konshu

I click to target, but I like having the tab-to-target as a backup in case for some reason the game won't let me click on my target (which happens a lot).

You like Baker? Why not Barker?

Rosie Barker

Founders' Falls Infiniti just rolls off the tongue ...

I could see Atlas Park with a Toyota dealership. Atlas is so clean these days, they must be driving hybrids and electrics, like the Prius.

Steel Canyon BMW/Lexus sounds about right.

What would you find in the Rogue Isles? I'd assume St Martial would have Ferrari and Lamborghini ...

If you're thinking of AE maps, I'd use the Primeva map (no war walls), or for an urban area, in my own Africa arc I used a downtrodden section of St Martial with the Giza visible in the distance.

IMO, if someone is going to buy the game, negotiations will begin in earnest starting around now. There was absolutely no reason for NCsoft to entertain any of the earlier offers, because they were probably soft. With the deadline coming, soft offers will fall away.

Not only does this game have valuable IP, but the player accounts have value as well; in fact, their value may be higher than that of the game itself. If NCsoft is to get their money out of CoH, they'll want to sell the player accounts (with the existing player character information) along with the game IP.

Are you thinking NCsoft never wanted to sell the game? Perhaps.

However, one possible reason for NCsoft choosing to set the expiration of CoH a few months after they closed Paragon Studios is to maintain value while they give suitors time to put together a deal.

I read NCsoft's response as saying, "What? We can't hear you! LOUDER!"

NCsoft may not have any legal responsibilities to its customers regarding the game, but there is a social obligation to the players who wish for the profitable game of City of Heroes to continue and a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to sell the game before it loses value.

Very nice.

The update about to be released - Issue 24 - was looking to be one of the best updates ever to the game, including a lot of long-awaited improvements to old features and new content. I was more interested in this next issue than about any previous issue I can think of.

The financial backers of the game - NCsoft, Nexon, whoever - are clearly completely divorced from what matters to the developers and players of the game. It shows in their timing. Couldn't they have permitted the game to continue one more month, to allow the issue to publish, before putting the game into close-down? Couldn't they have more honestly looked for a buyer for the game? (Surely there IS a buyer, as the game is profitable.) It doesn't look like the financial backers feel they have ANY obligation toward their gaming customers.

I think a significant angle for any SAVE CoH story is how the industry needs to get games back into the hands of smaller companies, who can enjoy - and live off of - the smaller profits from smaller markets. This will produce better work, keep the trust and contentment of players, and also keep the developers employed.

Someone needs to be permitted to buy CoH. To me, that's a basic obligation on the part of NCsoft to their customers.

A slight tangent: would it make sense for Valve to purchase City of Heroes from NCsoft?

Just to confirm ... I did NOT get a token along with my Paragon points.

I'd also add to the list the very slow progression of the game's story.

Coming Storm (tm), anyone?

In a way, it seemed that for the longest time nothing was happening.

It might have been nice to have some sort of annual story event, serialized like SSA, but available to all levels, and then chucked into Ouro when the year is up ... and on to the next annual story.

It would be nice to be able to look back on the game year by year and think back, "Oh yeah ... that was the year of the big Praetorian battle," or "that was the year of the Shivan invasion."

Well damn. I was hoping to use my monthly Paragon Points to buy Water Blast and give that a spin during the next couple months.

I don't see why they have to withhold our points. It seems like they could very easily continue to give us the opportunity to play the game as we used to, as it was all electronically mediated ... unless they're doing some weird torture thing, where they're going to turn off the game system by system ... losing email one week, and then chat channels, then bases, then WW/BM, then merit vendors, ... and then roll up the game, zone by zone ...

The only reason I didn't already mod NWN into a CoH type game is the lack of vertical movement. Dynamic flight and jumping are needed in all game engines, IMO, and NWN lacks it.

But other than that, I was making a world that resembled CoH, with origins, enemy groups, zones, and so on. Of course, due to off the shelf art restrictions, I had to keep it "medieval," but in theme it was very much filled with agents, patrons, heroism, and villainy.

It was fun using the NWN toolset for this purpose, because you could affect everything except vertical movement. You could create terrain and indoor maps, you could place transition points (doors, magic portals, etc.), you could create new enemies, new powers, new effects, change the reward scale, and even add in weather, music, draw up your own NPC AI, and add complex interactive dialogue / cutscene situations. IIRC, I had even re-coded the mechanism for rewards to issue a subset of potions as an analog to inspirations.

Anyway, I had a blast with it, but the big problem was that the engine was slow and the lack of athletic or vertical movement was - at least for me - a killer. It removed all the kinetic joy from the game, and that's one of the greatest things in CoH, as far as I'm concerned.

What I don't understand about this (turning stars into likes) is why they didn't do it.

It doesn't sound like a complicated change, does it?

IMO, we should have had this years ago. If the devs ever do regain control of their game, I hope they can make this change right away.

(FWIW, I always tell people reviewing my arcs to either give 5 stars or none at all, which is basically the same thing.)

I'm glad the devs are standing up for themselves and their work. I wish them luck. They were able to negotiate with Cryptic, and now - hopefully - with NCsoft. Since Paragon's been the one actually working on the game all these years, they're really (in a sense) the owners.

My preference is that they get a stay of execution on the game, get private funding to reform their studio, lease the servers from NCsoft, publish i24 as the last update to the game, and then use subscriber money and investor money to begin work on a new superhero game, using a modern, fully featured OpenGL engine.

Things I would change in a reboot of CoH ...

Make all corridors on maps easier to navigate with a team, with bottlenecks added for strategic effect.

Allow mission maps to have multiple doors, including more than one entry / exit point.

Might make maps of buildings (at least some of them) destructible.

Have maps with an outdoor area that leads to an indoor area be common, including rooftop encounters.

Might make it so that all powers are chosen from a single list, rather than having ATs. The weight of the powers would change according to whichever of 3 columns you place the power into, such that powers in the first column emphasize primary aspects of the powers, powers in the 2nd column emphasize secondary aspects, and powers in the 3rd column are weak in both aspects. (This would approximate how primary, secondary, and pool/AP powers work.)

I would keep the idea of slotting, but would make it so that slots received can be banked to be placed later.

Would eliminate visiting a trainer to get new powers or slots. I would have slots get banked automatically and new powers be acquired by visiting the equivalent of the SG base or the faction (origin) base.

I would have all contacts be available by cellphone primarily, and secondarily be encountered in instances. No contacts would be available outside of an instance.

There would not be a lot of open zone areas to traverse, though there would be areas in which players could gather if they wished.

There would be an emphasis upon teaming through use of text channels and team-up UI. (This was added in later issues of the game, but might have been better implemented if they'd been planned upon at the start.)

Storytelling UI would be configured with the idea of multiple players receiving story information, not just the team leader.

Player text editing would work properly.

Content would unlock through play, where one story unlocks others further along in the tree. There would also be open, non-tree content.

Missions would have a greater number of actionable events in them, thereby increasing the number of scenarios a player could encounter within a mission. Under-utilized examples from CoH include trip triggers, security camera triggers, IR beam triggers, and so on. Events that could be triggered would be increased as well, so that instead of just ambushes, triggers could fire off dialogue, costume changes, teleportation, and so on.

I have a lot more things in mind that could be changed, but that's probably already more than most people would want to read, so I'll just end it there.

I agree with the OP.

Cold is already strong, but Frostwork is better delivered as an absorb power.

If there are balance concerns regarding Frostwork as an absorb power, then obviously that can be addressed by not making Frostwork uber powerful ... right?

For that matter, Hoarfrost could also be rendered as an absorb power, if desired.

EDIT: And the solution for Force Field is to fix Force Field.

Certainly, give the devs feedback. But keep in mind that players have been asking for mission text to be shared since the beginning, and it hasn't happened yet.

(Considering the quality of the storytelling, you're probably better off not seeing it. But if you must satisfy your curiosity, the best way to read the missions is on wiki, as you can see the mission text, the dialogue, and the clue text without having to take occasional breaks to fight something.)

In my experience, a lot of players find the story aspect of the game inadequate, but they don't get onto the forums and complain about it.

What they do instead is they learn to click through it all without reading. Click past the garbage and get to the fighting. Which means, essentially, that whatever time the devs are spending on story isn't entertaining to this section of the player base.

As for the argument that a company would stop / change a practice because it reduces their revenue ... keep in mind that not everyone runs their company well. Some people just don't do a good job; instead they do the bare minimum needed to get by. They're not always enlightened servants of their audience. ("eh heh eh heh ... Customers suck!")

I'm not saying CoH is going to go out of business because they scribble and scramble their stories, but I think it's fair to say they don't capture all the audience they could if they did write better stories.

And as for revamps ... revamps are fine. But they should provide opportunities to clear up inconsistencies and improve the product, not opportunities to create new inconsistencies and reduce quality.

Graphically, the Skulls look better now because they are using newer art. However, they do take a step backward by missing the iconic gang symbol on their jackets, the name change of the Petrovics isn't explained, the Yakov accent doesn't fit with the varied ethnicity of the group or their history (none of the Skulls had an accent before), and possibly Chernobog looks too goofy to be anything other than a caricature.

Since none of that was required (i.e., the devs can put a Skulls emblem on jacket models if they want, the devs can explain the change of name for the Petrovics if they want, the devs didn't have to add nonsensical Yakov accents, and they could have made Chernobog look more chilling), it makes the revamp look poorly handled. As if it was done by someone without a care or clue, which was probably the case.

In my experience with a tank, TW is a groaner through the lower levels. It's only as you get beyond 30-ish that it starts picking up.

Heh, a lot like the whole momentum thing.