Are All Good Things Meant for CoH Going to Aion?

This has already been explained and he still doesn't get it, so I think you're wasting effort.

Plus, the official fuel for MMO features is purified trilithium. Techno juice? How plebeian.

Yes, it would have, but it's still based on assumptions about the relationship between NCSoft and its subsidiary developers that are, based on the information currently publicly available, erroneous.

Putting aside for the moment that Guild Wars has no subscription fees and is thus quite literally entirely reliant on selling new content and microtransactions for revenue, that question does have a simple answer:

There's a Guild Wars 2 because ArenaNet wanted to make one. Presumably at some point someone at NCSoft had to say "Okay, do that." But if what you are really trying to say is "I want a CoH2," you need to start by trying to convince Paragon Studios that that's a good idea. It's not likely to happen until Positron and co. want to do it, and from what little has been said in interviews it's not something they've even given serious thought to yet.

So basically the reason people in this thread are looking at you funny is that you seem to be saying the reason CoX lacks features X, Y, and Z that you want is that someone in Seoul is bogarting a finite supply of Magic Shinies that will make it happen. The CoX dev team has gone from 15 to over 70 (at last count) in the past two years, and they are still hiring; if you're not seeing the things you want, I really don't think Magic Shiny supply is the issue.

That you're accusing me of posing a conspiracy theory is funny. That you've got me "trolling" with "doom enhancements slotted and toggled on" is just hysterical.

Folks, life really isn't measured or explained by conspiracy theories however strategic long-term business decisions and investments are guided by weights of "beneficial" versus "wasteful" spending - and there's nothing more "conspiratorial" to it than having good business sense.

Paragon Studios is a subdivision of NCWest - and NCWest shares the responsibility for managing and producing both Aion and City of Heroes in the Western Hemisphere. But NCWest doesn't act as a sole entity that's 100% independent of NCSoft - its all still virtually owned under one corporate purview no matter how many times the region-based developers change names. And if NCSoft feel its money/resources are best spent/invested on one in-house IP than another, then you can bet that's what they're going to do. Again, just simple business sense - which may or may not be in the best interests of Paragon Studios or NCwest (although signs are good since GR is on the horizon - but they're not great because its not CoH2 on the horizon which leaves me to wonder what happens to CoH *after* GR's been around for 6 months) but it all serves NCsoft's net profit at the bottom line.

And trust me, I hear what you're saying: all the viable tech improvements in the world aren't going to help an IP that's technologically challenged and unable to accomodate those advancements. They're also not going to save an established IP that appears to be ultimately unprofitable - especially after the 5 year mark which is why they're going to *another* wholly new IP rather than trying to rebuild this one... (hence my concern that we have GW2 and new, improved Aion on the horizon and not CoH2). Unless of course there's an easy way to make a quick buck with lots of stage dressing but very little "under the hood" production in terms of *new* gameplay - which is how Marvel Universe went belly up and Champions Online came to pass. Hopefully GR is not an attempt to pull the same sleight of hand...

I now leave you guys to go back to debating my "conspiracy theories" amongst the few of you that love to put the tar and feathers to the lesser-known folks in this forum; y'all really need to stop getting lost in the "tech" details for a change and try looking at the overall strategic vision of *all* the IPs in NCsoft's stable - which as Captain_Photon has already pointed out, probably isn't nearly as considerate as I'm assuming it to be. Then again, they sure did get rid of Tabula Rasa real quick after *years* of production, now didn't they...

Oh right, sorry: just because its not discussed openly at the local/regional level (whether that be Paragon Studios or NCwest), that means its not being discussed in a transatlantic vacuum over in NCsoft Korea. Sure: tell that to the folks who got laid off from Tabula Rasa that and see how far *that* attitude gets you...


PS: BackAlleyBrawler is the mastermind of an imminent alien invasion because he doesn't like "underwater zones" - discuss.

A) because NC Korea and NC America are two wholly separate subsidiaries. Their PR teams don't meet and confer and compare notes.

B) because "looking at" and "going forward with" are two wholly different things. I'd be willing to bet that every MMO since consoles became comparable in computing to desktops has considered going cross platform, and since the XBox was Windows based, some even considered rather heavily. However that's not the same thing as putting it in your Design Docs and allocating resources and schedule for it.

Short answer: what you call revisionist history, I call semantic differences.

You're kind of bending the meme quite a lot by looking at comments from our devs in the most favorable possible way to make it sound like we were going see cross platform, yet at the same moment being very very literal when it comes to what the Aion guys said. You can't have it both ways, if you're going to take one with a grain of salt, you have to take both.

Edited to add:

There are actually probably some very specific reasons we haven't seen more traction on some of the things you're asking about, so let's lay down some logic.

1) porting to a console is a lot harder than porting to another Operating System. I'm sure our devs used their usual incremental approach and that led them to try the simpler option first and see how it went. Thus we have the Macintosh version of the game. So in a broad sense, you've gotten what you asked for. This game IS cross platform. Since we've been told they didn't have the skillbase in house to do that conversion, it's fairly safe to say that even with the expanded staff they don't have the skillbase to do a much more complicated console conversion. So that leaves them with two big hurdles: the internal determination of whether the Mac version and that conversion was successful, and finding another company that could handle a console conversion. Actually I'm wrong, there is a third hurdle. They then have to spend a lot of capital on a new distribution track and service platform that handles the console integration. None of that is "easy" especially in a 5 year old game. Thus you see a new game like Aion designed from square one to at least potentially handle that kind of integration someday.

2) player apartments. No question these are in demand. However since you're so interested in making sure there isn't revisionist history, I beg you to recall just how long our base system has been languishing. There's a reason for that. It's been borderline unstable for a long time, and the only way to make it more robust would be to very nearly start from scratch. In order to create Player Apartments with the level of customization we'd demand, they'd be basing it on the base system, and that opens a whole can of worms. Again, this becomes something highly demanded but very intensive on both the engineering and the art departments. Considering all that, I'm reasonably safe in saying that I think when given the choice between 8 months of work on a new expansion, or 8 months of work on the base/apartment systems, they chose the one that was more likely to expand the game. Does that mean we'll never see it? No, but like anything it's a question of priorities.

However you're wrong in thinking that it's the guys at the very top that set those priorities. It has a lot more to do with our own dev team and our own community team and what they suss out when they mash together what we want with what they feel like they can do well.

My understanding is that there's only one PR team working for NCWest, and its answering to Korea (which has led to its own share of headaches).

I'm sure a red name will correct me if that setup's since changed.

The point is that you are insisting that ideas from CoH have been "stolen" to be used on another NCSoft MMO, which is a hypothesis without merit, because these ideas have been used in other non-NCSoft MMOs long before CoH. That is why you should care - because the fact that these ideas have been persistant in the industry long before CoH undercut your hypothesis. It's a fault of inductive reasoning.

Appeal to emotion is also another logical fallacy. I think everyone here on these forums cares about the future of the game, to varying degrees. Simply because people disagree with your arguable hypothesis does not diminish their enjoyment of the game nor their concern for its future.

This game is hardly a "red-headed stepchild" - if that were the case, we would not have received more developers for GR and beyond. The actions of NCSoft thus far have indicated that they are deeply invested in the future of CoH, both financially and intellectually.

Merely because you see some new features being added to one game instead of another does not indicate preference. Heck, the two games don't even share the same development staff, so this juxtaposition, IMPO, is absurd, especially when combined my observation above.

You aren't wrong for wanting the tech, but starting off a sequel with a new game engine isn't as easy as replacing a light bulb. You're basically talking about everything being redeveloped form the ground up - textures, animations SFX, VFX, skeletons, maps, contacts, missions, text... everything in the game would have to be remade, a lot of it from scratch. Look how long it took for SOE to make EQ2 (a questionable successor to EQ1 at best), and you'll understand the time frame involved. It took Cryptic 4 years to make CoH Issue 0 from conception to launch; CoH2 might take even longer if they want to match the amount of content currently in the game.

That still doesn't mean they look at the big book of all NC MMOs and their development history before they make a PR statement. You say because we suggested it and our devs looked at it, we were first. They're saying because they went ahead and built the game to do it, they were first. Semantics differences, and one is a lot more concrete than the other, so guess who I'm more willing to believe?

I kno! Froots are better.

You know, prior to reading the whole thread and your responses, I was willing to take your word on this. However I decided to go look at the article you linked, and also followed it further back to the gamasutra piece on which it was based. I have two things to say to you:

1) don't mistake what the author says for what the PR guy said. There's nothing in his direct quotes that states or even implies NC never looked at it before Aion.

2) the gamasutra piece specifically notes that NC has looked at this before, however the prior relationship stalled, and Aion is currently their strongest contender.

In the end, there's nothing wrong with them wanting to enter new territory (for them) with the stronger horse. CoH failed in Korea. Aion seems to be getting good response on both sides of the ocean. That's a much more potent incentive for them to invest in their new game and push it into a new space. Not to mention that they're more directly up against WoW, and that means they NEED to do something that differentiates.

Besides, if you seriously feel that they need to invest in CoH2, you should be in favor of them going to consoles with Aion first. The development houses not being linked, means the budgets aren't tied together. However as others said, it would take Years to build CoH2 the right way. Why not let all the problems and issues shake themselves out on Aion in the meantime, and the CoH team and NCSoft can learn from those successes and failures.

I agree with you 100%.



Well that depends: if there was no other way to proceed, would you mind if CoH was temporarily "rested" (ie shut down) for a few years while they worked on Aion, GW2 and took those lessons learned back to CoH2 somewhere down the road? Cause that might be what we're looking at in late 2010/early 2011 if GR doesn't hold up well...

When I consider where the bulk of the technology and investments are going now versus where they *could* be going, then yes I'd rather have seen CoH2 then GR. I just can't imagine a period of time when there isn't an operating CoH IP in service (nor do I want to), but you tell me.

I think this would be counterintuitive to their current, apparent strategy. Why hire on a bunch of new developers of your intent is to create a new game that has more appeal than your old game, in the hopes of drawing player base form Product A to Product B? What would be the point in reinvesting in Product B when you want everyone to go to Product A? What would be the point of revamping the New Player Experience in Product B when you want to draw new players to Product A?

Logically and financially, it doesn't make sense. If this were the case, Paragon Studios would have remained NCNC, not hired on new developers, and instead maintained the existing game to retain subscribers, and allocated the additional manpower to NA regionalization of Aion or to another project, and then tried to enitce the current player base to the new game, as well as new players.

You're right in saying that building a new IP is much easier than taking an existing IP and making a sequel, since an existing IP comes with a lot of baggae and player expectations. Fiscally, doesn't it make sense to utilize the existing technology as long as possible, in opreder to get a better return on investment, or in order to better prepare for a sequel in the future? I don't imagine that NCSoft likes licensing Cryptic's engine for CoH, but it's still better than spending millions to redevelop a CoH sequel on top of a new engine. Sure, many want other things to be added to the game that the engine can't currently support, but at what cost? Heck, EQ is still going after 10 years and is still profitable.

False Analogy. TR was a hugely hyped MMO with an overblown budget and a production schedule that was pushed back several times, only to deliver a mediocre product at launch with little to no hope of paying back the initial cost of investment based on the number of subscribers. I believe nearly any publisher would have done the same in NCSoft's shoes, but that's just my opinion.

That's a little ironic, IMPO, considering that you didn't care about the happenings of other MMOs a page or two ago. Although I know you're being sarcastic here (which is really not the best why to make a persuasive argument, or so I've been taught), I know Matt Miller's in South Korea this week, probably to discuss the state of the game with the higher ups.

But if you'll forgive me for using some sarcasm, I bet what he's really doing is giving them all of our suggestions so they can use them in Aion and other games being developed and lauded over our poor red-headed stepchild game, Little Orphan CoH

They wouldn't shut down CoH, they'd just cut back the team to the minimum required for caretaking (meaning very few updates beside critical bug patches). The overall cost of running an MMO without updating the content is pretty low so unless all of the long term players decide to quit it'll still be profitable for them to keep the servers running (for example Everquest is still running despite the release of Everquest 2).

I didn't say they weren't in the game. I said they weren't enabled for that segment of water in the Cimeroran map and the pool in Grandville. Just to make sure I wasn't out of my gourd on this, I grabbed my stalker and went to check using the Grandville pool.



Yep. I can hop under the water, but I follow the contours of the rocks. There is no Z-Axis movement in the water.

It did have it's own Vision video, it was called CoV. That still didn't help it when WoW launched. Please stop revising history. A significant portion of the playerbase was playing this game until WoW launched, and we all knew it. There's no way you can expect they'd keep their Year One levels when you account for that fact.

*cough* : see this post. CoH was already largely working on the Cedega engine years before the Cider commercial release. This wasn't so much a port as it was using already existing WINE-based technology.

Supposedly the ability to send items between characters is coming to CoX; one of the things mentioned at Hero Con.

My bad, its Cafe HON in Baltimore - not Cafe HUN. Sorry Lemur!

Source Link: http://www.cafehon.com/

I don't think that stuff is so much of an issue. For technical and gameplay reasons it can be handwaved with "it just works." If you like you could just throw on a magical explanation. So-and-so cast a charm here so powers work underwater. Even fire! Cool eh!? I think the real issue is animation.

You can't just use existing animations with everything if everyone is underwater and swimming. Flying isn't swimming. We'd have to have every animation in the game redone to include legs kicking and hands waving. Every movement would have to be done as underwater, not just the stiff levitating animation that flight uses. Every attack animation would need to be done with legs kicking to sustain your current height.

Of course, having an underwater zone would also invalidate every travel power but teleport. You can't run, jump, or fly while underwater. Not to mention there's already a large number of powers that require you to be grounded to use, that wouldn't work in any area where being suspended in water is a requirement.

Some of those issues would be alleviated by an actual space/moon zone, but not all of them. Now a low-gravity moon zone with oxygen would probably work fine...

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I love Eddie Izzard... he's so fabulous!


Oh, LL: I updated my earlier post to say:


I honestly never heard this one before; if you've got a source link I'll absolutely concede the debate to you fair and square.

I would think by now you would know that people trying to bring post counts into conversations, as if they mean anything other than the fact they influence rep (which doesn't mean anything itself), tend get looked upon as trolls trying to divert attention from themselves.

Post count is irrelevant in determining if a given post is Doomsaying or Trolling.

Source?