that well anyways, and usually have one or two books put out and fade into oblivion within 6 to 12 months. See The Buffy RPG, Red Dwarf, Army of Darkness, the first Babylon 5 RPG (although that one was semi successful in that it hung on for 2 years and had a handful of supplements before it went under) and so on.

As for the CCG. Too many people look at the success of the Magic the Gathering, Yukio and Pokemon CCG's and think that if a CCG doesn't last for 6+ years it was a bomb. Other than the huge breakout CCG's, most of them have a very short life span. The main set comes out, it sells well for a month or two, then people move on. One expansion pack comes out and the game is boosted for another month or so then it disappears again. Unless it's one of those rare breakout CCG's like Magic, or Vs, ALL CCG's barely last a year and you will see them filling up bargain bins within a year of them coming out. That's the normal life span of a CCG. The COH CCG did moderately well, it sold well for the first few months it came out, then dropped away. Standard stuff. In fact I think it did extremely well all things considered. First off it wasn't that great of a CCG, it had a somewhat interesting game mechanics but the mechanics didn't really mesh well with the way CCG's are sold (booster packs didn't really support the power set system and it be came clear early on that buying booster pack resulted in more cards you couldn't use than could use). It was really set up as a CCG that you buy one or two starter packs and one or two boosters and that's it. But the big thing it had going against it was it's timing. The COH CCG came out about the same time VS came out, and VS was a bonafide hit. It was one of those rare breakout CCG's. Vs was a much better played game, and it's booster packs and expansion packs supported the game mechanics much better. Plus it was supported by a very strong tournament scene. COH had no tournament scene and no real support for it. It was just put out on the shelves and the players would buy it but had no real organized areas to play it. It was a CCG made for the casual gamer not the hard core CCG player. So it had casual sales. It likely made some money for AEG and Cryptic but not a lot, which was probably the goal.

As for the comic book. I'm surprised that it was still running. The first run was a joke, both in quality and in terms of financially supporting itself. The switch to Top Cow produced a much better quality of comic but a comic that costs a lot more to produce. When they stopped shipping it out to players for free (which was a good choice since I'm sure it was costing a LOT of money to do that, there's a reason why DC and Marvel charge around $5 for their comics it's expensive to produce a comic book) the COH community for the most part stopped caring about the comic. It wasn't good enough for most people playing COH to go out and buy it and non COH certainly didn't give a crap about it either. So Cryptic was paying Top Cow to hire professionals to produce a comic book that wasn't selling well. Eventually a company has got to say "hey this costs a lot of money to produce and we aren't getting much back for it". Both Cryptic and Top Cow were probably losing money on it. (or perhaps Cryptic was covering Top Cow's losses). The fact that they stuck with the comic for as long as they did is a testament to how much they care about what was certainly a small portion of their fan base.

Guys, just remember that getting the CoV pre-order doesn't mean you get into the closed beta right away. If they handle it the way they did with CoH (which seems to be the case from every official thing I have seen on the subject) Pre-orders allow you to get into the beta 2 weeks or so before CoV goes live (which is not going to be for a while). So don't get your hopes and think that buying the pre-order will mean you get a beta invite right away. The only people who are getting beta invites are the ones who have been selected for the first wave (selected from the list of people who have had paying accounts since the beginning, SOME of those people not all of them).

Getting the pre-order of CoV allows you to get the special item (in this case one of the helmets), some other bonus materials, an invite to the beta JUST before it hits live (I believe CoH gave the Pre-orders access to beta about 2 weeks before it hit live it certainly wasn't much longer than that), and the 3 day head start (which was the game went live, but the first 3 days only the pre-orders were able to play, day 4 everyone who purchased th game could play).

From the way people are talking on this thread, it sounds like people think that getting the pre-order is going to let them into the beta right away. None of the information that has been officially posted about the beta and how the beta will work suggests that. You guys may want to adjust your expectations of the pre-order accordingly.

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P.S. For the poster who stated there was only red K, well, you are partly correct: there is still kryptonite, all colors and sorts, and over 100 pounds of the stuff is missing, presumably in the hands of a secret society of villians. Go read Countdown to Infinite Crisis (RIP Ted Kord).

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No, I said that it was just Red K that takes his powers. The 100 pounds of Kryptonite is in the hands of The new Red Hood, who is supposedly Jason Todd.

Go read a small fraction of the comics I do.

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Hey guys do you think you can stop with the spoilers. some people let their comics stack up for a couple of months before picking them up and reading them...

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Ok, so since at least one person wants to know where the memetic (I'm pretty sure that's not a word, but it shoud be) "Go. Hunt. Kill skuls." comes from, and not everybody has the time to go through the hundreds of pages of posts that now contain these words, I thought I'd do a search for the words by date and show the earliest results.


everybody happy now?

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yes thanks. So I DID actually see the thread that started this stupid "Kill Skulls' running joke, I remembered that story but thought for sure that something else had to spur the "kill skulls" on since it couldn't have been that uninteresting, unfunny story. .

Now that I know the back story to it, i'm glad to find out that my instincts when i first heard "kill skulls" was right. So there really isn't anything more to that lame catch phrase. It IS just as lame as I thought it was, and there isn't some really good story that started it all which has since been beaten down to being terribly unfunny due to overrepeating the catch phrase.

Glad to know thaat the story that spawned it is as lame as the joke. Now I don't have to hunt around to try and find out why "Kill Skulls" is supposed to be funny.

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Not everyone likes aliens. Stop assuming everyone wants dinosaurs or aliens or whatever in game. This is not AVP or Joe and Mac, it's city of heroes tyvm

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I agree there. The biggest problem I have with CoH is that the villain groups don't feel that much like comic book villains. About the only group that is all that "super villain like" are the Outcasts and that's because even their minnions have powers. BUt they don't wear costumes so even they don't feel like villains. So when new groups are brought in I would like to see some that are actually comic book villain like (as in powers, costumes and so on. Not characters that are more appopriate for a Fantasy, or SF game).

Hellions and Skulls are fine they are nice thug level (or street level to use a Champions term) early group. Trolls are a natural progression from Hellions and Skulls.

The Vaz and Banished Pantheon are cool but are not really in keeping with the comic book theme and feel more appropriate for a first person Doom style shooter than a super hero game. Also two different types of zombie/undead groups is pushing it (one would have been plenty). The OUtcasts are nice in that they have powers but they are dressed in street clothes.

The 5th, while not super powered, fit the genre i the agent organization subset of Super hero comics (ie. Hydra agents, VIPER, etc). At least up until you reach their werewolves and vampires then it starts feeling like i'm playing a fantasy game again. And their Steel Valkryes don't help either. Too bad they are going away since they are the most super hero genre appropriate group in the game and have the best backstory.

The clockworks are neat, and would fit the super hero genre fine if they stood out (as in nearly every other group were costume based powered villains). But with so many other groups fitting the genre poorl, the Clocks just add to the lack of comic book feel.

The Circle of Thorn. They really, feel like a group more suitable for a fantasy game than a super hero game. However if they were one of the few non-genre appropriate groups then they would be fine as a nice change of pace but since there are so few (any?) groups that wear super villain costumes and feel like comic book villains they feel more appropriate for a fantasy game than a super hero game.

The Devouring Earth. Blah, another group more approriate for a Fantasy genre than a super hero genre. I like their background/story but fighting fantasy style monsters doesn't make me feel like a comic book hero.

Freakshow are ok in that they work as a sort of super powered biker group but much like the Clocks if they were the exception to the villians wear costumes style they would be fine for a change of pace but since none of the other groups feel much like a standard comic book group then they just add to the feeling of playing a fantasy/SF game instead of a super hero game.

The Sky Raiders are a nice group for a high tech villain organization type of deal (just ignore their Sky Skiffs as those ruin the comic book genre feel and turn them into more like SF in the future theme than modern day supers) but they seem to come and go so quick that they are a blip in my character's career.

The Crey are ok, but really guys in lab coats, swat uniforms, mini skirts or suits don't scream comic books to me.

The Family are nice for that street level, Dark champions feel and ganster/mob type of organization is pretty much standard hero fare. Although guys with tommy guns and fight in suits feels less like standard super hero comics and more like 30's era pulp or modern day guns and swords gritty dark supers (ie. Spawn, Whitchblade, etc) than the main stream 4 colour style.

Hydra, the lava based guys in The Hollows, the Kraken, etc They are monsters that feel just as suited if not better suited for a fantasy game than a super hero game.

That's about all i've seen so far (i'm progressing slowly, I play way too many Alts). But the glimpses i've seen of the groups i haven't made it to don't seem that much better. (The Carnivale are women wearing garters belts and fishnet stockings and other things straight from a Victoria's Secret catalog not all that comic book like unless you read only Image comcis). Where are the adversaries that wear costumes similar to us heroes? The typical super villain in the typcial comic book. So far the only thing that makes me feel like this is a super hero comic book game is the fact that the heroes wear costumes and have powers. The people i'm fighting give me very little genre appropriate atmosphere.

If I end up grouping with someone who dresses in medeivel armor and uses a sword (broad or Katana) it feels more like a fantasy game. Or if my teammate is an Assault Rifle character wearing body armor or street clothes or a martial artist in street clothes for al lintents and purposes I'm playing a Halo or Max Payne MMORPG and not a super hero game.

Really the group the most representative of the super hero Genre are the 5th Collumn and they are being removed in favour of the less comic book like Council. Granted they look similar, wear similar uniforms and so on. BUt their names, their background doens't feel like they are leaping from the pages of a super hero comic book more like a Doom or Halo style first person shooter. The thing that made the 5th feel like super villains was their nazi like flavour which makes them an agent level group similar to Hydra, AIM or the Intergang with a Nazi-like refrence). Removing that from their style strips them of their super villain comic book flavour.

It's sad as the game is set up so well to be a super hero game but there are times when it feels very little like a super hero game. Give us some villains that wear costumes! Don't make us wait until City of Villains comes out before we get comic book style villain groups.

I just wanted to point out that one doesn't need to bind the lshift and mouse button to use teleport efficiently. I just stick my teleport into my second power slot (the one where I normally stick sprint) and hit the 2 key whenever I want to port. That way I can still use the keyboard movement keys (rotate, strafe left or right, jump, etc) yet quickly hit the teleport power. So with my left hand i'm hitting 2 to turn port on (and aim the port with mouse and a single click), and am still in position to make movements if needed. Then using my right hand to move the mouse to aim my porting. Using the right mouse and move mouse in order to make most of my facing adjustments in mid porting. I find that works extremly well and doesn't work much different than standard moving (flying, running, etc.) which is good since i use many characters with various movement powers (less need to learn different "muscle memory" for different characters).

Using the lshift and mouse button means my left hand has to move off of the movement keys, also makes it harder for me to use the mouse to make rotation adjustments (especialyl up and down which is a pain to do with the keyboard but really needed for teleport if you misjudge and find yourself porting too close to a building). Also if my hand s moved down to hit the left shift it's not near my numbers where my more important attack powers are placed for quick access in a pinch.