Do Dev's hate base's?

I agree with that 100%. The bid fish in CoH is content and even as a base builder, I would prefer new zones, upgrade packs and more TF's.

That's wildly inaccurate, and not really based in any sort of truth. Lets go over the basic history first to frame the questions here:

One of the basic problem(s) is that what the developers imagined the game would be like back in 2001, 2002, and 2003, isn't what the game has become. The game was originally founded on the same sort of gameplay basis as Everquest, with repetitive missions, constant grinding, massive street hunts, and endless weeks with no level progression. Many of these older influences are still seen in today's game if you follow the natural contact progression by following the contacts that sell your avatars origin of enhancements, or if you run the older Task Forces.

In the same way, bases were seen as something that would cater to the UO Pub Crowd, the sort of player who saw two hours sitting and doing nothing but chatting as equally important as spending two hours grinding towards the next level. Some of the base functions were extensions from the Pub / Town ideal, giving players a neutral zone... since there really wasn't a zone in the game until the Dance Party, and even then that wasn't really well known. A Pub answer only really arrived with Pocket D.

Other functions of the base were added on as they made sense to the game and how comic book entities like the Fantastic Four or Justice League handled their bases. Storage for personal items, transport to other zones, and so on.

In the early days of CoH, having a base with all of the zone teleporters helped players drastically cut down on travel times... but as the average power of the computer has advanced, and as new train station and connection zones have been added, the importance of having a base with every single teleporter has slowly disappeared. Speaking for myself, with a couple of my computers, I can take trains or ferry's and get to missions faster than players with mission teleport.

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Base Raids and the Cathedral of Pain fitted into the original design scope of the game, when the development staff at Cryptic honestly thought they had to have PvP play in order to draw a successive playerbase from the established MMO's on the market. Market Reality, however, taught a different lesson.

Despite launching PvP play in May 2005, by the time May 2009 rolled around 4 years later, the paying playerbase that participated in PvP content had never left single digit percentages. Quite simply, City of Heroes was proof to the MMO industry that PvP play was not a requirement for a successful MMO... and as NCSoft found out in the financial meltdown of Tabula Rasa... PvP play was not enough to sustain a game either.

In game reality followed that external financial trend. The majority of the paying playerbase couldn't care about base raids. The idea of loosing several hundred hours of prestige just wasn't worth it. The plain and simple fact was, only the largest and active SuperGroup's with a full list of actively contributing members could ever hope to recover from a Raid. Getting that many people who were willing to participate in PvP, on one server, in just one Super Group... just wasn't happening. So, for the most part, Raids were limited to SG's play-raiding... basically trading back and forth Items of Power with no real damage to each base.

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Cathedral of Pain also presented another problem, or at least it's reward did. The Invention Enhancement system completely replaced the old Items of Power in the game. Quite simply, the Items of Power are not coming back. This also rendered one of the original envisioned functions of the base system irrelevant.

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There's also another factor to consider when looking at the history of the game. Back in the ending months of 2007 NCSoft bought the City of Heroes franchise from Cryptic, and in 2008 started pumping money into the company. We've already seen some of the fruits of that reinvestment with the information on I17 and Going Rogue released at Hero-Con.

What isn't focused on is that between the 2005 launch of City of Villains and the 2007 buyout, Cryptic tried to kill City of Heroes. The general idea was that Cryptic's Marvel Universe Online would be released and would replace City of Heroes. While the Paragon Studio Devs probably can't comment on exactly what went on at Cryptic, we do know that City of Heroes was essentially run on a skeleton crew across Issues 7, 8, 9, and I think up until 10.

Essentially, Cryptic wasn't willing to invest the time, money, or resources into seriously upgrading the City of Heroes game or examining underlying functionality. Now that NCSoft owns the property, Paragon Studios has the resources to do what Cryptic wouldn't... and again, we've got an idea what those results are going to look like over the immediate future of the game.

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That pretty much brings us up to... now.

In the current environment of the game, the function of bases does need to be looked at. Paragon Studios also, when Going Rogue launches, will have the resources to look at the function of SuperGroup bases, if Going Rogue doesn't address some of the base features.

We can make a few guesses as to what the future of bases is going to look like.

Base Raids, as we knew them in the past, probably won't be coming back. The primary reason is that there just isn't a market for it, and the whiny hell-repping PvPer's can just get over that.

In the same way, Cathedral of Pain, as we knew it, is gone. There is a chance that the Task Force itself will return in Ourobous with a Merit Reward, although I suspect the Calvin Scott Task Force will be the first de-activated Task Force to be turned back on through Ourobous.

What I suspect the focus on Bases will be is to offer functionality that isn't available, or is separated from the game. Given the petitions raised at the end of each winter session to keep the Ski Resort around, I would suspect that some coders might find themselves implementing ski-able surfaces into Bases, allowing players to create their own internal ski-slopes.

I suspect we'll see development on Open-Air, Shadow Shard Style islands to contain bases, and I suspect we'll see tech work to make open-air / internal cave rooms work together.

I suspect we'll see an integration of the Base System with the AE system, so for those who want to rack up on SG defenses, they'll be able to use their own Base as a Stronghold for other players to assault in AE... without risking prestige.

What I suspect, and what actually happens... well. We'll see what the future brings.

we'll just have to wait and see.

Thank you for that little essay, je_saist, that was fascinating.

In layman's terms; It isn't that Devs HATE bases, base raids, and PvP. There just isn't enough reason to care.

I still try to be optimistic that ParagonStudios unlike Cryptic might Throw us newbies a bone who didn't get the opportunity to experience base raids and those of us that love base building.

That is a pretty serious allegation. Do you have any direct proof showing that Cryptic was actively attempting to kill CoH? NCSoft would probably sue the pants off of Jack/Cryptic if there was any such evidence.

I would presume that CoH was suffering from quite a bit of neglect because Jack Emmert was busy working on securing DCU and MUO, and diverting resources to land the 'whales', but that would just be trying to bite off more than he could chew rather than claiming he was trying to commit suicide.

From an external perspective (at the time), it would make more sense to build up the CoX customer base and then sell them the idea of transferring over to something like MUO after it was launched. To try and kill your only cash income stream before the other product has launched makes no sense whatsoever.

Cryptic probably just couldn't afford to keep the development pace of 2 MMOs but their greed forced them to divert critically needed resources from CoX to MUO.

Technically speaking the Cathedral of Pain wasn't a task force since it allowed up to 24 players to participate. If the devs do ever bring it back I'm hoping that rather than Ouroborosing it they get rid of the SG requirement and have it launch from the Shadow Shard zones. Personally I'd also like them to keep it as a multi-group event but we shall see.

You bring an "interesting" perspective to the table here... both in terms of your thoughts on the rationale behind what occurred in the past and what you "suspect" happening in the future. I don't know if your last sentence above hedges everything you said properly but... ok, you are certainly entitled to your world view.

I agree with some parts of your first post and disagree with many other parts. But it's probably not worth the time and effort to parse all of your comments line by line.

All I can say (repeat) about the present and future of bases is what I have first hand knowledge of from direct observation and/or direct discussion with the devs. In short, that is:

(1) Going Rouge development is currently indeed taking precedence over base development.

(2) Multiple devs at HeroCon expressed a desire to work on bases in the future. A return of "base raiding awesomeness" was specifically mentioned by Positron as something they want to do (regardless of your take on PvP interest etc.).

(3) Our "red name" rep for bases is no longer a "red name" on the forum. Who knows what that means? I PM'ed Castle asking about this but did not receive a reply (oh well).

Other than that, yeah you are obviously right... we will indeed see what the future brings.

Directly trying to kill off is maybe a little strong. Pulling people off the team and putting it into barely getting-by mode is a historical fact (the Freem-15). Business is business and I am sure they were fulfilling the letter of their agreement. (but I doubt the spirit of it)

Ontop of that jointly developing with a different 3rd party, an MMO in the exact same genre is certainly what I would consider an unethical business practice.

Cryptic then getting involved in the unethical recruitment attempts for CO, and an apology for that set of actions which was an apology not worth it own weight in electrons.

THIS will almost certainly form the "core" mechanics/tech needed to completely overhaul how bases are built and stored in the game database(s). The current editor, which Paragon Studios has already tried to overhaul (and failed at doing!), is now such a legacy piece of code that it is in a lot of ways a dead end as far as upgrades are concerned. It was originally programmed by someone at Cryptic who is long since gone, and the documentation for all of its features and functionality is ... less than complete.

Point being, the current base editor ... and therefore the entire base environment "experience" ... is not exactly a great launching point for further evolution of how to build and use bases. In so many many many ways, Paragon Studios would be FAR better off to simply revamp the whole thing from scratch with (nearly) all new tech underlying everything for a far richer, feature filled, and more powerful editing suite capable of 3D design and editing from the get-go ... rather than as a side effect of what essentially amounts to hacks of errors/oversights in the original programming (which was intended to be 2D only!).

Which means that the best hope for upgrades to bases lies in aligning development resources for bases with development resources for AE environments ... which in aggregate sounds like a worthwhile "topic" of focus for an Issue release.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Fixed that for you.

Bah! This will go into my hate base.