'Who is Jack?'

Or just add more costume pieces.

Y'know, that's what this game needs; more basic costume pieces, LOTS more.

I think the hate for Jack is a bit overblown.

There were issues with his vision... He seemed to have the idea that the game should be similar to EverQuest and DAoC and all the other MMOs out there, in that fighting even level mobs should be something that could only be done one at a time, and teams should be single pulling for fear of their lives...

And that... Just doesn't work in a Superhero game. That doesn't make you feel super in the slightest.

But... He stuck to his guns, and you should respect him for that. I mean, I'm glad he "lost", in the end, and the game is what it is now and not what he wanted to make it. But at the end of the day, it is their game, and we're just playing in it. Devs shouldn't just give the players what they want. They should make the game they want to make and let the players decide if it's something they like or not. Nothing great is ever created by committee, there's always a single vision behind greatness.

So yeah, I think designers should stick to their guns and not give in to player whining. And he did that. If he'd had his way with the game I wouldn't be playing it (And I actually left it for a very long time while he was at the helm), but I'd still respect him for not caving, even if I happened to disagree with his idea of what's fun.

On the plus side, if what I've played of the CO beta is anything to judge by (And mind you, I haven't played it in a while now, so it might have changed) then he's come to his senses about letting players be powerful. But, who's to say.

I don't hate Jack, but I carried a lot of mistrust for what he said in public after a series of public statements that were kinda spun.

I also think that people missed the point of what he was trying to say about the Gameboy (or whatever) boss fight he talked about, but it's not worth arguing out - I think a big part of why people missed the point is because of the way he made said point.

I also think it's hard to talk about this without people automatically assuming everyone is LOVE or HATE. I know it certainly was on the CO forum last year.

The problem is, you build a game that way, but there's no way people are going to group up to fight even minions. They're going to go after bigger game, and end up having to single pull.

Trying to fight that is silly... It's best to just build the game with that in mind.

Okay, return aside now, as someone throughout the years who has gotten a bad rap as a Jack supporter:

I agree with all of the negative sentiments.

Yes, it's hard to conceive of a time where it's Taser pitted against Jack in a cage match of nerd rage. But since I've been on "vacation," I've watched the dev digest and new issue release notes as every single thing that Statesman said couldn't be done... is done. It might not have been easy to add power customization, for example, but under Positron we at least had the hope for years that it could come. With Statesman it was always a firm "Can't Be Done."

And that's not even taking into consideration inventions, flashback, and architect.

I remember when new issues would hit on test and there'd be a sense of dread looking at the patch notes; which nerf that probably didn't need to happen will I have to fight with forum ranters with today (a mentality that I thankfully have left back in 2007). Compare that to checking out the issue 16 patch notes which are a sheet cake made out of victory and talking owls. No major game nerf, the addition of customization which has been asked for since day one, changes in a few dozen badges a lot of us never expected to get but now have a shot, and quality of life changes no one ever even considered but will drastically change the way the game is played for the better.

Us early adopters had it rough sometimes. It's good to see such a drastic shift towards giving the players as much of what they ask for as possible instead of saying "Nope, Engine Can't Handle It."

Taser, do you remember the "power customization would be bad because of PVP" explanation?

Yeah, was that a pack of lies that Jack came up with or did I...

I honestly can't remember anymore.

That and "We can't let you do old missions because we want them to be unique events in your character's life."

Under Jack, I seemed forced by some cosmic shame to make excuses and fight with knives to hold this game back.

Unlike Jack, I'm willing to apologize for most of the big fights I threw down that turned out to be absolutely meaningless by the great job NCNC have done in the past two years.

Okay, I'm just going to list Jack's good and bad points, and I'll try to keep my seething hatred for him and all his works under control.

Good:

-He did develop and refine a lot of the stuff that makes Co* what it is today, a lot of basic stuff at the core of the game.

-Everyone may have hated ED at first, but it's actually turned out to be okay, and I guess it's not bad.


Neutral:

-The Global Defense Nerf and the Control/AoE nerf. The GDN was going way too far (as evidenced by the fact that many of its changes were partially rolled back in later issues to be less extreme), and the Control/AoE nerf sucked all the fun out of being a Gravity Controller (unlike other controllers, all Gravs had going for them was Gravity Distortion Field, though I guess they get a lot more benefit out of Containment...). Okay, I'll call this one even.


Bad:

-All the broken promises. This ground has been covered already.

-He really, really hated regen. Yeah, it was overpowered, but he nerfed it until it was barely better than SR (this was before SR got buffed).

-In retrospect, all of his "can't be done" talk sounds more like "I don't feel like allocating the resources that I think would be better spent nerfing you some more," considering that all the things he said can't be done have been done.

-The plane speech (I think he was talking about playing the GBA installment of Castlevania, but that was just my inference). It wasn't just the idea he expressed (which I didn't agree with, I think it should be 1 player=1 boss), it was how condescending he was. It gave me a really good idea as to what sort of person he is. He probably rationalized our dislike of his changes as a lack of understanding about his "art," and thought that if he talked to us as though we were five years old, we might finally get it through our thick skulls. He couldn't conceive that we might actually have a thought-out, rational reason for not liking his changes, that wasn't possible. He was Jack Emmert, perfection incarnate. And an ego like that isn't fit to run an MMO.


In all honesty, it's not that I hate Jack, it's that I don't respect him. He seems like the sort of person who wouldn't understand what you're getting at if you told him you disagreed with him. He just doesn't comprehend anyone else's wishes but his own. If anything, I feel bad for him, because he's in the worst possible business for a guy like him. Even as a single-player game designer, I think Jack would do better. But for MMOs, you need to know when to listen to feedback.

Not bad, Manofmanychars,

-but go back and look at his broken "promises." Many of them were qualified... or were what was being considered. Even then, one of the things with being in his position, is the things that he's thinking about TODAY are concepts being put on paper that'll change dramatically down the line. That's a tough thing to foresee, and reason for many "broken promises." And contrary to popular fiction, he's been one to admit faults:

I don't think he's a liar so much as I think he's an egomaniac of the worst kind. He doesn't realize that intelligent, sane people could disagree with him on anything and be in the right.

I don't think Jack was an egomaniac or evil at all. He was just someone with no background at all at video game design becoming the mouthpiece for something he knew next to nothing about. He didn't know how to interact with a fanbase for a video game because this was his first and done example. Instead of being honest from the beginning, he tried what he say work for other games: PR Doublespeak.

That's what gave us the "I said no power nerfs, ED is not nerfing specific powers" argument.

Just the fact that we have numbers in-game for everything right now just proves how wrong some of Jackie Boy's ideas were. He was so dead set against that. That was not a resource thing but a simple developer choice.

He's a part of City of Heroes history, yes. But in hindsight, he might have done more damage than good in the long run. Positron and company have done more than enough to win back my trust at this point, though.

..I should've added that what made real numbers NECESSARY in CoH is that not all "minor" damage was equal (for example). Some powers listed with the same generic description had notably different results. That made making informed decisions difficult