Todogut

Last night on the Infinity server, players made the most of CoH's final Sunday:

- the regular Sunday night Rikti mothership raid in Rikti War Zone
- a server awards ceremony in Pocket D
- a Hamidon raid in the Hive
- a Rikti drop ship hunt in Peregrine Island... we downed one of the alien war vessels

Where did CoH go wrong? I don't think it did. I liked it for what it was.

Still, it's interesting to consider paths not taken.

The founders of CoH (Rick Dakan, Jack Emmert, and others) indicated that they had played the Champions pencil and paper roleplaying game, and that's what inspired them to create a superhero MMO. When CoH was released, its strengths included character creation, travel powers, and strategic combat (all big parts of Champions). I told a friend about my initial impression from playing CoH, "It's a great superhero combat simulator."

But, for me, that was largely the extent of CoH's appeal. I played for the first month's subscription that came with the game purchase, and then I canceled my account.

At the time, I had played several other MMOs and was tired of their conventions. I didn't like the emphasis on gaining experience points and levels. Much of CoH's gameplay, such as hunting Skulls in Perez Park, seemed mindless and lacking in charm. I wanted more of a story and a more complete roleplaying experience.

A gaming friend whom I had met while playing Ultima Online commented that he had tried City of Heroes as well as many of the other MMOs of the era (Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, and so on), and, despite the technological advances in the later games, he had never found a roleplaying environment that was as sophisticated, complex, and involving as UO.

UO was created by Origin Systems, and their slogan was "We create worlds." Their approach was very different from CoH. I had friends in UO who enjoyed playing the game by managing a store where they sold player-crafted goods; they rarely bothered with combat. Others roleplayed as elected town representatives in a player-run political system. A chess or checkers board could be placed on a tabletop as a decoration in a player-owned house, and when clicked on, a window opened showing an enlarged board with moveable pieces, allowing players to play chess or checkers.

CoH offered comparatively little in terms of roleplaying environment. For example, we could make up secret identities with a civilian occupation; but, besides Day Jobs and multiple costume slots, the game didn't provide mechanics to support it.

The basic concept--there's a coastal city in Rhode Island that's the focal point for heroes and villains in the world--was acceptable for an MMO at the time. But, the premise would be rejected as nonsensical by any editor of a comic book or producer of a movie or TV series. (Unless it was a metaphorical setting, like "the city" in The Tick.)

CoH provided the opportunity to dress up as a hero and go fight bad guys, and that was good enough. Casual play was a strength.

I returned to CoH after a friend told me that a lot of good stories had been added. He was right. The game constantly improved, particularly after the staff increased from 15 to 80. Toward the end, the latest wave of designers provided fresh, new approaches to storytelling.

Still, I would like to see a superhero MMO or single-player game with more of a roleplaying environment.

However, I doubt it will happen. Industry trends seem to be going in other directions, more towards casual play on mobile devices for mass appeal.

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And some posters, judging from the past two months, are either contrarian misanthropes or employees of Korea-based corporations.

Here is a transcription of statements made by former City of Heroes lead designer Matt Miller (@MMODesigner on Twitter) during an appearance on Analog Hole Gaming:

A typical day at the office at Paragon Studios. Carry on. Business as usual.

Statesman carried the torch for City of Heroes at New York Comic Con 2012 and rallied support from attendees.

Click here for full-size image.

Graphite's New York Comic Con 2012 Gallery



Statesman and Spidey carrying the torch for City of Heroes

Another photo of Statesman at New York Comic Con 2012

Statesman at New York Comic Con 2012

I guess we're supposed to think:

I copied the following text, which defines the custom NPC that I created of my friend's character, named Starbolt.

I want to make a video of my friend's character playing through one of my Mission Architect story arcs. But, my friend isn't in-game much lately. So, I thought I would:

1) use /demorecord to record my character playing the arc; and then
2) edit the .cohdemo file to replace my character with my friend's character.

This process worked somewhat; but, not entirely as intended.

- I recorded my character playing the arc.
- I created my friend's character as a custom non-player character in Mission Architect.
- I demorecorded the custom NPC I had created of my friend's character (in a separate story arc and separate .cohdemo file from the recording of my character).
- I copied and pasted the custom NPC data to replace my character's data in the .cohdemo file.

When I played .cohdemo file, the custom NPC appeared in place of my character... at first. But, when the custom NPC was first hit by a villain's attack during combat, my character instantly appeared in place of the custom NPC. This is not what I intended.

Is this behavior--a replacement character reverting back to the original character upon first damage--normal for demorecording? Does it only happen in recordings of MA story arcs? Is there any way I can keep the replacement character from reverting back to the original?

Please advise, demorecord/edit experts. Thank you.

Awesome, VG. Congratulations!

My long-broken Mission Architect story arc "For the People" (Arc ID 530574) is now fixed--hooray!

I found that, while Statesman was removed from the Standard option in the Contact Type field, he is still available in the Enemy Groups option.

From reading the available information (and from my experience working in a different segment of the software industry), my guess is that NCSoft's decision has more to do with "closing Paragon Studios" than with "closing City of Heroes".

From reports, City of Heroes was doing pretty well, with a still sizeable population and still substantial revenues. If the only business concern was to keep milking the cash cow, then NCSoft could have kept the game running.

But, NCSoft also had to be concerned about the viability of Paragon Studios, which included not only running CoH but also developing its "secret projects". After NCSoft suffered huge losses in Q2, they decided to cut something... and probably they chose PS and CoH because sacrificing CoH's relatively small profit was deemed an acceptable loss in order to get rid of the expense of continuing to support PS and the development of its secret projects.

Here is the email that I sent to the provided contacts:

Hello.

I am very disappointed with NCSoft's decision to close City of Heroes. Please consider an alternative outcome that would allow City of Heroes to continue.

I enjoy playing City of Heroes with my friend, Jim. He and I met in junior high school, and we are now [redacted from this post] years old. Currently, Jim lives in California (in the Pacific time zone), while I live in [redacted] (in the Eastern time zone).

When we were teenagers, one common interest that fostered our friendship was our love of American super-hero comic books. We exchanged comic books, and I liked to draw pictures of super-heroes.

In 2004, when we saw advertisements for an upcoming computer game called City of Heroes--where you get to be a super-hero--we bought the game and played enthusiastically. Over the next eight years, City of Heroes has enabled us to stay in touch and share each other's company virtually.

In the game, I enjoyed creating a supergroup base for me, Jim, and other friends. (This YouTube video shows our base: http://youtu.be/BNC2OjmEmj4.) It is very sad for me to think that our base and all of our super-hero characters will be gone after November 30th.

I work as [redacted]. I understand that economics can force a company to make difficult business decisions. So, I appreciate NCSoft's position regarding "a realignment of company focus and publishing support" to shut down Paragon Studios and City of Heroes.

However, to players of City of Heroes, the announcement on August 31st came as a shock. We could see that the game still had a sizeable population (reportedly around 100,000). A new power set had just been released, and Paragon Studios developers were telling us about upcoming issue 24. Reportedly, City of Heroes was doing pretty well in terms of generating revenue.

In social media and mainstream media, the decision has caused bad publicity for NCSoft (for example, this ireport on CNN: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-840174). Computer game players around the world must now take into consideration: should I invest my time and money in another NCSoft game given how City of Heroes was abruptly closed?

Although Paragon Studios might not fit into NCSoft's future plans, please consider that another publisher might be willing to buy City of Heroes and keep the game running. Selling the game (instead of just sunsetting it) would improve NCSoft's reputation among computer game players.

Personally, I would be very grateful if NCSoft would work out a way for City of Heroes to continue.

Thank you for your consideration.

[name redacted]
https://twitter.com/Todogut

Okay, so, Paragon Studios decided to remove Statesman and Sister Psyche from the game for whatever reasons.

But, didjareallyhaveto remove them from Mission Architect? Doing so messed up all published story arcs that used Statesman and Sister Psyche as NPCs.

Just because Paragon Studios chose to wipe those characters out of existence, now your customers must retcon their previously published MA story arcs? Thanks!

Statesman and Sister Psyche are still available in Ouroboros flashback missions. Seems they could have been left intact in MA if only to keep from messing up customer-created story arcs.

Before AE was released, my CoH-friend and I were excited about the description we had read, where you get to create your own missions and share them with other players. We began to plan stories that we wanted to tell; but, we didn't know how the system would work. It was a surprise to learn that AE is a holographic studio, like Star-Trek: The Next Generation's Holo-Deck.

Trying to fit a preconceived story into AE mechanics was frustrating. While the interface was relatively easy to use, it also seemed quite limiting (compared to other game's similar systems, such as Bioware's Aurora toolset). Almost invariably, I found the AE mechanics would not let me tell the story the way I wanted, resulting in unsatisfactory work-arounds.

Eventually, I adopted a different approach to developing a story for AE. Instead of first imagining a story and then becoming frustrated because I couldn't find the right maps and events for it, I looked for maps that I wanted to play on, villain groups that fit my desired level range, and events to fit the maps and foes. In this way, the maps, villains, and events inspired me to develop a story that strung them together.

At first, I created several story arcs just for my friends to play, featuring our custom characters as NPCs. Later, I created an arc that hopefully any CoH player can enjoy.

I've played many great story arcs created by other players, exhibiting wonderful storytelling skills and a lot of hard work. (I've also partially played many other story arcs--before quitting them--that were, well, not so good. I'll never get back those wasted minutes of my life... but, I digress.)

Yes, AE has negatives as pointed out by other posters. In particular, the copyright filter deserves to be called out. Did you know, if you choose "Black Scorpion" from the standard list of villains, the filter will flag your story as invalid--presumably because "Scorpion" is a copyrighted Marvel Comics character? Note that "Black Scorpion" is CoH intellectual property and provided in AE's interface as a standard pull-down menu option--that is, not a player-created custom character name. So, choosing a standard menu option will cause your story to be flagged as invalid. Clearly, the copyright filter is myopically misguided.

Even so, I am glad AE is part of CoH. Could it be better? Yeah. But, still, it's a really cool feature, one that I enjoy using periodically.
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