New efforts!

[Arcana]

I'm just as certain that it was there <shrug>  I repeatedly had to reset missions with 'destroy these glowies' objectives as they tweaked themselves 5 degrees out of phase with the rest of the world on being hit with any knockback.  The one that springs to mind is the generators on a Longbow island base (can't recall the name of the mission, overall objective or contact).  I've been skimming the patch notes on the wiki, but I can't seem to find anything about it.

I went looking myself but can't seem to find anything referencing this particular bug.  I do, however, have a vague recollection of a bug affecting destructible glowies "warping" upon being hit to unreachable locations.  Maybe this was related to that bug and I've merged them in my memory.

It was KB or Immobilisation, fixed in  https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2006-06-27.

I did find this one though, and after reading it I do now recall the immobilize half of that bug.  I had forgotten about the knock back component of it.

[slickriptide]

On the subject of SOE and CoH, since I'm a packrat who never deletes anything, I happen to still have the emails I exchanged with John Smedley. One doesn't often have a conversation with a game company CEO, so for the curious:

I wrote a lengthy email, mentioning that there were a lot of rumors floating around about potential buyers of CoH and one rumor said that SOE was a contender.  I politely asked for clarification while mentioning that I had played most SOE games at one time or another and sort of pitched the idea that CoH would fit well under the SOE umbrella.

Smedley wrote back:

great game. rumor is completely and totally untrue. Never been discussed never going to be discussed and no clue where that got started.

I replied thanking him for the quick response (it was like 8pm on a Sunday) and expressing my regrets about the rumor, and also some compliments for SOE having recently made some new investment in Free Realms at the time. Mainly, rather than just quote a private email, I asked permission to post what he'd told me on the CoH forums.

He replied as follows:

I respect that game a lot. I thought it was a good game and was made by people who cared a great deal.

Players don't realize how long we leave some of these games up even when they aren't particularly profitable. We never made money on The Matrix ever and we left it up for a few years anyways and got our asses ripped for shutting it down. The same thing was true of EQ Online Adventures for us.

At some point it just becomes untenable. We make these games because we love what we do and we love our fans. sometimes reality just dictates we have to turn stuff off as bandwidth prices, rack prices, power prices ( actually power prices are the worst surprisingly) go up and revenue goes down.

There it is. The ugly ugly truth. Seeing behind the curtain sucks doesn't it

We'll probably never really know why CoH was shut down. If we did know, the reason would probably seem entirely trivial and perplexing from the point of view of players of the game.

In any case - If SOE had zero interest in CoH when they were part of Sony with Sony's clout and budget, I don't see any hope there now that they're once again an "indie" studio with what is no doubt the tight budget of an indie studio.

If I had to hazard a guess about why Jack was hired at Austin, it would be that Warner Brothers is making their push in the next two years towards a Justice League movie and DC and Daybreak want to be ready to capitalize on that exposure, with an experienced superhero lead at the helm. If that's the case, it doesn't really leave any room for Jack or anyone else at Daybreak Austin to be worrying about a dead game that technically would be considered competition to their main bread and butter.

[Surelle]

Yeah, Slick, I was just going to say the same thing:  Seeing as how SOE under Sony, Japan had infinitely more millions of dollars at their disposal than they do now as LLC Daybreak Studios, and even SOE said "no way, no how" to a CoH buyout attempt, I think we can cross that one squarely off the list for Daybreak as well.

[Kelltick]

Yeah, Slick, I was just going to say the same thing:  Seeing as how SOE under Sony, Japan had infinitely more millions of dollars at their disposal than they do now as LLC Daybreak Studios, and even SOE said "no way, no how" to a CoH buyout attempt, I think we can cross that one squarely off the list for Daybreak as well.

Although, to be fair, DBG is owned by Columbus Nova, a venture capitalist group with a broad range of holdings totaling (according to their valuation, GAAP (generally accepted accounting principals) may or may not apply  ) $15billion. So I think it's safe to say that BDG does have the funds to give NCSoft the proverbial "offer they can't refuse" but highly, highly doubt they would.

http://www.columbusnova.com/about.html

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/02/02/columbus-nova-acquires-sony-online-entertainment

[slickriptide]

The Columbus Nova deal never made any sense to me. That probably just says that I don't know anything about Columbus Nova and their priorities, but on the face of it, there's no synergy there at all.

Especially since the first thing that happened was that Smedley was canned and "highly anticipated" Everquest Next was canceled.

My beta access to Landmark apparently wasn't enough to qualify for the early-access, so I'll have to wait for the weekend to login and see what the current state of the game is. (It's been a good year since I last played it.) The couple of times I checked the forums, it wasn't encouraging; especially after EQ Next was ashcanned. I think it's fair to say that most of the people who paid big money to be "trailblazers" did so based on the implied promise that they would be partners in building and testing the world of EQ Next. There was a lot of disappointment when that promise vaporized.

I hope it is a success but the impression I have is that they still don't have a clear vision of just what Landmark is supposed to be. As far as I can tell, the number of devs working on Landmark is rather like that list of devs working on original EQ. :-/ Storybricks appears to have never lived up to its promise and the Storybricks guys themselves have redefined their company as some sort of business management software or something.

Hmmm... I just googled Storybricks and it seems that the main guy there posted a "post mortem" last year that is interesting if only for showing yet again the pitfalls of trying to make it in the gaming biz even when it seems you're being "profitable".

https://medium.com/@rodolfor/storybricks-is-no-more-f26b0980e62e#.iksw5xdzq

It really makes me wonder about the state of EQ Next if Columbus Nova/Daybreak preferred to close the game rather than spend $250k to acquire Storybricks. That seems like a small amount of money for technology that was integral to your game (unless, of course, it didn't work the way you expected).

[slickriptide]

So, to segue back to City of Heroes - I've always been interested in how highly people rated story as compared to punching bad guys in the face.

In the early days of the game, CoH was described as "Punching bad guys in the face and looking good while doing it" and that was a fair description in a lot of ways.

I've made the observation a few times that Jack and his crew, despite interesting new ideas like side-kicking, were heavily influenced by Everquest and their original design was really geared towards people who wanted to play "Everquest in tights". The story missions yielded paltry rewards compared to street sweeping because completing the story was supposed to be its own reward. It was only when the street sweeping efficiency became a bit ludicrous and people were leveling to 50 in a few days, only to discover that unlike Everquest, there was no real raiding "end game", that they refocused the game to make missions more important and street sweeping less important.

They had their missteps too - People like to reminisce about Doctor Q but do you remember how hard it was just to keep a group together to complete Positron's task force back in the day?

However, the most well-loved task forces were those with a good story to support it. The mission architect produced a lot of farms, but it also produced some real story gems amongst the dross.

If you had CoH back today, would you be playing it for the stories or for the punching enemies in the face?

If you had the chance to play through a story without punching bad guys in the face? How interesting would that be?

.

[adarict]

If you had CoH back today, would you be playing it for the stories or for the punching enemies in the face?

If you had the chance to play through a story without punching bad guys in the face? How interesting would that be?

For me, it would be both, just depended on my mood at the time.  For the most part, it was the stories that were most important to me.  On the other hand, the combat was what made me keep playing.  Most other MMOs I've played, just don't have the same flow of combat.  It ends up making it frustrating to play for extended periods of time.  Personal preference of course.

If the game were back right now, I'd say the story would be the thing I would most enjoy, mainly because the game has been gone so long, that old stories almost feel new again.  After it had been back for a while, it would probably go back to the combat itself.  I didn't join until right before I3, but that was still a pretty good length of time to get to know the majority of stories.  Near the end, I honestly didn't pay attention to the story most of the time.  I had been through things so frequently that the story was ingrained.  The combat still made it fun to repeat content.

Some days, all I am wanting is to get pulled into a story.  Other days, like after a stressful day at work, I just want a fun game that I can pummel bad guys (or good guys on the off chance I play red side).

[Remaugen]

Pity the poor mastermind that tried to solo red-side content CoV when it was released. Door missions were the worst with ambushes at the door. No zoning pets. No AoE upgrade and equip, and the recharge time to singly equip and upgrade your pets was horrendous. Yet, I loved my mad scientist: Bots/poison.

I loved my Ninjas MM, I made her at the first opportunity and she was hard to level solo, while she teamed now and again, she got to 48 mostly solo, then some friends got together and helped me make to push to 50. The class was never really balanced right though, some content was a total cakewalk while other stuff seemed impossible for the MM, and they were never team harmonious, all too often folks would complain about the pets and ask you to dismiss them, and for many the pets would contribute to lag.

So solo was still really the only way too play them.

[Arcana]

If you had CoH back today, would you be playing it for the stories or for the punching enemies in the face?

Sounds like a cop-out, but both.

If I'm being honest with myself, I liked punching things in the face more than running through story arcs.  I tended to gravitate to running ITFs or Magisteriums in later days.

BUT.  I only really enjoyed running ITF after ITF, trial after trial, because I actually cared about my characters.  I knew them, I leveled them, I built them, I ran them through the game.  I did not powerlevel alts.  I did not twink alts (prior to 50: after that fair game).  Every alt I played on live servers ran through the game arc by arc, story by story.  I invested in them, and I wanted to see them succeed.  I wanted to see them grow.  I wanted to take them from the 100k build to the 10m build to the 5 billion build.  I wanted them to have all their Incarnate powers and a warchest of their own making because I cared what happened to them.

Without the story arcs and the conventional leveling path, there's no reason to run the ITF more than once.  There's no reason to collect Incarnate shards.  There's no reason to purple out the build, at least for me.  Its all just numbers, unless I care about the characters.

If you had the chance to play through a story without punching bad guys in the face? How interesting would that be?

Also a cop-out, but it would depend on the story.  A great story doesn't need a lot of combat.  But of course, a great story without any combat doesn't likely have a lot of replay value either.  A story arc with combat has replay value: even though you know what happens, you still want to know how alt #63 makes it through.  A story with no combat has to be a choose your own adventure book to have significant replay value.

[hejtmane]

He's the CEO of Daybreak Games. Everquest is their flagship product. The DCUO connection is just the most obvious line to draw because of the superhero connection to Champions and City of Heroes.

DCUO may well be their most important product now, but the company has many games in the market from fantasy, to superhero, to zombie apocalypse, to trading card game and voxel world-building.

From a historical standpoint, Everquest is one of the most historically important games around today. Without EQ, there'd be no WoW or City of Heroes. Without Verant/SOE/Daybreak, we'd all be playing Ultima or Kesmai or Meridian54. (Yes, I'm ignoring that technology has marched very far on since those days.)

Having Jack Emmert in charge of Daybreak is way more interesting than just what it means for DCUO.

As CEO of the company, he's going to be responsible for all of them, from the standpoint of making the company into a leader in the industry again.

UM wrong without Ultima Online there is not Everquest etc yes it was the one that made EQ possible and before that the orginial Diablo where it allowed 4 people multiplayer on battlenet that is where we started then went to UO then came Evercrack (I skipped) and went ot DAOC myself but UO lost a lot of people to EverQuest once it came along many years later

[Twisted Toon]

UM wrong without Ultima Online there is not Everquest etc yes it was the one that made EQ possible and before that the orginial Diablo where it allowed 4 people multiplayer on battlenet that is where we started then went to UO then came Evercrack (I skipped) and went ot DAOC myself but UO lost a lot of people to EverQuest once it came along many years later

I would probably still have been playing The Realm Online if it wasn't for CoH. Never played UO, Everquest, DAOC, or most of the other MMOs out there. The Realm was my first MMO.

[MM3squints]

If you had CoH back today, would you be playing it for the stories or for the punching enemies in the face?

I would be repeatability killing the same thing over and over again until I have enough prestige to make a house with an aquarium.

[Arcana]

I would be repeatability killing the same thing over and over again until I have enough prestige to make a house with an aquarium.

You're talking about City of Heroes.  Right?

[Power Gamer]

I dream of a massive group insta-zone-swatting every spawn.

[Arcana]

UM wrong without Ultima Online there is not Everquest etc yes it was the one that made EQ possible and before that the orginial Diablo where it allowed 4 people multiplayer on battlenet that is where we started then went to UO then came Evercrack (I skipped) and went ot DAOC myself but UO lost a lot of people to EverQuest once it came along many years later

Actually, although Ultima Online predates Everquest, it does not predate Everquest development.  Everquest was an independently created game that was not an evolution of Ultima Online. Ultima Online was intended to be an online version of, of course, the Ultima games and was released in 1997.  Everquest was conceptualized as a graphical MUD and began development in 1996.  In other words, without Ultima Online there would still be an Everquest.  On the gaming tree of life, Ultima Online is a descendent of graphical adventure games, while Everquest is more appropriately a descendent of text MUDs.

[MM3squints]

You're talking about City of Heroes.  Right?

I tried to think of something witty to say here, but I'm lazy so I will say, [insert witty comment][inset filler anecdote here] Yes I am talking about City of Heroes.

[LadyVamp]

I loved my Ninjas MM, I made her at the first opportunity and she was hard to level solo, while she teamed now and again, she got to 48 mostly solo, then some friends got together and helped me make to push to 50. The class was never really balanced right though, some content was a total cakewalk while other stuff seemed impossible for the MM, and they were never team harmonious, all too often folks would complain about the pets and ask you to dismiss them, and for many the pets would contribute to lag.

So solo was still really the only way too play them.

I never had the problems of players wanting me to dismiss the pets.  What one has to do is manage them well.  If on a team that could handle their business without the pets, I tended to hold them in reserve and use my buffs/debuffs as I saw fit.  A few times I'd have to send them in to bail out the team but that was like maybe once or twice per hour.  Sometimes I'd let the boss level pet fight right along side the team.  Or an AV would be on the map, and I'd unleash my pets on it with the team.  Sometimes I'd get pissed off enough that I didn't care if I lived or died and would unleash hell, pardon the pun.  But usually the team was all dead or dying.  Being a demon/dark mm, most people just wanted me to debuff the bosses and use my leadership skills to boost the team's numbers.

Other times, I'd have my zombie/ff mm and let the lich attack but hold the others in reserve.  If the team got in trouble, I'd throw up repulse, taunt the enemy into attacking me and feed my pets a human/fish/demon/whatever meal.  The mob would be too interested in attacking me personally to try and attack my pets.  And they couldn't get to me thanks to the repulse power.  Usually the team wiped and needed me to bail them out or the game would piss me off, and I'd go "ok, coh, you've pissed me off enough.  Now I'm going to teach you you're f'ing with the wrong rat!"

Only time I ever got carried away was while listening to disturbed - deceiver.  I zoned in with the team, got in before they did (maybe 3 seconds ahead.  Nothing like a raid 0 stripe set to load game objects fast from disk), deployed pets, and killed off 2 mobs before the tank asked me to leave them something to fight.  lol.  Told them, "sorry guys.  was listening to metal.  next mob is all yours."

[ivanhedgehog]

Sounds like a cop-out, but both.

If I'm being honest with myself, I liked punching things in the face more than running through story arcs.  I tended to gravitate to running ITFs or Magisteriums in later days.

BUT.  I only really enjoyed running ITF after ITF, trial after trial, because I actually cared about my characters.  I knew them, I leveled them, I built them, I ran them through the game.  I did not powerlevel alts.  I did not twink alts (prior to 50: after that fair game).  Every alt I played on live servers ran through the game arc by arc, story by story.  I invested in them, and I wanted to see them succeed.  I wanted to see them grow.  I wanted to take them from the 100k build to the 10m build to the 5 billion build.  I wanted them to have all their Incarnate powers and a warchest of their own making because I cared what happened to them.

Without the story arcs and the conventional leveling path, there's no reason to run the ITF more than once.  There's no reason to collect Incarnate shards.  There's no reason to purple out the build, at least for me.  Its all just numbers, unless I care about the characters.

Also a cop-out, but it would depend on the story.  A great story doesn't need a lot of combat.  But of course, a great story without any combat doesn't likely have a lot of replay value either.  A story arc with combat has replay value: even though you know what happens, you still want to know how alt #63 makes it through.  A story with no combat has to be a choose your own adventure book to have significant replay value.

I loved a game where a tank was a tank, didnt need a healer standing behind him to keep him alive. support really made a difference, it wasnt just green numbers keeping my squishy butt alive. an emp was heals, but effective heals, not a constant stream of barely adequate healing. dps really blasted, didnt have to have one set rotation and exact equipment list to perform. I have been playing swtor which is exactly the opposite of this. I would be back in coh in a split second given the chance.

[Arcana]

I loved a game where a tank was a tank, didnt need a healer standing behind him to keep him alive. support really made a difference, it wasnt just green numbers keeping my squishy butt alive. an emp was heals, but effective heals, not a constant stream of barely adequate healing. dps really blasted, didnt have to have one set rotation and exact equipment list to perform. I have been playing swtor which is exactly the opposite of this. I would be back in coh in a split second given the chance.

I haven't played SWTOR in a long time, but at least when I was playing it there were no real player tanks in SWTOR.  There were, however, pet tanks. 

[hejtmane]

I never had the problems of players wanting me to dismiss the pets.  What one has to do is manage them well.  If on a team that could handle their business without the pets, I tended to hold them in reserve and use my buffs/debuffs as I saw fit.  A few times I'd have to send them in to bail out the team but that was like maybe once or twice per hour.  Sometimes I'd let the boss level pet fight right along side the team.  Or an AV would be on the map, and I'd unleash my pets on it with the team.  Sometimes I'd get pissed off enough that I didn't care if I lived or died and would unleash hell, pardon the pun.  But usually the team was all dead or dying.  Being a demon/dark mm, most people just wanted me to debuff the bosses and use my leadership skills to boost the team's numbers.

Other times, I'd have my zombie/ff mm and let the lich attack but hold the others in reserve.  If the team got in trouble, I'd throw up repulse, taunt the enemy into attacking me and feed my pets a human/fish/demon/whatever meal.  The mob would be too interested in attacking me personally to try and attack my pets.  And they couldn't get to me thanks to the repulse power.  Usually the team wiped and needed me to bail them out or the game would piss me off, and I'd go "ok, coh, you've pissed me off enough.  Now I'm going to teach you you're f'ing with the wrong rat!"

Only time I ever got carried away was while listening to disturbed - deceiver.  I zoned in with the team, got in before they did (maybe 3 seconds ahead.  Nothing like a raid 0 stripe set to load game objects fast from disk), deployed pets, and killed off 2 mobs before the tank asked me to leave them something to fight.  lol.  Told them, "sorry guys.  was listening to metal.  next mob is all yours."

Now if you ever want to feel helpless never join a group with four Illusion  controllers. I joined a group with my Ill/Rad troller and there where three more illusion controllers with different secondaries yes this was high level so we all had PA on short recycle poor tank it was complete chaos but man was it funny.