Author Topic: City of Heroes 2  (Read 44848 times)

Abraxus

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #40 on: July 19, 2017, 01:33:10 PM »
Again, they are a game company, not some evil organization that feeds on human suffering and hates people who gave them money for years. Attributing malice to any of this is idiotic, it is at worst misguided.

I qualified my "malicious" statement by saying "if they understood the American market".  Since they obviously don't, it was just a business decision that, from our perspective, just felt that way.
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blackjak

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #41 on: July 19, 2017, 02:01:49 PM »
What puzzles me a bit there that they are not "just reusing the IP". They are advertising MxM with Statesman.
... and I cannot find any reasonable enough reasons for that move.

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Easy. Capitalization on the huge success of American superhero movies. It's the only western superhero product that they have IP for.

Just trying to make a buck on a "trend".
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Thunder Glove

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #42 on: July 19, 2017, 03:12:39 PM »
Easy. Capitalization on the huge success of American superhero movies. It's the only western superhero product that they have IP for.

Just trying to make a buck on a "trend".

It's still puzzling, because that trend was already well underway when they shut down CoH.  (Iron Man had been released in 2008, and the Avengers had been released earlier the same year they shut CoH down)

If they wanted to capitalize on "the superhero trend", shutting down their big superhero game right after the biggest superhero movie in decades, doing absolutely nothing with the IP for five whole years, and then bringing a couple of NPCs back as glorified cameos in another game seems like a really roundabout (read: stupid) way to do it.

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #43 on: July 19, 2017, 05:08:43 PM »
Again, they are a game company, not some evil organization that feeds on human suffering and hates people who gave them money for years. Attributing malice to any of this is idiotic, it is at worst misguided.
I agree with princezilla here - I don't see any "malice" per se, in what NCsoft does.

There's an old adage, something along the lines of: "Never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by sheer ignorance and stupidity".

With respect to the North American gaming market, NCsoft makes the proverbial "box of rocks" look like Einstein.

Their approach, in the NA market, strikes me much more as "gross incompetence" than anything else... They're like a plumber who, instead of fixing the drippy faucet you called him for, ends up flooding your entire home...

I can't speak for anyone else, but that "plumber" would never come near my home again, and in the same way, NCsoft will never sell a product to me again either.

Frankly, they should stick solely to the Korean marketplace, where they seem to have at least a small vestige of a clue.


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cmgangrel

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #44 on: July 19, 2017, 08:04:59 PM »
It's still puzzling, because that trend was already well underway when they shut down CoH.  (Iron Man had been released in 2008, and the Avengers had been released earlier the same year they shut CoH down)

If they wanted to capitalize on "the superhero trend", shutting down their big superhero game right after the biggest superhero movie in decades, doing absolutely nothing with the IP for five whole years, and then bringing a couple of NPCs back as glorified cameos in another game seems like a really roundabout (read: stupid) way to do it.

You missed out: The Punisher, Spider-Man 2   (won an Oscar as well), Blade Trinity, Elektra, Fantastic 4, X-Men: Last Stand, Ghost Rider, Spiderman 3, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer all being released whilst CoX was alive, but before the MCU starting.

And that is just the marvel side.

DC side: Catwoman, Constantine, Batman Begins   (Oscar nominated), V for Vendetta, Superman Returns

And this is all before 2008 (The Dark Knight was 2008), so midway through the games lifespan.... we were not exactly "hurting" for Superhero films, with almost 4 per year at this stage.

LaughingAlex

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #45 on: July 19, 2017, 08:21:37 PM »
You missed out: The Punisher, Spider-Man 2   (won an Oscar as well), Blade Trinity, Elektra, Fantastic 4, X-Men: Last Stand, Ghost Rider, Spiderman 3, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer all being released whilst CoX was alive, but before the MCU starting.

And that is just the marvel side.

DC side: Catwoman, Constantine, Batman Begins   (Oscar nominated), V for Vendetta, Superman Returns

And this is all before 2008 (The Dark Knight was 2008), so midway through the games lifespan.... we were not exactly "hurting" for Superhero films, with almost 4 per year at this stage.

Of course half of them sucked, like Elektra and Fantastic 4, or even the X Men movie in there :(.  Speaking of fantastic 4.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TrrE66FYO0

Does this remind you guys of something?
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princezilla

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #46 on: July 20, 2017, 09:01:23 PM »
Of course half of them sucked, like Elektra and Fantastic 4, or even the X Men movie in there :(.  Speaking of fantastic 4.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TrrE66FYO0

Does this remind you guys of something?


Yeah the Superhero craze didn't really explode until Avengers hit. There were some good and very successful movies before it but it wasn't a full blown phenomenon until after it blew open the box office and a few records in the process.

GUGuardian

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #47 on: October 02, 2017, 12:46:29 AM »
Frankly, I wouldn't care who made CoX2 as long as it was out there and as awesome as (if not better than) the original.  I WANT MY CITY BACK!!!

princezilla

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #48 on: October 08, 2017, 12:25:18 AM »
Frankly, I wouldn't care who made CoX2 as long as it was out there and as awesome as (if not better than) the original.  I WANT MY CITY BACK!!!

This has been my attitude for years, with the addendum that at this point a sequel would be better than bringing the old game back as it was at shutdown. We've already lost all of our characters and adds ons so recreating the setting and style of the game using the newest tech and with the advantage of a fresh start rather than having to continue to try and build off a core designed barely out of the 90s would allow for possibilities that the old dev team only dreamed of.

srmalloy

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #49 on: December 28, 2017, 02:54:08 AM »
I agree with princezilla here - I don't see any "malice" per se, in what NCsoft does.

There's an old adage, something along the lines of: "Never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by sheer ignorance and stupidity".

With respect to the North American gaming market, NCsoft makes the proverbial "box of rocks" look like Einstein.

The Asian MMO market is considerably different from the Western MMO market. There, players would get together with their friends, go down to an internet cafe, and game together as a group. Asian MMOs are very heavily group-focused, to the point where most of the content can't be done solo once you get out of the starting area. And they make most of their money from microtransactions, a cash shop selling a steady stream of gear and buffs; you can't make yourself a god with the cash shop, but you can buy the things to make your grinding smoother and faster. And that was the fundamental problem with CoH. Look at what Paragon Studios did at the end with its version of loot boxes. You didn't get anything that significantly improved on what you could get in game. Everything that mattered in the game came from what you did in the game -- even at endgame, unlocking and upgrading your Incarnate abilities was something you couldn't get from a cash shop, and the majority of what you could get was entirely cosmetic -- new costume parts. There was nothing for NCsoft to monetize, no steady stream of income from a cash shop tied to their NCCoin currency that fed directly to them. It flew in the face of everything that all their experience with MMOs told them that an MMO should be. 'City of Hero' flopped so badly in Korea after all the work put into localization because it didn't play like an Asian MMO; you didn't have to group up to do content, and bringing more people didn't make it easier -- it just scaled up your opposition. You could be a solo hero or villain. All NCsoft saw was an MMO that didn't work the way they expected an MMO to work, and which couldn't be twisted into the 'right' kind of MMO without destroying it. But it was turning a profit. So NCsoft threw a secret project at Paragon Studios to make the studio as a whole lose money, which let them pretend to be virtuous about trimming out unprofitable subsidiaries.

Abraxus

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #50 on: December 28, 2017, 04:07:17 PM »
Problem there is, CoH was still making money in North America.  Obviously not in the Asian market, but there was still money to be made here.  They just decided that pulling the plug to devote resources to one of their other losing propositions was the better way to go.  Fair enough.  However, throwing roadblocks in front of the folks who wanted to do something with a property they don't appreciate; well, I think that is where a lot of folks get the impression there might be a little malice involved.  True, or not, it's an easy conclusion to arrive at.
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Golden Aurora

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #51 on: December 28, 2017, 08:30:03 PM »
The Asian MMO market is considerably different from the Western MMO market. There, players would get together with their friends, go down to an internet cafe, and game together as a group. Asian MMOs are very heavily group-focused, to the point where most of the content can't be done solo once you get out of the starting area. And they make most of their money from microtransactions, a cash shop selling a steady stream of gear and buffs; you can't make yourself a god with the cash shop, but you can buy the things to make your grinding smoother and faster. And that was the fundamental problem with CoH. Look at what Paragon Studios did at the end with its version of loot boxes. You didn't get anything that significantly improved on what you could get in game. Everything that mattered in the game came from what you did in the game -- even at endgame, unlocking and upgrading your Incarnate abilities was something you couldn't get from a cash shop, and the majority of what you could get was entirely cosmetic -- new costume parts. There was nothing for NCsoft to monetize, no steady stream of income from a cash shop tied to their NCCoin currency that fed directly to them. It flew in the face of everything that all their experience with MMOs told them that an MMO should be. 'City of Hero' flopped so badly in Korea after all the work put into localization because it didn't play like an Asian MMO; you didn't have to group up to do content, and bringing more people didn't make it easier -- it just scaled up your opposition. You could be a solo hero or villain. All NCsoft saw was an MMO that didn't work the way they expected an MMO to work, and which couldn't be twisted into the 'right' kind of MMO without destroying it. But it was turning a profit. So NCsoft threw a secret project at Paragon Studios to make the studio as a whole lose money, which let them pretend to be virtuous about trimming out unprofitable subsidiaries.

Uhhhhh... That's not true. They had released archetype specific enhancements. They had also released upgrades for enhancements. I remember buying more than a few.
Also like most other Asian MMOs they had monetized costume parts. Asian MMOs commonly rake you over the coals for costume parts (especially modifying your costume).
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetype_Enhancements

Aron

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #52 on: December 29, 2017, 07:04:48 PM »
I sometimes get the impression that NCSoft resents or simply don't get that its American customers won't always respond the same way as its Korean customers.  I recall the Forbes article a little while back that gave me the impression that NCSoft was kind of baffled about much of its failure in North America with the recent exception of "Blade & Soul."  I thought it was kind of suspicious that Paragon Studios and CoX wasn't mentioned at all in that article.  Though amusingly the four comments posted by readers all brought it up.

Ohioknight

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #53 on: December 29, 2017, 11:05:37 PM »
Problem there is, CoH was still making money in North America. 

The GAME was making money here.  Paragon Studios, the organization NCSoft had to support/run the game wasn't.  They really shut down Paragon more than they shut down the game -- a corporate reorganization that cut off an "oddball" piece of the enterprise.

To keep the game up they would have needed some support and that would have needed somebody to pay attention to it, the money wasn't enough to tempt them and the easiest from their perspective was to kill it.

As I understand it.

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Abraxus

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #54 on: December 30, 2017, 03:07:04 AM »
The GAME was making money here.  Paragon Studios, the organization NCSoft had to support/run the game wasn't.  They really shut down Paragon more than they shut down the game -- a corporate reorganization that cut off an "oddball" piece of the enterprise.

To keep the game up they would have needed some support and that would have needed somebody to pay attention to it, the money wasn't enough to tempt them and the easiest from their perspective was to kill it.

As I understand it.

Well, I'd love to have a crystal ball to tell me why, if they have no faith that it could ever work in the Asian market, are they not willing to give someone in the western market a chance to make something of it.  The recent weak effort to use the most recognizable character from the game to promote one of their other losing properties demonstrates, at very least, that they remember they have CoH in the vault, and that there might be some way to make some bucks with it.  They just seem unwilling to accept that the only way it will really benefit anyone (including them), is in its entirety.  Not in small, worthless pieces.

Sorry, let myself slip into righteous indignation mode again.  So easy to do when it comes to our beloved CoH.
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srmalloy

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #55 on: January 20, 2018, 08:36:22 PM »
Uhhhhh... That's not true. They had released archetype specific enhancements. They had also released upgrades for enhancements. I remember buying more than a few.
Also like most other Asian MMOs they had monetized costume parts. Asian MMOs commonly rake you over the coals for costume parts (especially modifying your costume).
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetype_Enhancements

None of this happened until long after "City of Hero" had crashed and burned in Korea, though; NCsoft was looking at a game that had already failed in their primary market, and even with the additions that Paragon Studios made to the cash shop near the end of the game, it would still have been nothing like the constant stream of microtransactions from players; the IO being an enhancement you'd never outlevel breaks the Korean MMO model, which relies on a continual gear upgrade process to fuel the cash shop.

Gorgor

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #56 on: February 01, 2018, 10:07:35 PM »
WoW has heirlooms that boost as you level, up to a certain level, which you can upgrade 2x to get to top level.  This is to ease leveling for established players plowing through the content for the forty-leventh time.  You can pay real cash to jump right to 100, where the most recent expansion begins.

We don't know but IOs would probably be fixed to 50, and leveling stuff would stop at 50, if the cap had ever been increased with an expansion.  These are meant to aid fast leveling through ancient content, or are "best in slot" stuff...for the current content/level cap.

That stuff never drags on past it, and we don't even know for CoH what they would have done, but turning old great stuff into replacment table legs on next expansion is tried and true.

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #57 on: February 02, 2018, 12:45:16 AM »
WoW has heirlooms that boost as you level, up to a certain level, which you can upgrade 2x to get to top level.  This is to ease leveling for established players plowing through the content for the forty-leventh time.  You can pay real cash to jump right to 100, where the most recent expansion begins.

We don't know but IOs would probably be fixed to 50, and leveling stuff would stop at 50, if the cap had ever been increased with an expansion.  These are meant to aid fast leveling through ancient content, or are "best in slot" stuff...for the current content/level cap.

That stuff never drags on past it, and we don't even know for CoH what they would have done, but turning old great stuff into replacment table legs on next expansion is tried and true.

City of Heroes sidestepped the whole level cap enhancement deal with the Incarnate system. basic leveling stopped at 50, where the Incarnate system started and made further power increases "level-less", so to speak, by slot unlocks for the incarnate powers. I haven't really seen many games go that route. Most of them just increase the level cap, to the consternation of a  great many players with level capped characters.

Star Trek Online also has power progression beyond the level cap without raising the level cap.
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Paragon Avenger

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #58 on: October 07, 2018, 07:48:19 AM »
How about a game without levels.
Your exprience gains more powers or stengthens exist powers.
You vs enemy would need a way to tell you, going against Lord Recluse after just starting the game might mean insta-squash for you.

Anyway, you just keep gaining powers and strenthening exist powers.

TinFoil

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Re: City of Heroes 2
« Reply #59 on: October 07, 2018, 05:13:40 PM »
How 'bout a no-level system where your powers unlock per enemy type (aliens, machines, humanoid, otherworld, etc) rather than just a straight improvement across the board. It would sort of make sense that if you fought machines all the time you would start learning some tricks to better defeat those enemies while those same tricks wouldn't work on aliens.