A CO Dev Posted on the Champions Forums

[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."