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Quote:I agree with this.Originally Posted by brophog02
GR will either be the re-birth or final death for this game..........and I'm not sure which way it'll go yet.
But it has a lot of people very interested, and interested people have a way of being highly disappointed.
A lot of people here are coming on highly buzzed from the new info released, but the devil is always in the details. Such as what rewards you get for staying as a hero / villain - right not it seems that becoming a Praetorian offers the best of all worlds. Or how hard is it for you to swap over from one side to the other.
Plus powersets are highly dependent on their effectiveness. Dual Pistols looks good, but if the best path is to keep everything slotted as toxic then that is exactly what is going to happen.
The 1-20 zone thing is also a bit issue. How long does it take to leave the lvl 1 - 20 experience? Not long. I really do expect to see another announcement of lvl 21 - 40 content (at least, if not up to lvl 50) later on. Plus it will have the effect of killing all interest in the low level game in both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. No point in having costume contests in Atlas Park any more if Nova Praetoria sees more traffic.
Also I can't see how the markets can't merge if you can have access to both the BM and WW as a Praetorian. Hello arbitrage.
It's the initial info release. Lots of exciting things, but also lots of unanswered questions. And if it isn't successful in pulling in a lot of new subs, then it could very well be the end of major development on this title.
We'll see. -
Quote:There was the shark, surfing and minding its own business, then !WHAM!, in came DumpleBerry. Shark never knew what hit it.Originally Posted by Rodoan
You were part of an attack on a surfing shark? 0.o
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Quote:I'll go let Silverspar know that BABs has smacked down Arcanaville AGAIN, thus invalidating every post she's ever made on these boards ever.Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
Crate Buster 2000 had no aggro system.
Also, I just Googled Crate Buster 2000 and it appears to not exist outside of BABs' head. Or that's the new codename for GoRo. Because if there is anything a video game player is used to fighting, it's crates.
City of Crates, due out Q2 2010. -
Quote:I've highlighted the salient point about why I prefer official content over MA content. It doesn't have to be "farming garbage" either - it can be "Mary Sue garbage" or "unfunny internet meme garbage" or "I4 / I5 / I6 nerdrage garbage".Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic
There are plenty of really good mission arcs in the MA that are buried alive under the farming garbage that was being created for months.
At least in recent official content there is at least one new map to take in, or the mobs doing something surprising (because it is custom scripted). MA doesn't get that benefit.
There might be "several thousand" good arcs, but you have to sift through a lot of filth to find them. -
Battlerock_X - You've misunderstood the aggro mechanic. It's not a matter of roles or archetypes, it is a matter of controlling where enemies attack. You (pointedly?) ignored ChampO in your discussion, which is 'classless' did try initially to keep aggro mechanics to a minimum, but players were very quick to complain, "Where is the taunt? How do I keep opponents locked on me / targeted on someone else?".
Aggro is the way of the player working out how the AI is going to react to them and, despite vocal claims to the contrary, players like reliability. The aggro mechanic provides them with reliability.
On top of this there are some genre standards regarding how aggro 'should' behave and violating these standards sees MMO players getting upset. Setting aggro to 'always attack the healer' is something players are going to get upset about, even if it is a good tactical choice for the AI to win the battle. Because the aim isn't for the AI to win the battle, it is to look good losing it. -
This will be a great feature when it is implemented.
But I still hate defeat alls. Lazy mission objective. -
Quote:This.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I used to be on the gimme new stuff instead of redoing the old junk side of the fence, but lately I've been running through a bunch of launch content with a critical eye, and in the interest of retaining new players it's got to go- either replace it, or re-work it.
The initial game experience is critical to keeping players past the first 30 days (and also why I am so critical of the trial restrictions, but that's a different issue). Unfortunately the majority of low level content has remained fairly untouched since launch (yeah, the tutorial got a little touch up and there are some more revised maps added since then, but not much). On top of this the very first TF is widely recognised as the least player-friendly and interesting TF in the game.
I fully get the idea that you have the resources to either add new content or rework old content at one time, but you can also switch it up - this issue Dark Astoria gets a work over, next issue here comes a brand new lvl 50 zone. Some of the best, most interesting work done in CoH can be seen in Faultline and it makes the zone interesting to revisit. Just adding in new content means that players are spread ever-thinner over the content (up to lvl 50 or so), which has its own issues.
I'm sure GoRo is going to have a full new player experience in it. I look forward to seeing what Paragon Studios has learned and what they are going to do with it. If it is an improvement, I can also see the entire existing early level experience of CoH/V ignored by current and future players. -
I understand why they have an Oceanic Lounge - it keeps these gripes out of general public attention.
I'll probably hang on until GoRo, but to be honest my main point of logging into CoH/V is to move characters to places they can get Day Job badges and then leaving them there for 21 days. -
Quote:It points out how are being deliberately obtuse.Originally Posted by Twisted Toon
If CoH="old" and WoW="old" and CoH="needs remake" Then WoW=|="needs remake"
I'm sorry, that does not compute. It is illogical.
Does that make things clearer to you?
CoH/V is "old" and has maybe over 100k players. Cryptic indicated that in the time they ran it CoH/V earned over US $100 million in revenue.
WoW is "old" and has over 11 million players and makes Blizzard over a US $1 billion dollars in revenue per year on around 40% operating profit (been a while since I looked at the figures though).
CoH/V potentially needs a remake to re-launch itself into the market. WoW IS the market as far as most players are concerned. Even if you were to look at only North America, WoW dominates CoH/V by potentially a factor of 20 (or more) in terms of player numbers.
CoH/V is getting a major expansion. WoW is getting a major expansion. On top of this, Blizzard is working on another MMO. Paragon Studios certainly should be. -
Quote:Gazillion is behind not one, but two Marvel MMOs.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Marvel Universe Online got canceled. That's why Champions Online was created at all. (Cryptic was making MUO, Microsoft was going to publish it until they realized there was no possibility of being a WoW-killer)
Superhero Squad, which will be more kid- / family-oriented, has been scheduled for 2010.
The Marvel MMO has been scheduled for 2011 by one of Marvel Entertainment's bigwigs (which I don't think is realistic, but anyway).
Also coming out will be a Ben 10 MMO - it might make some in-roads - as well as the DCUO. -
Quote:I agree - you can't make everyone happy. Some of the things that some players saw as weaknesses attracted others. And CoH was a pioneering title in many, many respects, which often gets forgotten... and pioneering titles can often turn people off who would prefer the familiar.Originally Posted by Ms. Mesmer
Funny thing is, aside from the repetitive maps from the same few core tilesets, the rest of those things are also things that people love about this game. Minimal spawn camping, low impact of kill-stealing, no ninja looters, no boring endgame raids (many of which are also instanced and run so often that they would make you long for the simple variety of warehouse layouts that we get within just that one tileset) that you have to do to keep up, and no looking just like everyone else because you all do the same instances for the same gear.
But the original point was about being surprised over players being negative towards CoH/V. There are a lot out there and some are very vocal. -
Quote:There's a difference between being profitable and profitable enough to maintain / increase investment in. That's the business way of thinking.Originally Posted by Kepaaaaaaaaaaaaa
If Aion does better than COH, they wouldn't gut COH. That's a rather childish way to think.
"Your game is still making money, but not quite making as much money as one of our other products. Sorry, clean out your offices by this afternoon."
A number of MMOs have been cancelled that might have been profitable, but weren't meeting the business requirements for success. Sims Online / EAland wasn't losing money afaik, but it wasn't successful enough to justify keeping a team on it. If you've got $50m and the choice is investing it in an existing title that might generate 10% return or spending it on a new title that could open up a new market space and generate 20% return (at a higher risk, certainly) then it's not hard to see where the money might go.
My point was that NCsoft HQ has been in the process of gutting NCsoft West / NA due to a raft of its own business failures. Comparatively NCsoft gets something like 78% of its revenue from Korea and 11% from NCsoft West (iirc), so even CoH/V's success is a small drop in the ocean.
Yes, CoH/V is profitable and was built to be profitable on a player base of 50k. It's earned its money back and generated over US$100m in revenue. This does nothing to stop NCsoft HQ deciding that the priority moving forward should be Guild Wars 2 and co-opting Paragon Studios to get to work assisting ArenaNet on that title (or another scenario). -
Quote:I'll let you in on a little secret: there are a lot of people who don't like CoH/V. They tried it, they played it, they got sick of the lvl grind and / or constantly seeing the same maps in their instanced missions. Some players hate that CoH/V is so instance dependent; others hate the lack of visible loot, or the lack of an endgame they consider worthwhile. EQ / DAOC players of the time felt that CoH/V was too light and breezy, that it lacked substance.Originally Posted by Evilanna
The article isn't bashing CoH, the forum posts responding to the article seem to express a huge amount of hate for CoH.
Most people agree that CoH shouldn't be on the list, but there also seems to be a large number of people who love to say negative things about the game...
And so on.
The reason that CoH/V needs a remake (or: a huge expansion with new graphics that probably see it unplayable for those with low-end systems and a host of new game experiences) is that it is now six years old. It's done a good job in keeping up, but it probably isn't attracting huge numbers of new players to it, especially in a sub-genre that is seeing some direct competition and also while the overall number of MMOs continue to grow and grow. For instance, take APB. Look at the customisation available in that. In terms of being able to layout how your character looks, APB leaves CoH/V far behind.
I fully think that CoH/V could coast along for years more doing what it is doing now. But that isn't going to see it grow and without growth NCsoft won't keep substantial resources dedicated to it. As I've said elsewhere, either Going Rogue is going to be the most impressive expansion ever or Paragon is going to announce a new title... or things aren't going to keep running smoothly. -
Quote:Agreed. I thought this thread would contain information about a new update, not a request for one.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
I'm not the negrepper in this case, but I was considering it just for starting this thread. You've been around long enough to know that info comes when info comes. And you have a history of trying to bait the Devs into responding to your 'innocent' questions about upcoming issues.
This is not new to you and the negative reaction to these threads is not new to you. Don't know why you're surprised by it. It's like being surprised you got stung after throwing a rock at a hive.
Signed, -Zombie Man
(no anonymity here) -
Quote:I'm aware that the development team has grown rapidly, but I really am waiting to see some outputs that inspire me about the future of CoH/V. Either Going Rogue is going to be the most awesome expansion ever or I won't be surprised when Paragon Studios announces an entirely new title.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
How long it will be sustained is an open question, but I believe NCSoft is committing more resources to developing the product than any player is likely to be guessing. That bodes well for us (the playerbase) in at least the medium term.
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Quote:One day, when I actually find out what the original reference is, I'm sure I'll find the OP vaguely amusing.Originally Posted by Megajoule
Next time, don't rebrand unfunny (and potentially politically charged) pop-culture references with a thin veneer of game relevance, and then expect people to laugh instead of seriously debating the implications of such a policy.
But I did find the whole, "Yeah! Kill'em all!" attitude distasteful considering in-game lore. And, y'know, superheroes. -
Quote:Incorrect. CoH/V might get some resources out of the revenue generated by Aion, but they'll be expected to provide a return-on-investment case to justify that they'll make that money back, plus some. If CoH/V wasn't seen as financially viable, NCsoft would gut and cut it without a backward glance, regardless of how well Aion might be doing. See: Dungeon Runners.Originally Posted by Commander
Any business made from subscriptions and sales of Aion actually helps CoH. CoH isn't only getting funding from their own subscriptions. They get funding from NCsoft, who in fact is taking in the money from both products. If Aion does well, it means there is a larger pool of money that can be distributed between the products that NCsoft produces/distributes. Just like the money taken in from CoH is used to fund other NCsoft titles.
If Aion does well, it might just tell NCsoft HQ that transferring Korean developed MMOs to the Western market is a better strategy than having Western studios develop their own MMOs. So why bother continuing to develop a MMO with a comparatively small player base that failed in Korea? -
Quote:If the playerbase was large enough, growing and there were a bunch of features a new engine could bring even more players to it, redeveloping the engine could be a priority.Originally Posted by Hellsminion_CoH
If current trending hold true, and NCSoft remains committed to enhancing CoX and making resources available for said enhancements, then really, the possibilities are endless as to the direction of the game.
But then, at what point does the program get too large and complicated (glutted) with old code, thus warranting a complete re-write?
That's a lot of "if". Going Rogue will have a graphical enhancement aspect to it, but unless the CoH/V player base is doing a lot better than I think it is I don't think the resource rational exists for a complete re-write of the engine, which would have huge potential downsides (e.g. breaking things that work now) in return for little short-term upsides (sure, in the long-term it might allow more flexibility, but in the short-term all the work would be on making sure things that worked right under the old engine work right under the new engine i.e. a backend change that the majority wouldn't even see if it was done right). -
Did everyone miss the memo that the Rikti weren't at fault for the invasion, so some sort of retribution against the Rikti homeworld would actually be a horrendously vile moral act?
I still remember people disagreeing with me that Nemesis and everyone in his organisation seriously should have been seriously squashed out of the game due to the kind of reaction that his machinations would attract from all sides (he'd come back of course, but I don't think he could have operated as openly as he still does). So, yeah: the Rikti were the victims here.
Statesman's greatest mistake is letting the Rogue Isles continue to operate. -
... and here was me thinking this thread was Mr NoPants vs Poison Pain in some kind of no-holds-barred winner-take-all forum brawl.
Carry on. -
The server queues are being implemented ahead of CoH/V going into a single server with a full seamless world. The war walls are coming down, people.
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Quote:Zikar is on the money here: the issue isn't how we can white knight CoH/V on its own forums, it is how an influential print magazine bothered to re-review an existing MMO and gave it an average rating.Originally Posted by Zikar
In the UK it's the best selling game's mag.
I really really enjoy PCGamer, it was a shame to see such a negative article of CoH...
Commentary that CoH had nothing new to do past lvl 20 isn't exactly new - it's been said since before launch. The issue has always been that in running instanced missions, you see a lot of the same maps with slightly different enemy types and that makes the game repetitive.
That people get past that / don't have the same experience happens, which is why people still enjoy CoH/V. But in this case the reviewer - who has to write a review within a fixed time window and probably doesn't have the ability to explore every corner of the game before sending the article off for review / publication - felt they weren't doing anything new / different after lvl 20. That's a long-time criticism about CoH that hasn't really been dealt with (AE impact aside) by the devs since about I2. -
The CoH/V movie should start around I10: Invasion. The return of the Rikti.
From a narrative perspective, the first Rikti War is a lot of fighting with no pay off since a reason isn't know for why the Rikti attack - that doesn't come out until they return, which is the 'twist' you need to throw the Rikti into a whole new light. Otherwise you end up with "Independence Day", just with more spandex.
Instead, the story should be a rookie hero starting out with an older and slightly washed-up supergroup - they aren't top rung, but they are effective in what they do. Rookie learns the ropes vs some other groups (importantly: Nemesis) - the writer could have fun with some superhero tropes here, if they wanted - but stumbles across the fact that the Rikti have re-opened the portal to their homeworld and are restocking.
Prior to I10, the Rikti are scary, but the population on Earth are effectively under siege. They've been locked down and will eventually run out of logistics to conduct an effective fight with. To this extent, the Freedom Phalanx lets Vanguard deal with them and is now worried about what is going on in the Rogue Isles. This is why it is a little bit hard to convince them that the Rikti are a growing threat and why the rookie hero and his SG have to provide more solid proof of what is going on. Somewhere in this would be a flashback / remembrances of what the Rikti did the first time around, probably tied into some of the characters of the SG.
At this point there would be the mission where you fight the robot versions of Manitcore and Positron in the script - there's the twist on the villains. So it becomes a race against time to knock out the militant leader and install the traditionalist or see another full-scale invasion against a better prepared Rikti.
It has to be one movie that is self contained. No point worrying about explaining everything in the sequel, or detailing CoH/V lore in detail. If you get the three picture deal, worry about CoV in the second one and the Coming Storm in the third. -
All we need is a Positron post, a SexyJay post and the rare (non-existent?) Ghost Widow post and this we'll have a dev royal flush.
... sorry BABs.
;-) -
Quote:The trial account restrictions have always been too severe and I personally have only seen an increase in spam after gold sellers worked out ways around them (such as: using keygens or stolen credit card numbers to generate full accounts).Originally Posted by Zombie Man
The reality is that the 'full experience' is limited because it's a *trial* account and it's *free.* It's only meant to give one a taste or a sneak peak at the game. Not give one actual full-functioning game time for two weeks free. It's just enough to let one see if they'd like to upgrade to the full game or pass on it.
It might be a sneak peak of CoH/V, but it's a sneak peak while being gagged and segregated. It's like being given a free stay at a resort, but being handcuffed and with duct tape over your mouth so you can't bother the paying guests. I'm sure some people would be into it, but it's a big turn off for others.
Also: CoH/V is not WoW. If CoH/V had the same market popularity as WoW, it could do whatever the hell it wanted. I know several players who trialled CoH/V, couldn't even team up with each other and all quit before their trial period had finished.