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I believe Posi has also said something to the effect of (paraphrased): "the engine is actully quite powerful, and we haven't fully utilized it yet." So there's still room for the game to grow. (That may have been in terms of graphics, come to think of it. Hmm...)
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That was in reference to graphics, and I agree with it. What's largely limiting CoH from looking better than it does now isn't the engine. The engine, optimizations aside, is robust enough for the game to look better than it does.
What's hamstringing them are the art assets. Having to redo all of them to take advantage of new tech dropped in/unlocked from the existing engine is just as, if not more time itensive than redoing them all for a new game.
In fact, it's worse because keeping it in this game, they have to make sure any new assets match up with old ones. You can't have the new stuff look too good. You can see the difference in something as simple as the old hair styles vs the ones that came in i11.
Again, their hands are tied by the garbage of the past 5 years instead of having the freedom to design something truly awesome.
But that's graphics. The AT/Power system being stuck the way it is has little to do with tech and everything to do with legacy issues. They can't even re-order powers without a huge fuss.
We can't run on/climb walls not because the engine couldn't do it, but because they'd have to go into every building/surface model and tag it as being able to be traversed. It's more easy to do that as part of the creation pipeline than redressing everything after the fact.
Power customization is a big deal because the system wasn't designed to support it. If the could start fresh, it wouldn't be a big deal at all.
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On the subject of Going Rogue, I think it's far too early to judge it as a failure. I'd wait until we have a more comprehensive list of features before passing judgement.
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I'm judging it based on the information they've released and on the survey that spawned the expansion. I'm also judging it on the fact they didn't release any new information or material since, or at E3, which betrays a lack of faith to me.
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discarding those people in lieu of a sequel would be a mistake.
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Discarding other people because you wont do what it takes to grow your game and keep it competitive with newer games for those people's attention is also a mistake in my opinion.
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if you want a mostly player run game, go play eve. let us know how that works out.
i've been playing these games since they were called MUD's for almost two decades. to date any game that has tried to 'break the mold' has failed. the only truely classless game that has succeeded has been eve online - and it doesnt succeed because of a lack of classes.
unless the game in question is free to play korean trash balanced around the idea you have to spend real money at an item shop to advance your characters there IS a pretty simple formula these companies must adhere to in order to be profitable. because if they are not profitable, the game doesnt survive. i dont think you'll ever grasp that concept.
there will never be a true comic book hero clone mmorpg unless marvel or dc make it. why? they've already proven they will sue the pants off companies who make available to users power and power combinations that too closely resemble their trademarked characters. and also some just wouldnt conceivably work. lets face it - if you could make a mr. sinister clone and it was done just like the comic books it would be stupidly overpowered. the game would be trivial. interest in trivial games is fleeting. the game wouldnt survive.
the at system exists to encourage grouping and to ensure some semblance of balance when it comes to doing the relatively small amount of group-only content in this game. this is MMORPG 101. i think mmorpg's arent for you. you should go back to or start playing console games.
yes - in order to add something like wall climbing they'd have to redo a lot. the technology didnt exist 5 years ago. but they also have to consider the masses - WoW's ui is pretty primitive and their graphics pretty low-tech compared to this game and it's chief rival LOTRO. but that has the added effect of making the game more accessible to people who cant or wont spend thousands of dollars on pc gaming gear. a total graphical overhaul was easy to do in Eve because so few models actually have textures in that game. it's not the case in most mmorpg's. redoing grandville would prob take a metric butt-ton of man hours due to how texture intensive that one zone is.
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I'm judging it based on the information they've released and on the survey that spawned the expansion. I'm also judging it on the fact they didn't release any new information or material since, or at E3, which betrays a lack of faith to me.
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Then you're simply speculating. Just because they haven't released new information doesn't mean that there isn't any. It's also entirely possible that nothing on the survey (aside from side switching) is part of the new features. We simply do not know.
It's the same problem I have with people saying that CO / DCU will be everything we ever hoped for without playing them. I haven't played either, so they could be the best gaming experience out there. I wouldn't ever make bets on upcoming MMOs being everything they promise without compromise; I've been burned too many times. (I'm looking at you, AoC.)
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Discarding other people because you wont do what it takes to grow your game and keep it competitive with newer games for those people's attention is also a mistake in my opinion.
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It's a gamble - do developers stick with their current loyal fanbase or do they drop them in hopes of getting a new one? Actually, there is another MMO that made that bet: Star Wars Galaxies. I don't think that worked out too well for them. (As a matter of fact, players were downright outraged.)
Are there legacy systems (such as ATs) in the game that won't be going away? Yes. Do new games promise things we may or may not see here? Yes. Are you not happy with that? Obviously. Does that mean the game cannot compete? I don't think so.
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Essentially, it boils down to this: there are lots of things that you point out that I'd love to see, but I understand that if I'm likely to see them,
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What that boils down to is the devs are unwilling to do what it takes to deliver on those things that people want.
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To be more precise, they're unwilling to do what it takes to deliver on those things that [u]some[u] people want that would cost them so much it'd put them out of business within a year. See? I can use formatting, too!
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Then you're simply speculating.
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I prefer to call it an educated guess.
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Just because they haven't released new information doesn't mean that there isn't any.
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No, but as I said before, it strongly suggests a lack of faith to me.
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It's also entirely possible that nothing on the survey (aside from side switching) is part of the new features. We simply do not know.
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I'm pretty damn sure of some things that aren't, and really that's enough to call it as far as I'm concerned.
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Then you're simply speculating.
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I prefer to call it an educated guess.
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Just because they haven't released new information doesn't mean that there isn't any.
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No, but as I said before, it strongly suggests a lack of faith to me.
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It's also entirely possible that nothing on the survey (aside from side switching) is part of the new features. We simply do not know.
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I'm pretty damn sure of some things that aren't, and really that's enough to call it as far as I'm concerned.
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if you dislike this game so much, why do you continue to maintain a paid subscription? just so you can post?
Essentially my last word on this topic (unless someone really incites me, but I've got better things to do today): there are a lot of things that should have been possible to do with CoX that the devs have said "no" to. A few of those things have eventually become features, some never will.
In my personal opinion (though not entirely substantiated, but highly likely), if the game had been designed with massive modular expansion in mind from the beginning, we'd be looking at a lot more possibilities. But it wasn't--it was designed to get specific things done for a specific release now five years past (where they had begun design and development up to four years prior to that). When a team of programmers, especially in a new field (as MMOs still were at that time), are working on something as diverse and unpredictable as an MMO, they take shortcuts and close off modularity for the sake of simplicity and performance--very understandable for anyone who knows anything about developing large programs that can often easily hit their performance caps. It takes a very large amount of forward thinking, as well as a very large time investment for testing cases where high modularity can actually mess things up. Unfortunately, once a product is released to the public, it becomes exponentially more difficult to add that modularity back in.
Add in the fact that since two requisite factors for MMOs that single-player games don't worry about are 1) running essential services with 2) high up-times just so players can play, and MMO systems are often very static when it comes to many aspects of their core gameplay.
Also, Cryptic was a small developer at the time of CoH's inception. CoH was their first product. In such a situation, it's very hard to realistically expect a massively modular and expandable game to have been developed by them: first products by un-established developers are usually designed to, well, establish themselves, get further funding so that they can then create better games. It is very rare indeed for a new development team, especially one without the industry pedigrees that are more often available now (as there weren't many places people could get experience developing for MMOs then) to plan so far ahead to allow the kind of expansion necessary to make these kinds of sweeping changes and additions easy. It was near impossible for Cryptic back then (there having been less MMOs on the market than I have fingers on one hand), and though it'd have been nice if they did, expecting that would be foolish.
Finally, I tip my hat (if I were a hat-wearing person) to the dev team of the past two years or so for having made as many excellent additions as they have. It's not easy to do these things, considering what they've had to work with was a stagnant (the initial programming team was long gone), poorly documented (shown by how taunt mechanics had to be largely rediscovered by the current devs), middle-budget (i.e. SOE or Blizzard does not have this excuse), MMO (see two paragraphs above).
The accomplishments of the devs that took stewardship of this game are extremely laudable if you understand the history of this game's development. Of course, I'd be foolish if I thought many players understood, or even cared, about this game's development history. But not understanding or not caring about history isn't license to ignore it, it's simply license to be wrong.
I think I can agree with all of that. Well said.
/thread
someone has it figured out.
Sarrate: Your chart is inaccurate. EQ reached over 500,000 in 2001, and as far as I know (meaning I've never heard of a press release to the contrary) FFXI never surpassed EQ's prime. Also, with regards to EQ vs. EQ2, you do realize you're talking about MMOs that are either over or just under a decade in existence?
Since EQ2 has been the only MMO sequel to another MMO, I can see why you would judge sequels as being "bad" however keep in mind that an MMO should be judged on its own merits rather than on what the next one has done. EQ2 "failed" to exceed EQ for a number of reasons which are too numerous and not salient to the point at hand, but one of those reason was *not* because it was a sequel.
CoH (and any MMO) that stands the test of time, needs to continually update. At some point, it needs to be rewritten. From a business model perspective it makes more financial sense to do this as a new release.
Incidentally if CoH2 were ever made, allowing existing characters from CoH to be imported into the new game would excise much of the debate of split populations, not to mention guarantee your new release a solid player base at release. Something I think EQ2 should have done has the game been approached differently.
*EDIT* I forgot to include Asheron's Call 2 as another MMO sequel, but again it failed due to being a bad game, rather than being a sequel.
Also, generally speaking, an MMO (whether it be a sequeal or not) will generally have its own dev team, rather than drawing from current resources. While *some* resources may be shared, this is usually on the concept level (the "vision") rather then on the dev level. Verant/Sony produced three expansions for EQ in the time they were developing EQ2 for instance.
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Sarrate: Your chart is inaccurate. EQ reached over 500,000 in 2001, and as far as I know (meaning I've never heard of a press release to the contrary) FFXI never surpassed EQ's prime. Also, with regards to EQ vs. EQ2, you do realize you're talking about MMOs that are either over or just under a decade in existence?
Since EQ2 has been the only MMO sequel to another MMO, I can see why you would judge sequels as being "bad" however keep in mind that an MMO should be judged on its own merits rather than on what the next one has done. EQ2 "failed" to exceed EQ for a number of reasons which are too numerous and not salient to the point at hand, but one of those reason was *not* because it was a sequel.
CoH (and any MMO) that stands the test of time, needs to continually update. At some point, it needs to be rewritten. From a business model perspective it makes more financial sense to do this as a new release.
Incidentally if CoH2 were ever made, allowing existing characters from CoH to be imported into the new game would excise much of the debate of split populations, not to mention guarantee your new release a solid player base at release. Something I think EQ2 should have done has the game been approached differently.
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some of the reasons that made everquest2 fail (a bad launch WILL doom an mmorpg) were:
1) forced grouping for everything. at the time it launched mmorpg's were moving from niche to more mainstream, and soloing was preferred. they were behind the times.
2) graphics - MOST mmorpg'ers machines couldnt handle the game. it's still to this day a resource hog graphically. oddly, isnt that what the whiner wants coh to do? drastic graphical update?
those two facts kept people away for the first year and a half. it's a good game now, but if an mmorpg doesnt start out the gate good people generally wont give it a second look.
Not precisely accurate. EQ2 didn't fail in its own right as it was financially successful (second largest release and sustained subscription base according to Sony).
It did fail to overcome EQ's success but not for the first reason (all MMOs at that point were group based as most are today) and minorly for the second reason.
Server and network instability was a larger reason for its failure to keep a substantially higher percentage of its release crowd, as well as poorly designed crafting systems and to a lesser extent, content. There are also various other reasons but they get pretty granular and are more subject to interpretation.
People will upgrade their rigs for a great game generally speaking.
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Sarrate: Your chart is inaccurate. EQ reached over 500,000 in 2001, and as far as I know (meaning I've never heard of a press release to the contrary) FFXI never surpassed EQ's prime. Also, with regards to EQ vs. EQ2, you do realize you're talking about MMOs that are either over or just under a decade in existence?
Since EQ2 has been the only MMO sequel to another MMO, I can see why you would judge sequels as being "bad" however keep in mind that an MMO should be judged on its own merits rather than on what the next one has done. EQ2 "failed" to exceed EQ for a number of reasons which are too numerous and not salient to the point at hand, but one of those reason was *not* because it was a sequel.
CoH (and any MMO) that stands the test of time, needs to continually update. At some point, it needs to be rewritten. From a business model perspective it makes more financial sense to do this as a new release.
Incidentally if CoH2 were ever made, allowing existing characters from CoH to be imported into the new game would excise much of the debate of split populations, not to mention guarantee your new release a solid player base at release. Something I think EQ2 should have done has the game been approached differently.
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some of the reasons that made everquest2 fail (a bad launch WILL doom an mmorpg) were:
1) forced grouping for everything. at the time it launched mmorpg's were moving from niche to more mainstream, and soloing was preferred. they were behind the times.
2) graphics - MOST mmorpg'ers machines couldnt handle the game. it's still to this day a resource hog graphically. oddly, isnt that what the whiner wants coh to do? drastic graphical update?
those two facts kept people away for the first year and a half. it's a good game now, but if an mmorpg doesnt start out the gate good people generally wont give it a second look.
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I disagree, as a EQ2 release player. Grouping was encouraged, but soloing was possible. I had no problem soloing on melees, casters, or tanks. I also remember them making group mobs tougher after launch. Now they did make it easier to solo, but it was still solo friendly to begin with.
Graphics wise you have a point, though I didn't find them that high, others did. Though it was not as bad as people say, I found CoX to be harder on my graphics card then EQ2 was.
I would say the bad start hurt it worst then your 2 points. EQ2 on release was the most laggy game I have played. It was almost impossible to travel Qeynos, and outside while better still could freeze for a minute. Then there was it's competition, WoW did most things EQ2 did better.
Dirges
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As for you, Talen, I think I've shown already that I'm capable of forming ideas. I'm not going to dignify your comments with any further response.
[/ QUOTE ]After all, if you had to respond to criticism, you'd have to acknowledge how empty your statements are and paranoid your worldview is.
I'm happy to reply to criticism. I'm not going to reply to baseless insults and ludicrous personal attacks.
You claim "X is easy," and when called to explain how you know that, you say it's easy because "you have an imagination."
Your imagination is not proof. You can't prove that your ideas are easy to implement, and there's evidence that they are, in fact, not.
Hi:
The concept of tankers not having ranged attacks, has to do with the game's initial concept.
The initial concept was tankers had little offense all together, no range and the melee was supposed to be mediocre; but, they could really take a pounding!
Because of this concept, the Blaster, Defender and Controller wer given less base hit points, no status effect resistances, mediocre armor at best, and also mediocre defense if any. But this was a compromise, tankers needed armor to go melee, and others (now humbled to be refered as support) have range to make up for their built in weaknesses.
as the game evolved, tanker damage has noticeably increased, and also the availability of ranged attacks also gained. Super Strength for instance has "Hurl" as an attack, and is in fact now a very effective and devastating range attack. By the time you get to your epic powers, Tankers can gain more ranged attcks, for instance my Brute chose the energy package, which gives her a lightning bolt, and a Lightning ball which is a range AOE attack to boost. Just as my Brute plainly now has 3 ranged attacks, which recycles around quickly enough to be able to do consistent ranged attacks, you can thru vet rewards gain one more rangd attack as well for a total of 4 ranged attacks, not bad in my opinion. All that armor, defense, status effects and 4 very good ranged attacks, is nothing to sneer at.
Hugs
Stormy
Ps: Since tankers have effective ranged attacks now, should not blasters, defenders and controllers have the opportunity to have decent armor, defense, and status effect resistances too? it should also be true for red side... Giggles
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Ps: Since tankers have effective ranged attacks now, should not blasters, defenders and controllers have the opportunity to have decent armor, defense, and status effect resistances too? it should also be true for red side... Giggles
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Sigh...okay, let's do this again.
Tanker ranged attacks have not changed much since issue 1. That's when the Ancillary Pools were released, giving Tankers the ability to do ranged damage and control, the thing that they were lacking.
At the same time, the 'squishy' ATs were given armors, in the same place that Tankers could grab ranged damage.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
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You claim "X is easy," and when called to explain how you know that, you say it's easy because "you have an imagination."
Your imagination is not proof. You can't prove that your ideas are easy to implement, and there's evidence that they are, in fact, not.
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I never said "X is easy." I said there are things that could easily be done, and I stand by that. Doubtless there are things that would NOT be easy. None of us here are in possession of the information to say what would be easy and what would be difficult.
However, it's not a stretch to think that porting a power that's already in the game into another set would not be terribly difficult. There would be no need for new art, animations or what have you.
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You claim "X is easy," and when called to explain how you know that, you say it's easy because "you have an imagination."
Your imagination is not proof. You can't prove that your ideas are easy to implement, and there's evidence that they are, in fact, not.
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I never said "X is easy." I said there are things that could easily be done, and I stand by that. Doubtless there are things that would NOT be easy. None of us here are in possession of the information to say what would be easy and what would be difficult.
However, it's not a stretch to think that porting a power that's already in the game into another set would not be terribly difficult. There would be no need for new art, animations or what have you.
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Granted. The balance issues associated with that, however...
And no, I'm not just talking about damage scales. I am talking about the potentially HUGE survivability boost that this could give Tankers, and the ability of the Tanker to keep enemies at range with absolutely no return fire, at no cost to the AT.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
Yah, I didn't think it would be a big issue, what with the damage output being reduced as well (since ranged attacks do less than melee attacks), but I'm prepared to allow that it might be an issue. That's really why I liked the idea of adding Energy Blast to Energy Melee. It's just one attack, after all.
As noted, though, most melee sets don't have a ranged attack! Maybe this is something that should be added to all melee sets? At least ONE ranged attack?
Why?
What is to say that some of the things people are whining for. Game Engine overhauls and what not aren't what these new "r-type" programmers aren't doing among things like discovering more limits to the graphics engine????
Until we get confirmation from a Dev one way or the other who can say what is going on inside the studios.
Why not? Some sets have ranged attacks, so giving all the sets one would balance them out in that regard. Plus, it would fill a hole in the power sets that really doesn't need to be there.
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Then I would suggest you try an energy/energy blaster. Iron Man tends to let his repulsors do most of his talking anyway.
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You have figured my -main- out!!!!
ArchRex Dojhrom x ?
* Sidus Loricatus: B-NRG2, S-BS/Reg, T-Fire/Ice, MM-Bots/FF, St-NRG2, Dom-Psi/NRG, Cor-Son/Traps, Cor-Ice/Kin, Ctrl-Fire/Kin, PB-LB/LA
* Arachnos Loricatus: Soldier, Widow
* Praetoria Loricatus: B-DP/Dev, Cor-Elec/Elec
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MMOs are extremely susceptible to the law of unintended consequences. Very little is "easy" to do, and the stuff that is could lead to a lot of not easy work later on.
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Alas, this is very true.
As for you, Talen, I think I've shown already that I'm capable of forming ideas. I'm not going to dignify your comments with any further response.