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Honestly? I kind of hope so.
That's a good way to describe it I suppose.
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 can understand wanting to discourage 'Kiting' and 'Jousting', however, as a Tanker, one of my most useful abilities was to circle-strafe mobs. Yes, this meant that many rooting, blasting, cone, and ground-targeted AoE attacks would tend to miss me (and my teammates). It also meant that I could... sorta 'sculpt' a crowd of mobs so that they interfered with each other and stayed focused on Me, the Tanker, instead of on my teammates.
In other games, I've found the same sort of thing works well for Blasters, especially against mobs with a charge/over-run mechanic. They'd attack along a given line, but I'd already be moving out of the way. So I'd win, not by staying beyond their attack range and leading them all over the map, but by always avoiding/dodging the attack.
Is this Also a tactic you want to discourage? Will tactical, in combat movement also be nerfed?
Be Well!
Fireheart
No quite the opposite. You just won’t be able to do that forever. At some point you’ll either need to stop attacking or stop moving so much.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Um, so we eventually have to stop dodging... is that a per-encounter, per-hour, or per-instance limitation?
Be Well!
Fireheart
There is no active dodging. You need Evasion to avoid being hit. Every attack affects your movement, so it happens at the start of the encounter. The movement reduction doesn’t last long and returns to normal if you don’t attack.
In theory you could pace yourself and limit your movement reduction. Or you could keep attacking a bunch but keep pushing it and you will reach a point where you have to choose, be rooted when you attack or slow your attack pace to get more movement.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Interesting. What about 'stick-and-move', or 'shoot-and-scoot' for the ranged attacker, where one would move about Between attacks?
Be Well!
Fireheart
I think what they're trying to say, is moving while making an attack will apply a movement speed debuff. But this debuff ONLY triggers if you move while attacking, not if you stand still. Likewise, it seems it only continues to stack if you continue to attack while moving. If you move without attacking, or attack without moving until the duration expires, it's gone. So it's not as if you're slowed for the entirety of battle and never able to reposition. If this debuff stacks high enough, not only are you slowed by a good amount, but lose the ability to move and attack at the same time until it expires. With a short enough duration, this will allow movement in battle without allowing infinite kiting, or needing to trigger every ranged attack during a jump like in City of Heroes.
Although I can think of some issues with this, it's only what I'm able to put together based on comments so far.
Good explanation. It isn’t perfect, and so want to play with curves in reduction and return instead of linear but that comes with testing.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Could we have this broken off into its own thread?
- - - - -
[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I'm intrigued by this idea and would like to see how it looks in action.
Yes please! Months from now it will be hard to remember this was discussed in a thread about some other game.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Many things players ask for "Will be added later" not feeling that tbh. I do appreciate MVM going the extra mile as-well. I don't know, I just feel if you have a bare rushed product, do you have a product? If they are booking on the harsh mmo world to overlook this and help them generate revenue to add other features, they may be in for a rude awakening. The SoH supporters will pitch in, no doubt.
They have guts, considering the KS failed. Now you are expecting players to pay for a bare minimum product when they can play CoT, or a developed mmo? SoH is subbed based btw. I am all in on the game, just being realistic here.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
The SoH kickstarter failed? I know it was canceled, but I didn't hear about it failing.
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
It was cancelled when they failed to get the momentum needed to successfully pull it off. Some might call that failing, but I don't. I call it smart on their end. Casey and team are good people.
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
They're better off because they get donated funds immediately, don't have to give Kickstarter a cut, and they don't have to stop fundraising after a one-month-or-so window.
Flip side is they have to do all the legwork.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yeah that sounds more in line with what I heard. They had pulled it themselves for internal reasoning, not had an out and out failure.
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
Kickstarter *and* Amazon. I don't think people appreciate that almost 30% of the KS funds went to such fees.
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
The way I see it, if KS was successful, it would have been successful. It was not successful, so it was a failure. They took other routes, so those folks are good and ready to go.
April is nearly here. So we are nearly halfway through 2018. Exciting times to be a former CoX or current CO player. I noticed we are getting into the meat from both sides. SoH are doing alpha runs with supporters, and that CoT char gen was an awesome surprise.
Three super hero mmo on my plate? I invested a lifetime sub in CO so that game will be a mainstay. Now I got CoT and SoH, but hey, I am not complaining.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
BTW guys, associated with Valiance is the MMO Project Gorgon. Check out LazyPeon's review of it:
[youtube]5FVyKFtN5zo[/youtube]
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
It's an interesting game, Project Gorgon.
As for the games out there on the list, there are plenty of them "out there".
In terms of SoH being a "failure" of a kickstarter, well, it did fail, and they did pull it, which was a smart move. Now SoH has really ramped up their marketing, and I would assume it's to garner more support and more funds.
I've been wondering why CoT isn't doing the same thing. This might be something I can help with, though, it really depends on the CoT roadmap, and what they're (you're) looking to accomplish.
Valiance has been making some headway with their "investors alpha". I haven't hopped in quite yet but I assume it's in a pretty decent shape as their funding has taken off.
Heroes and Villains, well, I've heard bad things. They update their development page regularly, but I hear that they have little to no actual work completed by someone who was involved in the project. I do mean project, as it appears to be a crowdsourced game, but from what I can hear, they aren't pushing development much, if at all.
The reason why we are not doing the same thing is not a simple answer, but it boils down to manpower. We don't have enough of 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
Do you mean that if you had a dedicated community manager that handled those kinds of media interactions that you would ramp up media attention? Or are you saying you don't want additional media attention because you don't have the manpower to support the amount of updates preferred for (or by) a media correspondent?
We would need dedicated art and coding staff to handle it. Marketing materials do not just appear out of thin air.
Due to being so distributed, our development is very balkanized by necessity. As such, integrated pieces to demonstrate with come very late in the process. Take the costume creator video. That comes from merging 4 different efforts together into a single one.
It's like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Unless you have enough pieces together, the picture does not look so good.
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
But, that Costume Creator piece was pretty much a creme de la creme of marketing pieces. It doesn't always have to be so... polished. Especially in comparison to the media updates put out by your peers.
The demonstrated "Costume Creator" was just functional enough to cobble an example character together and step through a handful of options. The result looked promising, but not exactly ready for marketing, especially given what has been talked about (and confirmed to be available at launch). It was more a couple steps beyond a proof of concept, but not ready to showcase. We don't even know what options were not shown (or avoided due to missing or buggy code). The demonstration was a good faith display of "[I]see what we have accomplished and understand how that will index into so many more wonderful things... later on down the road[/I]".
Planning ahead for marketing is a good thing. Creating directed media that promotes the game and showcases it at the same time is ideal.
The problem for MWM at this point is dev hours to get this thing up an running, not marketing. They don't have the critical mass (or funding) to flip the switch on hiring full time employees. The funding will come when they decide to fire off the Second Chance (or whatever they are calling it), but that won't happen until they have the Character Creator done (iirc). They don't have the Character Creator done because the development is distributed and merging all the code is difficult to do under this structure (plus dev time is all volunteer when they aren't doing day job stuff). Communication (and documentation/tracking) is a critical component in this environment.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Planet10, you hit it right on the nose
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've gotten into this subject here before. It doesn't take a totally polished product to create marketing material. Simple updates saying "this week we are working on x, y, and z", along with some basic raw screenshots of that work, would be tremendously helpful to maintain community confidence and outside interest. It doesn't always have to be a graphics laden video or animation. It could be a simple screen cap, with an explanation of what it is each different person is working on. No matter how boring it is, I guaruntee people will appreciate it. A Trello would be great.
Further, the fact that this game has been in development for as long as it has, and we have barely seen any of the actually city, when it is right in the name of the game (you'd think this would be a priority, building the actual world to run around in), is rather alarming to me. I'm sure plenty of progress has been made on it, but in absence of proof one way or another, one is left to speculate. Further, it makes me worry and second guess the potential of the game overall. If things are this hard to communicate and slow to develop at this stage of the game, how are things going to be any different when the game is actually released? It is really a management issue, more than a manpower issue. No offense to whoever is in charge here.
Even though, I'm not super impressed with what I've seen from them so far, at least Valiance had a discord channel where you can ask questions to the devs directly, and pretty much always get a response. They also have a working demo of the game that I can play, after a similar development time, with similar staffing and even less funds than CoT has. That says a lot right there.
Don't be too impressed by the existence of Valiance's "investor alpha" if you haven't seen it. While they do have a very marginally playable game -- to the extent that you can create a character and move around and fight some things -- even spending a few minutes there shows how much they have yet to do, and how slow their progress has been on many fronts.
And though I'm sure "we have an alpha" is a draw for investors, I think it can also generate some disappointment when those investors are met with the reality of where the project is. Whenever I log in, I check to see how many others are logged in, and it's usually no more than one or two, unless it's the day after an update, and then it's still almost always in single digits. It's not uncommon that I'm the only person on. And I never stay on long, because there's not much to do, and what there is to do is beset with myriad problems. Bugs reported months ago remain unaddressed.
Also, the Alpha puts VO's weaknesses in full, inescapable view. The game still only has the same handful of missions -- which still have the same bugs and typos that they had in the pre-alpha -- going back several years. In the meantime, they've completely redesigned their city hall and the surrounding terrain three or four times now. It certainly leads one to question how their developmental energy is being spent, and what holes there may be in their development team.
Now, I'm not here to bash Valiance. I'm a supporter of both VO and CoT, and I'm patiently waiting out their development as they each go about it in very different ways. But I don't think there's anything superior about VO's approach. Personally, I'm more optimistic about CoT at this point, because I see them trying to get things right before they put them out on public view. And the things which ARE on public view, such as the Chargen, the lore and background, and ongoing animation work, show more promising functionality than I'm seeing in VO right now.
So while it's a draw to have an early investor alpha, it's not necessarily a plus for your project if that alpha is draining your resources, and not showing your work on the game to good effect.
My two cents. YMMV.
This is a very valid point. I've asked this very question myself.
Despite anything I've ever written in this forum I still remain generally hopeful/optimistic for the eventual success of CoT. There's always a fine line between wanting the Devs waste a lot of extra time generating fancy "press release" type material versus just letting them get on with the dirty business of the sausage making.
But I must admit that it would be very informative (at this point in the development cycle) to perhaps get from MWM a simple "photo album" of in-game snapshots of various points in the city. Obviously I'm not demanding/expecting that the entire city map be 100% completed by now. But I do think it's fair to expect that there would be enough of it completed that we could get say 20 or 30 screen captures just to get a rough idea of what we can expect to see once the game finally launches.
Obviously I'm not suggesting that a huge amount of time be spent creating such a photo album but by the same token it shouldn't seriously take more than a few minutes to generate such a thing at this point. I believe something like this would go a long way towards "filling the gap" of info about this game that ought to be readily available at this point.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
To Geveo's point, it may be true that VO has perhaps pulled the trigger on their investor alpha a bit prematurely. Yet, even if they had it as a closed, very limited alpha, for only devs and a few select members of the community, it would still be further than CoT is right now. We see some videos of players running around a couple maps, and one of a very limited city, but it is all very unfinished. As lothic said, if we just had some screenshots around the city, in whatever state it may be in, it would be very reassuring.
I think everyone thus far is blowing this out of proportion in terms of what they are deeming as "marketing" and what could otherwise be considered "exposure". I've seen games with less put out pieces of information much more frequently.
What I'm hearing is that development at this time isn't interested in additional exposure, and that's completely fine.
Rome wasn't built in a day. While some pretty pictures would be nice, I don't need them at the expense of throwing unnecessary chaos into the development. They've been beavering away at this thing on volunteer time and a shoestring budget for years. I believe our patience will be rewarded when the time is right.
Reality is what I make it
I would argue that Valiances approach is superior in that, it doesn't matter what state the game is currently in, they have clear cut goals that include funding, and they are accepting that funding whereas CoT is currently not.
That's not to say the game is in a better or worse state, and the investor alpha is their 2nd "alpha" as originally they had an open alpha for a short time, and now it's simply paywalled.
The other major feature of having a live alpha is, it gives a better idea of the state of the game, if an when patches roll out to the live game. Here we are, in the days of early access, I've been in alphas for games that were not appealing in the slightest, at least initially. But you also see these games come to form during their development cycle, so in that regard, there's nothing wrong with an alpha of that nature.
Seeing is believing.
As I've agreed there's no desire on my part to significantly interfere with the development process of this game by asking/begging for excessive info about the game.
On the other hand the idea that having one person spend a few minutes to take a few in-game screen shots of content that should be ready enough for viewing for a game that's supposedly going to be launching by the end of the year is seriously NOT that much to ask for. If a Dev of this game can't spare 10-15 minutes sometime in the previous 4+ YEARS to do something like that then I could really only conclude (or at least reasonably speculate) there might be something seriously wrong in the House of MWM.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
No, Rome was built invisibly. You know how Romans love the "Big Reveal". One day, no Rome, next day.. .ALL THE ROME
To be clear, it's not like MWW never gives updates. A quick glance at the front page refutes this notion. Yet, there are clearly some parts of the puzzle notably absent, still, and the updates lack a coherency and consistency that you'd hope from a game that is planning to be in beta this year. Some may be fine with the approach of "it's ready when it's ready, and when it's ready you'll know", but others, like myself, would like to have some idea of where things are at in the grand scheme of things, and the details of what is done and what is not. It is really not an excessively burdensome request, in my opinion, and a focused and professional development team should have a detailed schedule and accounting of where things are. It's just a matter of making such an item publicly available, assuming it exists. Again, in the absence of such things, it leaves one wondering.
Essentially I am here because CoT was purportedly going to be in beta this year. In this thread though, I'm hearing that the character created is barely out of a "proof of concept" stage.
Whatever development stage its in right now is fine, just from what I heard, a game eyeing beta this year should be getting more exposure.
The question I wonder at is what do you get for your money as an investor? I haven't looked into it but if all I'd be getting is the ability to run around in a vacant Alpha doing very little, I wouldn't call that worth the money. A paywalled Alpha as disappointing as it sounds could also be counterproductive, driving interest away. VO might be better served selling swag or future perks and time in their finished product as MWM has in the past. There's 'early access' and then there's 'way too early access'. Sounds like VO went for the latter. And I have no hate for them at all. I could certainly see trying it out once they have a reasonably polished product. But what it sounds like they have now is more likely to drive me off than lure me in, especially if I have to pay for the privilege. A functional beta would be a better choice for early access I think. Especially for paid early access.
I don't know why MWM isn't fundraising more but as it takes time and resources to do so, they may feel they are better served putting what they have into the game than fundraising in the hope of getting more.
Reality is what I make it
We have different people working on different parts of the game at the same time.
We have the avatar creator fully prototyped by one group.
We have combat being worked on by another.
City design yet another.
Mission map design another.
Base design...
Some people wear multiple hats and have to prioritize time between each as they are needed.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
You get more than just access to alpha, they have tiered systems. At the high end you get character slots and titles and new travel powers.
I think it all depends on where MWMs focus really is. I get that it's volunteer work, or what have you, but you get out what you put into it, most especially when it comes to funding.
This, in my belief, is the sole purpose of why SoH has ramped up community interaction and has began courting online publications. They failed the original Kickstarter, but that was because exposure was next to nothing, and now they have much more exposure, likely leading up to a new crowdfunding push or maybe they'll go the way of Valiance and do a donation system.
The donation system seems to be working well for VO. They've reached their first "tier" with over 50K. That could potentially be 2 salaries for a year for MWMs staff or volunteers to further development. :shrug: there's always secondary round of kickstarter, that's not unheard of either.
But if at any point MWM plans on requesting additional funding, or wants to push hard for a completion date and wants support, they can't go from 0 to 60 and expect a rousing reception.
This is my feeling as well. My experiences with "early access" have typically been less than stellar. It may not be in MWM's best interests to have [I]too[/I] much exposure at this juncture - not until they have something working and fleshed out to an extent.
I think few if any are calling for early access to CoT. The VO alpha has been a major disappointment for me, and the updates are painfully slow. But at least we know they have a functional game (assuming you want to grant them that much), and they provide regular big picture updates of their development. CoT dribbles out updates, most often relating to lore, and never gives us any clue as to the overall big picture of where things stand. This is a unique situation in this space. Both of their competitors have released a broad roadmap of where they are in the development process.
This is exactly my thinking. I want so bad to be able to support them in their next round of fundraising, but as I've said before, unless I see a more communication on where the overall development of the game stands, not just bits and pieces, I will be very reluctant. I guess it's a bit of a catch 22 from their perspective. They claim they don't have time or funds to devote to such efforts, but without such efforts, it will be hard to garner enough support to make such efforts possible. Thus why I think it is critical that they realize this, bite the bullet, and put in the effort to make these sorts of things a part of their regularly scheduled programming.
I second this good idea.
With a distributed team as they are, surely the project management people have requested weekly updates from all their contributors. I would hate to think what would be happening if they didn't.
So since regular status reports are probably being submitted to the management already, it seems that paraphrasing it into a regular public status (or bi-weekly or other) would provide significantly more marketing return for the time invested.
I would think that after the first time, the time invested drops off radically as one ends up just copying and pasting into a template such that it takes barely any time at all. Just proofread, and edit to control some information, and send.
[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.
You say that polished isn't needed for marketing, but when we use anything less than 100% perfect, it get thrown in our face, saying it's not good enough. After a few months of that, we decided not to release anything until it's 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
I can't help wanting everything perfect, now. *grin*
But I anticipate everything excellent eventually.
Be Well!
Fireheart
True words, Doctor Tyche. And I will be the first to admit guilt there. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, I suppose. I guess you just have to figure out which you are willing to live with and take the slings and arrows from us knowing you did what you thought was right.
[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.
Honestly, the proof is in the pudding. We can discuss the game until we're blue in the face. We could show pretty videos for ages. But it ultimately comes down to playing it.
We bit off a huge challenge with our design, making something this flexible at it's core. As a result, it's taking a longer time than we had planned. We could have cut corners, at the cost of future growth, but we are stubborn folk, and want to deliver the best damned game we can.
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 mean, I can't speak for anyone else, but I want the game you guys are trying to make. I understand and deeply appreciate that it was a crazy thing for you to even try to take on, I'm grateful that you're committed to seeing it through, and I'd rather wait for the game you want to deliver. I'm always incredulous when people (not usually on these forums) make statements tantamount to "I'd rather have a 'meh' successor right now than an great one in a year or two." That baffles me personally.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I wasn't aware that anything we forumites would generally call "marketing" had been attempted yet, besides maybe the recent character generator video - which got mostly positive feedback. Did I miss something? Perhaps you're counting the backer updates and livestreams as marketing?...though I wouldn't.
I would be expecting a fair bit of (brutally) honest investor/donor/customer feedback to any organization that is either too hesitant to make promises, or has a low success rate at keeping those they make. That only gets more acute as they begin a real marketing campaign. Between Valiance and Ship of Heroes, only one has managed to make an adequate number of promises and also keep a high percentage of them, in my opinion. I hope that balance can be struck for CoT in the very near future.
There isn't a game on the market free of criticism, and you're right, the proof will be in that delicious superhero pudding, but gamers are a fickle breed. It's unfortunate that in that way, developers are expected to have thick skin. Some developers don't, and they begin to be defined by their responses, like Derek Smart, who is probably a much better developer than he's been given credit for, but his reactions have been largely viewed as unprofessional, and they become fodder for the varying degrees of internet trolls. Or, like Uwe Boll and his penchant for trying to fight his critics... there's an undercurrent among gamers that it's cool to burn down anything and everything.
It shouldn't stop any developer from drumming up interest for their game. It's better to just understand that those with no constructive criticism that go out of their way to be heavily critical aren't worth paying attention to in the end.
This.
And this.
Deadlines, flashy videos, updates... none of that matters if the game is never delivered, or is delivered and sucks. Whereas if MWM does as I believe they will and delivers the game they have promised, it will thrive on its quality, not because someone made a flashy video in the year before release. I think MWM is the best judge of when and how much marketing is needed, but personally it seems far too soon to be devoting significant resources to such things. Are we all eager to know more about the game? Sure. Do we [i]need to[/i]? No, I don't think so.
Spurn all ye kindle.
This pretty well hits the nail on the head for why I backed CoT long ago, and why I'm still patiently waiting. I support the goal.
I particularly support the idea that the game design is being generated from a gamer's mindset. The primary goal isn't to squeeze the maximum profits out of the fan base (loot crates, etc...), but to generate a game that's fun enough to play that people will want to support it and keep it going.
The fact that people -- in many cases skilled professionals -- are working on this game without pay, just because they are so determined that it should exist? Big draw for me.
Two people created that? Very impressive. Hard to be too critical of this project. It appears functional, and contains some serious depth.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
Yup. Talked to them awhile back. Damned smart people.
Their server technology is used for Valiance Online. Frankly, the whole thing is amazing.
I remember the first pre-alpha for it. The hallway of death.
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
And definitely THIS!
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
I played EQ back when it had first released. That was my first MMORPG (I had played MUDs for years before then) and Project: Gorgon makes me really nostalgic.
EQ was my first. I had a L58 Bard. I think I can still manage the song-twister's waltz. My Guild was Healers United on Quellious. I really miss them.
Be Well!
Fireheart
https://www.nerdmuch.com/games/5184/new-upcoming-mmos-2018-mmorpgs/
Number 19, not bad. CoT is obviously the most popular of the three.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
I wouldn't be using this list as an example of popularity. Most importantly, the other titles aren't listed because none of them have release dates on them. or even suspected beta dates.
It's nice that CoT is on a list like this regardless. The other successor projects might also technically be on the "list" but they might have just been farther down than the first 24 entries. Or it's just that CoT's been around the longest in the public view so maybe they just think it's the "most likely" to launch first.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
CoT is probably the oldest one mentioned, and the only one properly crowdfunded. (though Valiance is now self-crowdfunding and has been doing pretty well, though it has less than 1/10th the funding that CoT received on their kickstarter currently)
Valiance hasn't been really pushing any advertising lately though, they haven't been present at any game shows that I'm aware of, but I guess I'll see if they show for PAX West this year.
Ship of Heroes (I still hate the name) if you ask around would probably be on the radar more, they have very active PR focused staff, and my personal opinion on it, is because they didn't originally fund their kickstarter and are hoping they will be able to crowdfund after more exposure.
It's always good to see CoT on a list, but in terms of exposure or popularity, I'd be hard pressed today to say which one is at the forefront, though it's unlikely that Valiance would take anything more than the third spot in 2018.
I just look at those and think "god there are some lame MMOs that are way too popular" :p
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
I try not to judge. I just remind myself of the game shop discussions, "I mean... I liked the Warcraft series, but that world's a contrived mess made solely to advance the stages of the RTS game. Who in their right mind would want to play a RPG set there?"
I'd just been so spoiled by CoH, no other game has come close to the level of customization :(
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
I was spoiled on this and the CoHs community. I have been in countless multiplayer communities surrounding games like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Team Fortess 2, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, Battlerite, and the list goes on and on.
I have not seen any community that has come even close to City of Heroes community wise. The closest I have seen in recent years was a battle royale game I picked up very recently called Darwin Project and another game that is MMOish called Warframe. Some of the enemy players in Darwin Project have actually given me tips or respect for providing a good fight before dying but I still see bad eggs. Warframe from my experiences was a pretty friendly community as well but it has its issues. I know City of Heroes had bad eggs but they were so small that I rarely ever saw them as they generally ended up blacklisted.
I honestly kinda worry that fan rivalries between City of Titans, Ship of Heroes, and Valiance Online might cause toxicity that'll ruin our little communities. I remember how Champions Online's community was when I played it near launch. Absolutely dreadful of a community. DCUO wasn't much better and Wildstar despite not being a bad game had a lot of trolls calling for its head and spreading bad hearsay near constantly.
What about Champions Online? That game has much more customization.
I only played CO for about the first 6 months after its launch so my direct knowledge of it is out of date. I can only assume that by now (in 2018) that game almost certainly has "more customization" options than CoH did if only for the fact that it's now been operating about as long as CoH was alive.
But here's an important point you must take into account: like I said I played CO for about 6 months before I finally gave up on it. In contrast I played CoH for 8.5 years. Why you ask? Well CoH was in my opinion simply a much better game in ALL areas, including character customization options. Basically I could never get past the "silly cartoony" look and feel of CO.
So sure CO might now have "more customization" than CoH ever did. But CoH will always be the "better" game as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping that CoT will look and feel more like a "CoH 2.0" than a "CO 2.0".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
In my experience CO has better costume customization but even though it has freeform builds (almost no restrictions on what powers you can have simultaneously, only when you can take them) it feels more limited in powers than CoH.
The reason for better costume customization is more "slots" for costume pieces and being able to separate left and right choices where appropriate, add in up to 4 color choices per piece and the customization is better. Where it falls down a bit imo is that most new "costume sets" are released in lockboxes.
As for powers freeform doesn't count for much if the choices are limited, hardly any set is represented as both a melee and ranged "version" (like most were in CoH). Add in the stats-based nature of the game and the dependencies on buffs/debuffs and it in a way penalizes you for actually going fully "freeform" in form of lowered efficiency. And don't get me started on just the token nod to CC and pet's, that was actually the most fun part of CoH imo.
CO had more options than CoH at the start. Body sliders galore. Even more now.
CO was always the "newer" game compared to CoH and even from the beginning it clearly had more "structural options" (like the 4 colors selection, more sliders, and more "body areas" for costume choices and so on).
Sadly even with all that going for it I [b]still[/b] thought it was ultimately inferior to CoH overall and that's essentially why I gave up on it. I still think the "overtly cartoony" look and feel killed it for me. Even after the CoH shutdown I could never bring myself to give CO another try and that's with a lifetime subscription for it that I never really quite got my money's worth out of. *shrugs*
I get that you guys like CO for all the various reasons you're mentioning. I simply didn't get "hooked" enough by it to care - no real point in trying to "convince" me otherwise at this point.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Warframe was one of the many games we tried shortly after the shutdown, and it was entertaining but limited. That was a number of years ago and I am currently between games again. I had considered looking into Warframe again and I heard good things with the amount of content they've released.
Yeah - it's ironic in that even though you had free choice as to which powers to pick virtually everyone ended up with the same build.
Odd. I never saw people going around with the exact same build unless they were strict Duelers/PvPers, so they would pick certain skills. Even then, I saw plenty of variety.
COs freeform is quite awesome, the problem I saw with it, was the animations. Just so many of them were so bad :/ Or the nice looking skills just sucked.
CO did great with Dual Pistols, but to make the most out of that, you only really needed 2-3 skills to make it work.
As for the aesthetics of the game. Depends on if people knew they could take off the comic outline in the options. Then how much they were willing to mess with the sliders.
In my experience, people call for lots of sliders, but most of them really don't like messing with them enough and then complain about the looks. However, the game outside of that, did have a more superhero cartoon look, rather than a superhero comic book look.
CO freeform was alright, if you paid for the game. The second your sub lasped, bam, had to respec if you wanted to play. I jetted over to CO in the first place because I expected a mor freeform system off the bat, much more closer to the PnP game it was based on. It did not deliver in that aspect, sadly. I pushed on, played for about a year. Never felt like the PvE story as connected or really..went anywhere. As for CO's Dual Pistols, I preferred CoH's take. I loved the action, and movement, while CO's felt bland, in disjointed. I haven 't touched it in a few years, to be sure, but when I stopped playing all together, Regen was godmode and they stated they had no intention of looking at it.
Onto the costume creator bit, CO did have more sections you could smack soem stuff on, but when it first came out, those sections were kinda threadbare from what I recall. Now, I know they have gotten better, but from what I hear from sem of my friends who play CO is, it might as well be in maintenance mode. Now, this could be a perception thing, I';m well aware. I hope it isn 't because I think CO had some good ideas and would like for it to stick around for a few more years.
I prefered CoH's take as well, as you got more animations and used more attacks. CO you really only needed Two-Gun Mojo and Bullet Ballet (or whatever CO calls it) for the AOE.
I wasn't a fan of COs combat or abilities at all. The animations were lackluster, the PvP was way off balance, but they did have some good travel powers and customization.
DCUOs dual pistols... waaay way more fun to play. My dual pistols nature character... so much fun.
I feel like DCU has too much focus on the weapons and not enough on the powers.
Agreed. I couldn't find a good secondary power set to go with dual pistols though in DCUO :(
Yeah the weapon sets used to take precedence and now you can go full on powers or weapon sets or whatever, they've really ..well.. messed up the game in my opinion, but they made it more accessible. They added a full on ballistics set, and a tech set, and you could cherry pick powers in the iconic sets too. Just depends on what you're looking for.
But that being said, the look and feel of dual pistols was way fun. Great animations, great combos and skills, it wouldn't work for CoT but I'll always remember it fondly.
My issue with Champions was mostly with it's community. It's community back at launch atleast was absolutely god awful. That was the very first multiplayer game that I played after City of Heroes and World of Warcraft that I experienced just how bad in general most gamer communities are.
City of Heroes for the most part was the exception from that as the game actively encouraged people to cooperate well with each other. I did know of small amount of bad apples but they usually ended up blacklisted heavily on all fronts. Mostly PvP players if I recall correctly.
Since this has become the go-to thread to talk about "other Superhero MMORPGs" I'm gonna toss this here:
https://www.shipofheroes.com/schedule-to-release/
Milestone update for Ship of Heroes
[Img]https://www.shipofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DevelopmentMilestonesThreeearly2018V1040618.jpg[/img]
While I'm not particularly excited for this game, at all, I [I]am[/I] a big fan of their method of communication. They try to be very vocal about devo, their visible timeline is nice, and they always have a lot of visuals with each post.
Charts like this might be nice to look at but I'd be more interested to learn if they are actually meeting all of those fairly specific milestones. In the long run visual aids like this don't [b][i]produce[/i][/b] results and more importantly they could negatively highlight setbacks/delays.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
We’ll see if SoH can keep the schedule. Nothing against the developers, it’s just that release delays for games are common and MMOs are the worst of all because they also have server issues to deal with on top of making sure the game itself is ready.
But although like you I have very little interest in their game I wish them well and hope they succeed. The superhero MMO market is terribly lean, in fact I think that CO and DCUO are pretty much it. CO seems to be phoning it in these days and with Daybreak Games reportedly in big trouble, I don’t know how long DCUO will be around. So the more the merrier.
If SoH comes out before VO and CoT, I’ll check it out, to get some kind of superhero fix if nothing else. I hope all three games can make it and super MMO fans can have some real choices.
I like it as well. If we had a full time, paid staff as they had, we could make such charts as well. But we are a work-as-available group of unpaid volunteers, so such a chart is counterproductive.
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
Oh, yeah I'm fully aware. This wasn't a knock against you, it was a compliment for them.
This is so unbelievably true. My many years in management went out the window with how this team needs to functionally operate.
If you were placed on a projectt and were told most of your workers would be part time, with no set schedule, would work remotely in different time zones, with multiple people wearing multiple hats, and the budget is absolutley fixed with no way to compensate for production changes (much less salary), well I’d say in my professional opinion - “not ever going to work”.
Yet, we make it work. It is more nebuouls in shape than what is typical for large projects. We have rougher timelines on when X should be compelted - which always shifts.
We have to avoid the inevitable “crunch time” practically all game companies go through to get things done.because no one is full time, no one is paid, and no one would get paid for their overtime.
Which means a lot more leniency must be applied with expectations. This also means that any timeline we could post would be one that is regularly shifting, which would result in more questions demanding understanding. This would then require responses which largely deal with personal lives of volunteers who are not enforced by the paid-for-work schedule that would result in more strict adherence to working and producting work.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Whether the people who make it are volunteers or not has nothing to do with whether or not such charts are counterproductive. Productive or counterproductive is more about the value that the organization place in it. Obviously the folks at Heroic Games seems to find it of value or they would not have paid their full time staff to perform the work and publish it.
One organization has determined that there is value in producing and publishing charts like that. One has not. In fact, I could make a very good argument that for a work-as-available group of unpaid volunteers, a well communicated plan of actions and milestones (POA&M in business parlance) is more valuable than for a group with full time paid staff.
Personally, I think Heroic Games is not trying to build a lasting game, but are trying to cash in on maximizing the MMO-skipping crowd who pay a lot of money for perks and glitter, race to max level, get bored and move along to the next offering. To maximize income from those folks, you need to maximize flashy marketing and spend as little as possible on engineering effort. Those are two things we do see from Heroic Games on the Ship of Heroes project.
[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.
Indeed. They've done a great job, and I tip my hat to them.
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
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