Have the developers held their efforts so close to their vests that the public has given up on the game?
Has the public stopped caring, or have they just forgotten about it?
Has Discord replaced the forums as the discussion medium of choice?
[indent]How have the Discord population trends been?[/indent]
Have the latest developer announcements been too little too late, or will they regenerate public interest?
Will there be a dedicated costly Marketing Campaign to bring [i]City of Titans[/i] into the prime gamer news spotlight before its ultimate release? Or will it wallow in obscurity?
I don't know, but I think it's worth discussing.
[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.
My issue with favouring the great WWW multimedia sites and apps is that I stay as faaaaaaar away from them as I can. FB will never see me again (how many times have they been hijacked?), Twitter is not far behind, etc. I prefer the forums where moderation is ongoing and relatively quick.
I'm not into online chatting and what not so this site, The ORIGINAL COT News site is my preferred place to visit.
i can't speak for others but for me i was never that much participating in forum discussions in the first place but interest wise i am still very interested in the game and i check the forums here almost every day.
i think most people are just waiting for the next things to be released.
i'm sure the long pauses sometimes between releases doe's not help and latest releases, while by no means are not important had less tangible things, also i think a lot of people are waiting for something other than the character builder only.
just to be clear, i have no issue with the current pace or with any of the things released and the posts from MWM so far.
i truly believe they do the best they can with what they have right now and that they are fully committed to this game and i will gladly wait as much as needed to get a great game from them.
i am still as eager for this game as i was at the start, if i didn't have faith in them i wouldn't still be here.
also i want to take this opportunity to again thank MWM and everyone involved with this for all their hard work so far and onward, it is very much appreciated.
as a programmer myself i know what an herculean task they took on, so keep doing what you do and know that i am rooting for you all.
and hopefully we will see each other in paragon city :)
It's so hard to say; MWM isn't a typical gaming company. There are not really any other examples to look to. To some their KS amount was a lot...to others it wasn't even a drop in the bucket. Dr Tyche likes to share that video about why video games cost so much to make, but it just feels like a cop-out. So if that's the case there is 0 hope for this game...but at the same time they say there is hope for this game. So that video must not apply to MWM or they'd stop wasting their time on it. They are all working unpaid, which is incredible in and of itself, you can't really argue that this isn't a labor of love, or that the team isn't dedicated to seeing it through. But labor isn't the only cost. How far can they get on the KS and 2nd Chance donations? Who knows? Not us. It's also difficult because we can't compare, or at least shouldn't compare, this game to AAA games, nor should we expect this to be AAA game quality.
I think participation on these forums isn't a completely accurate picture of general public excitement for this game; Discord has become far more active.
As for the question if there will be a marketing campaign...that's kind of a double-edged question. They didn't raise enough money to pay anyone to work which begs questioning whether they would have the funds to market at all. If they had the funds to market and didn't use those funds to make the game better, if its not obviously AAA quality I think that's gonna have some bad backlash. Perhaps they have plans of taking out a business loan when they get to the point where they can start thinking about marketing, or they might seek investors, etc. We don't know. If they don't market...who knows how long this game will last once released.
Overall...for me its mere curiosity that brings me back here now. I haven't donated because I haven't really seen anything yet that gives me confidence that this will be a fun game to play...but that's the nature of any game at this point in development. They've released the alpha version of a character creator, which is impressive given their circumstance, but not AAA quality and I've never spent more than 10 minutes in CoH's chargen so this isn't a selling point for me. I make simple characters. I do think the map, from the pictures they've shown recently, has potential...but the main factor is the gameplay. Is combat fun? smooth? what about animations? do I feel like i'm playing an early 2000's game? or a 2020+ game? Is the world fun to be in? is it intuitive? questing, crafting, leveling, etc etc etc. Aesthetic decoupling is probably their biggest selling point...how will they do on it? visual effects are enormously important. if it feels cheap and not up to par with other games coming out today...some may be able to look past that but it will be harder feeling like you are going back in time to play a new game that feels 20 years old. But that's just my take. If they ever get to the point where they can show those things I might consider donating. but for me to become a monthly subscriber...that's gonna take a lot of convincing.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
There have been some good responses to this thread so far so I don't have much to add.
It's probably obvious to say that if MWM can finally release something that could be considered a "playable game" then the amount of traffic we'll see here, on discord or any other website set up for this game will increase. For what it's worth this forum had a fairly decent number of regulars up to as recently as maybe 18-24 months ago which is probably a pretty long time for a "game in development" all things considered. As long as there's no game to play I'm not really sure how MWM would keep any but the most die-hards (like anyone reading this I suppose) hanging around.
The biggest difference between a potential player like Dark Cleric and myself is that I did "donate" a significant amount to the initial Kickstarter of this game. I will not make any judgements about that one way or the other - I respect the decisions of those that need "a lot of convincing" to be willing to donate hard-earned money to a cause like this. I was fortunate enough at the time to be able to afford giving MWM what I did without need/concern that I needed that money for other things. From my point of view it was essentially a "lottery ticket" that theoretically still has a chance to be worth something. Sure I'll be upset if CoT never happens, but at this point there's not much I can do about it either way so I choose to remain generically optimistic just for optimism's sake if nothing else.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I try to keep tabs on what's going on here, but there hasn't been a lot to comment on recently. Like Dark Cleric, while I like to have costume options, I don't spend hours in the AB -- actual gameplay being more important to me. And in its current state I find the AB rather overwhelming. I still think we're gonna need a lot more presets for the less fashion-designer-plastic-surgeon-inclined of us to make it a practical experience.
I think the fact that the old game is once again playable is a significant factor in the change of mood here. Not only does it mean that folks (if they choose to play it) have somewhere else to go to satisfy that longing instead of hanging on every update here as we used to do, but I think it raises the bar for CoT by quite a lot. Now everything in this game has to be equal to or better than an accessible reality rather than just a fond memory. A couple years ago, if CoT didn't quite measure up, it was sort of a 'Yeah but where else are you gonna go?' situation (other CoX-alikes nothwithstanding), but now there's an option to go back to the well-loved original if CoT doesn't satisfy that itch.
For my own part, I have several outstanding concerns about CoT that I hope will disappear as the game gets closer to completion. Some are design issues and some are operational questions, but I figure I can wait till MWM has more time to polish the game and their plans. I do hope there's a lot more polishing in the works, though I do note Dark Cleric's comments re AAA expectations.
I do often wonder whether the relative quiet from MWM means that not as much work is being done or if they are just happily developing away without being required to take time away to assemble a flashy update every 2 weeks. I am still interested, but there's still a way to go before I'll know whether it can really supplant the original for me.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Agreed and well said. I think that 1.) had I known about the KS and 2.) had I been in a more better financial place (was a poor college student at the time of the KS), I probably would have donated since that is the time I was missing CoH the most. The reason I haven't donated yet is just because I don't have, or haven't seen, what I need to justify spending money...yet. I hope that CoT gets to the point where I do feel like donating.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
There's no denying that traffic on this website died down roughly the same time everyone learned The Old Game (TOG) had been pirated from NCsoft and made easily accessible to everyone. We have to assume that some relatively large percentage of people who were hanging out here were only hanging out here because there was no obvious hope TOG was ever going to be playable again.
My personal reaction to learning that TOG was accessible again was of amused indifference. Frankly I thought it was amusing that someone out there had given the "big middle finger" to NCsoft by pirating the game and keeping it alive all these years. But my indifference was rooted in the fact that even though I absolutely loved TOG (I easily played it 10,000+ hours over 8.5 years) it was personally hard for me to want to go back and start playing it again. I had spent so much time playing effectively every mission, task force, archetype, powerset, etc. that there was really nothing new for me to do with it. TBH, the only thing that really kept me active in the game for its last few years was badge hunting - by the end I had TWO characters who both had 1390+ badges each.
So even though TOG exists I really have no strong desire to play it again. As groundbreaking and fun as it was from 2004-2012 it really has become dated both graphically and stale in terms of features/gameplay. Again I'm happy somebody managed to keep the game alive (even if the legality involved is questionable) but just knowing that it is alive is enough for me.
I'm willing to wait to see if CoT ever actually happens - like I said before there's not much else I can do regardless.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
For me:
- Lack of meaningful updates(new costume part(maybe), rearrange UI, tweaks to performance, here is a new material, behind-the-scenes change No. 4523, etc VS check out these new combat animations/particle effects, here is a new powerset, check out this new mission with destructible walls, check out this new version of flight, etc)
- timeline, despite knowing they are a volunteer group, is MUCH longer than anticipated. Definitely losing interest
- Return of City of Heroes
- even AAA titles are failing to live up to expectations, both single player and MMOs, so overall gaming landscape appears bleak and what chance does a volunteer studio have in changing that
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
I've read the comments so far and I also have to concur that the drought of these forums was coincident with the (illegal) release of CoX again.
But I don't think that was a silver bullet. The release of the Avatar Builder also happened at about the same time (relatively), as was the second chance fundraiser. These were expected to result in an up-tick of interest in the game. Surprisingly, if forum activity is an indicator, they did not, not in any meaningful measure, at least. In fact, since all three events, forum activity dropped. Why?
One of the reasons I think has to do with the shift of focus from people entertaining each other in "concept-space" to people waiting for "the next reveal." This mental shift results in short spurts of activity followed by long stretches of silence while waiting for the next reveal. And that's what we've seen, and even then, those short spurts are diminishing.
In Concept-space, people ruminate among themselves about what could be, what they would like to see, etc., and it feeds on itself as people get carried away by their imaginations or with watching the train wrecks of misunderstandings and disagreements. But interest in concept-space kind of starts dwindling once [i]red names[/i] begin telling us about what is and will be.
I suggest that the devs begin interacting more with the people in a way that promotes feedback. Taking polls and looking for input on issues or creative ideas would be a great way to re-engage the public and drive interest. (one need only to look at Ship of Heroes' and its very successful marketing campaign's use of daily polls) This is an MMO, after all, and people play MMOs instead of standalone games because they want to participate in or bask in the glow of interactions with other people. I think it is reasonable to extrapolate that the potential player base would also respond favorably with topics of conversation that promote discussion and player interaction. And even those loners who play MMOs solo would be happy to lurk on the forums if they were more active with interesting stuff.
But back to the original question from the OP: Does Forum Activity correlate to game success? I suppose this entire discussion depends upon how you personally answer that question.
Those are my 2 cents.
[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.
"But back to the original question from the OP: Does Forum Activity correlate to game success? I suppose this entire discussion depends upon how you personally answer that question."
From a developer point of view, there is a great deal of organizing and work that happens constantly behind the scenes, whether there is discussion happening on the threads or not. We have moments where there is more discussion, like after our last update which shared film footage of the project, because updates like that give the community something tangible to discuss. But after the conversations quiet down, we are still working very intently behind the scenes on our next progress goals.
When the game expands its playable features, there will certainly be more discussion happening on our platforms...
[color=#ff0000]Environmental Artist, PR Editor[/color]
You addressed the question of whether forum activity is an indicator of development progress, but you completely missed whether it is an indicator of success.
Repeating the thoughts we made back to us is good for establishing a connection, but without advancing the thought to a conclusion, I have to wonder what point you are trying to make. Or are you just saying "buck up camper, forum activity will surely have a resurgence when we show you more!" To which I say, unless you do something to bring people back, they won't even notice the new developments because they've already stopped paying attention.
For example... is there a push method of contacting potential audience? Is there a newsletter? How are the announcements actually announced to the public? Are there streamers or fake games journalists we have in our back pocket we can "incentivize" to spread the word?
Or are we going to continue to rely on pull methods where the audience is only informed if they ask about or seek info?
Check out your site analytics. I'm sure they can make a better case than my anecdotal evidence does.
[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.
I'm just saying that lots of work is happening right now even when it's quiet on the threads... Our work behind the scenes is something you can't know about, and so I think it's important to reaffirm that it's happening, because it's part of what can make the game successful.
[color=#ff0000]Environmental Artist, PR Editor[/color]
"Does Forum Activity correlate to game success?" I feel this is sort of a loaded question since forum activity is more reflective that the game in particular still has an active community. Lets be fair here, most of the time a lot of the traffic and threads that a video game forum sees, especially for an MMO, is usually something in relation to gameplay, builds, player-to-player advice and so on. Given that we only have a character creator to go off of, there's not much for out little-but-sizeable community can express much involvement in. Yeah, it was fun to see people sharing pictures of the characters they made in the Chargen when it first released (which might I say, was the most active I think the forums had been), but that soon trickled down and away entirely when the Official CoT Discord finally went public.
Another thing thats worth noting is that outside of the two or so people that frequently post in the 'Forum Games' section, there's not much to really speak on or about here. Everything, or at the very least, most things are speculative until officially revealed or confirmed by the devs outright. The most you could probably do is share your main character's backstory on here? Probably share some artwork you've had drawn up for your character(s)? The point that I'm driving at here is that, conversation-wise there's not a lot to really say here. At this point, the website has become a bit of a news site (at least thats what I use it for at this point). I'll constantly come back to see if there are any new updates and take a peek at the forums to see if there's a recent thread that catches my attention, but if not then I tend to go about my day.
I'm sure its been said before here, but communication amongst Discord is rather instantaneous as opposed to the constant checking over here on the forums to see if someone replied to your forum thread or not. And its likely quicker to reach out to a dev or someone there then it is to do here. Discord can be very daunting due to how its easy to get drowned in in a server of 30+ people. I don't sign into the application as much as I used to anymore just due to how I've been invited to so many servers that I've had to go ahead and mute that I literally miss every message and conversation thats had, unless its a direct message.
Anyway, I guess the "TL;DR" of my 2 cents is that, there's not really a correlation between the game's success via how many people are actively taking part in the forums. At least, this isn't the case for CoT since NDAs and so on prevent too much from being said or even shown. Arguably, most of the conversations and "forum participation" is being had over on another platform and this can be both good and bad since to someone who's on the outside looking in might see this community as a bit of ghost town. Not everyone is
"If I am to die in battle, Remember me for who I was and not what I've become..."
I'm still very much interested in this game. Can't speak for everyone, but a lot of the information and conversation topics that I personally wanted to learn/talk about have been learnt/talked about. So there isn't much to add to the forums.
I still very much check up on the forums. Hell, I even have the forums favorited to make it easier.
Honestly. I could do a SERIES of forum posts around what ifs. But ever sense No Man's Sky, I don't like talking about what ifs. I keep that to myself.
[center] [i] [color=blue] Unarmed combat best combat. Every media [/color] [/i] [/center]
I can only add my own experience as a player (before I became a dev last year) — my attention to the game shifted from intermittent dropping in on the forums here, to being a much more frequent presence on the CoT Discord. It’s hard for me to say why this happened, I’ve been a regular on a few forum or forum-like sites since the early 90s, and I’m not generally a fan of chat-like services. But I found it much easier to interact on the various CoT Discord channels.
I do think there will be more activity here when there’s some major new information about the game to talk about. I do think the forums are a better place than Discord for longer discussions, or informative pieces like the FAQ post collection, which, as a potential player, I frequently referred to as I was trying to understand the pieces of the game.
There’s a lot of stuff beginning to mature behind the scenes. I expect some of the stuff in progress will become evident sooner, rather than later, and activity here will pick up, because there will be a lot of new info to discuss.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Well, My excuse is that I'm focused on work and don't have a lot of time to argue arcane bits on the forum. It's been long enough that I've SAID practically everything. Six times.
I still visit this forum nearly daily.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Even before the rogue servers made the news and the Discord became available, the forums had quieted down a lot. There were smaller or larger bursts of activity around updates, but that was about it. As Fireheart has pointed out, everything that's available for us to debate and argue has been gone over at least two or three times. I don't see it as being indicative of anything except that it's not possible for people to maintain a high level of interest and excitement indefinitely.
- - - - -
[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 don't think that there have been many developments that would warrant a great discussion. Some things that might warrant some more discussion: Allowing players on to the game map. Island is great, show us the game world please. Combat would give us a LOAD to talk about it.
I realize that all these things are not going to happen soon and that even when they do we may not see an uptick on discussion here. It might be focused on discord. Aaaand there are reasons that those things aren't out to the player base. And because of the huge amount of work that releasing those components would result in.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
Log in successful for Phararri.
Your last login was Sat, 07/04/2020 - 22:43.
Your last page access (site activity) was Sat, 07/04/2020 - 22:59.
These successor projects were too ambitious. However, the interest from the community is not there. When I say community, I mean gaming, superhero, mmo, etc community.
These devs are in a tight spot. SoH, CoT, VO are all in a sticky situation imo. They already used funds to build the project, but may know, deep down, it was ambitious. So you are kind of
[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iTgDBZAYjYE/maxresdefault.jpg[/img]
Youtube, Twitch, Social media, CURRENT donations, etc are all a good gauge for interest. Active participation forums as-well. MOST of all, activate players on servers. The latter is difficult to know at this stage, but maybe the amount of people donating to play with the char gen is a gauge.
Here is my heart of hearts opinion. The first successful game out of the three, will be the group who comes forth and shuts it down. "WTF are you talking about?" I am talking cut your losses now, instead of stringing this along another 7 or so years.
Lets say the game is created...The interest is just not there from any of these titles.So, how long before it is shutdown anyway? You need funds to run servers; not only that, funds to keep the game undated.
If SoH failed to get support to fund it, how will they get enough support to keep it up, while providing meaningful updates?
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
Sorry Lothic, just a quick quibble here, and yes I understand why you may not have had access to this info. The game wasn't "pirated", it was "leaked" by a dev that had access to the code. (No one who knows is saying who in appreciation presumably.) And it was leaked to someone in a country where NCSoft couldn't go after them for possessing it because of lack of a treaty allowing that. What happened after, ok that WAS piracy. Yes all of the current servers, including the one that claims to be "in talks" with NCSoft to be totes legit (insert derisive laughter here) are in fact pirate servers.
That's exactly why a volunteer based game is so long to develop :)
I joined the team 2 months ago and... i didn't help a lot due to my job (at least, for a big part) :s
So, like Fireheart, i'm less focused on the forum (and the discord, and the internal team discord) than before. I don't know why but, in France, working at home allows me less time than before :s weird.
[hr]
Suivez l'avancement du jeu City of Titans en Français sur https://titanscity.com
http://forum.titanscity.com | www.facebook.com/titanscity | http://twitter.com/TitansCity
[color=red]PR - Europe[/color]
I basically just summarized the multi-year epic journey of TOG from official CoH shutdown to the current situation with the phrase "pirated from NCSoft" without bothering to mention all the various pseudo-clandestine steps along the way. The net effect is that most people only heard that TOG was playable again once the existing pirate servers were "outed" and became common public knowledge.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Sorry if any of this has been said, but I only skimmed the first few responses.
Having no new information or an existing game to discuss doesn't create any incentive to come to the forums regularly, aside from hypothetical discussions (which I enjoy). Active forum population doesn't directly represent game population or its success.
For nearly 7 years I was a very active member on the Warframe forums (as a design council member - so hypothetical game improvements was regular discussion), until I quit playing during the pandemic. The game wasn't highly popular initially, but now has 50 million+ players. The forums still only have a few thousand users, with only maybe a hundred or two regular participants, and only maybe a few dozen that I saw on a daily basis. The number of active, regular forum users didn't drastically change over those 7 year despite the player population drastically climbing on over those years.
Once this game is up and running I'm sure there will be plenty of activity on the forums, but right now many people are burned out on anxiety from waiting for this game to come out. Or waiting for meaningful progress updates (which is not a complaint). I used to check in every other day for the first year or two, but 6 years in I just check in every few weeks or whenever a see an update on Instagram. lol
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
I don’t have any donation title or word in game industry discussions except games I’m into since long time. But I want to promote and help build the game as much as other veteran/new future players. Indeed I entered CoX illegal servers only to taste a little bit more or superheroes mmo while waiting this come out, although time will say how this develops and hope my efforts help when something playable comes available.
As a Hero: Fhantom Raven, the Ghost from Heaven (League of Lights)
As a Villain: Greem Reaper, Toxic Wanderer (Empire of Thorns)
...............................................................
Im still excited --- I just dont have much to talk about. Once powers and power details start to be put out in the open again, Ill have more to theorize.
Speaking of ... It really seems like its about time to get a new look into more power specifics; I definitely think it would drum up more interest even in a "this might ALL change soon" sort of way.
If you have access to the Avatar Builder, you can see all the archetypes, specifications (archetype sub-types), primary and secondary launch power sets, and individual primary/secondary powers now, in the archetype and power selection screens. I don't think this level of detail has made it onto the website or other places yet, though.
There are other powers yet to be detailed, notably masteries (archetype-specific powers), travel powers, and tertiary power sets, though most of the latter are cut-down versions of primary/secondary power sets, as I understand it.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Thanks, its been a bit since Ive been in the creator.
Ive definitely devoured everyone on the forums so far about the powers and breakdown. It looks like I have a LONG update, but Ill check the creator. =)
Yeah, before I became a dev, I spent a lot of time looking at what was on the webpages, the forums, and even the Kickstarter updates. So I empathize....
I suggested to the PR folks that we might want to do some of the progress updates digging into what we’ve released on powers so far, and it seems that this is something that might happen, so thanks for bringing it up.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
BTW thanks Iathor for telling me about those power explanations in the generator. I have been able to poke at a lot of general information I haven't seen fully on the forums, so that was great.
Now I need to figure out which melee I want for a speedster themed character (there are too many good options) ; and WHICH of the many directions it looks like I'll have on how to go about making a 'Lantern' analog ....=)
Thanks for the info!!!