City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

So, about that CoH2...

Acemace

By Acemace,
Posted on: 2010-08-12 01:33 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven View Post
And if you don't have character porting, I believe the devs would risk alienating the existing players of CoH1. As I rather vaguely recall, this is what happened with EQ?
More like Asheron's Call 2.... that died because of no character ports.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vel_Overload View Post
anyobdy consider it could be CoH3?

called it here first!
Oi, lets not get ahead of ourselves here.

... well, more than we have already.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven View Post
And if you don't have character porting, I believe the devs would risk alienating the existing players of CoH1. As I rather vaguely recall, this is what happened with EQ?
I'm not sure that's what happened with EQ2 exactly. It was more a case where a lot of the stalwart EQ players just didn't want a new game that was different from the original. So they stuck with EQ. It's still running to this day after all.

In any case, why would porting your characters over to a new COH be a priority? It's unlikely to have the same power structure, character attributes and mechanics as the original. You would definitely not be starting at the same character levels(as that would be ludicrous from a dev perspective).

So what exactly is it that you think players would keep besides a costume look?

I have to agree with Arcanaville on this. Porting to a new COX game would be worthless.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Slashman View Post
I'm not sure that's what happened with EQ2 exactly. It was more a case where a lot of the stalwart EQ players just didn't want a new game that was different from the original. So they stuck with EQ. It's still running to this day after all.

In any case, why would porting your characters over to a new COH be a priority? It's unlikely to have the same power structure, character attributes and mechanics as the original. You would definitely not be starting at the same character levels(as that would be ludicrous from a dev perspective).

So what exactly is it that you think players would keep besides a costume look?

I have to agree with Arcanaville on this. Porting to a new COX game would be worthless.
Inf and IOs?:O

 

Posted

I seem to recall in some of thier older interviews with various gaming sites that there was some talk of doing a game dealing with spies and espionage.

If there is a CoH 2 then I wouldn't expect a character port, the game would likely be too different for the character to work with it. It would be nice if they came up with a way to let current players reserve a certain amount a names of current characters. I played EQ for 5 years and was excited about the prospect of EQ2. We were even told before it's launch that while we would not be able to port any characters that an EQ2 character could be played as a descendant of an EQ1 character and we would be able to have 1 item passed to the EQ2 character as an heirloom, but they backed out of that, which really cheesed off a lot of people, myself included. It also didn't help that EQ2, while looking gorgeus, was such a crashing bore to play that I never made it past the free month.

I've also heard a lot of talk about how many people would like a serverless environment. It may sound well and good, but STO has that and it gets complained about quite a bit because of all the instancing. My main gripe with it is I've been playing STO since open beta and there is just no sense of community that I can detect at all like we have with the servers in CoH. If there is a CoH2 I hope they keep individual servers and not do like STO did. The community on each server is a strong part of what keeps CoH alive and well. As I've seen in STO going serverless prevents those communities from forming.

 

Posted

I'd still like to see a "true" character customization system similar to, but hopefully less exploitable than, the old PnP Hero system.

Something along the lines of:

Base Power (single target ranged, single target melee, aoe ranged, pbaoe, self, team, etc)
Primary Effect (damage, buff, debuff, etc)
Secondary Effect (damage, buff, debuff, etc)
Animation (various types selectable for each pe/se)
Coloration
Emanation Point (hands, head, eyes, torso, feet, weapon point)
Special Effect (various, things like selecting the weapon, wands, after-glows, etc)

A balancing nightmare of course, and unlikely to ever be implemented, but that's what I would ultimately hope to have someday...an actual PnP-type free-form SuperHero game correctly translated to an online experience.

6000+ levels gained and 8 level 50's
Hello, my name is Soulwind and I have Alt-Itis.

 

Posted

Bah, nevermind. Forgot about the rules change for a sec.

MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulwind View Post
I'd still like to see a "true" character customization system similar to, but hopefully less exploitable than, the old PnP Hero system.

Something along the lines of:

Base Power (single target ranged, single target melee, aoe ranged, pbaoe, self, team, etc)
Primary Effect (damage, buff, debuff, etc)
Secondary Effect (damage, buff, debuff, etc)
Animation (various types selectable for each pe/se)
Coloration
Emanation Point (hands, head, eyes, torso, feet, weapon point)
Special Effect (various, things like selecting the weapon, wands, after-glows, etc)

A balancing nightmare of course, and unlikely to ever be implemented, but that's what I would ultimately hope to have someday...an actual PnP-type free-form SuperHero game correctly translated to an online experience.
I'd love to see this as well. And as for balance, I think it is vastly overrated. Just get in the general ballpark of "balance" and leave it at that. Sure, there will be people who will find the "best" power combinations and be all "uber", but I don't do that (it's booooooring) so I really don't care. Just make the game content varied enough so that characters of different power levels can progress. Not all character have to be equally powerful (or weak as the case may be). The Joker is severely outmatched by Superman...and that's ok.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by sleestack View Post
I'd love to see this as well. And as for balance, I think it is vastly overrated. Just get in the general ballpark of "balance" and leave it at that. Sure, there will be people who will find the "best" power combinations and be all "uber", but I don't do that (it's booooooring) so I really don't care. Just make the game content varied enough so that characters of different power levels can progress. Not all character have to be equally powerful (or weak as the case may be). The Joker is severely outmatched by Superman...and that's ok.
The problem with a multiplayer game that doesn't care about balance is that it must of necessity have no rewards tied to anything unbalanced. That's an axiom. If you don't believe it, your only recourse is to find people who are simultaneously game developers and who don't accept that axiom, and get them to make a game without that axiom. The intersection of those two types of people is, I believe, vanishingly small. I'm unaware of any multiplayer game anywhere created by a dev team that rejects that axiom, although I'm always willing to have one pointed out to me.

Its not impossible to implement a multiplayer game that rejects that axiom, but you end up running into some very fundamental principles of game design that don't have obvious solutions when you do, and you usally have to risk millions of dollars before you know if your solutions have any chance of working. And if you fail, its extremely hard to correct that error.


The only kind of game I can conceive of that works this way is a Sims-like game that only rewards activity without regard for type of activity, so that power level is both unrestricted and meaningless to the game.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by sleestack View Post
I'd love to see this as well. And as for balance, I think it is vastly overrated. Just get in the general ballpark of "balance" and leave it at that. Sure, there will be people who will find the "best" power combinations and be all "uber", but I don't do that (it's booooooring) so I really don't care. Just make the game content varied enough so that characters of different power levels can progress. Not all character have to be equally powerful (or weak as the case may be). The Joker is severely outmatched by Superman...and that's ok.
balance is intrinsic to satisfying gameplay for most players. if content were limited by power factors then multiple versions of the same missions would need to be created (as content is sure to be limited anyway at a launch and/or shortly thereafter; see champs for an example), vastly overwhelming the time it may take to reasonably balance powers.

just because 'you' don't do it doesn't mean anyone else won't and this will affect 'your' gameplay and satisfaction with it over time.

as an aside, one thing i would very much like to see addressed is the suggestion of actual power in a superhero. as it stands there are very few games (nothing i can really think of off the top, but i suppose they must exist) where a mob of foes is more than 2-4 npc's of varying configurations. i think we can all appreciate though the satisfaction of mowing through much larger numbers of human powered foes with fewer powered foes of 'more equivalent' power levels. it was one thing i really used to appreciate about pre agro cap mission farming was the massive numbers of foes and the 'suggestion' that as superheroes this wasn't unreasonable. at the time the graphics resources weren't there for many players, and limitations on the number of *whatevers* would appear to be much closer to a moot point. so, why couldn't we break up a mob from 2-3 minions + lieut into 10 minions attacking/xp'ing at an equivalency with fewer powered lieuts in the mix but on a more named basis? it would certainly add some flare to the game for soloists, and teams could get very interesting.

Kittens give Morbo gas.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by sleestack View Post
I'd love to see this as well. And as for balance, I think it is vastly overrated. Just get in the general ballpark of "balance" and leave it at that. Sure, there will be people who will find the "best" power combinations and be all "uber", but I don't do that (it's booooooring) so I really don't care. Just make the game content varied enough so that characters of different power levels can progress. Not all character have to be equally powerful (or weak as the case may be). The Joker is severely outmatched by Superman...and that's ok.
Actually, I'm meaning less about balanced characters (ie Gimped idiot with no attacks vs super Tank-Mage) and more about the unbelievable exploits that can easily come from the real "build your own" style of powers creation.

Back in the old days, when my gaming group was heavily into a certain PnP superhero game, we took a certain sadistic pride in finding ways to exploit the rules without actually breaking them. Just to see who could come up with the most broken.

There were a ton of utterly silly exploits that we came up with (one even eventually got turned into a "real" power during a game revision and one of our group got a mention in the game credits for it), but I think one of the best we ever came up with was this:

Teleport - Usable on Others - Extra-Dimensional - Not Usable on Self - Random Destination

(as his only power)

Bad Guy runs up - Exploit Man points a finger at Bad Guy and "poof" Bad Guy's gone.

Other Hero "Where did Bad Guy go?"

Exploit Man "I have no idea."

6000+ levels gained and 8 level 50's
Hello, my name is Soulwind and I have Alt-Itis.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulwind View Post
I'd still like to see a "true" character customization system similar to, but hopefully less exploitable than, the old PnP Hero system.

Something along the lines of:

Base Power (single target ranged, single target melee, aoe ranged, pbaoe, self, team, etc)
Primary Effect (damage, buff, debuff, etc)
Secondary Effect (damage, buff, debuff, etc)
Animation (various types selectable for each pe/se)
Coloration
Emanation Point (hands, head, eyes, torso, feet, weapon point)
Special Effect (various, things like selecting the weapon, wands, after-glows, etc)

A balancing nightmare of course, and unlikely to ever be implemented, but that's what I would ultimately hope to have someday...an actual PnP-type free-form SuperHero game correctly translated to an online experience.
I think it would be pretty easy to impliment actually if you just included two more tiers
Primary Specialty - Melee, Range, Buff, Debuff, Healing, Tank, Minions, Control etc.
Secondary Specialty - Same

That would allow them to build on a more open but still similar structure to what we have now.

IE: If you pick range as your primary you get the Blaster secondaries to all your ranged attacks and they consiquently do more damage.

This allows people to still pick up off skills for utility or concept reasons but they'll be much weaker and make the game easier to balance similar to taking a pool power now just with a lot more freedom.

_____________________________________

Personally I want to see the game become more fast paced in actual combat.

For example I'd like to see you start with one full tray of generic weak sause powers so you have something to do even early on which get replaced with your good powers as you level up and become stronger or perhaps just start will all your "obligatory powers" and as you level start to customize them with secondary effects and adjustments.

Of course I'd also like to see the combat be a little more more action elements or at least more of an action feel to things, and the little less click a button wait for animation tone that plague early CoH. Classes like Brutes or Blasters don't suffer from this IMO as I always seem to be actively doing something with them once you hit level 20 and the facing feels very active and intense. A stalker though, at least for me, really feel painfully lifeless and mechanical. When I think of a stalker I kind of expect something like the Assassin from Monday Night Combat. A fast light fighter who excels at taking out weaker foes quickly and rabbiting away with a variety of skills. Instead I always feel like it is:

1. Click to hide *wait*
2. Click to assassin strike *wait*
3. Quickly placate *wait*

I'd compair to playing a laggy scrapper. It just feels like I'm stopping all the time or at least that I'm acting in slow motion compaired to the better paced classes. Most other ATs can avoid this with the right builds but certain builds can experince this problem till almost level 30.

I know behind the scenes CoH is a numbers game behind the scenes but other MMOs like Guild Wars do a much better job of hidding this fact in immersive fast pace game play that you don't have to wait 20-30 levels to really experience and they don't expect you to make and level 50 or more charaters like CoH does.

 

Posted

Unless they use a name scheme like the other superhero MMO, I would at least lilke to port my name and look. Secondarily a port of fundage, though not a big deal for me.

The powers and enhancement process maybe different enough to not be compatible with the new game.

Also why bring a full character over wouldn't rather you start at level one and do the new content or would your rather get to endgame at start or are you hoping for a flashback system there?

Plus would transfering your character to the new game delete the version on the current? Or would you some how keep both if the transfer is one way/one time and is a MT? I think the odd are good that CoH1 will still be up and running.

I still hope at mininum the port would be a partial one, transfer name witht the option to port your CoH1 costume into CoH2. Maybe they would then also have an option to map out your current powerset to the CoH2 version. You would still have to start a level one, but you could have a guide to recreate an equivlent character or go on a completely different path.

I still think in the end it would the names we want to keep and use in CoH2, especially if things are structured different enough not to allow a full transfer.

Champion
Pillars of Might
Darc Ranger [Blas] / Darc Nebula [Cont]
The Bikini Patrol
Darc Lighter:51-[Blas] / Darc Lady:50-[Tank]
The Panty Raiders
Aegis Magnus [MM] / Atomic Spector [Cor] / Dominar Sefus [Dom]
MEGAFORCE
-Darc Ranger [Def]

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Coming_Storm View Post
Inf and IOs?:O
And why do you think it would be desirable to the developers to have a brand new game populated with insanely rich players who have complete economical freedom?

Also...you think your IOs would be usuable in a brand new COX? That's laughable.