Many of us have been discussing (in another thread) the recent arrival of the new spiritual successor CoX project known as Ship of Heroes. It's the first new major successor project we've seen in the mix since the "original three" started off a few years ago.
During those years it's been generally accepted that every CoX successor project has a "right" to exist and that the greater community has been collectively supportive of all the projects. In that spirit of goodwill I'm willing to allow for the possibility that Ship of Heroes' combination of superheroics and space themes may actually work in some form or fashion.
But now we apparently have yet another new contender to consider called [url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1405683158/redside/description]Redside[/url]. This project clearly seems to be tackling the whole CoX concept from the all-villain point of view. While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that idea I'm now seriously starting to wonder just how many of these successor projects the community in general can support/tolerate.
Sure it's one thing to say we could only benefit from having as many "chances" to get a new CoX-like game as possible. But logically there also has to be a point where having too many choices ultimately hurts everyone's chances. Having this community split three ways was arguably bad enough but split maybe five (or more) ways doesn't bode well. Sure we might delude ourselves into thinking that there's really only one or two "serious" contenders amongst these efforts. But even if that's true it doesn't help having too many "lesser" efforts cloud the overall landscape.
I realize MWM is moving forward on a good schedule and they will release the various parts of CoT when it's ready. All I can say is that every time one of these new "Johnny-come-latelies" comes along it's only going to make the future success of ANY of these projects that much more uncertain. I don't want to have to tell the folks at MWM to work any faster because I'm sure they're already working as fast as they reasonably can. On the other hand getting things like the Avatar Builder and/or the first betas of CoT released ASAP would probably be better for all concerned, not the least of which would be MWM itself.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I hate to say it, but I expected this, or something like this, to show up about now. I expect a few more to arrive before the end of the year.
What alarms me is that this is now the third effort using the Unreal platform. There is a concern here, namely that Unreal is not actually built for MMO work. With a lot of work, you can do it, but out of the box it is not made for the job. There is a reason why we fell back to Unreal, rather than started with it initially. If I were to start such development today, I would go with Amazon's Lumberyard engine, the engine behind Star Citizen.
Unreal is an excellent game engine, but if you are aiming for an MMORPG you will have a lot more work than you would elsewhere, such as with Unity, Lumberyard, or BigWorld.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
This effort is only looking for $45000.00. Lets face it you can't make a MMO with that. I am so done with all these other efforts. Thanks but no thanks I'm looking forward to CoT.
I can only speak for myself, but it does not matter to me how many supers games come out, just as it doesn't matter how many military shooters release in a year. And it doesn't matter to me when it is released. If the game is good - I'll play it. There could be a dozen "successor" projects - I'll simply choose the one that appeals to me most and support that. As I've said before, at the moment CoT seems to be that one, whether it's the first one "released" or not.
That said - I'll admit that I rolled my eyes when I first heard of this new...effort. CoV had a MUCH smaller population - and when the games effectively merged Villains only made up a small percentage of the pop. The appeal of this game, to me at least, is questionable.
From what little information is available at this point, I am more than a little skeptical about their effort.
On the plus side for us redsiders, this may be the only project with the potential to spread true love to the redders. If they forgo targeting a teen rating and aim instead for a more mature rating, then they may potentially be able to pull some of us to split time btw projects. Not all of the projects are offering redside content. Those that are face the limitations of their target rating. In the end, their success will be dependent on delivering better game mechanics than the other projects.
I hear what you guys are saying and I generally agree with you. For what it's worth CoT is the only successor project I have "voted" for with my money and I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future.
The main reason I started this thread was to highlight the very reasonable concern that even if CoT is eventually accepted as the clear "winner" among the various successor efforts every other successor that exists will only serve to further sub-divide the overall pool of potential players thus hurting ALL of the successor efforts. For instance it's easy to assume there are at least a handful of "diehard old-school CoV redsiders" out there who've been happy enough to support CoT up until now who might very well jump ship in favor of this new Redside alternative just because they loved all things "red" more than anything else about CoX. Sure that might represent a small number of people but at this point MWM really can't afford to lose ANY potential players for ANY reason. All we'd need is to have yet another narrowly-focused successor or two pop up just in time to further dilute the expected support for MWM and really screw up its long-term viability.
All I'm suggesting here is that MWM really needs to bring out its A-game for this and do it as fast as reasonably possible. It'd be great if CoT was the first complete game out of the gate; it'd be even better if it's also the superior alternative as well. Either way the only way to effectively deal with the literal mounting competition is to do it better/faster than they can. The market will ultimately decide and I just want to be super-sure the MWM folks understand the relative threat even "questionable" alternatives like Redside could represent if they manage to become a reality.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
No offense, Lothic, but you're making a scarce resources argument, and I'd like to know what resources you're perceiving as scarce.
My opening bid is "talk is cheap"; we can have several communities, and there's no need to exclude participants in a given community from other communities. We talk about the other contenders, and they're free to talk about us. So I don't really see "potential players who hang out on forums" as approaching zero-sum.
On the flip side, I posit that multiple attempts increase the chance that someone's going to succeed. And three seems on the low end.
Thoughts?
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I think if COT is so fragile that losing just a few customers is going to doom it to failure we may as well give up hope that it will succeed. No one game is going to be able to make everyone happy. Thousands of us contributed to the Kickstarter. There is no way that MWM/COT is going to be able to satisfy us all. If one or more of the other successor projects succeeds that means more of us will have a chance of finding a new home.
The scarce resource is obviously the total number of people who would ever care to play ANY version of a psudeo-CoX like successor game. Assuming that the world ends up with several CoX successors all running concurrently some of their players might very well overlap and play several of them on a regular basis. Many though would likely gravitate to just one game - any of those that aren't playing CoT because they have viable alternative(s) are the ones lost to MWM.
Perhaps in a multi-successor environment CoT (for example) could eventually outperform the rest and cause the others to wither on the vine. I don't necessarily assume that will be the case. Remember we know that even though MWM has professed to be relatively averse towards "making a profit" in the traditional sense do we know that to be the case for the growing number of other groups angling for a piece of the pie? If the other outfits are more "in it for the money" than MWM is then MWM may suffer disproportionately for that in the long run.
For what it's worth having some healthy competition is a good thing even for MWM's situation. But where you consider having 3 projects to be the "low end" I actually see it as a "workable max" and only see more than that as an overall drag on ALL of the contenders. That's why I never really talked about this subject until the FIFTH entrant in this race reared its proverbial ugly head. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I never claimed that any one game would or could ever make everyone happy. I just wonder about the overall fate of ALL of the projects if they all have to share from a finite pool of potential players.
Perhaps I'm wrong and there are enough players out there to keep all of them barely afloat. But even if that's the case NONE of them will ever have the playerbase size that one or two strong games could have if there was far less competition. There's a reason why Coke and Pepsi dominate almost the entire soda market (with the rest coming in at distant thirds). I just don't think that 5 or 6 CoX-like games could equally prosper with each only scraping by with 15-20% of the total playerbase.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Interesting points. While I don't expect all others to wither on the vine after someone makes it to market, I do expect at least a couple to never make it to launch. (There's also odd outcomes like one launching and cratering before the next launches, reducing the concurrency maximum, but let's keep this simple.)
How many games a given available player plays remains to be seen, though IMHO cost is going to be a bigger factor than time. Some games will go subscription and I'm sure some will go with F2P.
Another thing that remains to be seen is how the various projects react when one or more release a viable beta. These projects are legal entities and in control of their assets; there's nothing stopping them from making cross-licensing deals if they can benefit. Heck, the whole computer industry we're building this on is loaded with cross-licensing. Granted, there's less to cross-license if you're using different engines, but there are still options.
So I'm cautiously optimistic. This market doesn't have to be zero-sum beyond whatever legal restrictions the companies impose on themselves or have imposed on them by others (e.g. Epic Games).
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Forgot to mention: how many servers did CoH have? And we kept a big community together there.
It's what we do.™
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Part of our goal is to grow our community as well.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
To be fair I don't think the chances that all five of the currently known CoX successor projects are going to be up and running at the same time - to be brutally honest we don't even really know if ANY of them are going to get far enough to be considered a "launched" game at this point.
But on the off chance there's a period of time when say 3 or 4 of them are relatively "active" at the same time I legitimately wonder if there's enough potential interest by enough players to have them all reach some kind of critical threshold to success. I unfortunately see a scenario where that many alternatives may actually prove to starve any one of them from becoming fully self-sustaining. It could ironically become a variation of a "circular firing squad" where instead of helping each other they all collectively kill each other off.
Again if CoT can be the first and/or clearly better than the rest it'll go a long way towards making sure that at least ONE of these projects survive. Some competition is good - too much is suicidal.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I would have pretty much assumed that as a given.
I willing to accept there might be some way to achieve a workable equilibrium with multiple CoX successors all getting enough players to make them all "successful" in whatever terms that means to the individual Devs and players involved. My contention simply is that the more "competing alternatives" there are out there the harder it's going to be to achieve that holy grail of communal equilibrium.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I do think that competition is a good thing and causes the devs of each of these games to always want to improve. Therefore we should hope that atleast two of these games do succeed, so that there is, in a way, an Apple and Samsung dynamic. In which they both develop their products for people to stay loyal to their company. If there isn't competition, there isn't a need to improve.
We also cannot assume that all 5 of these "successors" will be able to retain their playerbase perhaps a week after launch. Some of these may fail to reach expectations and not be true to their promises as to what will be in the game. So they will see a peak at launch, and plummet to a sparsely populated game.
The amount of these successors may initially spread attention across multiple projects, but in the most likely outcome, only a few will remain in the top, having the most populated and strongest communities.
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
Again this is why I never worried too much when the working number of known successors was three - as you say some competition is a healthy thing.
My concern was piqued when in the last couple of months we've seen two more projects enter the fray from out of the blue. Even Doctor Tyche himself says he wouldn't be surprised to see more than that before all is said and done. There's a point where the field may become too saturated with all these "Johnny-come-latelies" to allow ANY of them to adequately succeed in the long run. Sure several of these projects may quickly fold like a house of cards, but all you'd need is for 3 or 4 of them to simultaneously exist for even say 4-6 months to cause enough havoc that would be hard for ANY of them to recover from.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This is an improbable occasion but I do see why the apprehension is there. At the same time, although there may be a large pool of successors, how many will actually gain an active community that this game already has, along with its modest size?
Although it mathematically makes sense that if there are 10 available, they will each have 10% of the available playerbase. However this isnt true. Its like comparing Overwatch to Team Fortress 2, both have similar concepts, but Overwatch does dominate the field.
Which brings us back to City of Titans being the first to launch, I dont think it is entirely necessary as I think it is the most well known from my perspective.
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
I understand the incliniation toward concern over multiple "successor projects". As many categorize the particualr genre of "super-hero / comic book inspired" as one of limited appeal to a larger audience when it comes to gaming. And then, there is a consistent view of appealing to the even smaller crowd of those who specifically enjoyed Cityof... as a game being the target audience. It is easy to begin the side-step-logic that with each successor, each becomes more limited in capability of attracting the target audience, creating a divide of the original community.
I, however, have andifferent view. First, competition is heathy for a good dev team. It should embolden a team to step up their game (pun intended), to be innovative, and creative within the scope of their game.
I also don't view fans of Cityof as "the audience", but rather, our core audience. And if we'be done our job well, not only will we have a strong core, but expand on that audience to our larger audience; mmo players. Even within that group we will attract a subset of players, those that enjoy tab-targeting game play over purely action oriented. But through that group we have the potential to reach a larger audience, pc gamers.
It may be a lofty view that I behold, but I don't have my head in the clouds either. I recognize that our core audience will have potentially many games vying for their attention. What I love about our team, our company, and our vision for this game are the many "firsts"in gaming we'be already achived, and the many "firsts" that we aim to achieve innthe near future. It is the uniqueness of the type of game we intend to provide which i believe will set us apart from the other successors, and even othet mmos, that will act as the catylist which fuels that lofty view I behold of our potential.
Then again, I'm a bit biased so...
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Even if you could successfully argue that as of today CoT has the "largest active community" of any of the successor projects can you be sure that will remain the case 6 months or a year from now? I don't think we can automatically assume that any of the "more obscure" successor projects will always remain so obscure.
Who's to say that CoT is destined to be the "Overwatch" of this field of gaming? Sadly we can't assume that Redside or Ship of Heroes will remain in virtual "second place" just because they are relatively new right now.
Again I believe you're allowing the current instant state of affairs to color your long-term thinking on these matters. Even if CoT is the "most well known" successor project at the moment that could easily change if the other projects successfully dazzle the playerbase in the coming months. I don't want this discussion to become political but just as a purely neutral object example you'll recall that Donald Trump was not the first Republican to announce his intention to run as the Republican candidate for the presidency. Even though there were plenty of more well-known candidates in the field before him history shows us that fact didn't matter in terms of Trump ultimately winning his party's nomination.
The possibility (no matter how slim) that any of the other successor projects could easily "come from behind" and eat CoT's lunch only adds to why it's actually critical that CoT be the first to get something substantial launched before any of the others, especially before any of the successor projects that haven't technically been around for years already. To be blunt if say Ship of Heroes manages to get a beta out before CoT does the "optics" of that is going to look pretty bad even if CoT ultimately proves to be the better game in the long run. Sometimes all it takes is to be first out of the gate for the "early adopters" to latch on and never let go.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Contemplating a finite playerbase is not an exercise in "side-step-logic"... it's a matter of cold, hard facts.
Obviously I'm not assuming that the ONLY people who will ever play any of the CoX successor projects will be from among the original players of CoX. For one thing it's been so long now I'm sure some of CoX's players have literally died while other potential players are now around who weren't even alive in 2004. But no matter how many people the current collective community can attract to play any of the spiritual successors that number's going to be finite. You can only split a finite number between so many options before many/most of those splits aren't big enough to adequately sustain any one single game. The inevitable outcome is far more like Highlander's "There can only be One" mantra than some kind of permanent equilibrium between multiple successors.
I'm glad you remain optimistic about CoT's chances. As I pointed out earlier I'm obviously still biased towards CoT as well. I just don't think you can afford to assume that CoT's potential "uniqueness" as a MMO will be all you need to earn and keep enough of the playerbase available to keep CoT perpetually viable.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I am curious to find out exactly why five games was the tripping point and not four. Which one(s) of the four do you think is the weak sister? Why do you think Redside will deliver any better than CoT? How concerned are you about Marvel Heroes & DCUO as a threat to CoT? Those are probably more of a threat than anything else.
There are always games in development, whether we know about them or not. Focusing on what you are developing is a little more important than worrying about what the others are promising. MWM has been keeping us updated with progress without making unsubstantiated claims. You should be aware of what competition will be out there and figure out how to marginalize their effect on your user base. Developing to compete against the market primarily means that your effort is reactive in nature.
Unless these new successor projects have been in development for years, I do not see them as a threat. I do however see stealing concepts or developer resources from MWM as a threat. I enjoyed my time with CoX. I don't want to play CoH again or a narrowly focused version of CoH. I want to play CoT on a large scale map (part of what they have planned). I want an extensive & semi personalized campaign (storyline) that can/will be different each time I make an alt. I basically want everything MWM has been planning & developing.
The best thing we can do to help make CoT successful is to talk to friends about what MWM is delivering. Explain why it is good, why it is different and why it will succeed. Become the reason why others would want to play CoT. I agree that the Character Creator demo needs to make it into our hands soonish™, but it needs to be handled properly (communication from MWM about expectations & limitations).
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
I have always contended that MWM needs a Blizzard (or CCP) level of infrastructure to make CoT ironclad. The MWM concepts and approaches sound solid. Full time support and funding is the only thing that will probably make any difference on the CoT trajectory.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Five projects wasn't necessarily the "magical threshold" that strictly prompted this thread. But you'd have to admit that it was a bit... unusual that after years of there just being the main three successor projects that all of a sudden two more appeared from nowhere almost back-to-back. For what it's worth I was pretty much just as concerned about this issue a few weeks ago when I first learned about Ship of Heroes. *shrugs*
As for the other preexisting superhero games (DCUO, et al) I actually don't see them as much of a direct threat to the CoX-successors as you might naturally assume. Even if CoT was the only CoX-successor project out there it would still have to make its mark by offering a game experience that's fundamentally different than say Marvel Heroes. Clearly if the currently existing games you mentioned were "good enough" there would be no need/desire for ANY CoX-successor. While all these games nominally involve superheroes the CoX-based games (no matter how many get launched) will be unique enough to not really be in the same category as the DCUOs of the world.
I think it's still pretty straightforward to accept that while -some- competition is good for MWM too much would be bad. The key question (again even suspected by Doctor Tyche himself) is whether we're going to start seeing more of these alternative projects popping up to muddy the field.
Ah but there's the rub - I suspect that these newer projects (like specifically Ship of Heroes) didn't just "suddenly" start from zero a couple of months ago. People have been aware of efforts like CoT for years now and anyone else who actually wanted to make their own spiritual successor to CoX wouldn't likely wait 4+ years doing absolutely nothing about it and then suddenly decide to start. The supposedly "sudden" appearance of these new projects raise many questions about their true motives and means and I simply don't think it's worth automatically assuming they are second-rate efforts until they are PROVEN to be second-rate efforts.
I know players always tend to want to get things from Devs ASAP by default. I'm simply pointing out that the "importance" of getting tangible applications from MWM sooner rather than later is now coming to the fore if for no other reason than they suddenly have twice as many potential "competitors" as they had just a couple of months ago.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I have to say, as I'm looking at Project Redside's kickstarter page and their own page (http://www.brasslampworks.com/), there are several warning flags. And, I think this successor project just might be more of a cash-grab than a sincere effort. The things that stood out was, which I feel I should point out:
In my opinion, all of that stuff makes me skeptical about this project. Which brings me to my fear, which is not having multiple successor projects with each premise being more-and-more questionable or sporting a narrower focus. It having some of these successor projects turning out to be nothing but scams and cash-grabs that will make people lose faith in the genuine projects, or give the general impression that a Superhero MMO is nothing but crap in the eyes of potential players.
I firmly believe that City of Titans, Heroes and Villains, and Valiance Online are sincere in their attempt to make a successor MMO. I'm on the fence about Ship of Heroes (and I got agree with its premise). But, I think I don't have any in this Redside project (not even with the $40 exclusive nose-picker emote).
To be perfectly honest I really don't have much faith in the long term viability of ANY of the successor projects besides CoT at this point. Despite that I don't think it's wise to completely discount any of the others as "non-threatening" until we know for super-sure. Better safe than sorry. *shrugs*
But you raised a good point about the potential threat of these "questionable" projects casting a bad light on CoT just by their very nature of being potentially bogus. This highlights yet another reason why we as players shouldn't just blindly welcome as many successor projects as possible. We need a couple of high quality choices, not a bunch of sketchy ones.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
As the old adage goes: Good, Cheap, Fast, pick two. Come from behind efforts either require a ton of cash, or cannot be built well. Poorly made games have a bad habit of dying off in short order. Being first out the gate with a badly made game could, in fact, sink all successor projects. By sucking the air out the room due to early release, it drives the competition under. Then when the quality falls short, the "winner" also folds. We have seen this happen many times in the past.
There is also another problem in that it becomes harder to not step on toes. For example, (not the case, but using it as an example) let us say Group #1 was planning on running its crowdfunding on April 15th, designed to end before Group #2 begins their own pre-sale alpha in May. Now here comes Group #3 who plan their own crowdfunding for that same period. Group #1 and 2 have kept a communication channel open to make sure they did not step on each others toes, but the newcomer wasn't part of that and has made their own plans. Do the established groups change their plans, and potentially scuttle something months in the preparation, or go ahead and then give the appearance of being the bully and trying to intentionally sabotage #3's own efforts?
When Valiance appeared, MWM and Shogn talked, and talked, and talked, to see about forming a single effort. It could not happen due to the pre-existing material on both sides, but this discussion happened and should have happened. Heroes and Villains split off from what eventually became City of Titans, so as well effort was made to keep a single effort together. The new efforts came out of left field. I know I've reached out to both, and so far one has been little if nothing in return.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Personal viability rankings (including running titles, because they're competition, too):
1: DC Universe Online
Daybreak (or really Columbus Nova) has swung a heavy axe lately, but the DCUO team wouldn't hire Jack Emmert for nothing. Besides, they're rolling in enough PS4 money that the PC and XB1 versions just have to pay for platform upkeep. (And hey, maybe with Jack in town, the mythical PC UI will finally get finished!)
2: Champions Online
Perfect World knows their F2P systems well. CO may never get the engine overhauls and console ports Star Trek Online and Neverwinter have received, but as long as there are whales to maintain the slightest momentum, the lights will stay on.
3 (tie): City of Titans
3 (tie): Valiance Online
Both are in the Hell of Showing Ugly Greybox Work Because We're Crowdfunding, but it's unfair to assume either has a "lead" or "advantage" based on how their project management is reflected in that Ugly Greybox Work. So let's call it a draw.
[i]-----Significant gap between Plan Zs that are doing real work on things like netcode and combat systems and Plan Zs that have kitbashed fancy mockups in UE4-----[/i]
5: Ship of Heroes
The re-skinned CoH screenshots, thinly-veiled attacks at other Plan Z projects (see that MassivelyOP interview), and general slickness for a fresh new startup give me some bad vibes. Still, they at least have something to show in a game engine, compared to...
6: Heroes & Villains
Earlier this month, they promised to have seamless zoning, which will ensure they're up to the 2007 standard set by LOTRO. Really, they just want to keep their name out there, because they at least have more concept art than...
7: Redside
Never mind half-baked ideas. These guys haven't even mixed the batter yet. If they try launching a Kickstarter now, with overall game crowdfunding on a sharp downward trend, they'll fall flat on their face with so little to sell.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
By your own words Ship of Heroes and Redside remain unknown quantities. It may be easy enough for you to recite Game Development 101 to a person like me who started learning about those rules of thumb 40+ years ago but until you can be absolutely sure these supposedly "new" successor projects are truly hopelessly pathetic and/or otherwise non-serious it's not wise to discount them completely.
For instance I remain unconvinced that the Ship of Heroes folks just woke up a few weeks ago and randomly decided to make a CoX-based superhero MMO. Sure what they are trying to do may ultimately fail regardless, but just because no one heard about them until now doesn't automatically mean they are 4+ years behind CoT's level of progress. For all we know those guys have been working on their game as long as MWM's been working on CoT and simply (for whatever kooky reason) decided to remain absolutely silent until now. Better to find out what you're really dealing with before you dismiss them out of hand with boilerplate rationalizations.
The fact that Ship of Heroes and Redside (not to mention any other new projects that might pop up) are not part of the original "CoX community League of Nations" means we can't really expect them to play by any sort of "tradition of cooperation" you managed to establish with VO or HaV years ago. Sure it's always worth trying to talk to the newcomers whenever they arise, but eventually you'll probably have to accept that the more projects that exist the more that "toe stepping" is going to be inevitable.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Very true on both points. I was not trying to imply that either SoH or Redside was lower quality, but pointing out only the potential risk of any new entrant into a field. And yes, toe stepping will happen, does not mean we have to like it and should not do at least reasonable effort to avoid it.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Again I don't consider games like DCUO or Marvel Online to be direct competition to any of the CoX successors because assuming any of the CoX successors actually launch they will offer a type of gameplay that will be fundamentally different. Even CO is questionable as an example of direct competition considering that most of us are waiting for CoT precisely because we collectively judged CO to be lacking as a good CoX successor. Anecdotally I have a lifetime subscription to CO and haven't played it probably 6+ years. *shrugs*
And again as far as the other CoX successors go I'd already rate CoT head and shoulders above the rest. I realize people like Doctor Tyche would likely want to diplomatically say nice things like CoT, VO and HaV are still "equals" so for their sake I'll unceremoniously state for the record there's been a "first among equals" for years.
So if I think so little of all these other games in comparison to the potential of CoT you might wonder why I even started this thread. It's simple really: While a little bit of healthy competition for CoT is a good thing too much would be bad, even if the so-called competition is questionable at best. It does CoT no favors for fringe efforts like Redside to pop up and muddy the waters for the more legitimate projects. Conversely it does CoT no good for these various projects to be dismissed as non-threatening when they may manage to linger around long enough to provide a constant drain. They need to be proactively pounded out of existence and the easiest way for CoT to do that is to start providing some things for players to play with as reasonably quickly as possible. Frankly if an upstart like Ship of Heroes manages to toss out an even half-way reasonable app/beta before CoT it's going to look bad for CoT.
Basically this is a warning to the Devs of CoT. On one hand I don't want them to "rush" anything out the door before it's ready to go. On the other if they let someone like Redside slip by with some bedazzled stunt it could give MWM a black eye it doesn't need.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Interesting thread. I think Redside shot themselves in the foot by asking for only 45,000. That is maybe enough to get some basic sampler stuff done and then they would be asking for money again. That's not a tenable path as they would at some point have to ask for more money to do some of the yucky background stuff that doesn't provide a good highlight real for the next campaign. Even if they could do that how many rounds can they go before losing community faith and goodwill. Conversely if I were trying to make a years salary in 30 days I'd carefully pick a target and set the KS complete price at a value that could easily be reached to guarantee that the KS is successful and then disappear with the money. Which is exactly what I see from Redside.
I've yet to see a game successfully run a second crowdfunding campaign without serious questions being raised and a ton of skepticism from the community. Crowdfunding is all about the deliverables if you don't deliver crowdfunders will burn you and any future campaigns to the ground.
If you ever look at the internet and think it's a safe space where you can take your dreams and fantasies and find endless support you're wrong. The internet is a seething cauldron of anger and hate that sometimes skins over in pretty colors. Poke the skin too much and you'll find that same boiling mass underneath.
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I don't want to lose sight of DCUO and CO because any newcomer's first comparison will be to the incumbents. DCUO is Daybreak's cash cow right now. It's the active standard bearer for superhero MMOs, even if it's an obvious console port on PC. For critics who never played CoH, it will be their first point of reference for the state of the market. CO is a low bar, to be sure, but if MWM drops a public character creator demo that dazzles everybody, it could be the one thing that [i]finally[/i] lights a fire under Cryptic's arse. But even that's wishful thinking. I'm more inclined to believe that PWE/Cryptic is content with CO being in the long-tail phase of life. They'll retool and refresh existing systems until the whales stop spending, then slip into maintenance mode until Zen Store sales can't pay for server upkeep.
And I'm willing to give VO the benefit of the doubt because the Ugly Greybox Work Silverhelm and MWM show are reflections of the different ways they are skinning their particular cats. (Wow, that metaphor really goes downhill once you try to rephrase it.) Silverhelm is willing to show a fully-integrated game, albeit in a very rough state. MWM is demonstrating more refined subsystems with some level of integration, but not the whole enchilada just yet. They look very different to outsiders, but both can still be on target for their internal milestones.
You're absolutely right about Ship of Heroes and Redside (and GG occasionally shouting "Hey, remember us?") lowering the signal-to-noise ratio, though. They're probably going to be a major distraction in the press until either Silverhelm or MWM release a significant public demo of actual game code. Once that happens, though, these Johnny-come-lately projects are going to have some hard decisions to make about what progress they've made, whether they can close the gap quickly enough to remain viable, or whether they have something [i]truly[/i] different to offer the market.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
I basically never played redside in CoX and have no great desire to do so in a game entirely devoted to it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
IMHO Emmert is overrated. They got lucky with CoH having viable game mechanics, and blew it with their ED efforts.
Speaking as an STO player with a lifetime subscription, I don't think the console port is doing them any good. "Ship a bug-ridden mess early and patch it later" doesn't work very well on consoles since it takes weeks to get updates through the necessary channels. Weekly patches just can't happen. And there's still a million old bugs in there, even on PC; they'll never be able to patch less often than weekly.
And console is still far behind PC in terms of released content. Further, the way the game is built now makes it work like an actual job: most of the special things come in the form of "do this daily mission 25 times during the 5-6 week event." Which sounds fine until you realize that there are dozens of these "dailies" all over the game. Redlynne would spend something like 8 hours a day running dailies. (Then the retro WoW server showed up last November, and STO was dropped like a lead balloon. Red only dropped WoW years ago, after moving to it when CoH launched ED, because CoH got the invention system. I haven't played STO for a couple weeks now.)
The way they do guild bases is, frankly, horrifying. Players pour in their reward marks and hundreds of dollars of dilithium, then wait weeks while the timer counts down. Someone calculated that if you could kick off every task the day it was available, you'd still need something like 3 years to fully outfit everything. And forget any form of creativity beyond uniforms and fleet insignia.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Just to point you are right in my opinion.
- The aiming system is not great in CO. I feel the system was developped for game console rather than PC.
- the (power) combat system was really hard to embrass since it was not usual with new concepts... (not translated xD)
- Moreover, for foreigner players, to not have, at least, the powers translation or even description make me feel like it was not a game like CoH which was translated.
- Therefore, some details were really wired and disappointing like the teleport system...which was, in my mind, a real swindle.
Like you, i have a lifetime subscription, bought (cost me an arm and a leg) before the release because i really believe in this game but i haven't played since at least 7 years... I'll never pay this amount again to be disppointed. :)
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Worth noting that superhero mmo players are not your only potential player base and superhero mmos your only competition.
I've never been a bug supers fan but I loved CoV anyway. Great game, great setting, way more features than other mmos and most importantly it let me fly around as a dragon (more or less) and interact with a with friends in great environments.
I got into CoV very late, alas, but no game I've heard of has the stuff I liked about it. GW2 doesn't even let you fly, WoW doesn't let you customize your powers hardly at all add doesn't even provide a character description box - are you kidding me?
No game lets me be a storm dragon blowing my opponents all over the place and crowd controlling with all sorts of weather.
Will CoT? Maybe not. But maybe eventually it'll do some. Nothing else does.
But no, we're not quite all here for just supers.
Who wants to join me in making a Superhero MMO?
I got a big garage and $45,0000 bucks.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
To be absolutely clear I share everyone's healthy skeptism about Redside. There's only one of two things going on there: either A) the people behind Redside are legitmately trying to create a superhero MMO but apparently have very little knowledge/experience with how to do that or B) the guys behind it have no intention to actually create a viable game and it's a complete (albeit hamfisted) scam.
Despite all that I still contend that for the moment we need to continue to take them seriously if for no other reason than to acknowledge a truth we might not want to accept: As long as no CoX successor (legitimate or otherwise) has anything tangible to offer players in the way of working apps and/or betas there's always going to be room for people like the ones behind Redside to whip up a KS and pose as a potential CoX candidate worth paying attention to. Think of it this way: If CoT already had the Avatar Builder app and/or at least a worakble beta running do you think anyone else would bother tossing out a brand new copy-cat KS without a serious intention to compete against CoT?
Again one more time I want to stress that I don't want MWM to rush anything out that isn't truly ready to be released. But I would argue the sooner something's in our hands we can actually play with the less likely any other "upstarts" will appear with the idea of being able to easily fill the gameless vacuum that continues to exist as of today. Basically the easist way to ensure no more "surprise" CoX successors pop up is to actually have a working CoX successor on the playing field.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Regardless of the specific merits of Jack Emmert's experience, the fact that Daybreak poached the founder and CEO of a competitor tells you how serious they are about their product.
Cryptic's still gonna Cryptic, though, whether it's CO, STO, or NW: Love to build new systems, hate to maintain old systems. That's been their corporate culture from the day CoH launched. They never would have doubled back on modifications to implement ED if six-stacking didn't allow certain builds to pretty much break the game.
[i]It was.[/i] Quick Champions Online history time:
The project, codenamed "Fight Club", was originally going to be "Marvel Universe Online", developed by Cryptic for PC and Xbox 360 and published by Microsoft.* To make a long story short, both Microsoft and Marvel decided they didn't want to make MMOs after all, so Cryptic bought Hero Games for the Champions pen-and-paper RPG,** and used its lore (very loosely) to rebuild "Fight Club" as Champions Online. Cryptic still intended to launch an Xbox 360 version of CO, but they could never work out the details of account and subscription management over Xbox Live with Microsoft. The Xbox 360 port of CO eventually faded away, but the APIs remained in Cryptic Engine. Over the years, both Microsoft and Cryptic had changed their business practices enough for Cryptic to port Neverwinter to Xbox One. They've since ported NW to PS4 and STO to both, but the odds of CO being ported are next to nil. Money's so tight for the CO team, [i]everything[/i] they're developing now is recycled from existing content. Even new costume parts are being kitbashed from old models.
*: The name "Fight Club" came from The First Rule of Fight Club, because Cryptic didn't want NCSoft to know they had a project for another publisher in development. Like NCSoft couldn't figure it out from the sudden slowdown in CoH development anyway. That's what led to the split between Cryptic, cut loose to work on Marvel Universe alone, and NCSoft NorCal, which became Paragon Studios because "NCSoft NorCal" is an awful name. To this day, CO's build numbers have the project code "FC" where Star Trek has "ST" and Neverwinter has "NW".
**: Many of CoH's signature NPCs came from a Champions campaign played by Cryptic's founders. As you might expect, Statesman was Jack's main.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
Another possible spin this could take is that when MWM releases their character creator, the internet collectively says "4 years and $600k and this is all they have to show!" Obviously that is not going to be said in this little section of the internet, but as was stated in the "death of a game: City of Heroes" video that was recently posted COT is the prime successor, but the narrator effectively says COT is vaporware. So there is a little misunderstanding beyond those loyal few here.
If you haven't noticed my opinion of the internet as a collective being is very poor.
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The time and money you cite is already water under the bridge. The people who are going to hate on CoT's Avatar Builder from the point of view of how long it took are going to hate on it whether MWM finally releases it next week or six months from now. There's nothing that's going to reduce that feeling of "What took so long?" for anyone at this point.
The sooner MWM releases -something- tangible the better it'll be for everyone. It's like an old Band-Aid that just needs to be ripped-off ASAP - once it's done the quicker people will forget just how long the "vaporware era" of CoT lasted.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
We test little nibbles, and get negative feedback, so things get pushed back till they are more polished.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
That's fine. But eventually you'll need to find the courage to gather up those "little nibbles" and squish them together to make one publicly releasable app regardless of how rough/unpolished the first versions of it are. That's why you have a boatload of closed alpha and open beta testing to help you get to something approaching a finished product.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This is basically the case for any video-game I've found. MMOs in particular have a strange thing where people are often very upset with long wait times in between content updates, and then once content arrives they basically forget all about the wait and just lose themselves in the new experiences. We humans are strange things.
Once CoT releases, the wait time will literally just be a thing of the past. Because of that, I'm willing to wait as long as it takes.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
If no other CoX successors existed I'd agree with you on this 100%. Unfortunately I think even their mere existence as "kindred vaporware" makes it imperative that CoT be the first to release something... anything. I'd rather have something from MWM that's 90% done within say a year than wait for something "perfect" that arrives long after someone else plants their flag first.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This discussion makes me wonder how close MWM is to a closed Alpha.
And by that I mean a real, closed Alpha--something that few people would call fun. Not the weird, often open things that are called "Alpha" these days--wisely or unwisely--for marketing purposes.
With their new/current release date, I'd think a true closed Alpha (which I understand I'll probably not be allowed to participate in, and I'm cool with that) would need to start before too long, even taking their modular approach into account.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
If my understanding of what a real, closed Alpha is matches that of MWM, I'm not likely to be in the real, closed Alpha, either. And while I might be a little disappointed if it turns out our understandings differ, I'd gladly be in on that RCA if they invited me. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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Bear in mind that releasing an avatar builder first was the plan spelled out in the Kickstarter, so it would be disingenuous for anyone to claim that releasing the avatar builder indicates a change in plans.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
When we planned on that, we had a less capable avatar builder than we wound up with. The engine change simply opened up options we did not have before. On revision 12 now, and I think we finally hit the finish line.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Nice tease....
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Careful Dr.T. Your definition of finish line doesn't appear to line up with my definition. Unless you've misspelled Finnish. In which case I'd still like to know what you mean by hitting the Finnish line.
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I suspect the community appetite for more potential successors has been sated and that anything else on kickstarter will struggle to get off the ground.
Human Flea / Union / Sci SR/Claws Scrapper
H3-AL / Union / Sci Emp/Psi Defender
I suspect the same - VO's own kickstarter never got close to COT's numbers, despite having more to "show" in regards to actual development. Redside's kickstarter is currently not doing very well at all. Ship of Heroes is apparently starting up their kickstarter soon - we will have to see how that pans out over the next couple of months.
That's an understatement!
With three days left in their kickstarter they only have four backers and $170!
I suppose their backers could still come out of nowhere at the last minute they way the initial announcement did.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
One thing that all these attempted developments demonstrate is that there are still quite a few people out there who are interested in this genre enough to at least try to give it a try. The hunger is there, and the existing genre games are obviously not enough for many people, or all these others wouldn't be trying to make a go of it.
(insert pithy comment here)
My God, there's nothing there.
I looked through their site's pages. They're barely more than templates and art which might have nothing to do with the game.
CoT had way more than this when they had their Kickstarter.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
If the Redside team thought "[i]open resentment[/i] of NCSoft instead of lamentations for City of Heroes" would be the difference that made up for the lack of concept, it appears they were greatly mistaken.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
[Doctor Tyche
"As the old adage goes: Good, Cheap, Fast, pick two. Come from behind efforts either require a ton of cash, or cannot be built well. Poorly made games have a bad habit of dying off in short order. Being first out the gate with a badly made game could, in fact, sink all successor projects. By sucking the air out the room due to early release, it drives the competition under. Then when the quality falls short, the "winner" also folds. We have seen this happen many times in the past."
Right on! (I guess nobody under age 60 says that term anymore but what the heck). Might I suggest that in this case the problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are two entities laying claim to "Titan City" (CoT and H&V) and three claiming to hold the mantle of the CoH torch bearing community (TTN, CoT, and with their latest video entry SoH). I am a glutton for punishment I guess because I enjoy following the exploits of all these efforts on a semi regular basis. But I don't think the world at large is as tuned in or cares. The potential for things to get very muddled in a hurry (sucking the air out of the room) is great. The truth be told, I bet on you in this horserace. And I really haven't been thrilled you have yet to distinguish yourself from the others in the field to the degree I think you should by this time. But I am glad you recognize this risk. Now go out there and make us proud.
Let me fire away one more time and then shut up. If this is true, you are doing an excellent job of hiding it from those of us in the cheap seats on the outside. What I am seeing from you and all the successors are promises of a much craved fix to the CoH addicts (yours truly included) out there in the world. Some of us are on Methadone (Paragon Chat, inferior mmos, etc.). Some of us (including the president of your company) are out praying Hail Mary's looking for a way, any way, to bring back the good old days. Some of us are out hunting Zombies. You tug at our heartstrings with visions of torches and cliche slogans reminding us of the pain (and yes anger) of a time gone by. Many of us are out looking for a dealer, any dealer, to satisfy our need. MWM is as guilty as any of the successors of promising to satisfy that hunger. Don't be at all surprised if somebody gets to us first (even with product that is inferior to yours). Your company appears to be doing as much as they can to facilitate that with fears of not being a "bully" or "stepping on toes". Honestly, sometimes I think you guys are more into the inside baseball of backroom talks (and talks and talks) with NCSoft, or VO, or anybody who wants to yak about a superhero mmo than your constituency here.
I am not here now to comment on whether these activities are "right" or "wrong" . I've made my opinions known (as unpopular as they may be to many) in other posts. And it's probably is clear anyway from the tone of this post. But I am sorry Tannim222. None of this is expanding your audience. None of this is plowing new ground. I really am 100% clueless on what you are talking about based on what I have read (and more importantly what I have seen or used) from your company. You and I specifically had a forum back and forth months ago along similar lines. As far as I am concerned, nothing has changed except that other people are moving in your turf (did you catch those torches?). Would you care to enlighten me and spark again the excitement I felt when you announced CoT? Or am I better off in the short term at least booking passage with another ship of heroes?
Thank you for your time and for letting me have my say. I mean that. And I mean it when I say I remain optimistic. What very little I know about your game mechanics, original storyline (not the TTN rehash), costume creator, music, etc. has blown me away. Keep up it up.You have an opportunity to knock this thing out of the park. In fact, I'll make a prediction right now. If you do this right, your biggest problem will be maintaining a positive player experience in the face of mega demand. Hopefully, a couple of years from now you and I can share a big laugh about how "clueless" and worried I was in March 2017.
At this point, the other games really have not shown any more than we have. The difference is in presentation. We presented it as under development, never disguising that fact. We chose not to dive into the "Early Release" bandwagon, and today we're not facing the, rather nasty at points, feedback surrounding those games which did.
Why? Because if we had presented it in a polished format back then, we would have people today at our throats over having not delivered something that was "obviously ready to ship." So, we chose to display it in the rough form, to keep people's expectations in line with the reality, that this will take years to do right no matter who is doing. Because if we had opened up our early servers, several options would have been locked down else have hurt our players experience, all while the funds to develop the gain were drained to maintain the servers (not an inexpensive proposition). The end result is, we chose the harder option, to deliver a better game, because that is the right thing to do.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Note, I have a severe toothache, so if my response comes across as a bit snippy, my apologies.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I, personally, think you've done an excellent job managing our expectations while still showing forward progress on a fairly regular basis.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Agreed. I think a lot of the flak you guys have gotten has been emotional and based on misunderstanding or lack of understanding, and is a perfect example of exactly why major studios don't let on that they're even developing a title until they've already accomplished the most time-consuming and boring parts of the process--which is an option that MWM didn't have.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
On a rare occasion a major studio does, like Sony Online Entertainment did in the case of Everquest Next.
We now are witnessing the end results of that decision.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I thought Everquest Next was cancelled?
I accidently ate a bowl of radioactive soup....ok I guess that makes me a Soup-er Hero
Yes, due to many factors. One of them is that by the time they hit the end of development, it no longer matched the design promised when originally revealed, which is not atypical for any development cycle. I know our current design is quite different from our 2013 plan, certainly.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
For one thing, you've gone through a full engine change, and isn't that just a kick in the pants to the mechanics of it? There's no way the game's original vision would have survived that kind of overhaul.
Another great pair of examples example would be the Guild Wars titles, and World of Warcraft. WoW was originally going to be top-down, if I remember correctly - something similar to diablo, using resources polished off of the Warcraft 3 game. You can still see some stuff like that over a decade later, the early design for boars and wolves being the most prominent, I believe. That is much, much different from the end result we got, and I imagine the genre would be very different now if not for that fact.
Guild Wars... well, the artifact is a give away to the nature of the title. Originally planned to be set during the titular Guild Wars, the intention was an exceedingly PvP focused game in which guilds vied for control of the landscape. As development wore on, PvE became a stronger focus, a proper story was written, and they decided to leave the guild wars behind, resulting in the much more focused story we got. Guild Wars 2 actually had a similar development issue, in that the five main races were originally supposed to be opposed with one another rather than allied, and constant warfare would be going on between them. Personally, I think that would have made a better game, but oh well.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that CoT has gone through similar development bumps.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Perhaps it is because I've been following this title more closely than any other but I disagree with the supposed lack of progress. Admittedly I feel like there could or should be more to see for the public at large. I get why that is but the feeling persists.
It gives me the feeling of being in a house frame that is being put together by the devs. Here I am screaming and shouting about how great the house is on the inside but everyone else just sees a raving lunatic in a cage.
So that makes me the protagonist of a Disney princess movie or a Twilight Zone story. Probably not a princess, I don't sing and dance much (read: at all, for good reason).
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