I hate to say this...but, I think it's really over for our beloved game.
By
Ad Astra,
Posted on: 2012-09-21 16:20 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Yeah and, in my opinion, for something that was unnecessary. Tanks are my favorite AT. I think tanks are fine as they are. I imagine your response will be along the lines of, "You must be an idiot if you couldn't see the problems with tanks."|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Stop and think for a second whom you are speaking to.
I lobbied non-stop for five years, more or less alone, for what is admittedly a ludicrous cause for most people. Uphill, against pretty much everyone. |
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| We need to focus on moving forward while we still have momentum. |
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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A spiritual successor to CoH. A worthy sequel in everything but name.|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
This line puzzles me. You are convinced that CoH is done for. Then we need to focus on moving forward with what? To what?
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Originally Posted by Machariel
1) It's "to whom you are speaking"
2) If you find yourself using that phrase on an internet forum you might need to get up and take a break  |
My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom
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I'm not sure you are doing that right.
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Originally Posted by JayboH
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Ugh. This just smacks of ignorance and a superiority complex.|
Originally Posted by Severe
ill come back here on nov 29th to tell you i told you so. till then welcome back to the real world.
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If the game shuts down on Nov. 30 or whatever, no one will have "told you so" to any but the most ridiculously over-optimistic players. I sometimes think some of the players promoting a negative outlook don't understand what "hope" entails.
If you have "hope" that the game can be saved, it means you understand that it might not. It doesn't mean you know it will be saved. If someone around here thinks they know that CoH will continue to run beyond Nov. 30, and it doesn't, you can come tell them "told you so". You can't do that for anyone with a more realistic outlook.
Anyone with a lick of sense has known all along, no matter how painful it was to consider, that the odds of the game being saved have been small. Worse, even if the game can be saved, it would almost certainly still shut down on Nov. 30 - moving the game to any other stewards would almost certainly take time. Pretty much the only version of saving CoH that involved no shutdown would be if NCSoft itself kept the game running, and the reasons that was incredibly unlikely started to become apparent thanks to various analyses within days of the announcement.
In short, it's pointless to lord over people that "you were right" when they already knew it was likely. The only thing sensible people are hoping is that "you might not be right". If you turn out to be right, it's not going to be a surprise. Disappointing, but not surprising.
Hope and realism are not necessarily incompatible.
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I'm one of the guys that actually thinks you generally talk pretty good, cut through the c**p, sense but not sure how we can influence the great new successor to COH anymore than we can prevent it's current demise.
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
A spiritual successor to CoH. A worthy sequel in everything but name.
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Don't get into a flap. It's only my opinion and I'm thick
Arc 56763 Lord Anarchys heaven
2 mission arc. Bring friends cause Lord Anarchy means business...
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Cuz there really can be only one.|
Originally Posted by Severe
and your no billz
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/I took the name on all servers.
Be well, people of CoH.
Yeah. Making a "worthy successor" isn't really up to us, is it? It requires a team of dozens of dedicated professionals working for years to put together a new game. If all of Paragon's devs reassembled under a new company name, got funding, and started working on a brand-new CoH-alike right this second, it wouldn't see the light of day until around 2020 or 2021. We probably wouldn't even see a bare-bones tech demo until 2016 or 2017.
And that'd be if we had a team of dozens of dedicated professionals to begin with. We don't. Part-timers scattered across the country tinkering with code with no real central leadership or direction (other than "be like CoH") would be lucky to have even the barest of basics done by 2020, assuming they don't lose interest by then.
I'd much rather work towards saving this game (even if there were a few months downtime) than sitting here waiting a decade for a "worthy successor" that I may not consider worthy at all.
(I mean, I'm sure Jack Emmert considers Champions Online to be a "worthy successor" to CoH in "all but name" — it even uses the same basic engine and everything — but I don't like it anywhere near as much as CoH, and there's no guarantee I'll like any other "successors" to CoH)
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There's a great deal more we can do on that front. Saving CoH was always dependent on getting NCSoft to budge on their decision or sell the IP. There's very little a small group can do to influence and reverse a corporate decision once it has been put in motion. There was only one path to success and NC was right in the middle of it.|
Originally Posted by lionsbane_EU
I'm one of the guys that actually thinks you generally talk pretty good, cut through the c**p, sense but not sure how we can influence the great new successor to COH anymore than we can prevent it's current demise.
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Conversely, there are many paths to a spiritual successor to CoH. For starters, many people in this community work in the game industry. They have skills that can be applied directly to forming a studio and creating a game. That is not inconceivable considering how many players were in turn hired by Paragon Studios. Such endeavors are already being discussed.
Then we have the former developers at Paragon Studios. Not all of them have taken jobs right away and although they may not yet have publicly commented as such, they may want to take another run at a superhero MMO. It's important for us to continue to support them and remind them of the great community they'd be making a game for. Show them and anyone potentially backing them that it there is an audience in place waiting in anticipation for such a title.
In that same vein, there is the simple fact that the more we demonstrate our fervor for the game, the more we show other studios who may be contemplating what their next project should be that there is a vacuum in the MMO space for a high quality super hero MMO cut from the same cloth as CoH that people long to be filled.
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Hardly. Let's say Positron and Co. decided tomorrow to do this. New studios can be, and often are, set up in a couple of months. I know, I've been there. Nobody makes their own engines from scratch these days. Once funding was secured they would acquire a license for Unreal tech or the like; maybe even continue with Cryptic's engine. You're looking at around three to four years for development, not seven, and we'd be hearing about its production long before then with a web site set up to begin building hype and awareness and keeping the momentum. We'd probably be on their forums arguing about the game by next Summer. In the mean time, you'd be playing other games.|
Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
If all of Paragon's devs reassembled under a new company name, got funding, and started working on a brand-new CoH-alike right this second, it wouldn't see the light of day until around 2020 or 2021. We probably wouldn't even see a bare-bones tech demo until 2016 or 2017.
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My guess? Developing a billing system in-house will be quite an undertaking for a business without an influx of revenue from their customers.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Why do they need a third party publisher? Is that even necessary these days? Why couldn't they hire the people necessary to handle everything in house?
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--Rad
/whereami:
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Why would you want the people responsible for the games failure to oversee the successor ?
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Hardly. Let's say Positron and Co. decided tomorrow to do this. New studios can be, and often are, set up in a couple of months. I know, I've been there. Nobody makes their own engines from scratch these days. Once funding was secured they would acquire a license for Unreal tech or the like; maybe even continue with Cryptic's engine. You're looking at around three to four years for development, not seven, and we'd be hearing about its production long before then with a web site set up to begin building hype and awareness and keeping the momentum. We'd probably be on their forums arguing about the game by next Summer. In the mean time, you'd be playing other games.
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Buy one. But this time pick a better one than the paragon market.
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Originally Posted by Radionuclide
My guess? Developing a billing system in-house will be quite an undertaking for a business without an influx of revenue from their customers.
--Rad |
Even if that's the case and it only takes half a decade to get a new game up and running (which also presumes that Paragon reunites and starts working on one right now, which is not the case), that still doesn't take into account what I said about it being a "worthy successor". Define "worthy".
A new game made by the original CoH devs and running on the same engine as CoH is exactly what Champions Online is. I don't much like Champions Online. It's a spiritual successor, but I don't consider it "worthy".
And there's no guarantee that I'd automatically like any other game made by CoH devs and running on the CoH engine. (Especially if NeoParagon is legally not allowed to emulate CoH's "look and feel" because NC Soft still owns that)
I'd certainly give it a fair shake. I certainly wouldn't go "it's not CoH, so it sucks" and turn my nose up at it. But I don't know whether it would have that magic something that drew me into CoH and kept me playing. And I can't know that until the game already exists and I'm actively playing it.
(This is not meant to disparage the Paragon team, but it's difficult to catch lightning in a bottle twice. See, for example, Brutal Legends compared to Psychonauts, or Noby Noby Boy compared to Katamari Damacy)
Edited to add:
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The game was making $10,000,000 a year, according to Paragon management - that's profit, not revenue. The game wasn't closed because it was failing. We may never know the real reason the game was closed, but being a "failure" isn't it.
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Originally Posted by PPCGunner
Why would you want the people responsible for the games failure to oversee the successor ?
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Technology has moved on quite a bit since CoH was developed, and the gap between professionals and amatuers isn't so wide now.
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
Yeah. Making a "worthy successor" isn't really up to us, is it? It requires a team of dozens of dedicated professionals working for years to put together a new game.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Because the game's failure is not something you or anyone else can clearly lay at the feet of the implementation. We cannot point to how the game worked, or its lore, and say "that's why it 'failed'." We can point out things we consider flaws, but that's not the same thing as a list of reasons why the game "failed". And among the things that might be considered mistakes, is your assumption that they would immediately repeat all of them?|
Originally Posted by PPCGunner
Why would you want the people responsible for the games failure to oversee the successor ?
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Whatever mistakes they may have made, these same devs have been responsible for either early creation or later work on a game that many of us here loved to play even today. At this time of closure I think we were on the verge of some of the best things ever added to the game. We want these same people to work on the game because we trust them to create something we would love to play - they proved they can do that.
Remember, when consider mistakes and paths not taken, we also have to include what we know about corporate support from NCSoft. That includes includes, among other things, shooting down an actual sequel. What "mistakes" might have been corrected there?
In any case, I think it's a bit ludicrous that you frame that question around an assumption of failure. An eight year run is hardly a failure in this context. The game being shut down at this point does not mean it "failed".
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Red
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We don't want NCSoft invovled at all.
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Originally Posted by PPCGunner
Why would you want the people responsible for the games failure to oversee the successor ?
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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That was revenue. Good job.
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
The game was making $10,000,000 a year, according to Paragon management - that's profit, not revenue. The game wasn't closed because it was failing. We may never know the real reason the game was closed, but being a "failure" isn't it. |
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The only things I hate NCsoft for are not stepping in when it became obvious Paragon Studios wasn't growing the game, and shutting the game down completely instead of selling it.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
We don't want NCSoft invovled at all.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Because the game's failure is not something you or anyone else can clearly lay at the feet of the implementation. We cannot point to how the game worked, or its lore, and say "that's why it 'failed'." We can point out things we consider flaws, but that's not the same thing as a list of reasons why the game "failed". And among the things that might be considered mistakes, is your assumption that they would immediately repeat all of them?
Whatever mistakes they may have made, these same devs have been responsible for either early creation or later work on a game that many of us here loved to play even today. At this time of closure I think we were on the verge of some of the best things ever added to the game. We want these same people to work on the game because we trust them to create something we would love to play - they proved they can do that. Remember, when consider mistakes and paths not taken, we also have to include what we know about corporate support from NCSoft. That includes includes, among other things, shooting down an actual sequel. What "mistakes" might have been corrected there? In any case, I think it's a bit ludicrous that you frame that question around an assumption of failure. An eight year run is hardly a failure in this context. The game being shut down at this point does not mean it "failed". |
I don't know that I agree with the OP, but the buck has to stop some place. I can personally think of numerous actions by Paragon Studios that were infuriating. A few that caused me to stop playing and the only the wife could pull me back into the game. I don't know what role NCsoft played. I have been told things that literally sound impossible to insane.
BTW one of the things I won't miss is the way people can read a word and completely ignore what was meant by it's use.
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fail·ure [feyl-yer] Show IPA noun 1. an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success: His effort ended in failure. The campaign was a failure. 2. nonperformance of something due, required, or expected: a failure to do what one has promised; a failure to appear. 3. a subnormal quantity or quality; an insufficiency: the failure of crops. 4. deterioration or decay, especially of vigor, strength, etc.: The failure of her health made retirement necessary. 5. a condition of being bankrupt by reason of insolvency |
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NO NO NO, it was revenue, not profit. If the game was making 10 million in profit NCSoft would have never closed them.
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
The game was making $10,000,000 a year, according to Paragon management - that's profit, not revenue.
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Tempus unum hominem manet
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NCSoft already cancelled the CoH2 plans the studio were developing - it wasn't the devs who failed to grow the game.
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Originally Posted by PPCGunner
The only things I hate NCsoft for are not stepping in when it became obvious Paragon Studios wasn't growing the game, and shutting the game down completely instead of selling it.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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And we have no way to find out what kind of profit it was making, do we, FX?
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
NO NO NO, it was revenue, not profit. If the game was making 10 million in profit NCSoft would have never closed them.
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Be well, people of CoH.
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CoH2 was this game. The features they wanted for it got rolled into going rogue and ultra mode.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
NCSoft already cancelled the CoH2 plans the studio were developing - it wasn't the devs who failed to grow the game.
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Things like Zwills goodbye and Cryptic picking up a number of Paragon employee's is kind of starting make me feel this way. Still, it ain't over til its over. And we still have November 30th for that. So until then I'll do whatever I can do try and save it.
"I have something to say! It's better to burn out then to fade away!"