Where did the game go wrong?

Except for NCsoft being idiots I think the main problem was that the crossection of superhero fans globally and people who play MMOs just was not very big and keeping a game like this alive and prosperous maybe simply was too hard.

They should of given us warning and asked us to spend more money. I would have bought more stuff to keep the game going.

Can someone confirm this stupid rumor about a COH2? I had someone mention this to me on facebook and I almost laughed.

Honestly? I think CoV was the biggest mistake they made and one they've been paying for ever since. Split up player base too much as well as dev resources.

The game didn't go wrong at all.

NCSoft went wrong.

In retrospect, they tried a lot of stuff that just didn't work, despite being cool ideas.

Gladiators, the Shadow Shard for example.

Also they had a bit of redundancy and waste. Two starter zones. Many zones for limited level ranges that didn't have much content. Granted, nobody can predict the future. When they were designing a Hazard Zone for each level range, they didn't know that future changes would all but kill street sweeping as a popular activity

They also exceeded their reach sometimes, planning for things down the road that, ultimately they never got to. They've been setting up the Coming Storm for years with way too many detours and distractions. Up until the end, they were setting stuff up in i24 they probably wouldn't get back to until i26 or i27, if that early. The Incarnate system is another example. They set up Omega way too early. In hindsight, they should have aimed for 5 slots, got them finished before they indicated there would be 5 more.



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If I had known of this thread, I might not have set up this one.

My basic opinion is that this game would be a much bigger deal now than it actually is if it weren't for all the early nerfs. Though I can see they paved the way for something better, if you had played before it was pretty tough to keep playing after. I really only got interested again after IOs made it possible to build characters that were close enough to being as strong as they used to be.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

If it went wrong anywhere, it was the very beginning- a lot of half-formed ideas, vague power descriptions and poor balancing. The game spent eight years fixing these problems, getting better and better.

I believe their first misstep was to make instanced missions a lot more attractive than simple street sweeping. Reduced debt (back when debt hurt) and XP bonuses turned most zones into ghost towns with only the occasional hero spotted traveling to their next mission, contact or zone.

Even those sightings became rarer as they introduced more and faster ways to travel across zones and to missions. Certain gathering spots became more and more of a ghost town as bases got invention workbenches, Tier 8 direct access to the consignment house and vault, eliminating the need to go to Icon by making every zone trainer a tailor.

Sure all of those things streamlined our play but to what end? You log in as a new user and the first zone you go to has only a handful of players visible (and as a new F2P user you can't even talk to them without running up next to them). People judge popularity based on seeing other players and if you aren't seeing many, is it a game you want to invest time playing if you can't find anyone to play with.

They corrected almost all of their "mistakes" imo. This game still has many of the traits that must be in future MMO's if future mmo developer monkeys want me to keep throwing them my hard earned bananas. For example: any of those mmos I consider must have a decent community or encourage teamplay like COX or I'm keeping my bananas. Those solo-only or 2 member team mmo's are just not fun for me.

I found COX exceptionally enjoyable, especially the extreme variety of primary and secondary powersets that could be used so many ways to benefit the team.

When the enemies melted like sticks of butter, the vets in the game knew why. You see the rads, sonics, darks, ice, etc doing their thing for the sake of the team. Even the stepkids, the TA's, they did their job, too.

Farewall all.

-BurnSucka.
"Melt 'em like butters!"

the game "went wrong" when Jack talked NC into publishing it when nobody else would touch it. Corporate skullduggery/malfeasance/incompetence (depending on which flavor of rumor you prefer) killed this game, it was nothing the devs did.

The only real foreseeable problem was that the microtransactions had to be done through a third party company instead of NCsoft proper like in their other games.

As far as game design is considered, City of Heroes did have a couple of mistakes. The greatest being the lack of an "overworld" for people to really interact in. There were a couple of powerset problems and all that, and also there was a lack of focus on PVP, the base system was kind of messed up, and other things like that.

But did the "game" really go wrong? The biggest thing I noticed in the last few months of CoH is that the developers not only acknowledged these problems, but were making active attempts to fix them. ATs were being balanced and improved, empty zones were being removed, writers were paying attention to feedback.. all in all I was really looking forward to the next couple of issues.


I'd put the blame more on NCsoft for refusing to capitalize on the emergence of several very popular superhero movies. It's like NCsoft just didn't care that much about little oh CoH.

The biggest problem CoH had was the first one, which was it's rigid old engine that made it hard to add new features.

The only thing they ever did wrong was changing the way we chose our colors in beta to separate skintones from costume colors.

I more and more get the feeling that it is dirty board member politics. From wanting to cut the non Grindy Foreign black sheep out of their business model to oh look we need to make the shareholders happy and show that we can make even more profit when we show them we cut the fat (read employees) of. Never mind that they made money of this game, keeping shareholders happy is more important.

For the mods, sorry if I overstepped the boundaries here.

What was the size of paragon studios on August 31st? When did the workforce peak and what was the number?