They are doing good work over there, but it's definitely a different direction than CoT is going. And they seem very clear that they are "a" spiritual successor, not "the". I'm here on these forums because I personally like the direction that CoT is going.

The idea of all of the spiritual successors (there is at least one other) coming together and working together is tantalizing, but at this point it seems highly unlikely to say the least, so hopefully the friendly competition will make them all better.

Definitely no use in a pissing contest.

toxic striker wrote:

Are you aware that there is another company or group of folks claiming to be the successor to CoH/CoV? http://valiance.shogn.net/ aka Valiance Online. They are in alpha testing stages from what can be seen on their site. Will you folks be offering Alpha testing? As well as beta that everyone asks about. Also are you folks working with them at all or have you considered it?

After we got the news back in 2012 that NCsoft was shutting CoH down there were groups of players/fans who did what they could to either try to get NCsoft to reconsider their decision or even attempt to buy/license the property from NCsoft to keep it going. When it became clear none of that was going to happen people started coming to terms with the idea of creating their own "spiritual successors" to CoH.

I don't know all the details over the following months, but it didn't take too long for the various groups involved to split into at least three different efforts; MWM being one of the three groups, the Valiance Online folks being another. On one hand it's kind of unfortunate that the collective creative post-CoH community has become split into these various factions - obviously it would have been more useful if everyone could have become united behind one single project. But as Cinnder has pointed out the various parties have remained remarkably friendly and generally supportive of each other's efforts. I only hope that when the time comes when these various groups start to have playable products that might potentially "compete" with each other that the general air of friendliness will continue.

As far as CoT alpha testing goes it'll be up to how MWM decides to scope that out. There's no hard or fixed rules about how any software developers must test their products so it'll be up to MWM to decide how many iterations of testing they'll do and how open they'll be for it. It's likely they'll do plenty of what they'll call "alpha testing" but only invite a few key people in for closed sessions. It means that "average" potential players like you and me might only get to be involved once beta testing begins. Alpha testing (almost by definition) involves limited CLOSED testing - I wouldn't automatically assume they'll invite just anyone to that. I doubt even being a Kickstart supporter will be enough to grant access for most of us. Again it'll mostly depend on what MWM wants to do and what kind of testing they want to label as "alpha", "beta" or anything in-between.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

ivanhedgehog wrote:
any idea where COT is in the timeline? how long before we see the possibility of beta? im figuring spring but have no real idea.

Public beta is near the end of 2015. Closed betas will be earlier.

That seems reasonably close to what the hoped-for schedule was in the KS pledge level ETAs.

We do plan on releasing the Avatar Creator earlier.

Personally, I will most likely stick with whichever one refuses to sell out to free to play models that penny pinch for every little item in game. I am an old school 15 a month guy, I tend to stick with what I am comfortable with, you know?

Valiance had a head start when they chose to build a Superhero MMO. They were already an active studio have an inhouse Engine that they could modifie. As well as all the physical equipment needed. So that's one reason they got an active Alpha running and being great people they opened the door for us.

There was talk at the start to see if the two projects could become one. It didn't work some of the things MWM wants to do there engine couldn't handle. Then there the whole mass Volunteer membership of the CoT and they being an established business.

I looked at VO. I prefer COT. COT shows a LOT more promise in the long run.

I've been playing Champions Online to get a superhero fix. It's okay. Better than it was in Beta and Launch, but just not...YEAH! I'm a sad panda.

I remember pretty clearly, when CoH announced the closure. Several groups - the gal with the overuse of emoticons, whose handle escapes me, she was pretty good at making comics with her avatar, the folks from the Titan Network were essentially one group that divided into two groups - and then maybe a week or so after, the Valiance Online guys made their pitch, explaining that they were a year or so into development and hoping for support. Some welcomed them, others like myself found it a bit too opportunistic, but that's me being old and grumpy.

I did ultimately download their beta, and have tried it once - only a few npc's about. The combat was okay, but it was very odd being the only player in the zone (as far as I knew).
I tried again this past weekend to catch their progress, the server was down and has been all this week.

I wish them well - but I don't think their game is as well planned out as CoT looks to be.
As far VO as being a spiritual successor, or even a successor - that remains to be seen.

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

Valience was a major disappointment to me.
The first thing I noticed was that the interface default was too small to read clearly which made it very difficult to do anything, including modify it so that I could read it. (Had the same trouble with Terra).
Next the costume options are way to complicated. I don't mean the costume creator, I mean the costume options. They were all elaborate designs that I would never want to use, and they had these ridiculous and offensive textures. Texture is almost always a bad thing in a character creator (for me) I want my characters smooth and simple. The only reason I'd ever want any texture is if I were making a rocky character. (By the way that's something I hated about the cinematic Spider-man also). This is even more of a problem in a game because it just means more to animate and more lag and lag is the cruel god that rules the Valiance world.
Next, every time I logged on I had to create a new account and character and start from scratch because it never remembered my account info.
Finally the server would be down for months at a time. I finally removed it from my computer.
Maybe it'll be better one day but I'm not going to try again until I hear good news from someone else.

The thing about VO that you have to remember is that it's pre-alpha. We've been given the chance to play the game long before it would normally be available for people to play. A lot of the things you have problems with can, and will, change long before it even makes it into an alpha state, much less a beta state.

For instance, the interface will be getting an overhaul soon. They've been previewing pieces of that for over a month now. And that's likely to not be the only overhaul it gets before launch as they gather feedback from the players that choose to give it. It also won't have all the options for scaling and customization that it's likely to have to launch. I'd be very surprised to see those go in before they've settled on something close to their final look.

For costume options, there's very few available, and for good reason. They've been through 3 different character models since I started playing it alone, and I didn't even start when they first offered it. The female model had some serious issues, and only just made it back in their most recent build. They're not going to give more than a couple of sample options while the model is still undergoing such heavy revision. That said, they have said that they're going to start adding more customization in the next few builds, so I'd start looking at that.

As far as the account thing goes, sometimes they have to wipe accounts due to changes in the character creation process, or changes in the account backend. It sucks, but again...this is a pre-alpha, play at your own risk game. And, if you're watching their Twitter, they usually warn when they're going to wipe accounts.

At the moment, the server is only up when they need feedback. They're making some pretty hefty changes in that downtime. This, again, to be expected of a pre-alpha game. Also, if you don't give -them- feedback, they can never take your issues into consideration, so I hope you have! VO's still got a long way to go, but it's getting somewhere.

I understand that but I do feel like they've made some bad decisions.
The tiny interface is more than an annoyance it's a serious problem
The complex costumes should wait till later. K.I.S.S. I do believe that they contribute to lag.
As for letting us know through Twitter that their wiping accounts: PPPTH! Twitter.
But at least now I know that's not a mistake. So I'm cool with it.
The biggest mistake is the incredibly long down time gaps.
It's not just that I'm eager to play, or that I'm gung ho to overwhelm you with constant feedback, but how are you going to build a community if we can't even log on? (Weird comment coming from me but I know it matters to a lot of other people) It's very frustrating. Seriously, there have been several times when I thought the game had folded.
One last thing: the buildings in the game look weird in a way that makes it seem like I'm not on earth, or not in the present day anyway. Is the game supposed to be set in the distant future?

Hitting development dates/goals: Like playing [i]Battleship[/i] when the ships are randomly moved about the board every so often.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

First of all, since we've got an old dev post in this thread with the old open beta date, let me officially post the new one.
CURRENT projected open beta launch - mid to late 2016. Yeah, it's been pushed off. Development is a fickle thing, and this happens with the triple AAA fully funded game you've been waiting for all the time too, lets remember. Understand that by default, any date we say is still a soft goal. The current date is maintained at the top of the FAQ page now, so you can always check that to see if it's still the same.
The Character Creator, however, is currently slated to get out by the end of 2015. Progress is actually humming along there, more or less. Fully expect to make that deadline.
Now, to answer the one part of the OP that our magnificent community has not already addressed: no, we won't be doing open alpha testing. Our stance is that alpha is not fit for public consumption. Closed beta wave access was conferred by donating ten or more to the KS campaign.

when the 'additional funding' round opens, will that be be considered a beta invite as well?

while i'm at it and before I check the forums (apologies) cuz of a time constraint, will the additional funding round also confer eligibility for the mogul secret lair, or was that purely a kickstarter benefit?

The DCUO people Phararri? I hadn't thought their staff would weigh in officially on this. I'm intrigued and would like to know what you are referring to.

Me three. Didn't know that DCUO had weighted in at all.

Though a bit in VO's defense almost all of the updates has been to the back end tech, and almost nothing that utilizes it to such a degree that one notices it.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Me three. Didn't know that DCUO had weighted in at all.
Though a bit in VO's defense almost all of the updates has been to the back end tech, and almost nothing that utilizes it to such a degree that one notices it.

Yea, this is true.

CaptainSabalan wrote:

What is the basic story synopsis of City of Titans?

To be honest that's actually a fairly interesting question given what you said about preferring things like movie franchise MMOs or other superhero MMOs which tend to have fairly specific settings. While much has been developed over the last couple of years to flesh out the general backstory of the CoT game (you can find this material spread around this forum and the Kickstarter pages) I think one of CoT's biggest strengths will be that it actually doesn't have an incredibly strict "story synopsis" or worldview that will force you to roleplay in any particular way.

One of the biggest problems I have with games like DCUO or Marvel Online is that they force you into playing existing classic characters (or at least incredibly close clones to existing characters). I have no problem with Batman or the Incredible Hulk as characters - I think they're awesome. But when I play MMOs I'd much rather play my OWN characters that I created. To me there's no comparison between creating my own superheroes and being forced into playing characters some old comic book guy created 50+ years ago.

One of the greatest strengths of City of Heroes (the game that City of Titans is striving to be a "spiritual successor" of) was its generalized setting which allowed players a huge amount of freedom to play and develop the stories and characters they wanted to have. Sure CoH had its own backstory and cast of NPCs but those things were only there to enhance your own creativity. In simple terms CoH didn't force you to have to accept any of its lore if you didn't want to. Hopefully CoT will follow in that model.

CoT is also expected to have a very strong character/costume creator and an alignment system which will be flexible in terms of hero versus villain styles of play. If it follows in CoH's footsteps these things should allow an unprecedented degree of freedom to essentially "do your own thing" storywise.

CaptainSabalan wrote:

Lothic wrote:
CaptainSabalan wrote:
What is the basic story synopsis of City of Titans?

I think one of CoT's biggest strengths will be that it actually doesn't have an incredibly strict "story synopsis" or worldview that will force you to roleplay in any particular way.
One of the biggest problems I have with games like DCUO or Marvel Online is that they force you into playing existing classic characters (or at least incredibly close clones to existing characters). I have no problem with Batman or the Incredible Hulk as characters - I think they're awesome. But when I play MMOs I'd much rather play my OWN characters that I created. To me there's no comparison between creating my own superheroes and being forced into playing characters some old comic book guy created 50+ years ago.
One of the greatest strengths of City of Heroes (the game that City of Titans is striving to be a "spiritual successor" of) was its generalized setting which allowed players a huge amount of freedom to play and develop the stories and characters they wanted to have. Sure CoH had its own backstory and cast of NPCs but those things were only there to enhance your own creativity. In simple terms CoH didn't force you to have to accept any of its lore if you didn't want to. Hopefully CoT will follow in that model.
CoT is also expected to have a very strong character/costume creator and an alignment system which will be flexible in terms of hero versus villain styles of play. If it follows in CoH's footsteps these things should allow an unprecedented degree of freedom to essentially "do your own thing" storywise.

That's a very good point you have and I agree with you. Having a strict storyline is fine to me in like Lord Of The Rings Online or Star Trek Online, but I guess having more freedom storywise in a Superhero MMO is actually a good idea. That way I could at least in a way make my own Superhero AND his own story. Very good point. I'd still like to learn a bit more about the lore in City of Titans. Thanks for the reply

Well in the past two years or so the Devs of CoT have released a large amount of "lore/story" content on both this website and on the CoT Kickstarter page. Many of the various factions (both heroic and villainous) have been highlighted and discussed and information on many of the "notable NPCs" have been covered.

Many people use bits and pieces of this lore to provide background for their own characters. Obviously some people like to model their characters very closely to this material while others choose their own path. Either way good luck and welcome to the game. :)

If you really want to dive into the released Lore and stuff, I suggest starting with Winter's List: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/kickstarter-update-reference-list

Be Well!
Fireheart

Decided to try the alpha. Just as I figured after looking at the production screens, the art style is VERY DCUO and features overly shiny costume pieces and cool-ish areas that suffer because of extreme shininess and color intensity. IMO, I rarely like anything with more color intensity than WoW (very few exceptions). So.. yeah, was going to pass at first. Now just going to avoid unless it's the only option.

Metal is great. Super shiny metal is painful to look at. CoH had a good limit to how shiny its metal could be and Champions does even better (except in Canada and any areas that share its weird light source).

Well, they appear to be moving to alpha in the coming months.

https://valianceonline.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/say-hello-to-my-little-friends/

I am no developer, but not sure they are ready. Has anyone played the pre-alpha? It is far from a resemblance of a game, it feels 19% complete imo. Not sure what they can do in a few months to justify moving to Steam, as I mentioned before, the game feels pretty much the same from the 2014 version, with a few minor model changes.

The worst thing they can do is to put the product on Steam; first impressions matter, knowing what I do about their developmental process and their definition of "progress" this game will be shot down after the Steam release.

There just isn't enough in that game, nor am I convinced they can change that in the coming months, cause the game feels the same from a year ago. Hopefully I am wrong.

Someone posted this on Steam Greenlight VO discussion page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c_Mr-kv98I

Huuuuge difference from VO pre-alpha, and this pre-alpha. DCUO pre-alpha resembled a incomplete game.

VO's pre-alpha resembles something too far off to even be an incomplete game.

Their progress is extremely slow, not convinced they will suddenly put a foot on the gas and implement A1 features.

Tons of steam games are in the Early stages but feels like a game nonetheless, VO does not feel like anything, its awful atm.

I attempted to start Valiance Online but I couldn't get past the character customization. Whenever the game starts up, sooner or later it will say Not Responding

Very excited for this!

Supposedly, there is a "Big Announcement" coming up. This is laughable to me, because the game is indeed too far behind to announce anything worthwhile. I pretty much gave up on Valiance. Looking at Blade and Soul, Black Desert, and Titans atm.

Yea, on their FB page, a dev alluded to a new site with crowdfunding options an hour ago, so I guess you were right on the $$$.

^^^yea.

I thought about donating, but kind of glad I did not. Lost faith in this project, that pre-alpha was awful, as i look around and see other pre-alpha titles.

No way this game gets to Steam until 2017 imo, if at all. VO has Bounty hounds Online written all over it, btw, is that game still in beta?

Lothic wrote:

This is a simple example that highlights having more choices is pretty much always better. Depending on the situation (or particular character I'm playing) I sometimes prefer glossy color options and other times more matte colors. I could see where if a game heavily favored one over the other it would become annoyingly noticeable.
One case I recall from CoH was especially irksome: It had basic matte versions of "tights" for every major body area (top, pants bottom, bikini bottom, gloves and boots). It also had a "shiny" version of tights, but only for the top and pants bottom. This meant you could never use the shiny items with matching gloves, boots or bikini bottoms (to make complete shiny leotard-type outfits). For some reason the CoH Devs never bothered to finish giving us the rest of the "shiny" parts for that even after 8.5 years. *sigh*
I'm optimistic that the texturing that's been shown for CoT will allow us the ability to have full "shiny" or "not shiny" options as we choose.

One would hope so, given that even under "old style" (pre-UE4, non-PBR) stuff "shiny" basically meant having a relatively high peak specular reflection aligned to the viewing axis, with a fairly sharp drop-off as the angle increased, and that is the sort of thing that should generally be handled by having a separate specular layer (as UE3 did).

UE4, their page on PBR gives a very good set of examples on "what is shiny and why" when dealing with physical based rendering -- but it means that in theory so long as the material is defined similarly, you can make any costume piece out of it and it should Just Look Right(tm).

While theory and reality don't always cross paths, the things that drive "shiny" (or lack thereof) are all pretty fundamental-level optics, so you kind of have to support them well to get anything more complex working at all.

I actually dont care for an exact release date. I'm the kind of guy that gets happy when i see Any Real progress.. doesn't matter which department either. But i'll admit I find 3D more intriguing to work with, and learn much more about.

I myself am playing with Unity 3D and trying to optimize the tools that allows others to make UI's.. and I've been struggling to get All the single images to only perform a single Draw/Pass call. And I finally have it doing that now, but it took me months more that I predicted. :P

example: Can draw thousands of individual independent resizable windows with just One Pass.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/DsFkOrw.png[/img]
And it Still needs allot more work. :/

So I understand that many of the Devs think that its gonna be a heck of allot easier to roll back and redo things right now, then trying to do it once the game is up and running for all. I'm on the Devs side as far as that goes. But, I'll like to draw the line at a certain set of features, so feature creep isnt always looming.
But, if one of the features postponed for a later version might directly affect one of the features in the current release version(s), it's a good idea to go back and reCode the Base Feature to allow for the future Feature to work when its added in the next release.. instead of leaving it all for the next version. That's not how business works though, when deadlines loom. :/
But the Devs at MWM might feel they can stretch their legs and do things that work in their favor, since most of the deadlines are Soft. :)
Caveat is, Not All backers will agree to this POV of always having Soft Deadlines. Only 60% or so?!? :P

And yes, Right Now, I ONLY care what the backers impressions are. Since they will be the ones that will fund the next KS or the like. To please the majority of us, MWM doesn't HAVE to release the AB right now, but just SHOW Progress! Us KS backers just need the Good FEELz of Real Progress! ;)

This is why we make so few promises. Except very broad ones, which are sorta the minimum requirement. No, we don't tell you what you want to hear, we tell you what we can be honest about. Trying to make too many big promises, hints to grand things and so on, at this stage, we could only undermine faith for the future.

That said, Valiance's pre-alpha was, even officially, more like pre-pre-alpha.

Someone stated that they are in the midst of a "HUGE" announcement soon. Lol......well....lets see, judging from their track record, expect the same state of the game from this time last year. I am in "Believe it when I see it mode" with these guys. Unless they did a complete re-haul, VO is not a promising project. They keep putting their foot in their mouth with these false promises. i don't mean "Releasing on X date" but rather, they really feel like progress is being made, promising huge updates only to deliver a similar pre-pre-alpha feel.

Also, that "Soon" crap the VO devs keep throwing out there as a joke was was never funny. VO's progress is funny, a joke.

I like VO. I think my biggest issue is/was with their engine (I do not like the Unity engine especially not the last gen) the way i do Unreal. Even DCUO is in Unreal engine and I like the way it mixes realism with comic-ism.

Now.. if they want to fall in line (no more cooks in the kitchen) and combine the Project Z projects once again behind the vision of CoT .. I would not be mad about it. I'd rather have one really GREAT game than 3 in competition for players.

I especially think the collaborative effort of VO and CoT will continue to be appreciated. I don't know personally what's going on there but IF they reached a point where they couldn't continue development I think they'd let their community know.

It's funny. When I see Unity vs Unreal, I always have the same reaction. They both look awesome, but when I see the Unity I think "wow, that looks amazing!", and when I see the Unreal (ironically enough), I tend to think, "wow, that looks REAL."

I wish Valiance all the luck in the world. It's not a zero sum game. One great game would be good. Two great games would be even better. But I do think, being out front from the beginning, Valiance has taken the chances and inadvertently demonstrated a good bit of what NOT to do.

And I get the sense MWM has been paying close attention, and learning.

When I discovered these (VO, CoT and H&V) little over a year ago it looked like VO was the one that had progressed the most because I erroneously mistook having a playable version out with progress. Over time though it certainly looks like CoT is the most progressed one, especially after VO shut down most communication. Haven't really kept tabs on H&V but a quick look over doesn't put it ahead of CoT.

I think the biggest mistake VO has done was to put out a publicly accessible client before settling on the underlying technology. Redoing many of the underlying technologies (animation system, character creator and so on) and not having all of them properly done (no proper travel, activatable passives, no CC or proper debuffs/buffs, dodgeable heals and many more) while having a public client out can't be good in the long run. Add to that how long they have dragged out [i]Soon[sup]tm[/sup][/i] for their big announcement (what, 5-6 months?) and that they "removed" their existing site before having a proper replacement and it certainly haven't gained them any bonus points.

A very wise decision Doctor, very wise.

Well said Rotten, well said!

Pretty Good ... i'm so happy.
However, damage number have to be blue like cold damage... it will be more good than this big square logo of ice... my opinion ^^

Servers should be back up soon, according to them. Personally, i am not interested in playing a per-pre-alpha game. It is unplayable imo. Will wait until Steam Early access, if they ever manage to get there......

I have one question though, serious question; how can they go into early access in 2016 with the product they currently have? The game (If you want to call it that) seems so far behind in the developmental process. I am no developer, just going by the eye test, VO is unplayable atm...not sure how some volunteers came press on the gas during 2016 to make it an acceptable product. For instance, VO alpha in 2014 feels similar to VO in 2015........

Preview of the new site is up.

http://newvaliance.shogn.net/

What do you guys think about the powers? All look pretty neat.