Time for Change?

Well here I go.... I thought about this all day at work yesterday, making this thread anyway, and came up with a bunch of different ways I could pitch this to you guys, but in the end I know it wont get support, but I'm going to post it anyway....

Suggestion

Ok, so we've had a great 5 years of super-powered hero and villain fun despite all the bad blows the powers have taken over the years, but I feel the overall result of the game was good, since we have more people playing now, and the devs actually listen to the player base and take in what we suggest/ask. Now due to technical reasons and permissions, the devs can't do a lot of stuff, and maybe just don't want to do.... At any rate I'm trailing off the subject. As it stands in the last 5 years CoH/V has been seen as two completely different games with the same general idea in mind with the two maybe crossing on either pvp or co-op zones. Now with villains and heroes becoming one in Going Rogue, maybe it's time to change the name along with the setup.

Against side

Now I know both sides of this argument well since I've fought with myself on this since I heard what Going Rogue was going to bring to the game.... Now on the one end we got the against side. This states one of the laziest phrases that people tend to lean to when a radical idea like this comes about, and that is.... "If it isn't broken, don't fix it..." Well this in mind I almost felt that that reason alone was enough not to post, knowing that people would just fall back to that reason and just be done with it. But a feeling deep inside telling me to still post and at least see what people have to say/think about the whole idea, or maybe it's the hope that maybe I'll do something great on the game, or do something that everyone will know me for, good or bad. Before I go to far into the whole thing I want to stop for a minute and explain where I'm coming from.

Background (Skip this if you don't want to know bout me)

Trailing off a minute, I want to take you into my world of this game. I first started playing bout issue 8, now back in the day the only reason I got started in this game was because my bro was playing this game in our basement, and from there I got into the game and will here I am now... 3 years strong and still really interested in the game. Bout halfway through my time in on the game, my bro quit, and by this time my first and only toon was 33. I was left for dead sorta speak... I by no means was any good at lvlin and a ill/emp gets boring without your epics.... I felt helpless and sad about the whole thing, me and my bro teamed a lot and he just up and bails on me? Bulls***! So by that point in my life I had a job, but I soon lost it due to the stuff I'm not going to get into. So with no money, no hope, no drive to play the game, I was forced to stop playing for 3 months...

One of the things that played in my head a lot was something I asked him when I was making my first toon, and that was... Me "What kind of toon should I make?" Now at the time I just wanted to be useful and learn to play the game at the same time. He replied by saying, "I don't know, what kind of hero do you want to be?" Til this day I ask myself that same question all the time, and til this day I still don't know... I have no main and still no idea what kind of hero I would be.... I've thought bout maybe I'm suppose to be a villain, but nothing about evil doing interests me...

After those three months I found myself missing the game so much, I love being able to fight the npcs and really enjoyed the gfxs of the powers... So I went to my step bro and had him give me a job at his store and shazam! this was my source of money... and from there I went back to playing, but this time I got back to basics and learned to play the game as a soloist. Then one day I got asked to team with someone, I accepted. After a little while teaming with them I asked a few questions and got to know the game better. Asking to be their friend, I got closer to them and then one day they asked me if I knew anything about farming.... Me being pretty new knew nothing. So making a new toon, (Cinnamon-Frost) she was my first lvl 50... After 1 and half of years playing, I finally had a 50! Well after that lvlin toons seemed to be fast as heck, and I was doing it without farming, it was crazy! I don't know if they still play today... I lost contact with them a while back, and I don't even know if they play anymore... But what I learned from them as being my bro and that kind "Stranger?" will always be with me.

It seems though that more I play this game the more I just enjoy making character concepts and designing costumes and what not... So you can say that i16 is a dream come true for me, it's great. But enough mushy stuff, back to our regularly scheduled program. XD

For side

Anyways, I'm leaning more to the For side of this argument, it just makes more sense to me as a whole. Now I know that CoH/V gets it's fame mostly from it's trademark name. But with innovation and improvement the name of something most be changed to show improvement and that the product has gone through major changes and is altogether better as a whole. I'll mark up an example. Let's take the plane. The plane started with the Wright brothers model. Simple, three sets of wings, and a motor with a propeller, now through improvements and better technologies we have planes or "Jets" that can break the sound barrier, and that can get you to the other side of the world in just hours... Sure they could have kept the same name, I mean the name wasn't really old or outdated, but they decided to change the name to show change and improvement.

Well with this in mind I think a change of the guards (sorta speak) is in order to keep the idea that the game keeps getting better as the devs keep adding new content. The idea itself is a good idea, but what it comes down to is coming up with a name that everyone can get behind and support. This a lone is a hard thing to do, cause if just one person decides the name then it's what they think is a good name for it and not what everyone else thinks it should change to better suit the game or product to. Well unfortunately we really don't have that kind of power over the game, so it'll be up to the devs to decide to change the games name or not, but I can at least try for change.

In the End

Well thinking bout all this, I have of course thought about a couple names that would better suited for the game as a whole now with Going Rogues changes to the game. Some of them are...

1) Rogues (Simple, easy, and gives the game a new feel)

2) City of Heroes and Villains ( Though long and drawn out, still shows change and has the fresh car smell)

3) City of Rogues (Keeps the signature feel of the name, but still shows change to the game.)

4) Heroes and Villains (Not so much for this name, but still holds some merit)

5) World of the Super Beings! ( Now this name is completely new, and describes the game as a whole better, it's been a world of super beings for a while now, when I think hero or villain I always think of some humanoid form of a super being. We've had Khieldians for a while now that can shape-shift and we got a stone tank that turns completely different into a granite beast.)

Though the name is a little weak, I'm sure with a little more thought on it, and perhaps patients I can come up with a better name than that, but those are just some names I came up with off the top of my head... At any rate, whatever you guys think, at least I got what I wanted to say off my chest.... No matter the outcome, I least I shared this with you guys.

Nova

Okay, so I did the tl;dr version (about to go eat so I got an excuse ) so I might have skipped something important

IMO, from a sort of unofficial point of view, the name is already 2. I don't think 1 is appropriate, because we'd lose all the name recognition we have now plus ignore 2 factions. 3 would keep part of the name recognition ('City of'), but still ignores 2 factions. 4 loses the 'City of' which I think is a huge part of the name recognition, IMO... And #5 ignores that it'd now be Worlds, and 'super beings' while being more accurate (except for natural origin per its definition ), IMO it sounds pretty lame.


Suddenly I'm actually thinking that in some of the recent PR, NCSoft used the name 'City of Heroes and Villains'... no time (plus too lazy ) to check though, so just throwing that out there.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

My first reaction was to just rant and try to pick apart your post... but, well, that is exactly what you accused me of doing... so that'd be a bit stupid to do I believe in Socratic intellectualism, so after thinking for a while I decided cool heads would prevail and I should attempt to clear up what I meant, and why I post the way I do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Novawulfe When I saw that you posted, I pretty much knew what you were going to say, you discredit and try to drag down anything you can, though you do make up the whole, and I see you as the main voice of negative, I can't say I share anything you think except the fact that #5 needs a better name.

My philosophy is that if an idea can't stand up to criticism, it's not a good idea (yet). I know that is definitely not the way to make friends, and I know at times I can go overboard (I've pissed off my best friend so many times by being too blunt with her I also have a tact for poorly wording what I say so I sound blunt when I meant to be joking ), but I'd rather give my honest opinion when I can (sometimes you simply shouldn't).

I didn't think 1, 4, and 5 were good due to losing the brand recognition (I think the 'City of...' is a huge part of the brand thats been built up over the years), and 3 was because Heroes/Villains are still the main part of the game.

I actually liked #2 (re-reading my post I was really vague about that, although when I wrote it I thought that was obvious, so that's my bad), since it keeps all the brand recognition that the game(s) have built up over the years, still supports most of the short hand methods used to refer to the games ('City of...' 'City of X' 'cox' 'cov' 'coh' etc) and accurately reflecting that it's one game.

And as for the last comment, I thought I'd remember reading them call it 'City of Heroes and Villains' in some of the Going Rogue PR, but after a bit of searching I couldn't find any mention of it, so I might have just gotten confused with another site calling it that, and not actually NCSoft, so that's my bad also.

I'm sorry for any confusion or angst I've caused, that's not my intention.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

First, dismissing any argument against your idea before it comes is a lazy, poor way to argue. If you don't believe your idea has any flaws that can be pointed out other than "it's always been that way, don't change," you haven't thought it through very well. There are solid reasons, in this case, for maintaining the status quo.

Second, for your example - and yes, this is nitpicky, but if you're going to use an example, use it properly. THe Wright Flyer - the actual name of the aircraft - had two, not three wings, one motor, two propellers, and just barely flew. We do not call aircraft "Wright Flyers." On the other side, we do not refer to all aircraft as "Jets," as that is incorrect. A jet is a subset of the vehicle type "Aircraft," as is "Glider," which has no propulsion of any sort, "Ultralight," "Propeller driven" (some of which use turbojets, some of which use radial or in line engines - or more esoteric solar or other power plants,) "Blimp" and such. All of these are variations of aircraft. Airplanes are subsets of aircraft, jets are subjets of airplanes, and you can get more picky such as ramjet, scramjet, turbojet, turboprop, axial or centrifugal flow, with or without afterburner, super, sub, or hypersonic, and so forth. However, they are all still "Aircraft."

On the flip side of that, Boeing just recently sold its 6000th 737 model airliner. It has had massive improvements throughout the years, but all civilian models carry the 737 moniker. THey have sub-versions (the 737-500, 600, and IIRC 700 all being considered "next generation" versions of the 737.) Why do they do this? Partially from brand recognition and model recognition - but partially to show improvement and variations.

I'll also point out that authors have done this in reverse - Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman - specifically to "break" his branding. Part of it was due to publisher limits, and part of it was to see how a non-"Stephen King" book would do ("talent or luck," as I recall.)

Similarly, we've had two "models" - City of Heroes, and City of Villains. These have ended up being combined into a ... let's call it "slashed" City of Heroes/City of Villains. All releases since COV have been "sub-versions," keeping the known, recognized branding - City of Heroes Good vs Evil edition, City of Heroes Mac Edition, City of Heroes Architect Edition, and coming up, City of Heroes: Going Rogue.

If you just saw a box on the shelf that said, say, "Architect," would you have ANY inkling - short of having visited the site - that that was a City of Heroes product at first glance? The City Of... branding ties the entire franchise together.

For that reason, no, the City Of franchise does not need renaming.

Directly against your proposals?
- Rogues. What about those not purchasing COH: Going Rogue? What about those whose heroes (or villains) cannot be classified as a "rogue?"

- City of Heroes and Villains. It's technically wrong, as there's no one city. In fact, with GR, there are three.

- City of Rogues. Again, it's technically incorrect, and doesn't really describe what GR is about - it's not a "city of rogues," but the process of "going rogue" - breaking out of the defined role to change (fall/redeem.)

- Heroes and Villains, and WOrld Of - This is just... eh.

I realize those were just thrown out there - but why break the brand and marketing when it's got five years of solid history behind it and is easily recognizable?

See my Guides and Tutorials

How about... Superbeings eXtreme!!! because we all know names with 'X' (and three exclamation marks) in them sell really well!

These days, I think Paragon Studio and NCSoft have other things to worry about other than the name, seriously.