Fixed a link:
19. [url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/631801]Gabby Cabbie (Cabbie Tour 1)[/url]

I've been doing something similar on the Watchfire forums. Didn't think to do it here too... :P Nicely done.

Is there a "sticky" function? And, if so, why isn't this thread a sticky?!?!?

Winter wrote:

Empyrean wrote:
Is there a "sticky" function? And, if so, why isn't this thread a sticky?!?!?

Because I don't have mod options ;).
If the powers-that-be deem this relevant/important enough to be pinned, wonderful! If not, I'll just try to keep it toward the top of the page by posting when a new update is added.

*grabs the duct tape*

This is a great resource. Thanks for putting all the updates together like this.

So, i'd taken a project of the last few days of going over all the KS updates and summarizing them in a Google Doc. Maybe that could be merged with this thread, or made into it's own. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PdfLX58KSW0RzwqYDf9THYSCa3tyti3qhnApTK9h3yI/edit?usp=sharing

Warning: it has stronger focus on mechanics than it does on Lore. It also glosses over KS-related updates, since i missed the boat on that and couldn't access them.

I'm a kickstarter supporter, not sure how I get my 'K' on my account.

message me or with the email associated with your KS pledge and I can look it up.

This is an absolutely GREAT idea! Thanks, Winter!

Hi Winter,

Just wanted to say thanks for compiling this list. It is a big help when I am trying to reference previous kickstarter communications.

<<< Applauds Winter's efforts to keep up-to-date in the face of a veritable storm of updates this Devmas season. ^_^

Is there a beta or any way to play the game? Has it come out yet? I have been searching for a couple of hours to see what happened to COV and COH because I stopped playing in 2007 because of my age at the time and I just found out that it has been shut down :( is this game close to completion? I have so many questions lol

Thank you! I am defiantly going to check it out!

[url=http://cityoftitans.com/content/april-1st-technical-update]Update # 75[/url] still seems to be missing.

Not sure why I was thinking of it today... ^_^

Thanky you very much for the reference list, it is really nice

What update had the guy run an just flip off the top of the building?

They could keep the name Rottweiler, I believe the problem was, the characters actually look pretty close to each other as well.

And, as I recall, the creator of the existing superheroic character was/is a friend, so they didn't want to commit an infringement on a friend.

Better to find a different name.

Be Well!
Fireheart

ivanhedgehog wrote:

Atama wrote:

Grumble wrote:

The character is tentatively named "Rottweiler" but needs to be changed due to copyright. (How can a dog species name be copyrighted for a comic book character?)

https://cityoftitans.com/forum/special-release-vigilante-night

“Dog” is a species. A Rottweiler is a breed.

It’s not just the name that’s subject to copyright, it’s the entire character. I’m sure if MWM made little girl with a laser gun dressed up like a circus clown and named her Rottweiler they’d be okay, but this character and the other character are just similar enough that a copyright lawsuit might be plausible.

If you think you can’t copyright a character just because the name Rottweiler is too generic... What about an actual species, like a Wolverine? Do you think you could create a comic book superhero who fights with claws under that name and Marvel/Disney won’t sue you once you start being successful? A species name is more generic than a dog name...

Thor is uncopywritable. but a character named thor with these certain appearances is copywritable. its complicated.

Exactly. Thor is not an original character. Marvel derived the character from Norse mythology. Being a god wielding lightning from Asgard and a magic hammer named Mjolnir is all copied from legend. They can’t copyright any of that.

A blonde guy in a winged helmet, with a red cape, who is on a team called The Avengers... Those are all aspects of Marvel’s intellectual property that they developed and they can copyright it.

Just like the name “Rottweiler” is the name of a dog breed. You can’t copyright that name and its association with dogs because you didn’t make it up. But if you come up with an original character inspired by the dog breed, you can copyright your original ideas regardless of what the inspiration was. And if MWM comes too close to your creation, you might have a case for copyright infringement.

It is indeed complicated.

I just want to pass on my thanks to the OP for keeping up this thread for the last few years, It's been super helpful and I'm sure many of us appreciate your efforts!

I can say that on the official Discord server (yes, I went to Discord, I try not to) and they have lots of streaming content posted there. No formal “updates” but they haven’t been quiet.

Dark Cleric wrote:

All of the streaming is either music or Artstrong making an outfit, just fyi.

True, but it’s [i]something[/i].

It’s the equivalent of a music- or art-based update.

I agree with Dark Cleric that a game declaring itself worthy of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment capital should be capable of a modicum of program management. It should be able to establish milestones and a plan of action, and be able to update the investors with progress along that POA&M.

Having said that, however, the developers are still mostly volunteers; and more importantly, so are the managers. There is a limit to how much leverage a manager has over an enterprise's human resources to motivate them to meet deadlines when they are volunteering their time and effort and can leave at any time when their priorities change (e.g. Charles Logan) or they no longer feel like it's a labor of love (e.g. how many others?).

Without the ability to reliably stick to any plan the management tries to establish, I imagine they are not sharing anything until they have it in their hands to show. This way they avoid giving ammunition to naysayers who could poison the pool of potential investors. I suppose in their minds, no update is better than a poor update. I can understand that. It's not how I would do it, but I can certainly understand it.

So, in lieu of a program update, we get these Armstrong updates that serve a very important purpose: They prove to us that every day progress is made, however little, and that the team still intends to reach the end goal. That is a very important message, especially to people whom have already invested.

Huckleberry wrote:

So, in lieu of a program update, we get these Armstrong updates that serve a very important purpose: They prove to us that every day progress is made, however little, and that the team still intends to reach the end goal. That is a very important message, especially to people whom have already invested.

It also gives Artstrong a chance to show his work!

Be Well!
Fireheart

Superpersonage wrote:

The list itself is a very useful reference, thank you. But if you wander to the Kickstarter page, you will see many, many, many negative comments from backers (non-backers cannot post) about their loss of confidence in the project, their unresolved requests for refunds for what they now consider vaporware, and the very negative experiences they have had with MWM employees who actually responded.

Yes, every day minute progress is made. Yes, these devs are volunteer amateurs. Yes, professionally developed games take a long time. Yes, games rushed to release are invariably horrible failures. But it's been EIGHT YEARS since CoX folded. In the meantime, the leading pirate servers have gone public and there has been NO backlash from NCSoft. Other superhero MMOs have come and gone. You cannot expect people not to think that TOO MUCH TIME has passed to seriously consider that this game will ever release when the majority of your updates are only about graphics.

As I've said many times to many people, it doesn't matter how pretty a game is if the mechanics are not satisfying. The bulk of MWM updates are all about graphics. Most info we're getting about mechanics has been coming from random and extremely vague forum posts from Tannim, and the implication is that they are dropping what they've developed and starting over again whenever a cool new idea comes along. This is not how to develop a game that began development eight years ago.

At this point, I don't care if it looks like a crude version of CoX -- Hells, I don't even care if it's black and white stick figures. We need CONCRETE progress updates on mechanical development. Frankly, there is nothing here to instill confidence on that front.

About three years ago, I posted on the forums that I couldn't see an ALPHA before 2025, and I've seen little since to convince me otherwise. On the contrary, I think we won't see one now before 2028. In 2025, I would have been 61 years old (I was 39 when CoX was released). I no longer have the reflexes to be competitive in shooters now, and expect that by the time I'm 63 I'll have to start withdrawing from MMOs in favor of single player strategy games (not that I'm complaining, I enjoy those too, and it's because I spend so much time in MMOs that I currently have no time for them). In other words, my monetary support will have been completely wasted on a game I will not be able to play effectively when (or if) it ever is released.

We need less on the graphics development, and more concrete info on mechanical development. You also need to be playing the PR game, because original and Second Chance backers are (and will continue to be) demanding refunds for good-faith contributions to a game that many people now believe will never be released. Flaming them in personal emails because they no longer share your vision is NOT an appropriate response to this problem, and it matters not one whit that you are all part-time volunteer amateurs. Bad PR is bad PR, and you do NOT want it at this late stage of the development game.

And the kicker? The reason I was over there at all was because I was considering contributing a little more money. The sheer volume of negative comments convinced me not to do so. Also, despite no announcement on the Kickstarter site that Second Chance is closed, there appears to be no actual way to contribute, either on Kickstarter or on this site (on this site, it insists I'm not logged in even though I am, and when I try to relog, it insists my valid credentials are unrecognized even though I successfully used them just minutes ago), which is very, very bad for PR. Announcing and meeting deadlines, open avenues for contribution are your friends. Being three years late with a semi-usable character builder and being vague about game mechanics is not.

Some of that, like the technical stuff and stuff towards Tannim, he'll have to handle. Missing deadlines and spending too much time focused on the wrong stuff, I even agree with personally. There were a number of updates that have explained what happened with those, if you care to read them. The rest of your concerns, I can handle now.

Kickstarter refunds... We refunded quite a few people some time ago, and still refund incorrect/other problem purchases in our store, but the original Kickstarter was years ago. You can't get a refund from Walmart 8 years later- it's the same with Kickstarter. Further, that original contribution was a donation, not a pre-order. Kickstarter spells that out pretty clearly. I know, I made a donation myself.

Most of those comments on Kickstarter talking about Facebook messages and reaching out to us, I don't recognize the names, and I've been in charge of the Facebook for some time, same here on the forums, and in our Discord. If they spoke to someone, it was someone that hasn't been in our PR department in a long time.

Lastly- the Second Chance is still active, with a number of ways to contribute.
There's no way to purchase anything on this site- you want https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/, sign up with either your forum email or with your original Kickstarter email, and purchase what looks good. If you use your original Kickstarter email, it will even sync up with any Kickstarter contribution you may have made.

Superpersonage wrote:

As I've said many times to many people, it doesn't matter how pretty a game is if the mechanics are not satisfying. The bulk of MWM updates are all about graphics. Most info we're getting about mechanics has been coming from random and extremely vague forum posts from Tannim, and the implication is that they are dropping what they've developed and starting over again whenever a cool new idea comes along. This is not how to develop a game that began development eight years ago.

We have quite a few updates that discuss mechanics of multiple systems. And yes, I have given some explanations in discussions. I believe that open communication (or as open as possible) between developers and players helps build a healthy community.

We have been pretty focused as far as our mechanisms and combat systems are concerned. I don’t know where these implications of our game play team dropping things and starting over is coming from. There is always a danger in development of adding to scope (bloat) or wanting to hold onto a baby you’ve created instead of letting it go because it doesn’t work in the current environment (or at all). As I am leading your game play development, I can assure you that I have not been looking for the “cool new thing” and focusing on “let’s get our thing done.”

Heck, when Epic announced UE5 and stated that everything in UE4 will be directly portable, internally we basically said “that’s nice” and went back to work. We aren’t even looking at, or asking for access, or anything related to their new engine. We’ve been there before.

Superpersonage wrote:

At this point, I don't care if it looks like a crude version of CoX -- Hells, I don't even care if it's black and white stick figures. We need CONCRETE progress updates on mechanical development. Frankly, there is nothing here to instill confidence on that front.

I get it. You want to see videos in combat and missions systems. I want to show that too. However, you talk about PR and playing the good PR game and then talk require we show the ugliness of game development. Most common people don’t like seeing the ugliness. They don’t understand what they are looking at. I’ve seen so many games, even some of our fellow hero based game developers show off early stuff and outside of their immediate fan base, the response from other websites and forums is all negative because of how “unpolished”, “janky”, “ugly”, and insert more negative phrases and terms, they say things look.

Doing this makes things worse for our PR team, not better. I want to show stuff happening when it looks good enough to show - not perfect, but good enough. Something that will be proud to show. And yes, that is “graphical” in nature - because that is what most people outside of development see - they look at how things look, not the underlying functionality.

In order to show the public mechanics, you also need to show it in a way that is at least, pleasing and representative of what and how they expect a game to look.

Huckleberry wrote:

I think it would be perfectly acceptable to show work in progress to backers only, with an NDA associated with it. I think most, if not all, of the criticism you've gotten from fans has been from backers who have not been given assurances that their money is being spent wisely or that any meaningful development is happening. I'm not here to argue whether or not development is happening, I'm here to make a case that in MWM's desire to not let peripheral entities see ugly work, you are leaving your financial backers in the cold dark.

For what it's worth I've been writing code in both professional and non-professional capacities for almost 40 years now. I also been playing and creating rules for games for at least that long. I suspect based on that tangential experience I'd be able to give MWM the benefit of the doubt if I saw some half-finished "ugly stuff" related to an unpolished test build of a game like CoT. Just saying...

Tannim mentioned, "Most common people don’t like seeing the ugliness." Sure most people don't really care how the proverbial sausage is made much less have any understanding how the raw sausage bits become the final product. I'd simply offer there are people here in this future playerbase (likely some far better suited than me) who could maturely handle seeing a "work in progress" right now and provide usefully significant feedback about it.

I'd have no problem with signing an NDA for exclusive CoT access/testing. I've worked with/under NDAs for the government and various companies for decades. The main problem I'd specifically have is the relatively small amount of free time I could spend on it, but considering the current volunteer nature of MWM I don't see that alone being an issue.

warlocc wrote:

it's been decided up until now that their time is better spent actually working vs explaining what they're working on.

Obviously when someone asks to see a "work in progress" there's always going to be the question of exactly what you would show and at what point during the effort does it even make sense to show it.

For example if you paid someone to make a wooden table for you would it be helpful to show it at the point where it's just a pile of wood or would you show it only when you had the legs attached but before you've sanded/polished it? In that case the "pile of wood" version of the table probably wouldn't be that interesting or useful to look at but the "pre-polished" version might be worthwhile because the table maker could get input about what kind of polish to use.

That analogy is totally applicable to CoT. Sure it's vaguely interesting to me to see some of the "under the hood" stuff just because as I pointed out in my last post I've been tinkering with code for years. But I would totally accept that most people who want to play CoT will not care about seeing the game so early in its development that all you have to show is the code itself. Basically what you showed in your post was the "pile of wood" version of CoT. If you literally do not have anything else to show at this point then I'd probably have to sadly agree it's not worth showing -anything- at this point. I say 'sadly' only because after close to 8 years it would seem that you ought to be far closer to the "pre-polished" version of CoT and actually have something worthwhile to show.

I get that MWM's been making more progress recently but you can only keep saying "we're almost there" so many times without showing more. The general working assumption you're dealing with here is that if you really are "almost there" then you also ought to have a version of a "work in progress" that's actually worth showing by now. You can't have one of those things without the other.

Huckleberry wrote:

Please forgive me for playing Devil's advocate here, but it looks like MWM is playing a shell game.

Even if we take MWM at face value and assume (for at least the sake of argument) that there's no element of "scamming" going on the snips of info we've gotten so far is leading me to think that at best CoT still only exists as several sub-units being developed in isolation by a number of volunteers that have yet to be integrated into a single working baseline. The problem is not that the game is being developed in "chunks" that are meant to seamlessly work together - the problem is that I don't believe they've even gotten to the point where they've tried to put those sub-units together to see if they're going to work as a whole. It's all still "theoretical" even 8 years after they started. That's where the proverbial "rubber is going to meet the road" with this.

At some point all the efforts of all the various volunteers are going to have to rise from their respective basements and be linked together into something approximating a workable game. As you say it'd be nice to get "ballpark metrics" to show where MWM thinks they are with all this. I don't need to see Gantt charts with exact timelines, but something more than "effectively nothing" but Soon(TM) would be appreciated after 8 years. I know there's always going to be the argument that "the volunteers would have to waste precious time reporting on their progress that could be better used to make more progress". Sure that argument makes sense if we potential players were unreasonably demanding minutes from weekly IPT meetings, but we're not... far from it.

Sooner or later MWM is going to need to cross the threshold of becoming a real "big boy" gaming company. Sure it'd be nice if they could have CoT 100% finished before that happens. But I'm starting to suspect they are going to have to settle for 80 or 90% to have any chance of "priming the pump" and getting this thing launched before the house of cards collapses. Ripping off the proverbial Band-Aid may not be pretty or ideal but it may be necessary.

Dark Cleric wrote:

To play devils advocate to your devils advocate... they've shown us all of that recently. Maybe not as much as we want... but they have.

Understood, but you only need to see posts #76 to #79 of this thread alone to see an example of what I discuss. And that's just one example.

Perhaps this is all water under the bridge now. Perhaps the age of being treated like a mushroom is over. If that's the case, I will be the first to commend them.

Darth Fez wrote:

Part of the context that needs to be kept in mind is that MWM doesn't have anyone who's dedicated to putting together updates and, as Lothic also reminds us, they're not an entity that's sitting together in one office. I couldn't begin to guess how long it took to put together the last update, for example, but spending a few hours on such an update takes on a different dimension when those few hours might be all the work one or more people can put in on the game, in a given week.

Much as I'd like to have such (more regular) updates, myself, I've seen enough information from MWM to trust their judgement on these things. And yeah, I'm sure more than once their reasoning has been, "Just... no, not this week." More than once, even. And I'm still good with that.

Again, for what it's worth, I've kept in mind the volunteer nature of MWM when considering my latest posts on this thread. I even acknowledged the classic argument that continues to come up that "time spent providing status could be used to actually work on the game" and I'm completely mindful of that concept.

But I will point out that while there may be such a thing as Devs "wasting too much time providing status" there's also the evil twin concept of "not providing enough status". I get that everyone's definition of "how much effort MWM should be spending telling the public what they're doing" is going to be different. Again I'm not asking for constant daily/weekly status, but it's very debatable whether what we're getting is enough considering the time invested. Remember MWM has had a year or two shy of a [b][i]decade[/i][/b] to get their proverbial ducks in a row for this. At the very least maybe it's time to have someone strictly "dedicated" to putting together updates for periodic release even if that means actually "paying" someone to do that. MWM will never become a game company until they start -operating- like a game company.

Unfortunately it's hard not to notice other recent games in the last few years that have vaguely similar features (e.g. expansive character/costume creators and superhero-style combat systems) that have been developed by tiny, independent developers and are already well on their way with early access deals at venues like Steam and such. I understand that it's hard to compare "apples and oranges" when it comes to different games but I'm just saying there have been at least several comparable games to CoT that have already launched in far less than 8 years with effectively the same kind of "no corporate investor budget" Kickstarter type deals. We know what MWM is attempting to do development-wise [b]can[/b] be done because [b]OTHER[/b] people are showing that it's possible.

To be clear I still believe MWM will eventually launch CoT in some form or another. I'm simply stressing that they don't have the luxury to continue to function under the radar as a "pseudo" game company forever.

Lothic wrote:

I get that MWM's been making more progress recently but you can only keep saying "we're almost there" so many times without showing more. The general working assumption you're dealing with here is that if you really are "almost there" then you also ought to have a version of a "work in progress" that's actually worth showing by now.

Let me tell you, I've been in some real arguments internally because there's been stuff I [i]have[/i] wanted to show, and they wouldn't let me. Ten minutes ago I threw a fit because one dev just said "Oh, it turns out [spoiler] is nowhere near ready, we can't show anything for a while." Luckily, they were wrong and it got cleared up. We're still on track like we've been talking about, and I think people will be pleased with our next software update. More than just showing, we're going to be giving stuff to players.

Huckleberry wrote:

Please forgive me for playing Devil's advocate here, but it looks like MWM is playing a shell game. They talk about developing mission maps, or the city, or combat animations, or movement abilities and we ask to see it and the answer we get is "we won't show you because some people will not understand it is a work in progress." So we ask they show it to just the backers, and the answer we get is "it's all code anyway, so what's to show? You wouldn't understand it." So MWM keeps moving the goalposts, offering whatever excuse is convenient at the time that serves to purpose of justifying why they don't show us anything. To an objective observer these are the same symptoms of a scam operation.

To reply to this, you're taking stuff out of order. Up until recently, it's been a lot of code, which is why we haven't shown it. Which is what I said in that post. Now that we're starting to plug it all in, we can start showing it. Which you saw in those gifs in the last update.

That said...

Huckleberry wrote:

I look forward to seeing this "big" update you are all telling us is coming. But I'd be even more encouraged if it could be delivered as a metrics snapshot, telling us how far along you actually are. You don't need to make it calendar-based. Just tell us how far from finished all the moving parts are and give us an idea of what is going to come first and what comes last.

I actually agree with you, more than partly. I'd love if we could have a solid road map of what's going on, constantly updated. Last time we made one though, a lot of people didn't care. Some people straight up called us liars. For the most part, it turned out to be wasted effort. On top of that, if you had asked me, this time last year, to predict where we'd be now, I would have been way off- underestimation. That's that volunteer thing again, which really hurts our ability to give predictions or make decent progress reports. We don't actually have a consistent work speed. I have to give a shout out to Iathor though; Retired, he's been like a full time dev for us, and the difference in having someone full time is really starting to show.

warlocc wrote:

Let me tell you, I've been in some real arguments internally because there's been stuff I [i]have[/i] wanted to show, and they wouldn't let me. Ten minutes ago I threw a fit because one dev just said "Oh, it turns out [spoiler] is nowhere near ready, we can't show anything for a while." Luckily, they were wrong and it got cleared up.

This is the other thing that needs to be kept in mind. Working on CoT is business as usual, which is to say that it's not somehow magically better than any other job. People throw fits. People make mistakes.

Never mind having to deal with the reality that there's always at least [i]someone[/i] who thinks they know more about what's going on than the people who are actually doing the work.