Hello everyone, I am like most of you an old player from CoH/CoV. Played almost every MMORPG since the last 10 years and worked as a game designer for an Asian company for some time, I'd like to share my experience and knowledge to make City of Titans a wonderful game.
We dream big and have majestic ideas, general concepts and global systems, but often a good game lacks the innards and details to continuously captivate the players. The answer to this lies in the basics and details.
0. Graphics: lightings and colors: Some people prefer cartoonish kind of graphics with thick dark borders, I think this is good to give a good first impact impression but players are to play the game and not watching a comic, therefore graphics should be elaborated, attractive and sexy, just with a slight touch of Superheroes feel. Colors should be friendly and the lightings not to contrast too much but have strong contrast in very specific zone locations.
1. Character appearance and motion: Many games have failed due to this apparently unimportant factor but it is vital and essential for a game to triumph. A player will be spending all his hours looking at his character for the whole time when his playing the game. Nobody wants something he/she thinks "I guess this is all OKAY" everyone wants something more like "Damn this is so good and sexy" and they keep enjoying. CoH/CoV was very good at character motions, it was fluid, friendly and to the point, there were never abrupt motion ends (maybe while jumping), abrupt motion ends gives an impression of "under development" impression, personally I could not stand the movements of Champions Online, and I think CoH was exquisite in this factor.
Appearance MUST be aesthetic, very good looking and with a personality. If we think all the games that have succeeded we can remember easily the attractiveness of character and the sexiness of their motions in our minds.
2. General interaction, interface and menu: Some games while good miss this basic step deeming it again unimportant, players are deadly judges, if they don't like something they won't play it, it is good to put some extra thought and effort in the interaction flexibility and interface captivity.
4. Atmosphere and ambient: The atmosphere and ambient make the "home" for players, they must match with the characters and roles and lores, and stories and everything. It must be heavily Superheroes themed with some contemporary architecture touches here and there, it shouldn't be too futuristic neither, because players like to feel identified with the character and with his/her "home", it should be fantastic, exquisite, each reflecting each uniqueness yet never going too far from the things we know, because people only accept things that are known within a context.
5. Liveliness: This is not needed is there are always active players, but in case, to make things more "happening" we ought to look for options and ideas to populate more the game, not lagging it, but making it more resourceful and offering more moving sights, more random NPCs, alternative quests... birds flying, animals, casual NPC routine, special things popping up, small good surprises, etc, etc, to keep the players content and giving them the good deals
CoV player, miss that game.
Welcome to the forums :)
Also, most of what you described in 0 has to do with aesthetics rather than graphics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oK8UTRgvJU
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMcQdRLgVpMwXi_3yTCN5iA/videos
Yeah, for actual graphic quality MWM are going to have to lower the bar down anyway so players with older computers don't get shoved out.....
Formerly known as Bleddyn
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WCqnt88Umk]Do you want to be a hero?[/url]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/nyktoss-character-cove] My characters [/url]
Not necessarily. Unreal 4 tends seems to run well on older computers as is, but as long as the devs include options to scale down the gfx they can still bring the pretty to the game.
Personally I have to turn the graphics setting way down on most games I play
So I don't get to see or appreciate the awesome detail that the rich snobs go on about
If I want the game to be playable at all it has to look like a cartoon.
Dungeons & Dragons online is the only game I can play with the settings around the default
and they have much higher settings available that I don't use.
So making it too pretty means nothing to me,
and unless you make it possible to filter that crap out by reducing the graphics setting,
a really pretty game is going to keep me away along with all the huddled masses yearning to be free.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Just so people are aware of what DDO requirements are:
[b]Minimum Compatible System Requirements*[/b]
Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2 is recommended)
Processor (CPU): Intel Pentium 4 - 1.6GHz or AMD equivalent (with SSE support)
System RAM Memory: 1 GB
Graphics Card: 64MB Hardware Transform & Lighting (T&L) compatible
Internet Connection: Broadband Internet Connection
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
Disk Space: 11 GB
[b]Recommended Compatible System Requirements[/b]
Operating System: Windows XP SP2 (32bit/64bit); Vista or 7** (32bit/64bit)
Processor (CPU): Intel Pentium 4 - 2.0GHz or AMD equivalent (with SSE support)
System RAM Memory: 1.0GB (2.0GB recommended for Vista/7 and higher texture resolutions)
Graphics Card: Geforce® FX 5900 or newer, ATI Radeon™ 9600 or newer, with 128MB or better
Internet Connection: Broadband Internet Connection
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
Disk Space: 11 to 15GB
[b]HD (High Definition) Recommended System Requirements[/b]
Operating System: Vista or Windows 7 64bit with latest Service Packs and updates
Processor (CPU): Dual-Core Intel or AMD processor (Pentium D or newer; Athlon 64 X2 or newer)
System RAM Memory: 2.00 GB Minimum
Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8600 or newer, ATI Radeon HD 2600 or newer; with 256MB or better
Internet Connection: Broadband Internet Connection
DirectX Version: DirectX 10 or 11
Disk Space: 15GB
And please note: This is for a game that was released back in Feb 2006.
My £80 tablet can in theory RUN this game at recommended. The only part it is lacking on is the storage part.
But even so, for recommended specs, the graphics card needed is over 12 years old. For "HD" version, its 9 years old.
How far back do you draw the line?
Because the reality is, no matter how far back you draw the line, you will end up disappointing people because their hardware is "not good enough".
At some point, they will need to do a hardware survey amongst their testers... and I can pretty much guarantee that some people will be picked and be "not good enough" on the hardware front for whatever reason.
Side note: Eve Online caused a huge uproar when they changed the requirement to include SSE2 support on the processor front. A technology that AT THAT POINT IN TIME was over 8 years old. And it was something that the game needed to be able to drive forward the game. If they didn't then they would have ended up with their original problem of supporting several different clients (Trinity/Non Trinity mode for Windows, and one for Linux and another for Mac), which then hamstrings and limits your optimizations across the board.
As someone who isn't a rich snob, but did just put out a lot of good money for a new VC, I want it PRETTY!
A NEW VD?!
OMG!
LOL
ROFL
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
Hehehehe
Giggle
Sorry maybe you have to be Old to get it.
just be careful who you tell that you just got a new VD
HAHAHA!
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
:p Fixed just for you.
Sorry X
I love ya but I just couldn't help it.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I agree with most of what you are writing, though I think you could phrase it a little less in absolutes. There is no 'do this and your game will be a success' recipe. SW:TOR checked off all the required boxes, as do nine out of ten korean MMOs, and still had huge problems retaining players. And there are plenty games that fail entirely at achieving some or many of the requirements you state, and that still manage to be a (relative) commercial success.
However, the think that makes me a bit nervous is how you stress that the game, its appearance and its movements must be 'sexy'.
This is a highly subjective qualifier, and worse than that, it is likely to fall into tired stereotypes. I don't want to drag the whole gamergate mess into this discussion, far from it. However, the critique that the gamergaters are obsessed with -- that there is some questionable content and implicit sexism in games and in comics -- is unfortunately legitimate.
CoH was a child of its era and certainly did not escape this implicit sexism. Just the way that there were the choices between 'male strength' and 'male hulk' and only the 'female supermodel' if you didn't want to play as a male was no conincidence for the time the game was created. There wasn't really any alternative conceivable in (superhero) comics and games in general at that time. (it was at the end of the glory days of LIefeld when the game was conceived).
So, I would say that sexiness should not be a goal for game design. It can be a result, but it certainly should not be a goal. There's too much baggage and negative stereotyping that you risk dragging in with it.
Any player character, male or female, should be a hero or a villain of their own story first and last. Their looks do not affect their essential heroism or villaniny. And while it is likely that the majority players will opt for the traditional stereotypiing (*), this should not be enforced by the developers, nor should the shape that traditinal gender coding takes be mandated by what the developers and early adopters consider 'sexy' (and worse: acceptably sexy which is a much narrower and more damaging subset).
(* I take comfort in having seen how many players of CoH took advantage of the character creator options to create powerful heroic characters that were anything but conventionally 'superman, wolverine and powergirl' pretty.)
I basically agree with the OP.
Those who are worried about the graphics really probably don' t need to be. UE 4 is well known for using system resources efficiently so that you can play surprisingly nice looking graphics on old or low-end systems.
And everyone always touts "OPTIONS!", so just make a stripped-down graphics setting that you could play on an old calculator watch that looks all polygony & such. And make a setting where those with monster machines can turn it to eleven and feel the sunshine on their faces and the breeze in their hair.
But I mostly want to emphasize the movement issue that the OP brought up.
While I loved and miss CoH's graphics, I was shocked by the low-quality, jerky, abrupt movement in other games after CoH (which was my very first game). Movement totally circumvents the whole graphics issue--everyone from striped-down to eleven can enjoy good movement--and it really is important, ESPECIALLY in a Superhero game!
DERAIL/RANT ALERT:
(This is not in any way about Nadira :D)
To an old-school comics fan, it is HILARIOUS that Wolverine has become a standard for pretty in any way, shape, or form.
He has drifted so far from the 5'3, hairy, ugly, tough, ornery little cuss patterned after the overgrown weasels he is named for. He went from a truly interesting low-level character--as Cinnder put it, a healer turned into a weapon--to the most insipid Marty Stu in the entire Marvel cannon, replete with his entourage of irrational fanboys.
Boy, popularity can beat the hell out of a character. But, there's nothing for it. The more popular a character is, the more those poor writers have to crank out story after story every month year after year, so...
END OF DERAIL/RANT.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
yes. My point is not that the game shouldn't be pretty
but rather that we should be able to turn it down in the options
to make sure it works on lower end machines.
Hell, make the options go all the way to 100 if you want
so long as I can still turn it down to 1
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
101.
For when you've turned it all the way up, but you need just a little more...
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I agree that it's necessary for players to be able to turn the graphics down. Compatibility with a wide variety of machines is important. It'd be a shame for the minimum specs to turn folks away, especially those displaced by City of Heroes who are aching for City of Titans to become their new home.
Still, I hope for the opposite as well in that it will be worth it to turn [b]up[/b] the graphics. The nVidia GTX 980 is on my shopping list, and I hope that City of Ttians will make good use of it. It'd be nice to really appreciate what the art team is designing in all of its brilliant glory for those of us with the power to render it.
Specs doesn't cover just the graphics, but also influence other area's of the game.
Audio for example.
But the bare minimum for CoX though is FAR FAR below what most people would consider nowadays to be playable. There is trying to accommodate everyone and there is just admitting that some former players WILL NOT be able to play the new game.
Hell, Final Fantasy 3, 4, 7 and 8) on the PC have higher minimum PC requirements than CoX ever needed (in terms of processor speed).
And yet, these are "old games" (granted, 3 and 4 are mobile ports), but 7 and 8 are pretty much *Identical* to the original release (as in they still have the same engine bugs and exploits available on the Steam and non steam versions)
So this is why I keep on asking "what minimum are you referring to?" Because no matter the level, you WILL end up losing some players.
I'm not qualified to answer that question
I know how to use programs
I know nothing about computers.
Next year I'm actually planning to buy a new computer
after windows 10 comes out.
just so I won't be slowly turning into a cave man.
Not looking forward to it.
I'm currently using widows 7 and from what I've seen I don't like windows 8
Touch screen sucks
I just really really hope i'll be able to use a mouse with my new computer.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
You're right, and I'm not sure I know how to answer that question. I guess what I mean is if the minimum requirements are a Core i7 and a graphics card made within the past year just to be able to play the game, then that will exclude a lot of players. I honestly don't know where to draw the line. It might depend on the minimum specs that UE4 supports for 3D rendering, if any exist, and whatever other limitations are discovered during development.
I know that the devs are very much aware of this, so I trust that they'll do what they can to support as many systems as reasonably possible, whatever that might mean in another year or so.
At the same time, I hope that they don't neglect the other end of the spectrum. I want no compromise at max settings. Bring on the eye candy! Make my computer work! Graphics definitely aren't a dealbreaker for me, but it'd be nice to see just what UE4 and MWM are capable of at their best.