Who were some of the original designers?

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I wonder where this game would've gone and how it would've evolved if Dakan had stayed on board. Would ED have happened? Would balancing issues have been sorted out?

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I recently listened to a (very amateur) interview with him about his Geek Mafia books, and the interviewer had a City of Heroes related segment. Rick made a comment that he found it "interesting" that Cryptic was going with a classless system for CO, as he'd originally wanted for CoH. He said "interesting" in a "and they told me that wouldn't work" tone of voice.

So-- Rick wanted a system radically different from what was here at release. We don't know exactly who wanted it to change-- Jack? Michael Lewis? Richard Garriott (who Jack quoted a few times after he took over as lead designer) or someone else at NCSoft? Would Rick have continued to fight the idea as a lead designer? ED was far out enough that asking the question might be totally irrelevant, because the system could have been radically different at release. It's also possible that it would have ended up the same way, and that ED would still have been done.

My questions are more related to story and lore, and later developments: If Rick had stayed as lead designer or even as lead writer, would the Council have taken over the 5th Column? Would Arachnos exist? Assuming he remained lead designer, would there have been a City of Villains (he was on record saying the idea of a separate city filled with villains was silly), or would they have existed in Paragon? Or would there have been player villains at all?

Regardless, I want it to be known that I've been happy with the general direction of CoH since about Issue 8. I've had some complaints, sure, but I'm really happy with the state of the game and hints of things to come. I just feel sad that the guy who came up with the very idea of this game we love so much, and put ~5 years worth of work into it, almost never gets any credit for it.

---

Please try my custom mission arcs!
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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

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I recently listened to a (very amateur) interview with him about his Geek Mafia books, and the interviewer had a City of Heroes related segment. Rick made a comment that he found it "interesting" that Cryptic was going with a classless system for CO, as he'd originally wanted for CoH. He said "interesting" in a "and they told me that wouldn't work" tone of voice.

So-- Rick wanted a system radically different from what was here at release. We don't know exactly who wanted it to change-- Jack? Michael Lewis? Richard Garriott (who Jack quoted a few times after he took over as lead designer) or someone else at NCSoft? Would Rick have continued to fight the idea as a lead designer? ED was far out enough that asking the question might be totally irrelevant, because the system could have been radically different at release. It's also possible that it would have ended up the same way, and that ED would still have been done.

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I think the classless system was way out of Cryptic's ability to implement during CoH. The devs have struggled, more or less since closed beta, to balance how powers interact with each other in a relatively closed power system. An open power system ... with the original devs ... and, yeah, I can see why CoH's development was in trouble.

IH, Stamina, and Quick Recovery? Together? Who'd ha' thunk!

I think Dakan's got some frustrations over how things went down, but, IIRC, he still came to back to write for Cryptic.

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That is the only way I know how long I've been working on this game...because of playing Issue 7 in a hotel room in Wyoming.

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Oh yes, Wyoming!

Starts at about 4:25

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"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.

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I recently listened to a (very amateur) interview with him about his Geek Mafia books, and the interviewer had a City of Heroes related segment. Rick made a comment that he found it "interesting" that Cryptic was going with a classless system for CO, as he'd originally wanted for CoH. He said "interesting" in a "and they told me that wouldn't work" tone of voice.

So-- Rick wanted a system radically different from what was here at release. We don't know exactly who wanted it to change-- Jack? Michael Lewis? Richard Garriott (who Jack quoted a few times after he took over as lead designer) or someone else at NCSoft? Would Rick have continued to fight the idea as a lead designer? ED was far out enough that asking the question might be totally irrelevant, because the system could have been radically different at release. It's also possible that it would have ended up the same way, and that ED would still have been done.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think the classless system was way out of Cryptic's ability to implement during CoH. The devs have struggled, more or less since closed beta, to balance how powers interact with each other in a relatively closed power system. An open power system ... with the original devs ... and, yeah, I can see why CoH's development was in trouble.

IH, Stamina, and Quick Recovery? Together? Who'd ha' thunk!

I think Dakan's got some frustrations over how things went down, but, IIRC, he still came to back to write for Cryptic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually that's the way it was originally gonna go. The first powers system is VERY similar to how CO is set up. I recall the reason they revamped it into the system we have is because they (Jack & co.) wanted to go with a more casual approach. It's also the reason why there were absolutely no numbers given out for powers. The belief was simpler = better. There are a number of video snippets out there on the interwebs (some on the CoX ftp site!) that show a very early version of the game, including the character creator, and how at one time you were able to pick any powers you wanted from a long list. Oh, and it's interesting to see Plant Control, Sonics, and a few other gems on that list, considering they weren't actually implemented into the game till many *years* later.

The game was very different back then, and the balance between powers was actually a lot better than it is today (for many of the original sets that is). There are a lot of powers that now, due to ED and GDN, simply aren't very useful, but originally were. Castle is slowly but surely working through them one at a time (MoG being a very good example) to bring them more up to date with how the game currently works.

And the reason we all believe Jack was the mastermind behind the game is because *HE* has repeatedly said so. Sorta like how Stan Lee takes all the credit for creating Marvel Comics when we all know it was Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko who did 90% of the work.

PS -- Today is my 5 year anniversary! Yay!!!

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After seeing this quote from Back Alley Brawler it made me think:

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The infamous knockout blow animation wasn't even something that I animated, so I have no attachment to it and don't feel any need to defend it's quality. I happen to like it, I know plenty of others do as well, and I know a great deal of people who don't.

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So if I recall correctly:

Geko = Original powers guy before Castle, or did Castle exist with him back then too?

Statesman = Original lead designer, passed mantle to Positron.

Original powers animator guy = ???

Gilgamesh = ??? Was he just NC Soft or a designer?

[/ QUOTE ]


You also have

Lord Recluse = David "Zeb" Cooke who was lead designer for City of Villains when it was released. He's also the guy who designed Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

Captain Mako = "Savage" Shane Hensley who was the lead writer for CoV. He's also the guy in charge of Pinnacle Entertainment Group (aka Great White Games) which released such infamous PnP titles as Deadlands and Savage Worlds. He's allegedly working on a Deadlands MMO as studio head of "Superstition Studios". This is part of the financially turbulent Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment group of studios, which if it has the luck of previous attempts to bring Deadlands to the electronic age will die on the vine but not before threatening to actually launch and be really cool.

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If the post still exists, Castle mentioned that he came in around I6 when talking about the changes to Energy Melee. BABs' start date was said by the man himself during a conversation in the Beta Testers global channel during the I15 beta.

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I was in the process of moving to Cali to start working at Cryptic on CoH/CoV when my car's engine exploded in Wyoming. I spent about 4 or 5 days in a hotel room playing Issue 7, which had just been released.

That is the only way I know how long I've been working on this game...because of playing Issue 7 in a hotel room in Wyoming.

I've played the game since roughly 2 weeks after launch.

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They had internet in Wyoming way back then?

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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

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I think the quote says it all.



.

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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

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Considering it was their first MMO, the wide number of powers and animations they made available at game start was pretty amazing. Sure, lots of broken stuff, but it's still an amazing accomplishment.

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Lewis, a longtime player of videogames and Dungeons and Dragons, the forerunner paper-and-pen role-playing game, graduated with a degree in computer systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1993. Soon after he founded his graphics-chip company, Stellar Semiconductor, which was acquired by Broadcom in late 1999 for $60 million in stock but had run up to $168 million by the time the deal closed in March 2000, just as the Internet bubble burst.

Lewis walked away with $17 million and began working on his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at UCLA. But before he left Broadcom, he had gotten a pitch from a childhood gaming friend, Richard Dakan, who asked him to fund an online game about heroes. By chance Lewis also met a former engineer from videogame maker Atari, Bruce Rogers, who was developing a new graphics engine and was working on a game of his own. Lewis brought the two men together.

"The idea was to have enough capital to self-publish it or sell it on good terms" to a big publisher, says Lewis. He held a board seat and attended UCLA while the other guys got to work.

from

http://www.forbes.com/business/free_.../1004/100.html

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It does seem that dakan was a polarizing figure, a guy who had amazing ideas but, as referenced in the forbes article, just didnt have a clue how to get them to work. That kind of moves the ball back to jack making the game we actually got to play, with rick setting down the ideas and characters.

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[ QUOTE ]

I recently listened to a (very amateur) interview with him about his Geek Mafia books, and the interviewer had a City of Heroes related segment. Rick made a comment that he found it "interesting" that Cryptic was going with a classless system for CO, as he'd originally wanted for CoH. He said "interesting" in a "and they told me that wouldn't work" tone of voice.

So-- Rick wanted a system radically different from what was here at release. We don't know exactly who wanted it to change-- Jack? Michael Lewis? Richard Garriott (who Jack quoted a few times after he took over as lead designer) or someone else at NCSoft? Would Rick have continued to fight the idea as a lead designer?

[/ QUOTE ]

From my recollection of Jack's and Gaffer's postings in the early days and on the beta boards, it was NCSoft execs who pushed for the standard MMO archetypes of "tank", "healer", etc. Gaffer was Jeremy Gaffney, the NCSoft executive producer for CoH. Gaffney previously worked on Asheron's Call from developer Turbine.

Cryptic changed the design plan from the "open" system to the "archetype" system in the winter of 2002 (iirc). That was when they went "silent" on the web site. Anyone else been around long enough to remember this? That was supposedly not long after Jack was made lead instead of Dakan.

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My questions are more related to story and lore, and later developments: If Rick had stayed as lead designer or even as lead writer, would the Council have taken over the 5th Column? Would Arachnos exist? Assuming he remained lead designer, would there have been a City of Villains (he was on record saying the idea of a separate city filled with villains was silly), or would they have existed in Paragon? Or would there have been player villains at all?


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It's my understanding that Dakan remained a story consultant long after release. I don't know how much input he had on thing like the 5th vs. the Council.

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Yes. Rick Dakan is the "father" of City of Heroes. It was his idea, not Jack's, as so many people seem to think. Rick created Nemesis, the Rikti, the 5th Column, and who knows how much else. He was a writer for the game at least through Issue 2 (he claims to have had some writing involvement with the Shadow Shard, I don't know how much). There was a much more detailed article on warcry.com from just before Issue 3's release, but it seems to have been removed.

[/ QUOTE ]I think Jack gets credit because game media sucks and doesn't do any research or doesn't care. Everyone interviewed and chatted with Rick during the early days of development, but once they brought Jack in as Lead Designer suddenly it was Jack's creation. Most people interviewing Jack probably didn't interview Dakan or really know anything about previous developer interviews.

Then players read all that and don't know any better and ultimately you end up with Rick Dakan basically being entirely unknown except and virtually uncredited ("Special Thanks" in the manual, but game development credits are incredibly sketchy generally) with a few exceptions while Jack gets to tromp around Cryptic Studios as the father of City of Heroes.

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Wow, I've been playing the game and reading the forums for years and had no idea who Rick Dakan was or his involvement with the game. I really believed it was Jack's brainchild.

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I was under this exact same impression. 60 month veteran and I just learned something new...

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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

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I think the quote says it all.



.

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Get tired of carrying that grudge yet?

---

Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.

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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

[/ QUOTE ]


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That seems to get quoted a lot, but I think people are missing the point. They got everything ready, functioning and actually playable for the release of an MMO, in a time when it was customary for MMOs to be shunted off to Live in a stage only tangentally better than early Beta. When City of Heroes launched, one of the key points people kept praising the game for was the fact that it launched without any showstopping bugs and with pretty high quality. The game worked!

To me, the mere fact that they actually got all powers animated and working really is doing things quickly and well. It may not have been a perfect setup, but it worked.

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
After seeing this quote from Back Alley Brawler it made me think:

[ QUOTE ]
The infamous knockout blow animation wasn't even something that I animated, so I have no attachment to it and don't feel any need to defend it's quality. I happen to like it, I know plenty of others do as well, and I know a great deal of people who don't.

[/ QUOTE ]

So if I recall correctly:

Geko = Original powers guy before Castle, or did Castle exist with him back then too?

Statesman = Original lead designer, passed mantle to Positron.

Original powers animator guy = ???

Gilgamesh = ??? Was he just NC Soft or a designer?

[/ QUOTE ]


You also have

Lord Recluse = David "Zeb" Cooke who was lead designer for City of Villains when it was released. He's also the guy who designed Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

Captain Mako = "Savage" Shane Hensley who was the lead writer for CoV. He's also the guy in charge of Pinnacle Entertainment Group (aka Great White Games) which released such infamous PnP titles as Deadlands and Savage Worlds. He's allegedly working on a Deadlands MMO as studio head of "Superstition Studios". This is part of the financially turbulent Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment group of studios, which if it has the luck of previous attempts to bring Deadlands to the electronic age will die on the vine but not before threatening to actually launch and be really cool.

[/ QUOTE ]

Another Deadlands connection is this book I found a little while ago.

Deadlands Back East

NC Soft better have some saboteurs over at Cheyenne Mountain because a Deadlands MMO is the only thing that will ever compete with CoH for me.

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<QR>

Zombie_Man has a list of these somewhere. Long, long ago I was contacted by someone using the handle Osprey who said they worked for Cryptic and liked the Beholder.

As for Rick Dakan, here's the interview I did with him long ago:

Part 1

Part 2

It's an interesting look back - Part 1 is more CoH focussed.

---

Thanks, UnSub. Google keeps giving me addresses that don't work.

---

Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)

Devs:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...mp;output=html

---

Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides

[ QUOTE ]
Devs:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...mp;output=html

[/ QUOTE ]

I remember Aura... she used to zap all the folks who ripped off various comic book heroes back in the day. Used to be funny running through Galaxy City (when rebuilding a toon), spotting an over-the-top obvious copyright infringement... only to see the toon slowly fade away from the world without a quit counter. My cousin and I used to emote something along the lines of "Aura got ya!" And, then, ran very fast in the opposite direction (well, as fast as the run powers would let us).

---

Explorer: 93%. Achiever: 40%. Socializer: 40%. Killer 33%.
Current Heroes and Villains (altitis holding at 50 currents)
To all the devs, past, present, (and may there be) future: /salute
To NCSoft: Understand that you reap what you plant, and you cannot gain what you throw away.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

[/ QUOTE ]


[/ QUOTE ]

That seems to get quoted a lot, but I think people are missing the point. They got everything ready, functioning and actually playable for the release of an MMO, in a time when it was customary for MMOs to be shunted off to Live in a stage only tangentally better than early Beta. When City of Heroes launched, one of the key points people kept praising the game for was the fact that it launched without any showstopping bugs and with pretty high quality. The game worked!

To me, the mere fact that they actually got all powers animated and working really is doing things quickly and well. It may not have been a perfect setup, but it worked.

[/ QUOTE ]

On the other hand, I think what Starsman was commenting on was that the powers system worked, but it really couldn't be said to work well. I think we've forgotten how broken the powers system was at launch, but as an example of how broken things were remember it was possible then to have 100% resistance. Sure all the powers worked. But you really couldn't say that this game launched with a powers system that was sensible.

---

The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

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I think we've forgotten how broken the powers system was at launch.....

[/ QUOTE ]

Not me.

The first character I ever made was an MA/SR scrapper.


>:E

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

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Sure all the powers worked. But you really couldn't say that this game launched with a powers system that was sensible.

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At the same time all of the testers worked darn hard on working out those combos. I remember when a fellow proved to the devs that a phase-shifted fire tank was unbalanced (fire aura was hitting, mobs couldn't hit him, he could just meander around and rake in xp). Simply put, by going through the powersets (once they were in), there were a *lot* of combos that had to be changed, challenged, and tested. I still look back and consider that to be an incredible accomplishment to get those powersets to a (relatively) unbugged state.

---

Explorer: 93%. Achiever: 40%. Socializer: 40%. Killer 33%.
Current Heroes and Villains (altitis holding at 50 currents)
To all the devs, past, present, (and may there be) future: /salute
To NCSoft: Understand that you reap what you plant, and you cannot gain what you throw away.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think we've forgotten how broken the powers system was at launch.....

[/ QUOTE ]

Not me.

The first character I ever made was an MA/SR scrapper.


>:E

[/ QUOTE ]

I still have one, level eight or so, that I haven't touched since then. 1835ish days since I last loaded her...

---

Explorer: 93%. Achiever: 40%. Socializer: 40%. Killer 33%.
Current Heroes and Villains (altitis holding at 50 currents)
To all the devs, past, present, (and may there be) future: /salute
To NCSoft: Understand that you reap what you plant, and you cannot gain what you throw away.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

[/ QUOTE ]


[/ QUOTE ]

That seems to get quoted a lot, but I think people are missing the point. They got everything ready, functioning and actually playable for the release of an MMO, in a time when it was customary for MMOs to be shunted off to Live in a stage only tangentally better than early Beta. When City of Heroes launched, one of the key points people kept praising the game for was the fact that it launched without any showstopping bugs and with pretty high quality. The game worked!

To me, the mere fact that they actually got all powers animated and working really is doing things quickly and well. It may not have been a perfect setup, but it worked.

[/ QUOTE ]

On the other hand, I think what Starsman was commenting on was that the powers system worked, but it really couldn't be said to work well. I think we've forgotten how broken the powers system was at launch, but as an example of how broken things were remember it was possible then to have 100% resistance. Sure all the powers worked. But you really couldn't say that this game launched with a powers system that was sensible.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the key words here though are "as they did". I think Castle is really saying something more like, "given the short amount of time and small amount of people they had, I'm surprised the powers system wasn't far worse, or unfinished (functionally, not just balance-wise)."

---

Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)