Intriguing Massively Article

Read the whole thread. Liked a lot of the ideas I heard.

I suppose right now one of the best (and biggest) things that can be done for the game is to do away the whole "villains in the isles, heroes in the city" dynamic they have set up. One of the best parts about playing through Praetoria is while going through the different paths you see how all the different stories come together. Events in one arc interferes or explains events in the other, and vice versa. It felt like the resistance and the loyalists were fighting against each other in one gigantic game of poker-chess.

This is me just typing ideas here, since I don't think this can really be done in the game without going as far as CoH2, but just let me write for a moment. I think one of the stronger things that could've been done is to take the dynamic that was in Praetoria, and make the Hero and Villain dynamic work similarly. In the same zones (both paragon and rogue isles will be accessible to everyone), you would have hero contacts and missions alongside of villain contacts in missions. You can only initiate hero content if you are a hero/vigilante, and also join them as a rogue. You can initiate villain content if you are a villain or rogue, and join them as a vigilante. By doing this, you can make it so you are fighting alongside of 5th column in paragon, or fighting against Lord Recluse in the rogue isles. The stories would intertwine with each of the opposing sides taking actions against each other. It would then truly feel like Paragon is a battleground and the rogue islands a slum in need of some great help.

There are some problems with this idea, though. The biggest issue is you won't know who is a hero or villain until you try to invite them to something and find out you can't. The other issue is that for RPers it may break immersion to see their hero walking by a villain but not being able to do a darn thing about it (implement an opt-in dueling system?) and vice versa. The last issue is implementation: there may be some legacy coding with the whole hero and villain thing that can cause problems, and also to make a story like this you'd need to add a ton of content to every zone in the game to accommodate the new alignments in the area.

BUT, the advantages are obvious. The stories are more involving and allow for greater depth than being an arachnos lackey/legacy hero errand boy. This makes every zone approachable by every player, so we won't have to deal with the whole "red side is empty" issue. We can now add content to either the rogue isles or paragon individually without having to deal with that whole "only add to both" stigma the staff has developed (as if a 30-35 SF to redside only will melt their faces). The whole game becomes one giant zone instead of the three way we have now.


EDIT: Also you can expand the praetorian storylines further into the zones instead of vanishing, like other people have mentioned.

For some reason I thought this would simply be chalked up as another DOOM thread but am pleasantly surprised the direction it went.

I admit I have only one Praetorian character and he hasn't even leveled to the point where he gets missions beyond the starting zone. Yes it's tougher which I chalk up to unfamiliarity of the new mobs and their powers as well as the fact I'm playing a KM Brute.

The pros - no war walls, both CoH and CoV ATs allowed, full use of the new graphics engine.

The cons - new users directed here first, existing CoH/CoV characters aren't allowed, UM effects targeted at higher end systems so sluggish performance may have discouraged new players.

Then of course there was the mass migration of players to GR and then back again. Blue and Red side became deader as existing players rushed over to try out GR only to have them return and make the Red side seem jumping compared to who was left playing Gold side.

I disagree with the article about Freedom. The hybrid F2P/Subscription model has been proven as the natural evolution of the just subscription model. Of course NCSoft needs to get their butts in gear with Paragon Points cards at major retailers like other hybrid MMOs. They need to stop making this game the exclusive realm of credit/debt card and Paypal users and look at the kids/tweens/teens with cash end of potential players.

Why Going Rogue?

1. Expansionmania. This is the idea that getting a 'box on the shelf' brings in huge profits and gets you noticed.

2. An Unfortunate Attachment to the Idea of "Don't Update, Create New." The Devs have said over and over again that they'd rather create something new than renovate the old... even if the old is very, very bad. So, the intro zones to Blueside had become increasingly seen as outdated and poor, especially in contrast to newer content. But rather than update those arcs and zones, the Devs felt compelled to create a new replacement for the old Blueside low level arcs and zones. Add in non-aligned ATs and Ultra Mode, the new GR zones would easily supplant the old blue zones, right? Right???


Why FREEDOM?

Cause everyone else was doing it. And those that did it successfully, got a big pay-off out of it. So, they hired the company that did LoTR:O (playspan) to provide a microtransaction system for CoH. CoH would have to be WoW-popular to not attempt a microtransaction system. And even if GR was successful, it was unlikely it would be *that* successful. FREEDOM and GR had nothing to do with each other.


Why did GR Fail?

As good as it was, there were some fatal flaws that have been mentioned above: Praetoria was not fully integrated into Red- and Bluesides; it was not an easy level-up zone for those who want to skip or have grown tired of repeating the GR storyline; it was not a full 1-50 'side'; GR critters are significantly more difficult than the blue or red critters; and, zone events have pitiful rewards to make it worthwhile to do.


The Fall Out.

And so, they finally did the things that GR was supposed to do in order to bring in more players, but, in the non-GR 'sides': They revamped the tutorial and beginnings zones (more so Blueside than Red); they finally made all non-Epic ATs 'faction-blind' for all 'sides'; they upgraded the ultra-modiness of the legacy zones; they created a fast level-up path for lowbie toons with low-level trials.

I think Z_M nails it, above.

When I listened to the Paragon Market panel at the Pummit, I noticed that the only things people are willing to pay extra money for are character-related. Notice that neither Praetoria access nor First Ward access showed up in the best seller list. The best seller list consists entirely of powersets, costume parts, enhancements, and the "cards" that give a random costume part or enhancement.

Players have voted with their dollars and with their time for less low-level content, less mid-level content. The cash-paying customers want a new character subclass (or class, eventually), or a new costume set, so they can roll new character concepts ... which they then want to PL up into the end-game raids as fast as humanly possible, skipping all of the content up until then if possible. Note, after all, that upcoming releases for the market include much stronger XP boosters, and several-hour substantial self-buff temp powers: exactly what you'd need so that as soon as you get done with Death from Below, you can crank any character's difficulty up to +4x8 and PL yourself through the 20-50 range. Note also that they long ago altogether gave up on stopping the AE PL farms that are designed to get you to level 50 in 8 to 16 hours; Power Amplifiers and Double XP boosts will only reinforce that.

That's not how I play City of Heroes. Right this minute, I have a whole crop of mid 20s, playing leisurely through the mid-level content, which I mostly still enjoy, and a half dozen or so low 30s waiting for Night Ward. But people like me are apparently as much of an unprofitable niche market as the PvPers. Paragon Studios is, arguably correctly, chasing the big money: selling people a wider variety of characters to grind Incarnate Trials with.

(Although, I say with a wry grin, there's very little point in caring what your character's costume is once you get to the end game. On a 24-man raid, the particle-effect smog is so dense that nobody can see your costume.)

Not a bad article but I'm not sure I agree with it.

GR introduced quite a few things to the game that we now take for granted.

-New graphics: Anyone remember the days of no shadows and no reflections? I do. The game looked good before but now? Much better. also, GR has shown that a form of open world can exist in this game. Anyone see war walls there? Nope? Good.

-Morality System/ Side Switching: Once upon a time, the only places blue and red could mix were Pocket D, RWZ and Cimmeroa. (and even before that, only Pocket D) Now? Run amok people! Go wherever the heck you want. Just a mission or ten and you can be doing content everywhere in the game universe.

-New story lines: The tired old 'statesman with a beard-alternate universe' idea got some depth to it and has become a big part of the current storyline.

-New zones: To date, counting the latest content, GR has given us 5 new places to hack/slash/blast our way through (with another, night ward, on the way)

-New characters: And new ways of looking at old favorites. Tunnel Rat has become a favorite as well as the newer, more vicious versons of the Phalanx.

Now I know folks will say 'so what, there's nothing to do there.' Ok, I will admit it could use a bit more mission content but what is there is good for quite a decent number of hours of game play. I, like most everybody else, would like to see the content go up into higher levels But I believe it's getting there with the addition of First Ward (content up to 30), and Night Ward should build on top of that.

GR may not have been the 'runaway blockbuster hit' that everyone expected and hoped for, but to claim it nearly killed the CoH franchise? That might be stretching things a bit too far.

Having read the article and digested it a bit, and then reading the replies here, I personally agree with a lot of the theories put forth in said article. My own take on what I felt was going on is as follows.

As the article says, time and money and a reinvestment into Paragon Studios was undertaken with Going Rogue. And when I look at the final product, I can see that the studio decided they wanted to take a chance at something new, both in terms of presentation and in story. In addition to that, they were getting the opportunity to make a city (as I seem to recall being mentioned by War Witch in the videos leading up to the release) as they'd always wanted to, with proper locations, proper geography and rationale for things to exist in.

The storytelling to me at least is both its strength and its weakness. There's a desire here to try and go for more 'shades of grey' storytelling in a genre not known for it aside from some pieces known for it (Watchmen, V for Vendetta et al) that could be argued that's still being tried today with mixed results (some elements of SSA#1 and First Ward) and encourage the player to find their moral compass through two distinct factions with sub-factions. That's certainly more complex than the hero/villain binary we currently stand with.

The weakness here, as others have noted, is that it ends far too soon and asks you to go back to a binary decision (hero/villain) without then coming back to where that character evolved from. Is this then a direct consequence of Going Rogue not performing as hoped or a lack of foresightedness? I know as someone who loves at the very least the more vibrant feel of Praetoria City, it feels like just as I come to embrace the setting I have to leave it. And that's sad.

Moving 'on' to First Ward where you're supposed to see the evil of Cole's decisions (although I personally felt the actions of the Furies to be disempowering to the characters) is a story I feel that comes too soon after coming to a point where a Praetorian character's moral compass has already been fixed. Night Ward potentially threatens a damnation of at least some of those choices.

But it's the overall decision of how the Praetorian storyline is handled that I think led to its ultimate demise as a valid storyline. I think adding in the Sutter/Apex/Tin Mage II TF's come off as awkwardly positioned. From a strictly linear point of view where your current level is the present, then seeing the attack on Skyway City at level 30 or so only to then never hear about the Praetorians (who you've last heard of around level 15, presuming you've playing the Shining Stars arcs) again until level 50. Where they apparently attack for 'the first time'. This disjointed approach to the story combined with the rest of the 'War' (I've never been convinced of it as an actual war as a player, I'll explain why) in concentrated bursts (the Trials) makes the experience far less effective than it could've ever been. It never feels like a war. There's some visually effective moments of attack in the Tin Mage/Apex TFs but these never seem to get expanded upon. In fact, it becomes incumbent upon the story to tell them only through the Incarnate System, which promises a gradually increasing godlike power...until you realise you are one of perhaps twenty-four godlike beings having to work together.

The Incarnate System also seems to have been curtailed from the original and tantalising glimpses given in the Alpha Slot arc. The ramblings and revelations of Prometheus go from a demanding Titan to one who seems almost apologetic and revisionist as time goes on.

There's a number of things here that seem to start as one thing and then inevitably become another, and one presumes it stems from Going Rogue's performance below what was expected. I agree very much with the notion that the Devs (especially in the Market) are throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks. 'Does this work?' 'What about this?' And the result is we get hit and miss moments. I can personally say I love the last arc of Who Will Die? whilst feeling disconnected and even a bit insulted with the telling of the events of chapters five and six.

Costume sets unrelated to anything other than a desire to be an astronaut/animal/pirate/post-apocalyptic survivor/etc. are just rampant. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a game prided on its costume creator, but it certainly doesn't speak to a unifying theme or conscious awareness of product. It's as if the masses speak and the loudest voice is chosen as the direction to go in for a given month. That's strictly a personal impression, but it's a strong one.

It seems likely now we may see the Battalion by the end of the year, and then what? Will there be a design imperative to restructure the content so that older content disappears in favor of the Praetorian/Battalion War? If so, the narrative lines need to be cleaned up quite a fair bit in my opinion. For a game that often states that your current level is your present, their sense of tense seems often confused.

And then what of the Great Experiement, Praetoria? Some want to see it transformed into a post-war zone where people could mission again, which would mean a revamping of the entire city, let alone a zone. Perhaps that version of Praetoria is just wiped away ala Galaxy City and the basic infrastructure becomes some newly imagined district of Paragon City? It's hard to imagine all those assets being just cast aside in an era of Atlas Park makeovers. I don't know myself, but I know I'm very sad to see it virtually never used.

And lurking behind all of this is Paragon Studios' secret other project, where the vast majority of the names we know from this game are now working, bar War Witch and Positron. I do in fact expect at some point they too will go to this project; their experience and skills cannot be underestimated or underutilised. I feel the torch for costume designs has been passed from Noble Savage to Dink, and this is entirely reflective of where the design team is right now. I know a handful of names now who actively work on this game, where even a year ago, I could safely rattle off nearly ten or so in some capacity or another.

And ultimately, if the game is to recieve no new expansions, if no further expansion in revenue comes save from microtransactions, and the major storylines of the game are being brought to a head that have been around since its inception, then is NCSoft going to let it coast on this road until it does (as all games will inevitably) lose enough money to cause them to close it down? This isn't doomcrying, I must state. But it's something at least for myself I see being raised less as a conjecture and more as of a question in recent times.

Food for thought for this player, at least.




S.

redacted

okay, finally got around to reading the link in the OP.

To call it an "article" is pure hyperbole- it's generic forum butthurt & conspiracy mongering that somehow escaped a well deserved fate in the editor's garbage can.

When you open with this

I think the angle presented in the article might explain why GR is so different from the rest of the game: NCsoft wanted Paragon to create a different product to bring in a new audience.

That's why the expansion so greatly resembles a Star Wars empire/rebellion type story crudely welded onto a superhero game. Paragon wanted to tap into the Star Wars fan market.

Possibly that's also why the incarnate system so greatly resembles the upper levels of AD&D, where players become like gods. Paragon wanted to tap into the AD&D type audience.

Unfortunately, from my standpoint, neither aspect of this work actually supports the original premise of the game, which is superheroes, nor does either aspect communicate what it is clearly enough to draw in that new audience.

For me, these new efforts tend to dilute the game. I don't play in Praetoria ever, as it really has nothing to do with heroes and villains, and grinding through a small number of repeating missions to gain 3 extra powers plus some buffs (i.e., the incarnate content) isn't terribly attractive to me.

If marketing wants to successfully broaden the audience while keeping the focus of the game, perhaps they'll make a scifi expansion that supports scifi heroes (giving missions in space, time, and alternate dimensions such as you might find in Green Lantern, Adam Strange, Fantastic Four, or Captain Marvel comics). They could also make a magic expansion that supports magic heroes in specifically magical environments and circumstances, as clearly there are fans of vampires, mages, demons, and so on, and this audience is well-represented in comic lore (Tomb of Dracula, Blade, Son of Satan, Ghost Rider, Phantom Stranger, Hellboy, etc.).

Likewise, they could appeal to martial arts fans by expanding game options in that direction, and appeal to spy/detective fans by creating content of that nature.

Sell each of these as expansions keyed to those specific genres so people can see what they're getting.

I think this approach would be successful. Players seem to respond positively whenever the devs release a product that caters to these desires. They like the occasional rocket board, flying carpet, moon mission map, or themed costume set (barbarian, cowboy, imperial dynasty, or whatever). It would be nice to have a large chunk of content that would deal in detail with a specific genre, yet be contained within the existing game.

To me this is a natural method of expansion, as the product is easy to communicate to potential buyers, whereas products like GR are a farrago that can at best please a small number of the existing player base.

If you want to bring new audiences to an existing game, to me this is how you do it.