A CO Dev Posted on the Champions Forums

[Kaos Arcanna]

Yes, really. 

He seemed like a nice guy and gave a flat out answer about something I was impressed by. (Sad that it meant we won't be seeing wheeled vehicles soon but still impressed he gave a straight answer to.)

[Atlantea]

More impressively, he gave a clearly explained and logical reason WHY they can't do them properly that made sense.

Shocked the hell out of a lot of people. Zonechat was also echoing with people calling out with stuff like -

"A Dev actually posted on the forums!"
"Dude! No way! Really?"
"We actually HAVE Devs?"
"Did he post more than once?"
"He ANSWERED QUESTIONS?"

I think it boosted morale a bit. (Also makes you realize how good we had it with COH when we had near constant contact with Paragon Studios.)

[Night-Hawk07]

Link or it didn't happen.  

[Thunder Glove]

http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=3584281

[DJMoose]

So some hope remains it seems.

[Super Firebug]

As vehicles go, I still just want a VIPER hoverbike as a travel power - preferably repaintable. I keep wanting to ride off with one of the bikes in the Serpent Lantern arc.

[General Idiot]

I too wish vehicles had more customisation. But that'd require them being more than the glorified become devices they currently are. They'd have to make them a full feature of each character like ships are in STO, which in turn would likely necessitate significant changes to the underlying engine and also require them being made available to free players somehow.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love them to expand the idea like that. Make it something worth actually having and putting effort into. But it's unlikely to happen, especially any time soon.


Also, that reason for not being able to do them is interesting. I thought the reason for it was mostly the same as why we couldn't have vehicles in CoH - the movement is way different, cars and such can't move sideways like people do which necessitates a different control system.

[JaguarX]

looks like thay try and get CO to live to it's potential now. Bugs fixes, a coupleof new content that isnt going away, and now a Dev, the mythical creature of the CO world, actually speaks?

[JRVthatsME]

All this does make it look like Champions Online may finally start going somewhere. And this game does have the potential to be a great superhero game if it is given the chance. I would love to see a villains faction and supergroup bases that were essentially larger version of the hideouts someday. One little thing I would love to see would be a way to reduce the saturation in the video options so we can make the colours less cartoonish. But all this aside the fact that some things are getting done with this game is nice to know.

[Brou]

a way to reduce the saturation in the video options so we can make the colours less cartoonish.

 

/ui_postprocess 1

/ui_postprocess 2

/ui_postprocess 3

will satisfy your need to re-enact old war cinematics in-game.

[Empyrean]

Gods I hope this is really a significant event. 

In the back of my head I can't help but feel that it's very little and it's very late, and that may not even lead to anything--but part of that is probably that I just don't want to get my hopes up again.  I mentioned before that I switched to TSW, and while it really is a great game with good dev attention (despite Funcom's troubles), I miss my tights and cape.  I grew up on comics and nothing can change that, and CoX was the perfect scratch for that itch.  Champs just hasn't been.

Well, actually, I'm very satisfied with the ability to make heroes in Champions, both looks and powers, and I can get over the cartoonish look and feel of the game (though It'd help if they moved away from that as much as possible), but once you have a great 40 or two, you just run out of stuff to do so fast and then you fly/leap/swing/run around bored.

Maybe I'll just start reading comics again  .

[Captain Electric]

I sent the team some good wishes:
http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=3593421#post3593421

I haven't played Champs in a long time. But if they really do want to build CO into a better game, best of luck to them; and for the whole genre's sake I hope they succeed in their efforts.

[Captain Electric]

I will tell you all something though. There's a reason for everything. In business, it has nothing to do with mystical fate.

Jack Emmert, while cocky and arrogant, has no illusions about the devotion and tenacity of the City of Heroes community.

And you can bet he doesn't want CO to get shown up by some fan-made MMOs, not if he can help it; especially after getting repeatedly shown up by COH, the game CO was supposed to blow away. Heck COH is dead and CO still gets shown up by it in reviews.

[General Idiot]

I will tell you all something though. There's a reason for everything. In business, it has nothing to do with mystical fate.

Jack Emmert, while cocky and arrogant, has no illusions about the devotion and tenacity of the City of Heroes community.

And you can bet he doesn't want CO to get shown up by some fan-made MMOs, not if he can help it; especially after getting repeatedly shown up by COH, the game CO was supposed to blow away. Heck COH is dead and CO still gets shown up by it in reviews.

Honestly, I see no situation in which this doesn't come out favorably for us as players. We end up with better games to play no matter what the outcome. :p

[Kaos Arcanna]

I will tell you all something though. There's a reason for everything. In business, it has nothing to do with mystical fate.

Jack Emmert, while cocky and arrogant, has no illusions about the devotion and tenacity of the City of Heroes community.

And you can bet he doesn't want CO to get shown up by some fan-made MMOs, not if he can help it; especially after getting repeatedly shown up by COH, the game CO was supposed to blow away. Heck COH is dead and CO still gets shown up by it in reviews.

I would think things are a little premature before Jack has to worry about any of the successor projects being a threat to Champions Online.

On the other hand, I do think that Jack's smart enough to realize that the COH players were an unusually faithful fanbase for a MMO If nothing else, the reaction to his "Tell NCSoft to Call me" line would have shown him that. That one line got him more of a positive response than probably anything he's said or done since the great ED fiasco.

On the other hand, it may just be that Radio Science (the CO Dev who posted) may have just wanted to do so himself.

[Captain Electric]

I would think things are a little premature before Jack has to worry about any of the successor projects being a threat to Champions Online.

I'm not entirely disagreeing with this quote. I am not a big fan of tin-foil hats (according to all the money that CSICOP has made off of me, anyway), so let me explain part of my rationale. In thinking of Champions Online in comparison with City of Heroes or the MMO genre generally, I am mostly concerned with the average lifespan of an MMO and the amount of maturity (growth, development) the game in question displays when stacked against the rest. City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings are two examples of games that, by the average "AAA" MMO's prime (4 or 5-year mark)--despite some dark periods--held onto enough content that players often said you could play for years and never run out of content. At this stage, if the game has a lot of investment under its belt, that is the best possible feather in the hat because it can sell itself and just coast on profits a few more years, even with the inevitably lame marketing budget that aging MMOs get.

CO is nearing its prime in an extremely malnourished state. As new games come out, eventually CO will start to look and feel dated and at that point, it better have a lot of character to see it through. And therein lies the problem: CO is the proverbial 30-something year-old manchild who has never really invested in his future, and is losing the excuse of "such great potential" and "all the time in the world". And this is so transparently the case for CO, even Jack knows better than to try to spin it in interviews with the media. He just beats around that bush.

CO has a phenomenal amount of catching up to do. Right in this moment, it would be like wounded prey to any super hero MMO arriving on the market with some decent investment.

[Kaos Arcanna]

I'm not entirely disagreeing with this quote. I am not a big fan of tin-foil hats (according to all the money that CSICOP has made off of me, anyway), so let me explain part of my rationale. In thinking of Champions Online in comparison with City of Heroes or the MMO genre generally, I am mostly concerned with the average lifespan of an MMO and the amount of maturity (growth, development) the game in question displays when stacked against the rest. City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings are two examples of games that, by the average "AAA" MMO's prime (4 or 5-year mark)--despite some dark periods--held onto enough content that players often said you could play for years and never run out of content. At this stage, if the game has a lot of investment under its belt, that is the best possible feather in the hat because it can sell itself and just coast on profits a few more years, even with the inevitably lame marketing budget that aging MMOs get.

CO is nearing its prime in an extremely malnourished state. As new games come out, eventually CO will start to look and feel dated and at that point, it better have a lot of character to see it through. And therein lies the problem: CO is the proverbial 30-something year-old manchild who has never really invested in his future, and is losing the excuse of "such great potential" and "all the time in the world". And this is so transparently the case for CO, even Jack knows better than to try to spin it in interviews with the media. He just beats around that bush.

CO has a phenomenal amount of catching up to do. Right in this moment, it would be like wounded prey to any super hero MMO arriving on the market with some decent investment.

I won't disagree with you that the lack of investment and attention has seriously hurt CO.  It has a lot of good points to it-- the costume creator is first rate and I have seen results that just were not possible in COH-- the Adventure Packs are quite fun-- and I do enjoy the vehicles for concept purposes. Freeform is just awesome.

On the other hand, there hasn't been a lot of attention paid to it. There doesn't seem to be any long term investment or planning for the game. (From things that I've read on the CO Forum it sounds like that wasn't always the case).  The amount of content it has for a four year old game is pretty sad.

A well made game that scratches the super hero itch as COH did would do quite well in the super hero market.

[JRVthatsME]

At present to the superhero mmos out there the CoH community is like a large potential customer base for who ever can appeal to us the best. CO is ok, but not great. It does have it's good points but what it really needs is a major expansion to breathe new life into it. And I think that the expansion it needs to boost its popularity and the overall enjoyment of the game is a playable villain faction. I think if they can get that in place it should bring a lot of players in and they can then build on it and add in long term gameplay content.

[JaguarX]

At present to the superhero mmos out there the CoH community is like a large potential customer base for who ever can appeal to us the best. CO is ok, but not great. It does have it's good points but what it really needs is a major expansion to breathe new life into it. And I think that the expansion it needs to boost its popularity and the overall enjoyment of the game is a playable villain faction. I think if they can get that in place it should bring a lot of players in and they can then build on it and add in long term gameplay content.

Indeed. Outside COH, and without pure copy, catering to that group, the COH community as a whole is a tall order for a sub 100,000 player game. Because unless it's direct copy with the exact same people working on it, there will be things different and depending on the person that is asked within the community, "why thye played COX or what attracted them to COX" there are hundreds if not thousands of different answers. Sure there are groups that relatively have the same answer that probably say one thing, but cater to that view then still lose a lot of the community.

Like even on COHtitan, it's only a small part of the community that is here and show themselves. Many ex COXers have never been on COHtitan, some have but no longer, some dip in every now and then, and others moved on to various other groups. Overall the community is scattered and if the community first can find some semblance of common ground instead of "COH means this and nothing else other people say" then there is no way in hell any game maker even if they wanted to can actually target the COX community. It wouldn't be worth the investment for a major game maker.

On a smaller scale that is targeted at various few pieces of what COX meant, it should work. Hence that is where the three upcoming projects come in. Three different views of what a successor of COX should be like and maybe most or at least a good portion of COXers can find something that fit their definition of what COX was to them.


Short version: as a community, meaning that includes the people that is not here on COHtitan, have to figure out a general idea of what it is that appeals to them overall instead of trying to place a flag based on one or two views of what appeals to the community. And the first step is to realize that COHtitan people are not even majority of the COX community as the community is nice sized but splintered to hell right now which each side thinking they are the community and speaks for the entire community. 

[JRVthatsME]

All very true points. But just for my previous comment, I wasn't trying to imply that a playable villain faction was the best part of CoH or the most important. I just think having one would promote interest among a lot of potential players, many of which would likely be kids. I don't like how the CoH community is so scattered. Considering how we were back during the few months before the shutdown it's not nice to see this now.

[JaguarX]

All very true points. But just for my previous comment, I wasn't trying to imply that a playable villain faction was the best part of CoH or the most important. I just think having one would promote interest among a lot of potential players, many of which would likely be kids. I don't like how the CoH community is so scattered. Considering how we were back during the few months before the shutdown it's not nice to see this now.

indeed. Yeah people came out the woodwork after the announcement. I don't recall ever seeing AP instance reach over ten let alone 33 in it's entire life of the game. Then lines were drawn, with us or against us, hopeful vs non hopeful, defeatist, traitor, or like being screwed over accusations got thrown around, ncsoft shill vs overly emotional, and it got split. Maybe for ever as long as each side stay focus on who started it instead of putting the "pride" aside and saying, "ya know what, sorry about that. Got caught up in the moment." But as long as each of the side think they are infallible right and everyone else is unforgivable wrong, it wont ever be the way it used to be no matter how many COH like games come out. It will be a small community that continues to consume it self as time goes on.   

And the gathering proves that it is possible to come together when they want to. And all it takes now, is if they want to. If they want to remain split, it will.


And yeah I think a villain faction would help though. More options. Assuming it wont end up a ghost town after a few issues, then it would be a waste of time and resources. 

[Eoraptor]

It's nice to see that someone on the developer's side is actually still paying attention to the game and willing to work on it and engage the community. But I wonder how much work they are really willing to put in as a company? When City of Heroes went F2P, they did an assload of work making sure that the game remained coherent and that reasons existed in game for the changes made.

CO and Perfect World don't see to want to make that kind of manpower or resource investment in their game, and it shows. every new game development or addon seems more or less bolted on to the game. Like Captain Electric pointed out, going into it's apex span, games like Eve and City and even Warcraft had tons of content with which to work, and multiple paths to follow. Which is why its 2004-era graphics didn't drive people away from CoH as more sleek-looking games came on. Champions, by comparison, only seems to become MORE linear as time goes by, handicapped by more and more limited-time event story telling and bolted on components like vehicles that no one ever factored into the long game.

At this point, undoing that progression will take a LOT of work, by a LOT of developers and writers and designers. (which is why Paragon Studios had a staff of 80 totally independent of the rest of NC)

I want to hold out hope that my friends who still play CO are right, and that things are getting better, and the highly linear mobster-wars game I tried for three months to get into will eventually be more enjoyable, but part of me looks at the numbers and says "all signs point to no."