Starsman

I think (but not sure) that Tabula Rasa opened up the game for everyone. CoH locked everything down so unless you had an account you can’t do much.

Also, for Tabula Rasa the dev team was there till the end to craft an event. Here best we will get may be some lingering mod with powers not stripped away spawning lots of stuff on various zones.

I am not sure I would have liked that either. As it is, I felt forced to do 2 arcs per day plus a repeatable to optimize my rewards. Remove the timer and you would make me think I had to do all the arcs every day! (I’m not always that OCD but the bug can bite.)

The entire crafting thing was messy and the trials... too raid-ish.

I would have gone for this:

You gain Unlock XP
You also gain Ability Craft Points (not a random drop, just a consistent reward, make it not drop from minions or Lt’s only from Bosses/EBs/AVs and Monsters, for monsters in huge amounts)

Make crafting of any ability ONLY cost "Ability X Craft Points".

Then you add content that grants xp towards every slot that is available. Grinding up this will not be too different from grinding up from 1 to 50, and they don’t have to fear players hoarding up Craft XP for future slots because you can't ever earn xp towards them until you actually add them to the game.

Point being: If I play only 20 minutes I should feel 20 minutes of advancement, not feel that I need the full hour to make the entire arc or it will be a wasted day, nor that I got to get lucky to feel any advancement at all (yea I was never a fan of the invention drop system either, although Merits sort of fixed it)

Bah, I'm turning this into the "what will you not miss" thread

For me personally, it was more fun than grinding Trials. Mind you, still talking about preferring to be punched in the stomach than being hit with a hammer to the head. I would rather neither.

I'm diving back into game development. Maybe my next iPhone game will make better than my last one

If I can keep it up I plan to make my own super hero game. Not an MMO though just a game for my characters to gain new life.

Hopefully not hit by yesterday's Zynga mass layoffs.

Yea... I did the Incarnate grind with one character only, and only to unlock the first tier of the slots, and only what i was able to solo in DA.

I keep thinking they would have been better off just increasing the level cap and adding more content.

The homogenized abilities took a lot away from the AT design, and some of the abilities gave way too much power way too suddenly. The addition of levels with and potentially expansion of the Ancillary pools, plus global slots would have been, in my opinion, a bit more entertaining.

You guys buddies, a couple or the same dude dual boxing the forums? If neither, you guys should consider the first two.

OK so a base. May be against the naming, though but I guess the third bucket needs some name. Physics or Physical may be a better name, no?

Hmmm, not sure I like that list, and I may need a bit more on what you mean by Penetrating and Enveloping.

The Area of Effect... not sure I like it. How are you supposed to, in any way or form, be able to avoid a bomb's blast? I (biased I know) like more the idea of direction and range.

Hmmm... I can sort of live with those.... although I would go deeper in those branches with sub-types and rename the "Standard"s to:

Magic Standard -> Arcane
Psionic Standard -> Mental
Physical Standard -> Kinetic

Having any one type be "Standard" may have the connotation that the other types are rare and/or situational instead of thematic or conceptual.


Edit: curious, would you note a difference between thermal as an energy form and fire as an elemental force?

Casino is open already? Darn... have not been down there in a while...

MMOs? Only MMOs they have canceled that I am aware off have been:

EverQuest Online adventure (A PS2 game they had no way to keep supporting.)
Star Wars Galaxies (shut down was decided by Lucas Arts in hopes that those players would move to TOR)
And Matrix Online.

Matrix Online is the only one they canceled due to low subscription numbers, and that’s an excuse they had from the day they acquired the IP 5 years earlier when the original owner studio was closed.

They have other games they canceled, but these are not MMOs (Tanarus, Cosmic Rift and Star Chamber.) These other 3 were only "freebies" they tossed as bonuses for subscribers of their All Access plan. Despite their nature they lived enjoyed between 9 and 13 years lifespans.

I see... I thought you were talking damage types, my brain is checking out already and I forgot the meaning of _attack.

But yea, the overall type_attack system in this game is a mess, I think a perhaps late in development choice to cramp a lot of comic book concepts into a single system.

If we were talking exclusively the ability to avoid damage, I would make stats for melee/ranged combined with some form of directional avoidance stat. This would be great for tanking and ranged. Imagine if a pure range build was able to get high frontal avoidance, you can have a strong ranged AT that must play strategically. If he ever got surrounded, it would likely means his end.

On the other hand, a tank-type or melee type may have better flanking and rear attack voidance. But I think I'm shifting topics here...

For most games I would say there is no reason. For a Super Hero MMO, you may feel the desire to allow things like The Human Torch, a hero that is vulnerable to almost all attacks but immune to fire, or Superman's vulnerability to magic and a very specific type of alien radiation.

Another reason to have damage types is mostly Player Vs Environment. As you said before: NPCs don’t get to have fun, so you can actually make use of damage types to give big, exploitable shifts to enemies.


I guess it makes sense to add magic also as a "positional" avoidance stat, along with mental.

There are points I need to expand. For instance, although I would expect all tanking builds to have a rather even coverage, there may be logic behind giving a ranged build some strong resistance to "his thing", like the Human Torch example above.

Reason to do it from a gaming perspective? Everyone gets content they can be good at on their own. The Human Torch may be able to easily fight The Magma Men, and Iron Skin Tank Man may be able to survive anything but be faster solo shattering The Glass Demons. Players join forces to tackle bigger mixtures of enemies.

The biggest challenge is to have enough content over the entire game to justify all damage types.


I wrote a lot very long ideas to revamp Stone armor. In every one I think I insisted that the set had only it's Lethal resistances boosted with the goal of finally have some distinction to the two physical damage types. Stone, after all, should be hard to cut but not so hard to smash.


It's a waste for player defenses (although Kinetic has one power that does only boost Smashing and Energy resistances, always liked that one) but when it comes to players attacking critters it was not a waste. The devs did a bit of mixture here and there (although overused smashing resistances.)

I can see the point for magic, and Mind, but science/natural type? Unless you are meaning to flag there anything that is not magic or mental...

I keep inclining to no damage type at all every time I think too much about this, though, having just an inherent side effect to your choice of "element" or "power" instead of an actual type. Although I think it may be fun to geek out playing with all the stats, it may be too much and never have enough conceptual reach to make a fun difference.

My statement was based on some stuff I have read, there is additional things that some industries take into account, like inventory (may be meaningless for software but replaceable with subscriber base)

Some industries DO base the purchase on 100% of the profits for the last year but ignoring all inventory and stock. I think the lowest end of that scale I saw while hunting for information was 60% + inventory value.

Mind you, there is a gotcha for this one title and it’s that it’s already killed. It’s not the same to attempt to sell an ongoing business than to sell one you already closed down doors on and refunded all customers their money.

Again I have to say I don’t know if this applies to software. I was not able to find out enough information on such acquisitions with enough information on how much the business in question did on the specified year.

That is not entirely true.

5 years ago, Cryptic was working on the Marvel MMO. They slowed down production in CoH, but never killed it entirely. The one that actually threatened to kill the title was not Cryptic, it was NCSoft itself. They found there was a conflict of interest (there was one indeed) and either Cryptic had to pass full control of the IP to NCSoft or NCSoft would just cancel CoH.

Cryptic did the same to Champions with STO, they treated it just like they treated CoH, but it still is running 5 years later, so had CoH remained with Cryptic instead of with NCSoft, it's very likely the game would have not been canceled. Would not be in the advance state we have today, but likely would still be running. Castle and BABs may have never been fired either.

Passing full control of CoH to Cryptic was never an option for NCSoft, though.

The only thing we can realistically credit NCSoft for doing is ramping up game production, something that made total sense when there were 2 potential big players entering the same arena.

BTW, not only is NCSoft the only one to cancel that many MMOs, it's also the only one that comes to mind that kills a profitable MMO that is in the middle of heavy development. Every other MMO out there that I have seen canceled slowly phases out development first, cancelation comes as a last resort after the game was just coasting it's fading consumer base.

Not this one, that is something not even NCSoft claims.

Yes, it seems NCSoft's capabilities at managing the titles were very lacking. That is too many failures to start blaming the individual studios.


Canceling profits when you just face a loss is stupid business.

No it was not.

I think you are making up facts. CoH profits went slightly down after going F2P but it was in a slight increase compared to the previous year quarter. There was potential for at worst a couple more years of steady profits or even an increase in profits.

That is not entirely true.

5 years ago, Cryptic was working on the Marvel MMO. They slowed down production in CoH, but never killed it entirely. The one that actually threatened to kill the title was not Cryptic, it was NCSoft itself. They found there was a conflict of interest (there was one indeed) and either Cryptic had to pass full control of the IP to NCSoft or NCSoft would just cancel CoH.

Cryptic did the same to Champions with STO, they treated it just like they treated CoH, but it still is running 5 years later, so had CoH remained with Cryptic instead of with NCSoft, it's very likely the game would have not been canceled. Would not be in the advance state we have today, but likely would still be running. Castle and BABs may have never been fired either.

Passing full control of CoH to Cryptic was never an option for NCSoft, though.

The only thing we can realistically credit NCSoft for doing is ramping up game production, something that made total sense when there were 2 potential big players entering the same arena.

BTW, not only is NCSoft the only one to cancel that many MMOs, it's also the only one that comes to mind that kills a profitable MMO that is in the middle of heavy development. Every other MMO out there that I have seen canceled slowly phases out development first, cancelation comes as a last resort after the game was just coasting it's fading consumer base.

Not this one, that is something not even NCSoft claims.

Yes, it seems NCSoft's capabilities at managing the titles was very lacking.


Canceling profits when you just face a loss is stupid business.

No it was not.

I think you are making up facts. CoH profits went slighlty down after going F2P but it was in a slight increase compared to the previous year quarter. There was potential for at worst a couple more years of steady profits or even an increase in profits.


It's obvious you never been to any other MMO's forums.

Ponder who can we blame for that...

City of heroes is actually number 7. I would still make a case for 8 due to the us version of Lineage 1, but figured some would nitpick about that.

It's the only company to have closed 6.

If I'm not wrong the "standard" for most industries is for businesses to be priced at about a year-worth of income. I think that would set the sale of Paragon Studios at a minimum price tag of about 8 million.

It's "just a game" that you just wrote 460+ words dismissing.
It's "just a game" that you claim unable to find a replacement for.
And it's "just a game" who's community, you included, helped raise several thousand dollars for charity.

I ponder if the "it's just a game" posts I keep seeing from a select few are just attempt at convincing themselves about it...

You should take a look at Star Trek Online. It is not THAT far, but the things you can do with faces amazed me. You can decide the XY coordinates and rotation of scars! Give me just pieces I can use to build my own shoulder pads, similar to how I can build my own faces in STO! Let the community managers take care of offensive creations.

Damage types are another thing that I am very split on. My stance seems to depend on my mood that day. In one side, sometimes I think damage should just be damage and not be complicated with typing. Other times I feel it's not complex enough.

In the complex category... Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but technically Fire is a form of energy. If I was to go complex, I would make damage types a tree, not a list.

By this I mean, imagine you had Elemental_Attack type, and then under it you had Cold_Attack, Fire_Attack and what the heck, Wind_Attack and Earth_Attack.

If you have 30% Elemental resistance, you would resist all those attacks.

At the same time, I would have an Energy branch that is subdivided into Radiation, Electricity and perhaps also Fire.

This may mean that 30% Elemental, 30% Energy and 30% Thermal all combine in a diminishing form to result in, perhaps, 65.7% final Thermal resistance.

The Kinetic branch may house Smashing, Slashing, Piercing, and potentially also Wind. Earth maybe too?

What I'd do with Magic? Holy, Dark and Runic come to mind.

I know there can always be things like magical fire, but I think that goes down to "power customization" (allowing the player to select fire fx for his magical attacks.)

This is going too far but I would not have the extreme disparity in resistances/defenses we currently have in this game. Even if your primary element was Fire, this would simply give you a slight edge against a type at a marginal expense of a logical opposite or maybe even selected type, but never a crippling hole.

One thing is sure: If I go complex, I do so in a way that allows easy expansion of that complexity. If I want to add a toxic type later, it should be easy to plug it in and everyone that selected a survival boosts may start seeing the standard values where they apply.

BTW: more often than not, I just incline towards no-typing. At that point "typing" is just a thematic thing that determines your FX selection, plus perhaps a few non-damage powers.

I would have no "origin" and Magic would simply be another "elemental force" (not in the literal element sense) that determines a damage type and side effects.

The only reason to give an origin like we have in this game should be to determine some kind of atmospheric story branch. Example: pick magic and not only your first contact, but most contacts that get introduced to you will direct you towards magic-themed story-lines.

I think they sort of attempted that in this game but didn't take it past level 5 in the original game and did nothing with it in CoV (and horribly insulted me in The Origin Of Power with it.)

For a while I thought such a thing should be there, but today I'd say: let the player decide what type of content he inclines to via his own actions.

That's basically what I mean with an EQ-like faction system, although not as granular as to go to individual NPCs (simply because that may be a bit too hard to manage.) Although various NPCs may be tied up to various factions.

Hero or Villan status would mostly be determined in the eyes of certain "lawful" factions like The Police, The Army or Citizens of Atlas. Heck, maybe the citizens of Atlas will see you as a hero while the citizens of Steel Canyon may see you as a villain.

This faction system will not just determine what type of content you can unlock, but also potential perks you may gain access to. (Police may have you to arrest on sight if you approach any public transportation area but you may be a good friend of Crey who may give send a chopper to pick you up.)

But yea, YOU determine who sees you how, and it can be up to a player to act as lawfully good as possible, "grinding" his hero status in the face of all citizens and all law enforcement bodies across the world. It would be a rather epic Super Hero MMO.

One idea I liked for a long time is a diminishing value per target and also based on range from a "sweet spot". Example: The guy at the center of a fireball will always take more damage than the guy 10ft to the left. In theory, the sweet spot does not have to be the center of the explosion. A dark sphere may induce more damage on its rim than at the center, for instance.

In addition, the system maybe should count how many targets will be hit before deciding how much damage will be applied. Then with a formula (non-linear) the more enemies you hit, the less damage you do per enemy.


That idea has crossed my mind, but I get a gut feeling that despite it being balanced, it may not be considered to be "fun" by most players (not just a small minority.) It may lead to things similar to knockback hate, were anyone with an AoE may be automatically disliked for lowering the final team reward. Also opens up for trolling.


A tangent to your tangent: I remember brainstorming an "ideal" super hero mmo before I even read anything about CoH. I always thought you should start your life at your "origin point", where you acquire your power or skill or whatever. From that point forward every action determines if you are a hero or villain based on your actions and a classic EQ/WoW-like faction system. It may also open the doors for things like being a hero that the citizens love but the cops hate (property damage caused by you may be a good fit here; property damage may lower your rep with law enforcement factions.)





I would have liked that better than what we got. The entire RI was a cool looking place (except Grandvile and every Arachnos structure), but the idea of splitting the community was something I never liked.

I am not sure if it was your post that started the threads I remember on a similar line. I just recall the /jrangers arguing that they didn’t wanted to play villain in a game where they can’t attack every hero they see (something that went down the toilet with coop zones.) I ponder if that was one of the strong reasons for the devs to pursue the separation.

IMO, the goal should not be to make every build viable, but to allow players to backpedal.

I have been playing this addictive iPhone game: Devil's Attorney. It's sort of an RPG. Biggest annoyance I found is that you can easily gimp your build and have zero way to fix it without restarting the game.

I think a few things should not be easy to change or able to change at all (AT/power set selection.) Like you say, though, anything that would be fixed should not be integral or able to extremely change the balance of reward acquisition.

In most MMOs I always hated the idea of “trash character”, the concept that your first ever character should be considered a throw-away character you will mess up because you don’t know the game rules yet. It would be great if at least that was impossible, to mess up a character entirely because you did not know the game rules.

One idea I always liked (and D&D Online went for, don't think it's "failure" was due to it) is the concept of rewards being attached to the mission as a whole, not to individual kills. This opens up the doors to so many things. You are suddenly able to do things like "if you hold a minion for 30 cumulative seconds he surrenders".

There are other balance things to keep in mind but mission design may be done in a way that things like stealth are viable but not extremely fast either. Speed and stealth exclusivity? Or at least the need of additional skills like time consuming hacking to stealth through missions with minimal combat?

Or was it....