City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

NCsoft President Speaks on Publisher's Future

almighty_valek

By almighty_valek,
Posted on: 2008-01-16 19:19 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion

 

Posted

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Consoles are the latest fad, [...]

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If so, then the're a fad with a long, LOOOONG lifespan: to the tune of thirty six years. I mean, Jesus ... I'm only one year older than this supposed "fad" ... and home-computer games are younger than console games ... so if anything is a fad, it's PC gaming.

Arguably, one could cite the Commodore Business MAchines' VIC-20 as the first widely-purchased "hoem computer", as it was the first computer to sell more than one million units. That was in 1981, almost a full decade after the Magnavox Odyssey.

(I still remember my Commodore 64 fondly; I got it for christmas when I was fourteen - that was in 1985, three years after it was first introduced. Cost my mother an arm, a leg, and two months' worth of sleep to afford it for me, too.)

 

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Chung: We are going for the latter. We're taking some of our IPs and reviewing whether they would work on console. We want to make sure that we don't just bring these IPs over to PS3, but also make the experience optimized for console gamers.

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I think these two things here are something that most people posting here are missing. For them to port CoX to a PS3 it'd require a rather significant overhaul of the UI and control scheme (damn you SOE for screwing up SWG!). To port Guild Wars however, wouldn't be much tougher than the original Diablo for PSX. Exteel is just begging to be ported over. Lineage, same problems as CoX. Dungeon Runners could possibly be done without too much trouble (been a while since I played it). Tabula Rasa also would possibly be a candidate. Can't remember what other games NC has.

Lineage and CoX, IMO, would be lowest on the porting candidates. Dungeon Runners, Guild Wars and maybe Tabula Rasa would be FAR easier to do considering the UI and control scheme wouldn't be to difficult to make work using ONLY a gamepad.

"And yes, it worries me that people know how many pipelines their graphics cards have and the bus speed of a PCIe-16x, yet don't know how to convert between bordering time zones."

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NCSoft has nothing to do with MUO at all.

Ask over on the Cryptic Studio Forums.

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I heard the pool is closed.

 

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I'm not sure if anyone caught this. I am coming to the thread a little late and didn't read up an ALL of the posts. But I think Phil made a pretty glaring typo in sentence one of his article.

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For a publisher so focused on what many still consider to be a niche genre, NCSoft had a huge year in 2008 .

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<QR>

Good on MMORPG.com for asking about Spacetime Studios and for getting an answer. I'm surprised that NCsoft has 8 unannounced projects and only plan to release 2 or so a year - it seems like a pretty big portfolio for an industry where even getting one game out takes a long, long time.

As for CoH/V on the console: go for it NCsoft. It'd have to be streamlined - I'd go so far as to say no toggles and no endurance, with power recharge time being your barrier to overpowered - but it would work well. Of course, for CoH/V to work on the PS3, it'd have to beat the DC Online MMO to market. It could be done. However, I'd see it more likely that NCsoft would see Guild Wars, Exteel and Dungeon Runners go to the PS3 first before trying to put CoH/V on it.

 

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PS3? meh.

360 is where it's at NC^2.

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I'm yet to hear any developer speak in glowing terms of the Xbox Live architecture. I subscribe to ChaseArcarnum's idea that it doesn't scale well to MMO lvls (until I hear differently, of course).

Don't know about the PS3 online architecture, but it may have been designed with more than FPS deathmatches in mind.

 

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Pax, I'm impressed you got all that on a controller but I don't think it's going to work well for most folks. Reading that reminded me a lot of the older editions of Word Perfect where you use shift-F7 to save and alt-F3 to switch to bold type. It's going to take folks a long time to learn a complex control scheme like that. (And then it's going to take a long time again if they put the game down for a few weeks.) The tutorial had better take things slow and even then it's going to be the hardcore that really like the game.

But on to the next interview....

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...we want to make sure that this is the year that we wrap a lot of that with additional and beneficial services for our customers that will really make it easy to access games and connect with the people that they like to play with.

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<shudder> Sorry, I know this could be a good thing, but it always scares me when I hear it. There's a whole spectrum of gamers that go by how much time they can spend on their games. It ranges from easy to learn party games for the folks that just want to play the game an hour or two a week all the way to deep, complex games for folks that commonly burn 30+ hours a week on their gaming hobby. I'm deep into the hardcore side but I know very well that the lightweight side is easier to make and has far more customers. I'm afraid the big companies are going to dump me for the casuals.

 

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Soo... is there ANY new on the new Marvel Universe Online game?! I can't wait for this to come out...!

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NCSoft has nothing to do with MUO at all.

Ask over on the Crytpic Studio Forums.

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Didn't they close their forums?

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Posted

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Soo... is there ANY new on the new Marvel Universe Online game?! I can't wait for this to come out...!

[/ QUOTE ]

NCSoft has nothing to do with MUO at all.

Ask over on the Crytpic Studio Forums.

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Didn't they close their forums?

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I thought MUO was all but canceled? Might have to look for confirmation on that...

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Posted

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[ QUOTE ]
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Soo... is there ANY new on the new Marvel Universe Online game?! I can't wait for this to come out...!

[/ QUOTE ]

NCSoft has nothing to do with MUO at all.

Ask over on the Crytpic Studio Forums.

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Didn't they close their forums?

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I thought MUO was all but canceled? Might have to look for confirmation on that...

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There is no confirmation* about whats going on with MUO.

*My meaning of confirmation is "public statement from the companies involved" not "vague comments from anonymous sources which may or may not exist", just to clarify. Most gaming "news" sites tend to go with the later.

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Posted

Man, why's everyone so down on a PS3 version of CoH?

I think it's really cool.

 

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Didn't they close their forums?

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I checked the evening (hoping for some Star Trek comment) and indeed they did close them last month.

Apologies and let the rumour mongering at the meaning of this commence


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Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Consoles are the latest fad, [...]

[/ QUOTE ]
If so, then the're a fad with a long, LOOOONG lifespan: to the tune of thirty six years. I mean, Jesus ... I'm only one year older than this supposed "fad" ... and home-computer games are younger than console games ... so if anything is a fad, it's PC gaming.

Arguably, one could cite the Commodore Business MAchines' VIC-20 as the first widely-purchased "hoem computer", as it was the first computer to sell more than one million units. That was in 1981, almost a full decade after the Magnavox Odyssey.

(I still remember my Commodore 64 fondly; I got it for christmas when I was fourteen - that was in 1985, three years after it was first introduced. Cost my mother an arm, a leg, and two months' worth of sleep to afford it for me, too.)

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Perhaps I described it wrong. I meant to break it down to the level that IMHO, console porting is not the way to go. It dumbs things down, the customizing ability, ect compared to PC games.

However i can't wait for MGS4 and have had tons of fun on my consoles from NES to PS3!

It's like the age old idea of ice cream and pizza. Both are wonderful, but pizza flavored ice cream of vice versa is plain nasty!

-C.A.

 

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I currently play the game with a Logitech Rumblepad. It takes a lot of keybinds, macros and tray switching, but I only use the mouse for manipulating inventories and the keyboard for communication. But, hopefully, they would be smart enough to have a keyboard peripheral to be added as a requisite for porting the game to console (but I remember the "fix" to the coinflip emote...).

And I'll join the chorus of "Never a server be merged" as well.


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CoH/CoV on console will make it easier to have a second account... won't have to buy a game compatible computer which would be possibly 3X the cost of a PS3 or a 360. For that reason alone, I'm in.

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Hrm.. *rubs chin* with a console version of CoH I wouldn't have to worry about the dialogue box popping up asking for "wut happened!?" when CoH crashes when I zone into Talos...

 

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Perhaps I described it wrong. I meant to break it down to the level that IMHO, console porting is not the way to go. It dumbs things down, the customizing ability, ect compared to PC games.

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Customisability? Do you mean, of the character/avatar?

IF so, then: only because, prior to the current generation of consoles, it really hasn't been possible to customise elements within a game, the way we can here on CoH. And honestly, I think the possibility was absent not because of any especial hardware limitation (witness: those Tony Hawk skating games, with the OMG-customisable personal avatars. Least I think it was the Tony Hawk series; I don't actually play those). The limiting factor has always been developer attitude.

Heck, that kind of customisability wa largely absent from PC games, before City ofHeroes came along.

...

If you mean customisability of controls ... even there; give me a '360 controller with a messenger kit 47-key keyboard (which attaches directly to the controller), and there is precious little you can do with a PC keyboard-and-mouse in Co*, which I can't emulate near-perfectly with my controller-and-messenger unit.

The main stumbling point is, I think an MMO like CoH, with constant free updates, would have to be a "hard drive required" game, which rather puts the kibosh on 'porting it to 360 (due to Microsoft's policy on that front).

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It's like the age old idea of ice cream and pizza. Both are wonderful, but pizza flavored ice cream of vice versa is plain nasty!


[/ QUOTE ]
One man's vomit inducer is another man's delicacy.

My girlfriend, for example, recently discovered that she likes peanut butter and jelly ... AND CHEESE, all in one sandwich. The very thought makes me want to empty my stomach ... but she loves it. Go figure, right?

 

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The good news: we're not going to be blindsided with this development- ExLibris reported 100% of the current resources are in for the PC Version right now.

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And I am once more compelled to point out the wondrous level of trnsparency this represents; many development houses, or heck, corporations of any sort, would have dodged the question, or outright refused to answer it, on sheer principle. Instead, we got a straight answer, within an hour. How's THAT for having great developers, eh?

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If such developments are to be made, it's being done tomorrow, and maybe released in 1-2 years.

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Another thought occurred to me, after you reminded me of the lead time:

NCSoft is looking at IPs, not actual games, to put on PS3 (and maybe other consoles). So, if City of Heroes is ever translated to PS3 ... it won't be this City of Heroes. It'd either be a PS3-specific version (with it's own servers, and likely it's own forums - to avoid confusion if nothign else) ... or it'd be [u]City of Heroes 2[u], designed as a game that works well on either platform.

Either way, that's good news for us, IMO.

 

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NCSoft is looking at IPs, not actual games, to put on PS3 (and maybe other consoles). So, if City of Heroes is ever translated to PS3 ... it won't be this City of Heroes. It'd either be a PS3-specific version (with it's own servers, and likely it's own forums - to avoid confusion if nothign else) ... or it'd be [u]City of Heroes 2[u], designed as a game that works well on either platform.

Either way, that's good news for us, IMO.

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I believe it won't be City of Heroes 2... it'd be more like a Marvel Ultimate Alliance game where you can actually play the members of the Freedom Phalanx or possibly an Oblivion/KoTOR style RPG.

If it is going to be something for the consoles, I think it's going to be something new, not just an MMO port. They are talking about the IP, meaning the characters, storyline and setting; it leaves them open to build any type of game, hopefully using that game to bring in more subscribers (as in "if you like this game, imagine creating your OWN character in this world and interacting with many others")

Remember Everquest: Champions of Norrath? It wasn't the MMO, but based in the MMO's world. I believe that is what is going to happen; standalone games based in the CoX world, but not the MMO itself.

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Posted

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If it is going to be something for the consoles, I think it's going to be something new, not just an MMO port. They are talking about the IP, meaning the characters, storyline and setting; it leaves them open to build any type of game, hopefully using that game to bring in more subscribers (as in "if you like this game, imagine creating your OWN character in this world and interacting with many others")

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Free Trial to the MMO, and a $5-off coupon for a GVE code from the online store, packaged in with the console game. ^_^

 

Posted

I've always played CoX using a PS2 controller, since I have problems with keyboards (they don't like the bones in my hands).

The reason I never play any other MMO and quit Tabula Rasa after its Beta is cos I couldn't get my controller to work with those titles.

For CoX, my PS2 controller is plug and play - it works instantly. I would never have even begun to play this game without the controller support.

I only use a keyboard for chatting, changing costume and executing the more rare powers on the numpad keys.

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Ugh, CoH on a console. What an abomination.

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Not sure I agree with you on this A_C.
Porting our MMO to PS3? yeah bad call.
NCNC using the resources they already have in place to set up say...
A sandbox style superhero sim/action game along the lines of the Spiderman games, but incorperating the character creator, and the vast array of powers and power set combinations?
Given a decent enemy AI and enough variety in missions... Something like that make all those concolse gamers out there cream thier jeans.

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THANKYOU! Someone else is looking beyond "CoH MMO on the PS3" line everyone else is forcing themselves into.

Why does it have to be an MMO? Think of a single console or linked game multiplayer of a ActionRPG, like Marvel Ultimate Alliance or maybe some RTS!

Think outside of the MMO Box! There's too much out of an MMO that could be done.

Ever played the old SNES game, Spider-Man &amp; Venom: Maximum Carnage? A fairly cool beat-um-up with assist attacks/support powers from other Heroes.

Now, think of that, in 3D, and instead of Spider-Man &amp; Venom, it's a re-creation of Web of Arachnos novel! We'd get to play an adventure game of finding the Well of Furies, avoiding the cops, then becoming Statesman and forming the Freedom Phalanx! Players 2,3,4 could be other members, and those who aren't could be Assist Attacks.

Or like I first mentioned, an RTS that lets us be a Vanguard commander during the Rikti War, commanding squads of human soldiers, single units of Heroes, and having the "Hero Units" being the signiture characters in CoH! If Halo can get Halo Wars, then we could get City of Heroes: Rikti War!

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