It is true? They said at coffe talk that David Nakayama is no longer working on CoX?

No, that is Mr. T.


Even if things were to go that way again... it worked out pretty well!
Isn't the correct name "The Fantastic Fifteen"?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

"Freem Fifteen"

I'd e-slap you but I also chuckled.

Right you are!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

But that is the "official" title for that group of devs

It worked out, but it was also pretty grim, and it made the development team pretty humble. That's more or less how it started, though. Jack Emmert stepped down as lead developer of City of Heroes to manage all of Cryptic Studios, but don't worry! He's still very much with the game, he just has some new responsibilities. Turns out he had pretty much entirely moved to the Marvel MMO that turned into Champions. Then people from the City of Heroes team started switching jobs, then all of a sudden we're left with a skeleton crew.

Now we have Matt Miller stepping down from the role of Lead Developer, we have another secret side project and we're seeing more people being diverted from the ones who used to be working here.

I'm not saying I'm worried, of course. Not yet, anyway. However, I can't help but see a pattern here.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No he hasn't

Matt temporarily stepped down to lead a super secret team... which happened to be adding Incarnate Content to CoH. During that time War Witch was lead developer.

Matt came back as lead developer two issues ago and War Witch was moved to lead various 'strike teams' of development. And War Witch is now lead Producer.

heh, I just saw that.

*turns in her geek cred card*

spot on.

As long as you can continue to do this, I think things will be OK.

Okay that is good news, was a bit bummed upon first hearing about it but excited to see what you have been working on.

Thanks for the spotlight in the Coffee Talk too, that was pretty cool to hear ya guys talking about em. I know I can always see your stuff on deviantART too so I wasn't too worried that you were leaving

Hope to see ya at the Pummit as well.

But you have to remember that it was partially that conflict of interest that prompted NCSoft to decide it would be better to buy Cryptic's CoH interests and form Paragon Studios, and the first thing they did was add development resources to the game.

NCSoft doesn't have that same conflict, because both City of Heroes and the Other Game are just line items on a budget spreadsheet: spending more money on the other game doesn't "divert" money from City of Heroes, because that was never City of Heroes' money to begin with. NCSoft is not taking from CoH and giving to the other game: NCSoft takes *everything* from CoH and gives back whatever it wants. I don't see why they would give back less just because a new game is spinning up: the calculus at work is return on investment, not spending quality time with all their children.

In terms of resources, the new game competes with City of Heroes about as much as Guild Wars 2 does.


Another conflict of interest perspective. David implies that the chinese wall that existed with MUO doesn't exist to the same degree within Paragon Studios now. I'm sure there are limits to what they can openly discuss, but when Cryptic was working on MUO they were working on a non-NCSoft property. There were ethical reasons to ensure the dev teams did not overlap, and did not share time or resources and didn't leak ideas from one property to the other (although I'm sure it happened a little: otherwise I wouldn't know about MUOs skill trees).

There's still the basic professional requirements of devoting all of your work time on your project, and maintaining some need to know between the two teams, but there is likely not the same conflict of interest component: both teams are working on NCSoft games. Everything they do is fungible in a way CoH/MUO was not.

And that means all other things being equal, its better we lose developers to the other side of the building than another company entirely. Paragon Studios hasn't lost their expertise or their knowledge or their perspective, and they can still make the odd contribution to CoH, as David is free to work at the pummit.

I would love to see the A-Team intro done with various Coffee talk ustream clips. That would be amazing.

You should be careful what you wish for

Don't be too worried, just check out all the new stuff in beta. CoH mightn't last forever, but it won't shut down next week, either. The Batallion invasion hasn't even begun yet, they're still several issues away from running out of ideas. Besides, if Paragon Studios is releasing a new MMO, we can all eventually just migrate there anyway (assuming it's not a pokemon facebook game like Arcana's predicting, that is).

P.S. Good luck with your new project, David, make it your next masterpiece

They just added a producer, a lead developer, and a concept artist. I'm guessing we still have a few issues to go before the new game comes along and kills us in our sleep.

Can we fill the bed with pillows, while we safely hide elsewhere, instead?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Sure, he always claimed to be French. But that weren't no French accent.

The juxtaposition of these two sentences, even across a paragraph break, is really funny. Just had to point it out in case anyone missed it.

That's all great for the usual stagedressing props (costumes, powers, zone makeovers, etc) but it does feel like the end for any new game functionality or systems. In my heart, I was still holding out for a new "custom foe" or "npc faction" system but no chance of those now. Don't get me wrong: i'm grateful for what we've got and what we've yet to get in the Incarnate system but beyond that?

Eh, hope still springs eternal for I24 and beyond.